The Path Was Steep by Suzanne Pickett

nap, stood on her knees at the window. A black thundercloud of a mountain towered over the bus.
    “Mother, what is that?” she asked.
    “Just a mountain, darling.”
    “I want to go home,” she wept. “I am afraid of that mountain.”
    They were so awesome that Davene sat for thirty minutes wide awake, stilled, just looking. A record for her.
    The rain ended, and the sun shone between the peaks, then hid itself behind the hills long before the day ended. We climbed to the roof of the world; then we zoomed down, down, down into a densely settled valley. Surely this was Switzerland—but it was the town of Welch. Mists hung in the hills that hovered menacingly overhead. Hemlocks, apple trees, and tangled vines hid rocks and boulders.
    The bus drove into the station and stopped, and there he stood! Like a rock, like Gibraltar. His white teeth gleamed in a wide smile. The mists had tumbled his curls into a bright gold mass on his forehead.
    “I see my daddy!” Sharon screamed. “Look, Daddy, I’ve got some new shoes!”
    He was up the steps and had caught us all in his arms. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” Sharon wept, forgetting her shoes.
    In the taxi, Davene clung to me and looked at David suspiciously. She hadn’t seen him since she was nine months old. But halfway to the boarding house (he had arranged for us to stay there a few days), Davene peered at him again, then flung her arms around him. “Daddy!” she shouted.
    Then David and I were both crying.
    The boarding house stood on an almost perpendicular hill. The back porch was jammed against the hill, but a long flight of steps had to be mounted before we stood on the front porch.
    “Dave, come on in the kitchen,” someone called.
    We went through the house, depositing our things in our room. The house had seven big rooms. Each bedroom held two beds, and each bed held two men at night. In emergencies, cots were crowded into the rooms. David was in such high favor that we had a whole room to ourselves.
    A long plank table, a big coal stove, and a pine sideboard furnished the dining room. The kitchen held a giant cookstove, and before the stove was a short, plump woman with very blue eyes, pink cheeks covered with yellow down, and a fine, gold mustache on her upper lip.
    “Mrs. Cranford,” David smiled, “this is Sue, and these are the girls.”
    Mrs. Cranford was drying an iron skillet. “How are you?” She slapped the skillet on the stove, put thick rashers of fat pork into it, and began to peel boiled sweet potatoes. “Dave told us all about you. These are my ‘jewels.’” She waved a knife at the girls who came in and out of the kitchen carrying dishes, setting the table, helping with potatoes, turning the meat, and stirring various pots that boiled on the stove.
    The meat was browned. Halved potatoes dumped into the fat browned quickly, were forked onto a platter, and sprinkled with salt and sugar.
    Sixteen men were seated at the table. The “jewels” waiting on the table inspected me freely.
    “The one who looks like me is Ruby,” Mrs. Cranford said, pouring coffee. Ruby handed cream and sugar down the table. Thinner than her mother, curved generously, Ruby had brown hair, pink cheeks, bright blue eyes, and a hint of her future mustache.
    “Ruby is going to marry one day, if she can find a man with enough money to take her from the coal mines. Jade now—”
    “Mama,” it must have been Jade who cut in, “do you have to talk so much?”
    “Jade,” Mrs. Cranford ignored her, “has been married four times. You was married to all of them, wasn’t you, Jade?”
    “Nobody’s business if I wasn’t,” Jade said. She had a small waist, too much bosom, flaming red hair, white skin, and eyes that exactly matched her name.
    “Your man wasn’t so crazy for you,” the jade eyes looked down at me through lowered lids, “I’d a taken him away from you.”
    “Better women than you have tried.” I matched swords with her. Surprisingly, she