The Path Was Steep (9 page)

When I met him in the back yard, he stalked past me. Sometimes he aimed and spat tobacco juice near my feet. His wife, a tall, thin woman, peered suspiciously at me, but sniffed and turned her head if I spoke. I felt like a criminal and tiptoed about my work fearfully. We were uncomfortable, distressingly uncomfortable.

Mrs. Peraldo and Mrs. Hunt, another darling friend, walked from Welch and surprised me one day. I was never the best housekeeper, and this was one of my worst days. The men off to work, the girls had to be fed and dressed, and there was the inconvenience of our one entrance at the back. No chance to keep even one front room in decent order and ready for company. Besides, we had bought only the necessary furniture: beds, a few tables and chairs, a dresser, a coal stove for cooking. Exhausted after handling water and scrubbing black clothes for the men, I’d lain down to take a nap with the girls before taking time to clean up. I really loved these friends. They were cultured and interesting, and I specially loved Mrs. Peraldo. She had been so very good to me. But my embarrassment over the condition of the house may have made my welcome seem a little strained.

Cynthia didn’t seem to notice my housekeeping (or lack of it). And she spent much time with me. She and Bill, David and I had long talks. They had read my rhymes in the paper, and hearing that I didn’t have a typewriter, they gave me my first one: a deluxe, portable Underwood that Bill had used for only three weeks in school. It was, incidentally, the best typewriter I ever owned. I used it for nineteen years, then gave it to our little grandson. They really made typewriters in those days.

Mac went to an occasional movie and wrote letters home. In lieu of board, he’d sometimes buy something special to eat. On the afternoon of March 31, he came in with steaks, canned tomatoes, and a box of cayenne pepper.

I buttered the steaks, broiled them, and poured the tomatoes over them. Taking some out for the children, I dusted the rest heavily with hot pepper. Twenty minutes of baking, and we had a gourmet dish. But there were some tomatoes and plenty of hot pepper left over, and I did not wish to let them go to waste.

I have, unfortunately, always had a rather warped sense of humor. My Irish blood from Granny Mosley and Great-Granny Canada, who was a Garrett before her marriage, left me this heritage, no doubt. Papa’s sober English ancestry from Grandpa Mosley usually restrains me, but at times . . . perhaps the wind is damp and smells of peat, or perhaps my own personal leprechaun demands special attention; whatever it is, I sometimes do very silly things which are quite funny to me at the time. Possibly they are not so humorous to the recipients.

David would not have brought home cayenne pepper the day before April Fool’s Day. But Mac was happily ignorant.

A favorite food for the girls was tomato gravy. When this was served, they wouldn’t eat anything else. I made a big bowl full of gravy for breakfast, flavored most of it with tomatoes, but the other part I doctored with pepper until it was tomato red. Filling the girls’ plates with the genuine article, I put that bowl in the warmer and set the pepper gravy on the table.

David and Mac helped themselves to bacon and eggs. “Good gravy,” Davene said, red dripping from her chin.

“Tomato gravy, my favorite!” Mac said and ladled gravy over three biscuits. Then he took a bite, chewed, and swallowed.

When I dared to look, his face was as red as his gravy, but courageously, he swallowed another mouthful. “Have some, Dave,” he shoved the bowl at David. “Best gravy I ever tasted.” Then his courage faltered; he turned aside and blew like a whale.

“Don’t like it,” David said.

“You never tasted gravy like this!” Mac ate hastily, swallowed coffee, and blew again.

“I want some more,” Davene handed her plate.

“No, no. This is cold,” I dissuaded her.

“Cold!” Mac bellowed, swiped another bite, swallowed, and blew again. “W-e-e-e-w!” he said in agony.

David, used to the children’s chatter, didn’t notice.

As the last of the gravy burned its way down his gullet, Mac ran to the sink and tried to drown himself.

“You should have known not to bring in hot pepper the day before April Fool’s,” I choked.

“Sue!” David looked at last. “What have you done?”

Fearfully, I explained. “But I didn’t think he’d eat it.”

“I’d have eaten every bite if it burned my tongue out by the roots,” Mac said, beginning to laugh. “And it really was good gravy. If it hadn’t been so hot, that would have been the best gravy I ever tasted.”

I took the bowl from the warmer and ladled second helpings for Sharon and Davene. Mac helped himself to real tomato gravy and seasoned it quite heavily with the other.

I’m sure the pepper gravy wasn’t responsible, but a few days later he came in happily reading a letter.

“The wife wants me to come home,” he said.

“Work better now?” David’s face brightened.

“Three or four days a month.”

“You can’t live on that,” David warned.

“Neena has paid our debts with the money I’ve sent. I’ll have a few dollars left when I get home, and it’s gardening time” (as if we didn’t know). “Plenty of poke salat, wild onions, and a river full of fish.” His eyes moistened, “Dave, I’ll never forget what you and Sue have done for me.”

I was smiling as I waved goodbye, but my eyes were wet.

“Want to go back?” David asked.

I put my head on his shoulder. “You know that I do. But we can’t. We’ve no furniture, no job, no anything.”

“I shouldn’t have left,” David said.

Silently, I agreed with him. We’d have managed somehow; with chickens and a garden, I’d have canned every extra vegetable, picked blackberries—I could just see springtime at home. The dogwoods would have finished their blooming, but thousands of wild flowers would color the hillsides. David handed me his handkerchief.

9

Thunderbolt

How our roomers lived, we never knew. Bootlegging, we guessed. They ate regularly. We could hear her washing dishes. Certainly the man had plenty of lung power. He thundered his remarks about “furriners.”

We grew very tired of the situation. I really longed to go home. There seemed no hope in the world. Yet there was one who promised hope. The Roosevelt thunder began to fill every corner of the land. But November was long, hungry months ahead. March actually: if Roosevelt was elected, he could not take office until March 4th.

Our house situation grew steadily worse. One day the tobacco juice hit my foot. My temper flared, and I spoke a few biting words.

“Tell your man to settle fer you,” our guest said and, insolently, spat at me again.

I knew exactly what David would do if I told him. Knew also that his fists, no matter how expert, were not sufficient weapons against a shotgun held by a wild mountaineer. But how much longer I could put up with the man’s churlishness, I didn’t know. I seemed to have reached bottom, but no tobacco juice on my foot could make me bring David into this.

He came in a few minutes later, wearing his reckless smile, “Well,” he said, gleefully. “We are moving again.”

“Where?”

“To Marytown.”

“You mean the company will let us move? Why not go back to Welch?” Hopefully.

“We can’t. Marytown is eight miles away. Pocahontas Company owns the houses. They must be occupied, or they will lose their insurance. The company is offering them rent-free to employees.”

Our roomer took this minute to stalk towards us, his shotgun at the ready. I smiled my biggest smile.

He stood a moment, as if disappointed, then stalked to the front.

I touched David’s cheek. His face now seemed a little tired. He worked such long hours, and Marytown was eight miles away from the Hemphill mine. This was too much! Too much! I’d tell him to stay here. Then I saw our roomer once more, coming around the corner of the house. He chewed savagely at a new (no doubt) chew of tobacco.

I grasped David’s arm and hurried him into the house before speaking. “Eight miles is a long way to walk,” I said to David.

“I’ll buy a car,” he grinned.

“What will you use for a down payment?” I asked. But I knew David. If he’d made up his mind to buy a car, a little thing like no money for a down payment wouldn’t bother him.

After supper, the girls were playing with paper dolls, and David and I sat down in the kitchen to figure. “There will be only two dollars left after we pay all of our bills,” I said. There had been Easter outfits and new pants and shirt for David, charged at the commissary, and grocery bills had been pretty high.

“I’ll manage,” David said, grandly. His eyes searched the room and lighted as they rested on a portable radio we’d bought and paid for: cost, $14.50. Smiling triumphantly, David tucked the radio under his arm and took the road to Welch.

Two hours later, he returned, driving a car. How did he do it? Well, you’ve never seen David operate. Before he finished talking to the manager, the price of the car had been cut from $150 to $125, and the man loaned him the radio until David could come up with the down payment.

We named the car “Thunderbolt” from the roar it gained after a few weeks of our expert neglect. At first it was just a 1926 Studebaker—California top, deluxe, five-passenger sedan—quite a large car in those days of weary miniature Fords and Chevrolets. But soon the car became a personality, and we spoke of it as “he.”

Thunderbolt had a special brand of curtains. Nothing like the tricky, troublesome kind made of isinglass and kept under the back seat, then in bad weather you fumbled through patching, baling wire, tire tools, and pump until you found the crinkled, rumpled curtains. Then you had to stand in the wind, rain, or cold until the curtains were hitched onto the frames. Thunderbolt’s curtains fastened to a rod at the top and rolled up or down like window shades. Since they were permanently attached to the car, you never had to search for them. They almost caused our death once, but that was later.

Thunderbolt must surely have been the best car ever made. In our youth and blissful ignorance, David and I neglected him miserably. We bought oil and gasoline, but other attention he never received. Growl he did, until his growl turned into a thunderous roar, but he roared faithfully wherever we wished to go. Anywhere.

David had learned to drive on the comparatively straight roads of Alabama. (Any roads would be straight compared to those of West Virginia.) He knew only one speed, as fast as the car would go. And David had a new theory about curves: you roared up to one at top speed, took it completely by surprise, slammed on the brakes, and slid around. No curve, treated in this manner, would dare to throw you.

Surprisingly, they didn’t. I clutched the children in my arms the first few times we drove to Welch, closed my eyes, and sent frantic prayers heavenward. Then I grew brave enough to look. Pines, oaks, and hemlocks pierced the top of clouds that were level with the road. On a clear day, I could see to the bottom of the precipices around which we careened, and all the way to the distant depths below. Tires, fenders, and parts of cars hung on ledges, rocks, and trees. The scenery was half hidden by undertaker signs, a very appropriate place to advertise.

After a few trips, I grew numb and sat calmly beside David as we shuttled along. Drivers of other cars were not numb. They soon recognized David and would pull to the side of the road, thrust heads from their windows, and hurl curses as we passed. David, too drunk with speed to care, ignored them.

Weekends we drove through the mountains, sight-seeing, to other towns. As mentioned, the girls had the blue of David’s eyes, his gold hair, and fairness. I didn’t have any features worth mentioning—a pug nose, etc. But I had big black eyes, very fair skin, and a mane of jet-dark hair that was black until the sun hit it; then it gleamed with chestnut and mahogany tints. I must have looked strange with my blue-gold angels, but wherever they went, I was along.

In those days, a car seldom made a trip without a full load. Transportation was scarce, gasoline a thing to be used only when necessary. If one was fortunate enough to own and operate a car, he shared his good fortune with others. But after one ride with David, most people preferred to walk. Brave Virginian Jeff Carter, who had moved to Marytown ahead of us, rode to work with David.

Marytown consisted of a dozen houses on a swatch of level ground between high mountains. A railroad ran through the valley, and big trains snorted past daily. I soon heard the story of a little girl, a beautiful child with fair curls—like my own fair-haired girls—who was killed the past summer. The engineer helplessly tried to stop the train. “She ran to the center of the track and smiled at me,” he sobbed afterwards.

No one blamed him. They knew it was impossible to stop a fast train suddenly.

A row of houses across the road stood between us and the tracks. These were a quarter of a mile away from the houses. And though I didn’t believe in frightening children, I did my very best to make them afraid of the railroad, and succeeded, for they never ventured in that direction. Yet I lived in constant terror, for they would run away to play with small friends down the street. I tried spanking, pleading, shutting them in the closet. There could always be just one time when they’d be on the track before I missed them.

Once, in desperation, I tied a rope loosely around Sharon’s waist and hitched it to a peach tree. “Maybe this will keep you in the yard,” I said.

She could have untied the rope with one hand; instead, she fell to the earth in panic. “Mother! Please untie me; I’ll be good!” she sobbed.

I loosened the rope and took her in my arms. She was trembling, her little heart pounding. “I won’t tie you again, darling,” I crooned.

“Tie me,” Davene swaggered up to the rope. “I’m not afraid.” She tried to tie the rope around her fat tummy. “I can’t run away now,” she laughed.

“Can’t you, sister?” Sharon jerked the rope from Davene.

“You tie me,” Davene said. “I haffa stay in the yard.”

For a few days it was a nice game. Davene played cheerfully in the yard under the peach tree. When the rope fell, she waited for Sharon to tie her again. But she tired of this game. As independent as her daddy, Davene decided to join the nudists, of which there were five or six in Marytown. These native children played all day, sans clothing, and no one seemed to think anything about it. But not the Pickett children! I tried spanking, everything, to no effect.