The Path Was Steep

by Suzanne Pickett

  David careened to a halt. I bolted out of the car, darted under a barbed wire fence, and headed towards the gleam of water in a sweet Virginia pasture. Before I could reach it, I sat on a stump and was very sick.

  “Baby girl—” David had followed. He ran to wet his handkerchief in the stream.

  “So sick,” I whispered. “So sick.”

  There was a sudden wild yelping and a pack of hounds loped in, ringed us, and snuffled eagerly.

  “Bunch of drunks!” someone yelled, and half a dozen men followed the hounds. We stared, dazzled by a blaze of flashlights that dimmed the moon. I leaned weakly on my stump and clutched Sharon, who had scuttled under the fence and came to me.

  David was bathing my head.

  “What you doin’ in my pastuh, ma’am?” a soft voice asked. My nausea passed at the balm of that soft accent. Dressed in whipcords and a gray shirt and jacket, the man loomed tall in the moonlight. His face was kind; his upper lip wore a sandy handlebar mustache.

  “Drunk!” the first voice said.

  “My mother is not drunk!” Sharon turned on him. “She is sick to her stomach.”

  David rose and walked gently over to my accuser; his fist jabbed once, and the man fell to the earth. He sat up, rubbing his chin. “No call for that, stranguh.” His voice had that Virginia softness. “If I’m wrong, I apologize, but if not—” he rose. He was even taller than the mustache.

  “We’re going home—excitement upsets my stomach,” I explained, happy under the balm of those voices, “and we came over the Jumps . . .”

  “The Jumps! No wonduh!” he nodded in sympathy.

  “Wheah is your home, ma’am?” the mustache asked.

  “Alabama.”

  “Think of that; my mother came from Montgomery. Hathaway,”—to the taller man—“you owe this little lady an apology.”

  “I apologize, ma’am,” Hathaway bowed. “And to you, too, suh. You did right hittin’ me. I had it comin’. Heah, ma’am, heah’s some muscadine wine. Happen it’ll settle youh stomach.”

  “Thank you,” I beamed. “But I’m stronger now.”

  “Make yourselves at home,” the mustache bowed, and all left to fresh screaming from the hounds.

  The rest of the night passed in the steady roar of Thunderbolt as we wended southward. Bright sunlight woke me. We breakfasted, smeared sleep from our faces, and combed our frowzy heads. A dash of cold water, powder on my nose, fresh lipstick, and mascara, and I felt able to face the whole world.

  Karl took the wheel and drove for a time. My eyes marked every mile of the way. About eleven in the morning, we pulled into Gadsden, Alabama. The heat of the sidewalk burned through my shoes. The coolness of West Virginia was past, but we didn’t mind at all. This was home!

  Restrooms attended to and the car filled with gas, David handed the attendant one of the twenties. A tall, Ichabod Crane-type person with sad brown eyes and opossum-like hair on head, neck, and wrists, the man stared at the bill. “Buddy, ain’t you got less than that?”

  “No,” David said, importantly.

  “Hey, Joe!” the man bawled. “Come here!”

  Joe ran from the garage. “Trouble, Hank?” He grasped a big wrench in black-greased hands.

  “Look at this,” Hank held out the twenty.

  Joe took it reverently, than stared at David as if he expected to see a Chicago machine gun about his person. “A twenty-dollar bill!” he said.

  “He wants it changed,” Hank said.

  “Sure he does,” Joe laughed. “Thanks for the compliment.”

  “Joe,” Hank said patiently. “The man’s bought gas. He don’t have less than a twenty.”

  “Yes?” Joe’s eyes searched for machine guns again.

  “I can’t wait all day.” David’s lips began to get their white line.

  “Hey, Gus,” Joe called to the restaurant man who had come over to watch. “Got change for a twenty?”

  “You joking?” Gus reached his hand. “Just let me touch it,” he begged.

  “Maybe Herbert can change it,” Joe said. The three of them crossed to a fruit stand. David accompanied them.

  At Herbert’s they collected two more men and marched down the street. David stuck close to his twenty. Finally, they found change and returned triumphant. There was money in Gadsden!

  “Is it really that bad?” I tried to swallow a big lump.

  “It’s bad, ma’am,” Hank told me. “Nobody’s working in this town.”

  A bewildered, hurt, sick feeling was in the pit of my stomach as we left Gadsden and took the uncrowded highway south. At last we came to Morris. If the rainbow-colored Stutz with Griff at the wheel had jostled past, things would have looked exactly as a year ago.

  Papa had rented another farm, but we knew the place. My heart settled into a steady, joyous beat as we drove a mile, turned off the highway, and lurched down a rutted, dusty lane.

  Bulger, the old dog, creaked to his feet and came to meet us. Hens squawked, a young calf in the barnyard stared at us, then bolted around the lot. The house was old, of age-silvered hand-hewn logs, and had the beauty of an old-world painting. Tears washed the dust from my cheeks.

  Thunderbolt’s roar had announced us. Papa came around the house, a chunk of watermelon in his hand. Still dusty from his day’s work, his old felt hat, the same as the year before, rode high on his forehead. He pushed the hat off and ran, his face as bright as the afternoon sun.

  “Papa!” I was laughing and crying.

  “I’m a big girl now,” Davene boasted. She was two years, two months. Then she went on, “I’m hungry.”

  “Papa, Papa,” Sharon crooned, and her soft, white hands caressed the whiskers on his cheeks.

  “This is Karl Hauser,” David introduced them. Karl had a doubtful look as if he wondered suddenly why he was here.

  “Glad to see you, son.” Papa shook hands. His face was so friendly that you knew immediately he meant what he said. He was Papa. No one had ever been able to resist his charm. As he shook his hand, Karl’s face changed, looked as if he’d unexpectedly reached the promised land.

  Miss Mildred came running around the house. Her dark hair was damp-curled all around her face. “I knew somebody was coming; that old rooster crowed right in the doorway.” She laughed and bent to kiss the girls.

  The other children streamed around the house, dripping watermelon juice. We’d never seen Jerry, the baby. Clothed only in watermelon juice and dust, he crawled toward us. Davene’s eyes lighted. Here was a fellow nudist. She tugged at her shorts.

  “No, you don’t!” I grabbed her.

  The air was warm and rich with the scent of growing things. In the field were rows of okra, corn, beans hanging thick on vines, peas crowding low among the corn. This was home!

  Steps pounded down the path from the house on the hill, and my sister Thelma ran up the porch steps and grabbed me. Her gray eyes shone and her black lashes were wet. She had Papa’s straight black hair and his charm. George, just behind her, grabbed me, then turned to David. “You struck it rich?” He pointed to Thunderbolt. George had black hair and very black eyes. Used to my three blonds, I’d almost forgotten about all of these black-haired Mosleys and in-laws, too.

  “Thelma, when did you and George get here?” I asked, still hugging the smaller ones; oh, beautiful children: Colleen the oldest, Daphne next, J. D., and Jerry.

  Woodward plant had closed, we learned. George, out of a job, at Papa’s insistence had moved to the empty house on the rented farm, and there was enough work for everyone.

  We laughed and cried a little and learned, as we had in Gadsden, that things were far worse in Alabama than in the coalfields of West Virginia. Red Cross commodities kept people from actually starving. Too proud to accept charity, Thelma had a job with the Red Cross, keeping books two days a week. Her wages: $1.50.r />
  Everywhere people wore flour-sack underwear. There was the standing joke about the lettering on the panties. Actually, the letters were easily bleached from flour sacks. Feed sacks, too, when bleached, starched, and ironed, had the look and texture of linen and made beautiful dresses for Sunday.

  Old inner tubes were a rare treasure. Ezra, my sister Maurine’s husband, shared his old tubes. Thelma’s small feet were her great pride. She still owned one pair of real shoes. Many went barefoot most of the time, but Thelma’s pretty feet were always shod. She cut out strips of inner tube and wove them into sandals, and she had a perky hat made of corn shucks.

  Clothing was home-crafted. But there was no hunger here. Farm tables groaned under their load of food. The next few days we visited kinfolk and feasted until our clothing would scarcely contain us. There was fresh corn, beans, field peas, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, and fried chicken by the platterful. Cornbread, thick buttermilk, and country butter. For dessert—peach, apple, and berry pies.

  The girls were petted and loved and taken swimming in the creek nearby. And they helped with farm chores. Davene’s tiny finger would twist a grain of corn until it popped from the ear; then she held it proudly up to Papa. Never impatient, he threw it to a chicken and praised her until she puffed up with pride.

  But in a few days her attitude changed. As we walked to Thelma’s one afternoon, a young rooster, just frying size, clumped past on long legs. “See dat chicken, Mother,” Davene said. “I can eat dat chicken.”

  Papa had taken a helper, a distant relative. Their beds were crowded, so we slept at Thelma’s. She and George were used to a nice home with bathroom, kitchen sink, electricity. But the lack of these didn’t change their hospitality. The farm house was filled with fresh flowers and spotlessly clean with fresh-scrubbed white-pine floors. A born housekeeper, Thelma could wash (on a rub-board), scrub, iron clothes, and then cut out and make a dress for Jean or Ailene, her daughters, with less effort than it takes me to clean one room. Thelma was forever doing curtains, painting furniture, switching it around—a habit I had completely forgotten. She did everything for our comfort. Nights, I’d rouse to find her swabbing kerosene on my legs to scare mosquitoes away.

  David and George had gone to visit Uncle Lish and Aunt Stella Mosley one afternoon. The children were tired and sleepy, so I didn’t go with them. Uncle Lish had a fresh batch of blackberry wine, and David was eager to sample it.

  Shorter than Papa, younger, too, with thick black and white hair and twinkling hazel eyes, Uncle Lish wasn’t the best farmer in the world, but he must have been the most fun. A born naturalist, he knew every tree, root, and berry. One taste of honey, and he could tell where the bees had sucked. He dried roots and herbs for his own medicines. He and Papa had secret formulas for sore throats, colds, and fevers. Neighbors, unable to afford doctors or medicines, sent for herbs and bottles of medicine—free, of course.

  When his pigs conceived, Uncle Lish would bore a hole in his thumbnail and didn’t have to bother with calendars. When the hole grew long enough to need trimming, there was always a new litter of pigs. He made hickory-split baskets and chair bottoms, tanned calf hides for other chair bottoms, and made his own banjo, stretching calf hide over it. His fingers brought forth fairy melodies from this instrument.

  After the men left, Thelma and I sat in the open hallway and shelled peas for tomorrow’s dinner. Sharon, Jean, and Ailene cut out paper dolls from a Sears catalogue, then ran down to Papa’s to play hide-and-seek with the other children.

  I took Davene to the back porch to wash her feet and remembered my childhood—how I dreaded to thrust my dirty feet into the cold water. Dressed in a pair of pajamas Thelma had made from feedsacks, Davene wanted me to rock her. So we sat in the hallway in the dusk, as Thelma churned milk to have fresh butter for breakfast.

  Mosquitos gorged themselves on our chicken-rich blood. In the hollow, a whippoorwill called for his mate. A breeze wandered from the fields, scented with dust and ripe peaches. Chickens plurped sleepily in the henhouse. A screech owl wandered across the hills; crickets and tree frogs shrilled. Davene slept, and I sank into lazy, luxurious comfort.

  “I’ll put Davene to bed,” I said when Thelma took the churn to the kitchen.

  “Want me to bring the lamp?”

  “No, I’ll make it.”

  “I’ll draw a bucket of water, then,” Thelma said. I heard the windlass screech as I entered the house. Like a cat, I have an uncanny sense of direction, so I walked confidently to the bed and deposited Davene on it—to discover, as my arms released her, the bed was not there! I caught Davene before she hit the floor. Then something attacked me, and I plunged into darkness.

  “Sue,” I heard Thelma say from a far distance. I sat up. Davene was still in my arms and still asleep. “The bed was there last night,” I pointed, then rubbed my forehead. A lump as big as a half-ripe peach was there, and dirt from the flower box which had attacked me as I fell.

  Thelma put the lamp on the table beside the bed, which was now on the other side of the room. Her face was dangerously red. “Go ahead and laugh,” I struggled to my feet, walked over and laid Davene on the bed safely.

  “I can’t help it,” she gasped. She led me to the kitchen, bathed my forehead, then rubbed it with Cloverine salve.

  We were on the porch listening to the whippoorwill again when David and George returned.

  “I’ve just churned,” Thelma told them.

  “I like yesterday’s buttermilk,” David said. Kept in a bucket let down in the well, the day-old buttermilk was as thick as yogurt and tasted far better.

  George went to get the milk. Thelma took down a plateful of syrup cookies, and David helped himself. Then I turned to face him. His mouth opened and stayed open. Finally his jaws were in working order. “What happened?” he asked.

  “A burglar, I guess,” I stated innocently, I hoped.

  George’s eyes were as black as a seam of coal. “Heard about Dave’s twenties, I bet!” He began to curse.

  “I’ll kill him!” David’s blue-gray eyes turned green. “Oh, baby, I shouldn’t have left you!”

  I wallowed in his concern, but this was too much for Thelma; she whooped with laughter. George dragged the story from her; then he grinned. “You know how Pannie (his pet name for her) is. I never can find anything.”

  David gave me a few black looks; then pity took over. He stirred up the low fire in the stove, heated water, and applied hot towels until I was in danger of having blisters over my bruise.

  “I have to see Lucile and Maurine,” I said after two days. Lucile was my more-than-twin. Just younger than I, but far more efficient, she ironed my clothes when I was at home. “Sue, you can’t do that,” she’d say. And she watched after me to see that everything was in place. Friends pinch-hit for her now. Someone is always buttoning me, fastening things, or repinning strayed hairpins.

  From the time I was eleven and she going on ten, Lucile and I were the same size and thought almost the same thoughts. One of us could start a sentence, and the other finish it. We argued often, but never in our lives were we angry with one another. Lucile and our older brother Clarence lived with our sister Maurine and her husband, Ezra Armour. Clarence helped Ezra, who owned a country store, and Lucile helped Maurine with the housework, sewed for her three girls, washed, ironed, swept, dusted. The boys, Tom and Ray, wore overalls she had starched and creased; she kept the whole family in perfect dress. In between times, Lucile sang at church, and she and Clarence were the ringleaders of whatever was going on in Haig.

  No one had any money, but they managed plenty of fun.

  Lucile was scrubbing the porch as we drove up. She stopped, threw bucket and broom aside, and ran with Maurine to meet us. More laughter and crying as we tried to cram a whole year into a few hours.

  Karl was lost the minute he laid eyes on Lucile’s pink cheeks, dark hair,
and hazel eyes. Perhaps he didn’t know that Alabama’s motto was “Here We Rest,” but he made it his own immediately and decided to stay with Maurine and Ezra while David and I left for a few days’ visit with his parents, on Pea Ridge in Shelby County.

  11

  Hottest Day I Ever Saw

  We drove into Birmingham the next morning. It was a clean city now, a sad, brooding cleanness that no one wanted. The big industries that had belched smoke and grime during the twenties were almost dead now. The city was quiet with little traffic. Laughter, gaiety, and bustle were gone. The joy, hope, and expectation of six years ago were all but forgotten.

  Seen by night from the top of Red Mountain, the city is a gossamer dream. A wide river of jewels flows in beautiful, vibrant curves. Vulcan, the iron man, guards the city from his pinnacle atop the mountain.

  We passed through the somber city and raced down the Montgomery highway. At Alabaster, a town of lime kilns, most of them idle now, we turned into a dusty road, ran a few miles, then began the ascent to Pea Ridge.

  Eight miles from Montevallo College, Pea Ridge was a hundred years away in ideas then. Older women wore long dresses with long sleeves. They thought makeup sinful, and “bobbed” hair, too. They wore their hair tightly skewered into a bun on top. Most faces had an honesty and cleanness that was as pleasing as any beauty they lacked.

  David’s mother, Granny we called her, was sitting on the porch with Papa when we drove up. She looked very beautiful to us, tightly skewered hair and all. Her long-sleeved dress was the blue of her eyes. Starched and ironed, the dress was clean and crisp, as dresses had to be then. Papa was too thin, with a long chin, fierce blue eyes, and pepper and salt curls. (Ours was really a curly-headed family.)

  Buddy, the baby, had died since we left. Granny sunned* his clothes weekly, wetting the trunk lid with her tears. He was nine when he died. “I’d bring him back any time,” she told me, showing me his clean, starched clothing.