The Path Was Steep

by Suzanne Pickett

  “All right,” Karl agreed. He stepped out and went to the car. We had tied bundles, boxes, and suitcases to the fenders and crowded melons, tomatoes, and packages inside. Davene sat in my lap, naturally, and my legs soon acquired their accustomed numbness.

  “Never saw such good people,” Karl wept.

  “Times are bad everywhere,” David complained.

  “Haven’t gone hungry yet, have you, son?” Papa asked.

  “I’m hungry,” Davene announced. I’d never heard of prepared baby food, and mine were not bottle babies. They went to glasses of milk and table food as soon as they were weaned, and they were as healthy as young lions. With our delayed start, it was late afternoon when we came to the road that turned off to Pisgah and learned there was no bus until morning.

  “I can walk,” the old preacher said.

  “Seventeen miles?” Papa waved his hands. “Now, now, could we get to Chattanooga that way?”

  “Oh, you could get there,” the attendant at the gas station where we’d stopped said. “Rough road, though.”

  “I’ll buy extra gas, son,” Papa offered. “We didn’t pay for the meeting.”

  “Fed me, though—best you could do.”

  “They that preach the gospel should live of the gospel,” Papa quoted, and soon they were in a deep theological discussion.

  I dodged Papa’s waving hands and leaned against the back seat. Sumacs were bright red, and pawpaw bushes leaned over the road. I looked at the familiar Alabama vegetation with dry eyes.

  The road to Pisgah was just two ridges over gashes in the earth. It took David over an hour to drive the seventeen miles. Miraculous driving, keeping the tires on those ridges. We located the Smiths, where Brother Morrow was expected. Papa’s hands busied themselves as he made new acquaintances. David asked instructions, and we were riding again.

  13

  The Worst Road in the United States

  Dark purpled the hills as we sped towards Tennessee. With Davene off my lap, fairly comfortable now, I nodded drowsily. Fog rose, thickened, grew so dense that it was impossible to see the road a few feet ahead. David slowed to an unheard-of (for him) fifteen miles an hour. I settled to drowsy delight. Night riding excites me. I’ve a strange feeling of faraway places. My wanderlust rises with the steady roar of the motor, the feel of night wind in my face. I forget past and future worries and live for the pleasure of the moment. Davene was asleep now, leaning against me. Papa, his feet twisted around boxes, suitcases, and watermelons, held Sharon close to his side. We crept through the eerie fog. The car’s roar was muted; the lights peered anxiously ahead.

  Then a giant bulk loomed in the headlights. David slammed on the brakes too late and hit a young bull. The animal gave a surprised bellow, then dashed away into the fog.

  “Was that the Devil?” Sharon cowered against Papa. “I can see his horns.” (She must have heard tales somewhere; I’d never told her the Devil had horns.)

  “Just a young steer,” Papa kissed her.

  “Is Jesus stronger than the Devil?” Sharon asked.

  “Stronger than anything,” Papa assured her.

  She leaned against him, sang “Jesus Loves Me,” and secure in that love, fell asleep.

  David dismounted and looked at the bumper. He had only touched the animal, with no damage to the car or bull, so he started Thunderbolt, and we roared on again in a strange, separate place apart from the earth. The only visible things were wraiths of ghostlike fog.

  This was a night of ghosts, so naturally I saw one.

  At midnight, we reached Horseshoe Bend and saw the Chattanooga lights reflected in the river. Papa roused, peered out the window, then sat forward and read a sign, Chickamauga Park. “Paw fought in the battle of Chickamauga,” he said. “Then he went on to the battle of Atlanta, where he was wounded.”

  Before my eyes, Grandpa appeared. My imagination, of course. I was half asleep, and no one else saw him. But if he should appear anywhere, it would be in this area. In my half-waking state, I could hear his violin. Grandpa had never studied music, but he didn’t need to any more than the mockingbird does. Music was as natural as sight with him. When he was only nine, people rode twenty miles to get little Billy Mosley to play for dances.

  If Grandpa heard a tune once, it was his, and he added his own variations to it: silver and golden tunes such as the late great Fritz Kreisler or Yehudi Menuhin could make, but no other that I ever heard. A deep, rich bass and high silver, almost human, tones came from his violin.

  An undiscovered genius, until he died at the age of eighty-three, Grandpa’s frail hands could set feet to dancing with his fairy music. When he and Grandma came to visit, crowds flocked to our home to hear him play, which he did with joy. “Cotton-Eye Joe” was his last number. Why, I never knew. He had his own secret reason. You could beg, offer to pay—an insult Grandpa never forgave, but when he played “Cotton-Eye Joe,” it was his last tune.

  He was stubborn, bad-tempered, senselessly jealous of Grandma, but totally honest. He simply would not lie, and he paid every cent he owed if it meant starvation for himself and his family. A common saying from all who knew him was “Billy Mosley’s word is better than another man’s bond.”

  Grandpa was strong and healthy on a very unhealthy diet, which consisted chiefly of cornbread, fried bacon, and “grease gravy,” commonly called “red-eye gravy.” Not once after Lee surrendered at Appomattox did Grandpa ever taste wheat bread. He had fought and half starved on a diet of cornbread and thin gruel made of corn meal. If it was good enough in war, it was good enough afterward for Grandpa. Mama always knew to cook cornbread for breakfast when he was visiting. He filled his plate with bread and ladled hot bacon grease over it along with the hottest pepper sauce that could be found. Some of the sauce must have gone to his head, for his disposition was as peppery as his diet. He erupted into frequent blasts of temper. I rather think he enjoyed his temper and used it to get his way about everything.

  And Grandpa always wore a hat: a black one for Sunday, a brown army hat his youngest son, Milton, brought back from service in World War I for every day. Grandpa almost burst with pride when Milton volunteered for that war. “A Mosley has fought in every American war,” he boasted.

  He wore his white hair shoulder-length, in a row of curls. There was a large “wind” in the bald spot at the top of his head. Perhaps it was vanity, but on arising, Grandpa combed his hair, donned his hat, and didn’t take it off until he undressed at night. Only for funerals (Grandpa never went to church) or for some “great” occasion would he remove his hat. If “Dixie” was played, the hat rested reverently over his heart, for “Dixie” was his supreme love and his religion. He never admitted that the North really won the war. “They didn’t whip us!” he would say angrily. “They starved us to death.” And Grandpa was never whipped. He was wounded and captured in the Battle of Atlanta. A Yankee doctor removed the bullet from his thigh, gave it to him, and he kept it, wrapped in a bit of gray flannel, until the time of his death. He let me hold it once. I had learned to play his favorite tune, “Under the Double Eagle March.” He was so proud of me, he brought out his most cherished possession and let me hold it for a moment. My brother J. D. Mosley now has that bullet.

  My father was named Lee. Uncle Lish was Robert E. (Elisha). If Robert E. Lee had had a dozen names, all of them would have been used.

  Now, years after his death, Grandpa smiled at me. His hat was in his hand, for he was near sacred Chickamauga. Mists hung on his white hair, and a lone flute played “Dixie.”

  The car stopped, and I sat up in fright. David had changed places with Karl. Believing in Divine Providence and secure in David’s driving, I had slept soundly. But Karl was something else. He had sobered, but he was tired and groggy. But the old preacher was praying for us. I dozed confidently. The car’s coming to a complete stop woke me. I could see the white line in the middle of
the highway. We straddled it exactly, but nothing else was visible in the heavy fog. Karl, his head on the wheel, snored softly. I touched his shoulder. “Want me to drive?” I asked.

  “Huh?” His face was puffy in the light of the dashboard.

  “Hold Davene.”

  He slept again.

  I shook him. He roused slightly. “Back here,” I said.

  He opened the door and staggered to the back seat. I put Davene in his lap. Her head rested on his shoulder, and they both slept, dead to fog, ghosts, or real danger. Papa and David slept, too. We had bought a tankful of gas a few miles back. At our slow pace, it should last until morning. “Be with me,” I threw a prayer to Heaven and slipped under the wheel. David slumped against me, his lips parted slightly. His white teeth gleamed in the light, his hair curled on his forehead, but I didn’t take time to admire him.

  My feet played a Confederate march on the floorboard. I thought of Grandpa running, gallant and brave, towards Chickamauga. Trying to be brave myself, I mashed the clutch and gas pedal with my feet, and my shaking hands endangered the gear shift as we jerked along in low gear, second, then high.

  In spite of my bravery, I fed the gas in jerks. Only the line in the middle of the road was visible. This couldn’t be Earth and a material road. We seemed to be on a cloud and had died, and this was the highway to heaven. But, I thought in alarm, some of us, in our present state, would never make it.

  The thought woke me, and I concentrated on driving and clung to the middle of the road. When a car showed its lights, I inched to the right of the white line and blessed the mastermind that had conceived it and the engineers and workmen that had painted it in the exact center of the road. Faith and prayer brought us safely past the oncoming car; then it was back to the middle of the road as we traveled onward.

  Thunderbolt, sluggish but game, toiled bravely. The sleepers sighed or snored softly. A moist wind chilled my cheek. Were the girls cold? I had put light sweaters on them. Thunderbolt’s roar became the hum of bees. I jumped, woke, and searched for my lifeline. There it was—dangerously to the right! A car approached, blew his horn, then swerved to the left to miss us. In his lights, I saw how near we had come to driving into a chasm at the left.

  Fright kept me awake for a time; then drowsiness fell again. I suffered at the wheel and thought in anger of those who snored away in the back. Little did they care what happened. I couldn’t drive anyhow and was half asleep myself. My eyes just wouldn’t stay open. We were entering Knoxville, a city famous for its narrow, crooked streets. Our money was almost gone. We couldn’t stay on the road much longer. With grim determination to get home, I drove into Knoxville.

  The wicked, white fog changed to black; then the blast of a horn woke me. I’d stopped in the middle of the street. A bus, too wide to pass, blew his horn profanely. I started the motor, shot into low gear, and darted to the right.

  The bus gave a last angry blast as he passed me, and I saw an arrow pointing the other way to Bristol. “I’ve taken the wrong road,” I wept. In my drugged state, I forgot that I’d never learned to back the car. I threw the lever into reverse, backed an inch, killed the motor as another bus passed. Thunderbolt bucked and jolted, but somehow I turned around in the middle of that narrow street, inching forward, then backward, and we drove on toward Bristol.

  To stay awake, I began to slap my face—a stinging blow that would wake me for a moment. “Sue,” Papa chuckled, “if you need a whipping, I’ll give you a good one.”

  “Huh? What?” David woke and sat up. “You driving?” he cocked a dazed eye at me. “Don’t you know you’ll kill us all? Where are we?”

  “A few miles past Knoxville.”

  “You drove through Knoxville! Are you crazy!”

  “Just sleepy,” I said, too tired to fight. I pulled over, stopped Thunderbolt, and changed places with David. Karl and the girls slept heavily. Papa nodded. With David under the wheel now, I slept, too.

  It was foggy daylight when we stopped at a service station. “I want to eat,” Davene announced.

  “I’m hungry.” Sharon stared at donuts in the window of a small cafe. We crawled stiffly from the car, stretched our legs, went to the rest room, then to breakfast. The children, too hungry to talk, ate bacon and eggs and swigged coffee almost thick with cream and sugar. A donut each finished off their meal.

  Back in the car we piled. Karl, awake now and certainly sober, drove again. David and the girls settled comfortably and slept as if they’d never heard of strong coffee. A cold wind chilled us.

  Karl roared along at seventy miles an hour.

  “I’m cold.” Sharon woke and began to cry.

  “I’m freezing.” Davene accompanied her.

  Karl didn’t lessen his speed as he pulled down his curtain. It stuck and he looked to see what was wrong. Alerted to danger as the car slowed, David woke. “Slow down!” he said. “Are you crazy? Slow down!”

  But he was too late.

  The road, newly built, was eleven feet high. A row of houses ran along below the built-up highway. Thunderbolt swerved, sprang forward, and was airborne for a moment.

  “Keep this car in the road!” David yelled, uselessly.

  Karl, unfortunately, was too frightened to even try to steer the car. His hands had frozen to the wheel. Thunderbolt touched earth the way he had headed and bolted down the eleven-foot drop.

  Both of my hands automatically held the girls, one on either side of me, and I was helpless when it came to myself. My head hit the back of the front seat again and again as the car lurched and thumped down the steep side of the roadbed.

  After David’s shout, none of us spoke. We were too busy and too frightened. There was only the jolting, rending noise the car made and the thump of my head against the back of the seat. Rending, crashing sounds came amid the squawk of chickens, and finally the car halted.

  I looked to see that the girls were all right; then, my strength gone, I leaned weakly against the back seat, with closed eyes.

  “Mother’s dead!” Sharon tried to pry my eyelids open.

  “I’m all right, darling,” I managed to whisper, and opened my eyes. It took a great effort. Then as strength returned, I examined Sharon and Davene more carefully. They didn’t have a scratch or a bruise. But a goose egg as large as the one given me by the flowerbox was on my forehead. One thing was sure, if the old head held out, the girls would always be all right. True, I was young and perhaps a little bit stupid, but instinct as old as Mother Eve guided me, made me forget injury to myself and hold onto my babies.

  All of us were dazed for a few minutes. People crowded around the car and looked at us anxiously. Someone opened the back door, someone else opened the front door on the other side, and we were helped out of the car. David examined the damage to car and to property. How we escaped with so little injury, none of us could understand. There had certainly been terrific force to stop the car. Two oak fence posts had been uprooted, two small oak trees were severed, and two hens had been killed. The car rested an inch from the pillar of the house. That close we had been to possible death.

  “Oh, we killed your chickens.” I wept from relief, in a sort of daze. “We’ll pay for them.”

  “I don’t want pay. You are all alive, thank God!” a tall man said. He was the owner of house, chickens, posts, and trees, we learned.

  “But we have damaged your property,” David said.

  “Don’t mind that! No one was killed!” The man began to weep.

  “They built that road too high,” a woman told us. “Lots of people have had accidents. He ran off and . . .”

  Except for my head bump, all of us were all right, but the car was a total wreck, it seemed. It would never, never run again. We were more than a hundred miles from home, almost broke, and certainly could not pay for a bus ride.

  David and everyone examined the car. “It is ru
ined. We’ll never get it up that bank,” Karl said.

  “Looks like you are right, son,” Papa agreed.

  The left fender and left bumper were so badly bent that the tire could not move, even if the motor would run. David walked around it several times, bent, examined fender and bumper. “Do you have any iron tools?” he asked the man.

  “A crowbar and a few other things.”

  “We can straighten the fender and the bumper,” David announced.

  “But that fender is strong!” Karl said. “Look what it did—broke two oak posts and cut down two small oak trees.”

  “We can straighten them enough so that the car will run,” David insisted. When the man brought the crowbar, David’s muscles plus his strong willpower did the trick. He did straighten the bumper and the fender, enough to give room for the tire to move. Thank goodness, for due to their strength, nothing else—neither tires, doors, nor even the sides of the car—had been damaged.

  And what a car Thunderbolt was! David started the motor; it bellowed and roared proudly. He backed, turned until he faced the highway, then decided it was better to try to go up at the angle we had come down—not straight up, but veering a little, crawling up the side to the road—but this was too much even for Thunderbolt. He just couldn’t make it up that steep hill.

  “Not another car would go through what this one did and even start,” Papa said.

  “If some of you will push,” David turned to the men who had gathered.

  About six of them put their hands and shoulders to the rear of the car. Thunderbolt growled, struggled, and slowly climbed that high roadbed until he was safely on the highway.

  We waved to the good people below and were off. Coming to a filling station, we stopped for gas. David’s pocket was almost empty, but I found some change, enough to buy all of us a Coke. “I’ll pay for them,” Papa insisted.

  “No, Papa. We pay,” I said, so firmly that he knew I meant what I said.