IT WAS about a half mile from the old
house in Crumbie's Holler in the Ozark Mountains to the
mailbox out on the country road where the rural carrier
passed. Mail could be delivered there, or we could walk
three miles each way into town for it—or drive, which was
something of an experience over Arkansas roads nearly a half
century ago.
So the old mail path began at our back
porch and ended at the box beside the road, half a mile
away. That was the mail path in short. In long, the mail
path was almost a lifetime. It ran a few steps from the back
porch across the short grass of the yard, then across a rod
of plowed land along the edge of the orchard.
That plowed land stood for victory. My
mother had had my brother plow it up as an annex to the
regular vegetable garden farther away. At considerable
expense, for pennies then were like dollars now, she had
sent away for some very fine tomato seeds and had carefully
tended the tiny plants till they were big enough to set out.
The plants were very promising, and she was anticipating
eagerly the unusual kinds she would have.
As it happened a man who desired a
country home for his family had rented a tenant house on our
farm. He was home on a vacation from his work in St. Louis,
when he heard some remark my mother made about being behind
in her weeding of the tomatoes. He urged her to let him
cultivate them with the single-horse plow. With some
misgivings she yielded, and he went to work on the strip of
plowed ground beside the orchard.
No one will ever know why he did what he
did next; the rows of tomato plants were plainly visible,
and there were too few weeds to hide them. But when my
mother went out a little later to see his work, there was a
deep furrow right down every tomato row, no others anywhere
else, and every last one of her precious plants was
thoroughly destroyed. To this day I vividly remember my
mother's face as she turned back to the house. But a few
minutes later she came out of her room to answer his knock
and thank him heartily for his helpfulness, when he came to
report that he had finished his work. He was obviously so
thrilled to have done his day's good deed, that nobody told
him he had committed murder. My mother's self-control kept
alive a plant of friendship that lasts to this day. And
those dead tomato plants have strengthened me many a time
since when some friend has forced good on me according to
her own idea instead of mine.
The mail path went on between the last
row of apple trees and the high north bluff wall of
Crumbie's Holler. The bluff was desolate looking, covered
thickly with rough "blackjack" oaks, and the ground was
hidden beneath the layer of rough, gray, flint stones that
proclaimed the Ozarks. At one place a side path turned off
among some bushes. I never walked on that path; in fact, I
always stepped over the place where it diverged. That was my
mother's prayer path, and it seemed too holy for my feet. A
wave of awe used to come over me when I would see her go out
along the mail path and turn off into the side path. I have
tried to walk the prayer path many a time since then,
however, remembering the light on her face when she came
back.
Along the other side of the orchard were
cultivated rows of peanut plants, each plant looking like a
clump of sweet clover. The path left the orchard by a gap in
the old rail fence and tumbled down a few steps into the bed
of a dry creek that cut through the main bluff of the
valley. Here in coolness and damp, rich soil grew many a
semi-rare wild flower. The old ravine was so full of plants
and long grass and so overshadowed with trees tied with
grapevines that the path was in danger of being lost. I've
come to that part of life since then, too.
But the mail path hurried out of the
undergrowth and turned sharply up the corner of the bluff.
To the climber it felt like going up the corner of a house
roof; and like Bunyan's Pilgrim one fell from running to
going, and from going to creeping; for the path was going up
out of the valley along the line of juncture of the valley
bluff and the side of the tributary creek valley. A step
either way from the path would bring one downhill toward the
valley or the creek bed. And the path itself was
treacherous, for it was across the rolling stones of the
hillside. But there were convenient handles of blueberry
bushes to catch. Life walks such paths as that too.
At the top of this hill the path
ignominiously scrambled over a rail fence and under a strand
of barbed wire which ran from angle to angle of the zigzag
fence to ward off marauding cattle and, incidentally,
scratch travelers. Beyond that the path seemed lost, indeed;
for there were thick woods to pass through, and the ground
was covered with infinite numbers of small gray stones, each
nearly like every other one. I've thought of that part of
the path through many a monotonous year. But an instinctive
drawing toward the mailbox led me safely through the woods
where, if it was toward evening, the chuck-will's-widow
snapped its harsh exclamations overhead. So the most
monotonous day has always had some unexpected event to snap
one alert.
Then the path wound around the old burned
snag with the bird's nest in it, into an abandoned pasture
where the sedge grass grew higher than my head and rustled
like dead leaves. The path was so narrow there that when the
copperhead met me head on and hissed his demand for right of
way, I immediately retreated to the woods, where the path
was wide enough for two. There have not been too many
copperheads in life, and there has always been a "way of
escape" provided.
Then over the last rail fence, and there
on the grassy roadside was the mailbox, with letters from
the far-away world of cities and multitudes of poor people
who did not have a mail path to loiter a lifetime of thought
along.
