To Make My Bread by Grace Lumpkin Page A

cabin last week, and I’m not afraid to say so. My God is a just God and he won’t punish me or my young ones for sashayin’ around some to the music of Granpap’s fiddle and Sam Wesley’s banjo.”
    â€œTo my mind,” Jim Hawkins spoke very carefully, “hit’s plumb wrong and lascivious. My gal’s going to stay home with her daddy till her man comes along and takes her in marriage. If she can’t get a man without sashaying around for it, then unmarried she stays.”
    There was a silence after Jim Hawkins had spoken. Each man was digging down into himself, holding himself back. Jim Hawkins looked at them defiantly. He knew what was in their minds about his wife. He had found her in the back shed with a fellow who lived under South Range and he had turned the woman out and done nothing to the man. Only he kept Minnie at home, never leaving her at night except for Saturday evenings when he went to the store. And his neighbors went down in their minds remembering all this. But they kept silent.
    Granpap broke up the silence. “David danced before the Lord,” he repeated. “And I ain’t ashamed to play before the Lord. He can look and see there’s no sin in my heart.”
    â€œYes,” Fraser McDonald insisted. “Hit’s what’s in your heart that counts. Some of the round dances I’ve heard tell of are wrong. That’s what you might call lascivious, Jim Hawkins, a-hugging up a woman for a whole dance. But young ones or old ones a prancing around doing a Ladies’ Chain or Do Si Do can’t be harm.”
    â€œThere’s the preacher,” Hal Swain said. Preacher Warren hitched his horse to a tree down the slope. He reached in his saddle bags, got out what he wanted, and came along to the door of the church. The men followed him in silently. They sat on the homemade benches on one side and the women and children on the other. Up front there was a table with a pitcher of water and a glass that Sally Swain had brought from the store. Sally took up almost the whole of the front bench, for she weighed over two hundred pounds. Behind the pitcher the preacher laid the big Bible he carried around with him in the saddle bag.
    He was a small man from one of the settlements near a church school on the other side of North Range. During May he would come every Sunday and after that only once a month until summer was over. Standing behind the table, he gave out the words of the hymn. For such a little man he had a strong voice and led the singing. First he cleared his throat and hummed down in it to get the key.
    â€œWe’ll sing to-day, ‘Come ye sinners,’ ” he said and cleared his throat again. Line after line they sang with him.

    Bonnie, who was good at remembering words, did not need the preacher to lay the lines out for her. She could have sung right on, having learned this one the summer before. She had a good voice. John, sitting on the other side of Emma, heard her letting it out. She lifted up her nose and sang right through it. The prayer was a long one, and John was very tired before it was over. He tried to get Bonnie’s attention, but Bonnie held her eyes straight in front. She liked to listen to the sing-song of the words. John was simply not interested in them. There was another song and then the sermon.
    The preacher looked down at the Bible, turned the pages over to a place at the front, cleared his throat and with head bent looked impressively from under his eyebrows. He eyed them all, men, women and children, threateningly. It was what he had seen other preachers do down in the towns. And he thought it the right manner to use with a wayward flock.
    The text was, “And Abraham said, ‘Here am I, Lord.’ ” He read from the Bible about Abraham being ready to sacrifice Isaac in the land of Moriah on top of a mountain. “And Abraham said, ‘Here am I, Lord,’ when the Lord