The Path Was Steep (2 page)

Papa adjusted things, climbed out, and turned the crank. Nothing. He pushed his hat to the back of his head, scratched a minute, and then lifted the hood of the car. The motor hadn’t fallen to the road, but it might as well have for all the life that it showed.

“I’ll push; you steer,” Papa said and spat tobacco juice at a dusty pine. We rolled down a slight hill. No sign of life from the motor.

“Never make it to Birmingham.” He mopped his brow.

“I want to see my daddy,” Sharon wept. “I want to show him my new shoes.”

Davene, almost fifteen months old, had preened over a new dress. Now she looked at her three-and-a-half-year-old sister and began to wail in sympathy.

Papa kissed the girls. “I’ll stop the next car.” He’d never learned to be afraid of anyone.

As if on signal, a gaudy, roaring rainbow turned a curve and shuttled towards us. Papa’s long arm reached out, and his confident thumb waved southward. The rainbow, a Stutz Bearcat, 1919 vintage, stopped. Its yellow body, purple hood, and green, red, black, and blue fenders dazzled us.

“Trouble?” An incredibly tall, thin man unlimbered himself from the car. He had a turkey-red neck, bright blue eyes, thick shoulder-length pinkish hair, tobacco-stained pinkish mustache, and thick bushy eyebrows. Dressed in blue overalls, white shirt, and green tie, he was as brilliantly colored as his Stutz. He loped to the Ford and peered under the hood.

“Let me see them babies,” a warm, feminine voice said. Eyes adjusted to gaudy colors, I blinked at a drab, smallish woman. Hair, skin, and dress were mild shades of tan. The little thing hopped to the earth and grabbed Davene. For both, it was love at first sight. The woman crooned a minute, then raised beautiful, dark eyes. “Me and the old man never had any children.” She put a twig of a finger in one of Davene’s curls, then touched Sharon’s cheek. “Oh, what a love you are!” she said.

Sharon, used to the back seat since Davene arrived, flashed worshipful eyes.

“Me and the old man just sort of baby each other,” the woman smiled, and her small, weathered face grew beautiful.

The man found time to look at her. His face softened; the moment seemed almost holy. Then he bent over the Ford again. “All shot to hell,” he said.

Papa flinched.

“Griff don’t mean no harm,” the woman said. “He’s a good Christian man.”

“Christian, hell!” Griff exploded. “The old woman has her way, she’ll take me to heaven on her coattails. But a wicked old devil like me won’t never make it,” he grinned.

His wife closed her eyes, and her lips moved.

“Prayin’ again,” Griff said. “That’s the prayinest woman this side of paradise.”

Papa’s smile was broad and happy. A woman who prayed was to be trusted. “Sue here,” he flourished his hand. “My daughter, Mrs. Pickett, has to catch a bus in Birmingham.” He scratched his head confidently. “You going that far?”

“If we wasn’t, we’d make the trip just to hold these babies,” the woman said.

“Old woman! You tryin’ to boss me!” Griff bellowed.

“If you don’t want to take her . . .” Papa’s hands wavered in their confident flourishing, and his Mosley pride reared.

“Don’t git on yo hoss,” Griff said. “Just ain’t going to let that woman boss me.”

“Griff’s powerful independent,” the woman’s eyes sparkled, and her face showed her pride.

“I’ll pay you, of course.” Papa reached for his worn, leather purse. Bless him! I knew he scarcely had a dollar.

“Talk about pay and nobody rides,” Griff settled the matter. “Old woman, put them younguns in the car.”

Serenely, Papa dropped some coins back in his purse. The man was good. All men were good. His faith in humanity was restored.

“Can I hold the little one?” Mrs. Griff asked.

“Oh, yes.” I looked at the Stutz doubtfully. It was heaped with bottles, brushes, boxes, and buckets of paint.

“Pile the satchels on top, old man,” Mrs. Griff said. He stiffened, saw Papa’s trusting face, and meekly piled the satchels.

“Now, now, you be good.” Papa blew his nose.

“Papa—” I choked and kissed his cheek. My hands clung to his for a minute; then I climbed into the Stutz. It roared, and we were off, whirling past the dusty fields and parched gardens that were suddenly so beautiful to my heartsick eyes.

Our journey will not be forgotten. People on porches, in yards, and in gardens stared at us as we bolted along. Davene babbled happily. Sharon crooned a song about Daddy and new shoes. Mrs. Griff hugged Davene hungrily—too hungrily, I thought. My faith was not as strong as Papa’s. No children were as beautiful as my two girls. Who wouldn’t covet them?

“Whoah! There’s a dollar!” Griff slid the car to a stop. Would he rob a man in broad daylight?

“Sure we got time?” Mrs. Griff asked.

“Shut up, old woman!” Griff descended from the Stutz. Two strides took him to an ancient, rusty car parked at a service station. A small, white-haired man dressed in white shirt, pressed pants, and red suspenders leaned against the car. “Paint your fenders, mister?” Griff asked. “Paint one free just to show how it looks.”

“But—”

“What color you like?” Griff busied himself with buckets and brush.

“Blue,” the man admitted. “But—”

“Blue it is,” Griff said and began to smear on blue paint. His speed was incredible. “As I said, paint one free. Others just a dollar. Look better?” He stepped aside to admire his handiwork.

“Maybe,” Red Suspenders grudged.

“Want I should paint the others?”

“What else can I do?” The suspenders matched the man’s temper. A good thing Papa wasn’t there; the man’s profanity would have crushed him. Curses spouting from his lips, he opened a worn purse so like Papa’s I had to remind myself of the smallness of my own purse, and that little girls must have food on our trip, or I would have offered to pay for the fenders.

Gnarled fingers hovered over the purse; then it opened, and I saw it didn’t resemble Papa’s at all. It was stuffed with bills and silver. Fingers caressed each coin, then slowly counted out a quarter, five dimes, four nickels and five pennies.

His artwork accomplished, Griff started to board the Stutz. Then another car stopped. A man stepped out and walked over to admire the blue fenders.

“Paint yours for a dollar,” Griff offered. “Paint the first one free. What color you like?”

“Well, green, but—”

“Green it is.” The owner of the blue fenders grinned as Griff began to smear on green paint.

“Griff’s sure smart,” Mrs. Griff beamed. “Mixes his own paint. Don’t hardly cost nothing. We been to Florida and all over. Got some put away for a rainy day, too.” She shifted Davene to a more comfortable position.

Two more cars stopped.

I suffered.

But the painting went swiftly. Then Griff took out a heavy gold watch, glanced at it, stored buckets and brushes, and we roared towards Birmingham.

“You brought me good luck, little girl. Like to have you with us all the time,” Griff said.

“He never could resist a pretty face,” Mrs. Griff said and sat very straight. “But he knows I’d put rat poison in his coffee if he went too far.”

“She’d do it, too,” he boasted. “Prayin’ all the time.”

We reached the bus station with ten minutes to spare. You could almost smell the Depression in Birmingham. Certainly, you noticed the freshness of the air, the lack of smoke from steel mills. People walked more slowly. There was the very feel of despair. No brisk, beautifully dressed people like those who five years ago walked joyously these same streets. (I was one who walked with that joy, my feet scarcely touching the sidewalks.)

Griff helped me with bags and boxes. “How much do I owe you?” I felt pride-bound to ask.

“Not a red cent,” Mrs. Griff said and buried her nose in Davene’s curls.

“Old woman—” Griff began. I opened my purse. “None of that,” he shouted. “Old woman got rare pleasure from holdin’ them younguns.”

Her eyes were serene “Like I said, Griff’s got the heart of a Christian.”

I bought my ticket, and the bus was ready. “Take good care of them younguns,” Mrs. Griff said.

My feet were heavy as I climbed the steps. My lungs filled hungrily with Alabama air. It isn’t fair, I thought bitterly. What have I done? I may never see Alabama again.

With my blood and heart and mind, with my very breath, I wanted to see David, to have him hold me and promise, “Everything will be all right.” But I wanted it here in Alabama, back in Piper, our small coal-mining hometown, and not five hundred miles away in a strange West Virginia town.

2

What October Would Bring

Papa had once been a coal miner, and as a child I had learned the snobbishness of those whose fathers earned their living working on the earth’s surface. We were low-class, ignorant, dirty to them. In those days of rare indoor plumbing, miners must have been the cleanest of all people. Others took baths Saturday night, if that often, but miners, of necessity, tubbed themselves daily.

We knew that we were not dirty, and we didn’t think of ourselves as being in the lower stratum. We read our Bible, the King James Version, and understood that naked we came into this world and naked we shall leave it. The rich man’s son appeared red and squalling out of his mother’s womb; so also came the coal miner’s son, a little stronger perhaps—his father was muscled and tough. But all were brought forth equally, in pain. We were Americans, freeborn, and we didn’t know there were any little people.

Living with constant danger, our men were fearless. In the darkness beneath the earth’s surface, they knew a brotherhood that none else could know. Black men and white rode the trip into the mine. Down there, at least, the color of one’s skin was not important. Even farmers did not understand the earth so well, nor love it more. A miner knew its very belly: the dank smell of underground; water dripping from hidden streams in the rock; total, utter darkness. He knew the power of sheer weight that made itself known in crackings and groanings in the roof, usually just before timbers on the longwall* began to splinter.

He knew the god of fire that hid in the bowels of the earth, that could, of itself, explode into blinding light and power and death as gases ignited. He was aware of the colorless, odorless carbon monoxide that could bring death on silent feet. Ignoring this, miners enjoyed the godlike feeling that came as they mastered the underground. My husband, David, was a timberman for a time. There were no steel bolts then to hold the roof. A score of timbercutters worked endlessly in the woodlands surrounding the mines to keep a supply of timbers on hand.

The roof was uneven, pockmarked with holes and sharp rocks. The life of all depended on holding that roof on the longwall, and the timberman, with a helper, never had time to rest. He dragged heavy timbers to a dangerous place, set them, and drove capboards* to fit under the roof, even as the top began to settle and sometimes crushed oak or pine. As the weight above splintered timbers, he set others quickly to save his own life and the lives of the men who worked on the wall, or face, cutting and loading coal.

They sang as they worked, joked and laughed when there was breath for laughter, fighting the dark overhead that grudged the taking of its black veins of coal. A carbide lamp with hooks that fitted onto a cap fought the chaos of darkness. Each man knew that an unexpected flow of gas from a newly opened pocket could ignite from a lamp, and perhaps an explosion would crash through the mine with vivid light, tumbling rocks, then death and darkness.

David and I met in the summer of 1926; we were married October 5th. The war to end all wars had been fought and won. The future stretched ahead, a golden haze. David worked at the By-Product Plant of Woodward Iron, in Dolomite, and I was a long-distance telephone operator in the Birmingham office. “Dave has a wandering mind,” his mother told me shortly after we married. He proved it. The Woodward job paid $4.40 a day. David was offered work in the Belle Ellen mine at five dollars a day. So it was back to the mining camps for both of us.

There must have been half a hundred mines within a radius of fifty miles of Birmingham. Nowhere else in America, perhaps in the world, were all the ingredients for making quality steel in such close proximity. Iron ore, coal, dolomite*—everything was at hand. Woodward, Republic Steel, T.C.I. (Tennessee Coal and Iron, a subsidiary of U.S. Steel) gulped millions of tons of coal.

The pay at Belle Ellen didn’t pan out. David may have had a wandering mind, but never, for one moment of his life, was he lazy. After finding and quitting three more unsatisfactory jobs, he began work January 6, 1927, for the Little Cahaba Coal Company at Piper, forty miles south of Birmingham.

I was dreadfully homesick for all of a month. When we went to Bessemer and I heard the screech of streetcar wheels, I wept so hard that a strange woman glared at David. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” She shook a finger at him. His face was so amazed that I began to laugh, and my homesickness died. The magic of Piper captured all of my heart. I have never since loved a place so well.

The Cahaba River had cut a deep gorge across Bibb County. The river banks and the hills were covered with trees, mountain laurel, honeysuckle, violets, ferns—a wild beauty that caught at your heart, and forever after you were not quite so happy in another place.

On a series of rolling hills far above the Cahaba, shaded by giant oaks, Piper was cool and lovely in summer, and winter did not seem so cold as in places on the lower hills of Bibb. In spring the hills were covered with small blue daisies. There was a special light there, too, and the air was so pure that you had a constant sense of well-being.

The houses in Piper were scarcely worth mentioning. The ancient red and green that had once stained them now blended into muted colors. Plumbing consisted of a lone hydrant on the back porch. Three large, high-ceilinged rooms was the usual size. You were lucky to get a four-room house and smart if you stretched canvas on the back porch to make extra sleeping room.

In our small house, we had food, shelter, clothes, and an ocean tide of love. Sharon Sue, the most beautiful baby in the world (she resembled her father, his gold hair, blue eyes—his were blue-gray—perfect skin), was born fourteen and a half months after we married.