One April afternoon, I took Sharon, now three, and ten-month-old Davene into the garden to survey prospects for spring planting. Davene found a chicken dropping and tasted it experimentally. I grabbed for it, expecting her to wrestle for her find, but she threw it to the earth and cried, “Daddy!”
Black with coal dust, David stood in the kitchen door.
“Watch the baby while Daddy bathes,” I told Sharon, and put Davene back on the porch. It was very low; a fall wouldn’t have hurt her, but Sharon was better than a watchdog. She loved her baby sister and had never heard of “sibling rivalry.” If Davene crawled near the edge of the porch, Sharon pulled her to safety.
In the kitchen, I looked at the cornbread and stirred the butterbeans. The cornbread was crisp and brown. I pulled it from the oven and emptied the beans into a blue bowl.
David took the kettle from the stove, poured boiling water into a large zinc tub, and cooled the water with two buckets from the back-porch hydrant. Then he undressed and hung his black work clothes, stiff with dirt and sweat, on a nail behind the stove. “I’m leaving Piper,” he said. On his knees beside the tub, he washed his face, head, and shoulders; dried them; then stepped into the tub. Muscles rippled with every movement: timber-setting, coal-shoveling muscles.
I’d expected this, yet was not prepared. We knew that things were bad. Women fought hunger and despair with soap and water. Clothes might be worn thin and patched, but they were clean, starched, and ironed. The men, scarcely able to feed their families, had grown careless. A week’s growth of beard grizzled many chins as they gathered daily at the commissary. “There ain’t no work anywhere,” they’d say.
Rumors of jobs in Kentucky and West Virginia drifted into town. Other rumors told of long lines of men waiting in every place to find jobs. A man would take work at half the usual pay.
Slavery? In free America? Yet he must feed his family.
Now I was silent as the fair wind stilled, and the birds stopped their singing. The only sound was the slosh of water as David soaped and rinsed. Black streaks ran down his sides and into the tub. Black drops spattered the old tow sack* I’d spread around the tub. Blackness hid the late sunlight and the sky, and pulled a curtain across my heart. But what could I say? It was David’s job to earn a living. He was not equipped to sit and starve. Jaunty and confident, he was sure that a good job, somewhere, had his name on it.
“Times are bad everywhere,” I said. “Maybe they will get better.”
“Not in Piper. Work always slows in summer.”
Nothing could stop his leaving. Desolately, I packed clothes and personal belongings. The furniture, bought on payment after a summer in Detroit, went back to the store. My father lived on a farm, and there was always plenty of food there. Tears dimmed my eyes as I held Davene and took a last look at green hills. Sharon’s fair head leaned against me. I stooped to kiss her. Would we ever see these hills again?
My sister Thelma and her husband, George Johnson, managed a form of survival on the small wages he earned at Woodward Iron. A neighbor took us to Dolomite, where they lived. The neighbor was one of the rare greedy ones. In Piper, we helped one another, but not this man. Dolomite was not even a block out of his way to Fairfield, but he charged five of David’s lonely dollars to let us ride.
He knew we had a small sum from the sale of a few things—bedding, etc.—at half their value. But few were like him. Near hunger brought out the best in others. They were willing to share to the very last.
Bag and baggage, what little we had, we arrived in Dolomite unexpectedly, just before noon. If Thelma and George felt consternation, they didn’t show it. George grinned, his black eyes alight. Jean, almost three, and Ailene, seven, grabbed the girls. Thelma kissed us all, then started over. Who wouldn’t? With David there to kiss?
“I wrote to Papa. He’s coming for us,” I offered, as if giving a present.
“You are going to stay with us,” George stated.
“Dinner is almost ready,” Thelma said.
She had made a dress for a neighbor, who returned the favor by bringing a sack full of cabbage. George, unable to buy shells for his gun, set out homemade traps for birds and rabbits. Six birds, little more than thumb-size, added flavor to a bowl of dumplings. The cabbage, steaming hot dripping with salt, pepper, and a touch of sugar added; light, fluffy biscuits; and gravy, rich with canned milk, made you doubt that there was hunger in the world.
Food! It became more and more important. Not something you took for granted, but worthy of genuine thanksgiving.
Papa rattled up in his old rusty Ford a few minutes before dinner. He was so vividly alive. After the assassination of each of the Kennedys, people would say, “He can’t be dead! He was so alive!” A few, rare people have this quality. Papa had it to a great degree. He registered, cast a long shadow. My father, Lee Mosley, had stubby-lashed gray eyes, a patrician arched nose, and straight black hair. Very thin and pine-tree straight, he was still a handsome man—so virile that less than a year after my mother died, he had married a young, pretty wife.
Papa had never been neutral about anything. His religion came first, then politics, farming, weather, this Depression. He was interested in every subject and deeply involved in it. Earth, water, skies, animals, people—people most of all. Like Will Rogers, Papa never saw a man he didn’t like.
This day he offered thanks for the food. Flourishing his knife and fork, illustrating his remarks with his hands, eyes alight, Papa ate, talked, and, as always, managed to quote a few scriptures.
Then it was time to go. George and Thelma came with us to the car. I was quiet, quelled. This wasn’t happening. We were just visiting. Only little jabs of pain struck through my middle and called me a liar.
I clung to David’s arm, walked beside Thelma, sniffed the nearby gases of the Woodward plant.
“Things are bad everywhere, son,” Papa waved his hands downwards to illustrate his remarks.
“I’ll find work,” David said confidently. He rolled a Bugler cigarette, careful not to spill a grain of the precious tobacco. Finding a match, he lifted his leg to tighten his pants, and scratched. The thin material held, and the match ignited. “Someday,” I predicted silently, “he’ll bust his britches.”
“Do you need any money?”
“No, sir,” David lied.
“I could let you have a dollar or so.”
“Honest,” (how often people use this expression when about to tell a whopper) “I don’t need a thing.” David smoked a few draws and handed the cigarette to George.
“If you can’t find a job,” George inhaled, then returned the cigarette, “come on home. As long as I’ve got a biscuit, you won’t starve.”
“I’ll remember that,” David laughed, as if at a joke. He and George smoked the cigarette alternately, holding it at the last between thumb and forefinger.
“Well, I have to plant some corn,” Papa said.
I kept a smile on my carefully painted lips and blinked to save my mascara. But the smile ached in my throat. Sharon was too young for bravery. She clung to David’s legs and wept.
“Daddy will send for you soon,” he stooped to kiss her.
But I mustn’t cry, though I wanted to scream, “Don’t leave!” I knew his mode of travel. A freight train. I knew the danger. Lose your grip as you caught the train, and you would be crushed beneath the wheels. A “hobo” must spot an empty boxcar, swing onto it, and climb into an open door.
Guards searched the cars. If caught, a man was thrown into jail for several weeks. How the bright plumes of David’s pride would be soiled in jail! If not caught, how would he eat? This, too, I knew. I could almost see him. His face would be shaved and clean; he’d manage that at a creek or someplace. His teeth would be brushed, and his hair, combed slick with water but drying, would be a tumble of bright gold curls. His long lashes would droop over his gray eyes to
hide the deep hurt to his pride, but his smile would be wide, showing his unbelievably white teeth as he said, worn hat in hand, “Lady, do you have some work that I can do?”
No woman could resist that voice and that smile; this, too, I knew. He would eat, but at what cost to his pride.
“You write soon,” I whispered.
His face was white, but he smiled; he even swaggered a little; then his shoulders drooped. He didn’t slump; he’d not let himself do that. His smile was crooked. “Don’t worry, I’ll send for you soon.”
Papa coddled the motor of the old Ford. It sputtered, heaved, then racketed forward. Davene, happy to be riding, didn’t even look back, but Sharon wept desolately, voicing my own thoughts: “Will we ever see Daddy again?”
4
Despite All, Well-fed and Loved
As we rode towards the small town of Morris, we were strangely quiet. Usually, with two Mosleys together, you had a conversation. Frequently a heated conversation. “Papa,” I said finally, with the pride bred in people in that era. We didn’t want to be beholden to anyone. We wanted the best things in life, but only if we earned them. We knew God’s law “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread” and didn’t want relatives, friends, or a benign government in Washington to heap unearned benefits on us. So now I said, “I’ll be lots of trouble and expense, Papa. I’ll help with the farm work.”
His face reddened. He turned to speak; then he took my left hand in his, lapped his thumb and forefinger around the wrist, and said, “You—a farmhand?”
I looked at the wrist angrily. At that time, I was quite thin and practically boneless. Nature had given me very small hands. They were David’s special pride, but I looked at them in anger now. Of what earthly use were they?
“I’m stronger than I look,” I said.
“You’ve never been strong.”
“But I will help . . .”
“The boys can help all that I need,” Papa settled the matter. His heart as big and broad as the fields through which we passed, Papa understood all that I felt and thought. He had been close to my position all too recently. He’d worked in the mine for years; then at the beginning of the Depression, his section at Majestic mine closed. He was out of work, past fifty, with a wife and six children to support. Providentially, Mildred, his wife, had an income of $28.75 a month, insurance from a brother who had been killed in the war. Papa rented forty acres of land near Morris. His credit was good for a mule, a cow, and a few farming tools. Rent was three bales of cotton a year.
We left the Dixie Bee Line Highway and turned into a lane that led to the farmhouse. It was unpainted, age-silvered, with a front and back porch, and an open hall separating the rooms. There were two large front rooms, each with a rock fireplace. One room had a bed in each of three corners, a table, chairs, and an old phonograph. The other had two beds, a dresser, a wardrobe, a rocker, and a trunk whose flat surface served as a chair.
A small room was at the back of one bedroom and a kitchen behind the other. The kitchen was furnished with a Hoover cabinet in desperate need of paint, a cook table, and a shelf for water buckets and washpan. Big tin cans on the floor held sugar, meal, flour, and lard; they left room for the large dining table in winter.
A dog-run with a homemade bench and a few cowhide-bottomed chairs served as sitting room in summer, and we used the back porch for dining.
Here a long plank table was matched by benches at either side. Extra chairs seated as many as could crowd around the table. Water buckets, washpans, tubs of pepper, and flowers lined wide shelves. A gourd dipper added unbelievable sweetness to the water. Used to my own private glass, it was a few days before I could relish this, but “beggars can’t be choosers,” and I soon drank from the gourd as lustily as anyone.
A day or so later I set out sweet potato plants. Possibly I hoed a little, but other than that, I was practically useless. Miss Mildred did the cooking. I gathered vegetables and washed dishes. The children wore feedsack shorts and were bathed daily in a zinc tub under the pear tree. There was little washing and less ironing.
Three times a day the table was loaded with food. Around the table crowded the lively children, dogs, cats, chickens, and a swarm of happy flies. I soon grew used to noise, crowding, and insects, and all summer I kept a peach tree switch handy, waving uselessly against the flies. Miss Mildred was very kind. Not once did she ever make us feel unwelcome.
The railroad was only a mile away. At night, when I heard the lonesome wail of the train, I wept, thinking of David stealing a dangerous ride, and I wept for myself and the children. A few tears now and then spilled for others, but, selfishly, I had very few for any but my own woes.
A card finally came from David. He had gone to Detroit. The breadlines were staggering—no chance to earn a living in Detroit. He was leaving for Kentucky.
Papa, up before dawn, worked tirelessly; then after lunch he propped a chair upside-down against the wall in the cool breeze of the dog-run*, his head on a pillow that fitted onto the rungs of the chair. He would read his Bible and then take a short nap before returning to his plowing.
After dinner dishes were washed, I often sat in the hall, or lay on an old quilt while the children played, or took a nap.
Papa looked up from his Bible one day. “Sue, this will pass. You have to stay here until David can send for you. Why not make the best of it?”
“Papa—” A long look passed between us. “I will try.” He returned to his Bible reading. My eyes dropped to his hands: long, thin, muscled, aging, the very veins showing his mortality. A lump came into my throat, and my eyes dropped to my own small, white hands. Every finger and joint was shaped exactly like his. I had Mama’s big, dark eyes, but I realized suddenly that perhaps every wrinkle in my brain came from Papa—he understood me so well.
There was actually a great deal to enjoy. Mosley aunts, uncles, and cousins lived on nearby farms. My sister Maurine and her husband, Ezra Armour, owned a country store at Haig, six miles away. With five children, Maurine needed help, so our youngest sister, Lucile, had moved in to sew, sweep, clean house, and take a chief part in all the events of the community.
Our brother Clarence had been working in Tampa when the Depression hit, and he returned home. With a limp from polio and a hand that wouldn’t always obey him, Clarence was lucky that Ezra found work for him in the store. A large group of young people were in the area, and they had hilarious times together. Pat Buttram was one of this group. Later, Pat became known as “the boy from Winston County” on national radio. Still later, as a famous movie star, he provided the humor in Gene Autry movies.
The children enjoyed every minute on the farm. There were downy chickens just hatched, a hen bringing in a new brood every few days. There were kittens, dogs, flowers blooming, and gardens. Fruit would soon ripen. I became happy by day in the peace of summer on a farm, only at night letting my tears wet my pillow.
Davene learned to walk, the others cheering her on. Sharon, her blue eyes filled with love, seemed to think that she had done something wonderful the first time Davene walked the length of the hallway.
Miss Mildred’s check came, and Papa asked if I’d like to go to Birmingham with him to buy a month’s groceries: half a barrel of flour, 160 pounds of sugar, and coffee, soap, soda, etc. Our brief shopping ended, we drove out to see Thelma and George.
Sharon and Jean ran out to play, but soon came in crying. Jane Grant, carrying her small black dog, was with them. He had bitten Jean’s leg and Sharon’s hand.
“He is old,” Jane explained. “He doesn’t like children.”
“Is he sick?” I asked. We knew little of rabies then.
“Just bad-tempered.” Jane cuddled the dog, put her cheek against his silky coat. He whined and hid his face against her arm. My small fear died.
Back at Papa’s, we sank into the same routine. Day after day I trudged to the mailbox
and returned with no mail from David.
Lucile invited me to the movies. She and John Suddeth, one of her current boyfriends, would be glad to have me along. Miss Mildred, happy that someone had a chance at some fun, offered to keep the girls.
I didn’t have as much fun as I’d hoped. I felt guilty and uneasy. Was David having fun? Did the girls miss me? When we reached home, a car was parked at the front. I said my hurried thanks and went inside. Thelma and George were there. “Lucile would have waited . . .” I began, but Thelma burst into sobs. “Oh, Sue!” she wept.
George put his arm around me.
“Now, now, don’t scare her,” Papa said.
An avalanche of ice crashed about me, putting fear in my chest, numbing my hands and feet. “David’s been killed!” I thought it would be a scream, but it was only a dry whisper.
“No, not that bad.” Thelma kissed me, and her tears wet my cheek.
I leaned against the doorframe, and my eyes focused on Jane Grant. The avalanche of fear took another direction, and the ice still crushed me.
“Sue—” Jane began to sob. “Our dog had rabies—two children—two little children.” She reached her hand towards me, pleading. “Sue, they died.”
As the earth shook, I turned, put my face against the solid doorframe, and clung for a minute.
“Sue—” Papa’s hand was on my shoulder.
“I don’t want you!” I told him savagely, as if he had just given me a mortal wound. “I want Sharon!” Then I kissed his cheek. “Papa, you start praying.” I headed towards the bedroom, then turned. “When did he bite the ones who . . .” But I couldn’t say the word.
“Two weeks ago. But on the face. It is much quicker there.”
“Thelma!” I put my arm around her, finding comfort that Jean’s bite was on her leg.
“We started Jean’s shots this afternoon,” she tried to smile. “And we brought two treatments for Sharon. Dr. McInery has ordered more; we’ll bring it tomorrow.”
The Path Was Steep Page 3
