Beneath the Apple Leaves(11)
“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.