A Cup of Normal (28 page)

I didn’t get out of bed that morning. Didn’t get up that day. That night I tried to fall asleep in sheets tangled from tossing in them all day. I tried not to hear the train coming. But when more men stopped by to tell me their last words, things they wanted said to the people they loved, I did not know how to turn them away.

So I wrote their words down, all but Jacob’s and Matthews’s. I got up the next day, mended fences, tended livestock. I mailed letters. All but Jacob’s and Matthew’s.

Weeks passed, each autumn day drinking a little more life out of the land. I wasn’t sleeping much, wasn’t eating much. Jacob and Matthew’s deaths pulled tight stitches through my heart, so much so, I’d find myself leaning on the fence now and again, crying for no reason. A hundred times I’d tried to tell the Missus what they wanted me to say, but one look at her, and my words were gone. I was left frozen, still as a lake. I wasn’t steel, I was water, and too weak to do any good for any of us.

It was Sunday, and raining when the man came to our door. Dressed in a uniform, his chest splattered with medals, he looked dark and somber as a winter grave. He took off his hat and handed the Missus a letter. The letter that told her what I had not been able to, that Jacob and Matthew weren’t ever coming home.

When all the rest of them were crying, I felt dry inside, wrung out and hung on a line. There weren’t any tears left in me for Jacob and Matthew. I did my part of cooking and cleaning for the funerals. I did my part to let the silence grow big enough to take their place in the house, just like it’d taken Mr. McMahon’s place. I wore black and stood sad by their graves.

But the Missus noticed. Noticed me for the first time in a long while.

She opened my door one night.

“Elisabeth?”

“Yes, Missus?”

“May I come in?” She was like that, her manners pressed fine as church linens, no matter how late the hour.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

Truth of it was I didn’t want her in my room. The train would be coming soon and I didn’t know what it would do to have her there. Would the men still stop by, or would another living soul in the room keep them from saying what they needed to say?

She walked across my room, her house shoes making small noises on the old wood floor. She smelled warm as the bread she’d baked for tomorrow’s breakfast, and when she sat at the foot of my bed, the springs squeaked.

“You’ve been writing letters,” she said.

I nodded.

“To people we don’t know.”

I nodded. The train was coming. I knew it, even though I couldn’t hear it yet.

“What is in those letters, Elisabeth McMahon?”

I wanted to tell her I wasn’t really a McMahon. I was a girl who’d been thrown out by the train track like yesterday’s dinner bones. But she was the one who’d taken me in, treated me as well as I could expect. Better, maybe. I had never lied to her. I didn’t think I could start doing so now.

I bit the inside of my cheek, exhaled, and tried to say it all in one breath.

“Soldiers stop by on their way through to dying. They tell me things they want their kin to know. Mostly that they love them and miss them. Sometimes they apologize for things. I write it all down and send the letters. That’s all. That’s all that’s in the letters.”

The Missus did not look away from my face. Her own eyes were gray and green, the color of old metal. She did not believe me. I supposed I wouldn’t believe me either.

Far off, the train called, so distant, it was more feeling than sound.

When she spoke, her voice was stiff as a school teacher reciting numbers. “What did my boys say to you?”

I felt myself freeze up inside, felt my breath stop, my words fade. I tasted blood from biting down so hard. I filled my lungs enough to exhale. I owed her to say this. I pushed the words out past the pain in my chest.

“They said they love you, and they love the girls too. Jacob said they fought hard and made what difference they could, like you told them to. Matthew said your cookies helped.” I didn’t know if I should say any more. The Missus’ face was as frozen as I’d felt, and I was afraid she’d break if I so much as tapped her. But there was more. More I’d been holding inside.

“Jacob said I was made of steel, like you, but I don’t see how that’s true. And I know you didn’t ask, but Mr. McMahon said he’d miss you, but you’d see him yet. And he had a road to walk and he was going to see his boys.”

The train called out, closer. I imagined I could feel the engines, barreling through this world, shaking the living.

She nodded. Her eyes were red, but there didn’t seem to be any tears left in her.

“Do you think,” her voice caught and she swallowed to catch it up again. “Do you think anyone will be by to talk to you tonight?”

“When the train comes.”

“I’d like to sit here. If you don’t mind.” That’s when I realized the Missus hadn’t always been a McMahon. Before that, she’d had a maiden name, a different people. People with spirits made of steel. Maybe even people who knew how hard it was to sit alone and wait patiently for the dead to come calling.

She put one hand on the covers, her palm resting on my leg. We sat there, looking out my window toward the train we could hear coming, thinking our own thoughts. When the whistle was loud enough, I pulled out my paper and pen and looked at my door instead. The Missus looked that way too.

Three men came walking in, wearing their Sunday best.

I wrote down their words. One man was from Chicago and wanted to apologize to his father. He said to tell him he was right all along. Another man was from Texas. He gave me the names of all his kin and said to tell them he loved them. The last man said he didn’t have any kin. He told me he’d fought bravely, and thrown himself in the way of fire so another man could live. I wrote that down too. I had a box filled with those kinds of letters. Words there wasn’t nobody living left to hear, but me.

The train whistled low and lonely and called the men away.

“They’re gone,” I said to the Missus.

She glanced at the window, then back at my face.

“May I see?”

I handed her the paper, and she read it. She gave it back and patted my leg. “Only once a night?”

I shrugged. “Whenever the train comes through.”

“Do you mind if I come sit with you sometimes, some nights?”

“I’d like that,” I said. Her asking meant more to me than if she’d come out and said she loved me.

“Good.” She stood, and walked across my floor. She stopped at the door. “If the boys, if they come, I’d like to know while they’re still here.”

I nodded. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it happened so fast there wouldn’t be time for her to hear me, wouldn’t be time for her to walk from her room to mine before they were gone.

Yet, every night, going on two full years now, my mother and I sit together and wait for the train to call the dying to us. Sometimes she sleeps in my room, often enough we put a day bed by the window for her. I write down the words the men tell me, and she addresses the envelopes, never hearing them, never seeing them, but believing just the same. There’s a strength in that, a steel I wish I had. I know she is waiting for Seth and Roy to come by my bedside. I know she is praying they won’t.

I was praying the same, and more. I was praying the next time I saw Johnny, he’d be on that train, in the daylight, maybe sitting side by side with my brothers, and all of them coming home.

Prayers, even the best of them, don’t get answered how you’d expect.

That cold Nebraska morning, when I was fifteen, I went out and did my chores like every day. I was thinking about Johnny’s voice like I thought about him most constantly. Before the sun had shouldered over the horizon, I was already headed down the hard packed road to the elder Smith’s farm. The frozen mud crunched beneath my boots, and I tucked my chin down closer to my chest to keep my face out of the wind. Even though it was cold enough to see my breath, I was warm inside. Not from doing chores. It seemed the only thing that kept me feeling warm and living anymore was thinking about Johnny. I was remembering how he walked, easy, with a slow swing to his shoulders. I was remembering how he looked at me, his gaze steady, the hope of a smile on his mouth. I imagined he looked at me like something behind glass he was saving up for. Like something he desired.

Before I even reached the Smith’s front gate, I heard the thump of an axe hitting wood. It was a comforting morning sound. One thump, followed by the crack of wood splitting, falling. A pause, while another piece of wood was put up on the block, then one thump, followed by the crack of wood falling.

I shook my head. I couldn’t believe Mr. Smith had got up so early. Even though he didn’t like a girl chopping wood for him, his heart wasn’t what it used to be. More than a couple swings of the axe left him winded. Mrs. Smith was still handy with the hatchet, but she didn’t chop much more than kindling anymore.

I pushed the gate open and made my way to the woodshed behind the house, intending to take over the chopping for a while. The watery light of dawn played across the yard, veiling lavender across the worn grass, split rail fence, woodshed, and making a ghost of the figure who stood at the chopping block. Even at a distance I knew it was not Mr. Smith. It was Johnny.

Two years had made changes in him. He seemed taller, thicker muscled, but thinner too, so that when he turned sideways, there wasn’t as much of him as there used to be. He had on his undershirt, his arms bare. His collared shirt and jacket were folded over the fence rail behind him. He didn’t look up, likely didn’t see me as I stood there, unbreathing, quiet as water stilled at the sight of him. I wondered if I was seeing him alive or dead.

He took three steps to the shed, picked up piece of wood, took it to the block, set it. He heaved back on the axe, bringing it over his shoulder and driving his weight from the hip to split the wood clean in two.

Johnny had always been strong. He was powerful now. And there was more than strength in his movements. There was anger. Pain.

Three steps, another piece of wood, and anger and pain drove the axe down, shattered the wood into two.

If he’d been on his knees praying, I couldn’t have seen the sorrow in his soul better. I was ashamed for seeing him so, and knew I didn’t have any right to stand there staring at him, at things he may not want me to see. I turned, quiet as I could, and took a step away.

“Elisabeth.”

My heart beat at my breastbone and I trembled. But it had been two years since his words could stop me from speaking. Two hard years.

I pulled my shoulders back and tipped my chin up. I turned to him and nodded.

“Welcome home, Johnny.”

He camped back on one foot, the axe laying lazy across his wide shoulders. But the wind did not carry the warmth of summer. When it stirred, it was cold as death. He tipped his head a bit. “Come closer.”

Maybe a smart girl would have paused. Maybe a smart girl would have looked at the axe across his shoulder, the power in his body, and made her good-byes. Not me. I walked over to him, strong in my own way, in all I had been and all I had done since he’d left. Strong in what I’d become. He’d seen battles over the blue seas, and I’d seen them too, in the face of every dying man who came to my bed each night.

I stopped in front of him, so close I could feel the heat rising from his sweat. His familiar gaze made my knees weak and my mouth hungry.

I wished I’d run the comb better through my short hair. Wished I’d worn a skirt today, and realized I didn’t own any that weren’t black.

He waited for me to say something, but I didn’t have words for him. There was hurt in his eyes, and a distance I could not cross.

“You cut your hair,” he said.

I nodded. “So did you.”

That got the ghost of a smile on his lips.

“And the trousers?”

I looked away, feeling the blush heat my cheeks. Not much makings for a wife, me in a man’s clothes, doing men’s work. I looked back at him, and shrugged.

“Jacob’s mostly. No time for frills when there’s so much work to be done. I do my own at home, and help out the elder Smiths when I can. Mending fences and such.”

That put the thick pain back in his eyes, and something went out of him. He looked down at his boots.

“My dad?” His voice almost wasn’t enough to hear in the waking world.

I’d thought he knew his dad was dead, and maybe he did. But maybe he needed a living person to tell him so. I’d written a lot of letters, telling a lot of people I didn’t know the last things their loved one had wanted said. It was harder to say it to Johnny, and I wished I could use a pen and paper instead of my own faltering voice.

“Your dad said he loves you.” I said it quietly, hoping he’d believe. “He said to tell you he’s proud of you. That he’s always been proud of you.”

Johnny did not look up. “He told you so? When I left? Before then?”

“He told me so.” I didn’t tell him about his father standing at my bedside, didn’t think he’d believe me if the words had come from his father’s ghost.

The train whistled, far off. Johnny looked up, looked toward the train, like his father had. Like my father had. Like all the dying had. A shiver of fear ran down my arms. I held my breath and wondered if maybe he would make the same choice. To go to the dying world. My heart pulled tight with pain. I didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to lose him too.

“Please, Johnny,” I whispered. “Don’t go.”

The train called louder, powering toward the depot. I felt the thrum of its engines like a pressure deep in my ears, building stronger until it filled my head, my chest.

Johnny was so still, I wondered if he was a dream, my dream, standing straight and strong in the pale gold light of dawn. He closed his eyes. The train called out, lonely. Close now. Nearly here.

Johnny took a deep breath. He opened his eyes and turned his face away from the sound, away from the train.

“I don’t want to be anywhere but here, Elisabeth. Don’t want to be anywhere but home.”

I didn’t think I had ever heard such sweet words.

He pulled the axe down off his shoulder and set it by his feet. When he held his hand out to me, I took it with my own. We held on tight until the train whistled its leaving sorrow. We held on tight until the engine thundered away. We held on tight.