Beneath the Apple Leaves(17)
His head dropped into his hands and he pulled at the roots of his chestnut hair. “I froze, Eve. The tracks were wet; everything was damp.” His pupils dilated with the image. “It was just like that day. Except we were coming up to a stalled train and I couldn’t brake. Couldn’t touch it. The whistle kept blowing, over and over again. But I couldn’t move. Kept seeing his body falling from the roof, the shadow going by the window.” He fell into the trance of his words. “I froze.”
Eveline reached for his hand, but he pulled back ferociously as if she were trying to bite him. “I told you I didn’t want that boy working with me. Didn’t I? Didn’t I tell you we had no business helping him?”
The twins kicked against her ribs and she breathed through her nose with effort. “He lost his father, Wilhelm. They barely had enough money to live.”
“Well,” he snarled. “He’s ours now, isn’t he? Another mouth to feed, a crippled one at that.”
“How can you say such a thing?” His words made her sick. “You can go to the Baltimore and Ohio,” she reassured hotly. “Even the New York Central. They’d jump at the chance to hire you.”
Wilhelm leaned back and crossed his arms. He laughed then, long and cynical. “Don’t get it, do you? They’ve been waiting to let me go. Think they want a German—a German with the name Kiser no less—working the rails? Think they trust a German transporting all the raw materials for their artillery and machines?”
“You’ve been reading too many stories.” She removed the newspaper from the table and folded it, threw the pages in the trash before returning to the table. “The enemy is overseas, not a humble brakeman living in Troy Hill.”
The scowl expanded to the lines of his face. “Want to know what was waiting for me in the bunk of my caboose?” His voice sank low and deep and his eyes stretched in horror. “Want to know what I found wrapped in a bloody blanket on my bed? A German shepherd with its throat sliced.”
Chills crept up her spine and itched her scalp.
“And tied to its mouth was a sign that said: ‘To Hell with the Huns.’”
“My God.” She hushed. Eveline hid her face in her hands, but Wilhelm pulled her fingers away.
“You don’t know what’s going on out there,” he snarled. “Don’t have a clue!”
“What will we do?” She said the words out loud and regretted it. Eveline tried to realign her thoughts, unable to remove the vision of the slain dog from her mind. “Move to another city?” She never hid her hatred of Pittsburgh, but the thought of moving to Philadelphia or even New York made her ill.
He laughed then. Long and slow. “Got good news for you, Eve. Traded this house for a place in the country.”
“What?”
“Never have to live in this city again. Never have to live in any city again.”
Her temples throbbed and she rubbed one with her finger. “When did you—”
“What, no smile? No hug? Come on, doll!” he crooned sarcastically. “Like a dream come true!”
“You’re not well, Wilhelm,” she said evenly and with concern. Eveline rose then, pushed away from the table. “You don’t even know what you’re saying.”
He stood as well, the fake levity gone. “I know exactly what I’m saying.” And with a hostility that was quite unlike her husband, he grabbed her wrist and shoved a deed in her hand and made her fingers clutch it, made them crunch the paper in her forced fist.
“You got your farm, Eve,” he proclaimed. Wilhelm smiled then in an unkind, ugly way. “Just what you always wanted.”
*
The book rested on Andrew’s knee, the pages fanned out from under the center binding. The warm air from the open window brought in the scent of Eveline’s climbing rose and the words from the conversation below. When the exchange had finished and the front door slammed, Andrew closed his eyes. The words echoed and pounded like steady stab wounds. Dully, he opened his lids, let his vision draw to the endless sea of slate roofs that twisted along the city street. A group of pigeons settled upon the nearest eave, bobbing heads until taking flight in tandem.
The young Kiser boys suspended their marble game on his rug after hearing the shouting from downstairs. They waited for Andrew to turn to them, address them in some way with reassurance, but he couldn’t face them and just fell away to the emptiness found in the roofs and chimneys and cooing pigeons.
Seven-year-old Will approached the bed and perched upon the mattress, bending one knee so it shelved his chin. “What’s a German shepherd?” the boy asked.
“It’s a dog,” Andrew finally answered, the words soft and apologetic.
The child’s face drained, stricken to the core. A marble rolled in the tiny, soft fingers. He turned back to Andrew, his doleful gaze drifting to his cousin’s severed arm. “Does it hurt?”
Andrew nodded. “Yeah,” he said wearily. “It hurts.”
The child had meant the arm, but the answer summed up an existence. Andrew dropped his eyelids again, wrestled with the anger, the bitterness, the burn. The doctor had said the pain would stop once the nerve endings healed, but the searing heat was with Andrew always—an ache in a body part that didn’t exist, like the memory of a broken heart, like the memory of his parents and his muzzled ambitions.