by Leisha Kelly
7
Josiah Walsh
It wasn’t easy to push away the image. Bloodied skirt. Crushed body. We’d known immediately that there was no life in the man whose remains had become so entangled with that of his automobile, but I’d held out hope for the woman. To no avail.
Now every step took extra effort, and I ached inside, as though what I’d witnessed had produced some physical injury in me. The encrusted mud seemed to weigh a ton, and though I wanted to be rid of it, I could scarcely coax the movement from my hurting body to cleanse it away. Only gradually did I realize that the heavy pain with each breath, the horrible soreness down my entire left side, was an echo of the days after the accident that had taken Rosemary, when life had seemed nothing but a bitter, monstrous fog.
How quickly it must have ended for the couple in the gray topless coupe at the rail crossing. Perhaps they did not even see the approaching train. Perhaps their last thoughts, their last words, were ones of love and joy. If so, their end might be thought a mercy. At least they’d died together. At least one of them had not been left behind to grieve and struggle with the endless appraisal of what he should have done differently.
Aunt Mari’s washroom was down the hall from the kitchen, with running water and a large tub. But I did not want to wash so near everyone, with their words and their worries. Instead I filled a bucket, which smelled strongly of apples, and carried it up with me to the wash basin beside my bed, where the plumbing did not go.
For the moment I was glad Aunt Mari was too feeble for the stairs, and Leah Breckenridge surely kept herself too aloof to notice my struggle. I did not want them to offer help, nor follow, nor speak to me at all again until I could push away the cloud that had surrounded me.
The woman had been nothing like Rosemary. She was larger. And older. But I could not seem to separate the two in my mind anyway. Rosemary’s pale fingers and strawberry blonde curls filled my eyes even when I closed them. The bulge of new life beneath her dress still pressed at my heart. They were gone. Together and in an instant. But like a lone tree after a cyclone’s devastation, I’d been left behind.
I set down the pail of water at the doorway to my room, ripped the soiled shirt over my head, and threw it against the wall. I heard the pip of at least one button hitting the hardwood floor, but I didn’t care. I never wanted to wear that shirt again because it was tainted. I’d dug through the bog in it, I’d held death. And I’d cried.
Why, God? Why did it have to happen? Why does it have to affect me so?
I poured what was left of the tepid water from the pitcher into the wash bowl and buried my hands in it. I didn’t even have to scrub to darken the water, I’d carried so much of the slough home with me. When that water had done all it could, I drained it into the slop pail beneath the washstand and poured fresh water to clean my face and hair.
Little by little, I washed every part of me, leaving my encrusted denim trousers in a heap on the floor. When I was finally ready to dress, I felt too stiff, and almost buried myself in the covers of the bed instead. But if I did not manage to take myself downstairs again, Aunt Mari would send John’s wife up looking for me. She’d be that concerned, I knew without doubt, and I did not want our sudden visitor to be put in such a position. I did not want her inquiring after me at all.
Better if Leah Breckenridge were not here. What good could it possibly serve? But there could be no argument that I was as much a subject of Aunt Mari’s benevolence as anyone. So if I could not stomach the presence of another “wounded spirit,” it might be time for me to move on.
I tried to dress more quickly than I’d managed to wash, hoping Aunt Mari was patient enough to give me the space I needed. But as I started buttoning yet another of the shirts given to me by Mari’s neighbor, I heard the faint sound of footfalls on the steps. Too strong to be my aunt, with her worsening arthritic limp. Too light to be Mr. Abraham, though Mari’d sent him up my way more than once when I’d first arrived here.
In moments came a timid rapping at my door, and when I did not answer promptly, a far more timid voice.
“Mr. Walsh . . . your – your aunt sent me to see if – if you might need anything. Dinner is ready. When you please. She said I could carry it up to you if you wish.”
I almost accepted the offer, but I knew it would send Mari to her knees in prayer for me, and I didn’t want her to worry. “No. I’ll be down.”
Silence from the other side of the door. I’d have thought she was gone, except there’d been no more footsteps.
Finally, her voice ventured once again through the wood of the door. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” Somehow I could say no more.
“You could become friends,” Aunt Mari had said when first she’d told me about inviting Leah and her daughter to stay here. “The things you’ve both been through, you could understand each other so well.”
I didn’t want understanding. I didn’t want Mari’s well-meaning attempts to draw me from what she imagined to be some sort of hidden quarter within myself. It was not hard to be friendly, to be a kindly nephew to my generous “aunt,” to joke and banter with the men I worked with and idle acquaintances here and there. But John’s wife? Looking past her frosty demeanor into the pain that must rest inside would be almost like ripping open pages of my own hurt to air in the public view. I couldn’t do it.
Softly, slowly, her footsteps moved from my door and down the oak stairs. I took a deep breath, willing myself to somehow find the appetite Mari would expect. After a long day’s work, I should be ravenous. But my mouth felt like cotton, my stomach like lead. I couldn’t imagine enjoying anything placed before me tonight.
For some reason my mind traveled back to the burnt roast beef Rosemary and I had enjoyed together on our first full day as man and wife. She’d been so excited to prove to me her abilities, only to have almost everything go wrong. But I didn’t care. That roast beef had been the best I’d ever eaten, or could ever imagine eating, because her hands had prepared it and offered it with hope and love shining from her soft green eyes.
No gourmet meal could hold a candle to that.
I left my work boots upstairs and padded down in my stocking feet, hoping to be able to grab a few bites and be done with the obligation without having to say more than a few words at most. I could smell now what I probably should have noticed before. Apples. Fragrant and abundant. Leah Breckenridge must have picked from the tree today. Good for her. At least she wasn’t too stymied by her grief to lift a helping hand.
I don’t know why I didn’t smell the corned beef sooner. Or the pie. Aunt Mari had chosen a couple of my favorites, as if she’d tried to bless me especially. I could take or leave the pattypan squash, but for Mari’s sake I accepted a generous share. She said the prayer, and I wondered if she knew that I didn’t have the strength tonight.
John’s wife and daughter sat and ate in silence, surely feeling as awkward as I in this new arrangement. Only when I noticed the tiny glint of a tear in Leah’s eye did I remember what Mari had told me of John’s death. A train accident. God Almighty.
I’d been too consumed by the cloud over my own thinking to consider what such a subject would call to mind in this woman and her daughter. No wonder they both picked at their food, grave-faced and still. But there was nothing I could do now. The hurt had been driven home without remedy. And Aunt Mari had been right all those months ago when she’d said I’d be able to relate to the pain they were enduring.
“We’ve filled the back porch with fruit,” Aunt Mari said lightly. “With the old washtub full of pears in the backyard to boot. Mostly Leah’s doings. She’s been such a help today. I was going to ask you to carry some of the baskets down to the basement for keeping, but it can wait till morning when you’re rested.”
“I can do it tonight,” I told her, pushing my fork into the corned beef on my plate and careful not to look up.
“I think it might be better for everyone to turn in early,” she protest
ed. “None of that fruit’ll be going anywhere.”
I nodded, and Aunt Mari kept right on talking. “Leah’s discovered the garden. That’s where this squash came from. And she tells me there’s carrots to be found, and the chance of more tomatoes and peppers.”
How could I respond? My only experience with gardens had been brief here with Aunt Mari. And the loving labor at Rosemary’s side as she toiled to create a vegetable patch out of rough sod in the home we’d shared. Now the planted rows made me think of her and filled me with an empty longing. I didn’t ever want to garden again.
“You can’t go on grieving,” Mari had told me once. “At least not to the exclusion of everything else life has to offer. Rosemary would want you to live on and be happy again.”
Perhaps the words were true, but they rang with emptiness for me nonetheless. Rosemary would never have chosen to die in a ditch alongside a narrow street, and to take our unborn child with her. She’d had more hope for the future than that.
I finished my meal and did what Aunt Mari said in returning to my room and retiring early. The clatter of dishes behind me said that Mari and Leah would clean up before doing the same. I was sure I’d been woefully unpleasant company this evening, but there was precious little to be done about that. It would have been worse had I tried to talk. Bad enough to have to face Leah Breckenridge here at all. For her to see me shaken, bowed by the gruesome events of the day, was just a cruel jab at us both.
8
Leah
“Don’t let it worry you,” Marigold told me after Mr. Walsh had finished his meal and retired. “He’s exhausted. And shaken by what’s happened.”
“I know.” Somehow it was hard for me to hold my equilibrium together, as though the very mention of another train wreck had pulled the footing away from me. Eliza was watching me, had been watching all of us through our quiet meal, her eyes wide and wondering, perhaps not completely understanding the reason for our solemnity. Of course she knew that a train wreck was a serious matter, but I’d never told her the manner of her father’s death. I hadn’t wanted her to be plagued by dreams and fears the way I had been for as long as I could remember.
“Are you finished with your squash, honey?” I asked her.
She nodded, looking up at me with her bright eyes full of question. “Did Mr. Walsh know the people that got hurt?”
Again, my breath stuck in my throat. Somehow she had failed to realize there’d been no survivors left in the wreckage. “No,” I said softly. “Most likely not. But it’s difficult to come upon such a scene nonetheless.”
“Daddy told me about a wreck once.”
My heart thundered. I had no idea what she could be referring to. I could not remember John ever discussing such things with me.
“He was a little sad because a girl my size got her leg broked up. He hugged me and said it made him think of me when she was crying and he hoped I never got hurt like that.”
“I hope not too.” It was all I could say. I could feel the threat of tears and did my best to push them away. Eliza did not need to see me crying. We were here for a new beginning, for hope. Not to let the tragedy of strangers drag us down.
“Your father loved you very much,” I told her. “He was a wonderful man.” Quickly, I gathered the dishes and hurried them to the sink. Putting my hands to work in the dishwater was like a safety, keeping me from dwelling more than necessary on the pain that had presented itself so abruptly.
Marigold worked beside me, lifting her voice in a tender hymn. And though I could not quite bring myself to sing along, it seemed a most appropriate way to draw what had become a difficult evening to its close.
9
Josiah
Leah Breckenridge would think me weak. And Aunt Mari in her worry would surely explain to her all about my loss and my struggle. I should have pretended nothing at all had happened. I should have told them I’d fallen in a puddle and let them laugh at my foolish ineptitude. It would have been far easier to take.
I don’t want my pain rubbed raw in the view of others, Lord God! I directed bitter thoughts toward the ceiling.
I don’t want the things inside of me to be shared! Maybe I don’t want to die anymore, but I still think you were unfair not to take me along with my family. You know I didn’t want to come here. I didn’t want to do anything after Rosemary’s death but fade away to dust. Don’t open me up before a stranger. Don’t hang my weaknesses in view like so much tattered laundry.
My filthy trousers lay in a heap inside the door, and I kicked them across the room to join the spoiled shirt. Maybe in the morning I would pick them up and dispose of them. Or maybe I would let Mari talk me into allowing them to be washed and used again for thrift’s sake. It didn’t really matter. What I needed now more than anything was sleep.
I plopped onto the bed, glad I’d already taken off my work boots so I wouldn’t have to loosen the laces now. The pounding at the back of my head was worse than usual tonight. But maybe the rest I needed would come easily.
Lord, I know you work all things for good and according to your will, but why does life have to be so hard?
I didn’t want to pray anymore tonight because thinking would go along with it and I didn’t want to think. Better to be dead to the world and every struggle that’s a part of it. I lay down for a moment, shutting my eyes and wishing for instant sleep. But thoughts of Rosemary intruded on my efforts, and eventually I heard footsteps again on the front stairs. Leah and Eliza coming up to bed.
Why did Aunt Mari have to give them the master room? Right next to mine? Sure, it was the biggest, so it would suit a woman and her child. But I could already hear the little girl’s humming, just like last night. I could hear the whisper of voices, even without being able to discern a single word.
Leah had more than I did. She had a piece of her John beside her, to cherish and hold. I had nothing but this empty room. The voices of a woman and child just one thin wall away were like mockery.
Why didn’t she just tell her daughter to be still and go to sleep? Even after their talking was done, the humming continued, incessant, overwhelming, as if the sound were something alive, reaching on and on into the night for something impossible to grasp.
Maybe there was peace in it for that little girl. But to me it shouted only of her lack. Rosemary had been prone to humming. But her hum had been the sound of contentment, of quiet pleasure that needed no words. Eliza’s was different, which was obvious to me even at a distance. It was noise to fill up the silence, to cover over an empty spot that would never go away.
I tried to push it all out of my mind, but then Rosemary’s image returned to me, sitting in the cherrywood rocker in front of the fire, her knitting in her lap and a soft melody teasing forth from her closed lips.
In a fit of grief and rage, I’d smashed that rocker into a hundred pieces. And then I’d burned every sliver, so I wouldn’t have to look at its emptiness and remember the dreams I’d lost. But memories aren’t disposed of that easily.
I rolled slowly from the lumpy mattress and knelt by the side of the bed, knowing that the way my mind was plagued, sleep would not come unless I prayed. But tonight it might be difficult to form the words. Perhaps I could pray in my thoughts alone for Aunt Marigold. That would be easy enough. She’d been a blessing to me and it was not hard to ask a blessing for her in return, as well as help in her continuing struggle with the rheumatism that tried to cripple her.
It was also not as hard as I’d thought to pray for the relatives of the man and woman who had died together today. But that was as far as I got. Leah Breckenridge and her daughter surely needed prayer too. But I couldn’t bring myself into their pain right now without being slammed down again by more of my own.
Aunt Marigold will pray for them, and that will be enough, I managed. You know, Lord. You know their need.
I rose and climbed between the covers of the bed. The humming continued for what seemed like an hour before finally tapering off. Silenc
e. At last. But sleep proved evasive nonetheless.
This bed, any bed, was just too big. I grabbed at the extra pillow and scrunched it against my chest. Same as always, the pillowcase smelled like Aunt Mari’s lavender-scented detergent. Too delicate. Too feminine. I hurled the pillow across the room, rolled onto my stomach, and jerked the bedsheet over my head.
10
Leah
The next day, Mr. Walsh seemed to be trying to make up for the somber mood of the previous night by a hefty dose of levity as he hauled the finest looking of yesterday’s apples and pears into the basement for storage. Even after Marigold called him for breakfast he persisted at singing some sort of “jazzy” music I’d never heard before.
Last night, he’d seemed touched by the tragedy, and I’d been deeply surprised and moved at the depth of the feeling I thought I’d seen. But maybe he was just tired, like Marigold had said. This morning, he’d put it all behind him and seemed to have nary a thought that somewhere in this town or a town nearby there was at least one family in mourning, and preparations of the most solemn kind being made. Almost I wished to ask if he had any idea where the memorial services would be held and whether or not the railroad company would send any representative. But I did not dare to voice the words, uncertain of his reaction.
He ate heartily of Marigold’s oatmeal, avoiding looking at either Eliza or me as he relayed to his aunt the Kurcher family’s thanks for the biscuits and eggs she’d sent yesterday. “Dodie Elmira is getting married,” he said. “Only sixteen, I think. Her beau is the son of a neighboring farmer. They’ll be building a Sears Roebuck house practically a stone’s throw from both in-laws.”
“Well, that’ll be keeping the family together,” Marigold made conversation in return. “Is he farming like his father?”
