Beneath the Apple Leaves(14)

In one eternal instant, Andrew Houghton faced the clouds, the rain soft and listless across his eyelids, before his body crashed to the moving earth below.





CHAPTER 10

Eveline Kiser draped the bedsheet over the pine ironing board before lifting the flatiron from the stove. She rubbed the heavy tool over the creases, the thick bottom making a thump, thump, thump over the fabric. Young Edgar darted under the board, under the fabric, then back again, letting the sheet drape across his face before going back under.

“That’s enough,” Eveline scolded. “I’ve already flattened this sheet twice; I won’t do it a third time.” But the five-year-old only giggled and continued his game.

Her other son shot into the kitchen with purpose. “Toilet’s overflowing again,” announced Will.

“All right.” Eveline sighed and put the iron in the sink, the steam swooshing and fogging the window. She wiped her face with the dish towel, placed her hand at the small of her back routinely, the growing twins pressing against her nerves, sending a dull pain down the back of her thigh. That damn toilet, she thought. Wilhelm was so proud of that magical wonder of innovation, Eveline had no doubt that if that toilet could have been shrunk and set in gold her husband would have made it her wedding ring.

Eveline huffed upstairs, the two boys close to her heels in order to witness any job involving tools and spilling sewage. The pain in her back made her grit her teeth with each step. She had been short-tempered with the boys all morning, hadn’t slept well, as she never did when Wilhelm was out on one of his hundred-mile runs.

Eveline jiggled and pulled the toilet chain before giving up and mopping up the floor. Edgar and Will hopped into the inching puddle and jumped out again, their socks soaked to the ankles. “Boys! Can’t you—” A hefty knock came to the front door.

“Will, go on and get that for me.” She called back to the retreating child, “And take off those wet socks!”

Eveline met her son at the bottom of the stairs just as the front door slammed shut. “Telegram,” Will said helpfully as he stuck out the square card.

She pulled out a chair at the table and rested her elbows on the oilcloth as she opened the note. Her gaze bounced from one word to the next, then back again. Her quivering fingertips met her bottom lip. Edgar stole a blueberry muffin from a plate on the counter, but she was blind to his movements, to anything but the typed paper in her hand.

“Ma!” Will’s call echoed distantly from upstairs. “Toilet’s leaking again!”



Someone took my arm. Andrew Houghton writhed in the trenches. Gunfire and bombs spotted his vision. The gas stung his eyes and burned his body. Skin on fire. His mother was there, her face and dress filthy. She ducked the bullets as she tried to sew him back together with needle and thread.

My arm. The lanterns were out in the mine shaft. He tripped and floundered and spun to find the light. Air was leaving, compressing his lungs. His father called for him under the coal. A candle met his touch. He lit the wick, the stick igniting into a sparkling hiss. The dynamite exploded in his hand.

My arm! The screaming reverberated in his skull. He heard it, but his mouth was gone. His own shouting bounced between the walls of the room. Flashing lights. Blackness, then open eyes. A nurse held Andrew’s cheeks and mouthed soundlessly—a fish without water, without resonance. She didn’t see. His mother leaned against his bed and cried. He reached for her, grabbed her skirt. Tell them! The woman raised her head and he pulled back. He didn’t know who she was. Her face morphed with his mother’s until he couldn’t see one or the other, just a blur of shifting features.

A jab to the arm, a quick prick. Then another. No! Not that one. He tried to scream. He floated above the bed and under it. The room darkened and lit. He was going to throw up. He tried to run, pushed against the mattress. He tried to talk. His lips fused and words gurgled in his throat. His eyes were closing with weights from a scale, one on each lid. No! He had to make them....

*

Slowly, over days of burning heat and frigid chills, Andrew awakened, and still nothing was real. The woman who had been crying, who had been next to his bed at every moment, was not his mother. There was no need for introductions, the fine cheekbones and nose as discernable as his own, the eyes the same deep blue.

Andrew tried to speak, but his throat was dry and raw. His aunt touched his mouth lightly and then shook her finger for silence. She gave him water. He lifted the tiny glass, the effort making his arm stutter. He placed the rim to his lips, could see his body magnified through the water, saw the emptiness on his left side—only pressed sheets where his arm should have rested. He didn’t scream now. He didn’t know how.

*

Eveline Kiser waited until her nephew slept again before letting her tears flow. The inhumanity of a young life stalled and severed nearly cracked her to the bone. Bandages stretched and wrapped around the young man’s chest and covered the amputation at his left shoulder. She rubbed the dark hair and wiped the cold sweat from his pale forehead. He was as handsome as any man she had ever seen. And yet here he was, broken and on the edge of life. For one mournful moment, she wondered if God should let him die.

Outside the hospital, the noise from the street continued to rise. Eveline went to the window and lifted one edge of the curtain. Confetti rained down upon the crowds. Men stood upon automobiles whistling and waving newspapers. The thick walls of the room muffled the sounds slightly but only enough to distort the honking and cheering and shouting to a hideous war hum.