The Path Was Steep

by Suzanne Pickett

  “David!” I said, “David! Can we go? Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” he said; then his eyes slanted at me, and I knew. I remembered August. “I won’t be able to sleep a wink, will you?”

  “Sleep? When are we going home?”

  “How long will it take you to pack?” he asked and reached under the bed to grab a suitcase. I ran to the kitchen for a cardboard box. “Give me thirty minutes,” I gasped. “Call the girls.” I filled the suitcase and the box and put things in sacks. We fed the girls until they couldn’t hold another bite and crammed peanut butter, cheese, and crackers into a box. Then I bundled Sharon and Davene into their heavy winter clothes, put on my one wool dress—black waffle check, and my thin coat. At the last minute, I grabbed a blanket from the bed.

  Neither of us had a watch, so David put the clock in the car. The hands stood at 4:30 when we drove down the hill and crossed the Tug River. The Tug was usually black with coal dust; now it gleamed with silver and a hint of the sunset showing pink near the middle. The Tug was frozen across! A bitter wind blew from the north, and dark descended rapidly. “David, is it too cold to start now?” I chattered.

  “It will get warmer as we head south,” he promised. “Sit in the back; it will be warmer there.”

  Then it was surely far below freezing in the front, for icy wind blew through the curtains, caught my breath, and tugged at my eyelashes. The girls huddled close to me. I wrapped the blanket around them. “Keep under cover,” I warned, my teeth like castanets.

  The night blackened to onyx; then the stars came out. They shone like distant cities between the mountain peaks. “Mother,” Sharon asked, “is that heaven?”

  “One of the heavens. Keep your head under the blanket, darling.”

  “All right, Mother.” She pulled the blanket over her head and leaned close to me. I’d never known such bitter cold. Would the girls freeze? I held Davene in my lap. Sharon relaxed against me, and Davene’s soft breathing told that she slept. The sleep of death? My numbed hands found her cheeks under the blanket. They were quite warm.

  But I was not warm! There was no button at the neck of my coat. I reached a numbed hand to hold the coat closed against the wind, and released the blanket. “I’m freezing to death!” Davene lamented as the ice wind hit her face. I held the blanket around the girls, and my coat opened at the throat again. My dying of pneumonia would ruin Christmas for everyone. I bent to fumble in the box and came up with a dress that I’d ironed so carefully. I looped it around my head and throat.

  The girls slept; Thunderbolt’s roar was a steady song. David hummed or sang aloud, and I held Davene close in my arms and felt Sharon’s warmth against my side. But I knew that I couldn’t make it through the night. My fingers were numb, and my back seemed ready to break in two.

  David stopped to buy gas about ten o’clock and went to the restroom. I placed Davene on the back seat, dumped a pile of clothes on the floor to make a bed for Sharon. There was a little warmth down there from the motor, and shelter from the wind. I wrapped Sharon’s head and chest in a pair of David’s long underwear and piled clothes on her.

  “I’m cold,” Davene tried to rouse.

  “You’ll be warm.” I doubled the blanket and tucked it over her, head and all. When David came back from the restroom, I was in the front seat.

  “You’ll freeze,” he warned.

  In comparison to the back, it felt like summer. The windshield kept drafts from us, and heat from the motor warmed my frozen feet and legs. I reached back now and then to check the girls. They lay still and warm under their covers.

  “Want me to drive?” I asked.

  “Later,” David said.

  The hum of the motor became the steady drone of bees. I snuggled into my collar and dozed, but even in sleep, I knew that something was wrong. Thunderbolt had a new choke, followed by a hiss, then a gurgle. “What is it?” I sat up.

  “Got to find water,” David said. “The car is boiling dry.” In the headlights, steam made a white cloud. We were in Tennessee now. “The motor will freeze if we stop too long and burn up if we don’t find water,” David predicted.

  I’d been brought up on prayer; but now David and I used the Lord mostly for emergencies. We’d give Him a little time if the weather was fine and we had pretty clothes and nothing else to do; we’d even go to church. But certainly not if it inconvenienced us.

  This was an emergency. I bowed my head and sent an urgent prayer heavenward. Then I opened my eyes. From my bowed position, I saw what I would not have seen had I been sitting erect, a light in a window on a hilltop. “Stop the car!” I said. “There is a light!”

  David slammed on the brakes. “Tired?” he asked as I leaned against the back seat.

  “Dead,” I told him and reached to the back seat with exploring hands. The girls were warm and sound asleep.

  “Go with me to see if we can get some water,” he said. “They will be all right.”

  “But—”

  “It is only up the hill. I told you they will be all right. They are sound asleep.”

  Loud, angry voices greeted us as I followed David up the icy path. “I’ve told you a thousand times, no!” a man said.

  “You ain’t never give in to me,” a woman said.

  “That’s all I ever done. The worst henpecked man in Tennessee, I am. This time I’m going to have my way.”

  “Just like a Kramden. Have his way or die!”

  “You was glad enough to marry one.”

  David went to the door and knocked loudly.

  The voices stopped. An old man came to the door and peered at us. Firelight warmed the room, and a kerosene lamp burned in the corner. “Yes?” the man said.

  David took off his hat. In the lamplight, his hair was bright gold.

  “Could we get some water, please?” he asked. The wind blew his hair across his face.

  “Water?” the man asked, as if it were a foreign word.

  A woman came to inspect us. She wore a long-sleeved, black dress. A white lace collar was pinned at the throat with a cameo brooch, and a purple wool shawl was about her shoulders. “Let them in, Joshua,” she said and stepped back.

  “Step in, stranguhs,” Joshua said cordially. “Come to the fire and warm your chilled bones. Thought maybe you was angels, unawares.” He was a big man with white hair, crinkled blue eyes, and a shepherd’s hook for a nose that towered between white eyebrows and sharp chin.

  His wife was big-boned with sparse hair, thin lips, and the sweetest blue eyes in the hills, no doubt. “Joshua, throw on another log,” she ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he gave her a tender look. “Old wife’s thoughty of other folks,” he said with pride.

  “Now, Joshua, you’re the thoughty one.”

  “There you go, startin’ another argument.”

  “Watch where you put the log!”

  He reared, opened his lips, then put the log gently onto the coals. “Got to have everything just right, that old wife has.” His eyes were tender again. “So dad-burned purty, she’s always had her way with me.”

  Except for her eyes, the woman was as plain as anyone I’d ever seen. But she looked at him, and the room filled with light softer than the firelight. Why, the old couple were still in love with each other!

  David explained about the car. The woman drew a chair forward. “Set, child,” she told me.

  “I’ve sat all night. Just let me warm my hands and feet,” I held the chilled members to the fire.

  “Look at them little fingers, cold as ice.” She took my hands and began to rub them. “Thawed out, son?” she turned to David.

  “Yes, ma’am,” his smile was as warm as the red logs.

  “Help the boy with the water, Joshua,” she said.

  “This way, lad.” Joshua opened the door.

 
“Well’s on the back porch,” the woman boasted. “Joshua dug it and built the house before he asked Paw for me.” She eyed me a minute. “Your man good to you?” she asked sharply.

  “Oh, yes!”

  “Better watch him! Them purty ones can’t be trusted most times, and he’s dad-burned purty.”

  “I know.”

  “Put a little meat on and you won’t look so bad.” She took my hands again. “Too little,” she frowned. “Look deformed.”

  I smiled. All my life, my little hands had been one of my chief vanities. (But now, age has made them large enough to suit the old lady.)

  Wind swooshed through the door Joshua had left open. A windlass creaked, screeched from the back porch, water sloshed into a bucket, and David and Joshua crunched down the hill. I revolved before the fire as the woman closed the door. Returning circulation tingled my “deformed” hands.

  “Warm yet?” David stood in the door.

  “Uh-huh,” I was so sleepy I could have bedded down on the floor for the night. “Warm yourself; I’ll see about the girls.”

  “I looked. They are all right.” David stood before the fire, his strong brown hands to the blaze. The firelight brightened his hair, deepened the indentation in his chin, gleamed on his white teeth.

  The woman eyed him suspiciously. She admonished, “You be good to this little girl, young man!”

  David looked at her in surprise.

  “Got to boss the whole creation, she has,” Joshua said.

  “Could do a better job than most,” she replied saucily.

  “She could, at that,” Joshua smiled.

  “You take this,” she flung her shawl across my shoulders.

  “But—I couldn’t—”

  “Made it myself. Carded the wool and dyed it. Got a right to give a present if I want. Young man!” She shook her finger under David’s nose. “Remember what I told you!”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he backed away. “Yes ma’am, I will.”

  “Just a minute,” she said as I followed David. She darted to a door, hurried into a dark room, and came back, wrapping a fried pie in brown paper. “Eat this,” she said. “Eat lots of pies. Put some meat on your bones.”

  “Thank you, oh, thank you!”

  “Too little.” She took my hand, dropped it, and kissed my cheek. “Don’t forget,” she said.

  “I won’t!” Fervently.

  “Is she crazy?” David blazed as we walked down the hill.

  “No.” I took a bite of the pie. Filled with home-dried apples, the pie had crisp, brown edges. “She has mighty good sense.”

  “Give me a bite,” he begged.

  “Oh, no. I need it.”

  “If I had wanted a fat wife, I’d have married one.”

  “You sure?”

  He kissed me.

  I broke the pie into three pieces, keeping one for the girls. The wind changed suddenly, swooped down from the house, as the door flew open. “Bossiest woman on God’s green earth!” Joshua bellowed. “Dad-burned if I stand it another minute!”

  “Road’s not crowded,” the old wife said.

  “Think you can run me away from home!” the door slammed.

  “I bet they quarrel all night.” David swallowed the last of his pie. “That woman’s crazy, but she sure can cook.”

  “I’ll drive for a while.” I slid under the wheel.

  “Think I’ll take a nap in the back,” he said.

  “You’ll freeze.”

  David huddled in the back seat with Davene’s feet in his lap, and part of the blanket over his legs. Stars, big and bright. The moon, a silver sickle, fled before us or followed, with the turning of the road. Half-hypnotized by the hum of the motor, I jumped and swerved as a big dark object plumped suddenly beside me. I fought the wheel, righted the car, and turned.

  “You’ll kill us!” David snarled.

  “Thought you were in the back.”

  “It’s too cold back there.”

  “The girls warm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I — am — sure!”

  “Are they covered?”

  “Yes!” he exploded. “They are covered!” He was silent for a time, then, “Sue—” His anger was gone. “Reckon that woman was crazy?”

  I grinned under the darkness. “She was the smartest woman I ever saw,” I said.

  He leaned against my shoulder and slept. Steam began to spurt from Thunderbolt’s radiator as, providentially, an all-night service station appeared around a curve.

  “Mother,” Sharon woke and reached up to touch my shawl. “Did Santa come last night?”

  “No, darling. A woman gave this to me.”

  “A crazy woman,” David muttered.

  Happiness sent spurts of energy through me as the hours passed. But even happiness can do only so much. The bitter cold lasted on to Chattanooga. In a restroom, I looked at my face. What conceit I had (and Mosleys are a conceited lot) died and was buried at the foot of Lookout Mountain as I looked at my wrecked face. The eyes were red with ugly circles under them. The lips were cracked, and the nose was a strange new color—a mixture of blue, purple, and red. No amount of lipstick and powder could make that face presentable. I’d better be exceptionally good to David. My mane of thick, once-glossy hair had lost its faint wave and its shine. It was a stiff, dead-looking brush heap. Even David’s curls now resembled a worn-out mop.

  Across the thin strip of Georgia we passed and were in my own beloved Alabama. Even this miracle hadn’t raised the temperature. The rows of tattered cornfields were beautiful to my heart. Snowflakes turned to freezing rain. Cows faced away from the wind, bowed with cold. Only Thunderbolt knew any heat, as, still faithful, he roared southward.

  David took the blanket to lie in the back again. The girls, sitting beside me, had lost their sweetness. Davene fought, and Sharon wept. “If you don’t hit back, I’ll spank you, Sharon,” I said at last.

  “I might hurt her,” Sharon sobbed.

  Shamed, I kissed her. “Mother won’t spank you, darling.”

  “I won’t do it again,” Davene kissed her, too. They sat with arms around each other for a few minutes.

  “Don’t crowd me!” Davene said then.

  “I’m just keeping you warm.”

  Davene whacked her again.

  “I’ll drive,” David woke, refreshed.

  At four, I put the girls in their bed again and leaned against David. Clouds hung low, and it was almost dark.

  “Tired?” He reached over to kiss me.

  “Dead tired. Will we ever get to Papa’s?”

  “I’ll take the short cut,” he kissed me again. “You’re beautiful,” he smiled.

  Maybe he believed it. I forgot the cold and the exhaustion for a moment. Every day of our lives, David told me that I was pretty. Ordinarily, he was a truthful person. Possibly, he saw what he wanted to see. It was when I was at my most unglamorous that his compliments were most fervent. I thought of Joshua saying, “She’s so dad-burned purty,” and I glowed. Maybe that is how David thought of me.

  We left the main highway and took the short cut. It was almost six now. Soon we would be at Papa’s. If we could ever make it into the house, warmth, food, and a bed could be found. Looming suddenly ahead, a car blocked the road. David swore, stopped Thunderbolt, opened the door, and stepped to the ground. An extra blast of icy wind shot inside and flapped the curtains.

  “How about a push, buddy?” a man in overalls, blue shirt, and denim jacket smiled. His teeth were yellow, and he needed a shave.

  The girls woke. “I’m hungry,” Sharon began to sob.

  “I know, darling. But do you have to cry so much?”

  “I’m cold and hungry. Davene, you hungry, too?” Sharon kissed her.

 
“You leave me alone!” Davene whacked her.

  “I’ve never seen you so mean!” I reached to give Davene a taste of her own medicine.

  She aimed her small fist at my jaw.

  “Don’t you hit Mother!” Sharon grabbed her.

  I reached down and picked her up. She bellowed like a lost calf. I held her until she quietened. “I love you, Mother,” she kissed me. “But I am hungry.”

  David and the man measured bumpers to see if ours would fit. They wouldn’t. “Sue, help me push,” David said.

  He expected me to get out and help push! All right, if I died, it would serve him right! Anger sent a small spurt of energy into my hands and legs. We heaved. The car rolled. Sharon and Davene tried to help. The motor of the car showed no life as we pushed up a hill and down another. David and the man lifted the hood, took out sparkplugs in Thunderbolt’s waning lights. I drove our car close, and we pushed again.

  The girls wept. Anger did no good this time. Exhaustion claimed me. “I can’t go another step.” I led the girls back to Thunderbolt. “David!” I yelled as he and the man looked at the motor of the other car.

  No answer.

  “David Pickett!”

  “In a minute.”

  Thunderbolt’s motor cooled. My feet grew numb. The children gave lost, sighing sobs. “David!” My voice blasted a hole through the night. “The girls are freezing!”

  “In a minute, I tell you!”

  I opened the door of the car, staggered out, and stumbled towards the men. “David!” My teeth chattered so that I couldn’t get the venom I felt into my voice. “We’ve got to get these children to a bed!”

  “Do you want to leave a man stalled in this weather!”

  “It is a half a mile to Bradford through those woods.” I pointed. Lights from the houses could be seen. “He has feet. Let him use them.”