Beneath the Apple Leaves

by Harmony Verna

  Then there was the baby. The new life that grew inside sweet Lily. Within the confines of the old farmhouse, they all loved this child. They each took pride and protective responsibility for the unborn infant, as if they were all in silent competition to see who could love it more.

  * * *

  Andrew worked in the lower field cutting corn. He had nearly five acres to go. The corncrib was filled and so the rest would be sold at market. It had been a robust harvest.

  The kitchen was double the degrees of outside and Lily’s face flushed. She leaned against the table and drank in long gulps from the water Eveline offered.

  Eveline stroked the sweated hairs from Lily’s forehead. “You all right, child?”

  Lily nodded. “Just hot.” She rubbed her small belly absently as she always did.

  “Go on and get some fresh air, Lily,” Eveline directed. “Too hot in here. Not good for the little one.”

  “Better not.” Lily shook her head. “I’ll be all right.”

  “No, the air will help,” Eveline insisted. “Besides, if Frank was anywhere close, we would have heard his spurs jingling.”

  Lily laughed and took her water outside. She had been cooped up for so long that the sudden onslaught of pure sun seared her pale skin. She edged around Eveline’s garden, smelled the zinnias that colored in a fanned rainbow around the fence. She settled her hands under the growing belly and went to the old apple tree stump. She lowered herself, one hip at a time, and sat upon the rings of the cut trunk. She touched the sap, felt it still sticky against her fingers. She remembered when she used to climb this tree. It hadn’t been so long ago she had dreamed of this farm being hers and here she was. She patted her belly. It was a new life for them all.

  Lily leaned her head back, felt the full strength of the brilliant sunshine upon her face and closed eyelids. A wind drafted. Her braid jerked hard, nearly bent her neck to her shoulder blades. Another jerk and she screamed, her body suddenly yanked up from the hair roots.

  Frank held her hair like a rope, wound and seized it in his fist.

  “Help!” Lily screamed. Frank pulled again and she shrieked.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Lilith. I don’t,” he wheezed, his breath shallow and moist. His skin heated as if with fever and he wiped his nose on his sleeve, pulled tightly so her head was against his chest and her ear next to his mouth. “Just want my wife back. You hear me?” He jerked her hard for a response.

  His arm moved in front and Lily felt something sharp bite. Her pupils strained to see. The light reflected sharply off the knife blade held at her stomach.

  Lily closed her eyes, her body limp with what was to come as if she knew it would end this way all along. But not the baby. She couldn’t let him hurt her baby.

  “Please, Frank.” Eveline appeared. Will and Edgar were at her side and she pushed them behind her skirt. “Please,” she begged. “It doesn’t have to be this way. Let Lily go and we can talk. We’ll figure this out.”

  “Figure it out?” he screeched, then stumbled to regain his footing. “Claire!” he yelled. “Claire, you get out here now!”

  Frank stepped back, pulled Lily with him. She began to cry. “Please, don’t hurt me. Please. The baby.”

  He pulled her hair hard and she cried out. He put the blade under her neck. She felt the cool metal against the lines of her throat. He was going to kill her. She thought of Andrew. Below her panic, she was thankful he was not here to see. She cried for her baby. Cried for that life more than her own.

  Frank growled into her ear, “Been wanting to slice your throat for as—”

  An enormous crack shattered the air, reverberated from the very ground. Frank stumbled forward, crumpled over Lily’s stooped body and collapsed into a heap.

  Andrew dropped the crowbar and grabbed Lily, clutched her to his chest. Frank Morton twisted on the ground, his back curling.

  Andrew’s arm shook at Lily’s shoulder before he moved from her side, his eyes filled with the first hate she had ever seen in them. “Don’t, Andrew,” she called. But he was deaf to her voice, his footsteps weighted with rage.

  The young man’s face twisted as he landed a swift kick to Frank’s ribs. “Get up!” he ordered, his body rigid as he readied to deliver another blow.

  Will and Edgar hid their faces behind Eveline’s skirt.

  Lily winced. “Please, don’t—”

  “I said get up!” Andrew was blind to the world, to the faces turning away, his focus singular against the man on the ground. He landed a swift, harsh kick to Frank’s wrist that clutched his bruised side.

  Frank coughed into the dirt, his lungs spluttering. He rolled to his back, his face purple with hacking, his face dripping with pain and sweat. His broken hand trembled and reached for the clouds.

  Andrew’s gaze fell to the knife thrown in the grass. The silver gleamed in the light, promised a resolution. He stepped toward it, bent to grab the handle.

  “Stop, Andrew!” Eveline shouted. She broke from her sons and pulled at Andrew’s sleeve. “Don’t touch it.”

  Her nephew blinked spastically, the need for revenge driving him like a caged animal. “Look at him,” Eveline directed. Disgust pitched her voice and she stepped back from the writhing body. “He’s sick.” She didn’t need to say more.

  “I ain’t sick!” Frank climbed to his knees and coughed, his mouth wide and gasping for air. He clawed his chest, the wheezing loud and suffering. He clambered backwards clumsily. “Tell Claire to get ready!” he threatened. His lungs hissed, the veins in his forehead and neck blue and bloated as he tripped over his feet. “I’ll be back for her. Just wait.” He coughed endlessly, spit blood to the dirt as he found his way to the lane. “Get you, too, Lily. You wait!”

  The wildness left Andrew. He stepped back from the knife as if it were a cobra ready to strike. He reached for Lily and hugged her to him, his breathing desperate and protective. And they all watched the man fumble, the anger dissipating among them. Claire came out, white as a ghost. Will held her hand.

  Frank was without sight now, swaying and snaking up the rutted drive. He wouldn’t bother them again. He would be dead by morning.

  PART 5

  War is organized murder, and nothing else.

  —Harry Patch,

  last surviving soldier of World War I

  CHAPTER 55

  On November 11, 1918, the armistice was announced. The Great War had ended. In its wake, over 116,000 American fighters perished, another 200,000 wounded. Worldwide, over 37 million soldiers lost their lives on the battlefield.

  But the greatest cost to lives did not come from guns or bombs but from the Spanish influenza pandemic that killed over 50 million men, women and children across the globe. In Pittsburgh alone, six thousand people died of the flu, 1 percent of the city’s total population.

  As the war ended, the citizens of the nation tried to recover from the carnage. They looked up and blinked at the sun again, shook off the stupor that had paralyzed and crazed a country. Posters crafted with hatred and propaganda were torn from windows and telegraph poles. The American Protective League faded into obliteration like exhaust. And those who had cursed and abused their German American neighbors, colleagues and customers now averted their eyes. Their actions distant and inexplicable to their own hearts, clouded as a nightmare.

  Pieter Mueller returned from the war. He had only been stationed overseas for four months, but enough time to leave him thin and limping from shrapnel and with a pretty young bride on his arm.

  Those who lived along the narrow country road on the outskirts of Plum gave Pieter a hero’s welcome. Widow Sullivan gave him her favorite tan mare, refused to take her back. Bernice Stevens made a cake the size of a butcher block. Every Mueller from every inch of Pennsylvania brought beer and roasted chickens, sausage linked like garlands. Heinrich butchered two hogs. Lily and Claire brought piles of cookies and pies of every fruit. Accordions squeezed and Germans sang. Old man Stevens danced a jig wi
th Widow Sullivan, their hunched backs twirling like dancers in antique music boxes. Chinese firecrackers lit up the night while Fritz, Anna, Edgar and Will spun under the sparks as they rained in pink and green and gold splendor. Gerda clapped with her thick hands, nearly made the earth shake with her stomping feet.

  Andrew sat on the ground, leaned against a giant maple in the Mueller yard, Lily sitting between his legs, her head resting on his chest. A violin started. A voice of deep baritone sang into the night, the handsome tune reaching straight to the stars.

  Pieter carried a full glass of frothy beer in one hand, his other flung around his wife. And she held the hand of another young man who walked with a cane, his eyes blind, clamped shut and scarred.

  Andrew and Lily rose to meet them. Pieter let go of his wife and gave Andrew a burly hug, the men thumping each other on the backs, grinning ear to ear. “How’s it feel to be a hero?” Andrew asked.

  “I’ll let you know when I meet one.” His old friend smirked, the harrows of the war still embedded in the tired lines around his eyes. Pieter turned to Lily then and sighed, gave her a long, easy smile that washed away any hurt of the past. “Hi, Lily.”

  “Hi, Pieter,” she greeted him, the relief swelling her cheeks.

  “I want you to meet my wife, Gwyneth. If it weren’t for her, doubt I’d be standing here.” He kissed the shy brunette by his side. “Something about a pretty nurse picking shell bits out of your thigh makes it almost worth getting shot.” Pieter’s face turned sublime, serious. “Thought you two would get along.”

  The women shook hands, timidly at first and then naturally, as if their paths had crossed before. “When are you due?” asked Gwyneth.

  “Early spring.” Lily rubbed her belly. “She’s kicking already, though. Think she’s hungry for some of those cakes.”

  “Come on,” the woman urged. “Didn’t want to be the first one to grab a plate. Now I have an excuse.” She laughed and the ladies headed to the rows of tables piled with food.

  “Andrew, there’s someone I want you to meet.” Pieter put his hand on the shoulder of the blind man beside him. “This is Gwyneth’s brother, Robert Weiner. We served together.”

  The man put out a strong hand and Andrew took it in greeting. “Pieter’s told me a lot about you,” Robert said. “Talked about nothing else at the hospital. Almost had to tell the nurses to bandage my ears along with my eyes.”

  Pieter chuckled, then raised his chin at Andrew knowingly. “Robert was with the Veterinary Corps, in charge of the horses in our battalion.”

  Andrew’s stomach dropped, the yearning for a dream sudden and unexpected.

  “He ran a practice in Maryland before the war,” Pieter continued. “Looking to start anew in these parts.”

  Robert Weiner’s face waited, the blind eyes placed on Andrew as if with sight. “I was hoping you might help me.” The request came humbly, a pang of grief laced with the words. “I need someone to be my eyes. Help me with surgeries.”

  “I’m sorry, Robert.” Andrew’s voice dropped away. “I never made it to college.”

  “Well, I’ve done enough schooling for us both, I think. I could train you. You’d still have enough time at the farm. We’d start out slow. Be better for us both.”

  “So, Houghton, what do you think?” Pieter rocked on his heels, grinned. “Ain’t polite to leave the man waiting. You in?”

  From the corner of his eye, Andrew saw Lily laughing with Gwyneth, her hand on her belly while the other balanced a forkful of cake. Close behind, Eveline listened with mirth as Gerda’s animated figure told a story with its whole enormous form. Claire discussed baking tips with Bernice Stevens. Will and Edgar chased Fritz in the tall weeds. And in that moment, the land stilled. The movements of the season slowed and pulsed.

  A slow smile crept across Andrew’s face. “I’m in.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Marilyn Claire Houghton was born with an early spring. Gerda Mueller delivered the baby with authority and grace, guiding Lily through the pain as she had when her own daughters delivered. And Andrew was there, despite the protests of everyone that his presence was not appropriate. But he would not leave and held Lily’s hand through the endless hours of contractions and birth. And when he held his daughter, his daughter, in the crook of his arm and she looked at him with that endless stare it struck him that her first impression of him would never be of lack. His daughter would never think it strange that his arm was not there. He was simply her father, whole and complete. She would not know that she was held in only one arm. She would simply know that she was held.

  And he worshipped this little being—the sunburnt-colored skin and the hazel eyes of his wife, the V between the brows as she scrunched up her face with the new sensitivities outside the womb. Andrew’s eyes drifted from his baby to the small room. They rested on Eveline hugging Mrs. Mueller and the two women doting on Lily and he looked at his wife, at her tired glow, a woman who had traveled a long journey to find her home in his embrace.

  His daughter squirmed in his arm. She opened and closed her gummy mouth and struggled to open her eyelids. A tear dripped from his eye and landed on his daughter’s cheek, startling her. He blinked away the rest.

  Look at my child, he said silently to his father in Heaven. Look at your granddaughter. And he called out to his mother overseas, realized that she hadn’t slighted him with her letter but protected him with her distance. Look at my child, he told her. And they did. And his daughter smiled in that gurgling, gassy way and he laughed. He laughed and he cried and he held his daughter while his parents held her, too.

  She’s perfect, they said. Perfect. And they held him, too. Kissed his temple.

  The baby scrunched her forehead and let out a tiny, shrill cry. Eveline gently took the child from her nephew. “She needs to nurse.”

  Eveline handed the baby to Lily. The tiny infant rubbed her nose down her mother’s breast hungrily and latched on quickly. Lily’s eyes rounded in awe. She met Andrew’s eyes gratefully and mouthed, She’s drinking!

  Lily fed this child from her body. She had conceived this child and birthed this child from her body. And she was no longer a being of the dark. She cried hard at this and the baby had difficulty holding on with her mother’s sobbing. Andrew stepped forward, but Eveline held him back. “Let her cry.”

  She was not impure. Lily looked at her baby. Something that was black and tainted could not create light. Only light came from light. And her soul and her heart cracked open and she cried with forgiveness for herself. She cried for what she had never seen within herself. She cried for all that she was and for all that had been locked away.

  It was a personal, sacred moment and Gerda went to tidy the kitchen. Eveline left the room, just long enough to see Andrew wrapping his wife into his arm and kissing his child between them.

  Eveline Kiser wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and went out of the house. The air was cold and bit at her skin, but she relished it, the first sensations that touched alive and real against her skin in a very long time. The sky was blue and open, the sun too bright to look at, yet she tried, let the sharpness burn her pupils for a moment before closing her eyes. She wanted to look at the sun. Wanted to look at all the brightness again, the light. She felt she had been locked in a closet for eternity and now she was out and she wanted to feel the cold air and look straight into the core of the sun and walk barefoot across the cool earth.

  Eveline was drawn to the place of the old apple tree, scanned the empty space still seeing the girth of the trunk, the thick lines of the rugged bark and the branches that sprawled outward from the center. She sat down on the round stump, clutched the firmness and steadiness of it under her like sitting in the earth’s palm. The breeze stirred the tiny hairs around her face. Gray hairs, she thought to herself. Not all, but some. She had aged; this she knew. She had been to Hell and back and climbed by her fingernails to this place.

  The sun warmed the side of her face despite the chilly sp
ring air. She glanced at the old farmhouse, the perimeter of her dead garden and the fields that lay flat and barren as far as the eye could see. But these sights did not bring despair but all that was opposite and she smiled, felt the oddness of her lips shaped in such a way, wondered the last time she had smiled and meant it.

  Soon the garden would sprout again. The fields would show the green shoots and rows upon rows of new life blooming and her sons would run to the creek to fish and ride the horses and go to town fairs.

  A new breeze entered, wrapped around Eveline’s shoulders and held her close. The beautiful, subtle scent of him entered. The goose bumps rose across her flesh and her hair stood on end. Her heart swelled and her mouth stretched in a pained smile. A tear dripped from her eye and trailed to her chin. “Hello, Wilhelm,” she whispered.

  There was silence, warm and bright and thick. The energy moved up the left side of her body, filled her through the cells. She turned to him. He was there. She could see him and yet he was unseen.

  I’m sorry I left you, came the words.

  “I know.”

  But I never left you.

  Tears squeezed. “I know, Wilhelm. I know.”

  The screen door from the porch opened and closed. The voice silenced, but the warmth remained. Andrew escorted Lily carefully over the walkway as if she were an invalid.

  “Can you tell your nephew I’m not going to break?” Lily called sweetly to Eveline. The young woman cradled the child, smiled at her bald head.

  “You just delivered a human being,” Andrew interjected, still in awe. “You’re lucky I’m not carrying you.”

  Eveline stood, patted the old trunk of the apple tree. “Come sit. The fresh air will do you all some good.” With that she headed back to the house, looked back only once to see Andrew sitting down and Lily perched on his lap, her head nestled in his neck, their baby tucked within their embrace.

  A burst of warm air cut through the cold, strong enough to blow the leaves up and around the stump of the tree. As they settled again, a vibrant green glowed from the base. Andrew bent, tossed the rotting leaves to the side, found the new shoots growing victoriously from the bottom of the cut stump, strong and firm and pulsing with new life.