The Path Was Steep

by Suzanne Pickett

  Her sister, she explained, owned a chain of knitting mills in Italy. “I do not have the room,” she tried again. “The boys grow so fast that I have to store their small things. Would you mind—” she paused. “We are like the sisters, you know. Such good friends—if you have the room, Sharon and Davene can have of the socks and of the sweaters—”

  My first instinct was to freeze. We were not beggars. Accept charity? Wear castoff clothing? Not on your life! But she was so kind, so warm—my heart spilled over with gratitude. “We’d love to have the things,” I smiled.

  She was almost pathetically grateful, and her eyes misted with tears when I accepted a dreadfully expensive, brand-new, white bouclé knit suit and a dress. After that, the girls and I wore imported clothes, such as I had scarcely ever seen. The socks and sweaters really came in handy in the cold. Snow fell again and again, and the mountain air was bitter at times.

  The girls spent much of their time at our back window and stared far below where a street with ant-sized people (it seemed) ran through the gorge that gave access to Welch. Great mountains loomed all around; Welch filled the valley, and homes climbed the hills. Once Mrs. Peraldo showed me a picture of their summer home in Switzerland, and I thought it a picture of Welch. A street ran the length of Welch, and far, far below our house, a fire burned constantly. Natural gas coming from an aperture fed it. A man came daily to burn trash over the flame. Sharon, watching, began to picture evil things about the fire. “Mother, is it the Devil?” she whispered once. “I am afraid of him.”

  “Darling, he’s just a man,” I kissed her. “Let’s go and see him.” Hundreds of wooden steps led to the far street below. At the bottom, Sharon clung to me, trembling. But Davene ran to the man. “Hello, Mr. Devil,” she laughed. “I am not afraid of you.”

  “Sister!” Sharon’s love was greater than her fear, and she ran to stand before Davene. “Don’t you hurt my sister!” she screamed.

  The man wore a red stocking cap pushed back from tight, black curls. His cheeks were red, and white teeth gleamed between red lips. “Little girl, I won’t hurt you,” he smiled.

  “Why, Mother, he is just a man.” Color came back to Sharon’s cheeks.

  “You scare the little girl?” he stopped laughing.

  “I never scare my children,” I said quickly. “But someone did,” grimly. “We live up there,” I pointed to our high window.

  “George tell me about you.” He lifted Sharon. “You like to burn trash?” he asked, handing her a paper.

  “Davene!” I caught her as she ran towards the blaze.

  “Mickelli is your good friend,” he told the girls.

  After that, they watched happily as he burned papers. “Mickelli is good; he keeps our streets clean,” Sharon told Davene.

  “I am going to marry Mickelli,” Davene announced.

  I soon became acquainted with the Carters. He and David were friends now and walked the trail to Hemphill to work together. His educated, Virginia accent was new but intriguing. “Ooot and aboot,” he said for “out and about,” and “hoose” for “house.”

  Mrs. Carter, with laughing dark eyes and dark hair, was very pretty, and large with child. Their daughter Mary, about seven, was sweet, shy, and soft-voiced. She had blond hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. A polio victim, she used crutches, but you soon forgot them. Sharon and Davene worshipped her.

  Mary told stories of the three bears and Red Riding Hood, two of their favorites since babyhood. She said “woodchoppers” where we said “woodcutters.”

  “They chopped the wolf,” Davene said one day.

  “Yes.”

  “They chopped off his hands.”

  “They did that.”

  “And he couldn’t pat a cake,” she said, happily.

  You’re a bloodthirsty little thing, I thought.

  “They killed him,” she said.

  “The wolf is dead.”

  “And he can’t hurt the little baby.”

  “You darling,” I hugged her. She wasn’t bloodthirsty. She was concerned for Mary’s expected baby brother—whom, I began to think in panic a few nights later, I’d have to deliver.

  Christmas passed and New Year’s 1932 arrived. The Depression held America in a remorseless grip. But a small thunder began to be heard—a new hope. Who regarded the fact that he was crippled? Franklin Delano Roosevelt, governor of New York, grew and grew on the horizon.

  President Hoover was blamed for everything from the war between China and Japan to the Dust Bowl. Confidence in America was gone; the birth rate plummeted.

  But one birth was of great interest to me. I visited the basement apartment often. Now that the son—it would be a boy—was due, Mr. Carter decreed that he must be born in the hospital.

  Mrs. Carter, mindful of the present financial conditions, disagreed. “I’ll have my baby at home,” she told me. “I want you to be with me.”

  “No! I’d be scared to death!”

  “You’ve had two babies.”

  Two, yes, and unbearable agony with Sharon, born at home, weight ten pounds, a breech presentation, a country doctor—but this experience did not qualify me as a midwife.

  “I’m in labor,” Mrs. Carter announced one night after the men had left for work. Her smile stopped suddenly, and her face reddened.

  “I’ll call a taxi!” I babbled.

  “Jeff has a friend who will take us if I go to the hospital.”

  “Us?”

  “But I’m going to have my baby at home. You’ll help me.” Her face reddened again.

  “Let me call that friend,” I grasped the table for support.

  “It will—cost so much.”

  “I have to put the children to bed,” I told her.

  “Don’t leave me. Please!”

  “I’ll be right back,” I promised, and grabbed the girls by their hands. We stopped at Mrs. Peraldo’s door; I knocked and explained about the baby. “We’ll need to use your telephone.”

  “She can’t have the bebe at home!” Mrs. Peraldo chattered. “You call that friend.”

  “I will,” fervently. “Will you listen for the girls?” Our bedroom was directly over hers.

  “Oh, I listen! You hurry now!”

  Upstairs, I undressed the girls and put them to bed. For the next two hours, I wore out the stair treads running upstairs and down to the basement. Each time Mrs. Peraldo put her head out the door to ask about progress.

  “I’m keeping you awake,” I apologized.

  “With a bebe coming, you think I sleep?” she asked. “But if I do, I leave the door unlocked for you. Just come on in.”

  Mrs. Carter’s pains were five minutes apart now. “Where is that man’s telephone number?” I almost hissed at her.

  “If we—go—to the hospital—Mary will be—” Her face purpled.

  “She can stay with the girls.” I grabbed the sleeping Mary and hurried upstairs. I must have built some pretty good leg muscles that night.

  Sharon and Davene never woke. I put their little friend in bed beside them, then ran downstairs. “Now,” I said, firmly. “It is time to go.”

  “But think of the money!” she wailed.

  “This is no time to think!” I wanted to slap her. “You’ve got to do something!” Tears suddenly rolled down my cheeks.

  “My grip is packed,” she tried to smile.

  A sigh that came all the way from my toenails surged through me. “Give me that telephone number!”

  As I took it, she bent double. Her face was a vivid plum color.

  “I can’t deliver a baby,” I wept.

  “Hurry,” she gasped. “Hurry!”

  I hurtled outside, around, and pounded on Mrs. Peraldo’s door. She had gone to bed at last, but the light was on and the door unlocked. I called the operator, and after several year
s, it seemed, the telephone began to ring.

  It rang and rang.

  “Oh,” I wept into the phone. “The baby may be arriving this minute. Mrs. Carter is all alone.” I started to hang up and dash downstairs to help.

  Then, “Hello?” a feminine voice said.

  “Is Mister—” I didn’t even know the man’s name “—is your husband at home?” I asked.

  “Who is this?”

  “I am calling for Mrs. Carter,” I stuttered. “The baby—”

  “John!” the woman shrieked. “Mrs. Carter needs you!”

  “Hurry!” I shouted, slammed the receiver on the hook, and started for the door.

  “The bebe has arrive?” Mrs. Peraldo stood in her bedroom door.

  “Any minute, listen for the girls!” I raced downstairs, collected the suitcase, took Mrs. Carter’s arm, and we stumbled outside. Business of purple, agonized face again. “Lord,” I whimpered. “You know I can’t deliver a baby.”

  Car lights approached and stopped.

  “Hurry!” I snarled, shoving my patient into the car. “Hurry!” The hospital was only a mile away. We turned hairpin curves on two wheels and made it.

  A nurse rushed my patient to the delivery room. I answered questions, signed papers, then followed another nurse to the maternity ward, the suitcase slugging against my leg.

  Another nurse met us. “The baby is here,” she laughed. “A boy.”

  We’d been in the hospital exactly eight minutes. Of course I didn’t really need ammonia. The nurse just thought I did.

  Mother and son were doing fine, but yours truly wasn’t so chipper. I weaved down the hall and into the lobby. A strange man waited to take me home. I marched out of the hospital, down the steps, and to the car. Opening the rear door, I stepped in and sat down.

  Neither of us spoke. Possibly, he thought of his wife at home. I had another worry—how would David react to my ride at 2 A.M. with a total stranger? We made it home in record time. “Thank you,” I said and streaked into the house.

  Up the stairs I raced, looked at the girls, turned back the covers to put my head against their chests. They lived! Alone at night, they had survived.

  I dipped to my knees. “Thank you,” I whispered, found a vacant spot at the foot of the bed, lay down fully clothed, and fell asleep.

  But this earth-shattering event didn’t change the facts of the Depression. The story of David’s $14.80 shift was still circulating back home. The Peraldos must have thought we meant to keep a boarding house, so many came to visit. The old leather sofa in the living room, which made an extra bed, was rarely empty.

  My brother Clarence and my cousin Wilburn Clark had visited for three weeks. David’s company, Kingston Pocahontas, with an unexpected order, was hiring men, so they tried coal mining. They kept us laughing with their fantastic tales and jokes.

  Wilburn had black eyes, deep dimples in cheek and chin, and fantastic charm. He was full of tales about himself, such as the time he had been too familiar with a señorita across the Rio Grande; and the Mexicans, with fixed bayonets, compelled him to swim for his life while American soldiers on the opposite bank of the river cheered him as he swam.

  Wilburn’s work shoes were too small, so he changed shoes with Clarence, who had the narrow Mosley feet. The next morning both limped up the trail on injured feet. Each had preferred working barefoot on jagged rocks and coal to the agony of wearing shoes that, Clarence vowed, had been designed as instruments of torture.

  Two mornings later, Wilburn came home missing a finger. There was difficulty about compensation. He was accused of deliberately chopping off the finger. They even said that he had made two efforts. Far too many men were now missing fingers or toes. The compensation would feed them and their families for weeks.

  But the company had to pay. Wilburn chose a cash deal, for less money, and it was back to Alabama for him and Clarence.

  Work had practically stopped at Woodward Iron, so George came up for a month. Johnny Appleseed had passed that way once, and there was always a plentiful supply of apples, which sold at fifty cents a bushel. George and David lugged home a bushel every day or so.

  We ate apple pie, fried apples, applesauce, baked apples, jelly, and preserves. In between times, the girls ran about with apples in their hands. None of us needed a doctor all winter. We didn’t charge any of these visitors board, and somehow David and I managed the rent and our food, with even an extra at times.

  George had never been out of Alabama before. He missed Thelma and the girls, Ailene and Jean, very much. With his first month’s pay (two weeks were held back at first), it was back to Alabama for another homing pigeon.

  Now a trickle of visitors that became a steady stream began to arrive by freight train, or they had hitchhiked across the country. These tired, hungry men stayed a night or so; then, with no work available, they would drift on to another town. I imagine, till this day, when they think of West Virginia, they also think of apples.

  The girls slept with me nights when David worked. With our many visitors, they had to sleep on pallets on the floor, made by shoving chair cushions together.

  To amuse myself, I had begun to write the daily news in rhyme and read it to the girls. Junior and Henry often came up to listen. Mr. Peraldo once listened at the top of the stairs. “Could I talk to you?” He appeared suddenly at the door. “How long does it take you to write those?”

  “Oh, ten or fifteen minutes.”

  “Could you do them every day?”

  “Easily.”

  “Mind if I keep those you have?”

  The next afternoon Mrs. Peraldo called me. “Zhorze,” she said, then smiled. “I mean—George tell me you should see his friend, Mr. Kaiser, the newspaper man, tomorrow.”

  “I showed him your rhymes,” Mr. Peraldo stood behind her. “He thinks he can use them as a special feature in the paper.”

  Brash and ignorant, I went to the office of the Welch Daily News the next morning, too ignorant to realize that no unknown, especially with no experience as a writer, who has taken no courses and has only a high school education, lands a job as front page, feature writer for a daily newspaper.

  I didn’t even know what to say. I think I muttered once, “It has been said that I have a brain; if so, I want to use it.”

  Mr. Kaiser was very kind. I learned that he also had daily papers in North and South Carolina. “I like the rhymes very much,” he said. “I’d love to have them, but I am ashamed to offer you what I can pay. I’m the only man in Welch who has not laid off any employees, but if you’d like to do the feature—”

  As easy as that. A newspaper job, and featured on the front page beside Will Rogers. Pay? One dollar and fifty cents a week. And the heady excitement of recognition. A girl at the ten-cent store was as excited as if I were a personage when she cashed my pay check. “I keep a scrapbook of your poems,” she said breathlessly.

  The superintendent of education owned a shoe store. When I presented my weekly check, he looked, shook hands with me, and called his wife from the back to introduce us. “We are so proud to have someone like you in Welch,” he said.

  The local high school, when studying poets, included my rhymes in their study.

  Talent there must have been, a small amount, but it was wasted on such a stupid person as I. With such beginner’s luck, I might have been a successful, widely-known writer in a few years. But my big talent was supposed to be painting and drawing, next music, then singing, and even acting, so writing was just an accidental hobby. It was years before the urge to write became so strong that I was compelled to try my hand once more.

  Then I had heady fame in Welch. We lived in a nice apartment and had good clothes when millions were jobless across America. I knew how fortunate we were, yet I was practically dying of homesickness. The big problem was getting back home to Piper.

 
In the meantime, I did the best that I could with my rhymes and tried to be a good wife and mother. David—bless him!—never complained because I didn’t have any talent for housekeeping.

  The girls loved story hour, and nightly I read to them, or told stories of Washington, Lee, St. Valentine, etc. Sharon and Davene were deeply interested in hearing about the one who was “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” I showed them Washington’s birthday, February 22, on the calendar, and both girls marked the date.

  On February 23, a visitor arrived from Piper: McClaine Jones, David’s former wall boss*.

  “Do you know who this is?” I asked Sharon, thinking she might remember Mac.

  “I know,” Davene said.

  “Who is it, darling?”

  “George Washington,” she said triumphantly.

  Mac—an experienced fire boss, wall boss, and machine man—landed a job, and the sofa was occupied again on weekends. David and Mac both worked night shift. David caught every extra shift he could, and he and his buddy worked long hours, cutting coal. Each place they cut added to their income.

  Times grew steadily worse. Men were laid off. Work dropped to two and three days weekly. My check helped with the grocery bill and bought a few toys for the girls. We didn’t charge Mac for board; his family at home was in desperate need of far too many things.

  8

  We Never Knew Our Cruelty

  One morning David and Mac panted up the hill and came in exhausted, as usual. An extra ring of white was around David’s lips. “Well,” he announced grimly, “we are moving.” He put his lunch bucket on the table and went to brush his teeth.

  “That Dave.” Mac sat in one of the leather chairs. “Made of steel. Just sails up that hill.” His face was tired, his fingers clumsy as he rolled a cigarette.

  Davene climbed the chair and perched on his knee. Sharon lay on her stomach behind the sofa and looked at shoes in a Sears Roebuck catalogue.

  “He’s too tired to hold you,” I reached for Davene. My knees felt weak. Fear tied a knot in my chest. Papa would take us in again, but what about David? There was no work anywhere, especially at home. Mentally, I counted the money in my purse. With David’s pay—thank goodness they held back two weeks—there might be enough for current bills and bus fare home.