Vein River

by Kellie Honaker

  Our neighbor, Mrs. Brooks, received word yesterday that her son, Alan, would not be coming home from the war. She went to church and prayed for him every day. She prayed to God, the saints, the angels. On one occasion, when I went to say prayers of my own, I heard her pleading with our Blessed Virgin. All that praying didn’t do her any good. Her son went to a foreign land and he’ll never come home again. She doesn’t get the consolation of honoring his body; of laying him to rest with his family on that high hill overlooking the west where the buttercups grow and the bluebirds sing. Instead, he’s in a ditch with his brothers of war, without a single stone to remember him by. I think this is what bothers her the most. When we went to visit her, she clung to my mother and said, “Diana, my son was shot down like a dog and then he was buried like one.” And then she just howled. She cried until she ran out of tears, and my mother rocked her like an infant.

  There’s a blue star in nearly every window in town, a mother’s way of honoring her soldier boy. There’s one in Mrs. Brooks’ window as well. Once she finished crying, she plucked the flag from the window and rubbed at the star with her thumb.

  “Alan was an artist,” she said. “He painted the most beautiful pictures. He was a soft-spoken boy, not a mean bone in his body. He wasn’t made for war; I knew that when he went. Part of me knew I’d never see him again. I have my doubts that he even shot anyone. I don’t think he had it in him. Part of me died when he boarded that train. I felt he was going to be executed, like feeding a mouse to a snake. He had the most beautiful soul. And all I have is this horrible flag.”

  My mother squeezed her hand. “Would you like for me to put the gold star on for you?”

  “No,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I’m his mother. This is the least I can do for him.”

  So, today I put icing on a cake that I doubt will even be eaten, to comfort a mother that cannot be comforted. I couldn’t bear to go over there again, so my mother delivered the cake. Instead, I took a walk just as the stars were peeking out from the sky. The longer I walked, the sadder I became. Gold star upon gold star hangs in the window of nearly every home, honoring the beloved fallen. And it’s not just Vein River, it’s everywhere. I begin to wonder if there’s more stars in windows than there are in the sky.

  29

  Annie

  I close the diary because I need a break. My eyes are crying, and so is my nose. I’m a complete mess. I go to the bathroom and fix my face.

  I take a deep breath and stare at myself in the mirror.

  “You weren’t always evil, were you, Angelina?” I whisper. The more time passes, the less afraid I am of her. I’ve started talking to her at all hours of the day and night, because I feel somehow, she’s always with me. Always watching.

  I decide to call Mrs. Jenkins to tell her the news.

  She answers on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Mrs. Jenkins. How are you?”

  “Just fine. How are you?”

  “It worked. I put Angelina’s fabric under my pillow and I had a…vision? Out of body experience? I’m not sure what happened or how, but I have her diary now.”

  There’s a long pause.

  “Miss Jenkins?”

  “This is excellent news! Have you read it yet?”

  “Just one excerpt. It’s…it’s some pretty intense stuff.”

  “Really? How so? Was she a serial killer?”

  I snort and shake my head. “No, not that I can tell. I think she became a serial killer after she died. To be honest, she seemed almost…sweet. Compassionate.”

  “Humph.”

  “You sound distracted, Miss Jenkins. Are you alright?”

  “I’m…I’m fine, dear. It’s just that Silas Ramsey has taken a turn for the worst. Charles Oates isn’t doing well, either. They had to hospitalize them both last night. Copper, of course, is beside himself. I’m scared for him under this sort of stress, The Cough has been harder on him than it has for most people. I’m not trying to put you under any sort of pressure, but you need to read that book in a hurry. If Angelina can’t be stopped, or at least pacified, we’re going to lose our boys.”

  I think of the excerpt I just read, how all those women “lost their boys”. I couldn’t imagine that sort of pain. I don’t want to experience a single shred of it. And I’m not going to, if I can help it.

  “I’ll do my best, Miss Jenkins. You keep an eye on them, and you notify me immediately if anything at all changes, alright?”

  “Will do.”

  I hang up and pull our most comfortable love seat near the window where I can read by natural light. I then drag a small table beside of it. Instead of letting the coffee perk in the kitchen, I set it up in the living room where I’ll be reading. No use wasting time going to the kitchen for a refill—lives are at stake!

  I sink down into the loveseat and call Copper.

  “Hello?”

  The poor baby sounds exhausted.

  “Hey, Copper. How are you holding up?”

  “I’m okay, I guess. I have to be. There’s nothing I can do to fix it. I already tried that and look where it got me.”

  “I might have found a way to change things. I found Angelina’s diary…well, she led me to it. There’s something she wants me to know, and maybe the clue to her death is in this diary. I think it’s imperative that I read this as quickly as possible. Miss Jenkins thinks so, too. If I can figure out what she wants, if I can make her go away, then maybe The Cough will leave too? You know I want to be with you, right, Copper? You know how much I love you?”

  “I know that. Do what you have to do, Annie. I understand. If you can put an end to this, then by all means, focus on that. I’m fine. There’s nothing you can do for me here. Knowing that you love me is enough for me to make it through.”

  I want to kiss him so badly I can’t stand it. “It shouldn’t take horribly long; the journal isn’t completely full. I’m assuming she died before she got very far. I promise I’ll hurry. You call me if you need me. You hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I love you, Copper.”

  “I love you too, Annie.”

  I take a deep breath and open the book.

  “This better be worth it, Angelina…”

  Angelina’s Diary

  July 15, 1944

  After the news about Alan, Mrs. Brooks hardly ever leaves the house. She doesn’t even come out into her yard. She used to love the outdoors. I’ve seen her in a sunhat and gardening gloves more than I’ve ever seen her otherwise. After the weeds started attacking the garden and her roses started to droop, I took it upon myself to tend to them after I was done with my regular chores. Once she recovers from the initial shock of it all, she’ll be thankful to have her garden as a distraction. She doesn’t need to come out to withered roses. Losing those red-headed lovelies would push her even further over the edge. The woman has lost enough.

  I was busy weeding the marigolds when Mary Elizabeth decided to harass me.

  “You think you’re just a saint, don’t you?”

  I merely glance at her and go back to my weeding. “What do you want, Mary?”

  “It’s your fault Alan’s dead. You know that right?”

  I pluck a particularly ornery weed. “I’ve never shot a gun in my life.”

  She snorts. “You think you’re so clever. We all know that Alan was in love with you. We know he asked you to wait for him and you turned him down.”

  My heart skips a beat, but I keep my face blank.

  “Alan wanted romance, and it wasn’t in me to give it. He knew I loved him like a neighbor, a brother. I never led him on in the slightest.”

  She presses against the fence, only a few feet away from me.

  “Perhaps you should have? If he hadn’t went to war with a broken heart, he might have had the will to survive it.”

  I glare at her.

  “First of all, Mary, Alan and I grew up together. I loved him dearly as a friend and
I will never lie to someone I love. I had too much respect for him. He always knew where I stood. I’m sorry that you had feelings for him, and I’m sorry those feelings weren’t returned. I never wanted to be part of a love triangle, I assure you. But you can’t pin his death on me. If surviving war was based solely on a person’s will to live, not a single soldier would have died. Now, get out of my face, Mary.”

  “Just because you’re beautiful, you think you can get away with everything. I know what kind of whore you are. I know you wear a necklace of broken hearts around your neck. You’ll not get away with it; I promise you that.”

  She spins on her heel and hurries away from me, scared she won’t be able to get the last word.

  There’s a grain of truth to what she said. It’s true that I’ve been the cause of broken hearts, but it’s not from my own doing. People try to woo and pursue, but there’s none that particularly interests me. I like the attention, don’t get me wrong. I like when people buy me cokes, or give me free candy, but I just feel like everybody wants more from me than I can give them. I’m only sixteen, after all, and I’m certainly not a whore. I’ve never had sex with any man; that’s something you save for marriage.

  I finished the weeding, watering, and harvesting. I filled a small bucket with beautiful tomatoes. Nobody makes better spaghetti sauce than Mrs. Brooks. I had hoped she’d be happy to see them, but she didn’t even acknowledge me when I placed them in the kitchen. It was well past noon by this time.

  “Mrs. Brooks, have you eaten today?”

  She was in a straight-backed chair, gazing out the window. From what I could tell, she hadn’t dressed or bathed since day before yesterday.

  She shook her head.

  I went back into the kitchen and made her a tomato sandwich. I placed it on the small table beside of her.

  “You need to eat, Mrs. Brooks. I made you this sandwich, if I come back tomorrow and find it here, I’m going to be greatly offended.”

  She looked up at me as if noticing me for the first time.

  “You realize I don’t have anyone now? Gary died before this terrible war, and now I’ve lost my darling Alan. My only comfort is knowing that my boy is with his father, but why do I have to be the one that’s left? I’m all alone now.”

  I caressed her cheek with the back of my hand. “You’re not alone, Mrs. Brooks. You have me and my family.”

  She grasped my wrist with her cold, thin hand. “You’ll never leave me, right? Do you promise?”

  Her eyes were like marbles in that sunken, grey face. I had no choice. If I had denied her, I believe she would have died on the spot. Her soul would have simply fled.

  “If you promise to eat everything I fix for you, I promise to never leave. Deal?”

  Relief washes over her face and she reaches for the sandwich.

  She takes a bite as I pat her shoulder. “I’ll check in on you tomorrow.”

  Angelina’s Diary

  July 22, 1944

  The tomatoes I picked for her went rotten. She spends her days staring out of that window. The only time she eats is when I bring her something. It’s unthinkable to let the vegetables go to waste in a time like this, so I no longer bring them in for her. What I harvest is either canned or sent off to the soldiers. I’m afraid for her. I believe that grief will kill her. I honestly think she’d starve herself to death if I hadn’t made the pact.

  Angelina’s Diary

  July 23, 1944

  Every night we gather around the radio and listen to updates on the war. Anytime they mention the casualties, my father gets a strange look on his face. I never quite understood what that look meant. He feels badly for the men, no doubt about it, but it wasn’t the look of sorrow that most people get. I think Mama tries to tune it out. Every time an update is aired, she has to busy her hands: mending a shirt, a work of embroidery, braiding my sister’s hair. She will never just sit still and listen. She tells us we’re lucky, that we’re a bunch of forgotten hillbillies in a tiny town, and if we just lay low and grow our victory garden, then the world will just leave us alone. She wants us to live in a bubble, unaffected by the ravages of war. For the most part, she’s gotten her wish.

  I think it caught us all off guard when Daddy reached over and put his hand on Mama’s knee.

  “Diana, my darling, every time you were pregnant, I admit that I prayed for a boy. Now I couldn’t be more thankful that God gave us girls.”

  I glanced over at Elenore and she gave me a sad smile. She knows how badly I wish to be involved—to be in the nitty gritty of it.

  It wasn’t until after Daddy made that comment did I understand what that look meant.

  He wasn’t mourning the loss of millions, he was thanking God for an intact family.

  His look was not one of sorrow.

  It was relief.

  30

  Annie

  I read Angelina’s journal far into the night. Page upon page of how horrible the war was and how she worried about her neighbor, Mrs. Brooks. She had such an adventurous spirit, I can’t blame her resentment for being a farm girl when what she really wanted to be was a soldier. I must’ve fallen asleep, for the next thing I knew, my favorite eyeless phantom stood before me in her glowing twilight way.

  I sense that it’s dusk outside, judging by the shadows in the room. Angelina offers me her corpse-like hand and I take it without hesitation. She pulls me from the loveseat and I feel weightless once again. I glance over my shoulder and see myself slumped in the loveseat with the journal still open in my hand. I’m not unnerved by the sight. I merely accept it for what it is. Angelina is taking me on a journey, and when a spirit takes you on a journey, the body is not allowed to follow.

  She takes me back to her dilapidated house that is now not dilapidated at all. I expect her to lead me up the stairs, but instead she leads me across a dirt road to another house—a house that does not currently exist. The door opens as if it’s expecting her, and we enter as the phantoms we are. A woman sits in a straight-backed chair, gazing out of the window. I’ve never seen this woman before, but I know that she’s Mrs. Brooks. It’s the way her face is drawn, it’s the sadness in her eyes.

  Another woman, one who looks like an older version of Angelina, sits in a chair across from her.

  “She’s dead, Diana. You know it as well as I do. Mothers just know. They can sense when they’ve lost their children.” Mrs. Brooks stares at her with her steely grey eyes and it causes Diana’s lips to tremble.

  “I can’t believe you’d say such a thing to me, Alice! She ran off to join the war, she pestered me over it nearly every day. Just because your child is dead, doesn’t mean that mine is.”

  Mrs. Brooks flinches as if she’d slapped her. “Give it time. You’ll soon feel it, just as I do.”

  Diana makes to leave, but Mrs. Brooks stops her.

  “We had a pact, your girl and me. She was a great comfort after Alan died. I was having a hard time and she was worried about me eating enough. She promised that she’d never leave me so long as I ate whatever she brought me. She knew I was terrified of being alone. She promised me that, and Angelina always keeps her promises. She would never just run off. She wouldn’t do that to her mother. She wouldn’t do that to me. The only reason she’s not here in the flesh is because she can’t. Someone killed her.”

  “Who?” Diana demands, tears rolling from her eyes.

  “I don’t know. All I know is that your girl haunts me.”

  “What do you mean?” Diana hisses.

  “I’m not sure when it started. To be honest, I thought it was you doing it, in the beginning. It wasn’t long after we stopped searching for her. It was that feeling in my gut, the knowing that something bad had happened to her. It’s hard to have an appetite when your belly is full of dread. I stopped eating. And that’s when the sandwiches started. A tomato sandwich was left on the counter. I assumed you left it for me. A few days later, it was peanut butter. Next it was tuna, then egg salad. Sandwich aft
er sandwich, all in the same spot, always at the same time of day. But then it hit me, you had your own household to look after, you carried your own belly of dread. Food was the last thing on your mind, and feeding a childless widow was not your top priority. Not saying that our friendship isn’t special, Diana, but it was Angelina that always worried over me. She made a promise to Alan, you see. She promised him that if he didn’t make it back, that she’d look after me. And Angelina always kept her promises.”

  For the first time, Diana looks genuinely livid.

  “So, you’re telling me that my deceased daughter doesn’t come to visit me, her own mother, but instead comes to you from beyond the grave for no other reason than to make you sandwiches!?”

  “I know how it sounds, Diana, but I swear to you, if you just come over at noon tomorrow and stare at the counter at 12:03, you’ll see a sandwich appear right before your eyes. I swear to God and all His angels that I’m telling the truth.”

  “You need to be put in an asylum, Alice. You’ve lost your mind.” Diana looks like she wants to break down and cry, and beat the hell out of Alice at the same time. She shakes her head and makes for the door, but stops when she touches the doorknob.

  “Pray tell, Alice, what did you do with those never-ending sandwiches?”

  “We had a deal, Diana,” she says pointedly. “I ate every last crumb.”

  Angelina leads me across the field of violets, their purple heads hanging down in sorrow.

  “Why did you show me that?” I ask Angelina.

  “I am not evil simply because I died. It’s hatred that has a way of festering the soul.”

  Her cool, moist hand interlaces with my fingers. Walking me home is a formality. She has the power to transport me anywhere she pleases, but something tells me that she enjoys my company.