Free The Path Was Steep by Suzanne Pickett

David’s company, Kingston Pocahontas, with an unexpected order, was hiring men, so they tried coal mining. They kept us laughing with their fantastic tales and jokes.
    Wilburn had black eyes, deep dimples in cheek and chin, and fantastic charm. He was full of tales about himself, such as the time he had been too familiar with a señorita across the Rio Grande; and the Mexicans, with fixed bayonets, compelled him to swim for his life while American soldiers on the opposite bank of the river cheered him as he swam.
    Wilburn’s work shoes were too small, so he changed shoes with Clarence, who had the narrow Mosley feet. The next morning both limped up the trail on injured feet. Each had preferred working barefoot on jagged rocks and coal to the agony of wearing shoes that, Clarence vowed, had been designed as instruments of torture.
    Two mornings later, Wilburn came home missing a finger. There was difficulty about compensation. He was accused of deliberately chopping off the finger. They even said that he had made two efforts. Far too many men were now missing fingers or toes. The compensation would feed them and their families for weeks.
    But the company had to pay. Wilburn chose a cash deal, for less money, and it was back to Alabama for him and Clarence.
    Work had practically stopped at Woodward Iron, so George came up for a month. Johnny Appleseed had passed that way once, and there was always a plentiful supply of apples, which sold at fifty cents a bushel. George and David lugged home a bushel every day or so.
    We ate apple pie, fried apples, applesauce, baked apples, jelly, and preserves. In between times, the girls ran about with apples in their hands. None of us needed a doctor all winter. We didn’t charge any of these visitors board, and somehow David and I managed the rent and our food, with even an extra at times.
    George had never been out of Alabama before. He missed Thelma and the girls, Ailene and Jean, very much. With his first month’s pay (two weeks were held back at first), it was back to Alabama for another homing pigeon.
    Now a trickle of visitors that became a steady stream began to arrive by freight train, or they had hitchhiked across the country. These tired, hungry men stayed a night or so; then, with no work available, they would drift on to another town. I imagine, till this day, when they think of West Virginia, they also think of apples.
    The girls slept with me nights when David worked. With our many visitors, they had to sleep on pallets on the floor, made by shoving chair cushions together.
    To amuse myself, I had begun to write the daily news in rhyme and read it to the girls. Junior and Henry often came up to listen. Mr. Peraldo once listened at the top of the stairs. “Could I talk to you?” He appeared suddenly at the door. “How long does it take you to write those?”
    “Oh, ten or fifteen minutes.”
    “Could you do them every day?”
    “Easily.”
    “Mind if I keep those you have?”
    The next afternoon Mrs. Peraldo called me. “Zhorze,” she said, then smiled. “I mean—George tell me you should see his friend, Mr. Kaiser, the newspaper man, tomorrow.”
    “I showed him your rhymes,” Mr. Peraldo stood behind her. “He thinks he can use them as a special feature in the paper.”
    Brash and ignorant, I went to the office of the Welch Daily News the next morning, too ignorant to realize that no unknown, especially with no experience as a writer, who has taken no courses and has only a high school education, lands a job as front page, feature writer for a daily newspaper.
    I didn’t even know what to say. I think I muttered once, “It has been said that I have a brain; if so, I want to use it.”
    Mr. Kaiser was very kind. I learned that he also had daily papers in North and South Carolina. “I like the rhymes very much,” he said. “I’d love to have them, but I am ashamed to offer you what I can pay. I’m the only man in Welch who has not laid off any