~Gap Creek, by Robert Morgan ~
The riveting thing about this novel, for me any rate, is Julie Richards (nee Harmon)’s capacity for hard work and sheer optimism. It is hard to keep in mind she is only 17 years old. She is amazingly capable and astonishingly mature (although unworldly), having taken on adult responsibilities and work from an early age.
Julie Harmon is the 3rd daughter of the 5 Harmon children (after Rosie who loves baking and doing domestic chores inside the house), and Lou (who is hardier and helps Julie in the outdoors, rough, heavy chores); followed by the pretty, silly Carolyn who was spoilt as the baby of the family after they lost their youngest, a boy named Masenier. When her father’s health begins to fail, it falls to Julie to chop wood, haul wood and corn, and take on the chores of the man of the house. She never refuses even though she often feels like refusing. The Richards family are close, loving, and in spite of hardships, struggle along bravely.
Julie falls in love with the handsome Hank Richards, a year older than herself, and they marry, moving to a house in Gap Creek, South Carolina. Disaster after disaster befalls the young couple, and Morgan’s depiction of Julie’s managing of the difficult relationship with Ma Richards (Hank’s mum), and the landlord, Mr Pendergast, makes you wonder how she has such a wise head on such young shoulders. That said, it is entirely credibly written, demonstrating Julie falling back on her sound, sensible upbringing, and her own good common sense and humility. However, Julie’s youth and naiviety comes through in her gullibility and innocent trust in all she is told; Morgan exposes the young couple’s extreme vulnerability; they seem to live on a knife edge in so many different ways. They are barely educated and have lived such small lives, restricted to their immediate surroundings, and have so few resources to draw upon, such limited understanding and expectations of the world.
The charm of this novel lies in the domestic details of this place and period; in details of how wood is chopped, how food is cooked, how a house is run and the hard work of boiling water for laundry, of fetching wood for fire, keeping lifestock, slaughtering pigs, rendering lard, salting hams, canning, grinding coffee beans, etc etc. The importance of corn meal and molasses in the diet of this community is wonderfully illustrated in a whole number of instances; right from the very start, Julie’s Mama says,
Now you can do without a lot of things, but a family can’t do without cornmeal. If you run out of meal you don’t have any bread and you don’t have any mush. And you don’t have anything to fry fish in, or squirrels. When the meat runs out, and the taters runs out, the only thing that will keep you going id the cornbread. You can live a long time on bread and collard greens, if you have collard greens. And if you can live a long time on bread alone if you have to, in spite of what the Bible says.
p4
Later, when Julie is searching Mr Pendergast’s premises after his death for food, she comes across some stores – the description is rich and colourful:
The jugs on the lower shelves was heavy earthenware. […] I pulled the wooden stopper out and sniffed. It was the smell of sorghum, rich, maybe overcooked sorghum. I dipped a finger in the dark syrup and brought it to my mouth. It was sorghum all right, with a golden redness inside. No blackstrap syrup, or cane syrup, but sorghum with its special smell. It was a little overcooked and thick, almost rubbery in the cold air. But the molasses could be warmed up, and they had the right flavor. There were four jugs of them. They would last through the winter, with syrup for biscuits and cornbread, as well as sweetening for cakes and gingerbread. There was molasses to be put on cornmeal mush in the morning, and on oatmeal”
p144
The wonder of Julie and her community is how they see possibilities, and envision meals and futures, from such humble items and ingredients. Out of hardship and lack, they seem to have learnt to optimise, make do, patch and eke out whatever little they have.
The outdoors and domestic labour is arduous, time consuming, never-ending. It is a marvel to witness Julie’s capacity for sheer graft, toil, and her endurance, not just physical, but psychological. She accepts, even if not without anger, her lot, and just settles down to work at it. Even when she goes into premature labour all alone, she is stoical. The following passage illustrate Julie’s vocabulary and attitude, which characterises her and so beautifully colours this entire novel:
The hurt was so bad I twisted on the floor and hit the quilt with my elbows. […] I would be wore out and ready for rest if it wasn’t for the pain. Even though I didn’t know how much further, t was certain I had a long way to go before I was done. It was a full day’s work. And I remember that’s what they called giving birth: labor. I was in the labor of giving birth. It was hard labor I would try to think of it as work and not as pain. I had a mountain of work ahead of me, I might as well pitch in. There was no way I could get out of it. There was no way I wanted to get out of it.
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Julie is very kind to her husband, shoring him up where she discovers he has weaknesses, and attempting to help him feel better about himself. Hank matures in the course of the novel, learning to control his anger, steadying and becoming less afraid, more decisive. It is also hard to remember sometimes this is just a teenager, 18 or 19 years old throughout the narrative. He carries so many responsibilities. Julie and Hank are a touching couple, both so young and easy to exploit and injure, but both such hard workers, unsparing of themselves, willing to give even when they have very little. It seems Julie teaches Hank some of her generosity and humility, gentling him with her lack of reproach when he has done wrong, giving him space to work through his low moods.
A really charming novel, the kind which gives the reader an actual experience of a particular place and period.
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