Beneath the Apple Leaves

by Harmony Verna

  “So, you take that bread, Mrs. Kiser. Make an old couple have somepin to smile ’bout. All right?”

  Eveline’s lips twitched and she nodded. She wanted to say, Thank you, but the twitching was too much. She squeezed the bread tighter, the crusts cracking.

  Bob frowned at the look and his eyes grew wet. He took in a large gulp of air and pulled his old self to the forefront. “Besides, ya know Bernie gotta thing for that nephew of yours. She’d bring ya bread five times a day jus’ to git a look at the feller!” Bernice batted his arm. “Be safe, Mrs. Kiser.”

  Eveline watched the old wagon limp up the road. From the hill, Frank passed on the other side, did not acknowledge the Stevenses with greeting or sight; and in return, the Stevenses kept their eyes glued ahead.

  Eveline’s heart was still warm from the words when Frank reached her side. But she was melancholy, the usual nerves around the man quiet.

  He cocked his head, his eyes soft. “You okay, Eveline?”

  She nodded. “I am. Just a nice old couple is all.”

  “I don’t know.” He shivered. “Gives me the creeps thinking about those two. Nice and all. Just something about it don’t seem right.”

  Her lip curled. “What doesn’t seem right, Mr. Morton?”

  He caught the look and backtracked. “Nothing. Don’t pay me no mind this morning. Tired is all. Been stuck in the city the last couple days.”

  “Oh.” He did look burdened. “You want to come in for coffee?”

  “That’s kind of you,” he said without answering the question.

  He gazed at her with drained eyes. She knew her husband would not want him here, but she wasn’t ready to let him go yet. “Made a batch of muffins this morning,” she offered. “Let me give you some to give to Lily and Claire.”

  “That’d be nice. Thank you.”

  They walked down the lane together. His strong, firm body made her feel tiny and woman-like, safe. “Is that Andrew near the barn?” he asked as he pointed.

  “Must be back from the fields.” She hoped Wilhelm wasn’t with him.

  “Mind if I leave you for a bit? Like to talk to the young man.”

  She found the request strange. “I’ll give you the muffins before you leave.”

  * * *

  “Looks like you’re going to have a good crop after all.” Frank Morton’s bulk was propped against the barn, the glib presence putting Andrew on guard. “Cows look good, too.”

  He didn’t like the way the man soaked in the fields and animals with ownership. “Sound surprised, Mr. Morton.”

  The man shrugged, followed Andrew into the shaded stall. He looked up into the beams, impressed. “Didn’t think you had it in you.”

  Andrew grinned with the cut. “Don’t you have some German spies you need to hunt down?” he cut back.

  Frank laughed, long and slow. “Funny thing about that. Thinking you owe me a thank-you for getting you out of jail.”

  Now Andrew laughed. “You had nothing to do with that and you know it. If it was up to you and your protective league, I’d still be behind bars.”

  “Guess you’re right.” He shrugged. “That Lily got a soft spot for gimps. Even when she was young, she was always trying to save the critters that weren’t quite right.”

  Andrew took the pitchfork and stabbed it into the straw. His hand burned and he held tight to the handle in restraint.

  “Heard you came by the house looking for her,” noted Frank. “Told Lily she should just tell you straight instead of avoiding you.”

  “Tell me what?” he parried, his eyes rolling.

  “That she ain’t interested. She’s a tease, son. Always has been.” Frank came closer, kicked at the straw with his shiny cowboy boot. “She felt bad not meeting you at the spring, though.”

  Andrew stopped and squeezed the handle until his knuckles whitened.

  “But,” Frank continued, “she and Dan had a date. He took her to the fair. Didn’t even hear her come back home. Must of gone dancing after, I reckon.”

  Andrew turned to the man then and dropped the pitchfork. “It’s a good story, but Lily would no sooner date Dan Simpson than I’d date a chicken.”

  “Thought you smelled like hen feathers.”

  Andrew chuckled again, then readied to leave. “I got work to do.”

  “Wasn’t no story about Dan being Lily’s beau,” Frank announced loudly. “She’s out with him now. He picked her up this morning, took her to town.” He smiled cruelly. “Should have seen how pretty she looked in that dress and heels. Course, she and Dan always had a bit a fire between them. Her hitting him over the head and all and then kissing and making up just a bit later. Firecrackers, those two.” He stretched his back. “Only bailed you outta the jail to make Dan jealous. Firecrackers.”

  Andrew didn’t believe a word, but his body constricted. “What Lily does and with who isn’t any of my concern.”

  Frank laughed wickedly and tapped the hood of the Ford parked by the stall. “You don’t get it, do you, kid? She and Dan been on and off since he started for me years ago.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Dan would make a good match for Lily, don’t you think? He’s been working for me so long he’d make a good partner for the business. That and his dad’s work with the bank. Like it was always meant to be, don’t you think?”

  Frank rubbed one of his biceps, looked at his large hands and then turned them to look at his palms. “Another thing about that kid is he got strong hands, you know? Strong arms, strong hands . . . two of them.”

  The insult was quick, delivered with a smile. Andrew took a step back, fixed his thighs to keep from attacking. “Shame he’s heading off to the war then.” Andrew scowled.

  “You didn’t hear?” Frank’s mouth opened in surprise. “He didn’t pass his physical. On account of his head injury. Cut got all infected. How about that?” He knocked his fist on the car. “Ironic, isn’t it? Lily cracking his skull kept him close to her, made her turn away from the crippled German for keeps.”

  Andrew’s eyes flickered to the movement at the barn door. Frank turned. “Eveline, didn’t hear you there.” He pulled off his hat and scrunched it in his fingers. “Just joking with—”

  The woman stood in the doorway, the plate of muffins in her immobile hands, her eyes spitting with fire. “Get the hell off my land, Mr. Morton.”

  CHAPTER 44

  The lowing from the barn came all at once, one on top of the other. Andrew tossed in his bed, the sounds melding with dreams. It was too early for milking. But the sounds from the barn increased. He folded the pillow over his ear until he heard the horse. A high-pitched whine that stabbed the eardrum. In a moment, he shot out of bed, threw on his pants and stumbled onto the steps.

  He thought the lamps had been left on, the brightness full in the parlor. Something seized him from the back of the head and tingled down his flesh. The lamps weren’t on. Lights flickered outside. The yellow light bloomed from outside. “Fire!” Andrew shouted.

  The house erupted and the Kisers fell out to the yard, the pine tree next to the barn bright orange, the limbs engulfed like a burning skeleton.

  “Hook the hose to the well!” he shouted to Wilhelm.

  Andrew sprinted to the barn with Eveline and the boys at his heels. The pigs squealed from within the pens, the bodies thumping against the bolted gate. “Get the pigs out!” he shouted to Will.

  “The horse!” Eveline hollered.

  “I’ll get her!”

  Andrew flew to the main door of the barn, but it was too close to the tree, the heat coming in waves, the very air burning and clogged with smoke. The animals screamed inside as the roof ignited and spread down the old barn wood. He ran to the back, saw Will had released the pigs that were now running in a frenzy in every direction.

  “The main door is blocked!”

  He pulled open the side door, but it was too small for the animals to fit through. “Hack out the opening! I’ll grab the animals!”

 
; The smoke and flames billowed to the far right. He’d have to start with the animals closest to the door to get the most out before the barn collapsed. The mare reared, batted the sky in panic. He threw a feed sack over her head and hurried her to the door where Wilhelm worked with the ax. Andrew pushed her through the broken opening, the sides tight and scraping, but the horse was out. He pulled the cows, the lead cow stubborn with fear, grinding her hooves into the floor. He heaved the rope, cursed not having another hand to grip, until finally he jerked her forward to Wilhelm and she was out.

  Two more cows followed and then the heartstopping cracking of timber collapsed half the barn in a sea of sparks. The hideous calls of the animals trapped below buckled Andrew’s knees. He pulled himself up, pushed out one last cow, the barn cats nearly tripping him.

  By the time the Muellers had called the fire department and run to the farm to help soak it down, the barn was gone. Three cows had died; the Ford was half-melted. The horse was tethered to the house and the remaining cows stood in the pasture. The pigs were yet to be rounded up, might never be found.

  Piles of charred wood smoked and the smell filled the nostrils, deadened the soul. There were no words. The view, now unblocked from the barn, sketched a gray landscape, revealed hills and the pond that had not been visible before. All around, there was green and blue, a normal summer day, but all that was left here, on this farm, was the gray, like the paint mixed by Wilhelm’s father to keep all practical and without waste.

  And the family stared at the mass of destruction. The burnt bodies of the three cows, ones Will and Edgar had milked the day before. And it poisoned the heart, raked it to shreds.

  The sheriff said there were no signs of foul play. An accident, maybe a spark from the tractor. Maybe a stack of moist hay spontaneously combusted. “Got to dry the hay in the fields, you know,” he reminded them. “Damp hay heats quick, you know. Maybe a forgotten can of kerosene. An accident. Too bad.” Bad luck, the sheriff said. Bad luck indeed.

  CHAPTER 45

  When a man breaks, the air breaks around him, the ground cracks below his footsteps. His face remains unchanged; in fact, little changes, and that is where the break is first seen. The blank expression, the even line of the mouth and the pupils that do not contract in light or dilate in darkness. For all is gray, all is blank. And so a man breaks even as his limbs still move and his voice still speaks and his lungs still respire.

  Children sense the change first. Will and Edgar kept a wide berth from their father, fearful of the silence that hovered around the man. As if ghosts lingered and swirled around him and if they got too close they too might be sucked into the darkness. And so when Wilhelm entered the house from the fields, his clothes still clean and exposing the fact he had done no work, the children left for the outdoors. And when he came out to walk in the shadows of the day and stare at the charred space where the barn had been, Will and Edgar were quick to find work in the kitchen.

  Andrew doubled his efforts in the fields. The tractor had been left out overnight and was their last remaining vehicle. He worked until the pain and exhaustion in his body made him fall asleep without washing, simply crashed onto the bed in his clothes. And Andrew worked to stun the mind, numb it, but he also worked because Wilhelm could not. The man no longer saw the fields or the green or the money from harvest; he saw the dead cows, the dead twins, the black curled beams of the barn and the debt.

  And so they all spun in their own shapes. Spun in circles like a child practicing the number “8” upon his slate. Around and around and around. The children spinning at a distance from their father, whom they did not recognize and feared, circling wider and farther from his curve. Andrew circling from shed, to field, to animals, to bed. And Eveline to her garden, to the stove, to the table, to the counter. And in this infinity, they fled from the broken man, kept him at bay in hopes the fracture would mend in time.

  * * *

  Eveline’s mouth was dry. She itched under the skin. And when she stood for more than a few moments, she would curl against her stomach in wretchedness. A nightmare unfolded and she was not sure what was real and what was not. Time and time again, she pinched her eyes closed, prayed and opened her gaze with hesitation. But the nightmare was still there; the guilt, the grief, was still there.

  When she thought of Frank, Eveline gagged. She had been such a fool. She had drunk from his cup with relish and then, when she swallowed, realized she drank sour milk. Eveline retched. She wiped the corners of her mouth with her nightgown. She had heard every word the man had said to Andrew, the way he berated and hurt him, called him a cripple. She realized that Frank had not rescued Andrew from jail but was part of the reason he was there in the first place. She realized that it was at the insistence of the American Protective League that life in town became unbearable. And as the barn burned in that ungodly hour and the sparks flashed and pillowed into the infinite black night, she knew with bone-cracking despair that the man she had desired, the man whom she had dreamed of touching, had, in one way or another, lit that match.

  Eveline rolled in bed. The bile rose and she gagged again. She had been blind and now she saw and she wished she could have dug out her eyes with spoons. It was nearly too much. The war. The betrayal. She didn’t know how much she could take. But then there was her husband. And with this, her eyes welled and she cried in her mind, I’m sorry. And she loved him so. Loved him for what he gave her, loved him for the children they had brought into this world. Loved him for dealing bravely with a world where others were crumbling. How she had manifested feelings for another man she did not know. But there was only Wilhelm now. There had only ever been her husband, Wilhelm. She turned toward him and wrapped her arms tight around his middle, hoping not to wake him. I’m sorry, Wilhelm, she cried in her head, and wiped tears against his back. I’ll make it up to you. Somehow. She buried her head between the shoulders. I love you.

  * * *

  Eveline did not know she had slept late until the sun stabbed directly in her eye from the top of the bedroom window. Wilhelm was gone from bed and she was relieved. It means he’s milking, she thought. It means he’s working, he’s walking. He needed to work. He needed to pull himself out of the rut from where he hid. He had been drowning long before the barn burned down, had been taking steps in the murky water since the railway accident. She should have done more to help him before the water rushed to his waist. The thought poked until she shut it down, slapped at it. She would make it up to him now, make it up to them all.

  She made breakfast and waited for Will and Edgar. They all had slept in save for Wilhelm. They were all bone and mind weary. Andrew ate in silence, shoveling in his eggs and bread and bacon without thought. Will and Edgar had little appetite and she didn’t scold them. She didn’t feel like eating, either.

  After breakfast was cleared and the morning chores finished, Eveline grabbed her basket and headed to the garden. If winter came in anything like it did last year, they’d need every bean and cucumber and berry saved and jarred in the cellar.

  Eveline passed the ancient apple tree, picked up a few broken sticks below it and flung them toward the fence. A step stool lay on its side at the base of the tree. “So help me, those boys don’t remember to put anything away,” she mumbled. She propped it back up and searched the ground for any other missing tools.

  A chill drafted across her skin, raised the hairs along her arms and back of the neck. The creaking of a burdened tree limb ached from above. A shadow passed over her, passed behind her, passed over again. No. It was not a thought. The shadow took shape. No! Her hand gripped her heart and her scalp pricked, burned from all sides. Her body shook. She looked up. The boots pointed down. The body swayed from between the tree limbs. Wilhelm’s figure rocked listlessly with the breeze.

  Her body quivered uncontrollably. Her mouth stretched open, wide as a last breath. And Eveline’s scream cut through the valley and shook the land to its very soul.

  CHAPTER 46

  Pi
eter and Fritz Mueller dug the grave next to the giant apple tree, a horizontal line above the vertical ones of the twins. Once again the Protestant cemetery closed to the Kisers. Suicide, a soul damned among the unbaptized little ones, those in limbo. But if there was one act of grace from a cruel heaven, Wilhelm would forever be united with his youngest sons.

  Andrew reached the summit of the field, the corn to his waist, lost in a sea of green. He stood alone with the golden sun heating his dark hair. He stayed there for he knew not how long. He stood with only his body and that corn that he had plowed and planted with Wilhelm Kiser, a man who would never witness its harvest. And he stood without words, without comprehension, and stared upon this great ocean that waved around his body with dead hands.

  The mount was the highest point of the property, a gradual incline and complete in its visual isolation. No road. No house or neighbor. No farm animal or vehicle. Only that sun and the green pinnacles and the graphed dirt directed and mapped to lines. He searched with unmoving eyes, waited with unbeating heart, for what he did not know. He knew nothing. Understood nothing. All a void. A life of slumber between the stiff stalks.

  And then she was there. Across from him. Across from time. Lily.

  The corn parted around her. The memory of her not being at the spring, waiting for him, was gone. The gossip of her with Dan, gone. With her apparition, all that came before wiped clean.

  She was here now. All of her. The green eyes round with grief. He watched her approach, emerge fully from the green sea. Her hair flowed over her shoulders and the sun toyed with her dress, made the dull yellow shine to luminescence.

  She was here now and he could have fallen into the pools of her wet eyes, into the warmth and sincerity. But everything hurt. Hurt to move, hurt to breathe. But she moved and she came near him, came closer until she was in the invisible field skimming the bodily form, that invisible skin that pulsed and had sensitivities like nerve endings.