Abraham's Cloak

Words by Sharon A. Pruchnik

Art by Sandra Eckert

Anika watched as Mrs. Owens shot fistfuls of feed at the chickens scurrying along the picket fence. The woman’s wide, bare feet padded along the damp earth, and her arms jiggled stubbornly like chicken wattles. Her movements were unlike the sweeping arcs her mother used and Anika copied when she was a little girl. The window-glass Anika looked through made the woman’s movements wavy and distorted, as if a wall of ice stood between the two of them.

Anika pressed her fingers to the glass. Cool, always cool here. The Pennsylvania sun didn’t warm like the Virginia sun back home. Earlier she’d wrapped Abraham’s cloak around her shoulders and burrowed her bare feet under the frayed quilt on the bed as Will buttoned his shirt and tucked it into his pants. “Don’t forget, in front of the opera house on Main,” he’d said. “You know where that is, don’t you? If you get lost, ask someone waiting for the parade.”

“I think I remember,” Anika told him, her eyes focused on her husband’s back, her red hair draped across his pillow. Will took a few coins from under the kerosene lamp and buried them in his trousers pocket. Anika curled close to herself and listened as Will left with Pete and the others, the sound of their boots on the floor below strong and then gone.

Anika had spent her first few days in Johnstown following the road along the river into the city, exploring what was to be her new home. Even as far away as Main Street there was the constant groan from the steel mill and that biting, sulfur smell. She’d never felt so closed in by so many walls. Every day she walked in the rain with the shawl made from Abraham’s dark fleece wrapped close to her, missing him, missing the farm, missing what she used to have. With no extra money to spend and the women busy carrying their bags and tying children’s shoes, even Anika could think of nothing to say. This loud, hissing city said it all. After that first week she rarely left Mrs. Owens’ house.  

Now as Anika watched out the window of her room, the chickens let out a collective squawk, then turned and scuttled toward Mrs. Owens’ hem. A thin young girl with hair like tangled vines ran a stick along the rough wooden fence as she made her way up the alley behind the house. The girl’s mouth formed a wavering “O”, and although Anika couldn’t quite hear her, she felt sure the girl must be singing.

Anika grabbed the shawl from the bed and hurried down the narrow stairs to the kitchen, which had its own window to the yard. The girl no longer held the stick but leaned her shoulder under the arm of a woman who must have been her mother. The mother’s hand rhythmically smoothed the girl’s tangled hair against her head. Once, twice, three times. A pale strip of ear broke through. Then again, the mother’s hand petting as she spoke to Mrs. Owens.

Mrs. Owens turned toward the house in dismissal, her body tilted by the weight of the feed-bucket she carried. The mother watched for a moment, then bent and whispered something into her daughter’s ear. Anika felt the stirring of warm breath on her own lips, in her own ear, like when she’d whispered to Abraham, like when her mother had whispered to her. It was as if something gave way then, and a wide, deep valley suddenly formed in front of Anika, an emptiness she didn’t know how to cross.

For a moment she couldn’t move. Then, despite the cold floor and her bare feet, she wrapped Abraham’s cloak tight to her shoulders and rushed out the kitchen door to the porch. Mrs. Owens’ face was flushed and damp as she trudged up the three steps. Anika found herself with nowhere to go. All that was left to see of the girl and her mother was the tangled hair from beyond the neighbor’s shed.

 “Let me help you with that,” Anika offered, trying to steady herself. The landlady dropped the feed-bucket on a worn spot in the corner of the porch and wiped her hands along her faded apron. Anika stared at the hard grains that had spilled onto the bare wooden floor near the bucket. If she picked up the broom to sweep up the mess, Mrs. Owens would take measure of her every move, as if she were a child. But Anika knew she wasn’t a child, even though she had no babies to care for and hadn’t yet made a home.

Mrs. Owens picked up the broom instead, elbowing Anika as she did so and forcing her back against the door. She ran the stiff bristles across her bare feet before sweeping the wayward feed and a few small stones off the edge of the porch. To Anika, Mrs. Owens seemed like two separate people. The woman who served meals to her boarders was hard and silent, covered in coarse wool no matter what the weather. But when the men left for the mill, something loosened about her. It was with this woman Anika tried to make conversation. So far, she barely knew her landlady’s voice.

“Back home I always walked in bare feet, too, especially on the cool grass,” Anika said. The woman made her way with the broom down the three steps. “I once gave my shoes to the girl who sat at the desk beside me. I told the teacher they didn’t fit me anymore.”

Mrs. Owens picked up a bucket with a rusted rim at the bottom of the steps. She walked the mud-caked path that had been worn by the soles of her feet. The water made a rushing sound as the landlady worked the squeaky handle of the pump near the edge of the house.

“But my feet are always cold here,” Anika continued. “And the chickens don’t leave much grass in the yard, do they?” Anika tried to laugh at this, but Mrs. Owens did no such thing. Her face looked as pasty and blank as a lump of old dough. The woman dropped a bristly brush into the bit of water in the bucket and headed for the stairs. Anika stepped aside to let her pass. When she did she bumped into the copper boiler hanging on the side of the house. The heavy pot clattered down the steps and landed on Mrs. Owens’ foot.

“Oh no, I’m sorry.” Anika lifted the large pot and settled one of its handles on the nail poking out of the house. It was the pot she’d seen Mrs. Owens use to heat water for the tub that sat empty in the corner of the kitchen. The boiler slid forward on the nail and didn’t want to stay put. “I can be so awkward. Are you all right?” Mrs. Owens rubbed her toes along her calf for a moment and then pushed her way past Anika.

The emptiness Anika felt moments before was now overflowing and ready to burst. This place wouldn’t be so cold if the woman spoke or smiled once in a while. She was just like the northerners her sister Isabel had warned her about. On the farm, Anika always found ways to get the things that pleased her. Just because she was in the cold north didn’t mean she had to surrender.

“I could gather more water for you, if you need some.” Anika had a firm grip on the boiler. She watched the water drip from the pump into a puddle near its base. Mrs. Owens shooed a fly away from the door but didn’t say a word. Her mouth turned in on itself in a dry, crooked line. Anika set the boiler on the porch and followed Mrs. Owens into the house. To get what she really wanted, Anika would have to manage some time alone.

The old woman got down on her hands and knees and began to scrub at the black streaks left behind by the men. Anika knew it was like the other days, when the men were working at the mill, but today they weren’t working but drinking in a bar, so the woman’s silence seemed even more severe. “You’ll be going to the parade later, won’t you?”

“I have the men to feed,” Mrs. Owens said, her back toward Anika, “and you.”

“Oh, the men will be gone most of the day.” Anika ran her fingers along the cuts in the large wooden table as she made her way around it. “And I’m meeting Will in a bit.”

“There’s tomorrow,” Mrs. Owens said, moving on hands and knees near the stove.

“From what I hear there aren’t many days the mill shuts down so everyone can enjoy themselves.”

“What nonsense.” Mrs. Owens’ shallow breath followed the sounds of the brush along the floor. “Decoration Day is supposed to be spent honoring the war dead. What do drinking and picnics and parades have to do with honoring the dead?”

“The men said there will be soldiers in the parade. Do you think there’ll be many?”  

“You shouldn’t pay such close attention to the men.” The words came out of Mrs. Owens like spit from a fire.

Anika bit down hard. She’d seen Mrs. Owens give her sidelong looks when she laughed at the men’s stories at the supper table, as if enjoying herself was a sin. Even the dark-faced Virgin Mary hanging on the wall didn’t pass blame as harshly as the landlady did. Pete Haggerty told a new tale every night and Anika couldn’t wait to listen. Someone was always too drunk, too fat, too stupid. Dogs ran wild in the streets. A disaster waited around every corner. Last night Pete had warned about the dam in the hills again.

“It’s going to break,” he’d said, leaning back in his chair and covering his full belly with his hands. “Too much rain lately. They say it won’t hold.”

“They always say that,” Mrs. Owens blurted out. She tugged at the sleeve of the dress that didn’t quite cover her wrist before picking up the empty bowl in front of Pete. It was the first comment Mrs. Owens had added to the men’s conversation in the six weeks Anika had been living there.

“The owners are rich.” Will rested his hand on the back of Anika’s chair. He no longer carried scents from the farm but that hard smell that made her think of steel. “Bigwigs from Pittsburgh aren’t going to let anything happen.”

“They’re so rich they’ll just build another place to sail their boats.” Pete laughed and wiped his stiff mustache with his fingers. “They’re too stupid to care.”

Anika knew Pete was full of bluster but sometimes his stories were true. He was the one who fed Will information as they walked to and from the mill; Will shared it with her in the evenings lying in their bed. Without Pete’s stories, Anika wouldn’t know Mrs. Owens was a long-time widow, her husband killed in the battle at Cedar Creek. “Just south of the farm,” Anika had said, watching the light from the lamp shift across the bedroom ceiling. According to Pete, the Union might have won the battle, but Mrs. Owens was left alone with a big house and a baby girl not-yet two.

Now Anika swiped a wayward strand of her thick red hair out from under the black shawl and pinned it into the knot of hair at the nape of her neck. “We don’t celebrate Decoration Day back home,” she told Mrs. Owens. She buried her nose into cupped hands covered by the smooth fleece. “It’s harder to face when you didn’t win the war.” The shawl still held the scent of rich mud drying in Virginia sunshine and warm grasses blowing in the breeze. It smelled like Abraham.

Mrs. Owens carried a bundle of wood to the stove.

“Your daughter married and moved to Pittsburgh, isn’t that right?” Anika asked. “Maybe Will and I should have kept going. I hear there’s even more work there.” Anika counted the pieces of wood, watched as they settled on the grate. “But we ran out of money.”

“You have to tell me one week before moving out.” Mrs. Owens stood with her hands on her hips, her brown eyes finally meeting with Anika’s dove-grey ones.

“Oh we’re not going anywhere now. If we go anywhere it will be back south, toward home.” Anika let the shawl slip off her shoulders and settle at her hips. “Will’s parents have passed away, but I’d like to be closer to my family. And the farm.”

Mrs. Owens pulled a metal measuring cup from a drawer. Her weight shifted, and Anika watched as the woman massaged one wide foot with the toes of the other.

“Did I tell you my father raises alpacas?” Anika hadn’t meant to say this. Some things about the farm were too precious to share with someone who would go out of her way not to appreciate them.

Mrs. Owens set the dented measuring cup on the table near a bowl with a blue band.

“They’re beautiful, gentle animals, once you get to know them. At least most of them are.” Anika thought again of Abraham, the oldest of the flock, and how he let her wrap her arms around his long, soft neck. He was taller than the others, almost as tall as her, with long, tight coils of black fleece and a face that was always looking for a friend. Anika would whisper into his pointy, fluttering ear. “They hum to you, when they’re happy. They’re a bit like sheep. My father sheers their fleece and my mother spins it into yarn.” She held up the shawl as if to explain.

Mrs. Owens lifted her heavy eyes. “Never heard of such a thing,” she said. She went back to lining up utensils along the table. It was clear she wasn’t planning on starting a fire any time soon.

“My mother’s father raised alpacas. He came from Peru.”

“Don’t know where that is.”

“I don’t quite either,” Anika admitted. She just knew it was very far away.

Sounds from a small crowd heading toward town made their way into the room. Anika knew Will would soon be looking for her. “Is it true your husband died in the Civil War?” she asked. She wasn’t sure but thought the woman nodded. “Is he buried around here?” Mrs. Owens cleared her throat as if that were a good enough answer. “Today would be the perfect day to visit his grave. Most days you don’t have time to take care of much of anything but the house.”

“My daughter and I used to go once a month.”

“Is it far?”

“Twenty minutes, but I’m not cleaned up enough to go about town.”

Anika realized this would give her at least an hour alone. “I’ll brush your hair. I love to work with hair.” Anika took the pins from her own hair and shook her head until the long strands broke free. “I used to style my mother’s. She always said my hair was the color of a robin’s breast and hers was like its back. Like yours.”

Mrs. Owens looked out the window toward the squawking chickens, as if looking for herself in the reflection. “No,” she said.

“And you can wear my shawl.” As soon as the words were out, Anika wondered how she could take them back. But her feet were so cold and once she’d begun talking her words persisted on their own. “I knit it from alpaca fleece. It’s very soft and doesn’t weigh but a trifle.” Anika took the shawl from around her arms and placed it across Mrs. Owens’ back. “See? Doesn’t it feel nice?”

The smooth fibers of the shawl caught on Mrs. Owens’ rough hands. A slight tremble broke across her chin. “I’ve been meaning to visit Harry’s grave,” the woman said.

* * *

Mair Owens didn’t have to go to the cemetery to remember her husband Harry. He snuck up on her just about every day, first as a stubborn thought, and then he’d start living inside her, mostly with his eyes. She tried to push the living Harry aside; he was practically a boy, after all, and she’d turned old. She had no business bringing back the dead. Long dead. More than twenty years since her husband went off to fight the south. Twenty-five was it? And all of it gone like a whisper.

Mair sat on the edge of her bed and stared at her cracked black shoes. It would take everything she had to step into them when it wasn’t a Sunday. Beside them were Millie’s little shoes, still shining like the day she’d bought them. Mair had always given her daughter’s clothes to the young women at the church once the girl had grown out of them, but she never could part with those shoes. Mair bought a pair for each of them that day; Millie grinned with pleasure at their watery shine. In a year her daughter’s feet had grown too long to fit, but Mair’s feet had only grown wide. Even so, she still used them for good.

Mair Owens knew she could put on her every-day shoes and forget about what people thought. It was one thing to walk the few blocks to St. Columba’s in those stiff shoes, but to go all the way across town to the cemetery might be too much to bear. It was Millie’s face that used to crinkle at the sight of her mother’s every-day shoes. “There’s holes in them!” she once cried, and of course she was right. They’d been to the shoe repairman more times than she could count, so many times that her feet broke through without much struggle these days. The truth was Mair liked them better that way—easier on the bunions.

She’d kept nothing of Harry’s. He and his brother Joe had built this house board by board. Even after Millie was born they kept adding and fixing and pounding nails. When the two of them left for the war it seemed so quiet, with only baby noises filling the rooms. Within two weeks of the knock on her door, Mair had given away all his clothes, his tobacco, his tools. She had no need for Harry’s things. Besides, she had to make room for boarders. She had to make room to breathe.

Mair heard the girl moving about the kitchen, knew just about where she stood and what direction her eyes were taking. She didn’t need an open door to know the language of her house. She’d spent every day here since she and Harry married. Mair Owens learned to keep a close eye on the movements of her boarders long ago. She’d had a daughter to protect, and as far as she could tell she’d done her job.

Mair’s daughter didn’t sneak up unbidden, like Harry, but was called on, like the words to a favorite song. Millie had been the life in this house, the turning point, like a top. All the work, all the sacrifice, had been about her. Mair had purpose because of her daughter. She wasn’t sure what that purpose was now that Millie had moved on.

Mrs. Owens thought how nice it would be to lift her feet onto the bed and let the day’s weight rush out of them. She hadn’t allowed herself to rest for even a minute during the day since the girl had come into the house. There was more work with the extra boarder, of course, but that wasn’t what kept her moving. When Millie was home, tending to the garden or cleaning tenants’ rooms, the two of them would take a break every morning, lying on the bed together as they did every night, close their eyes and sometimes drift to sleep. Just for a few minutes, just until St. Columba’s church bells woke them for lunch. Without Millie by her side Mair couldn’t sleep at night, let alone during the day. With the girl in the house she didn’t seem to get a drop of rest.

Despite herself, Mair lay back and lifted her feet onto the bed. They rested on the black shawl she’d taken from the girl. As her rough feet rubbed together they caught at the shawl’s loose threads. She should have moved it, but didn’t. It felt smooth and full of life. Alpaca. No wonder the girl couldn’t keep still. Spoiled child, raised on a farm. A southern farm. No wonder.

The kitchen floorboards squeaked and cracked. Mair Owens listened for a cupboard door to open or furniture to be moved. It wasn’t as if she thought the girl shouldn’t do any more than sit on a chair in her room all day. But the men went to work early and came home late, ate and went to their rooms. That was what she was used to. The girl was a boarder, after all, and the room was what her husband paid for, not nosing into every corner of the house.

Mair listened until the listening turned inside her. The sounds from the kitchen and the street began to ebb and flow, washing over her like a healthy stream. Something in her sank, something weighty like an iron, sank as if into the mud. But with the sinking something else stayed afloat, rose above. Something white and fluttering. The edges of a curtain in a breeze. The fluttering white and the sunken weight were connected, balanced, floating beyond the room until a loud CLANG caused it all to fall. Mair sat up in her bed. The weight had shifted to her stomach and the fluttering white had drifted far away.

“What are you doing?” She found the girl on the small back porch, trying to get the boiler back up on its nail. The chickens had all fled into a corner of the fenced yard, feathers flying.

“I bumped it,” Anika said. “It tumbled down the steps. I was going to walk through the garden, see how the cabbage …”

“You are not a member of this family! I am not here to entertain you or to find you something to do! I agreed to rent the room to you and your husband, but that is all. Nothing more.”

The girl fumbled with the pot, which kept sliding off the bent nail. Mair took it from her and placed it on the porch. She left then, going to her room for the black shoes. When she returned the girl was gone. Mair Owens used the heel of her patent leather shoe to pound at the nail until it was straight enough to hang the boiler pot back onto the house.

* * *

Anika watched out the men’s bedroom window as Mrs. Owens’ shoes clomped along the boards that crossed the ditch in front of the house. Anika crouched down, her teeth chattering, even after the woman was far enough up the street that Anika could no longer see the shimmer of Abraham’s fleece. Her stomach dropped. What had she done? She’d given the one thing that reminded her of home to a woman who would’ve liked nothing better than to see her gone for good. For what? A bath that she barely had time to manage. But she was cold, deeply cold, even more than before. She held her breath and hurried down the stairs.

Cool water waited in the bottom of the copper tub while steam rose from the pot on the stove. Anika kept the fire small and the windows open so that Mrs. Owens wouldn’t notice the scent of fresh smoke when she came back. At first Anika kept watch on the clock, slipping down to only her chemise as she waited the long minutes for the tiny bubbles to form on the bottom of the pot. Once they did, she checked the bolt on the door one more time before pouring the steaming water into the tub.

Anika dropped her chemise on the pile with her corset and dress. She gripped the sides of the dented old tub and stepped in. The water was almost too hot to bear and tears formed in her eyes. Despite this she lowered her body into the water. Soon the shock eased and her body relaxed. Anika sunk as low into the tub as she could, then splashed tiny waves up onto her dry skin.

It’d been too long since she’d been able to take a bath. On the farm, Anika bathed twice a week and used enough buckets of water so that the tub was half-full. In between she’d swim in the pond. Her father insisted she use the leftover bath water to clean up the alpaca pen. Anika didn’t mind. She tidied their dung pile and scrubbed down their troughs. She sang to them or made up stories. Abraham would follow behind her like she was his mother, like she was the most important thing in the world.

Anika’s happiest days were when she knit the shawl out of Abraham’s smooth, black fleece. Her father and Will had shorn the herd in spring, holding the alpacas on their sides until all but their heads were bare. Anika could never watch, but waited until the new Abraham loped into the paddock. First he inspected the other alpacas, knowing by instinct that something had changed. Eventually he made his way to Anika. “Would you like something special?” Anika whispered, always the same words, the same tone. She snuck a carrot from her pocket and into his soft mouth.

Summer evenings Anika’s mother sat behind the spinning wheel while Anika and Isabel handed her bundles of fleece. Late that summer, when the heat held the sweet scent of hay close to the earth, Anika sat in the dappled light under the oak tree near the pens, Abraham’s yarn slipping between her fingers with a tickle. Abraham would trot away, chomp on a mouthful of hay, then circle back, his big cup eyes gathering her up. “Mother said this one is mine to keep,” Anika told Abraham, “so you’ll always be close.” That was the summer Will had first kissed her. That was a time when it seemed everything Anika might want could fit neatly into the bundle of her life.

Anika rubbed a thin cut of soap along her arm. The voices of people making their way toward town mingled with the golden afternoon light. For the first time, Anika noticed the scent of peonies coming from the street. She could get used to living here—she knew she could—if she could spend more time like she was spending it now. She could save pennies in a jar until Will found better paying work, as a carpenter or perhaps scouting for ore. They could buy their own home, and maybe she would take in a boarder or two. She might even raise alpacas out back. Some place where there was plenty of water to bathe herself and the children.

A knock on the bolted door opened Anika’s grey eyes. She tried to stay still. What could she tell Mrs. Owens so that they wouldn’t be thrown out of their room? Perhaps she could offer her a little extra money in the rent, even though she knew there wasn’t any to spare. The doorknob jiggled, stopped, then jiggled again. Anika checked the clock. Mrs. Owens couldn’t have spent more than five minutes beside her husband’s grave.

Anika wished she hadn’t left her clothes so far across the room. She stood and let the water drip from her. Children’s laughter came from the street as if they were seeing her distress. The dark Madonna picture that hung above the dry sink only stared. The curtain on the open window fluttered, then an arm came through. Anika quickly sat, trying to cover herself in the tub.

“I’ll be.” Will held the curtain aside with his strong hands. He looked at her longer than he needed to in order to understand. The curtain closed for a moment before her husband climbed through the open window. “I was worried about you,” he said, the hard soles of his boots thumping across the wooden floor. He carried his derby in his hand, his hair flat and wet along his forehead.

“Oh, Will.” Without warning, Anika’s eyes flooded with tears. She’d let her husband down by taking such risks. Will’s face looked soft and young like it had on the farm, but his hands were rough and stained by the work he did in the mill. Will knelt beside the tub. Anika put her arms around his neck and pulled him close. She wanted things to be simpler. “Do you think Abraham knows I’m gone?” she whispered in his ear. “Do you think he looks for me over the fence?”

A strand of Anika’s hair had worked loose from its knot and Will coiled it around his finger. He let it go and ran his hand down along her side and into the water. “You haven’t forgotten him, have you?”

“I couldn’t.” Anika kissed her husband on the mouth. She wouldn’t have left the farm if she thought the distance would end things. Until now she hadn’t an inkling what that distance meant.

* * *

Mair Owens read the names on the low stone markers as she passed. Quite a few of them were men who’d made widows of women from her church. Did they visit their wives with their eyes, too? Did they stay until all that was left was the hurt?

She knew it’d taken much longer than twenty minutes to get to the iron gate of the cemetery. Her back ached more than it used to and her bunions fought against the confining shoes. When she got to Harry’s grave, she realized it wasn’t just the shoes and work that’d kept her from coming here. Without Millie by her side there was nothing to do but see. The grass had been cut low for the holiday but strands grew long around the edges of Harry’s stone, tickling at his name. Everything was much too solid here. A cut of stone in some dirt and grass. It made her husband’s life seem so little. Was this really all that was left?

Life had always been hard for Mair Owens, but Harry’s leaving had made it harder. Her husband’s coming and going had given a good, strong pattern to her days. After he was gone, the baby cried and cried with no tears left for her. She’d feared boarders, men with rough ways, bringing with them the smell of the mill or the bar and words that a husband wouldn’t allow. Mair Owens only spent money on what was needed, and the pictures of Our Lady and the Sacred Heart that she hung in every room were never considered extra. If the men wanted to rent her rooms and eat the food she prepared, they’d look at what was holy, even if it was only a crucifix at the top of the stairs.

“You never came back but you wouldn’t leave,” Mair said as she fingered the ribbon in her pocket. It had gotten stiff with age. “It might have been better if you’d left.” It wasn’t as if there hadn’t been a hole, an absence that seemed to go from Harry’s empty kitchen chair straight to her heart, a steadiness she couldn’t find when her arms shook trying to lift a bag of feed. “If you’d left I could have depended on myself.” But she never had.

“The girl’s from down there,” she said to the marker. She was on her knees, pulling at the long blades of grass. “Winchester. Her husband, too.” She felt like she was in the confessional, waiting for penance. “They’re young, younger than Millie, so they don’t know.” They don’t know what senseless death means to a life, she thought. They don’t know stubborn resistance. “It was a hard winter.”

The shawl lay in a dark gathering beside the stone. Mair Owens tossed the long grass to the side and brought out the ribbon from her pocket. She’d found it on the steps of St. Columba’s after a wedding. As soon as she saw it she’d known where it belonged. “Millie’s expecting a baby,” Mair told Harry. “I’d like to see him someday, but I don’t know how.” She knew she could never get away from the boarders and all the work they required. She knew she had to save for the things a person should never have to consider. Mair had fashioned a wire around the ribbon and now stuck its length in the damp earth. The edges of the ribbon caught on the smooth fibers of Abraham’s cloak and tugged.

The sight of this—the wedding ribbon; the dark, glimmering shawl; the cratered stone—all of it crowded within Mair Owens in a swell. It was as if Harry, her husband Harry, who’d walked past her parents’ house what seemed like a thousand times, Harry with his protruding chin who always hooked his thumbs at the bottom of his canvas braces while Mair tried to look busy behind the kitchen window, this Harry who she hadn’t known but came to know, his eating and sleeping and worried face—Harry filled her then, as she knelt on the damp earth, her hands on the ground now, too, filled her to overflowing, beyond her fingertips and toes, growing until she knew there was more and then more, a swelling and aching that was neither joy nor pain.

“Harry,” she said, but it was more of a breath, and as soon as it passed through her she felt her husband slip away, downstream and away and Millie with him, as if they’d never be back. As if there was nothing left but the ground. 

* * *

Brassy music echoed off the wooded hillside as Anika walked along the cemetery path. She’d left Will at the gate, promising to meet him in front of the opera house as they’d planned. There’d been plenty of time to spill the bath water on the milkweed in the yard, clean out the stove, close the windows and dry the tub. Of course they hadn’t known this and Anika rushed. Even as they closed the door behind them (Anika had insisted on going back one more time to inspect) it felt to her as if something was left undone.

Anika’s toes were warm and her husband loved her. That was what he’d said. That meant something, didn’t it? He loved her, and they would be a family, and that was why she was here. But their time together grew steadily shorter, and there were other loves, not so easily understood. As silly as it seemed, Anika knew she wouldn’t feel settled until Abraham’s dark shawl rested in her hands.

A few people stood near the stones that marked the rows of the dead. On the farm, the graves were on a rise near the road; her father’s family and two favorite dogs. Not like this, with so many along the river. Anika read some of the names, realized how many had been in the war, most of them younger than Will when they’d died. Anika had always thought of the men that’d been in the war as old, like her parents and Mrs. Owens. As she read the markers, Anika understood this wasn’t true.

A glint of sunlight caught Anika’s eye as it reflected off the back of Mrs. Owens’ shoe. The woman was on her hands and knees as if she were scrubbing the grave. Her rounded back was covered by her nubby blouse, and the shiny shoes stuck out from under her skirt. The tails of a red ribbon caught along the edge of the stone. Beside it Abraham’s soft fleece lay like a puddle near the woman’s closed fist.

A great wave rose within Anika. Her steps became stronger, faster, hastening toward Abraham’s cloak and the woman who’d tossed it aside. Tossed aside! Did the woman know no respect? Didn’t she understand what had been sacrificed?

Anika grabbed the shawl. At first she thought it caught on the stone, but then realized Mrs. Owens had it in her grasp. The wrinkles on the back of the woman’s hand smoothed as her fingers tightened. They seemed to be digging for something in the ground. Anika pulled but Mrs. Owens held on, as if the threads were from a rope that kept her from sinking. The woman looked up but said nothing. Deep caverns hollowed out her eyes. She loosened her fist and Abraham’s cloak dropped to the ground. The woman’s faraway gaze made Anika’s heart skip. Mrs. Owens lowered her head.

The music that’d sounded so jubilant suddenly stopped. For a moment it continued to echo off the hillside, and then it was gone. Stillness gathered around the two women like something physical. Birds chirped and dogs barked and wind blew through the trees. Not the sounds of a band, or a groaning mill, but the sounds of the earth. The sounds of home. For a moment Anika wasn’t sure where she stood.

A breeze caught the tips of the woman’s robin-colored hair. Truth suddenly bobbed to the surface where Anika couldn’t push it down. She hadn’t cared if the woman visited her husband’s grave. What had she cared that the woman worked so hard? Anika had wanted to take a bath. She wanted to feel better, that was all.

“I don’t know what I’d do if Will left me,” she said to Mrs. Owens.

“That’s right,” the woman said. Her words sounded wet.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Anika watched the woman’s back rise and fall with heavy breathing. “Here. I’m not cold anymore,” she said, holding out the shawl.

The woman sat back on her heels. Her hand reached out, but only to brush off a clump of grass and dirt that clung to the soft threads. “No. I should’ve been more careful. I’ll wash it for you.”

Anika imagined Abraham rolling on the soft Virginia earth. “Please don’t. Abraham loved—loves—playing in the dirt.” She petted the fleece. “He came from a long way away,” she said, “but he got used to us.” Anika rested the shawl on Mrs. Owens’ shoulder. She turned to leave but then stopped and faced the woman. A coil of wet hair clung to Anika’s neck. “I took a bath just now. I’ll pay.”

Anika could see something had gone from the woman’s face, some determination. “We’ll work it out,” she said after some time, “with your help.” With her heavy legs Mrs. Owens lifted herself so that she stood alone in her cracked shoes.

The music started up again and echoed from the hillside. “Thank you,” Anika said, her voice cradled in the sound.

* * *

The girl was only a few yards from Harry’s grave when she bent to unlace her boots and took them off. There was a small hole in the heel of her black stocking. A few tiny stitches were all it needed. Needle and thread. Mair Owens’ eyes settled on the spot as the girl made her way along the path between the graves, the boots swinging at her side.

Mair looked at the old grass growing on Harry’s grave, trying to imagine him beneath it. She didn’t know if her husband had been with her all these years or if it was just her crazy mind. But she understood who’d taken care of things; she had. With the help of holy pictures on the walls, maybe, and something else. Mair Owens didn’t know if that something else was Harry, but whatever it was would always be inside her.

The woman lifted the cloak to her face. She could smell it now, the deep-down living in it. Mair ran the smooth fibers along her cheek as if they were dried tears. Somehow she’d been given proof of something she would never quite know.

Mair Owens used the toe of one shoe to slip the other from her foot. The second came off with her hand. She left the old shoes on Harry’s grave and turned toward home, stones nipping her bunions as she walked along the river. There was no hurry. She didn’t turn back. Wrapped in the shawl, the water rising, Mair Owens found the time to breathe at last.

About the author

Sharon A. Pruchnik’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Brilliant Flash Fiction, Atticus Review, and The Feathertale Review. Her stories have won recognition from various organizations such as the Westmoreland Arts and Heritage Festival and The Writer’s Center of Indiana. She lives the small-town life in southwestern Pennsylvania where, when not writing, she can be found feeling guilty about not writing. 

About the artist

Sandra Eckert is a doodler, a dabbler, and a messy and restless individual. An avid naturopath and off-the-road walker, she finds inspiration in the unscenic vistas and hidden places. While her interests currently lie in the world of art, she has been known to tend goats, whitewater kayak, fish for piranha, and teach teenaged humans. She is fascinated by the lessons of the natural world, both seen and unseen. Sandra holds a BFA with certification, and has continued her education both formally and informally, though she is too distracted to gather up her credits. She lives in Allentown, Pennsylvania with her husband, Peter, and her dogs, Jack and Tobi.  Additional works are available here.