The Path Was Steep (13 page)

“She bandaged my face and did everything she could,” Granny said.

“Weren’t you scared to death the rest of the night?”

“Mary would not hurt me if she knew,” Granny said. She lived with Uncle Lish and visited the others. Grandpa had been a Civil War veteran; Granny had a small pension. She gave away most of her money but kept fifty cents for each Sunday’s church collection. Often it was the biggest single contribution.

Papa came walking around the house in deep conversation with a white-haired man and introduced him as “Brother Morrow.” Papa had taken in the gentle itinerant preacher, questioned him on doctrine, then gathered a nightly crowd—kinfolk, mostly—for a five-day revival under a hastily constructed brush arbor. Past seventy, the old preacher had a feeble voice, no regular church nor income. Any homeless person was always welcome at the Mosley home. Papa invited, and Miss Mildred cooked for them. If there were only salt pork, gravy, and bread, Papa never complained or apologized. I believe if a hungry tiger had wandered through, he would have found a pen and something to eat.

We spent our last night with Thelma and George and were up at four. Breakfasted and dressed, we walked down to Papa’s. “Why don’t you go home with us?” David asked.

A cup of coffee was on the way to Papa’s lips. His eyes brightened. He waved the cup and said, “Wish I could, son.” Born at Morris, he’d never been a hundred miles from there.

“Why not?” Miss Mildred laughed. “The crops are laid by.”

Papa’s face became as bright as the morning sun.

“George and the others can take care of things.” Granny emptied her cup, rinsed it, filled it with hot water, and put in a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of whiskey, her morning “toddy.” This she took daily. One spoonful and no more. It must have been good medicine. She lived to be ninety-three and was in good health until the last few months of her life.

“Papa,” I said, “if anybody deserves a vacation, you do.”

“Deserves?” He looked astonished. He’d worked hard all of his life. Fervently in love with the whole world, he had seen little of it. But he made friends; men stopped to talk as he leaned on his plow, or sat on the porch with him evenings to chew tobacco and discuss religion, politics, or any other subject.

Papa observed nature—birds, clouds, and winds—as he worked. He’d take a handful of soil, smell it, and let it filter through his fingers. He read widely, even medical books that old Dr. Hardcastle had willed to him. He read mornings as he drank a last cup of coffee, by firelight at night. His mind was young and hungry for new friends, places, and things. I inherited his love of people, nature, reading, and travel, and his worst faults also, adding a few of my own. I argued with him (often a heated argument if we disagreed), told him of his faults, and loved him always.

He asked nothing of anyone and did so much for others; he worked on his rented farm, enriched the land with manure, planted Austrian peas in winter and plowed them under to supply organic fertilizer long before the “cult” for organic gardening. He planted fruit trees, paid his three bales of cotton for rent, and improved the land as if it were his own.

“I’ll pay your way home, Papa,” David begged eagerly. It was settled in a moment. Miss Mildred ran to pack clothes. She was such a good wife. Lee and Grayson brought tomatoes and melons. At the stove, Papa finished his coffee, cleared his throat, and said, “Could you take Brother Morrow?”

“To West Virginia?” I tried to sound casual, to keep horror from my voice, but the memory of Acmar started beads of sweat on my face.

“No, to Pisgah. He begins a revival there tomorrow.”

“Always room for one more,” David said.

We had to pick up Karl at Maurine’s place. When he first reached there, Karl stared at Lucile. Now he blushed when she spoke to him, and kept doggedly near. Clarence’s ribald jokes made him choke with laughter, and Karl practically lived on home brew. Even Clarence began to hide it from him. The local brew, compounded of corn mash, sugar, carbide, rotten apples, peaches, or any other available material, packed a kick like a one-eyed mule. Maurine emptied every bottle she could find, but Clarence found new hiding places.

Maurine was on the front porch when we drove up. “Karl is hiding,” she said, her eyes twinkling.

“Hiding!” David exploded. This was no time for games.

“He wants to live with us. Said he’d work for his board.”

We began a search for him. “Here he is!” Lucile called from the store, next door. Karl was in the back room behind the chicken feed. Tearfully, he nursed a bottle of homebrew. “Won’t leave these good folks,” he wept.

We pleaded with him. David was ready to use force when Papa said, “You go back with us and show me around; then you can come home with me. I’m going home with David and Sue.”

“All right,” Karl agreed. He stepped out and went to the car. We had tied bundles, boxes, and suitcases to the fenders and crowded melons, tomatoes, and packages inside. Davene sat in my lap, naturally, and my legs soon acquired their accustomed numbness.

“Never saw such good people,” Karl wept.

“Times are bad everywhere,” David complained.

“Haven’t gone hungry yet, have you, son?” Papa asked.

“I’m hungry,” Davene announced. I’d never heard of prepared baby food, and mine were not bottle babies. They went to glasses of milk and table food as soon as they were weaned, and they were as healthy as young lions. With our delayed start, it was late afternoon when we came to the road that turned off to Pisgah and learned there was no bus until morning.

“I can walk,” the old preacher said.

“Seventeen miles?” Papa waved his hands. “Now, now, could we get to Chattanooga that way?”

“Oh, you could get there,” the attendant at the gas station where we’d stopped said. “Rough road, though.”

“I’ll buy extra gas, son,” Papa offered. “We didn’t pay for the meeting.”

“Fed me, though—best you could do.”

“They that preach the gospel should live of the gospel,” Papa quoted, and soon they were in a deep theological discussion.

I dodged Papa’s waving hands and leaned against the back seat. Sumacs were bright red, and pawpaw bushes leaned over the road. I looked at the familiar Alabama vegetation with dry eyes.

The road to Pisgah was just two ridges over gashes in the earth. It took David over an hour to drive the seventeen miles. Miraculous driving, keeping the tires on those ridges. We located the Smiths, where Brother Morrow was expected. Papa’s hands busied themselves as he made new acquaintances. David asked instructions, and we were riding again.

13

The Worst Road in the United States

Dark purpled the hills as we sped towards Tennessee. With Davene off my lap, fairly comfortable now, I nodded drowsily. Fog rose, thickened, grew so dense that it was impossible to see the road a few feet ahead. David slowed to an unheard-of (for him) fifteen miles an hour. I settled to drowsy delight. Night riding excites me. I’ve a strange feeling of faraway places. My wanderlust rises with the steady roar of the motor, the feel of night wind in my face. I forget past and future worries and live for the pleasure of the moment. Davene was asleep now, leaning against me. Papa, his feet twisted around boxes, suitcases, and watermelons, held Sharon close to his side. We crept through the eerie fog. The car’s roar was muted; the lights peered anxiously ahead.

Then a giant bulk loomed in the headlights. David slammed on the brakes too late and hit a young bull. The animal gave a surprised bellow, then dashed away into the fog.

“Was that the Devil?” Sharon cowered against Papa. “I can see his horns.” (She must have heard tales somewhere; I’d never told her the Devil had horns.)

“Just a young steer,” Papa kissed her.

“Is Jesus stronger than the Devil?” Sharon asked.

“Stronger than anything,” Papa assured her.

She leaned against him, sang “Jesus Loves Me,” and secure in that love, fell asleep.

David dismounted and looked at the bumper. He had only touched the animal, with no damage to the car or bull, so he started Thunderbolt, and we roared on again in a strange, separate place apart from the earth. The only visible things were wraiths of ghostlike fog.

This was a night of ghosts, so naturally I saw one.

At midnight, we reached Horseshoe Bend and saw the Chattanooga lights reflected in the river. Papa roused, peered out the window, then sat forward and read a sign, Chickamauga Park. “Paw fought in the battle of Chickamauga,” he said. “Then he went on to the battle of Atlanta, where he was wounded.”

Before my eyes, Grandpa appeared. My imagination, of course. I was half asleep, and no one else saw him. But if he should appear anywhere, it would be in this area. In my half-waking state, I could hear his violin. Grandpa had never studied music, but he didn’t need to any more than the mockingbird does. Music was as natural as sight with him. When he was only nine, people rode twenty miles to get little Billy Mosley to play for dances.

If Grandpa heard a tune once, it was his, and he added his own variations to it: silver and golden tunes such as the late great Fritz Kreisler or Yehudi Menuhin could make, but no other that I ever heard. A deep, rich bass and high silver, almost human, tones came from his violin.

An undiscovered genius, until he died at the age of eighty-three, Grandpa’s frail hands could set feet to dancing with his fairy music. When he and Grandma came to visit, crowds flocked to our home to hear him play, which he did with joy. “Cotton-Eye Joe” was his last number. Why, I never knew. He had his own secret reason. You could beg, offer to pay—an insult Grandpa never forgave, but when he played “Cotton-Eye Joe,” it was his last tune.

He was stubborn, bad-tempered, senselessly jealous of Grandma, but totally honest. He simply would not lie, and he paid every cent he owed if it meant starvation for himself and his family. A common saying from all who knew him was “Billy Mosley’s word is better than another man’s bond.”

Grandpa was strong and healthy on a very unhealthy diet, which consisted chiefly of cornbread, fried bacon, and “grease gravy,” commonly called “red-eye gravy.” Not once after Lee surrendered at Appomattox did Grandpa ever taste wheat bread. He had fought and half starved on a diet of cornbread and thin gruel made of corn meal. If it was good enough in war, it was good enough afterward for Grandpa. Mama always knew to cook cornbread for breakfast when he was visiting. He filled his plate with bread and ladled hot bacon grease over it along with the hottest pepper sauce that could be found. Some of the sauce must have gone to his head, for his disposition was as peppery as his diet. He erupted into frequent blasts of temper. I rather think he enjoyed his temper and used it to get his way about everything.

And Grandpa always wore a hat: a black one for Sunday, a brown army hat his youngest son, Milton, brought back from service in World War I for every day. Grandpa almost burst with pride when Milton volunteered for that war. “A Mosley has fought in every American war,” he boasted.

He wore his white hair shoulder-length, in a row of curls. There was a large “wind” in the bald spot at the top of his head. Perhaps it was vanity, but on arising, Grandpa combed his hair, donned his hat, and didn’t take it off until he undressed at night. Only for funerals (Grandpa never went to church) or for some “great” occasion would he remove his hat. If “Dixie” was played, the hat rested reverently over his heart, for “Dixie” was his supreme love and his religion. He never admitted that the North really won the war. “They didn’t whip us!” he would say angrily. “They starved us to death.” And Grandpa was never whipped. He was wounded and captured in the Battle of Atlanta. A Yankee doctor removed the bullet from his thigh, gave it to him, and he kept it, wrapped in a bit of gray flannel, until the time of his death. He let me hold it once. I had learned to play his favorite tune, “Under the Double Eagle March.” He was so proud of me, he brought out his most cherished possession and let me hold it for a moment. My brother J. D. Mosley now has that bullet.

My father was named Lee. Uncle Lish was Robert E. (Elisha). If Robert E. Lee had had a dozen names, all of them would have been used.

Now, years after his death, Grandpa smiled at me. His hat was in his hand, for he was near sacred Chickamauga. Mists hung on his white hair, and a lone flute played “Dixie.”

The car stopped, and I sat up in fright. David had changed places with Karl. Believing in Divine Providence and secure in David’s driving, I had slept soundly. But Karl was something else. He had sobered, but he was tired and groggy. But the old preacher was praying for us. I dozed confidently. The car’s coming to a complete stop woke me. I could see the white line in the middle of the highway. We straddled it exactly, but nothing else was visible in the heavy fog. Karl, his head on the wheel, snored softly. I touched his shoulder. “Want me to drive?” I asked.

“Huh?” His face was puffy in the light of the dashboard.

“Hold Davene.”

He slept again.

I shook him. He roused slightly. “Back here,” I said.

He opened the door and staggered to the back seat. I put Davene in his lap. Her head rested on his shoulder, and they both slept, dead to fog, ghosts, or real danger. Papa and David slept, too. We had bought a tankful of gas a few miles back. At our slow pace, it should last until morning. “Be with me,” I threw a prayer to Heaven and slipped under the wheel. David slumped against me, his lips parted slightly. His white teeth gleamed in the light, his hair curled on his forehead, but I didn’t take time to admire him.

My feet played a Confederate march on the floorboard. I thought of Grandpa running, gallant and brave, towards Chickamauga. Trying to be brave myself, I mashed the clutch and gas pedal with my feet, and my shaking hands endangered the gear shift as we jerked along in low gear, second, then high.

In spite of my bravery, I fed the gas in jerks. Only the line in the middle of the road was visible. This couldn’t be Earth and a material road. We seemed to be on a cloud and had died, and this was the highway to heaven. But, I thought in alarm, some of us, in our present state, would never make it.