Beneath the Apple Leaves(4)
The young man ran a hand through his thick dark hair, scratched above his ears to rouse. In the kitchen, he stooped over the coal box and refilled the stove, then set the water to heat. He warmed his hands above the black iron, his breath visible from his lips.
Frederick and Carolien Houghton slept soundly in the next room, Andrew’s parents unburdened and secure within the wool blankets, his father’s light snoring soothing in the tightness of the small house. Soon, the owl would wake them, too, and Andrew’s father would head underground, pick rock from dawn until dusk.
Andrew put the tin mugs on the table, caught his tarnished reflection in the dented metal. He held a cup closer to his face, inspected his swollen lip, bruised jaw and blackened eye. Practicing a weak smile, he tried to mask the injuries with a beguiling grin, but all it did was open the cut on his lip and make him look not quite right in the head. He reached into his back pocket and took out the money he had won from the night’s fight, pulled out the steel box shoved behind the crocks of lard and cured meat. The coins were deep and the box heavy, the sound of his future clinking inside. Andrew crammed the bills and clicked the clasp, then slid the bank back into place.
The movement uncovered a small piece of paper tucked under the empty sugar canister: a bill from the company store—coffee, tea, lye, oatmeal, castor oil, sugar, dried mustard, pork, cheese, beans. Black lines crossed off half the items, the edits from the store clerk of what exceeded the Houghton credit. The familiar indignation rose. Andrew folded the receipt carefully back to the original despondent creases and slid the note back under the canister, the box of coins poking out guiltily.
Feet shuffled in the bedroom. Andrew busied a cast-iron skillet to the stove. Carolien Houghton placed a waxy, gnarled hand upon his. She was a beautiful woman, young in face with blue eyes that matched his own, but her hands were shiny and warped and ancient. In the cold months, she ached from the cold, her joints tight and balled in hard, painful knots.
“Go rest, Andrew,” she whispered. “No need for you to be up yet.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” He kept his face turned. “I’ll start the sausage.”
“Only have scrapple,” she noted while tapping his hand to release the skillet. The woman rubbed her twisted hands over the heat. Andrew brought out a few chipped plates while she poured the boiling water into the blue spotted enamel pot and stirred in the black grounds. Dawn would forever mean the scent of his mother’s simmering coffee.
Andrew brought her shawl and wrapped her shoulders, partly to warm the body and partly to keep her blind to his injuries. She spooned a heap of opaque fat into the pan, the hissing loud and sputtering in the small open room.
Andrew watched his mother work over the stove as she held her shawl tight and away from the spitting grease. Carolien’s life revolved around the four walls of the unpainted home, the tiny chicken coop and vegetable garden in the back, her only travel to the company store or to the pump house on washing day. In the summer, she baked, canned and pickled; in winter, she stretched the meals with buckwheat cakes, fried carrots, potatoes and meatless red sauce. And Andrew’s mother did her chores as they all did, with the soundless dignity that hid the tired bones and weary limbs.
The rooster crowed from the henhouse. The shadow of the owl flickered across the window as the wings flew to the fresh forest beyond. Carolien closed her eyes, recited the short prayer she made every morning before her husband burrowed underground. Andrew, forgetting about his bruises, handed the egg basket to his mother.
The woman jolted, the wooden spoon held high and dripping above the pan. “What happened to you?”
“It’s nothing.” Andrew rolled his eyes and cursed himself, tried to dodge his puffy profile from her full view, but she was quick and grabbed his face.
Her mouth fell open before her lips clamped shut and formed a pursed circle. “Frederick!”
“Don’t wake him—”
She stormed to the low wooden bed and shook the lump of blankets. “Get up!” Frederick buried his head under the covers, grunted and turned toward the wall, twisted the thin mattress so the burlap ticking was visible. She pulled the blanket from his body in one quick snap and dropped it to the floor.
“Eh, Frederick, enough of this now! What did I tell you about letting Andrew fight in those ham an’ eggers?” She knew all about the boxing matches held every Thursday. The winner got the money; the loser got a ham sandwich. Some of the weaker miners lived on a diet of little else.
Frederick wiped the sleep from his eyes, his hair jutting in two directions at once. “Come now, Carolien, don’t get yourself all in a huff—”
“A huff? Andrew’s face is half-beaten!”
Andrew came up from behind, snapping his suspenders in place over his shoulders. “It doesn’t hurt, Ma. I swear it.”
“See.” Frederick pointed. “Not so bad. And, ah, you should have seen him! Went through three rounds without a scratch until that young Pole weaved his way in. What’s his name, Drew? Bobi-enski? Got arms like iron pistons, that one.”
Andrew smiled, spurted a new line of blood on his bottom lip. “Got him square on the jaw, though.”
“That you did, Son.” His father winked and stretched one thick arm above his head. “That you did.”
Carolien shook her head and gave up the cause, trudged to the kitchen. “Two peas in a brawny pod,” she mumbled, then issued sternly, “but that’s the last of it. Hear me?” She sliced the scrapple and flung the mix of pork scrapings and cornmeal in the pan amid angry inner rumblings. One by one, she cracked the eggs over the skillet like mini skulls.