Beneath the Apple Leaves(64)
“A whore?” he asked loudly. “Yeah, Fritz knows!” He laughed mischievously. “Naked lady. Wants to have sex. Sex with Andrew.” He giggled impishly. “Pretty lady, too. Taught him good.”
A tied dog barked near the wagons, strained to chase a wayward baseball. Emily and her friends laughed loudly from beyond the way, clicked and chatted like beetles. Men smoked in a small ring behind the dugout. “Out!” yelled the umpire.
The noise drummed around her ears, made her want to shove her hands against the inner canals. Lily folded her arms into her stomach, her insides swaying and queasy.
“Fritz knows about the whore.” He slapped his knee, then rubbed it ferociously. “She showed him how to please her. How to touch a woman, he said. She was pretty.” He whispered to Lily secretly, “Pieter want one, too. Can tell he wants one just like Andrew had. A whore. Pieter want one bad.”
Lily covered her mouth. The hope, the dream, fractured—the sharp points stabbing ruthlessly. Watch out, Lilith. Your horns might start to show. Inbreeding does that to a girl. Andrew had seen the horns. He saw the malady she was, the curse she brought to this world. And he would rather run to the arms of a whore than touch her.
She fled to her buggy, the tears forming in rivulets over her cheeks, stinging and constricting her throat. Fritz cheered from his seat. The crowd clapped and rose.
“You’re out!”
*
While the brown dust from the field rose and coiled around Andrew’s ankles, the mood of the opposing team sank and stirred into the dirt. The men in green brooded as they chewed tobacco. With each passing inning, the rust-colored spit flung with more vigor and less-focused aim.
Andrew rolled the ball in his fingers, the stitching comfortable and familiar against the tender spots. He waited patiently as the next batter went through his ritual of kicking the plate, rubbing his hands upon his pants, kicking the plate again, spitting tobacco and adjusting the bat in his large hands.
“Cripple’s gettin’ tired, Sam!” a man hollered. “See that arm shaking from here!”
Andrew readied his stance, his body tight and expectant.
“Kaiser’s biggest fan!” another shouted. “Spawned straight from the devil himself!” another quipped.
He pulled back and hurled the ball across home plate.
“Strike one!”
The batter narrowed his eyes, his back bracing and hunched. He practiced three hard swings that could have smashed a tree. Andrew rubbed the worn leather of the ball, tan from use.
“Coal miner piece of shit!”
Andrew turned his head, raised his knee, pulled back his shoulder.
“Least his pa’s dead. One less German we gotta deal with!”
Andrew launched the ball, aiming it at the heckler, the ball crunching him in the skull. The batter dropped his bat, charged the pitcher mound. The men from the Creekers flooded forward with punching fists as Andrew walked away, the insults beating him harder than fists. But the fight broke quickly and the teams separated, the fissure widening with disgruntled force.
Pieter wiped a bloody nose and jogged to Andrew. “Bastard had it coming.”
The adrenaline fired through Andrew’s body, his chest heaving. Pieter took the corner of his shirt and dabbed his nose, inspected the growing stain. “It’s getting bad,” Pieter warned. “Like everyone’s all twisted up.”
Andrew wasn’t listening. He looked out into the crowd, scanned the benches for the woman with the green eyes, the woman whose light would numb the black words and make his heart pump with desire instead of anger. But Lily was gone. Andrew took off the baseball shirt and hat and shoved them in Pieter’s arms. “I’m done.”
CHAPTER 32
Lily went back to doing laundry and mending for Frank’s clients—dry basting clothes, starching and ironing until her face flushed with moisture and steam. Hidden in the back of her dresser drawer, in an old sock of her father’s, the coins from her egg money jingled pathetically. The money tugged, now more than ever. Just leave. Go away, Lily. There’s nothing here for you. But the coins mocked her with their words, for the meager total wouldn’t even get her past Pittsburgh.
On this evening, Frank had gone to town to play cards with the sheriff, the town clerk and the other townmen. They would talk about the war and she was glad they were in town and not here at the house. Always war, war, war. She was tired of the talk. Lily did not like to think of the battles across the sea. Always about the Germans. She thought of the ones she knew, and they did not match the pictures painted by the men in town. There was Mrs. Mueller who used to drop off food to Claire when she was too sore from beatings to cook. There was Mr. Cossman down at the brewery who always brought extra grains to Mrs. Sullivan for her horses. And the Kisers. Lily fanned these Germans in her mind and didn’t believe that the men against the Allies could be so different. Hearing Frank talk, they were a pack of savages, no hearts, just guns and a thirst for killing babies and raping women and taking over the world. But somewhere those men had mothers and sisters; they were somebody’s sons and brothers and lovers.
Andrew floated into her mind and the rosiness in her cheeks grew even as the steam lessened. She tried to push him from her thoughts, to rid herself of the memory of his fake kisses and vacant words. She was worthless and he knew it, the reality numb and harsh. She was drained of tears and dead to hope. Lily had just been a temporary fix between the women who could satisfy his needs.