Food as Commodity and Metaphor in Gap Creek: The Making of Julie

FEATURED AUTHOR—ROBERT MORGAN Food as Commodity and Metaphor in Gap Creek: The Making of Julie_________ Patrick Bizzaro I think about somebody and start trying to imagine how they would talk. How would somebody in this time, in this condition, with these problems talk? How would they tell their story? Robert Morgan, interview JULIE TALKS ABOUT FOOD: she uses language to describe the work required to produce and prepare it. But so fixated is she on food that food talk in Gap Creek rises above the merely literal and reveals the interpretations of day-to-day events, the mind-wonderings, and even the spiritual imaginings of the story's narrator, the young Julie. Food, both commodity and metaphor in the novel, becomes a linguistic sign so common in Julie's use of language that it enables Morgan to solve many of the problems usually associated with a man's attempt to narrate a novel through the eyes of a young woman. No one should have to argue for the value of food. Everyone needs it. But food is so valuable in Gap Creek that it may easily serve the purpose we customarily associate with money. There is nothing inherent about food that makes it a perfect commodity. In fact, a "perfect" commodity may not even exist; items may generally come to be commodities and then later cease to be so (take, for instance, the plight of tobacco over the centuries). As long as food is scarce, as it seems to be for one person or another through all of Morgan's novels, and satisfies a human want or need, it may function as money does in most cultures. In Gap Creek, then, we may rightly equate food with money and fairly treat them both as commodities. As one might check one's finances at thebeginning ofthe month, Julie, afterhavinghadwhatlittle money she and Hankpossessed swindled from them (and this after the landlord's death), took an inventory offood on the farm. What she would find would have to meet their needs for the entire winter. Hankhad losthisjob and had gone outhunting for wild turkeys in his effort to secure food. This scene reinforces the notion that food is as important a commodity in this novel as the money someone might have. . .to purchase food. Julie demonstrates her awareness of this fact: 29 After [Hank] was gone I cleaned up the kitchen. And then I decided to have a look around the place. With no money coming in from wages, I had to know what we had to last the winter. I would be eating for me and the baby, and I had to see what there was to getus through till the spring, assuming we was allowed to stay in the house till spring. I didn't have but thirty-six cents in my purse, and I didn't know how much Hank had in his pockets. But whatever it was, we would soon run out of cash. (142) In an effort to determine what she had to work with during the time she and Hank would be without cash, Julie searched various places for food: cellar, corncrib, back porch, woodshed, springhouse, barn loft, and even the pasture to see if anything edible just happened to have grown there. But the adaptable and irrepressibleJulie did not stop there. She writes: "With Hank not making any wages, and with winter on its way and Christmas on its way, I begun to think of some means of getting a little cash" (155). Itwas Julie's good fortune that she was broughtup not to care about money "except when I needed something, or to buy presents." She deduced that there must be something on the farm she could sell. The chickens belonged to Mr. Pendergast, but I had fed and watered them and gathered the eggs. Maybe I could sell a few eggs down at the store at the crossroads for twenty cents a dozen. And if I made some extra butter I might sell it for fifteen cents a pound. But the cow wasn't giving much milk now, and the milk she did give didn't have a lot of butter in...