The Path Was Steep

by Suzanne Pickett

  We followed her. The fresh-scrubbed porch and house were spotless. Jim and Flossie, born in the mountains of Tennessee, of good old English stock, had come to Alabama shortly after they married. “We moved so many times,” Jim told us later, “the children hardly knew which was their daddy, the truck driver or me. But when we came to Piper, we knew we’d reached home.”

  Humor, friendliness, slow Tennessee drawl, individuality, and incredible energy described the Ledfords. Jim’s tales of the mountains often kept us laughing for hours. Flossie had big, grave, blue eyes, naturally blond hair, and English fair skin. “Stuck up,” local people called her. She was a wonderful friend and neighbor, but she earned this title by keeping herself and her children not only spotlessly clean but “dressed up.”

  For a simple trip to the commissary to buy white meat and butterbeans, Flossie wore a hat and white gloves. She worked as hard as any man picking blackberries, gathering poke, growing vegetables and flowers. Flossie kept chickens, a cow, and a pig. She raked manure and brought it from the cow lot to grow organic vegetables, but when she went anywhere, she wore a hat and white gloves and carried a clean handkerchief. This, in a mining camp where people often dressed informally (some few even slovenly), was “stuck up.”

  Somehow, we were sitting before the fire. The girls munched cookies while I stared, half-conscious, into the flames. A heavy weight sat on my eyelashes. But the call of duty was strong. David, innocently asleep, depended on me to have his supper ready in time for him to get to work.

  “I’m so sleepy,” I murmured. “I don’t know what is wrong.”

  “You may be working too hard,” Flossie said. “Look at your little wrists; I could break them in two. Your bones are too small, not made for hard work.”

  “No danger of my abusing them,” I managed a grin, mindful of my own inefficiency. The clock began to strike. Even in my drugged state, I counted the “dong! dong! dong! dong!” It was four o’clock! I staggered to my feet. “I have to get David off to work.”

  “Work” was still a magic word in Piper. If you were able to crawl, you had meals ready for your husband. And if he were able to crawl, he put on his “muckers,” as miners’ clothes were called, took his bucket, and made it to the mine to earn that still-rare dollar.

  “Sue, are you ill?” Flossie worried.

  “Just sleepy,” I muttered. I clutched the girls by their hands and lurched out the door.

  I managed to make at least a mile out of the remaining quarter-mile walk to my house by staggering from one side of the road to the other. Davene, who had missed her nap, began to cry. I reached down, picked her up, and held her in my leaden arms. Sharon clung to my dress, looked at me, and began to sob. “Mother is sick,” she whispered and held onto the skirt of my dress. I tried to comfort her, but my eyes wouldn’t focus as I looked down at her. We lurched onward in a fog of exhaustion.

  Davene clung to my shoulders. My arms slipped, she roused, and wept again. Mother-love being stronger than my deathlike state, I clasped her to my breast again. At last, our small green house in the bend of the road appeared. Sharon opened the gate for me. I may have been crawling when we reached the porch. I remember holding on to the banisters as I pulled myself erect, held on to the wall, and navigated the miles to the door and into the house.

  Habit must have been very strong. Vaguely, I remember that a fire got itself built in the stove. Vaguely, I remember reeling, running into the walls of the room. What Sharon and Davene did, I never knew. Once, I sat at the kitchen table and slept. My hands, falling from under my chin, woke me, and horror gave me energy to rise as I remembered recent news in the papers. They had been full of tales about encephalitis, “sleeping sickness,” carried by mosquitoes; certainly Piper had her share of mosquitoes. Three persons had died in the United States, perhaps others. Mules and horses, too, and Piper had work mules. Possibly, the papers had warned, an epidemic was near. Three had died. Now my dulled brain registered; I was the fourth victim.

  Through the kitchen I reeled and across the vast distance from kitchen door to the bed at the far side of the room where David, unaware that his wife was dying, lay in peaceful slumber.

  “David,” I fumbled for his face. “Get up. I’ve got sleeping sickness!” Then the blackness of the dread disease hit me squarely in the face.

  20

  A Burglar Wouldn’t Try to Break In

  Dimly, I heard voices as I floated up through fog and darkness; then someone called my name. “Mrs. Pickett, have you taken anything?”

  My eyes would not open.

  “Do you have anything she might take to put her to sleep?” a voice asked.

  “Nothing stronger than aspirin.” This, clearly, was David’s voice. He should have gone to work long ago. I struggled, managed to open one eye. Dr. Phillips’s face floated somewhere between the eye and the ceiling.

  “Mrs. Pickett,” he shook me. “Have you taken any medicine?” He pried open the other eye and stared at my eyeballs.

  “I—” Sleep overcame me again, but David shook me, and the eye, obediently, opened. “At Mrs. William Hayes’s,” I managed with thick tongue. “A tablet.”

  “Small? With a groove in it?” Dr. Phillips asked.

  “Yesh.” I slept again, and again David shook me. Why didn’t he leave me alone, and why was the maniac laughter filling the room?

  The faithful eye opened again. Dr. Phillips was bent almost double with laughter. “She’s just doped,” he said. “One small tablet knocked her out. Give her some coffee; she’ll be all right.”

  A woman hurried into the room. My good eye registered a blur of fair skin and blue eyes. “I’m your neighbor, Mrs. Hendon,” she said. “Sharon told me you were sick. Can I do something?”

  But where is Sharon? I thought groggily. A few minutes later she rushed into the room. Mrs. John Hayes (my other “Mama Hayes”), who lived over the hill from the doctor’s house, and her little girl Jean were with Sharon. Jean’s red-gold hair was so bright in the glare of the light bulb that the room seemed on fire. “What’s wrong with Sue?” Mrs. Hayes asked.

  I slept again.

  The next thing I knew I was sitting at the kitchen table while someone poured strong, scalding coffee down my throat. “You go on to work, Dave,” Mrs. Hayes said and handed him his lunch bucket. “We’ll look after Sue and the girls.”

  Someone held me erect, and more scalding coffee ran down my throat. At last my eyes would open. The room was full of people: my new neighbor, Mrs. Hendon; her three girls, Edith, Fay, and Betty; Bella Eddings; Mrs. Davis from up the hill! Hazel and Mildred Hayes opened the door and walked in. Hazel carried a chocolate cake.

  More coffee was perking on the stove. My last coffee took effect, and I was able to keep my eyes open. Neighbors, I thought, and blinked my eyes to hide tears; friends who rushed to help when needed. This was Piper! We ate cake, drank more coffee, and laughed; they teased me about my “drunk.”

  Our brief January spring ended the next day with rain turning to ice. The second morning after my “binge,” every tree and shrub was covered with crystal. Diamonds sparkled everywhere as the sun rose and ice spewed from frozen ground. Roads were hard with ice and as slippery as glass.

  Men went to work piled with sweaters and jumpers, and newspaper beneath the jumpers. But no living thing would be out in such weather unless necessary, I thought. Certainly not at night, as I bundled David and kissed him and wrapped tow sacks* about his feet. But I had forgotten the power of love and friendship. Hydrants ran day and night, and smoke drifted over bare oaks and green pines from fires that roared up chimney throats.

  David left for work at dusk each day and returned at daylight. Never much afraid of anything, I might have forgotten to lock my doors, but David gave strict instructions daily. So as soon as he left, I battened the hatches. Doors were dutifully locked, and I even placed chairs under doorknobs and mov
ed a heavy piece of furniture against the kitchen door.

  “If we were millionaires, a burglar wouldn’t try to break in in such weather.” I laughed as David gave his nightly instructions before leaving the second day after the big freeze.

  “You lock everything, though.” He kissed me and strode away. More than half a mile he’d walk in bitter weather. Thunderbolt couldn’t be trusted in such weather even if we could afford gas to drive to work.

  David, who always overdoes everything, had boxes and buckets of coal in the kitchen and near the fireplace. “Be sure to put lots of ashes on the fire,” he warned as usual. For some reason, he thinks he must tell me every move, as if I might die or get myself killed if he isn’t there to watch. The session with the pill hadn’t increased his confidence in my ability to take care of myself.

  I bedded the girls down, listened to the radio for half an hour, and read all the want ads in the paper. My hunger for reading led me to this. We had no books and no magazines and not even a catalogue. The rest of the paper had been devoured and, for want of better material, I pored over the want ads.

  They must have been unusually dull, for I dozed as I sat before the fire. And perhaps David’s warnings had taken their toll, for the fire blurred, turned to a small flashlight, and a burglar stood just outside the door, rattled the knob, and tried to push his way through the door.

  I woke, started to smile at my silly dream, then jerked erect. It was not a dream! The door handle turned, and there was a tremendous knock at the door.

  David had provided for this. Each night he brought in the axe and put it under the bed. “Or you could use the poker,” he advised. The poker was heavy iron, made for us by the local blacksmith; it easily could have felled an ox.

  No time to get the axe, so I dived for the poker. “Who’s there?” I held the poker aloft, ready, I believed, to bring it down on the head of who or what might break through that door.

  “Willard,” a voice chattered.

  David’s youngest brother Willard was sixteen now, but certainly too young to be out in such weather. “What is wrong?” I gasped as I wrested the door open.

  “Nothing,” he laughed between his chattering teeth and almost tried to sit in the fire. Willard’s voice was, if possible, more beautiful than David’s. Already it was deep-toned, and he was almost half a head taller than I. “Willard Honeycutt came over to see his girl and wanted me to come with him.”

  Willard Honeycutt’s girl lived in Coleanor. Our Willard (his nickname was Kaiser) was a frequent visitor after this, until, in fact, the other Willard married.

  This night I marveled at the strength of love, and even more at the strength of friendship, that had brought our Willard/Kaiser out in such weather.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked foolish question number umpteen-hundred. Who ever saw a growing sixteen-year-old when he wasn’t hungry?

  “Oh, no,” he lied manfully.

  “I’ll make some coffee,” I offered. Still chattering, he followed me to the kitchen. A few red coals glowed in the firebox. We piled coal in the stove. I put water and coffee in the percolator and set it on the stove, wondering what I could feed this sixteen-year-old.

  “Gee, that smells good,” Kaiser sniffed as the coffee began to perk. I peered into the warmer. Eureka! Three biscuits were left from supper. In the cabinet was a bowl of cooked, dried apples, set aside for pies for David’s lunch.

  Kaiser buttered the biscuits, finished off the pot of coffee with my help and scraped the apple bowl. We put another pot of coffee on the stove. A scuttleful of coal disappeared. I found apple butter and a glass with a few scrapings of peanut butter inside. At eleven both were empty, and Kaiser nibbled hungrily at some stale crackers. “Something is wrong,” he worried. “Willard promised to be back before ten.”

  “Maybe his car won’t start,” I guessed (correctly, as we learned later). The night was bitter. A blustery wind rattled the windows and fingered at cracks in the door. We sat around the stove until the kitchen was cold. The effects of my coffee died. Chilled, almost as sleepy as the pill had left me, I wished earnestly for bed.

  We sat before the fire now. “Something is really wrong,” Kaiser said drowsily. I peered at the clock. Past one now. We couldn’t sit up all night. But there was no extra bed. The sofa in that bitter living room was too short, and there wasn’t enough extra cover to keep a cat warm. I longed for Papa’s cotton house.

  “You’ll have to spend the night,” I suggested.

  “Yeah,” Kaiser yawned.

  “We are out of coal,” I announced, pouring the last of David’s hoard onto the grate and looking earnestly around for a genie who would produce a bed.

  I went with Kaiser to the coal pile. Poker in hand, he hacked away at the frozen coal. Thunderbolt drowsed peacefully in the moonlight. Good old Thunderbolt, my genie of the night.

  “Give me the coal and bring the car cushions in the house,” I laughed. “Just the thing for a bed in front of the fire.”

  Hope for a place to lay his head gave fresh energy. Kaiser lugged first one, then the other cushion into the house and deposited them before the fire. The car doors had been frozen, but his strength was proof against any frozen door.

  I poured coal on the fire, dumped ashes atop, and ran for more lumps. “Good old Thunderbolt,” I murmured. He seemed to hear me. In the moonlight, he took on grandeur as if remembering past glories.

  The seats, end to end, filled the space before the fireplace. Here was a bed, but what would we use for cover on this frozen night? Even Sharon’s blankets were used on our bed the past two nights. When Kaiser went to the kitchen to wash coal dust from his hands, I slipped a blanket from our bed.

  On nights when David was home, the blanket was doubled over Sharon and Davene, who slept in the overstuffed chairs pushed together. The chair arms kept the girls’ warmth in their makeshift bed.

  Tonight I bundled them in winter underwear and flannel nightgowns, piled my coat on top of them, and if ever I had cursed in my life, I would have cursed Pearlie, especially this night. Wish I had my hands on her, I thought, and hoped that she was extremely uncomfortable under my blankets that she had failed to send.

  The seats made a narrow bed. “Careful you don’t fall off,” I warned as Kaiser doffed his shoes and, fully clad otherwise, lay himself down to sleep. I spread the blanket over him.

  His feet, like those of most youngsters, had grown even faster than the rest of him. Like two tombstones now, they towered at the foot of his bed as he lay on his back. He peered down at them. “Goodnight, little boys,” he said, wiggling his toes.

  Tired, almost hysterical with fatigue and sleepiness, I turned out the light, crept under my cover to undress, and put on my flannel nightgown. Not even a burglar could wake me now, I thought, and sank into instant slumber.

  But I was wrong.

  A thrashing, pounding, shouting at the door woke me. “Open this door; we are freezing to death!” someone called.

  21

  Wild Over Roosevelt

  I sat up in bed. Kaiser jumped, rolled to the floor, then rose and ran to open the door. Two muffled figures staggered into the room. “Put some coal on the fire,” I told Kaiser, the covers clutched about my shoulders.

  He turned on the overhead light. It swung on a long, fly-spattered cord from the ceiling. My eyes blinked in the harsh glare. Kaiser dumped the last of the coal onto the low, red coals.

  Papa Pickett and the other Willard’s father, Ped Huneycutt, swathed in coats with tow sacks wrapped around their shoulders and other sacks around their head and feet, huddled close to the fire.

  I slipped into my dress under the covers, rose, went to the fire, and used the poker. “Who brought you?” I asked. Cars, I knew, were scarce on Pea Ridge.

  “Nobody brought us,” Papa croaked. “We walked, every step of the way.” His cheeks were mottled purple,
but red swept across his neck and spread onto his face. “Kaiser— What do you boys mean? Why didn’t you come home?” His chin jerked, and his teeth rattled like castanets.

  “Willard didn’t show up.” Kaiser hunkered down in his bed.

  “You walked sixteen miles in this weather?” I said. The room was bitterly cold. Blasts of wind shook the house and found their way between cracks. “I’ll make you some coffee.”

  “No, no,” Papa said. “We’ll be all right.”

  I looked at the empty coal bucket. “You are half-frozen,” I shuddered, picturing the long, bitter walk over frozen roads under the cold moon while wind pierced underwear, coats, and the tow sack coverings.

  Mr. Ped turned to the door. “I’m going to Coleanor. I bet the car is frozen—that boy wouldn’t hear of staying at home. Had told Ruby he would be there.”

  “Take my bed,” Kaiser said to Papa after Mr. Honeycutt left.

  “No, no, just let me sit near the fire.” Papa drew a chair near and put his feet into the ashes.

  “Put the percolator on the fire,” I told Kaiser. “You know how to make coffee.”

  “Ought to, after tonight.” He shivered and went to the kitchen. “The hydrant would have frozen in a minute,” he said, bringing the percolator and setting it on the coals. “Ice had already formed and hung all the way down.”

  “But I left it running.”

  “Not enough, though.”

  “You’ll ruin the coffeepot,” Papa worried. Nevertheless, he drank the whole potful. He wasn’t shivering as much as he swallowed the last drop. “Thought I’d never be warm again,” he said.

  “Take my bed,” I offered. “I’ll sit up the rest of the night.”

  “No such thing! Stay where you are! Couldn’t sleep a wink anyhow. I’ll just sit by the fire and keep it going. Never passed such a night.”