The Path Was Steep by Suzanne Pickett Read Free Book Online Page B

twenty cents handed to us was the last that person had for that day. We sold peas for ten cents a gallon and heaped the bucket high. Big melons went for fifteen cents, smaller ones for five and ten cents. They were always ripe. Papa could walk through a field, look at a melon, and tell the state of ripeness. Tomatoes and okra were plentiful; beans, too—bearing more the more we gathered. Papa didn’t sell his corn. That was kept for bread and food for the animals.
    That first day we bought a tank of gasoline, a new broom, ten pounds of sugar, and a box of cocoa. The monthly hundred pounds of sugar had gone into apple and peach pies, preserves and jellies. Miss Mildred had begun to crave chocolate cake. We also bought thread, aspirin, coffee, and a plug of Brown Mule tobacco.
    The children were chocolate-smeared and happy as we rose from the table that night. “Yes, I’m pregnant again,” Miss Mildred admitted as she gorged on chocolate cake. “And,” her blue eyes were grave, “I won’t live through it this time.”
    “Of course you will,” I promised, not knowing how near I came to being wrong.
    The last of August, I walked to the mail box. Papa’s old straw hat came to my eyebrows. Pride hadn’t vanished in this Depression. I tended my baby-white skin as if it were some rare jewel. I’d not go to David toughened by sun and as freckled as a guinea egg.
    I was tired and discouraged. Bad news came with each passing day. America had reached the depth of suffering, we’d think, when news of more cutbacks and fewer jobs would come. Mines, plants, and factories were limping along, trying desperately to keep from closing down entirely.
    I was so discouraged that I didn’t actually believe David’s letter held a money order until I read the amount three times, heard myself crying, and saw the dust flying under my feet as I raced towards the house.

6
    The Value of Papa’s Teaching
     
    The next morning we started off in the old Ford, passed the dusty bitterweeds, and turned onto the highway, where the motor failed. The incredible Griff and Mrs. Griff rescued us, and the girls and I were safely on a bus and headed for Welch, West Virginia. As we rode the long miles that took us to David, I was in my usual state of shock. I knew this was happening but just didn’t believe it. Tomorrow I would wake and go peddling again.
    Night came; the children slept on empty seats. I slept, too. During the night, the driver woke us. We stumbled from the bus, collected baggage, and piled onto cold, hard benches to sleep through a two-hour stopover at Bristol, Tennessee. Another driver shook us awake; we staggered onto his bus and slept again.
    A rainy, gray dawn awakened me. I had a crick in my neck and a dry, brassy taste in my mouth. When the bus stopped for a thirty-minute rest, I smeared tired faces, brushed my teeth and then the girls’, and found a place to eat.
    Food and fresh air revived us. The children stared out the window as we drove through Virginia. Sacred Virginia, home of Washington, Jackson, and Lee. Virginia hills were neat, round, and green, with cattle grazing placidly, as if men had never died there, as if a cause had not been lost.
    My great-grandfather Canada had died of wounds received in that war. My grandfather Mosley, wounded at Atlanta, kept the bullet that wounded him. General Pickett was a relative of David’s. So, even in my state of shock, something vibrated in my heart at seeing Virginia for the first time.
    Then we were in Bluefield, and Virginia hills turned into West Virginia mountains, incredibly high and higher. Rain slanted past a window now. “Slippery when wet,” a sign stated, and below at a vast distance lay relics of cars to prove the statement. I kept the bus on the road by sheer will power. No fiendish road, however wet, could stop us now that we were so close to David.
    My neck acquired another crick as I gazed at the mountains. Straight up they went, like trees. Sharon, after a