Beneath the Apple Leaves Read online

  The fire crackled, released the occasional spark as the flames touched upon a stick of damp wood. Lily sat cross-legged on the knotted rug, studied the lines of her palm undistracted, even as her sister tugged at her long tresses with the hairbrush, forcing her head back now and then in sudden jerks.

  “Sure I’m not hurting you, Lil?” Claire asked.

  “Hardly tell you’re combing.”

  “Bet I’m squeezing tears.” She grimaced. “Sorry I got to pull so hard.”

  “Can’t feel it. That’s the truth.”

  “How’d you get all this sap in here anyways?”

  Lily shrugged. “Up in the pine tree. Got stuck in a resin patch.”

  “Well, you smell good. That’s for sure. Fresh as the forest.” Her older sister laughed softly as she worked on another tangled lump of hair. “Remember when I’d take you out to those trees when you were just a little thing? You and me? We’d sit up there for hours, nearly fell asleep up there a couple of times.” Claire’s voice suddenly abandoned its jovial chirp. The strokes came lighter to Lily’s hair until the brush stopped moving completely.

  Lily turned around. Her sister’s head bowed. Lily took the brush from the woman’s hand and placed it on the floor between them. Growing up, they had hid in those trees, the two of them, tangled close together for warmth and strength. Within those boughs, they had kept silent, pretended it was a game. And when his footsteps plowed through the dead leaves and his voice hollered in rage across the valley, they clung tighter to each other and endured the hours until he was gone.

  These were the memories that plagued Claire Morton, that came with the wind and left the woman hollow. Lily reached her arms around the slight shoulders. “That was a long time ago, Claire,” she whispered. Claire stared from the familiar abyss that made her skin chill. She was lost to the demons again.

  Lily lifted her sister’s chin. “We’re safe, Claire. Nobody’s going to hurt us ever again. I promise.”

  Claire blinked, then tilted her head curiously, asked nearly in despair, “Then why you still hiding up in those trees?”

  CHAPTER 4

  Andrew Houghton woke first. The voice of the great owl prodded from the roof, as it poked with scraping talons against the shingles, usurped the duties of the scrawny roosters that ran free from broken gates and fences. Before dawn, the silent raptors flocked to the hideous coal patches, the mine town beyond the trees where the mice were plentiful. For here the rodents scurried between the endless line of old sheds and privies, darted inside beehive ovens where burnt bread crumbs sat like anthills.

  The great owl called again, chiseled the dream state until eyes opened. The hoarfrost clung to the windows and the chill shuddered through the wads of newspapers insulating the cracks and holes of the shabby wood home. Andrew sighed and placed a naked foot to the frozen floor.

  The young man ran a hand through his thick dark hair, scratched above his ears to rouse. In the kitchen, he stooped over the coal box and refilled the stove, then set the water to heat. He warmed his hands above the black iron, his breath visible from his lips.

  Frederick and Carolien Houghton slept soundly in the next room, Andrew’s parents unburdened and secure within the wool blankets, his father’s light snoring soothing in the tightness of the small house. Soon, the owl would wake them, too, and Andrew’s father would head underground, pick rock from dawn until dusk.

  Andrew put the tin mugs on the table, caught his tarnished reflection in the dented metal. He held a cup closer to his face, inspected his swollen lip, bruised jaw and blackened eye. Practicing a weak smile, he tried to mask the injuries with a beguiling grin, but all it did was open the cut on his lip and make him look not quite right in the head. He reached into his back pocket and took out the money he had won from the night’s fight, pulled out the steel box shoved behind the crocks of lard and cured meat. The coins were deep and the box heavy, the sound of his future clinking inside. Andrew crammed the bills and clicked the clasp, then slid the bank back into place.

  The movement uncovered a small piece of paper tucked under the empty sugar canister: a bill from the company store—coffee, tea, lye, oatmeal, castor oil, sugar, dried mustard, pork, cheese, beans. Black lines crossed off half the items, the edits from the store clerk of what exceeded the Houghton credit. The familiar indignation rose. Andrew folded the receipt carefully back to the original despondent creases and slid the note back under the canister, the box of coins poking out guiltily.

  Feet shuffled in the bedroom. Andrew busied a cast-iron skillet to the stove. Carolien Houghton placed a waxy, gnarled hand upon his. She was a beautiful woman, young in face with blue eyes that matched his own, but her hands were shiny and warped and ancient. In the cold months, she ached from the cold, her joints tight and balled in hard, painful knots.

  “Go rest, Andrew,” she whispered. “No need for you to be up yet.”

  “Couldn’t sleep.” He kept his face turned. “I’ll start the sausage.”

  “Only have scrapple,” she noted while tapping his hand to release the skillet. The woman rubbed her twisted hands over the heat. Andrew brought out a few chipped plates while she poured the boiling water into the blue spotted enamel pot and stirred in the black grounds. Dawn would forever mean the scent of his mother’s simmering coffee.

  Andrew brought her shawl and wrapped her shoulders, partly to warm the body and partly to keep her blind to his injuries. She spooned a heap of opaque fat into the pan, the hissing loud and sputtering in the small open room.

  Andrew watched his mother work over the stove as she held her shawl tight and away from the spitting grease. Carolien’s life revolved around the four walls of the unpainted home, the tiny chicken coop and vegetable garden in the back, her only travel to the company store or to the pump house on washing day. In the summer, she baked, canned and pickled; in winter, she stretched the meals with buckwheat cakes, fried carrots, potatoes and meatless red sauce. And Andrew’s mother did her chores as they all did, with the soundless dignity that hid the tired bones and weary limbs.

  The rooster crowed from the henhouse. The shadow of the owl flickered across the window as the wings flew to the fresh forest beyond. Carolien closed her eyes, recited the short prayer she made every morning before her husband burrowed underground. Andrew, forgetting about his bruises, handed the egg basket to his mother.

  The woman jolted, the wooden spoon held high and dripping above the pan. “What happened to you?”

  “It’s nothing.” Andrew rolled his eyes and cursed himself, tried to dodge his puffy profile from her full view, but she was quick and grabbed his face.

  Her mouth fell open before her lips clamped shut and formed a pursed circle. “Frederick!”

  “Don’t wake him—”

  She stormed to the low wooden bed and shook the lump of blankets. “Get up!” Frederick buried his head under the covers, grunted and turned toward the wall, twisted the thin mattress so the burlap ticking was visible. She pulled the blanket from his body in one quick snap and dropped it to the floor.

  “Eh, Frederick, enough of this now! What did I tell you about letting Andrew fight in those ham an’ eggers?” She knew all about the boxing matches held every Thursday. The winner got the money; the loser got a ham sandwich. Some of the weaker miners lived on a diet of little else.

  Frederick wiped the sleep from his eyes, his hair jutting in two directions at once. “Come now, Carolien, don’t get yourself all in a huff—”

  “A huff? Andrew’s face is half-beaten!”

  Andrew came up from behind, snapping his suspenders in place over his shoulders. “It doesn’t hurt, Ma. I swear it.”

  “See.” Frederick pointed. “Not so bad. And, ah, you should have seen him! Went through three rounds without a scratch until that young Pole weaved his way in. What’s his name, Drew? Bobi-enski? Got arms like iron pistons, that one.”

  Andrew smiled, spurted a new line of blood on his bottom lip. “Got him square on the jaw,
though.”

  “That you did, Son.” His father winked and stretched one thick arm above his head. “That you did.”

  Carolien shook her head and gave up the cause, trudged to the kitchen. “Two peas in a brawny pod,” she mumbled, then issued sternly, “but that’s the last of it. Hear me?” She sliced the scrapple and flung the mix of pork scrapings and cornmeal in the pan amid angry inner rumblings. One by one, she cracked the eggs over the skillet like mini skulls.

  “He’s seventeen now, not five!” Frederick bellowed from the bedroom. “Besides, he’s a good fighter, good as any of those boys. Brought in more last night than I made all week.” His last words came slightly drowned as he splashed water on his face. “We’re getting this boy to university one way or another.”

  Carolien’s shoulders rose to her ears as if the words were a shriek. Andrew stayed quiet, remembered the slashed bill under the canister.

  Frederick took his seat at the table, the black bristles of his mustache shining with the early washing. Morning was the only time they saw the man’s chiseled Dutch features uncovered from coal dust, even though the black stains of years underground still etched every crease in his face and knuckles and blackened his nails. Each breakfast Carolien fed a white, clean version of her husband, and by end of day she fed a blackened one.

  Carolien picked up a small shipping box behind the stove, dropped it with disinterest on the table. “This was at the post for you.”

  Frederick inspected the return address and handed the package to Andrew. “Think this is the one you wanted.”

  Andrew put down his fork and started opening the cardboard. Inside was a worn copy of A System of Veterinary Medicine, the cover half-torn and the pages stained and bloated but the ink clear. “Where’d you get this?”

  “Library in Harrisburg got flooded. Got it cheap, too,” chimed his father.

  Carolien folded her apron and dabbed the oil spot that darkened in a circle. “Can’t get enough flour to last the month and you’re spending money on books.”

  “Hush now! Making my food taste sour,” Frederick snapped. “Besides, like I said, got it for cheap. Hardly more than the post to ship it.”

  Carolien ignored him and picked up Andrew’s creased and blackened boots, hand-me-downs from one of the boys who had died in the mine last year, decapitated by a dinky engine. She placed them near the stove to warm and swallowed. It was bad luck to argue before the sun was up. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. She kissed her son, then her husband on the cheek. “You know how the cold aches my joints.”

  The sun barely inched above the ridge when the men headed out. Andrew looked back at the small house, the weathered brown clapboard no different from that of the other homes lined side by side down the hill like stair steps. Next to the front door, three Sears, Roebuck shipping crates were stacked neatly. On hot evenings in the summer, they’d take dinner outside and sit upon the boxes, watch the sky as hues of pinks and orange waltzed and twirled with the gray, soot-filled air.

  The coal miners appeared on the road, manifested from the mist of the pearly dawn. Those from eastern Europe strode with sleeves rolled above elbows, untouched by the cold, while the English, Dutch, Scots and Italians wore moth-eaten wool sweaters buttoned to their chins. And these men spoke little, just passed one another with a nod, their metal supper pails clanging against their thighs.

  “Saw your light on late,” Andrew’s father noted to his son. “Not sure how you read with that eye bulging like it is.”

  “Still have one good one, remember?” Andrew said casually. But truth be told, his eye ached in pulses as if a tiny mallet tapped endlessly upon his brow bone.

  “Figured I’d find you stumbling in near morning, especially seeing that pretty girl hooked to your arm.” His father elbowed him, gave him a sly wink. “It’s the Houghton charm, my boy! No one woman can resist it.”

  They crossed the center lane, the sides gutted from wagon wheels and remnants of water lashes from earlier storms. The line of telegraph poles stopped. The hole in the mountain, a mouth to the earth, its lips the wooden head frame over the shaft, beckoned ahead. Activity buzzed near the entrance to the coal mine, each miner grabbing his pick and shovel, his lantern and breath, as they hooked the mules to the shuttle cars and followed them into the pit.

  His father stopped and motioned to the side for Andrew to follow. Frederick’s strong, fine face turned nearly impish as he dug into his pocket. “Was planning to give this to you at breakfast, but you know how your mother gets. Turns into a goose about all this talk.” He handed Andrew the folded papers, his lips twisting to hold his mirth, and finally blurted, “It’s an application. University of Pennsylvania.”

  Andrew’s throat closed. He stared at the school’s seal at the head, the ache to leave the coal patches throbbing. “Even if I got in, we couldn’t afford it,” he said quietly, feeling the burn of this life again. He tried to hand the paper back, but his father refused.

  “The money will be there.” Frederick showed his palms, rough and tight as stretched leather. “Long as these hands can work, we’ll get you there.” The man rubbed his wrist across his nostril and wiggled his shoulders against the emotion. “Just mail it, Son. Leave the rest to me.” He pulled down Andrew’s flat cap, slapped him on the back.

  Andrew watched his father slip into line toward the shaft, adjust his carbide lamp and mining helmet. Frederick Houghton gave a wave to Andrew, glanced at the sun as if he wanted to kiss each ray before entering the pit and then walked into the darkness.

  “Andrew!” Mr. Kijek hollered from the open-stalled barn, waving in frantic swats. The man’s cheeks bruised purple and he cradled his right rib. “Jesus Christ, stop starin’ outta space, ya idiot! Ya think I’m payin’ ya to look at that damn sun? Is that what you think, ya stupid ass?”

  “No, sir,” Andrew answered. Kijek cursed with a mouth full of manure, but he had a good heart. He was Andrew’s father’s friend and the colliery barn boss. He had hired Andrew as the farrier though the old man could have done the work alone. Despite his constant abuse to humans, he was kind to the animals, never hit the mules with fist or belt.

  Andrew reached for the rasps and nippers hanging on the shed wall, pointed an elbow at Kijek’s injuries. “You in the ring last night?” he asked.

  “Didn’t see me there, did you?” he spit.

  The tone was no longer light and Andrew came close. “What happened to you?”

  “Mind your business,” he growled. The old man limped to the feed station, stuck a pitchfork in a new bale of hay. “Think these mules gonna feed ’emselves? Is that what you think?”

  Even for Kijek, the man was more agitated than usual. Andrew kept quiet and helped stack the feed. A group of young miners passed the stables, heading toward the gaping portal. “Drew, you playin’ ball tonight?” James McGregor, one of the redheaded Scots, called out.

  “Naw,” his brother Donald chimed while swinging his pick. “Don’t want to get his shirt dirty for the ladies.”

  “Very funny.” Andrew shoveled a small clump of donkey dung and catapulted it at his friend. “I’ll see you on the field.”

  Donald jumped easily from the onslaught. “Better practice your pitch, Houghton! Yer aim stinks.” He gave a sly nod in challenge, then whistled at the old man bending next to the donkey. “Nice ass, Kijek!”

  Kijek turned to Andrew and snorted. “Kid says the same goddamn thing every day.”

  Andrew moved to the first stall and rubbed the head of one of the mules, the hair stained black from nose to tail, the original color impossible to discern. The animal stiffened under his touch, then trembled. A stream of urine landed near his boot. Andrew’s gaze spread over the animal to the red sores across her back and rear end. His stomach dropped.

  He found Kijek stooped over a box of rusty tools. “Who did that to her?”

  Kijek didn’t pivot with the question, didn’t even flinch as he kept his back turned. “Let it go, Andrew,” the v
oice warned, nearly too soft to hear.

  He grabbed the old man by the shirt. “Who did it, Kijek?”

  The eyes drew to his slowly, the whites cloudy and bloodshot and full of pain. His bottom lip twitched. “I said, let it go.”

  Andrew released the flannel sleeve, saw with new knowing the bruises and cuts along the man’s face and neck. “You tried to stop them.”

  The old lips trembled and saliva formed in the corners. “Damn boys,” he hissed. “Came here stewed on whiskey, hell-bent on hurting anything that moved. I got one of ’em, though. Got him hard in the back with that bar over there.” A glimmer speckled for an instant before drowned in a stifled tear. “Till the other one took it to me. But I got one,” he slobbered wretchedly. “Got one good whack in for hurtin’ that beast, I did.”

  Andrew stared down at the feeble man, so frail and shattered it made his ribs tight and pressing against his heart. “Who was it?” he asked again.

  “Please, son—” Kijek begged, the rest of the words buried.

  Kijek could take a beating as well as any man, but he’d never protect someone who hurt one of his animals. And then Andrew knew. “It was the Higgins boys.”

  “Don’t start nothin’, Drew.” The old man grabbed his arms, the bony fingers stabbing into the skin. “You hear me?”

  Andrew’s fists balled as he tried to shake the grip, but Kijek clamped like a dog’s jaw to a rabbit. “I know you’re hot as piss, but you can’t cross ’em and you know it.”

  “No.” Andrew pulled away from the man. “They’ve gone too far.”

  “Listen, you selfish prick!” Kijek reared, blazed with a finger pointed at Andrew’s nose. “You make a fuss with those boys and who you think gonna get the fallout? Eh? Your pa, that’s who. Mr. Higgins send him to work the tightest veins till he’s lying on his stomach picking. Then they’ll go after that sweet ma of yours. Yeah, that’s right. Think her credit’s low now? Be lucky to get the pork fat they scrape from the floor.”