Beneath the Apple Leaves(3)
CHAPTER 3
Plum, Pennsylvania—1916
Lily Morton emerged from the forest like a porcupine, the pine needles sticking stubbornly in her hair and needling through her dress. After plucking the ones deep enough to poke her scalp, she ignored the rest and plodded through the light snow toward home.
Instead of taking the shorter route through the valley, Lily climbed the slope of the old cornfield, the green pinnacles long browned and severed to splintered stalks. This was an open land, a land of even rows and endless swords of withered corn and ground straw. Her worn boots stepped with great concentration between the crisp sticks and occasional rock and tangled thorn bushes. In her imagination, she stepped like a soldier through a battlefield of bones, working hard not to desecrate as she picked her way across enemy lines. And she laughed at this. Laughed at the childish game, for she was no longer a child. The mirth left. She wasn’t a child or a porcupine. This wasn’t a battlefield in a brave war. She was a young woman who plodded through an old farm field that mirrored a million other farm fields in rural Pennsylvania. The cold stung her cheeks then and she veered hurriedly down to the valley.
In the open land, Lily sprouted. She changed as the seasons, expanded and contracted with the phases of the moon, shifted with the clouds and rose and rested with the tidings of the sun. She knew the soil that crunched and purred beneath her footsteps; knew the sky that hovered above her skin. She knew the songs of the birds and the secret language of the ants and bees and crickets. From the valley, Lily stretched her legs up the sharp incline of the hill and evened her stride as she reached the one-lane road—and here along the reclaimed, man-made stretch she knew her way by heart but was lost again.
Lily passed the Sullivan farm, the white farmhouse quiet and sleepy in the encroaching twilight, the gentle white smoke rising from the stone chimney. A few miles more and she would pass the Mueller homestead, the smell of their hogs drowning out the natural scents of frozen earth and distant wood fires. If she walked for an eternity along this road, the pictures of those houses would repeat in a stuttering image, one after another, just like the inhabitants within the reposeful walls.
The wind cut wickedly through Lily’s sweater, the fabric silvered and shiny at the elbows. She regretted not wearing a coat and ran the last mile home. And once there, she did not refuse when her sister made her drink strong tea by the fire, did not complain as her sister plucked and pulled at the nest of pine needles in Lily’s ashen hair.
The fire crackled, released the occasional spark as the flames touched upon a stick of damp wood. Lily sat cross-legged on the knotted rug, studied the lines of her palm undistracted, even as her sister tugged at her long tresses with the hairbrush, forcing her head back now and then in sudden jerks.
“Sure I’m not hurting you, Lil?” Claire asked.
“Hardly tell you’re combing.”
“Bet I’m squeezing tears.” She grimaced. “Sorry I got to pull so hard.”
“Can’t feel it. That’s the truth.”
“How’d you get all this sap in here anyways?”
Lily shrugged. “Up in the pine tree. Got stuck in a resin patch.”
“Well, you smell good. That’s for sure. Fresh as the forest.” Her older sister laughed softly as she worked on another tangled lump of hair. “Remember when I’d take you out to those trees when you were just a little thing? You and me? We’d sit up there for hours, nearly fell asleep up there a couple of times.” Claire’s voice suddenly abandoned its jovial chirp. The strokes came lighter to Lily’s hair until the brush stopped moving completely.
Lily turned around. Her sister’s head bowed. Lily took the brush from the woman’s hand and placed it on the floor between them. Growing up, they had hid in those trees, the two of them, tangled close together for warmth and strength. Within those boughs, they had kept silent, pretended it was a game. And when his footsteps plowed through the dead leaves and his voice hollered in rage across the valley, they clung tighter to each other and endured the hours until he was gone.
These were the memories that plagued Claire Morton, that came with the wind and left the woman hollow. Lily reached her arms around the slight shoulders. “That was a long time ago, Claire,” she whispered. Claire stared from the familiar abyss that made her skin chill. She was lost to the demons again.
Lily lifted her sister’s chin. “We’re safe, Claire. Nobody’s going to hurt us ever again. I promise.”
Claire blinked, then tilted her head curiously, asked nearly in despair, “Then why you still hiding up in those trees?”
CHAPTER 4
Andrew Houghton woke first. The voice of the great owl prodded from the roof, as it poked with scraping talons against the shingles, usurped the duties of the scrawny roosters that ran free from broken gates and fences. Before dawn, the silent raptors flocked to the hideous coal patches, the mine town beyond the trees where the mice were plentiful. For here the rodents scurried between the endless line of old sheds and privies, darted inside beehive ovens where burnt bread crumbs sat like anthills.
The great owl called again, chiseled the dream state until eyes opened. The hoarfrost clung to the windows and the chill shuddered through the wads of newspapers insulating the cracks and holes of the shabby wood home. Andrew sighed and placed a naked foot to the frozen floor.