The Path Was Steep by Suzanne Pickett Page B

made this unimportant.
    “Plenty of hot water,” Mrs. Cranford said. Pearl brought a big round tub. “I’ll mind the children while you bathe,” she offered.
    I was scrubbing briskly when the door opened. “Don’t come in here!” I shouted, and grabbed a towel. Mama had certainly instilled modesty into us. Not one of her daughters would let anyone—not anyone—see her nude.
    “Aw, what’s eatin’ you?” Jade came in and sat on the bed. “Think you’ve got more than other women?”
    I huddled in the tub. The towel was entirely too small.
    “Well, if you don’t beat the devil,” Jade said. “I bet Dave don’t even get a look at you. You’re pretty tough, in spite of what I said last night.”
    “Thank you,” I chattered. September mornings were cold in the mountains.
    “Say,” she pushed her hands through her bright hair and held it high. “Me and you could be friends, maybe.”
    “Of course.” Tears filled my eyes at this offer of friendship, and I tried to stop chattering.
    “Aw, kid,” she laughed and rose. “They come ignorant from Alabama, don’t they?” Her eyes were strange, hungry, full of need, as if she asked for help. Maybe we could have been friends.
    Thirty minutes later, as Jade helped me carry out my bath water, David came in. “Get your things,” he said to me. “We are leaving here.”
    “Takin’ her away from us, Dave?” Jade asked as we started to leave. Her eyes were bright green, then smoky, with a tormented look. “Maybe it’s the best thing you ever done.”
    A month later, I went to see her in the hospital. Two men, fighting over her, had killed each other. A wild bullet had hit Jade in the stomach. “Well, kid,” she smiled; then her lips twisted in pain. “Looks like my time has come.”
    “Jade, no!” I began to cry. The very earth would be diminished with so much beauty underground.
    “Hang onto that man, kid.” Her voice was a whisper. “I woulda took him if I could.”
    She died two days later. I thought of Jade often. Beauty, vitality, honesty, goodness, evil. Jade had lost her way somewhere and had not been able to find it again. Dimly, I saw the value of Papa’s teaching—one man, one wife until death do us part. If Jade had settled down with that first husband of hers, she’d be alive today.
    “I didn’t want life on those terms.” Her bright face looked at me for a minute, then dimmed. Well—she had chosen, and now all of that beauty was underground.

7
    A New Hope
     
    Our rooms were an upstairs apartment in Welch. Mr. Peraldo, our landlord, had brooding, Roman eyes, black hair streaked with white, and a habitual look of worry on his face. He was manager of foreign affairs at the local bank, taught school at night (six languages) to immigrants, and owned a rock quarry. Yet the Depression had hit him also, and he rented part of his home. We had the upstairs; rent was $28 a month. The Carters rented the first basement. The house was built on such a steep hill that the second basement, where Mr. Peraldo’s father lived, had back windows high off the ground. The Peraldos’ front porch was level with the street.
    Mrs. Peraldo was the granddaughter of a countess and aristocratically beautiful. I had read that the old Roman aristocracy was the oldest and the most snobbish in the world, but she was always lovely to us. The Carters, in the first basement, were another Depression-hurt, proud family—Virginia proud, landed gentry. Jeff Carter had not been trained for work in a coal mine. He should have been riding to hounds, but this black Depression was certainly a leveler. David and I, used to comparative poverty, weren’t as hurt, as unable to cope, as some.
    After I had washed my clothes (in the bathtub, and never mind my aching back), I’d take the girls out with me, bundled in their warmest attire. When the clothes were popping in the wind that swooshed down the mountains, I’d sit on a rock and watch the children at play. Sometimes