Beneath the Apple Leaves(92)
Two more cows followed and then the heartstopping cracking of timber collapsed half the barn in a sea of sparks. The hideous calls of the animals trapped below buckled Andrew’s knees. He pulled himself up, pushed out one last cow, the barn cats nearly tripping him.
By the time the Muellers had called the fire department and run to the farm to help soak it down, the barn was gone. Three cows had died; the Ford was half-melted. The horse was tethered to the house and the remaining cows stood in the pasture. The pigs were yet to be rounded up, might never be found.
Piles of charred wood smoked and the smell filled the nostrils, deadened the soul. There were no words. The view, now unblocked from the barn, sketched a gray landscape, revealed hills and the pond that had not been visible before. All around, there was green and blue, a normal summer day, but all that was left here, on this farm, was the gray, like the paint mixed by Wilhelm’s father to keep all practical and without waste.
And the family stared at the mass of destruction. The burnt bodies of the three cows, ones Will and Edgar had milked the day before. And it poisoned the heart, raked it to shreds.
The sheriff said there were no signs of foul play. An accident, maybe a spark from the tractor. Maybe a stack of moist hay spontaneously combusted. “Got to dry the hay in the fields, you know,” he reminded them. “Damp hay heats quick, you know. Maybe a forgotten can of kerosene. An accident. Too bad.” Bad luck, the sheriff said. Bad luck indeed.
CHAPTER 45
When a man breaks, the air breaks around him, the ground cracks below his footsteps. His face remains unchanged; in fact, little changes, and that is where the break is first seen. The blank expression, the even line of the mouth and the pupils that do not contract in light or dilate in darkness. For all is gray, all is blank. And so a man breaks even as his limbs still move and his voice still speaks and his lungs still respire.
Children sense the change first. Will and Edgar kept a wide berth from their father, fearful of the silence that hovered around the man. As if ghosts lingered and swirled around him and if they got too close they too might be sucked into the darkness. And so when Wilhelm entered the house from the fields, his clothes still clean and exposing the fact he had done no work, the children left for the outdoors. And when he came out to walk in the shadows of the day and stare at the charred space where the barn had been, Will and Edgar were quick to find work in the kitchen.
Andrew doubled his efforts in the fields. The tractor had been left out overnight and was their last remaining vehicle. He worked until the pain and exhaustion in his body made him fall asleep without washing, simply crashed onto the bed in his clothes. And Andrew worked to stun the mind, numb it, but he also worked because Wilhelm could not. The man no longer saw the fields or the green or the money from harvest; he saw the dead cows, the dead twins, the black curled beams of the barn and the debt.
And so they all spun in their own shapes. Spun in circles like a child practicing the number “8” upon his slate. Around and around and around. The children spinning at a distance from their father, whom they did not recognize and feared, circling wider and farther from his curve. Andrew circling from shed, to field, to animals, to bed. And Eveline to her garden, to the stove, to the table, to the counter. And in this infinity, they fled from the broken man, kept him at bay in hopes the fracture would mend in time.
*
Eveline’s mouth was dry. She itched under the skin. And when she stood for more than a few moments, she would curl against her stomach in wretchedness. A nightmare unfolded and she was not sure what was real and what was not. Time and time again, she pinched her eyes closed, prayed and opened her gaze with hesitation. But the nightmare was still there; the guilt, the grief, was still there.
When she thought of Frank, Eveline gagged. She had been such a fool. She had drunk from his cup with relish and then, when she swallowed, realized she drank sour milk. Eveline retched. She wiped the corners of her mouth with her nightgown. She had heard every word the man had said to Andrew, the way he berated and hurt him, called him a cripple. She realized that Frank had not rescued Andrew from jail but was part of the reason he was there in the first place. She realized that it was at the insistence of the American Protective League that life in town became unbearable. And as the barn burned in that ungodly hour and the sparks flashed and pillowed into the infinite black night, she knew with bone-cracking despair that the man she had desired, the man whom she had dreamed of touching, had, in one way or another, lit that match.
Eveline rolled in bed. The bile rose and she gagged again. She had been blind and now she saw and she wished she could have dug out her eyes with spoons. It was nearly too much. The war. The betrayal. She didn’t know how much she could take. But then there was her husband. And with this, her eyes welled and she cried in her mind, I’m sorry. And she loved him so. Loved him for what he gave her, loved him for the children they had brought into this world. Loved him for dealing bravely with a world where others were crumbling. How she had manifested feelings for another man she did not know. But there was only Wilhelm now. There had only ever been her husband, Wilhelm. She turned toward him and wrapped her arms tight around his middle, hoping not to wake him. I’m sorry, Wilhelm, she cried in her head, and wiped tears against his back. I’ll make it up to you. Somehow. She buried her head between the shoulders. I love you.
*
Eveline did not know she had slept late until the sun stabbed directly in her eye from the top of the bedroom window. Wilhelm was gone from bed and she was relieved. It means he’s milking, she thought. It means he’s working, he’s walking. He needed to work. He needed to pull himself out of the rut from where he hid. He had been drowning long before the barn burned down, had been taking steps in the murky water since the railway accident. She should have done more to help him before the water rushed to his waist. The thought poked until she shut it down, slapped at it. She would make it up to him now, make it up to them all.