Beneath the Apple Leaves

by Harmony Verna

Wilhelm’s stance softened. “Guess we’re both running then,” he said. “Me from tilling the land above and you from picking it below.”

  His uncle cocked his head, smiled affably. “Want to take a look at the roof? Old girl’s dancing on slippers today. Rails as smooth as you could want.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, feels good. Free as a bird up there. Once walked across the full length of the train with my arms out like a tightrope walker. Makes you feel alive. Besides, it’s a rite of passage.”

  Andrew smiled, felt the rush before he even stepped outside. He opened the side door, looked down at the ground rushing past his feet in a continuous blur. From the rain, the landscape appeared a charcoal sketch that had been erased and smeared with speed. The wind ripped at his shirt, puffed the fabric, tried to drag him into its pull. With effort, Andrew held his breath and grabbed the ladder rung. He flung his body against the caboose siding, his forehead pressing against the wood.

  “Just hold on tight and take it one step at a time!” Wilhelm ordered above the clattering cacophony of the rails. “You’ll be fine.”

  Andrew began his ascent, one rung and then another. On the top of the train, he pulled at the handrail, pushed his belly against the roof. Slowly, he bent his legs and sat upright. The curve of the train snaked along the contours of the rails, the puffing steam engine leading the charge.

  The rush of cold air washed over his face and body, enlivened every cell. The pulsating caboose below seeped into his muscles, made them tight and strong. His heart raced, but his breathing slowed, each inhale a conscious movement that filled his lungs and expanded his rib cage. He was free. Any fear melted away. He lifted his hands from the roof and settled his arms on his bent knees, his body flowing with the train as if welded. He was free. He tilted his head back, his eyes following the trail of smoke that stretched and morphed against the endless sky. Andrew never wanted to look down again. All his life he had waited to move forward and here he was—moving forward—faster than any other man on earth.

  Andrew closed his eyes. The rain pelted his face in stinging droplets that tingled the skin. His father was with him now. The dark memories faded behind the curtain of happier times. He would bring the light back, erase the darkness once and for all.

  A short blast shot through the steam whistle at the locomotive. Andrew opened his eyes, the sound shuddering. He snapped out of reverie, his ears alert. The train whistle shrieked again, long and desperate. Something wasn’t right.

  Steadily, Andrew pulled himself upright, reached his arms out for balance. From the curve in the tracks, the conductor in the front engine was visible for a moment, waving madly before the tracks straightened and he was out of sight. The whistle screamed. Instinct took over. Andrew lunged for the handgrip. The train jolted. From below in the caboose, the rear brake ground, crashing Andrew to his knees. He slid on his stomach, his hip spinning without traction on the wet iron. He rolled to the edge, his legs flaying over the side of the caboose while his knuckles and fingertips squeezed the weather-beaten seams.

  The wind tossed him, dragged his legs outward. He grunted and gritted his teeth, worked to pull himself up, his shoulder nearly disjointing from the socket. His muscles turned to cement, his limbs threatening to shatter as he braced against the wood with all his strength. The train jerked again. The wheels ground in anguish. Sparks jumped from the rails, rose high as his body. Andrew clawed at the paint, his nails useless against the pull of the wind. His muscles twisted and yanked his limbs from the roof. He reached for the ladder. His fingers grasped empty air.

  In one eternal instant, Andrew Houghton faced the clouds, the rain soft and listless across his eyelids, before his body crashed to the moving earth below.

  CHAPTER 10

  Eveline Kiser draped the bedsheet over the pine ironing board before lifting the flatiron from the stove. She rubbed the heavy tool over the creases, the thick bottom making a thump, thump, thump over the fabric. Young Edgar darted under the board, under the fabric, then back again, letting the sheet drape across his face before going back under.

  “That’s enough,” Eveline scolded. “I’ve already flattened this sheet twice; I won’t do it a third time.” But the five-year-old only giggled and continued his game.

  Her other son shot into the kitchen with purpose. “Toilet’s overflowing again,” announced Will.

  “All right.” Eveline sighed and put the iron in the sink, the steam swooshing and fogging the window. She wiped her face with the dish towel, placed her hand at the small of her back routinely, the growing twins pressing against her nerves, sending a dull pain down the back of her thigh. That damn toilet, she thought. Wilhelm was so proud of that magical wonder of innovation, Eveline had no doubt that if that toilet could have been shrunk and set in gold her husband would have made it her wedding ring.

  Eveline huffed upstairs, the two boys close to her heels in order to witness any job involving tools and spilling sewage. The pain in her back made her grit her teeth with each step. She had been short-tempered with the boys all morning, hadn’t slept well, as she never did when Wilhelm was out on one of his hundred-mile runs.

  Eveline jiggled and pulled the toilet chain before giving up and mopping up the floor. Edgar and Will hopped into the inching puddle and jumped out again, their socks soaked to the ankles. “Boys! Can’t you—” A hefty knock came to the front door.

  “Will, go on and get that for me.” She called back to the retreating child, “And take off those wet socks!”

  Eveline met her son at the bottom of the stairs just as the front door slammed shut. “Telegram,” Will said helpfully as he stuck out the square card.

  She pulled out a chair at the table and rested her elbows on the oilcloth as she opened the note. Her gaze bounced from one word to the next, then back again. Her quivering fingertips met her bottom lip. Edgar stole a blueberry muffin from a plate on the counter, but she was blind to his movements, to anything but the typed paper in her hand.

  “Ma!” Will’s call echoed distantly from upstairs. “Toilet’s leaking again!”

  Someone took my arm. Andrew Houghton writhed in the trenches. Gunfire and bombs spotted his vision. The gas stung his eyes and burned his body. Skin on fire. His mother was there, her face and dress filthy. She ducked the bullets as she tried to sew him back together with needle and thread.

  My arm. The lanterns were out in the mine shaft. He tripped and floundered and spun to find the light. Air was leaving, compressing his lungs. His father called for him under the coal. A candle met his touch. He lit the wick, the stick igniting into a sparkling hiss. The dynamite exploded in his hand.

  My arm! The screaming reverberated in his skull. He heard it, but his mouth was gone. His own shouting bounced between the walls of the room. Flashing lights. Blackness, then open eyes. A nurse held Andrew’s cheeks and mouthed soundlessly—a fish without water, without resonance. She didn’t see. His mother leaned against his bed and cried. He reached for her, grabbed her skirt. Tell them! The woman raised her head and he pulled back. He didn’t know who she was. Her face morphed with his mother’s until he couldn’t see one or the other, just a blur of shifting features.

  A jab to the arm, a quick prick. Then another. No! Not that one. He tried to scream. He floated above the bed and under it. The room darkened and lit. He was going to throw up. He tried to run, pushed against the mattress. He tried to talk. His lips fused and words gurgled in his throat. His eyes were closing with weights from a scale, one on each lid. No! He had to make them....

  * * *

  Slowly, over days of burning heat and frigid chills, Andrew awakened, and still nothing was real. The woman who had been crying, who had been next to his bed at every moment, was not his mother. There was no need for introductions, the fine cheekbones and nose as discernable as his own, the eyes the same deep blue.

  Andrew tried to speak, but his throat was dry and raw. His aunt touched his mouth lightly and then shook her finger for silen
ce. She gave him water. He lifted the tiny glass, the effort making his arm stutter. He placed the rim to his lips, could see his body magnified through the water, saw the emptiness on his left side—only pressed sheets where his arm should have rested. He didn’t scream now. He didn’t know how.

  * * *

  Eveline Kiser waited until her nephew slept again before letting her tears flow. The inhumanity of a young life stalled and severed nearly cracked her to the bone. Bandages stretched and wrapped around the young man’s chest and covered the amputation at his left shoulder. She rubbed the dark hair and wiped the cold sweat from his pale forehead. He was as handsome as any man she had ever seen. And yet here he was, broken and on the edge of life. For one mournful moment, she wondered if God should let him die.

  Outside the hospital, the noise from the street continued to rise. Eveline went to the window and lifted one edge of the curtain. Confetti rained down upon the crowds. Men stood upon automobiles whistling and waving newspapers. The thick walls of the room muffled the sounds slightly but only enough to distort the honking and cheering and shouting to a hideous war hum.

  Before this day, the war had been confined to a battered and ravaged Europe—a war far across the sea, a war in which Woodrow Wilson promised America would stay neutral and out of conflict. But even waves that begin so far away eventually ebb and flow onto every shore, lap into every life. And until this day of April 6, 1917—the day America declared war on Germany—Eveline had cared little about the great battle. War was a topic that Wilhelm and other men spoke of and read about and debated their views on, no different to her from talk of strikes, women voting or prohibition.

  But the war was upon her now, upon them all—stark and bold and flooding the streets of their city. The twins stirred within her depths and a deadness ached her legs, made her stomach plummet. She thought of her husband and their sons—of Andrew. She thought of the future that would be ahead of them all. She closed the curtain, let the roar of the crowds seep into a longing for a life that would never be the same again.

  * * *

  After Andrew’s stitches healed and the subsequent fever dissipated, the doctors allowed him to be transported to the Kiser home. In his new room, converted hastily from the nursery, Eveline sat at the edge of his bed. Her nephew leaned straight-backed against the propped pillows. The scar at his shoulder was jagged and bright red, but she was used to it now. She could see the tortured flesh without crumbling.

  Despite the fever and loss of weight, lines of muscle definition were still visible upon the young man’s body, belying a strength that did not atrophy. Andrew’s face had thinned, making the fine cheekbones more prominent; his dark hair provided a bold contrast to the pale skin and nearly indigo eyes.

  The handsome face stared stonily out the window, his profile hard and immobile against the sunlight filtering through the lace curtains. Eveline picked up one of the shirts draped over the iron bed frame and folded the material on her lap. “I’ll have your shirts mended, sealed at the shoulder,” she said quietly. “Better than the sleeve hanging loose.”

  She saw his jaw clench. “You have every right to be angry.”

  “I’m not angry,” he answered hollowly, his face still turned.

  Eveline touched the buttons of the shirt she held in her hands. “I haven’t heard back from your mother, but I’ll wire her again. It’s hard to know what gets through with the war. We’ll pay whatever it costs to bring her home.”

  “I don’t want her here.” He snapped his gaze from the window. “I don’t want her to see me like this.” His chest rose and fell rapidly, expanding across his ribs.

  Eveline patted the blanket covering his legs. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m grateful you’re here, Andrew. A bit of my family came back to me in you. We lose things and we gain things, son. What you lost in body will take shape in other ways.” She shook her head. “I know these sound like simple words, but I hope they bring you some comfort.”

  Eveline stood and picked up the rest of his shirts from the dresser for stitching, remembered the letter in her pocket. “Almost forgot, this came for you. Must be a friend from back home.” She held out the letter, but he didn’t take it, turned back to the window.

  “Take as long as you need,” she said softly. “You grieve. Get angry if that calls to you.” She placed the envelope on the bed near his covered thigh. “And then when you’re ready, you’ll stand again. You’ll find your way again.”

  * * *

  The door closed. The silence left in his aunt’s wake drummed in his ears. His insides were sick, his mind numb. He grimaced against the endless pain in his shoulder. Waves of sharp fire mingled with the settling agony. He closed his eyes. Each time he opened them, he thought the arm would return, appear like a forgotten joke. But the nightmare continued—asleep or awake—the constant truth of what had been taken away. He didn’t want to live; he didn’t want to die. He simply wanted to close his eyes and disappear.

  He picked up the envelope, the return address scrawled in the corner from C. Kenyon of Uniontown. His left hand went to hold the paper, but the arm wasn’t there, and again he had to drill into his skull that the limb was gone. He shimmied his thumb nail under the seal, then used his teeth to rip the top and pulled out the letter. A note on simple pink stationery was clipped to the top.

  Dear Andrew,

  I hope this letter finds you well. The classroom isn’t the same without you. The students miss you a great deal, as do I. The attached letter came to the post for you under my attention. I hope it brings you as much joy as it brought me. Be proud, dear Andrew, and congratulations.

  Sincerely,

  Miss Kenyon

  He removed the note to read the letter below. It was from the University of Pennsylvania—congratulating him on getting accepted into the veterinary program.

  Andrew stared at the typed words. Congratulations. The sentiment replayed, mocked cruelly. He was never going to college. He didn’t have a cent to his name. He was never going to be a veterinarian. He was now the charity case of a family he hardly knew. He couldn’t even open a simple envelope without using his teeth.

  The burn in his shoulder ignited again, made him nauseous with pain. He grimaced and clamped his eyelids shut. Blindly, he balled the paper and threw it against the wall, the simple action leaving him weak and limp.

  CHAPTER 11

  Lily Morton crossed her arms high upon her chest, an abrasive pose against the battered screen door. “What do you want, Dan?” she hissed.

  “What’s wrong, little Lily? Ain’t you happy to see me?”

  “No, I ain’t,” she said, imitating his loose slang.

  He stepped forward to enter the house and she blocked his way, the top of her head only reaching to his thick, sunburnt neck. He laughed. “Know I can come if I want. Don’t weigh more than a feather, little Lily. I sneeze and you’ll be floating to the roof.”

  His hand reached for her hip and she slapped it away. “Don’t touch me,” she growled.

  “Hello, Dan.” Claire emerged from the black raspberry bushes edging the lane. “Didn’t hear you come up.” She balanced a bowl filled with berries in one hand, her fingers stained purple.

  “Morning.” Dan Simpson took off his hat, gave a quick nod. “Makin’ jam?”

  Claire nodded shyly. “And maybe a pie or two. Never had such a good crop.” She handed the bowl to Lily, who cradled it against her stomach. “You looking for Frank?”

  “Yeah. American Protective League is meeting. Looks like Frank’s gonna head it up for Plum. Gotta keep an eye on those Germans, you know.”

  Lily rolled her eyes. That was all the men talked about these days. War. Germans. Now the APL, giving out cheap badges to the likes of Dan Simpson and Frank Morton so they had permission to spew their hate.

  “Think Frank’s around the back,” Claire noted. “I’ll go grab him. Give my best to your dad at the bank.”

  “Will do.” He tipped his hat and waited un
til she scurried behind the house. His eyes remained in that distant gaze as he asked, “See, why can’t you be friendly like Claire?” He turned coldly back to Lily. “Got some nerve treatin’ me the way you do.”

  Lily stepped back and tried to push the screen closed, but Dan stuck a boot in the opening, leaned in. “You’ll change your tune one day, little Lily,” he warned. “Won’t be getting any offers as good as mine and you know it.”

  She kicked his boot hard and slammed the screen shut, pressed her back against the door and waited until his chuckling faded away.

  CHAPTER 12

  Pittsburgh—the arsenal of the allies, the arsenal of the world. With World War I, the already-factory-bloated city grew to 250 war plants and employed over five hundred thousand men and women, produced half the steel used by the war. Eighty percent of army ammunitions were born from this city of endless smoke and fire. And the metal burned eternally, the foundries pumping morning and night. Accidents buried. More men brought in. Stop the strikes. Spy on the German workers. Bring up blacks from the South. Draw in the immigrants. Sweat the life from them. Burn the eyes and lungs with noxious fumes. Dig the coal. Build the bullets. Send the guns. Burden the trains harder, faster, longer. And so the city moved in a manic and maddening and sickening frenzy to satisfy the appetite of a world at war.

  After Andrew’s accident, Wilhelm returned to work on the railroad, but he was nervous and edgy, short-tempered. In bed, his dreams were horrid and left him screaming and soaked in his own fear. His hands shook when he left for work. He would not speak of the accident or enter Andrew’s room.

  The hours on the rails were unrelenting, an urgency chugging the locomotives without rest, the heaving coal cars and flatbeds and boxcars following in an infinite line. The Red Cross plastered posters across the station platforms showing a young injured soldier in agony upon a stretcher. “If I fail, he dies,” the signs promised. And the prophecy hung on the shoulders of the men whose sons were overseas and rung in the ears of any worker who slacked.