Beneath the Apple Leaves(16)
Lily Morton crossed her arms high upon her chest, an abrasive pose against the battered screen door. “What do you want, Dan?” she hissed.
“What’s wrong, little Lily? Ain’t you happy to see me?”
“No, I ain’t,” she said, imitating his loose slang.
He stepped forward to enter the house and she blocked his way, the top of her head only reaching to his thick, sunburnt neck. He laughed. “Know I can come if I want. Don’t weigh more than a feather, little Lily. I sneeze and you’ll be floating to the roof.”
His hand reached for her hip and she slapped it away. “Don’t touch me,” she growled.
“Hello, Dan.” Claire emerged from the black raspberry bushes edging the lane. “Didn’t hear you come up.” She balanced a bowl filled with berries in one hand, her fingers stained purple.
“Morning.” Dan Simpson took off his hat, gave a quick nod. “Makin’ jam?”
Claire nodded shyly. “And maybe a pie or two. Never had such a good crop.” She handed the bowl to Lily, who cradled it against her stomach. “You looking for Frank?”
“Yeah. American Protective League is meeting. Looks like Frank’s gonna head it up for Plum. Gotta keep an eye on those Germans, you know.”
Lily rolled her eyes. That was all the men talked about these days. War. Germans. Now the APL, giving out cheap badges to the likes of Dan Simpson and Frank Morton so they had permission to spew their hate.
“Think Frank’s around the back,” Claire noted. “I’ll go grab him. Give my best to your dad at the bank.”
“Will do.” He tipped his hat and waited until she scurried behind the house. His eyes remained in that distant gaze as he asked, “See, why can’t you be friendly like Claire?” He turned coldly back to Lily. “Got some nerve treatin’ me the way you do.”
Lily stepped back and tried to push the screen closed, but Dan stuck a boot in the opening, leaned in. “You’ll change your tune one day, little Lily,” he warned. “Won’t be getting any offers as good as mine and you know it.”
She kicked his boot hard and slammed the screen shut, pressed her back against the door and waited until his chuckling faded away.
CHAPTER 12
Pittsburgh—the arsenal of the allies, the arsenal of the world. With World War I, the already-factory-bloated city grew to 250 war plants and employed over five hundred thousand men and women, produced half the steel used by the war. Eighty percent of army ammunitions were born from this city of endless smoke and fire. And the metal burned eternally, the foundries pumping morning and night. Accidents buried. More men brought in. Stop the strikes. Spy on the German workers. Bring up blacks from the South. Draw in the immigrants. Sweat the life from them. Burn the eyes and lungs with noxious fumes. Dig the coal. Build the bullets. Send the guns. Burden the trains harder, faster, longer. And so the city moved in a manic and maddening and sickening frenzy to satisfy the appetite of a world at war.
After Andrew’s accident, Wilhelm returned to work on the railroad, but he was nervous and edgy, short-tempered. In bed, his dreams were horrid and left him screaming and soaked in his own fear. His hands shook when he left for work. He would not speak of the accident or enter Andrew’s room.
The hours on the rails were unrelenting, an urgency chugging the locomotives without rest, the heaving coal cars and flatbeds and boxcars following in an infinite line. The Red Cross plastered posters across the station platforms showing a young injured soldier in agony upon a stretcher. “If I fail, he dies,” the signs promised. And the prophecy hung on the shoulders of the men whose sons were overseas and rung in the ears of any worker who slacked.
Howitzer shells, tin cans for army rations, rifle grenades, millions of bullets, gas masks, steel tank plates, electric motors, machine guns marched from Pittsburgh factories to the waiting and weary arms of the men overseas. Railroad lines clogged and jammed, made the men of the rails bang fists upon the steel beast as they waited for movement. Delays meant death, a doughboy without a gas mask or a round of bullets or a working gun. “If I fail, he dies.”
Wilhelm would not speak of the war. For hours in the evening, he would read the headlines in the pages of the Pittsburg Press and then sit in stillness, his eyes unmoving, his focus on the white space between the words. And when Eveline found a crumpled and ripped poster in his bag that promoted Death to Germans, she did not question him.
Then, one day in late afternoon, Wilhelm returned home without warning, sent his children upstairs and met his pregnant wife at the table. For a long while, he simply slouched against the backing of the cane chair, head bowed.
Eveline remained quiet, placed an unsteady touch against her babies. “What is it?”
He sat immobilized, his eyes blank. “I was fired.”
“I don’t understand.” She blinked hurriedly. The sound of her children upstairs thumped in Andrew’s room and an explanation entered. “The accident.” She halted. “What happened on that train wasn’t your fault.”
A quick spasm twitched his face. “He shouldn’t have been up there,” he seethed. “I shouldn’t have let him up there.”
“But to fire you—”
“I froze!” His upper lip rose in disgust. “Yesterday, I nearly derailed the train!”