The Path Was Steep

by Suzanne Pickett

  We stopped at my sister Maurine’s for a few minutes’ visit with her and Lucile, then on to the dying coal-mining town of Majestic. As men and women came out to see what we offered, I felt a mingling of guilt and helpfulness. They could scarcely afford the small price that we charged, yet each could have planted a garden for himself.

  We accepted company scrip and often, I knew, the ten or twenty cents handed to us was the last that person had for that day. We sold peas for ten cents a gallon and heaped the bucket high. Big melons went for fifteen cents, smaller ones for five and ten cents. They were always ripe. Papa could walk through a field, look at a melon, and tell the state of ripeness. Tomatoes and okra were plentiful; beans, too—bearing more the more we gathered. Papa didn’t sell his corn. That was kept for bread and food for the animals.

  That first day we bought a tank of gasoline, a new broom, ten pounds of sugar, and a box of cocoa. The monthly hundred pounds of sugar had gone into apple and peach pies, preserves and jellies. Miss Mildred had begun to crave chocolate cake. We also bought thread, aspirin, coffee, and a plug of Brown Mule tobacco.

  The children were chocolate-smeared and happy as we rose from the table that night. “Yes, I’m pregnant again,” Miss Mildred admitted as she gorged on chocolate cake. “And,” her blue eyes were grave, “I won’t live through it this time.”

  “Of course you will,” I promised, not knowing how near I came to being wrong.

  The last of August, I walked to the mail box. Papa’s old straw hat came to my eyebrows. Pride hadn’t vanished in this Depression. I tended my baby-white skin as if it were some rare jewel. I’d not go to David toughened by sun and as freckled as a guinea egg.

  I was tired and discouraged. Bad news came with each passing day. America had reached the depth of suffering, we’d think, when news of more cutbacks and fewer jobs would come. Mines, plants, and factories were limping along, trying desperately to keep from closing down entirely.

  I was so discouraged that I didn’t actually believe David’s letter held a money order until I read the amount three times, heard myself crying, and saw the dust flying under my feet as I raced towards the house.

  6

  The Value of Papa’s Teaching

  The next morning we started off in the old Ford, passed the dusty bitterweeds, and turned onto the highway, where the motor failed. The incredible Griff and Mrs. Griff rescued us, and the girls and I were safely on a bus and headed for Welch, West Virginia. As we rode the long miles that took us to David, I was in my usual state of shock. I knew this was happening but just didn’t believe it. Tomorrow I would wake and go peddling again.

  Night came; the children slept on empty seats. I slept, too. During the night, the driver woke us. We stumbled from the bus, collected baggage, and piled onto cold, hard benches to sleep through a two-hour stopover at Bristol, Tennessee. Another driver shook us awake; we staggered onto his bus and slept again.

  A rainy, gray dawn awakened me. I had a crick in my neck and a dry, brassy taste in my mouth. When the bus stopped for a thirty-minute rest, I smeared tired faces, brushed my teeth and then the girls’, and found a place to eat.

  Food and fresh air revived us. The children stared out the window as we drove through Virginia. Sacred Virginia, home of Washington, Jackson, and Lee. Virginia hills were neat, round, and green, with cattle grazing placidly, as if men had never died there, as if a cause had not been lost.

  My great-grandfather Canada had died of wounds received in that war. My grandfather Mosley, wounded at Atlanta, kept the bullet that wounded him. General Pickett was a relative of David’s. So, even in my state of shock, something vibrated in my heart at seeing Virginia for the first time.

  Then we were in Bluefield, and Virginia hills turned into West Virginia mountains, incredibly high and higher. Rain slanted past a window now. “Slippery when wet,” a sign stated, and below at a vast distance lay relics of cars to prove the statement. I kept the bus on the road by sheer will power. No fiendish road, however wet, could stop us now that we were so close to David.

  My neck acquired another crick as I gazed at the mountains. Straight up they went, like trees. Sharon, after a nap, stood on her knees at the window. A black thundercloud of a mountain towered over the bus.

  “Mother, what is that?” she asked.

  “Just a mountain, darling.”

  “I want to go home,” she wept. “I am afraid of that mountain.”

  They were so awesome that Davene sat for thirty minutes wide awake, stilled, just looking. A record for her.

  The rain ended, and the sun shone between the peaks, then hid itself behind the hills long before the day ended. We climbed to the roof of the world; then we zoomed down, down, down into a densely settled valley. Surely this was Switzerland—but it was the town of Welch. Mists hung in the hills that hovered menacingly overhead. Hemlocks, apple trees, and tangled vines hid rocks and boulders.

  The bus drove into the station and stopped, and there he stood! Like a rock, like Gibraltar. His white teeth gleamed in a wide smile. The mists had tumbled his curls into a bright gold mass on his forehead.

  “I see my daddy!” Sharon screamed. “Look, Daddy, I’ve got some new shoes!”

  He was up the steps and had caught us all in his arms. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” Sharon wept, forgetting her shoes.

  In the taxi, Davene clung to me and looked at David suspiciously. She hadn’t seen him since she was nine months old. But halfway to the boarding house (he had arranged for us to stay there a few days), Davene peered at him again, then flung her arms around him. “Daddy!” she shouted.

  Then David and I were both crying.

  The boarding house stood on an almost perpendicular hill. The back porch was jammed against the hill, but a long flight of steps had to be mounted before we stood on the front porch.

  “Dave, come on in the kitchen,” someone called.

  We went through the house, depositing our things in our room. The house had seven big rooms. Each bedroom held two beds, and each bed held two men at night. In emergencies, cots were crowded into the rooms. David was in such high favor that we had a whole room to ourselves.

  A long plank table, a big coal stove, and a pine sideboard furnished the dining room. The kitchen held a giant cookstove, and before the stove was a short, plump woman with very blue eyes, pink cheeks covered with yellow down, and a fine, gold mustache on her upper lip.

  “Mrs. Cranford,” David smiled, “this is Sue, and these are the girls.”

  Mrs. Cranford was drying an iron skillet. “How are you?” She slapped the skillet on the stove, put thick rashers of fat pork into it, and began to peel boiled sweet potatoes. “Dave told us all about you. These are my ‘jewels.’” She waved a knife at the girls who came in and out of the kitchen carrying dishes, setting the table, helping with potatoes, turning the meat, and stirring various pots that boiled on the stove.

  The meat was browned. Halved potatoes dumped into the fat browned quickly, were forked onto a platter, and sprinkled with salt and sugar.

  Sixteen men were seated at the table. The “jewels” waiting on the table inspected me freely.

  “The one who looks like me is Ruby,” Mrs. Cranford said, pouring coffee. Ruby handed cream and sugar down the table. Thinner than her mother, curved generously, Ruby had brown hair, pink cheeks, bright blue eyes, and a hint of her future mustache.

  “Ruby is going to marry one day, if she can find a man with enough money to take her from the coal mines. Jade now—”

  “Mama,” it must have been Jade who cut in, “do you have to talk so much?”

  “Jade,” Mrs. Cranford ignored her, “has been married four times. You was married to all of them, wasn’t you, Jade?”

  “Nobody’s business if I wasn’t,” Jade said. She had a small waist, too much bosom, flaming red hair, white skin, and eyes that exactly matched her name
.

  “Your man wasn’t so crazy for you,” the jade eyes looked down at me through lowered lids, “I’d a taken him away from you.”

  “Better women than you have tried.” I matched swords with her. Surprisingly, she smiled.

  Opal, the next daughter, was short and plump in exciting places. Opal had dark skin, bold black eyes under heavy black brows, and blue-black hair.

  “Opal takes after her paw,” Mrs. Cranford said. “I loved the sonofabitch, but he’s dead now,” matter of factly.

  I choked on a bite of potato.

  A boarder, coming in late, hit Opal on a tempting spot. Eyes flashing, she returned the blow. Laughing, he pulled her hair. She grabbed a knife from the table, and he fled to the kitchen.

  “She’ll marry him one day,” Mrs. Cranford said, pouring David a second cup of coffee. “This is Pearl, my baby,” she introduced the last of her “jewels.” “Pearl is the sweetest.”

  Pearl’s name was as fitting as Jade’s. She had pale silk hair, dark gold lashes and brows, wide blue eyes, and skin the palest shade of pink—translucent, almost. Pearl, about ten, I guessed, ate with the boarders.

  “You’re pretty,” she smiled at me.

  “Thank you,” I glowed, happy for a kind word.

  Talk cascading from her lips, Mrs. Cranford had ushered us through supper. She was in the kitchen now.

  “If you like that type,” Jade grinned, clearly conscious of her own superiority.

  The girls, now joined by the boarders, began to discuss me as freely as they had inspected me.

  “She’s prettier than you,” Pearl told Jade.

  “Think so, Dave?” Jade asked.

  “My hair is blacker than hers,” Opal patted her own black mane.

  “Hers has got a little red in it where the light shines on it,” one of the men grinned at Jade.

  “She’s mighty skinny,” Ruby said, her non-skinny bust and hips very prominent as she walked around the table.

  “A mite skinny,” one of the men agreed.

  Industriously, I chased peas with a fork. My hands shook, and the peas eluded me. David looked at my hands.

  “Skinny legs,” Jade said.

  “Don’t you have no sun in Alabamy?” one of the men asked.

  “Of course,” I looked at him in surprise.

  “Yore skin don’t look like the sun ever touched it.”

  “Oh, I wear a hat to keep from freckling,” I explained.

  “Good thing the girls take after their daddy,” Jade said. She was standing behind David. Suddenly, she rumpled his hair.

  His face had been red. Now it whitened. “Will-you-get your big hands off me!” he said.

  Rising from the table, he grabbed Davene. “Let’s go, Sue,” he said.

  Jade howled with laughter. “Don’t worry, Dave,” she said. “I like big, dark, ugly men. I was just trying to make her jealous.”

  “Jade, behave yourself!” Mrs. Cranford came into the room.

  “You’re mean!” Pearl said. “You’re the meanest woman in the world!”

  “Pays to be mean, baby,” Jade stooped to hug her. “I got four husbands that way.”

  “You didn’t keep them,” Ruby said.

  “You never managed to get even one.”

  “Mama, if she don’t leave here, I will!” Ruby began to cry.

  “Jade, I’ll thrash the hide off your back if you cause any more trouble,” Mrs. Cranford said and went to get a pot of fresh coffee.

  “All right, Mama.” Jade was surprisingly meek.

  “I’m leaving this place tonight!” David said as soon as we were in our room.

  “You’ve stayed two months,” I begged. The bus hadn’t been conducive to rest and after thirty-six hours, I thought I’d die if I had to take another step.

  “They never acted this way before.”

  Davene was asleep, her head rolling on his shoulder. Sharon leaned against me, whimpering. “I’m tired, Mother.”

  “Of course you are tired,” David said, and putting Davene on the bed, he began to undress Sharon.

  Too exhausted to worry and too tired to be more than numb at seeing David again, I was asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow. I don’t think I moved all night.

  The next day was Saturday, and there was no work. David left early to look for a house in Welch. “I’ve never been so dirty,” I told Mrs. Cranford. There hadn’t been bathing facilities last night, but exhaustion had made this unimportant.

  “Plenty of hot water,” Mrs. Cranford said. Pearl brought a big round tub. “I’ll mind the children while you bathe,” she offered.

  I was scrubbing briskly when the door opened. “Don’t come in here!” I shouted, and grabbed a towel. Mama had certainly instilled modesty into us. Not one of her daughters would let anyone—not anyone—see her nude.

  “Aw, what’s eatin’ you?” Jade came in and sat on the bed. “Think you’ve got more than other women?”

  I huddled in the tub. The towel was entirely too small.

  “Well, if you don’t beat the devil,” Jade said. “I bet Dave don’t even get a look at you. You’re pretty tough, in spite of what I said last night.”

  “Thank you,” I chattered. September mornings were cold in the mountains.

  “Say,” she pushed her hands through her bright hair and held it high. “Me and you could be friends, maybe.”

  “Of course.” Tears filled my eyes at this offer of friendship, and I tried to stop chattering.

  “Aw, kid,” she laughed and rose. “They come ignorant from Alabama, don’t they?” Her eyes were strange, hungry, full of need, as if she asked for help. Maybe we could have been friends.

  Thirty minutes later, as Jade helped me carry out my bath water, David came in. “Get your things,” he said to me. “We are leaving here.”

  “Takin’ her away from us, Dave?” Jade asked as we started to leave. Her eyes were bright green, then smoky, with a tormented look. “Maybe it’s the best thing you ever done.”

  A month later, I went to see her in the hospital. Two men, fighting over her, had killed each other. A wild bullet had hit Jade in the stomach. “Well, kid,” she smiled; then her lips twisted in pain. “Looks like my time has come.”

  “Jade, no!” I began to cry. The very earth would be diminished with so much beauty underground.

  “Hang onto that man, kid.” Her voice was a whisper. “I woulda took him if I could.”

  She died two days later. I thought of Jade often. Beauty, vitality, honesty, goodness, evil. Jade had lost her way somewhere and had not been able to find it again. Dimly, I saw the value of Papa’s teaching—one man, one wife until death do us part. If Jade had settled down with that first husband of hers, she’d be alive today.

  “I didn’t want life on those terms.” Her bright face looked at me for a minute, then dimmed. Well—she had chosen, and now all of that beauty was underground.

  7

  A New Hope

  Our rooms were an upstairs apartment in Welch. Mr. Peraldo, our landlord, had brooding, Roman eyes, black hair streaked with white, and a habitual look of worry on his face. He was manager of foreign affairs at the local bank, taught school at night (six languages) to immigrants, and owned a rock quarry. Yet the Depression had hit him also, and he rented part of his home. We had the upstairs; rent was $28 a month. The Carters rented the first basement. The house was built on such a steep hill that the second basement, where Mr. Peraldo’s father lived, had back windows high off the ground. The Peraldos’ front porch was level with the street.

  Mrs. Peraldo was the granddaughter of a countess and aristocratically beautiful. I had read that the old Roman aristocracy was the oldest and the most snobbish in the world, but she was always lovely to us. The Carters, in the first basement, were another Depression-hurt, proud fam
ily—Virginia proud, landed gentry. Jeff Carter had not been trained for work in a coal mine. He should have been riding to hounds, but this black Depression was certainly a leveler. David and I, used to comparative poverty, weren’t as hurt, as unable to cope, as some.

  After I had washed my clothes (in the bathtub, and never mind my aching back), I’d take the girls out with me, bundled in their warmest attire. When the clothes were popping in the wind that swooshed down the mountains, I’d sit on a rock and watch the children at play. Sometimes we’d climb to the rock quarry at the top of the street. Slabs of granite brooded into the sky, and men clung to sheer walls, using chisels, hammers, and saws. Could one of the Italian workers be another Michelangelo?

  The clean sheets of granite were awesomely beautiful. Hobart Street ended suddenly at the edge of the sky, and a rugged, narrow path wound around boulders and craggy rocks, down, down, and down: the shortest way to Hemphill, where David worked. He was on the night shift now, machine-helper, and he walked this unbelievable path to and from work. I took it once and was in bed half a day as the result. David worked long hours and climbed this trail to earn enough for rent, food, and necessary clothing. Sometimes unnecessary—when he worked an extra shift, he would spend extravagantly on a dress for me.

  Letters from Piper brought distressing news. Hunger was a stark fact at times. Piper friends hungry? I wept at the news.

  One cold day as the girls and I came in from hanging out clothes, Mrs. Peraldo, in her doorway, smiled at me. “It is so cold outside.” She looked at the girls. Their cheeks were pomegranate red. Yellow silk curls, under blue tams, clung to their shoulders, and their noses were pink.

  “Blizzard cold,” I agreed. And the glow of my own red nose was clearly visible in the wall mirror.

  “Won’t you come in for a minute?”

  Fabulous wool sweaters, socks, and bouclé knit dresses were piled high in an open steamer trunk. “See what my sister have sent me,” she smiled. “What am I do with all of this? And she sends all of the time. Zhorze Jr. and Henry can never wear out so much, nor can I.”