Beneath the Apple Leaves(101)

Eveline screamed and cursed and pummeled the tree with no thought or sight of anything else until her body fell into exhaustion and her arm could not lift the ax for another swing. She pulled at the wooden handle, had to take down the tree, had to erase what Wilhelm had done, what his death made her do. She was falling, but Andrew caught her, kicked the ax to the ground. He held her there under the moon and next to the barely maimed apple tree, and she sobbed into his shoulder, broke limply against his chest.

Andrew walked her into the house, brought her up to her room and helped her into bed, saw the scratches and tears along her dress. He smelled Frank’s cologne on her skin. A crumpled, signed deed dropped from her pocket. And the truth of what she had done sank in with each of her brutalized sobs. I’ll make this right, she had said. The words replayed, left him broken. He covered her with the blanket and left her to her grief.

He put the boys to bed, hugged them until they finally wept for their father and for their mother. He hugged them as they shook with events and a war and a terror that they did not understand. He hugged them until they cried themselves to sleep.

The old farmhouse was quiet now. Andrew sat on the edge of Will’s bed. He looked at his large hand sitting on his knee. He bent the fingers, then relaxed them again. He rose and stepped with purpose down the creaking steps, went outside.

With ax in hand, Andrew stared at the enormity of the ancient apple tree. The limbs, old, had witnessed too much suffering. And they seemed to ask to be relieved, to say good-bye. A wind blew and rustled the branches, the leaves waving in surrender.

Andrew touched the space in the bark that was engraved with the word “Lily.” She had cut them both. The young man patted the deep and wise bark, rested his forehead for a moment against the jagged skin before lifting the ax and swinging it hard into the tree.

The ding and reverberation nearly knocked him backwards. Andrew pulled the ax from the nick and hit hard again, the shudder to his good shoulder rough and painful. He took the ax to the same severed spot. Again and again and again. His arm ached and his fingers blistered against the smooth handle and he didn’t stop. Again. Again. Again.

The moon arched and moved on its journey and still Andrew hacked at the tree. His hand bled now and he only stopped to rub it clean on his trouser, the sting of stopping nearly worse than the sting of movement.

Andrew weakened and he called upon the fire. He called upon the fire that filled the breathing spaces and breathing bodies of the coal mine that took his father. He called upon the pain and fire of his shattered body, the fire that reminded his skin and bone and cells of what was once whole. He called upon the fire of Eveline’s sacrifice.

Andrew called upon the fire at the core of the earth. The molten lava that rose with his cry through his feet and through his veins. Up, up, up it moved and filled his muscles and made them crackle against the heat. And he glowed. And he took the ax and swung with the flames and he hit and he hit and he hit. The pain rattled across his nerves—a shattering, brittle pain like metal pans clanging, their harsh throbbing vibrating each rib and vertebra.

He found the fire, he gritted his teeth with its burn and still he swung. He swung until the burn became him. Until he became the fire and then the pain left. The fire now glowed white and strong and hot, but it did not singe, for he was the fire now and a fire does not shrink away from its own power; it lets it rise and ignite.

Lily. Andrew thought about the woman he had loved. She had moved on. She had never loved him. He hit harder and quicker. He had felt ashamed, worthless. He hit harder. But no more. No more.

Andrew thrust the ax blade deeper into the fissure of the tree. A crack, a wounded sigh from deep within sounded, and he hit again. He watched his one arm as he swung. Watched the deep lines of its muscles and he grew even as it weakened. He grew strong with each thrust. He had nothing to hide. He was complete and whole. He grunted as he worked through the fire of his hand and arm and shoulder. He would not hide or feel less than. He could take down this tree with one hand. He could do it. And he hacked harder and fiercer than before until just before dawn the tree bowed its head, cracked from its ancient depths and crashed to the ground.

*

Dawn broke. With the smell of smoke, the boys found the fallen apple tree in sparks. Andrew worked around the burning branches, pushing sticks to contain the fire. The boys broke off stray limbs and flung them into the centered heat of the fire. Through the haze, Eveline joined them, a gray wool sweater wrapped tightly around her shoulders. She watched the flames and the curling of wizened limbs and seemed to take power as all fell away into ash. When only the skeleton simmered with glowing red veins among a black charred body, Andrew went up to Eveline. “I need to go to Pittsburgh.”

She nodded. Her eyes were calm, grateful, nearly at peace. He ignored his raw hand and numb arm, his hunger, the fatigue of being up all night, and walked to the Muellers’ to borrow their car. He would do it now while he had the strength. One tree was down; now he had to put to rest another standing in his way.





CHAPTER 51

Polish Hill hovered on a rise above the city, overlooking the burping, savage steel mills. The line of row houses and squat wood houses decayed in varying degrees of rot, no different from any of the other immigrant tenements inhabited by the steel and factory workers. The soot-stained buildings sagged under concave roofs, with windows of taped over broken glass and yellowed newspaper.

The restaurant owned the corner; a bleached poster for Heinz pickles hung upon the grime-covered brick. A handwritten sign in the window said simply: Pierogis. The building, perfectly square, a block with flat roof and the side closest to the chimney completely black. The smell of onions and potatoes and grease emanated from the homes, from the very sewers, but came strongest near the little eatery.