Beneath the Apple Leaves(2)
He couldn’t get out fast enough. “Yes, sir.”
CHAPTER 2
Uniontown, Pennsylvania—1916
Beneath the open and shattered hillside of the Pennsylvania coalfields, between the blurred swings of autumn and winter, Andrew Houghton bundled against the cold and put an arm around the young woman by his side. “You warm enough?” he asked.
“I’m f-f-fine.” Her teeth chattered through her forced smile.
“No, you’re not.” Andrew stopped, shed his coat and draped it around her shoulders. “Better?”
She gave a slight sigh and nodded. “You’re going to freeze without your jacket.”
“Me? No! Feels like summer,” he mused, and put his arm back around her, his skin shivering. “Besides, got my bruises to keep me warm.”
She grimaced. “You’re too handsome to be messing with those fights, Andrew.” Gingerly, she touched his swollen cheek, and he stiffened. “Besides, how you going to kiss me with your lip swollen like that?”
Andrew gave a quick, uncomfortable laugh and loosened his grip. He should have known better than to hold her so close. She stopped and pulled the large wool coat tighter around her body, her eyes beseeching. “Why haven’t you ever kissed me?” she asked in earnest.
The cold cut through his thin linen shirt. “If the police captain caught me kissing his daughter, there would be a couple broken bones to go with this bruise.”
“Don’t tease me,” she said. “You’re no more afraid of my father than you are of those men in the boxing ring. So, tell me why you won’t kiss me. The truth this time.”
Andrew exhaled slowly, looked at the pretty young woman, her soft eyes brown as a doe’s. He could kiss her. He could take her in his arms and kiss the lips that waited. After all, pleasures were few and far between in the coal patches. But that’s all it would be—a quick blast of pleasure, a sweet distraction soon to sour. He didn’t want to lead her on. “I can’t offer you anything,” he finally said.
She stuck out her chin and scoffed. “What does that mean?”
“Look,” he started, and tried to think; she wasn’t making this easy. “I’m just not looking for a girl right now,” he said as kindly as he could. “I just don’t feel that way about you. I’m sorry.”
Her jaw dropped and her eyes fluttered with the rebuff. “Do you have any idea how many men would jump at the chance to be with me?”
“I don’t doubt it,” he consoled. “You’re a beautiful—”
“Do you have any idea how many men beg to kiss me?” she shouted. “Do you?”
His skin numbed under the gooseflesh and he was tired. His face hurt in pulses. He was relieved he never kissed her. “Well, you shouldn’t have any trouble finding a replacement then.”
She snarled in disgust and tore off his jacket, threw it at his chest. “Should have known better than to cohort with a coal miner’s son.”
“Cohort,” he teased, amused by her tantrum. “Is that what we were doing?”
“You think you’re so smart, don’t you?” She snorted white steam from her nose. “Should be kissing my feet I’d even talk to you, let alone let you walk me home.”
Andrew slipped on his coat, relishing the warmth. He turned off his ears to her whiney trill and turned around.
“Never would have let you kiss me anyway, Andrew Houghton!” she hollered. “Take me a day to wipe the soot off my mouth!”
He smirked, gave a dismissive wave and kept walking.
“So proud, are you? One day you’ll be picking underground and I’ll be dancing over your head!” Her last ranting filtered away into the night. Dodged a bullet with that filly, he thought gratefully, and blew a hefty puff of white air from his mouth.
The road back home was quiet, the sky black as pitch. Lanterns were turned off in all but a few windows. A stray dog scurried nearby, licked at a fetid puddle. Andrew knelt down. “Come here, girl.” He clicked his tongue.
The dog inched forward, the head bowed low, the back hunched, ready to sprint at the slightest hint of aggression. Andrew stuck out his hand, let the dog sniff his fingers, her ears pulled back protectively. He smiled and scratched the neck of the pup, who hurried forward and gave two great licks to Andrew’s face. “Whoa, girl.” He laughed. “What’s with everybody trying to kiss me tonight?”
A garbage can tipped and crashed. A feral cat shrieked and the dog jolted into the night. Andrew stood, wiped the dog’s drool from his swollen cheek with his sleeve. The silence seeped with the cold, brought a melancholy to the empty stretch ahead.
He turned from the even road of the town center toward the rutted and sloped curve that headed to the mine housing. The melancholy grew—a nostalgia for a life that didn’t exist, a longing for the type of woman that didn’t exist. It seemed all the women he met fell in two categories: the spoiled girls from town and the listless, broken girls from the patches. He wanted neither.
The lines of a poem by Atticus drifted into his thoughts, the words pantomiming each boot step forward: Her heart was wild, but I didn’t want to catch it, I wanted to run with it, to set mine free.