The Path Was Steep (16 page)

“I—can’t—see,” I whispered. Then whiskey strangled its way down my throat. The doctor opened my eyelids, poured more whiskey down my throat, and felt my pulse. I could breathe at last, and sight returned. Dr. Klutch leaned over me. Sweat poured from his face as he massaged my wrists. “Feel better?” he asked.

“A little. Can you hurry?”

He began to probe at the tooth. Every few minutes he went to lean against the mantel and rest his head in his hands. Back to my jaw, he wrestled with the tooth. “Corkscrew roots,” he grunted, leaned against the mantel, then set to work again. There was a rending sound in my jaw. “Split it!” he said, triumphantly.

Dig! Gouge! Cut the gum. Sweat ran down his face. “Ha!” he shouted and held up a fragment of tooth. A long, vicious-looking root dangled from the forceps. Another and another were wrestled from my pounding jawbone. “Worst I ever saw,” he said, happily. “Want to keep them?” He held up the roots.

“I don’t even want to see them!” I managed through the cottony swelling of my mouth. He swabbed my jaw, squirted antiseptic, and gave me some tablets.

More than a little “under the influence,” I staggered from the chair, washed my mouth again and again, powdered my nose, put on fresh lipstick, and, not so blithe now, staggered into the waiting room.

“Better take her to the hospital next extraction she has,” Dr. Klutch told David.

“The hospital? To have a tooth pulled?”

“She came near dying,” the doctor said. “Can’t take Novocaine. Never came so near losing a patient.” He turned to me. “If you hadn’t told me that you were blind,” he gulped. Then back to David. “Her pulse went down to forty in just a minute. Good thing I had plenty of whiskey on hand.”

Staggering drunk, I only smiled and said, “All ready to go.”

Only homesick fools would have traveled in the bitter cold with no heater in the car and icy wind blustering through our once-proud curtains. But we were only forty miles from our beloved Southland, Bluefield, Virginia, just across the street from Bluefield, West Virginia. And this was Thanksgiving. Even fools would not have gone after such an experience as mine, but we never thought of turning back.

The girls were bundled in flannel petticoats, knitted long underwear, and long stockings. Heavy, interlined blue wool coats and tams to match their eyes kept them reasonably warm. My own thin, unlined coat barely kept me from freezing to death.

As the effects of the whiskey wore off, I talked less and less. My usual chatter and laughter sort of liven things up. But this wasn’t the nostalgic, fun day we had planned. It was more like the king’s horses and the king’s men who marched up the street and marched back again.

We drove into Bluefield, West Virginia, crossed the street, and were in Virginia, which was, unpatriotically, as cold as West Virginia. We bought hot dogs, ate them, looked southward longingly, then turned around and headed back to Hemphill. As a special treat, we let the girls eat all the hot dogs they wanted. Davene managed two, and Sharon worked valiantly on her third while David devoured his fourth. I barely managed one and drank cup after cup of scalding coffee, which, unfortunately, made me cold sober.

“Last Thanksgiving we were at home and had chicken and dressing,” Norah said wistfully. “Today we all had hot dogs for Thanksgiving,” she said, her large gray eyes sad. I knew that she, too, suffered from homesickness, and I silently resolved that never again would my family have hot dogs for Thanksgiving.

“You look horrible,” Norah told me. “Put on some lipstick.”

The lipstick didn’t help, and the biting cold didn’t ease my jaw. Norah had on a wool sweater and skirt and a heavy coat. She took the girls in the back seat and placed them between her and Burt. They soon slept.

We were not a jolly group as we drove back to Hemphill. Icy wind played hide and seek through the car, and snow began to fall. Sharp thrusts of pain attacked my jaw. I swallowed pills. The pain retreated only slightly.

Reaching Hemphill, we left Burt and Norah at their door, then made it safely home. David built fires. I warmed over yesterday’s beans, found a can of milk, some sugar and cocoa, and made a pan of fudge for the girls. As they enjoyed this, I told them the story of the first Thanksgiving.

My only sleep that night was a pain-filled doze. I heated water in the fireplace, sat before it, and applied hot towels to my jaw most of the night. Next morning I swallowed an extra handful of pills, cooked breakfast, saw David off to work, and stumbled into bed and nightmarish dreams.

David had taught the girls to drink coffee. “It isn’t good for them,” I pleaded. Now he agreed and told them, “Santa said he wouldn’t come to see you if you drank coffee.” Sharon put down her cup. But Davene looked at him, said, “Santa just said a lie,” and took another drink.

Mercifully, they slept that morning. Pain taunted me awake at nine. The girls, in the kitchen, were eating bread and drinking cold coffee—Davene unconcerned, Sharon deliberately; if Santa didn’t come to see her sister, she didn’t want presents either.

My whole head was burning. My eyes seemed ready to explode. The dishes weren’t washed. The beds were unmade. The doctor’s pills gone, I chewed aspirin. Bitter cold had arrived during the night. David had walked to work, but I couldn’t drive to the doctor and couldn’t leave the girls before an open fire. I kept hot towels on my face and wept silently. The girls ate apples and peanut butter for lunch and drank the last of the coffee.

The tormenting day finally came to an end. David, coming home, brought a strange man with him. He looked at my red eyes and swollen jaws. “Baby girl! I’m taking you to the doctor!” he said. Then he remembered his friend. “This is Bill.”

It was the same old story. Bill, looking for work, had made it to Hemphill. David took another look at my face. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll bring the doctor.” He chose the quick way and slid down the vertical path.

Dr. Anderson parked his car in a neighbor’s yard halfway up the road, and he and David walked to the house. My swollen jaw would barely open as he probed in my mouth. “You should have sent for me sooner,” he growled. “The damn thing is infected.”

“Blood poisoning?” David’s face whitened. His aunt Jeannie Goggins had died of blood poisoning the past summer.

The doctor only said, “Have to take her to the office.”

“I’ll watch the children,” Bill volunteered.

“Don’t die, Mother!” Sharon wailed.

“I won’t die, darling,” I promised.

In his office, the doctor put me in a chair and took out his tools. “Have to cut out the proud flesh,” he said and began to hack away.

I didn’t have the good fortune to faint.

“Don’t swallow,” he warned. “This is deadly poison.” He poured carbolic acid into my jaw. No germs could live after that bath. Flames seared my mouth, but it was over! Blessedly over.

“Two hours more would have been too late,” Dr. Anderson said, and gave me pills. “Send for me if you need me.” He patted my shoulder.

David wept as we walked home. “I didn’t know! I went off to work and left you—dying!” He cooked supper, bathed the girls, and put them to bed. Bill washed dishes, took up ashes, and swept the floor. Unable to eat, I managed a trickle of coffee down my throat. We sat around the fire after supper and talked about home. The pain in my jaw was just bearable.

“You’d better go to bed,” David said. “I’ll sleep with Bill.” He put the girls to bed and showed Bill the back bedroom.

Pain woke me during the night. I sat before the fire, gobbled pain pills, and managed to sleep again. David, stirring the fire, woke me. I heard the familiar roar of fire in the cookstove and sat up. “Lie down; I’ll cook breakfast,” he said.

David had never learned to cook, but he made coffee, toast, and scrambled eggs. By now the swelling had almost gone from my jaw. David went to the company office with Bill. I washed dishes, made the beds, bathed the girls and myself, and both occupants and house looked almost civilized when they returned.

Bill’s face told that he’d not found work. We asked him to stay another night. The next day, Sunday, he walked forlornly towards the railroad tracks. Another on the long list we had kept a night or so and sent on their hopeless way.

But a small surge of hope began to replace the despair. Roosevelt’s campaign promises made sense. Hoover vainly tried to get things started, but a “lame duck” Congress wouldn’t pass relief laws. And now, letters from home seemed more cheerful. Work was better. People were using coal again. I forgot the rare beauties of West Virginia and longed to see a muddy road between cut-over timber and on through rolling, red-clay hills.

A young girl who lived across the road swept her porch each morning as I swept mine. One day she crossed the road, broom in hand, and sat on the steps as I swept soot, coal dust, and grime from my porch. “My name’s Pearlie,” she said. “You’re a furriner, ain’t you?”

“We have been here for more than a year.”

“I know. I seen Dave, that first time he came. Seen that Jade, too. Still, best not speak ill of the dead.”

“Won’t you come in?”

“You a poet, ain’t you?” she asked as we sat before the fire. “My man, Starling, read me some of yore poems.”

“Well, they weren’t exactly poetry.”

“I reckon not. Leastways he said they wasn’t so good.”

I managed a smile.

“Me and Starling’s just been home a month. We tried Pennsylvania, but work’s no good there either, so we caught us a freight train and come home.” Pearlie lifted a snuff box and filled her lower lip.

“Weren’t you afraid?”

“I toted me a knife. Starling had a club.”

She was just sixteen and beautiful—fair, silky hair, soft eyes—as so many of the mountaineers were beautiful. Their Scotch-English heritage was very evident. She and Starling lived with her parents. After that visit she came often to regale me with her marital problems.

“Me and Starling had a row, and he hit me again,” she’d say most Mondays. “That man drinks away every dime. But I stole a quarter from him.” She held it up. “Will you bring me a box of snuff? I ain’t got nothin’ fit to wear to the store.”

“Put some clothes on credit,” I said indignantly.

“He’d whup me,” she stated, her face proud. Mountain women! The man was Lord and Master, and they gloried in it.

Sharon played outside while Davene took her daily nap. I warned her never to get out of sight. Just steps away were hills, a wilderness of jutting peaks, tumbling rocks, and frothing streams. I looked out every few minutes. One day she was not with her playmates.

“Sharon!” I called. No answer.

Davene woke and came to help me. “Sister!” she bellowed. “Are you losted?” She began to cry for her beloved sister.

“Of course not!” I bundled Davene into her coat and ran to knock on Pearlie’s door. “Have you seen Sharon?” I asked.

“She was playin’ with Breck’s cat. He’s big as a painter [panther]. She tooken him home.”

Breck was a familiar figure, but I’d never seen his wife. Davene and I hurried up the trail and knocked on the door. It opened a crack. “What you want?” someone asked.

“I’ve lost my little girl. Pearlie said she came here.”

The door opened. A girl with a heart-shaped face, long-fringed dark eyes, and pink lips stared at me. Inside, Sharon crooned to a large, tiger-striped cat. “Can you read?” the girl asked.

“Yes.” I knew better than to ask why.

“Come on in,” the girl said. Inside, a thin woman looked me over. “Set, stranger,” she said. I sat.

“Breck can read,” the girl informed me proudly.

I smiled. You don’t ask questions of mountaineers. They will tell you if they wish you to know anything.

“Maidie,” the girl turned to her mother, then pointed at me. “She can read.”

The woman looked me over; finally she smiled, reached behind a calendar, found a card, and handed it to me. “Read this,” she commanded. “Hit come fer Josie, here.”

“Dere Josie,” the card read. “I’ve got me a job and I’m comin fer you Sunday.”

Josie’s face lighted. “Maidie, what’ll I do?” she asked. “I ain’t got nothin’ to wear.”

“I’ll git you a outfit.”

“Breck’ll hide* you.”

“He’ll just have to hide me,” Maidie said; then, “Yore youngun wasn’t botherin’ nothin’. Hit would pleasure me iffen you didn’t say nothin’,” she said when I took the girls’ hands and turned to leave.

Monday morning early, Maidie came to visit. She pointed to her eye. “Breck give me this. That man’s got a temper. Still and all, hit didn’t keep Josie from havin’ her man. They run away.”

After Maidie left, I looked in the bag she had brought. There were a dozen eggs and some country butter. If I’d offered to pay, she’d never have forgiven me. Mountaineers are fiercely independent. From then on, I wrote letters for her and read the ones that came from Jim. “Wish’t I’d made her learn schoolin’,” Maidie said wishfully. She and Breck had moved to Hemphill from far back in the mountains. “A school bus run three miles from our place, but Josie wouldn’t no ways take hit. Wish’t I’d a put the switch to her back and made her go.”

16

So Dad-Burned Purty

Parents of local children used the sheriff as bogeyman. All were in deadly fear of him. One day I heard Sharon and Davene screaming and ran. “The sheriff’s got Daddy!” they said.

Bodine, the sheriff, tried to help David from his car.

“What happened?” I whispered.

Stubbornly David, without aid, stepped from the car. “Broke my foot,” he said, his face as happy as if he’d inherited a million dollars. He turned to Bodine. “Good of you to bring me home.” His right foot was in a large cast. Part of the mining machine had fallen on it.

David clumped into the house. I held his arm, trying not to cry. “Oh, David, David, David,” I yearned over him and his hurt. I’d never found a word more beautiful than his name. Once I looked up the meaning, found that it was an endearment—“Beloved” or “Darling.” No wonder that Jesse had given it to his beautiful, best-loved son who was to be king of Israel.

“I’ll be out of work for at least five weeks,” David boasted. How could he be so happy about this? “Compensation will be sixteen dollars a week.”