Andrew kept the six surviving runts from Pieter Mueller in the closed porch. With the cooling nights, the piglets were confined to that one room, bedded in straw-lined wooden crates. The animals had come to him listless, but under his care their bellies swelled and they squirmed and tumbled over one another as they found strength in their legs.
After the day of fishing and tadpole catching with his cousins, a day squeezing some fun between feeding the chickens, hogs and cows, the night came fast and hard and it was nearly dark before dinner.
Lily was pulling her sweater on when Andrew plopped down next to his charges, the box of pigs lighting up with squeals. It was no small effort to feed one piglet while the others fought against the bottle for their turn. Without his other arm to tame the mob, he had to use his knee as an inadequate buffer against the mass of hungry pink bodies.
“Need some help before I go?” asked Lily.
He nodded, the small action taking his focus off the feeding and sending the offended animal into a rage of grunts. Andrew slid to the side to make room for Lily.
“My gosh, they’re loud!” Lily leaned over and picked up a piglet from the pile. Andrew could smell the handmade soap on Lily’s skin and a warmth flooded down his stomach and heated his thighs.
The young woman nestled the pig into her arm, fed it from one of the warm bottles with the cork nipple while she watched Andrew drip milk with precision and concentration. “You were good to save them,” she noted. “Don’t think they would have lived more than a few days.”
“Not out of the woods yet.” He put the sated and drowsy piglet into the straw and picked up the next. “This nursemaid business is harder than it looks. But I guess you know all about that. Twins have been fussing nonstop. Surprised you’re not deaf yet.”
Lily didn’t laugh and her forehead furrowed. “Can I tell you something?”
He faced her completely. “Of course.”
“Those babies—” She stopped for a moment. “They don’t look well.”
“I know.”
She glanced at the door to make sure no one was listening. “Mrs. Kiser’s been giving them cow’s milk, but . . .” She concentrated on the piglet in her arm. “They’re crying just like these runts.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“She knows it, so I didn’t want to make it worse.” Lily bit her lip. “Women take that stuff hard. Becomes personal, you know?” She used a free finger to rub the top of the animal’s wrinkled forehead.
“Dr. Neeb came a few weeks back.”
“I know, but he’s no good. About the weakest man I ever laid eyes on. Sooner have these pigs healing me than Dr. Neeb.
“Your aunt’s scared, Andrew.” Lily pleaded with her whole face. “She’s scared for her babies and she doesn’t know what to do. Making her angry.”
Andrew’s gaze melted into the gentle profile, the perfect slope of her nose and curve of the lips. “Well, if it makes you feel better, you’ve been a big help to her. She likes having you around.”
“I don’t know about that. Feel like I get in the way more often than not. Hurts me something awful to hear those babies crying like that.”
She leaned closer to him, reached over and put the piglet down. So close a few soft hairs from her head touched his cheek. She retreated then and leaned against the wall, folding her legs up under her. “Saw Pieter in the barn with you today. You get on well, don’t you?” she asked uneasily, the color draining from her cheeks.
“Yeah. He’s a good man.”
“Did . . .” She waited, swallowed quickly. “Did he tell you anything about my family?” She flustered. “About me?”
“Yeah.” Andrew nodded. He didn’t want to lie to her. “He shared some things.”
“He tell you about Mary Paulsen?”
Andrew nodded again.
“I hated Frank for that.” Lily’s mouth trembled for just a moment. “Hated him for what he did to the Paulsens. Seeing Mary and her family kicked off their land like that.” Her eyes glistened. “Mary wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t even look at me. Not that I blame her. Pieter still hates me because of it.”
Lily pulled her knees to her chest and hugged them, rocked slightly. “I took all the money I had and went to the auction. Bought as much of Mary’s possessions as I could afford. She had the prettiest dresses, Andrew. Her mother made them all by hand. You’ve never seen such lovely clothes. I was lucky to get them.”
He turned away from her now, didn’t understand how the woman who made his heart jump could have acted so greedily.
“Should of seen Claire and me at the post office.” She grinned then. “I got so upset because I didn’t have enough money to mail the box to Minnesota. Poor clerk finally took pity on me and paid the rest.” She sighed. “Never heard back from Mary. Don’t even know if she got all her things I sent. But I hope so. Helps me rest at night thinking that she was still wearing those dresses.”
The relief was sudden and nearly left him giddy. “You bought her things so you could send them to her?”
“Of course. What did you think?” She looked wounded.
“Nothing.” Andrew smiled widely. “You should tell Pieter, though.”
“Wouldn’t matter. Frank’s done enough to the people around here that we’re all tainted.” Lily’s eyelids lowered and she became very still. “Did Pieter tell you anything else?” Resignation tinged the question, spiked with a scar that threatened to reopen.
Andrew knew what she was asking and he would not open her wound. “No.” He tucked the last sleeping piglet into the straw. “That was all he said.”
She exhaled gratefully and stood to go, wrapping the worn sweater tight at her waist. Andrew rose as well. “I’ll walk you home.”
She shook her head. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go alone.” Her words softened without any trace of insult. “Been a long day is all.”
“You sure?” He watched her carefully until she grinned under his gaze and turned away bashfully.
“Besides,” she scolded, “you got dark circles under your eyes. Should treat yourself to a good nap before Mrs. Kiser calls you to dinner.” She pushed him lightly in the chest, the touch tingling down to his pelvis. “Give you a chance to dream about digging holes or pretty girls or whatever you men think about.”
“Think I’m too tired to dream.” He walked her to the door and held it open, then closed it gently again right before she was about to walk through. He blocked her way with his body but met her humbly in the space. “I could teach you how to read, Lily,” he offered gently. “If you want me to.”
Her hand fumbled with the top button of her sweater. “I don’t—” Her voice cracked feebly. “I don’t want you to think I’m stupid.”
“You’re not stupid, Lily.” He said it so firmly that she listened.
“I would like that.” She smiled then, haltingly at first before her lips bloomed. “I’d like that very much.”
Without knowing he was going to do it, Andrew leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Good night, Lily girl.”
* * *
Andrew awoke from his nap on the sofa to babies screaming and Wilhelm shouting from the next room. The sky pitched black through the windows. He could smell dinner cooking.
Andrew walked into the kitchen. The babies screamed in the corner. Screamed. The high shrill pierced the eardrum, one in each ear. Eveline plopped the mashed potatoes on the plates. On Wilhelm’s the starch stuck stubbornly to the spoon, and she pounded on the dish until the food came off in a giant white blob. The boys tried to eat but gave up to hold their ears. The weight of the noise sat like bricks upon the rib cage, pressured the head and temples, reverberated in the walls of the room.
Wilhelm threw down his fork. “For Christ’s sake, can’t you do something?”
“Do something?” Eveline smacked the pot on the counter. “What would you have me do?”
“Feed them. Walk them. I don’t know.” He rubbed his eyebrows. “Jus
t do something!”
Eveline wanted to throw the pot at him. Do something, he says. Feed them, he says. Feed them! Her head was going to explode. The crying made her want to hurt them. She could see herself doing it, throwing them right out the window. She could feel the sensation of tossing them, one baby right after the other, into the dirt and then locking the window. She gripped the counter. Wilhelm simply poked at his stew and she wanted to throw the pot at him. Do something. His words screamed between her ears; the twins screamed within them and all she wanted to do was to scream louder than them all.
Eveline grabbed Wilhelm’s wool coat and flung it over her shoulder. She grabbed the babies and shoved them together in one arm, stepped into her boots.
“What are you doing?” Wilhelm asked.
“Taking care of it!” she shouted, and stormed out of the house, the waning cries of the twins slowly fading away.
Everyone’s ears stung with the sudden and forced silence. Edgar glanced at Andrew, then to his father. “What’s she doing with them?” he asked nervously.
“Nothing you need to worry about.” Wilhelm turned to his food. Stabbed the overcooked beef. “Eat your dinner.”
Before the meal had finished, Eveline returned, coatless. Her face was red with exertion, the hem of her dress stuck with old leaves. No one asked where the babies were. No one asked anything.
She sat at her chair, her plate of food long cold. Her hair strayed from the bun. The divide between husband and wife a jagged fissure, a torn space that everyone sensed and no one would acknowledge. Eveline finally pushed her plate away, left the table and went upstairs, slamming the bedroom door.
Wilhelm stood up. “Clean up the table for your mother,” he directed. The boys picked up their plates and headed to the sink.
Andrew rose from the table and faced his uncle, obstructed his passage. “You can’t leave them out there.”
“Yes, I can.”
The boys turned from the sink, their eyes worried and pleading. With one last scalding look, Andrew grabbed his coat and stormed out of the house. The sky was dark and the newly fallen leaves crunched under his feet. He stomped up the yard, past the apple tree in the direction of the distant cries. The temperature was low, and when the wind blew it forced his neck down into his collar for warmth. He took long, swift strides up the ridge toward the cornfields, the moon only now inching above the curve of the horizon. There was little light, trees and boulders in various shades of gray and black and dark brown—a world in decay.
A faraway cry carried upon the wind and his legs hurried, crested the ridge, followed the growing volume. Upon flat ground, he ran, found the babies between rows of dead corn, bundled together tightly in Wilhelm’s large coat, their limbs struggling to free themselves. Andrew sat on the hard earth and gathered them against his chest, their wet faces soaking his shirt, the cries raspy and sore and painful. He held them, rocked them, kissed the tiny heads.
His heart thumped in dull beats. There were no thoughts, only a mournful solidity that seemed to drill him into the dirt amid the dead stalks. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. He rocked them gently against his warm body until the crying waned, their snoring wheezy from clogged nostrils. It was difficult carrying the two in one arm and he had to stop often to lift their sliding bodies with his hip. But they were peaceful now, warm, as he brought them back to the house and laid them into the crib in the heated kitchen.
Andrew removed his hat and coat, hung them on the hook behind the door. The lamp glowed from the parlor. Wilhelm sat in his chair reading the paper by the dim light, his glasses near the bottom of his nose.
“The twins are sleeping,” Andrew announced coldly.
Wilhelm didn’t look up. “Good.”
Andrew pulled back his shoulders and straightened his spine, stared down at the man. “They could have died out there.”
His uncle turned the page of the paper. “Well, they didn’t, did they?”
Andrew watched him from that angle, studied him. He hardly recognized the man he had ridden in the caboose with. That man had been full of muscle and brawn, hard humor and wit. This man was as grayed as the walls, in tones lighter or darker but always gray. They were both men but as different as two genders.
* * *
Andrew rose well before the sun, his sleep restless. He woke often to rock the twins when their crying started up again. Wilhelm usually milked the cows, but he’d do it this morning. He lit the lantern and went to the back of the barn to the youngest cow, set down the three-legged stool and milking pail beside her. The hay that had been left out the night before still remained untouched. The cow stared at it listlessly, drops of drool dripping in long strands to the straw along the ground. He touched the cow’s neck, bent down to listen near her mouth, her breathing labored. “What’s going on with you, girl?” he asked softly.
The cow stared straight as if she didn’t know he was there. He sat down on the stool and reached for the udder, but it shook. The back legs vibrated. He kicked the stool out of the way and touched the hind leg, felt the thigh tremble uncontrollably under his hands. Words flashed from the recesses of his mind, long ago in his medical books. He touched the lower back of the cow, the shaking fierce, and then he went numb. No. Pieces joined, collected and clicked into place. Oh, God. No.
Andrew grabbed the lantern and sprinted from the barn through the fields to the beginning edge of the dark woods. Please don’t be here. He fanned the lantern over the dark, moist ground, the leaves thick, and he pushed them away with his foot to uncover the underbrush. Please, no. He stooped along the edge, kicking up damp leaves and crunching sticks. And then he saw it. The round, white flowers, most dead but a few still vibrant atop long green leaves. He dropped the lantern to the ground and covered his face with his hand, the biliousness stirring his insides. Fiercely, he pulled at the plant, jerking up the roots from the soil and then grinding them dead with his boot heel.
By the time he made it back to the house, the light in Eveline’s room shone and he didn’t pause to think, ran up the stairs and bolted through the door. Wilhelm was buttoning his shirt. “What the hell you think—”
Andrew grabbed the bottle from Eveline’s hands. Before she could say a word or close her mouth, he panted, “It’s the milk.”
The babies roared in her arms. “What are you talking about?” she yelled over the cries.
“The milk.” He tried to catch his breath. “It’s poisoned. The cow’s been eating white snakeroot. You need to get the doctor here. Now.”
CHAPTER 26
Otto died first, cradled in Eveline’s arm. The declining cry faded until the baby slept and then the breathing stopped. Eveline held the dead infant as if the child simply rested, as if the unmoving chest were just pausing and would start up again in moments. And she spent the night in this way, cradling one dead child in one arm and one living one in the other. And she watched them in the dark, too tired to sleep, too numb to move. Wilhelm slept soundly next to her, his broad back hunched over the pillow that lay crunched at his stomach instead of under his head.
A light flutter floated from Harold. And with it, the air of life glided away and did not return. Still Eveline sat, her ears ringing from the quiet, perhaps the loudest quiet she had ever heard, the kind that made the blood throb in the ears.
Eveline closed her eyes and a tear squeezed and dripped down her cheek, but it was not of sadness but of disgrace. She wasn’t sad. She looked at her babies in horror with her own stoicism. I’m not sad. Tears of infamy slid down her face. I’m holding my dead babies and I don’t feel anything. Dear God.
God. Dr. Neeb had scratched his head, said it was up to God. The same doctor who told her to stop nursing and give the twins only cow’s milk; the same doctor who suddenly remembered that the previous owner had lost a quarter of his sheep to the same snakeroot plant. It’s up to God now, the doctor had said. And so it was.
The rooster hollered mournfully before the promise of light turned the black sky
to slate. Wilhelm turned on his back, grabbed the pillow and shoved it under his skull.
“They’re dead, Wilhelm,” she revealed quietly.
Her husband pulled up on one elbow. Blurry-eyed and disheveled, he looked at one baby and then the next. A sound Eveline had never heard cracked from his throat as he reached for the babies, took his sons from her stiff arms and held them to his chest. She had never seen him cry. Ever. And the sight sent a fury through her veins.
“Stop it!” she snapped. The contrast between his despair and her own callousness frightened her, made her feel inhuman, and she wanted to hit him, wanted to punch him in the jaw for his sensitivity and her lack.
“They were sick from the start,” she told him. “Better they went now instead of suffering on.” Her voice leveled with effort. “God did us a charitable grace by taking them without further pain.”
Wilhelm’s tears flowed unending upon the pale heads. “That’s enough!” she commanded, her hands shaking. She pulled the babies and wrapped them in the crocheted blanket. “You need to tell the pastor.”
Wilhelm turned as if in a dream, his skin still stained with drying tears as he pulled on his pants and snapped the suspenders over his bent shoulders and slunk downstairs.
Eveline moved the babies to the crib and did not look at them again. She made the bed and set off to the kitchen to start breakfast.
* * *
The small funeral service only highlighted their isolation. A few parishioners from the Protestant church attended, those who felt their presence mandatory at any event hosted by a pastor, as if their absence would be instantly recognized by God and in his anger he would strike down a herd of locusts to wipe out every crop.
Beneath the Apple Leaves Page 15