The Path Was Steep Read Online Free PDF

the farm work.”
    His face reddened. He turned to speak; then he took my left hand in his, lapped his thumb and forefinger around the wrist, and said, “You—a farmhand?”
    I looked at the wrist angrily. At that time, I was quite thin and practically boneless. Nature had given me very small hands. They were David’s special pride, but I looked at them in anger now. Of what earthly use were they?
    “I’m stronger than I look,” I said.
    “You’ve never been strong.”
    “But I will help . . .”
    “The boys can help all that I need,” Papa settled the matter. His heart as big and broad as the fields through which we passed, Papa understood all that I felt and thought. He had been close to my position all too recently. He’d worked in the mine for years; then at the beginning of the Depression, his section at Majestic mine closed. He was out of work, past fifty, with a wife and six children to support. Providentially, Mildred, his wife, had an income of $28.75 a month, insurance from a brother who had been killed in the war. Papa rented forty acres of land near Morris. His credit was good for a mule, a cow, and a few farming tools. Rent was three bales of cotton a year.
    We left the Dixie Bee Line Highway and turned into a lane that led to the farmhouse. It was unpainted, age-silvered, with a front and back porch, and an open hall separating the rooms. There were two large front rooms, each with a rock fireplace. One room had a bed in each of three corners, a table, chairs, and an old phonograph. The other had two beds, a dresser, a wardrobe, a rocker, and a trunk whose flat surface served as a chair.
    A small room was at the back of one bedroom and a kitchen behind the other. The kitchen was furnished with a Hoover cabinet in desperate need of paint, a cook table, and a shelf for water buckets and washpan. Big tin cans on the floor held sugar, meal, flour, and lard; they left room for the large dining table in winter.
    A dog-run with a homemade bench and a few cowhide-bottomed chairs served as sitting room in summer, and we used the back porch for dining.
    Here a long plank table was matched by benches at either side. Extra chairs seated as many as could crowd around the table. Water buckets, washpans, tubs of pepper, and flowers lined wide shelves. A gourd dipper added unbelievable sweetness to the water. Used to my own private glass, it was a few days before I could relish this, but “beggars can’t be choosers,” and I soon drank from the gourd as lustily as anyone.
    A day or so later I set out sweet potato plants. Possibly I hoed a little, but other than that, I was practically useless. Miss Mildred did the cooking. I gathered vegetables and washed dishes. The children wore feedsack shorts and were bathed daily in a zinc tub under the pear tree. There was little washing and less ironing.
    Three times a day the table was loaded with food. Around the table crowded the lively children, dogs, cats, chickens, and a swarm of happy flies. I soon grew used to noise, crowding, and insects, and all summer I kept a peach tree switch handy, waving uselessly against the flies. Miss Mildred was very kind. Not once did she ever make us feel unwelcome.
    The railroad was only a mile away. At night, when I heard the lonesome wail of the train, I wept, thinking of David stealing a dangerous ride, and I wept for myself and the children. A few tears now and then spilled for others, but, selfishly, I had very few for any but my own woes.
    A card finally came from David. He had gone to Detroit. The breadlines were staggering—no chance to earn a living in Detroit. He was leaving for Kentucky.
    Papa, up before dawn, worked tirelessly; then after lunch he propped a chair upside-down against the wall in the cool breeze of the dog-run*, his head on a pillow that fitted onto the rungs of the chair. He would read his Bible and then take a short nap before returning to his plowing.
    After dinner dishes were washed, I often sat in the