Beneath the Apple Leaves

by Harmony Verna

  “What about the Ford?”

  Wilhelm headed out of the room and called back without turning, “All fixed.”

  During the journey, silence hovered between the men, alleviated only by the constant grind of the engine and clattering fan belt below the hood. “I shouldn’t have said what I did to you the other day. Wasn’t right and I didn’t mean it. Not a word of it,” Wilhelm finally confessed. “I’m sorry.”

  Andrew faced the window, cracked at the top, the wind whipping at his hair and leaving him chilled. “Don’t have to apologize.”

  “Yes, I do. Had no right speaking to you the way I did.” Wilhelm gripped the steering wheel, bit the inside of his cheek. “You’re working just as hard as the rest of us. Probably harder. Saved my family by finding that snakeroot when you did.”

  But not in time to save the twins. Andrew pressed his feet into the floor of the car.

  “That’s why I’m bringing you to the city.” Wilhelm glanced at his nephew sheepishly. “Call it a thank-you.”

  Wilhelm and Andrew headed into the streets of Pittsburgh, the roads crowded with cars, the city thick with gray soot—a world shifting from color to black-and-white. His uncle turned into a side street lined with stone houses and topped with slate roofs. Large sycamores hovered on both sides, their leaves nearly eclipsing the iron streetlights planted between them. He parked the car in front of a tall house with a wide porch. Climbing roses, the flowers now browning, dotted the stiff, thorny stems.

  Wilhelm got out of the car and Andrew followed, climbed up the flat steps, avoiding the ones with the broken and peeling slate. The door opened before they needed to knock and a woman in a green and yellow dress stepped out to the porch.

  “Willy!” Her hands found her hips and she looked him over in dismay. “My word, it’s been too long!”

  “Hey, Francine.” Wilhelm smiled, bashful. “Looking lovely as always.”

  The woman squeezed his shoulder with affection. “Heard you moved out to the country with that pretty wife of yours. How’s farm life treating you?”

  “Not as good as the railroad.” He shrugged, immediately sullen with the mention. “But Eveline’s happy. I think, anyway.” He seemed confused by his own thoughts, awkward with the description.

  Just then, both faces turned to Andrew. The woman pressed her hands together. “My word! Is this Andrew?”

  Wilhelm nodded and she smacked him coyly. “Could have at least told me what a handsome man he is! My word, boy, about the best-looking fella I ever laid eyes on.”

  Andrew blushed, not sure how to respond to the compliment or the open sentiment. The woman wasn’t unattractive, must have been pretty at one time, but her face wrinkled with tired lines. She wore too much makeup, which gave her a caked, powdery look. She was older than he, maybe in the mid-twenties, but carried a whole life in the circles under her eyes. Her dress appeared a size too small and her bosom and hips bulged from the fabric in mounds.

  Wilhelm put his hat back on and turned to go. “Take good care of him, all right?”

  She rested her hand on Andrew’s shoulder, the touch light and gentle and too friendly. “Don’t have to worry about that, Willy. Leave it to me.”

  He winked at Andrew. “You can thank me later.” And went to the car.

  Andrew’s heart raced, felt part of a story with a hidden plot. The woman put her arm around him and her voice softened, cooed in his ear. “My name’s Francine, but you can call me Frannie. Hell, you can call me anything you like, Blue Eyes.”

  They walked into the house. She moved to the edge of the steps. The top buttons of her dress were undone and the crease of her bosom curved like a black moon. The low hall light tinged her blond hair green. “Come on in, son,” she said gently. “You don’t need to be afraid. I’ll take good care of you.”

  She took his hand and led him through the door and he did not protest as she drew him up the carpeted stairs, threadbare in the center from traffic. Different scents of heavy toilet water—lilac, rose, jasmine—mingled and grew and his head dizzied in their garden. She brought him into a room that had little more than a giant bed covered in dark green velvet. She closed the door and came up from behind, her warm breath against his neck before her arms wrapped around his waist and reached to undo his belt.

  Clarity broke and he jumped from her touch. He put up his hand. “Hold on,” he called out. His hand flew to his hair, grated through the strands as he tried to compose his thoughts. “I think there’s been some sort of mistake.”

  She covered her mouth and looked at him like a charming puppy. “Wilhelm didn’t tell you then?”

  “Tell me what?”

  She stopped laughing and approached seductively, nearly crawling toward him. “He didn’t tell you why you are here or what I do?”

  Andrew stepped back, but she followed, etched the shape of his chin in her soft fingers. “I take care of a man’s needs, Andrew.” Her fingers touched his neck, played with the collar of his shirt. “I touch a man where he likes it best,” she whispered, playing with the top button of his shirt. She leaned to his ear and touched her tongue to his lobe. “I’m going to take you between my legs, Andrew.” She reached down to his pants and cupped his groin.

  Everything caught fire, ignited all at once. He hardened in her hand and couldn’t think. Only one working organ pulsed in his whole body. She kissed his neck, her dry curly hair rubbing against his cheek, and lucidity entered again. He stepped back, but she followed. “Just stop for a minute,” he ordered. “Just stop. All right.” His voice waffled, shifted disorientedly. She pouted a bottom lip with the scolding.

  “All right,” she consented haughtily. The woman brushed past and sat at the edge of the bed, one leg crossed high on the thigh of the other, her garter belt visible above her stockings.

  Andrew paced. He was sweating. “It’s nothing personal, miss.”

  “Francine,” she interjected.

  “Francine.” He walked back and forth, turned in short circles. “Look, it’s not that I’m not flattered or appreciative of what you . . . do. But I’m not going to do this. Not this way. Just doesn’t feel right.” A hurt look flashed in her eyes. “Nothing against you. I’m not judging you, miss—I mean, Francine. It’s just, I’d rather do this with my own girl, in my own time.”

  Francine studied him and her demeanor changed, turned from sultry and forced to warm. When she smiled this time, the tiredness left her eyes as if she was relieved of some duty or expectation. She became pretty then, in a worn way. And he saw the effects of what the profession had taken from what must have been a very sweet and beautiful girl.

  Andrew sat next to her on the bed, the anxiety, the threat, now subdued. “I’m not sure why my uncle brought me here. It doesn’t seem like him.”

  “He feels bad.” Her eyes softened, rounded in kindness. “He blames himself for what happened to you. This is his way of making amends.”

  Andrew glanced at his missing arm, the fabric sewn shut at the shoulder. “You mean he feels sorry for me.” The wind knocked out of his chest left him hollow and angry. “Didn’t think any girl would be with me. So he paid for one.” The clearness of the pity, the hanging thought, stung more than the amputation.

  She touched his knee for a moment. “It’s his own guilt that’s shaming him, Andrew. In his mind, this was a gift to you, an atonement maybe.”

  He squeezed his fist, the hurt raw and deep. His uncle’s insult worse than the one delivered in the barn.

  Francine tilted her head as she watched him. “You’re a handsome man, Andrew. Nearly took my breath away when I saw you, and trust me, I see a lot of men walk through these doors. But you’re different. The guys come in here looking to feel like a man and here you are, already being one, not needing anyone to show you how.

  “That arm being gone ain’t nothing. Any girl be blessed and honored to spend a night or a life with you. Can see that without hardly knowing you at all. You got kind eyes, honest eyes. Any girl be l
ucky to be with you.”

  She smiled but then looked mischievous, glanced over his shoulder at the clock next to the bed. “Listen, we still got over an hour and it’s all paid for. I think I can still do something for you, young man. If you’re open to it.”

  He blushed again and shook his head. “I told you, I wouldn’t feel right being with you. Hardly knowing you at all as it is.”

  She laughed. “I know. That’s not what I’m talking about, love. I’m talking more about a”—she searched the ceiling for the right word—“a lesson.”

  Francine stood before him. “Think of me as a teacher,” she said as she began to undo the buttons on her dress. “One day you’re going to meet the girl of your dreams and it’ll be a good idea if you know how to please her.” She stripped the dress off her shoulders, remained there half-naked in her corset. Andrew grew hard again, stared in wonder at the body, fascinated by the pale skin and the feminine curves. She unsnapped the corset methodically, dropped it to the floor. He gulped.

  “Most men don’t know how to touch a woman, Andrew. Come to think of it, most don’t care, either. But you do what I say and you’ll have your woman screaming out your name to the rooftops.”

  Francine jumped on the bed and leaned back on the pillows. She spread her thighs, the hair between her legs opening to reveal the pink flesh between. He stared, couldn’t have stopped staring if he had a gun pointed to his head.

  She squirmed comfortably, slid her fingers to her crotch. “Now, watch carefully. . . .”

  * * *

  When her paid hour finished, Francine walked Andrew to the door, whispered instructions as if he were taking notes. “Now remember what I showed you. You can do that just as well with the tongue, too. Lick like a cat drinks water, not the way a hound dog does.” She grimaced for emphasis. “And remember to take your time with a woman, make her want it and make her wait. Kiss her softly with not too much tongue; keep it dry, you know? Not too wet. Kiss the neck, too.”

  Wilhelm waited for them on the porch, did not meet Andrew’s face and only acknowledged Francine, his manner much more self-conscious than before. She wiped her brow dramatically. “Sugar wore me out!”

  Awkwardly, Wilhelm pulled bills from his wallet and handed them to Francine. “Thanks, Frannie.”

  “Was my pleasure.” She winked at Andrew. “My pleasure indeed.”

  The men rode in the car, the endless churn of the engine rattling along the map of roads. Andrew glanced at his uncle’s face, the absent and distant focus, as he drove before saying, “I need to ask you something.”

  Wilhelm stiffened with the tone. “What is it?”

  “Have you been there before?” He tapped his foot on the floor of the Ford. The thought of a betrayal to Aunt Eveline flattened his frame against the seat—the woman had become a second mother to him. “Have you been with those women?” he accused.

  Wilhelm Kiser veered off the side of the road, the wheels bouncing dangerously across the rocks before he set the brake. “You listen here and listen good. I’ve never laid a hand on one of those women!” His voice rose fiercely. “Never once!”

  Andrew wasn’t afraid, met the man’s fierceness with his own hard gaze.

  His uncle pulled away first, eased the car back onto the main road. “Though I guess I could see why you’d think that,” he admitted, and leaned back into the seat. “Look, a lot of the rail men visited places like that. Lost more men on the line from syphilis than accidents. A man gets lonely being en route for weeks at a time.”

  He turned suddenly to Andrew. “But I swear on my life, on my boys, I’ve never been with one of those ladies. Never cheated on Eveline and never would. You got it?”

  Andrew nodded, the relief expanding his chest. From there, they fell into their own reverie as they passed the morbid, stinking factories and fetid skyline of the city’s heart. As they paralleled the railroad lines, a Pennsylvania steamer barreled past. Wilhelm followed the train through the glass, stared at its trail in the rearview mirror until the caboose disappeared under a tail of black smoke, his face forlorn and sagging.

  “The accident wasn’t your fault,” Andrew said softly.

  The man’s grip tightened on the steering wheel and his knuckles whitened. His Adam’s apple rose and dropped in his throat.

  “I don’t blame you,” Andrew said. “Never have.”

  Wilhelm turned his head to the window, bit his bottom lip. “Not a day goes by I don’t blame myself for what happened.” His voice sounded as an echo that bounced upon the recesses of his mind, a long-buried regret birthed into words.

  CHAPTER 30

  Lily tasted blood in her mouth. She wiped the corner with her finger and the red tip confirmed it. Frank had hit her before, but it had been when she was still a child, when she had cried from the slap and run hiding into the woods.

  Her cheek stung and throbbed, but she would not cradle it for comfort. She was no longer a child. She tasted the blood again, the iron of her own blood, and was not afraid. She turned her head back in line and stared stonily at her brother-in-law until he budged.

  “Why you got to push me, Lilith?” Frank scratched his forehead. “Why you got to be so goddamn stubborn?” He lifted a hand again and feigned restraint. “If I tell you to do something, by God you better listen to me!”

  “Hit me again, Frank,” she ordered. “I’m never going to listen to you, so you better hit me again!”

  He stepped forward now, his face high above her own. She breathed heavily through her nose to keep up her confidence. She leaned back as to not break focus with her intent, to not waver from his look.

  Frank Morton smiled. He reached out and smoothed down her hair tenderly. She recoiled, the touch making her skin crawl. She’d gladly endure a thousand smacks to those fingers dancing on her cheek.

  “I won’t ever hit you again, Lilith,” he clucked. “Never again.”

  Now she felt a child. Now she wanted to cry and run hiding into the woods. He sensed her fear and inched closer, rubbed his finger down her neck. “You’ve always been prettier than your sister. Smarter, too.”

  Her chin quivered, her body frozen in fear and disgust.

  “I could take you if I wanted.” He drew a line under her neck to her collarbone. “Know I could.” He chuckled. “And you wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about it.”

  “I’d scream,” she hissed, her voice barely audible.

  “No, you wouldn’t.” He rubbed her arms knowingly. “You’d scare Claire. I could do anything I wanted to you and you wouldn’t make a peep, would you?”

  Tears began to flow over her rigid face, her mind blank, curled in terror. Her legs begged to run. Run. Run.

  Suddenly, he let go and stepped back. “But I’m not going to lie with you, little Lily.” He winked and started to walk away. “A moonshiner knows enough not to get drunk on his own stock.”

  * * *

  Despite his most noble attempts, Andrew could not shake the experience in Pittsburgh with that woman. His blood flowed hotter. The nerve endings under his skin vibrated and the urges pulsed and left him too restless at night to sleep and too agitated during the day to think straight. And when the desires ached to a near pain, he would chop wood until his hand blistered and the ax shuddered. Then he would look at the thick forest and wonder if there would be enough wood to get him through another day of longing.

  But it was not the wanting of the prostitute within the stone house. The ache called for a woman whose name sat carved beneath the apple leaves. Lily hadn’t come in over a week and he missed her, missed the smile and the fresh scent of her skin. And before he knew it, he found himself picking up the ax again.

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Eveline asked to his inquiry. “Frank stopped by and said Lily needed to help Mrs. Sullivan for a while.” She folded a sheet in her hands. “Woman hasn’t been well, apparently.”

  That evening after chores, Andrew headed down to the widow’s house. He pulled down his cloth cap
and kept his hand warm in his pocket.

  He rounded the lane to the old woman’s charming homestead and rapped on the door. “I’ll get it,” Lily’s voice echoed from inside. She looked startled when she saw Andrew. As a shield, she put her hand to her cheek.

  “Hi,” he said.

  She looked behind her and then at the floor. “Now’s not a good time. Mrs. Sullivan can’t talk right now.”

  “Didn’t come to see Mrs. Sullivan.”

  Lily kept her hand to her face. “I can’t talk now, either.”

  “Who’s there, Lilith?” Mrs. Sullivan hobbled to the door, her hunched back nearly humped. “For goodness’ sake, child, why didn’t you invite the boy in?” The widow didn’t wait for an answer and opened the door, pulled Andrew in by his elbow.

  “It’s freezing out there,” she harped. “Come warm yourself by the fire, son.”

  Andrew allowed the woman to lead him, saw Lily shrink into the shadows. “How’s your aunt doing?” she inquired. “Haven’t seen her since the funeral.”

  “Better.” He smiled at the old woman, his muscles thawing in the cozy room.

  “So hard for me to get around these days,” she lamented. “Can’t even use the buggy—” She wiped a pearly eye with a handkerchief. “Oh, never mind. You’d think me a silly ole fool.”

  “You’re not silly, Mrs. Sullivan.” Lily picked at the crocheted blanket draped over the sofa. “Nothing silly about caring for your horse.”

  The woman’s wrinkled lips quivered and she dabbed her eye again. “Got herself all sick,” she told Andrew. “Stomach’s swelled up like a water tank. Can’t hardly walk.”

  “May I take a look?”

  “Andrew was planning to be a veterinarian,” Lily added.

  The old woman lit up. “Would you? Was going to send for Mr. Thompson in town. Course, he knows more about butchering than nurturing, but thought he might help.” She cocked her head at Andrew and studied his face. “My word, son. Look at those eyes! My sight isn’t what it used to be, but on my word, I can see those!” She looked for Lily one way and then another before she found her tucked next to the sofa. “Lilith, have you seen this boy’s eyes?”