Beneath the Apple Leaves Read online

  His throat tightened. His father had kept him abreast on all the happenings in Europe since the war started overseas, the rabid fighting and bloodshed.

  “There’s war,” he reminded her softly, wondering if his mother had forgotten in the midst of her grief. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “The Netherlands has stayed neutral. It’ll be safe.”

  “Belgium was neutral, too,” he argued. “Until Germany invaded. Now the Belgian refugees are flooding Holland. It’s too dangerous,” he repeated. He wanted to sound strong and forceful, but his voice fell. He was nearly a man, but she was still his mother.

  “I need to go home, Andrew. I can find work there. The Dutch are supplying food and goods to Belgium and as far as Britain. They don’t have enough workers as it is.”

  “Then let me come with you,” he pleaded. “Take the money from your sister and I’ll come with you. We can work twice as hard.”

  She shook her head, wide and low. “You’d be drafted.”

  “Netherlands is neutral, remember?”

  “Damn it, Andrew!” She hit her fist on the table. “They’ve plucked the strongest boys and put them on the borders. If Germany invades, they’ll be the first ones killed.”

  “Then it’s not safe.”

  “It is safe.” The quiver in her voice belied the words and they both heard the tone. “But for me. Not for you.”

  Andrew pushed his food away, the meat a rotting carcass. The metal tags scraped against his chest, scalded. His father was dead. His mother was leaving. He was moving to Pittsburgh to work on the railroad. He was never going to college. His life—his future—was dissolving before his very eyes and there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop it.

  CHAPTER 7

  Lily Morton parked the buggy on the outskirts of the maple grove, far enough from the church to be hidden. She pressed her curled fingers into her stomach to calm the twisting inside. The thin yellow dress belonged to one of Mrs. Sullivan’s daughters, fell too long for the fashion, the heel to one black shoe broken and slabbed with tar to keep it in place. Lily thought about turning home, wasn’t even sure why she was here. All she knew was that Claire had lost another baby. This one was only a clot of bulbous growth, but the loss filled the house and seeped into the woods that would normally give Lily comfort.

  She didn’t expect the church to bring her peace or to anoint with words of consolation. A hope for distraction, perhaps. Any hope. For now, the church would be the only place open, the only place she could block out the grief of her sister. And so here Lily was, walking crookedly over wobbly heels, holding the hanging dress hem above her toes, toward the small white chapel.

  The oak doors whined mercilessly as she entered and every neck turned in response. The priest nodded once from the pulpit, the gravity of the expression indicating a clear dissatisfaction with her presence. Faces turned forward again while eyes followed the intruder peripherally as she searched for an open pew. Little Thomas, the youngest of the Forrester clan, scooted over and patted his seat. His mother’s chin jutted forward in silent reprimand but turned away when Lily sat. Lily smiled at the child gratefully, the poor boy’s neck red and pinched from the starched white collar.

  Lily glanced at the congregation, the Catholics she recognized from town and the farmers from the high country. Mr. Campbell, the owner of the general store, was stationed near the front, his wife’s strong shoulders and refined posture a deep contrast to her husband’s bored slouch, his balding head reflecting the candlelight. The three Campbell girls, the oldest a young woman of her own age, shimmered respectively in their crisp dresses and shiny shoes. Each carried a different-colored satin ribbon in her hair, the dark curls reflecting the light of the stained-glass window in rainbows. Lily glanced down at her own broken shoe and the faded dress tucked around her knees.

  Deep in her thoughts, she did not notice the shuffling until the boy next to her tapped her knee and motioned for her to kneel like the rest of them. She bent her forehead to her prayer-pointed fingers and observed those around her from beneath nearly closed eyelids. The priest’s voice droned in a steady monotone, the words blurred and pointless above her cramming insecurity.

  Thomas’s mother rubbed his shoulder. Across the aisle, Gerda Mueller held a handkerchief to her daughter’s nose. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson held wizened hands until their hunched frames seemed one body. The space between Lily and the parishioners widened with grim duality.

  The organ blasted and young Thomas nudged her again. As dutiful as a lamb, she entered the queue of people headed for the priest. Then she was before him, his hand held out, then pulled back, his brows scrunching incredulously. “You can’t take communion, Lilith.” The eyes watched her from all sides; the feet tapped behind her.

  “I—”

  His eyebrows now rose high and mighty. “You aren’t a Christian.”

  You don’t belong here, Lilith. The words came louder than if they had been uttered. You don’t belong anywhere.

  She broke from the line. The Campbell girls snickered. Mrs. Johnson whispered gravely to her husband’s old and hairy ear. Lily hurried to the exit, the open length between the pews elongating cruelly. Her ankle twisted and the glued heel cracked from the sole. She pushed through the aching front door and threw the broken shoe into the teasing sun, pulled the other off and twisted it in her hands to maim and break its spine.

  Barefoot, she fled over the icy ground to the grove of cedars, the red bark peeling and splintered and dense enough to curl beneath. She ripped the pearl barrette from her hair and let the long strands drape around her shoulders, rubbed the hair clip sternly under her thumb. The iron bell in the chapel rocked, tolled above the chatter and emerging bodies now leaving the church. Families trickled out. Homes would be warming for supper and smelling of baked bread. Fathers would sit in wide armchairs, smoking pipes and basking in a day without chopping wood or hunting. At night, mothers would tuck sons and daughters in tight and kiss their foreheads.

  Lily Morton hugged her knees, watched the families enviously from her spot below the boughs.

  You don’t belong here, Lilith, they would say. Too wild to be human . . .

  A cardinal wrestled in the decomposing leaves, picked at a pinecone. Lily leaned to the bird, opened her palm and bent her fingertips in a call to friendship. She inched closer, reached out slowly to stroke the feathers before the scarlet wings spread and burst into the air. Lily sank back against the rough tree.

  Too human to be wild.

  CHAPTER 8

  In early spring, Andrew’s scant possessions were shipped to Pittsburgh: a few clean shirts and trousers, a wool overcoat, his books and notebooks, a football and baseball. The furniture was sold. A new Bohemian family who smelled of garlic and old mushrooms stepped into the empty brown patch house as the Houghtons stepped out.

  Along the railway line, Andrew hugged his mother for the last time. Or so it felt, or didn’t feel. All he knew was that everything hurt and was numb at once. He only recognized life in the coal patches of southwestern Pennsylvania, had never ventured farther. To go to Pittsburgh seemed as foreign as the moon; to think of his mother moving to the Netherlands seemed like it was a different planet altogether.

  The metal tracks shone silver and endless, pulled his heart forward and then back. He could not stay here. There was no going back. But Frederick Houghton still lived in the mine, forever buried under the stone heaps that had crushed his dead body.

  “Your uncle will be waiting for you in Pittsburgh,” Andrew’s mother broke into the memory. “As soon as I get to Holland, I’ll wire you.”

  Carolien Houghton placed her palm against his cheek, gazed over his face as if she were memorizing each pore. Her eyes filled and his chest burned. He wanted the train to come now before he crumbled.

  The mournful wail of the steam locomotive rose from across the valley. The first puff of smoke billowed distantly above his mother’s bent head. People who had been sitting on benches now rose, picked
up their baggage. Movement quickened and voices chatted with the high notes of good-byes. The whistle cried again, louder now, shuddered through Andrew’s nerves, jolted him. He was leaving the coal patches. Sudden liberation vibrated through his muscles, flexed his biceps and stomach with confirmation. He was leaving. For the first time since his father’s death, lucidity entered—he wasn’t abandoning his father; he was renewing his promise.

  Andrew took his mother’s tortured hands and massaged the knuckles gently. The gift she had given finally revealed itself, the diamond formed from coal—a new life. Opportunity outside the gritty patches. Hope. “I’ll build a better life for us,” he said, determined. He could still save for college. He could still get there. Along the rails of this endless track, he could still get there.

  The black smoke thickened as the giant black steam engine chugged into view. The brakes screeched, assaulted the deep inner core of the ear. “I promise.” The resolution aged his voice, gave it the firmness of his father’s and made Carolien blink with recognition. He kissed her on the cheek.

  Sparks hopped from the wheels, metal ground against metal, until the steel beast stopped, the engine panting heavily after its long run. Andrew faced the giant locomotive as if in challenge. The thrust of open rails and possibilities gleamed within the steel monolith.

  Andrew wasn’t leaving his father in the mine shaft; he was pulling him out.

  PART 2

  Pittsburgh. Hell with the lid off.

  —James Parton

  CHAPTER 9

  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania—March 1917

  The train eased into Union Station, the gateway to Pittsburgh, the gateway to the West. Andrew stepped from the passenger car and followed the crowds into the massive rotunda, a grand circular skylight rounding the ceiling like a great lens, supported by four arched corners, each heralding the four mighty destinations of Pittsburgh, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. With neck craned to the light flooding the grand ceiling, he stumbled into the main waiting room at the bottom of the atrium. Three-story arches framed the perimeter openings that led to men’s and women’s lounges, a dining room, the ticket office and baggage office.

  Andrew waited at the center concourse under the giant clock for over an hour, his bag crumpled at his feet, his hands resting in the front of his pant pockets. Passengers weaved in an endless web. Men traveled with fine silk top hats and three-piece suits while others donned creased trousers with turned-up cuffs, their shoes filled with short gaiters. A group of boys wearing Norfolk jackets and knickerbockers smoked hand-rolled cigarettes, posed as miniature men in the corner. Women clicked upon the white marble floors with high heels, fox stoles wrapped around necks. There were middle-class men in dark broadcloth and workingmen in homespun cloth, encumbered with shipping trunks and luggage. But no coal miners darted between the travelers; no men in soot left footprints across the clean, smooth floor. Absently, Andrew pressed his father’s miner tags for comfort. He saw the station from his father’s vision, could feel the thudding of his heart along with his own. This would be a new world for them both.

  A nun led a pyramid of girls in ascending levels of age pointedly through the concourse. The oldest girls in the last row of crisp pinafores glanced at him, whispered coyly before the prettiest gave a short wave. “Constance!” called the Sister. The girl quickly hid her hand but continued to stare as she walked dutifully ahead. And for the first time, Andrew thought of the other benefits Pittsburgh might offer a young man.

  “You Andrew?” asked a gruff voice.

  He turned and picked up his bag. “Yes, sir.” The man was formidable in figure. Andrew was six-foot, but this man was a near match. His denim overalls and cap were worn and soft but his white shirt clean and unwrinkled.

  “Wilhelm Kiser,” he greeted Andrew. “Been waiting long?”

  “No, sir.”

  “All right, let’s get you settled. Train leaves in thirty. Ever been in a caboose?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well.” He laughed. “You’re in for a treat. Hope you’re steady on your feet.”

  * * *

  The days upon the railroad blended in a landscape of brackish rivers, squat brick towns, and smoking factories and mills. Andrew rose from the bottom bunk in the dark, held on to the wooden walls of the caboose with both hands to keep from falling. The last car rattled and rocked endlessly, felt as if the couplings were trying to disjoint from the rest of the train. In the rear of the space, he tried to keep steady while using the toilet—the straight-dump kind that sent everything over the rails. He was glad his uncle slept; otherwise there was no privacy at all.

  Andrew shoveled coal into the stove just as he had done for his mother not long ago. The car was frigid away from the stove and excruciatingly hot near it. The caboose always smelled of smoke. When he ate his oatmeal, the cereal tasted like ashes. The burning coal from the stove and the firebox between the engine and the tender made his eyes water and tear black. The caboose, insufferably loud, played with the brain, held it between two palms that shook vigorously.

  Wilhelm Kiser creaked down the ladder from the top bunk, nodded to his nephew as he headed to relieve himself. The cast-iron stove was bolted to the floor and Andrew made the coffee and boiled oats upon the top surface, the metal lip secured to keep the pots from falling off with the train movement. When breakfast was ready, they sat across from each other on splintered dynamite boxes, their bodies swaying in tandem to the rolling train. The tracks followed the Monongahela River, the churning water foaming yellow and sordid with chunks of debris.

  “We’ll be coming upon Braddock in a bit.” Wilhelm stirred his coffee and licked the spoon. “You can check the couplings like I showed, make sure they’re properly set.” He sipped the scalding drink between nearly closed lips. He was a lean and muscular man, his dark brown hair neatly trimmed under his cap.

  “Need to look out for signs of hotbox, too. Our last load heated up the axle bearings something rough. Remember that smell? If it overheats, be twice that. Smells so bad it burns the nose hairs outta your nostrils.”

  Andrew and his uncle settled in with each other. The first few days had been tense, lags of silence as they found their rhythm and space within the tight quarters.

  “My wife’s looking forward to having you. You got her eyes. She’ll like that.” Wilhelm said the words plainly and without flattery. “Eveline and your ma didn’t get along, she tell you that?”

  Andrew nodded. “Because my mother eloped.” He wondered how far along the Atlantic his mother had traveled by now, hoped her body was warm within the ship.

  “She don’t hold any grudge against you, though,” Wilhelm explained. “Be good for her to have you around. Got two sons and twins on the way. She’ll be happy to have someone over the age of six in the house.”

  The man chuckled then, low and gruff. “Should probably warn you, though. My Eve hates the city. Here she is with one of the finest houses in Troy Hill and all she does is complain. Nags me about moving to the country. Got an indoor toilet, you know that?” He took a large scoop of oatmeal and chewed it carefully. “Only telling you this because that’ll be the first and last thing you hear every day—Eveline asking for a damn farm.”

  Between his sentences, the monotony of the pistons and the clang of the ties grew bold. The drum of noise lulled the thoughts. Usually Wilhelm was not a man for idle chatter, but today he was animated and there was a comfort to the conversation.

  “I grew up on a farm and I’ll never go back.” Wilhelm folded his arms loosely at his chest and leaned back. “Watched my father turn weak and sour against the land. Saw it drain every ounce of strength from him and my mother and I vowed never to follow the same fate. As soon as I was sixteen, I ran off with a circus train and never looked back.”

  Wilhelm drank his coffee, finished his oats and placed the dishes on the side shelf to be washed at the next stop. His voice dropped low. “Sorry about you losing your father. Should have told you that s
traightaway.”

  Andrew paused, swallowed the cereal lodged in his throat. “He was a good man.” A memory of his father sweetened the air, made the coffee less bitter. “He used to play the violin. How he wooed my mother, he said. Stood under her window and played until she agreed to marry him.”

  Wilhelm lowered his chin and thought about this. “A romantic, eh?”

  “Except he was the worst violinist you ever heard.” Andrew chuckled and raised his eyebrows. “He was awful. God-awful. Pretty sure my mother married him just to make him stop.”

  Andrew was no longer in the caboose; he was sitting in their tiny patch house watching his father on the fiddle, his foot stomping in uneven rhythm. “He played at home in the evenings sometimes, screeching on that thing. Could hear dogs howling for miles.” He laughed. “Then my mother would start singing to the music and she was just as awful. Guess they were made for each other. Love is blind, guess it’s deaf, too.”

  Wilhelm grinned. “What about you? Got a girl waiting for you back there?”

  “No,” he answered without regret, rubbed the rim of his mug with his thumb. “Courted a few for sure, but”—he paused to run the pretty faces through his mind—“never felt anything close to what my parents had. Didn’t want to settle. Still have some girls there cursing my name because of it.”

  “Heartbreaker, eh?”

  “To be honest, I’m glad I didn’t have the distraction. Just wanted to get out of Uniontown.” Andrew dropped his spoon in the empty bowl, met Wilhelm’s eyes square. “My parents sacrificed everything so I wouldn’t have to pick coal like my father. Every day I watched as the mine crushed my family, my friends.” He stood, placed the dish next to Wilhelm’s on the shelf. “Through spirit or body or both.”