After The War, short story by David Terrenoire in Web Mystery Magazine, Fall 2005

After The War

In every class picture, Rose was the tall girl in the back row. Her clothes were dark and secondhand. She had a small spot on her cheek that on a pretty girl would have been considered a beauty mark, but on Rose was a mole. When she spoke, which was not often, her voice was hushed and hidden behind her hand.

Alton Baker held a trophy in nearly every one of his school pictures. He pomaded his hair and owned a flask. He drove a green Hudson Hornet, recklessly, and dated laughing girls who sat next to him with the gearshift between their knees.

Then the war came and everything changed.

The day after Pearl Harbor, Alton and his brother stood in line with the excitement that makes war possible. Four years later Alton returned home, alone, with a stillness that whispered to Rose like a sad song on a distant radio.

It rained often the following spring and the streetcar filled with men and their smell of Old Spice, cigarettes and wet wool. One morning Alton sat next to Rose. When she slid closer to the window, she dropped her glove. Alton picked it up and said, “You have nice hands.”

“I’m a typist,” she said, “at the mill,” and immediately felt too clumsy and stupid to live.

He took one of her hands and held it, gently. “They’re beautiful,” he said. “You could be an artist.”

Alton was smiling, but all Rose could see was his face, unshaven, dirty, streaked with blood.

“Do you live around here?”

“What?” She took her hand from his.

“Do you live in the neighborhood?”

“Up on Third Avenue. Just me and my father.” Her hands were still now, folded like nesting birds in her lap. “My mother passed on.”

“I’m sorry,” Alton said. “My father died while I was overseas.”

“I remember,” Rose said.

“It’s just me and my mother.”

“I know,” Rose said.

A large man carrying a package pushed Alton against Rose. Instantly, her head filled with explosions and the sight of shattering pines.

“She’s been sick,” Alton said. “I love her, of course, but sometimes I need a break, you know?”

“If you would like,” Rose started the sentence before she could think of all the reasons why she shouldn’t, “you can come to dinner. It’s nothing special, though, so if you’d rather not…”

Alton surprised her by saying yes.

That evening Rose insisted her father wear a clean shirt.

“I’m not wearing a tie,” he hollered from his bedroom. “The way you’re running around, you’d think he was the goddamn Pope.”

Alton told his mother, “It was strange. There was this instant connection. I’ve never met anyone quite like her before.”

Alton’s mother tried to picture the tall girl on Third Avenue with her son, but couldn’t. Finally, she said, “I understand she’s very nice.”

“Then you don’t mind? You’ll be all right?”

“I’ll be fine,” she said, and tried not to let him see how breathless the words made her.

In all but the heaviest rains, Alton rode a 1936 Indian motorcycle that could be heard all over town. When Alton pulled up to Rose’s house, Rose’s father got up from his chair and stood, the screen door between him and Alton. The father stared at the motorcycle. “You ride that thing?”

“Yes, sir.”

Rose’s father turned that over. Then, with a grunt, he let Alton come inside.

Alton sat on the edge of the sofa, his hands clasped in front of him.

Rose’s father talked about the Pirates and their chances for the pennant. “Good to have real men playing ball again,” he said. “Not 4-F’s, hit like a bunch of goddam girls.” When this didn’t get a response he said, “You still play?”

“No,” Alton said. “Not anymore.”

“Too bad. You were damn good. You and your brother.”

Rose came out and announced that dinner was ready. As they ate, Rose watched Alton. Her father watched Rose.

Untrained in dinner conversation, Rose had no idea how to fill the quiet that settled over the dining room. After a few minutes her father, his forearms on the table, knife and fork in either hand, said, “Heard you got a medal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Bronze star?”

Alton prodded his chicken with his fork. “Yes, sir.”

“Pretty rough, huh?”

Alton folded his napkin and placed it next to his plate. His lips seemed to form a word, then stopped. He picked up his napkin again, placed it in his lap and said, “I really liked Germany. I mean, after the shooting stopped.” Alton tried to smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

“I bet it’s pretty. Prettier than here,” Rose said. “A person could choke to death on the smoke.”

“Nothing wrong with smoke,” her father said. He speared a buttered red potato, pushed it into his mouth and chewed. “Puts food on the table.” He pointed the fork at Rose. “When the smoke stops, that’s when you worry.”

After dinner, Rose refused Alton’s help clearing the table. As she removed the plates, her father tilted his head, dog-curious, and said, “What the hell’s that noise?”

Rose stopped, a woodland creature caught in the open. “It’s me, Father. I guess I was singing.” “What the hell for?”

“I don’t know,” Rose stammered. “I’m sorry.”

“I thought I’d had a stroke.”

“You have a beautiful voice,” Alton said. “You should sing more often.”

If her hands had not been full of dinner plates, they would have fluttered about her face. Instead, she backed out of the room, her eyes glistening with tears of gratitude.

Rose’s father eyed Alton. He knew of only one reason why a good-looking guy like this would flatter a plain girl like Rose, and it wasn’t for her roast chicken and red potatoes.

Alton and Rose worked at the steel mill and their lives, like all the lives in the valley, were regulated by the hard voice of the mill whistle. Their days were overcast. At night the furnaces lit the clouds until they smoldered like live coals. The air smelled of kerosene and the river, red as a wound, carried barges of slag downstream. Everywhere, smoke clung to the valley, snagged on the branches of dead trees.

Rose worked in the mill’s front office where she heard Alton’s name in the mouths of other women. Alton had done things, they said, that other men would write books about. They stared at Rose in wonder and resentment, unable to connect the golden war hero with this shy giraffe of a girl.

Unlike the others, Rose had no desire to talk about the awful things Alton had done. She didn’t have to wonder. She could see them, every time he touched her.

They spent most evenings either at his house, with his mother, or at her house on the front porch. Alton rocked back and forth in the metal glider and remembered night skies so clear he saw God in the stars. He talked of rivers in Germany that glittered with fish.

In their second week together, Alton kissed Rose good night. It was a quick kiss, with lips closed, but it rocked Rose and she had to break away, gasping from the pain that rushed through her body.

“I’m sorry,” Alton said.

“No, no,” Rose said. “I wanted you to.”

“I’d better go,” Alton whispered.

“Maybe so,” Rose said.

The next day in the mill’s front office, hardly able to catch her breath, Rose misspelled a word. She stared at it and knew it was wrong, but the letters could have been backwards and Russian. So she let it go. She didn’t look it up in the big dictionary on the plant manager’s desk. She didn’t ask Millie Larsen, the office grammarian. She just put the invoice into the out basket and quietly experienced a light-headed rush, as if she was falling from a great height.

From April through October Alton and Rose talked of movies and books and what it must be like to live in California. Every night, Rose would close her eyes and let Alton kiss her good night, and every night she saw new horrors.

It was a Saturday, and Rose’s father had gone to bed. Alton and Rose sat on the sofa, listening to the radio. When Alton spilled coffee on his shirt, Rose insisted he take it off so she could soak the stain.

Alton unbuttoned his shirt and, standing under the kitchen light, he held it out to her.

Without thinking, Rose reached past the shirt and laid her trembling fingertips against the hard white scar on Alton’s chest.

Instantly, her hands and feet were frozen. She saw snow flecked red, and men in rags thrown about the ground, their limbs at odd angles. She heard screaming and then, as if an invisible hand had swung a hammer, something hit her chest and she gasped, her eyes wide but blind to everything but the sudden flash of light.

Alton mistook the gasp for passion. He held Rose tighter against his skin and whispered into her ear, “I need you, Rose. I want you more than anything.”

Rose backed away and said, “I can’t, Alton.”

Alton glanced upward, toward the father’s bedroom. “We can be quiet,” he said.

“No, Alton, please.”

Alton stood beneath the kitchen light. After a moment he nodded and said, “I better go.”

“I don’t want you to, but maybe you’d better.”

“I understand,” Alton said.

“No,” Rose said, “I don’t think you do.”

Alton took his shirt and for the first time in months, left without a kiss good-bye.

The next day marked the beginning of a week without Alton. For Rose it was the longest week of her life. On the last day of October, she went looking for him.

It was late morning, and sometime in the night an inversion had capped the valley, trapping the smoke and soot inside. Everywhere, a dry mist smothered the town like a wool blanket. The streets were thrown into a long gray twilight and the sun was no brighter than a lamp in the fog.

It was Halloween, and the children’s parade had begun. People lined the curb and watched the children appear, small wraiths drifting in the swirl. Wagons rolled by, their crepe paper colors leeched to a funeral gray by the haze. Parents were unable to identify their own children in the mist and mothers, in a panic, called out their children’s names.

Rose thought she saw Alton’s shape, the hunch of his shoulders, on the far sidewalk. He seemed to shimmer there a moment, then was gone. She ran through the parade, between a sheeted spirit and a pale cowboy on a broomstick horse. She looked up McKean Avenue, in the direction she thought Alton had disappeared. She checked every store window, the pool hall and the barbershop. She turned toward the green neon glow of the Shamrock Tap at the corner. There, by the curb, stood the Indian motorcycle.

She stepped inside, thankful for the familiar smell of Camels and work clothes. She looked around for Alton’s blond head above the crowd. She saw him. Alton was sitting at the bar, his hand around a cold Iron City beer and his arm around Angela Toracelli’s waist. Angela was laughing, her black hair thick and shining, her lips red, her teeth bright.

Alton looked up and saw Rose standing in the doorway. Her hand covered her mouth. Her eyes were wide and wet behind her glasses.

She turned and ran. Alton threw a single on the bar, grabbed his jacket, and went after her. On the sidewalk, he saw a tall shape run into the street.

Rose ran in front of the car that carried the Pumpkin Princess. The Cadillac’s chrome grill caught her and threw her to the ground. On her skinned hands and knees, she groped for her glasses, found them, and staggered off before anyone could reach her. The Pumpkin Princess coughed and said, “Why did we stop?”

Alton caught up to Rose and pulled her around to face him.

“Please, Alton, please, let me go.”

“Are you all right?”

“No,” she said.

“Where?” Alton looked for a fracture or the dark blossom of blood. “Where are you hurt?”

“Here, Alton.” She touched her chest. “Right here.”

“You saw me with Angela.”

Rose tried to pull away.

“Angela doesn’t mean anything to me. She’s just a girl I know.”

Rose tried to fix the twisted frame of her glasses. She gave up and put them on her face, skewed and missing a lens. With one eye blind and the other trying to focus on Alton she said, “And what about me, Alton? Am I just a girl you know?”

Alton gripped her shoulders and said, “No, Rose. You’re different.”

“I don’t want to be different, Alton.”

“But the other night.”

Rose looked away. “I know. I’m sorry.” Then, her eyes on his, she took Alton’s hand and placed it to her breast. Rose saw bright flashes in darkness and heard men cry out. Holding tight to the terror that skittered beneath her skin, Rose lifted her face to Alton and said, “Take me home.”

“But your father. . .”

“He’s a marshal in the parade. He’ll be gone all day.”

Together, in the swirl of mist, Alton and Rose climbed the hill to Third Avenue. Inside, Alton kissed her and Rose was in another place. Here was a woman with dark hair and bottomless eyes, her ribs close to the skin. As a new hunger washed through her, Rose held Alton, and kissed him back, her mouth open, and hoped she would survive the day.

Holding onto one another, they stumbled toward Rose’s bed. Each button undone was accompanied by thunder. Each piece of clothing was stiff with sweat and blood. Although Alton was gentle and slow, when he entered her, Rose bit her lip to keep from screaming out, and by the time Alton rolled away, Rose had died a hundred times.

Alton sat on the edge of the bed and said, “You were speaking French.”

“I know,” Rose whispered.

He touched her shoulder and Rose saw the dark-haired woman lying beneath a table, her legs tucked beneath her, her arms outstretched, her palms as open and as sightless as her eyes.

“I have to go,” Alton said.

Rose listened to him dress. When she felt him close to her, about to touch her again, she said, “No, please. Not now. I don’t think I could bear it.”

After the noise of the motorcycle had died away, Rose curled up under the covers. She smelled Alton’s hair tonic on the pillowcase and felt his warmth in the sheets. She pressed her hand against her face, where his lips had been, and felt her skin flushed and hot as if from fever.

That evening Rose’s father woke her. He was standing in her bedroom door. “You’re in bed early. You sick?”

“No,” Rose said.

“Where’s Alton? Have you seen Alton?”

“No,” Rose said.

Her father stood by the bed and touched her shoulder. “You sure you’re not sick?” But as soon as his fingertips touched his daughter’s skin, he stepped back as if burned. His voice was different now, dark with rising blood. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know. Maybe at his mother’s.”

“His mother’s dead.”

Rose sat up, holding the blanket against her.

“Eighteen others are dead, too, on account of this, this,” the father waved his hand, “this poison. It’s all over the radio.”

Rose slumped back against the headboard.

Her father shook his head like he was shaking water from his face. “She died while you two were dirtying this house. I thank God your mother is gone,” he said. “I’d rather she be in her grave than to see you now.”

“It’s not like that, Father.”

“Get up,” he said, “and get dressed. They need help at the hospital.”

Rose returned home the next morning. The poison had lifted and the sunrise was blood red behind her house. She surprised her father in the garden. He had turned the earth in a new section of the yard and had planted a young peach tree in the corner. When her father saw his daughter crying, he hugged her, his soiled hands on her back, and he promised her sweet peaches from the new tree.

In four years, three peaches ripened. The next year it was an even dozen. By five years, the branches sagged with heavy fruit. Rose never ate any peaches from the tree, but she canned them for the winter and packed them in her father’s lunch.

When the steel company closed the mill, Rose took her pension and watched from her front porch as her neighbors moved away or went on welfare.

Three years later she nursed her father through lung cancer until he died, suffocated in his bed at the new hospital in Pittsburgh.

The day after he was buried, Rose hired a boy to clean out the garage. Unlike many young men, he worked hard and was honest. He told Rose that the old motorcycle in the back of the garage, covered by the tarp, was worth a lot of money.

Rose told him he could have it as payment for one more job. The boy agreed, and the next day he cut down the peach tree and split the limbs into firewood.

That winter, Rose sat on the floor close to the fire. She saw his face in the flames and heard his promises in the whispers of steam. The scented smoke filled her hair and when she pressed her hand against her cheek it felt hot, as if from fever. When the fire died and the house grew cold, she went to bed in darkness, closed her eyes, and waited for the dream she knew would come.