The Path Was Steep (20 page)

And you’ve spent just about every penny of it, I thought. But it was Christmas. And his face was so happy—just glowing with Christmas and other spirits. And the girls would love to see the decorations and lights in Bessemer. Early dusk had come on now.

“Why don’t you all go with us?” I asked Thelma and pulled a comb through Davene’s curls, then brushed at Sharon’s coat collar. “David, bring in the suitcases. It is almost dark,” I said.

Thelma, unlike her usual self, seemed in a hurry to get rid of us. The suitcases and boxes were still in the car as she rushed us through our last-minute preparations and almost ran us to the car. “No, Jean, you can’t go!” she said when Jean begged to go. And almost before I had checked to see if the girls were warm, we were racing through Bessemer, scarcely taking time for red lights. “David, where are we going?” I asked.

“Driving around,” he grinned. “We haven’t been alone a single minute.” Then we were on the road to West Blocton. The children talked about Santa Claus and Christmas.

My heart spoke a different language and began to thud almost dangerously as we rattled through West Blocton and took the dirt road that led to Piper. Around curves and bends we rode, crossed the small bridge over Little Ugly Creek, and began the drive along the Cahaba River. Rain had stopped, and stars glimmered in the slow, rolling waters.

“David—” I was afraid to ask the question. I turned from the river and looked up at the stars as if one of them might speak to me.

David drew the car to the side of the road and took me in his arms. “Merry Christmas, darling,” he whispered. “Sue, we have a house, and I have bought furniture and groceries.”

This was too much—too much! I couldn’t bear it! He dried my tears and started Thunderbolt. We drove up the road, crossed the high bridge, and began the crooked ascent to Piper. The road wound around rocks and ledges—“So crooked,” people laughed, “you can see your tail lights.” We turned a last curve, and I saw lights glowing from the windows of the old Methodist Church. Cars took up all the parking space. David drove up the road, found a spot, parked, and helped me from the car.

My legs were weak, and I stumbled. I had not spoken since his announcement, nor been able to speak. Davene reached her arms; David took her, and I held Sharon’s hand while we walked to the building and up the familiar steps, and we were inside.

Then Christmas exploded in my heart and head. Not one thing had changed! The giant tree was loaded with gifts as it was each Christmas, and fruit in brown bags perfumed the building. The same smiles, the same wonder and joy in every face. Mr. Randle was there. Wheeler Fancher, Mr. Allen, Mrs. Hayes, Mrs. Randle at the piano. All—all of them were there.

“Here’re our singers,” Mrs. Hayes laughed, her dark curls a striking contrast to Mrs. Randle’s pure silver hair. David was leading me up the aisle. Someone took the girls and seated them near the front. Mrs. Randle struck a chord on the piano. Oh, David had really planned a Christmas surprise!

“Welcome home,” Mrs. Hayes’s voice was as warm as the big stove which heated the building. She hugged and kissed me and wiped tears from my cheeks.

“Everybody sing,” David held up his hands. “Silent night, holy night . . .”

The walls of the old church house rang. And I will not forget that night of brightness; it will be with me as long as I live.

Who could believe that hatred and anger and a bitter night would come?

19

‘Sleeping Sickness’

Home at last! The year 1933 brought new life and new hope not only to me, but to all of America. That golden voice had made promises. Americans, believing, had elected Roosevelt. A new world of love and brotherhood stretched ahead. A world of peace.

Peace?

Paradise, we learned, is not in this world. But the black night at Coleanor was fifteen months ahead. For a moment of time, I knew almost perfect happiness.

We had food, shelter, clothes, and once again we woke each morning in our beloved hills. With scarcely a ripple, we settled back into life at Piper. Our house, in the bend of the road, had three rooms, a long front porch and a double, V-shaped back porch. The outhouse leaned against an oak tree. Rent of $7 a month included water and electricity.

David not only had furnished kitchen and bedroom, but also had bought two overstuffed chairs, a sofa, a table, and a radio for the living room. We had a place to entertain. But former renters had cemented the living room fireplace, and our budget didn’t run to a heater, so we had to wait until spring to use our “parlor.” In the meantime, the chairs were not wasted. Moved to the bedroom (we did have a fire there) and shoved together, they made a perfect, though snug, bed for two small girls when David was home nights.

We wrote to Pearlie. If they would send our dishes, linens, clothes, etc., we’d give them what we’d paid on the furniture and write to the company to let them take over the payments. Pearlie mailed a small box to us. It contained a few things, but she kept most of the linens, dishes, and even a new pair of David’s work clothes and shoes. I had learned to love Pearlie. Maybe she wanted to ship our things but was afraid that Starling would ‘whup’ her. When I thought of Pearlie, I excused her in my mind.

Some in Piper had wounds, though, that would never heal. David and I had missed the time of slow bitterness that had come to a helpless people here. Weeks passed before we understood the bitterness and determination of the men never, never to suffer such things again. They had been hungry, humbled, brought to their knees. Worst of all, their children were hungry. Those on the appointed committee were proud men, yet they had gone to beg, not for free food but simply for credit to the miners. Every cent would be paid. They were honest men, hardworking when there was work, and they had guaranteed the debt.

But no credit was granted. Instead, there had been those words spoken, words quoted often in the year ahead: “Let them eat mussels; let them hunt hickory nuts.” There are men living today who have never forgotten nor forgiven that remark, though payment in full has been exacted, not only against that man, but also against all other coal operators.

When Roosevelt, newly elected, guaranteed freedom to organize, and when a strong union had been established, they could and would and did strike if things were not to their liking. People outside coal mining whose jobs were affected criticized miners, grew bitter against them. But they had not stood in these men’s shoes. There came a time when it was common to joke, saying, “If a miner at Piper or Coleanor stumps his toes and spills his water, the others, thinking a strike has been called, pour out their water and go back home.”

The old, peaceful days were gone forever. Piper still had its pure air and its special beauty. There was still love between the men and the company officials, but it was a strained “chip on the shoulder” sort of love.

But that first January, I was at home and very happy. Furthermore, I knew that I was happy, a rare thing for humans. Usually, we look back to happier times (even though they did not seem so happy then), or we look forward to happier times. But one person in the world knew, for a short time, that she would not change places with anyone on earth.

No silly adventure had befallen me yet, and I didn’t expect one. January often has one perfect week. On one of those rare days of spring-like weather, I dressed the girls, and we walked the mile to Portertown (Portertown, Sweet Ridge, and New Ell were names for different areas in Piper). We went to spend the day with “Mama,” Mrs. William Hayes.

January jasmine bloomed in the yards, sent its spicy fragrance across the hills. At the highest point in the road, I stopped to look at the scene I had yearned for: distant purple hills against a blue sky. Sharon and Davene skipped ahead of me, their cheeks strawberry pink, their eyes as bright as the January day. A perfect day.

Mrs. Hayes was the best cook in the county and had tornado energy, but she had hurt her leg and it was slow healing. Dr. Phillips had given her some tablets for pain. She took one or two daily, hobbled about on her bad leg, and did not miss one visit to the sick, a shower, Missionary or P.T.A. meeting, or any other local event.

She had adopted me, and I was part of her large family. Mrs. Hayes practically ran everything in Piper and still had time to mother me and see to her own large family. She was a talented musician and director of most pageants and plays that were often put on in the community. Perhaps it was her unfailing love and loyalty to me that made Piper more home than any I had known since my mother died.

I was happy and halfway between laughter and tears all day. Then there came a familiar twinge. One of my bad headaches signaled that it was on its way. “Do you have an aspirin?” I asked.

“No,” Mama Hayes’s voice was low, husky, and warm. Now it sounded concerned. “Take one of my tablets,” she said.

The small white tablet had a groove across the middle. “Is it strong?” I asked.

“Of course not. I’m supposed to take one every four hours.”

“Anything stronger than aspirin puts me to sleep.”

“This won’t.” She laughed her deep, husky laugh.

“Well, I have to get home.” I swallowed the tablet, talked a few more minutes, and then we left. My headache began to wane as the girls and I walked across the bridge and passed the Methodist Church, but my eyes were slightly blurred. Up the winding road we climbed and came to Mrs. Florine’s boarding house. From her yard, Mrs. Florine called, “Sugar darling, let me see them babies. You know I love them like my own.”

I smiled vaguely. Everyone was “sugar darling” to Mrs. Florine. We stopped, sat on the steps, and I thought I could never rise again. I suppose we talked; I was struggling with my eyes, trying to keep them from closing. I must get home, cook supper, and get David off to work. I managed to rise, took the girls’ hands, and we walked on down the endless road.

Smoke from kitchen fires sailed lazily into the sky. As we rounded a curve, Lorraine Champion called from her mother’s porch, “I am coming over to see you right away.” I was so vague, I mumbled something and spoke to her mother, Mrs. Dailey, who stood beside Lorraine.

There was the Jim Ledford house across from the Baptist Church. Every place was special to me even in my dazed state. A door opened. “Well, Sue,” Flossie Ledford said in her slow, Tennessee drawl. “How I have wanted to see you. Do stop by a minute.”

I didn’t have time to stop. I must keep moving.

“I’m thirsty,” Sharon said.

“I’ll get you a drink,” Flossie said; then she smiled. “I just baked some cookies; let me give some to the girls.” Her smile told how wonderful it was to have food to share.

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.