A Cup of Normal

by Devon Monk

“I would go with you,” I whispered.

  He tilted a look at me. “Did I ever tell you how I came to the blocks?”

  I shook my head.

  “I wasn’t brought here like the babies. No uncle or aunt found me. I walked in on my own.”

  “That can’t be. Only babies come here.”

  “I remember the skyworld, Dawn. I remember my mother. She said I was five years old — too old to hide in the sky any longer. I remember the day she brought me down to the wilds, and winged away.”

  “Why would your mother keep you that long?”

  Setham shrugged again. “I think if babies are to wing, they must be very young when they come to their birth soil. The wings are in this place somewhere. Maybe in the water, the sun, the toxweed juice. Something about this place has wings in it. But not if you’re brought here too late. Not for men like me.”

  I held his hand and leaned my head so that it rested against the round of his shoulder. We sat there as the fire burned down to darkness.

  He turned and helped me up to my feet.

  “You never said I couldn’t go with you.” I searched his eyes. Was I his favorite niece? Could I hope I was more than that?

  He brushed one finger over my cheek. “Look down on me when you reach the sky, Dawn. I’ll be looking up for you.”

  He turned and picked up his shirt and pack. Then he walked away.

  A baby squalled and another took up the cry. I took a deep breath. There were babies to tend, and food to find. Someone else would have to walk out into the junk and stink to find the babies before the dogs or rats did. I had a lot of decisions to make, people to care for. And I didn’t have time to cry because an uncle was walking out of my world instead of flying.

  I strode back to the blocks, to the bawling babies, and tried to ignore the strange itch that plucked at my shoulder blades.

  When I turned eighteen, and Reez had long taken to the sky, I left the blocks behind me. I gave each of the babies a kiss, and Jarn, who was thirteen and equal to my height, held out a square of red cloth.

  “It was Bell’s,” he said.

  “I remember.” The cloth was worn, the edges frayed. “Don’t you want to keep it?”

  He shrugged. “I’ll go find her in a couple years.” At my look, he grinned sheepishly. “I have her chimes too.”

  I smiled.

  “I’ll miss you,” I said.

  “I’ll remember you,” he replied. Then, with a smile, “Fly well, Dawn.”

  I walked away to Mount Discard. My wings had come in slow, but were strong and silky yellow. The wind felt wonderful as it stirred against them, and I stretched them out to unfurl above my head, then tucked them back again, enjoying the pure motion, the inherent promise of flight.

  Mount Discard grew larger and larger as I neared it. Once I made it to its base, it took me all afternoon to clamber over the broken bits of metal, wire and chunks of rot and filth until I finally reached the top.

  I paused there, all the wilds of my world spread out before me. I clutched the red cloth tight in one fist.

  I pushed out, and fell. My wings fanned wide, caught too much air, and I hissed from the jerk of pain that stitched my spine and stomach. I pulled my arms in, and remembered to angle my wings, cutting the air, catching half, just enough, that I could push against it and up. Thermals cupped me, warm like fire, like a hand, and lifted me as I shuddered and sweated, and learned my own body in the wind.

  For three days I flew above the wilds, always below the ceiling of brown clouds. It would be easy to slip upward, to see, just once, what color the sky was on the other side. But I kept my gaze on the Earth, looking for something else.

  The wilds here were made of stone. Empty stone streets, empty stone houses and stone rivers filled with water that was green and almost clear. Beside the river was a square of bare soil that looked as if it had been dug into rows. And at one end of that soil was a man.

  I tucked my wings and landed on my feet a short distance in front of him.

  He looked up from his work, rocks in both hands. His eyes narrowed, and then his mouth smiled and he laughed.

  I smiled back.

  “Dawn?”

  “I saw you from above. You weren’t looking up.”

  He tossed the rocks on a pile beyond the dirt and walked closer to me.

  “What beautiful wings,” he said, his voice as kind and gentle as I had remembered. “You must be the envy of every man in skyworld.”

  I looked away.

  “You have gone to skyworld, haven’t you, Dawn?” This now, disapproving.

  I looked back at him, my gaze level. “No. Nor do I intend to.”

  Shetham blinked. “You have wings . . .”

  “I love you. I always have. Don’t look at me like that. I know what happens in the skyworld. I know I should rise up and find a mate and have a baby and drop it in the birthing soil. And I know the men who have gone there. Reez. Others. Hungry men. Angry men.”

  “Dawn.” He shook his head.

  “And I know you.” I stepped forward and caught his hands in mine, afraid of his answer and needing him to feel me, to understand me. His hands were stronger than I remembered and he smelled of rich brown dirt that was new to me, and the familiar sweet-sour musk of his own sweat.

  “Can you love me even though I have wings?”

  Setham gazed at my face. “You’ll want more than me someday. You’ll want the sky.”

  “Don’t tell me what I want. I know my own heart, Setham. It is not in the sky. It never has been.”

  “You’ve given this some thought.”

  “Years.”

  He drew me into his arms. He was warm and smooth-muscled, and his fingers over my shirt found the curve of the small of my back, then ventured sweetly up to where the base of my wings pushed through my shirt.

  I drew my own hands up from the side of his hips to his back, and savored the long wingless curve of his spine.

  “If you decide to go . . .”

  “I won’t. But I’d take you with me,” I said.

  Setham pulled back just enough that he could study my face again. Finally, like a slow seep of water through the soil, he smiled. “I believe you would,” he said. And the reflection of the sky and earth in his eyes was brown and warm and home.

  The women of Nebraska did something heartfelt and remarkable during World War II. Upon hearing their sons would be on the next train through town on the way to deployment overseas, they gathered together and cooked a big meal: cookies, cakes, hot coffee and more to give them before they left. Even though they discovered their sons were not on that train, they invited the soldiers in for the feast. Thus began a tradition. Every time the train stopped in town, the women from miles around were there, offering up a home cooked meal, music, and birthday cake before the soldiers went to war. I found myself thinking about the boys who passed through town on that train and never came home again. This is their story.

  WHEN THE TRAIN CALLS LONELY

  It’s Johnny’s words I hear every morning, before the Nebraska night has given up to the pale light of day. His voice draws me out from under my wool blanket and across the wood floor worn down to slivers. I quickly pull into my day stockings and trousers — my night gown’s too short now that I’ve done some growing and spreading — and the cold air snaps welts across my bare skin. Fifteen. A woman. Old enough to be a wife. Old enough to be Johnny’s wife. As soon as he comes home.

  It’s his words that keep me hoping. Hoping for a life better than the one I got dropped into. The McMahons took me in, put me up instead of killing me, like maybe they ought of. They had a big farm, cows and chickens and pigs. The Missus pushed out a baby every spring up until the year I got there. There was a lot of unborn babies that year, too many. If the Missus hadn’t been walking the creek grieving, I’d probably still be where my own kin left me, squalling by the tracks.

  ’Course then maybe I wouldn’t have to worry about Johnny. Worry about whether he
was coming home in the day or the night. Alive or dying.

  A train called out, low and lonely. It would be daylight soon. I pulled on my boots and laced them up.

  Talcum didn’t do much to cover the color of my skin, not fair enough for most folks’ tastes. And my eyes, well, folk looked away from them. I’d taken a hand mirror out to the fields one day and spent time looking at my eyes. Strange color, yellow as river sand with flecks of green. I didn’t see the power of them. But when I looked too long at someone, they looked away, and soon as I was gone, they’d whisper about who my kin might be and why I’d been left behind.

  Johnny had come into town young, his whole family down to just him and his dad. Some folks said they were drifters, but they took on quick with the elder Smiths up the road and stepped right up to keep Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s small farm in shape. Johnny’s dad was good with fixing fences, and his drinking didn’t mostly get in the way. I’d been taught to mind my manners and elders, so I never brought it up. The other McMahon young waved it in the air like a sweaty rag whenever Johnny came to school, and Johnny, he just kept his head up, and pretended he didn’t hear them.

  I never said anything when Johnny walked by because he had my breath, and I couldn’t get it back when I looked at him. It’d been years like that, Johnny walking by, growing straighter, taller, stronger, and me standing like a shadow, unbreathing, quiet as water stilled at the sight of him.

  The summer I turned thirteen, I spent days practicing how I’d say hello to him. I snuck out behind the barn and held my breath until I nearly passed out. Then I made myself say hello. Over and over. None of the McMahon young found me at it. None of them had time to, what with the war needing every able-bodied man and boy.

  That year, Mr. McMahon took to his bed, and it was all any of us could do to keep up for him. We stayed by his side every hour of the day, so he wouldn’t slip too far into the dreaming lands. Sometimes in the night, Mr. McMahon would look at me, his cloudy eyes going blue, hard and clear, and tell me the dreams he saw. I got to thinking that those dreams might be a fine place to be. Got to thinking that maybe that’s where all the townfolk’s unborn babies might be, staying in the warm and softness of that world, instead of coming over into the hard light of ours.

  On a warm June day, when I should have been minding my chores, I stood out beneath the hackberry tree by the road and waited. Off far and lonely, I could hear the train calling out. Like a wolf who lost its mate, but didn’t know any better than to go on keening, looking for a life long spent. Like a soul coming down the living tracks from the dreaming world.

  Johnny walked up the road from out of town, his boots kicking up dirt too lazy to lift, a new pitchfork slung across his wide shoulders. I stepped out into the street. My heart rattled my breastbone so hard, my cotton dress trembled. All the rest of me trembled with it. Johnny looked up at me and nodded, and then my breath was gone, caught up in the force of him, like he was hard wind coming down to suck away the sweet summer breezes in me.

  But I’d practiced — I’d spent days practicing. I bit the inside of my cheek and exhaled.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Morning,” Johnny said, and that word sang in me.

  “I suppose I’d like to be your wife,” I said. That was beyond manners. No girl ever asked a man to betroth, but summer was getting on, and soon winter would fall. I didn’t know if I’d ever get my breath back to ask him again, to even speak to him, so I’d taken my chance.

  Johnny got still. Camped back on one foot and looked at me.

  The train called out again and I could hear the engine now, feel it deep under the soles of my feet, moving the world as it came. I thought right then if Johnny said no, I’d find the train and take it out of here, out of this hard living world to a place of dreams.

  “You want a man who doesn’t have more than the clothes on his back?” He shook his head, slow. “Not much of a husband, Elisabeth. Not enough for a McMahon.” He looked off over my shoulder, back at our big two story house, recently painted white, with the clean picket fence around. The Missus liked showing the neighbors we had enough. Enough and some to spare. But it wasn’t like that. We got by from the farm okay, but with Mr. McMahon’s sickness, and the two oldest boys, Jacob and Matthew, joining the war, and the next two boys soon to go, things had been falling by the side. Too many things.

  “When I’m enough,” Johnny said in a way that made me think he’d said those words before, maybe enough that he’d worn them in, nice and comfortable. “I’ll come back for you. Then I’ll marry you, Elisabeth McMahon, and we’ll have children of our own.” Johnny walked off, a cool wind following him.

  All I could think was I wasn’t a McMahon, not really a McMahon, but what nerve I’d had was gone, leaving me still as a lake, staring hungry at a sky that would not give up its rain.

  It was that night Mr. McMahon left us. I sat in the rocking chair in his room when he pulled free of his bed, free of his covers and his mortal shell. He stood, wearing his Sunday best and stretched his arms out like he’d just had a good long sleep. He turned to look at me, blue eyes hard, clear.

  The train called, far off and lonely, and he looked that way, toward the sound.

  “I’ll be going now, Elisabeth.” His voice was stronger than I ever remember hearing it. “You tell them I’ll miss them.”

  “Don’t go. Please.” I stood and held a hand out for him. He didn’t say he was going to miss me, the orphan daughter who did not carry his blood. The girl who saw the dying as well as the living. “Just settle back under the covers and I’ll fetch the Missus. She wouldn’t like you leaving without saying good-bye.”

  Mr. McMahon smiled and his eyes were no longer hard. “She’ll see me yet. For now, I have a road to be walking, and my boys to see.” He touched my hand with his fingers, and it was like winter breathing ice across my palm, burning cold.

  Then he wasn’t standing there talking to me anymore. When I looked over to his bed, he wasn’t breathing either.

  I cried myself into the Missus’ room. Those of us left, the McMahon women, spent the next few days quiet, or in tears, cooking and cleaning for the funeral. We kept to ourselves, like five strangers in the same house not knowing what to say to each other. Silence took up the space where Mr. McMahon used to be, and none of us had the strength to chase it out.

  Johnny did not come to the funeral. It was the next day I found out why. He’d gone off and joined the war.

  Seemed like all the men left town over the next few weeks, leaving women and boys and old men behind. The school rooms echoed, and the only voices in the halls, in the churches, were soft and high.

  I took to staying home more. Days I worked the farm the way the McMahon men would have, and nights I spent writing letters to Johnny, though I didn’t know where to send them.

  Johnny’s dad took his leaving hard. I went out in the fields to visit him, to bring him rolls, or fresh milk. But he turned those things away, and pulled close to drinking instead.

  Each day he drank a little more and worked a little less. So I took to helping him, working the elder Smith’s farm every day after I finished my chores at home. I thought maybe I could give Johnny’s dad some strength for living, but soon, he just sat and drank, and watched me do his work. The work Johnny used to do.

  Last I saw Johnny’s dad, was late one night by my bedside. He had his hat in his hands. He stood there though my door had not opened, solemn, shaking his head, dressed in a Sunday best I’d never seen him wear.

  “Tell him I love him, Elisabeth,” he said.

  I nodded. It was the most he’d ever said to me.

  “And I’m proud of him. I’ve always been proud of him.”

  “Yes sir,” I said.

  The train called loud, heading out, and he looked that way, just like Mr. McMahon had a month earlier. He put his hat on his head, and while I watched, he wasn’t there any more.

  They said he’d taken his bottle down to the tracks earlier that
night. Passed out. They said the conductor never even saw him.

  There wasn’t enough of him left for a burial, but we did what we could. The elder Smiths made sure he had a sturdy coffin, likely one of their own they’d been saving. They made sure he had a grave up on the hill too, not down by the creek where it floods every spring.

  I stood there after the burial, hurting, for myself, Mr. McMahon, for Johnny. Hurting for Johnny’s dad who couldn’t believe his son was coming home. I did not know how one heart could hurt so much and still keep on beating.

  But the days still came and I found myself mending fences, pitching hay, feeding cattle. I did it for the Smiths who insisted on paying me a small wage. I did it for Johnny’s dad who had ran out of strength for living. But more, I did it for Johnny, hoping if I did it good enough, he’d come home to me.

  After three months, my hands were strong as any man’s, and my height was coming on. I forgot what it was like to wear a skirt, and wore my older brother’s trousers, hemmed and taken in at the waist. I cut my hair to keep it out of the way of the men’s work we all had to do: fixing and running the farm and equipment, slaughtering and packing, delivering goods, budgeting, planting, and paying the bills. Missus kept a tight hand on our meals. She prided herself on always having something left in the ration books each month, enough sugar she could make up dozens of cookies to mail off to Jacob and Matthew, and the two younger boys, Seth and Roy. She always had enough left to give out at gatherings, at funerals.

  She even came upon the idea to meet the train on its stop at the depot each day. She’d take a dozen cookies, some apples, or what extra we had to give to the boys leaving for war. All the other McMahon girls helped her at it, and eventually all the women in town pitched in, bringing what they had to the depot, meeting the men on every train that stopped. All the women helped, except me. I didn’t think I could look at those men’s faces. Look at them and know they might not make it back home.

  I never said so to the Missus, but I already saw the men at night. Lots of men, some young, some old, all of them stopping by my room on their way to dying. They came by when the train rumbled through town. They stood by my bed wearing their Sunday best, and every one of them had things they wanted me to tell their kin. I don’t know who told them to stop by and talk to me before they moved on to the dream world. I thought maybe it was Mr. McMahon, and thinking that made me feel good, like it was his way of saying he missed me.