The Path Was Steep (10 page)

I didn’t have to worry about gaining weight that summer. I’d look out, see Davene’s little naked figure scurrying down the road, and race to catch her and wrestle her into her shorts.

Centuries of organic soil had washed down the mountains and settled in the valley. David and I dug furrows with a hoe, stuck seeds in the rich, black loam at the back of our house, and pulled weeds as they appeared. Warm midday suns and afternoon rains did the rest. Vegetables grew faster than we could use them. David took basketfuls to the commissary to exchange for items that did not grow in gardens. Jeff Carter shared the car expense, there was no rent to pay, and I felt close kin to Midas as we began to save money. Our hoard was kept in a sack, stuffed into the toe of a shoe, and this was thrust up the chimney in our bedroom.

David allowed himself the luxury of a bootlegger and arranged a charge account, but this bill was small. Just a drink or so on idle days. Another luxury: he would buy clothes for me. Perhaps the most beautiful dress I ever owned was one he brought in one day. His face was so happy I didn’t have the nerve to return the dress. It was black satin-back crepe, long sleeves, cut out to a deep ‘V’ in the front, with a vest of eggshell white satin, overlaid with gorgeous, delicate lace. Down this was a row of jet acorn-shaped buttons with rhinestone centers. Cost: $18.75. Such a dress would be several hundred dollars today.

Our shoe-toe bank became a little crowded, so David took the ones and fives to exchange for twenties. We couldn’t know what a sensation a twenty-dollar bill was to create in Gadsden, Alabama. Even here, they were not common.

One afternoon, as we ate supper, a small boy and girl appeared at the kitchen door. The little girl was about ten and had a curious, old-woman look in her face. The boy, a year or so younger, stared at a plate of leftover boiled corn.

“Have you had supper?” I asked gently.

The girl’s face reddened. “We was just going to ask if you have any food to spare.”

“Of course there is food.” I took down two plates.

“Could we have it in a poke?”

“Are there others?” I asked.

“Mommie and Aunt Bess and three small children.”

“Where do you live?” I asked.

She bent her head, and her face reddened again. “Nowhere.” It was only a breath. “We—we’ve got people over the mountain.”

“Where did you sleep last night?” I put my arm around her shoulders.

“Down the road.” She raised her head. “I aim to pay for the food. I’ll wash dishes,” she said.

“You slept outdoors?”

“We built a fire. Hit wasn’t cold.”

Nights in the mountains were always cold. “Go tell your folks to come here for supper,” I said.

“If you’ll let me work. I aim to pay.”

“If that’s the way you want it,” I agreed. I knew the stern pride of the mountaineers.

“That’s the way hit has to be,” she said.

I stirred the fire in the kitchen stove, sliced salt pork, put it in a pan at the back of the stove, and ran to the garden. The pork just needed turning when I returned with corn, tomatoes, onions, and lettuce. By the time the corn bubbled on the stove in salted water, with a little butter added for flavor, and biscuits were browned, the girl was back with her family. The women, young and fair, looked tired and hopeless. The smaller children were shy, hardly speaking. After supper they were all a little more cheerful.

The girl’s name was Irene. She washed her hands, cleared the table, and began to wash dishes. One look at her face, and I didn’t interfere.

“You got some soap we could have?” her mother asked. “We ain’t washed no clothes since we left Pennsylvania.”

“How did you travel?” I took a bar of Octagon laundry soap from a pantry shelf.

“Rode a freight. They found us at the state line and throwed us off the train. Said if hit wasn’t fer the children, they’d a throwed us in jail.”

Irene swept the kitchen floor, then carried water to wash the clothes. They hung them up on my lines and stayed until dark; then the aunt said, “You mind if we sleep in yore yard?”

“We’ve plenty of room for all of you,” I said, my throat dry.

“Just make us a pallet,” she smiled listlessly.

But I crowded Sharon and Davene into bed with David and me, so the women could have a bed. Perhaps it was the first they’d slept in for many nights.

Irene spread their bedding on the floor. It was dirty and mud-stained. I offered my only clean sheets for cover. “I mean to pay,” her eyes were fierce gray. “I’ll sweep yore yard in the morning.”

She had watched as I put the girls to bed, first kneeling with them for their prayers. She knelt and whispered, and I saw tears falling from her hands between her fingers.

I fought back tears. How had she kept her pride? Her mother, aunt, and the smaller ones had the very smell of the Depression about them. Pride, if they ever possessed it, and most mountaineers do, was gone and there was a trapped, animal look—I couldn’t describe it, but when David came in from work the next day, I knew. It was the look of cheap, shoddy, used goods.

There was two dollars in my purse. I didn’t even dare look at the fireplace, but slipped the money to Irene’s mother and gathered corn and tomatoes, found half a box of crackers and some cheese, and put them in a bag just before they left the next day.

Irene washed dishes, swept the floors, and was sweeping the yard when her mother called. “Time for us to git on.”

“I done what I could,” Irene told me.

“You did more than you should,” I stooped to kiss her.

She threw her arms around me and gave a big, gasping sob. “You are so good, as good as any angel,” she wept.

“Oh, no,” I whispered and held her close. “Why don’t you visit with us for a week or so?” I asked. I’d bathe the child, cut her hair, make her a dress. “All right?” I asked her mother.

“You can have her fer good if you want,” indifferently.

I looked at Irene, dreading to see the blow strike. But her eyes grew luminous and she ran to her mother. “I have to go with Mommie! I have to!” Her face grew protective, tender, burning with love, and suddenly I understood. The mother was whipped, cowed. Nothing was left to her, not even love for her children; but this child was not whipped. Somehow, Irene would get them through this Depression, if it ever ended, as a golden voice over our $14.50 portable radio promised over and over that it would end.

As they started away, Irene darted back to whisper fiercely, “Don’t think Mommie wants to give me away. She just wants to get a good home fer me.”

“Of course she does.” I kissed her, and her face lighted at my words. I offered them as a sacrifice to the child, and if He will accept a lie as a sacrifice, I offered them to God, for I knew the words to be a lie. Irene’s mother would be happy to be rid of the child. But no earthly power could make Irene believe this. Her love was so overwhelming that she wrapped it like a warm blanket around her mother. She was a swamp blossom. Pure gold, growing from black swamp mold. Perhaps her love would be strong enough to save her mother.

I scalded all the bedclothes against possible contamination from our guests. David, coming in from work, told that the women were prostitutes, plying their trade in mining towns.

A few mornings later, he went to work and returned just after lunch time. “Mine’s closed for repairs,” he announced as if he had just inherited a million dollars. He whistled “Dixie” and poured water into the tub for his bath. Hanging his clothes behind the stove, he knelt beside the tub to wash face and hands, head and shoulders; dried them; and stepped into the tub. Coal-mining muscles rippled with his every movement, and his skin was like silk. He turned to me, and his eyes were as bright as stars. “The mine will be closed for two weeks,” he said. “Like to go home while there is no work?”

I was too stunned to speak, too happy to cry. Then I managed a whispered. “Tomorrow? Oh, David, I can help drive.” I’d taken Thunderbolt to the ball diamond below our house a few times. I could start the car, shift from low to high gear and go forward erratically. So far, I’d never managed to shift into reverse. But who needed to reverse when we were going home?

“Let’s go today,” David said.

10

Here We Rest

David, naturally, had everything arranged for the trip, even a spare driver—not his wife. Karl Hauser, son of a friend, a high-school graduate with no job in sight, was happy at the chance to see Alabama. Mr. and Mrs. Hauser drove up with Karl all ready to go as we scrambled to put things in the car. “Which road you taking?” Mr. Hauser asked.

“The Jumps,” David said, having asked the shortest way.

“You wouldn’t!” Mrs. Hauser reached a protective hand to her son. “That’s the worst road in the world.”

“The shortest way home,” David grinned.

“You’ll be sorry. You wait and see.”

David would never let a road intimidate him, I thought with pride. Anyhow, no road could be worse than the road between Marytown and Hemphill. In less than two hours, I discovered that I’d never been more wrong in my life.

We were a tousled but happy crew as we shuttled through Marytown, passed Twin Creek, and took the road that led to the Jumps.

When I am a hundred, ask me if I remember the Jumps and no doubt I’ll be able to give you intimate details. The road was a nightmarish thing suspended on sheer cliffs, brittle ledges, and crumbling walls. Now and then dugouts had been whittled into the side of the mountain where one car waited if another approached.

Trees jutted through clouds below and stared at us. Far above, rocks heaped carelessly together by an army of giants dared us to jostle them; when we met a car—and there were other fools on the road that twilight—one had to back up or down hill.

David was not the one who backed. Cars snorted daringly towards us, then backed frantically. Curses, roared at us, resounded from hill to valley. Our guardian angels alone, I am convinced, kept our wheels from going the extra inches that would have sent us into oblivion.

Only once did David give ground. A big muddy lumber truck bolted down the mountain and screamed towards us. His brakes screeched as the driver saw us. The truck rocked and continued to slide downwards toward us, helpless below. David, seeing that the truck couldn’t stop, ground into reverse and crawfished madly.

Screaming and screeching, the monster hurtled towards us. David hung onto the road. We careened, missed the edge of curves by a razor’s edge, and heard the rattle of shale falling down the mountainside. We teetered at the edge, still shuttling backwards, and then found a dugout and jolted to a stop as the truck missed us by a fingernail, screamed past and on down the devil-begotten road.

I closed my eyes, thankful to God, then opened them when there was strength to raise my eyelids. It was strangely quiet in the car. Karl leaned against the back seat. “Gosh,” he whispered at last. “Gosh!”

Sharon, her eyes as blue as the twilight, patted my cheek. Then David found his voice. He went into detail, profanely, on the personality, looks, and intellect of the truck driver. Then he mentioned the road builders for some time. Next, he commented on the state and county road commissioners and worked his way up to the governor. He began to speak of the president; then Davene cut in:

“Spongabick!” she said clearly. “Gott down spongabick!”

I clapped my hand over her mouth.

Another car or two, outfaced by David, backed hastily uphill or, seeing our determined roar up the precipice, waited in dugouts until we passed.

The trip down the other side of the Jumps was gentler, and so we traveled safely into Virginia. A serene moon and lovely hills—not mountains—tried to soothe my nerves. But the Jumps had been too much for me. “Stop the car,” I moaned.

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.