Postcard Stories

Steelton, Pennsylvania (Part 3 of 3)

 Now Zella saw things. She saw ghosts everywhere. She saw visions of her husband from the window of her room, out in the mist and snow – or sometimes, in the pitch dark of her bedroom she’d swear to have seen the outline of a man standing over her bed.

She had long abandoned caring for herself; her hair was a tangled mess now and she rarely bathed. She couldn’t stand to look at herself in the mirror. She looked tired and sickly. She felt she was repulsive and guilty. She began to blame herself for the disappearance of the ship. If only she’d prayed more often, if only she had asked him to stay. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore Most of all she felt so empty. And the nervous anxious feeling multiplied every day that Andrew did not return.

At night she would lie awake in her head, tracing her hand along the back of her spine - the way Andrew used to do to comfort her - but each night she could feel the outline of her bones growing more prominent. She was malnourished and needed help. She began to miss her support meetings altogether, sometimes spending days at a time in bed. She’d forget to eat. She’d forget how long she’d been in her room.

“Are you okay? Zella, honey, are you alright?” The words were thick, gelatinous, run through the mud.

Zella opened her eyes to the rosy cheeked face of Anna Redgrave above her. A man, dressed in black, with a leather briefcase against his side stood next to her.

“I’m fine. I’m okay,” said Zella. “You can go now.”

“Zella honey, you’re sick. This man is a doctor, he’s going to take a look at you.” The man opened his bag, removed a stethoscope.

“If it’s okay of course,” he said.

“I’m fine!” she said, rolling over away from them. “Leave me alone!” She closed her eyes, and clenched her fists. The man put his hand on her shoulder and she began to thrash and shriek. Anna leaned over, putting her arms around her, whispering into her ear. “Leave me alone! Leave me alone!”

When she finally opened her eyes again, the room was empty. It was dark. Zella was confused. How long had they been standing there? Had she been sleeping? Everything was fuzzy, mismatched, and out of place. Her sense of time was distorted, and all wrong.

One morning she woke. It was a morning like any other; indistinguishable, and most ordinary. Her room was cold. She couldn’t tell how long she’d been in bed, or how long she’d slept. The window was frosted over. She couldn’t see out.

She dressed and hobbled down the stairs. There was a strange buzzing from somewhere in the house. She made her way into the kitchen, to a cloud of flies encircling the bag of groceries on the kitchen table. The buzzing was unbearable. She gagged at the sight and moved in, feebly, swatting away the flies. She carefully tipped the bag to look inside, and wretched at the contents. Rotten fruits, and vegetables, spoiled and rancid meats.

And then a thought struck her.

She ran out into the cold, her nightgown flowing. It was snowing. Thick, wet, flakes fell from the sky landing in her hair, on her shoulders. Her bare feet crunched across the grass as she moved.

The doors of the stable burst open, and Zella pushed inside, panting. It was dark and quiet. A horrifying stench sat heavy in the stale air. She put her hand over her face, and slid across the straw on the ground. She rounded the corner. She lost her balance and fell to her knees.

All four of her horses lay in a motionless heap in the corner of the stable. They were quiet, almost serene. No muttering, or neighing. They were dead.

Zella swiftly vomited onto the cold dirt floor. It was a grayish yellow color, mostly bile. Her breath was heavy, and stifled. She felt as though someone were pressing down hard on her lungs with a boot. She couldn’t pick herself up. She closed her eyes. She screamed. She vomited once more, traces of blood this time. She sobbed and pulled her knees into her chest trying hard not to vomit a third time.

Then something began building in her stomach, it worked its way up through her chest and out her mouth. A scream. She released it up at the ceiling, letting it echo through the stables, out the door, and disappear into the snowfall outside.

It was getting dark by the time she was able and strong enough to pick herself up and leave.

She walked out into the dark snow. She felt strangely calmer now, and the cold didn’t seem to bother her. She felt impervious to pain, to physical suffering. She felt vacant and hollow, but with a newfound feeling of purpose.

She moved beyond the house, and pushed off into the woods.

Clint clutched a glass of rum at the bar across from the factory that night. It was late, and he sat with other several other sailors, debating and sharing stories.

The room was packed, and hot. A fireplace spit flames out across the floor. The windows had fogged, and were beading with condensation. It smelled of sweat and booze-tinged breath. Several inebriated men kicked out rhythms on the floor with their boots, to the guitar and accordion songs from the corner of the place.

At one point, Clint and his men finished their drinks and flung their coats around their shoulders and bid each other farewell. They stepped out into the cold, lighting cigarettes and readjusting their hats and scarves. Clint was feeling good and drunk. His mind swirled, stimulated from the friendly debates with the other men. It was late, but he wasn’t tired. Even though it was cold, he decided to get started on some work down at the docks. He had the energy and loved the quiet of the town at night, in the winter. He loved the way the snow danced in waves around him, and everything glistened with ice.

Clint cleared through the alley, and tossed his cigarette into a mound of snow. He took sight of the docks and pushed forward.

As he got closer, he saw something, something not right; Zella. Clint picked up his step. She was in her a nightgown. Something wasn’t right. Snow had piled up around her, and her head was leaned against a tree.

Clint ran now, his boots slipping along the wet cobblestones. He saw her seated peacefully on the bench, her chin pointed out toward the docks, the river, beyond. Clint gasped at the sight of her. He swallowed hard, and coughed. He didn’t know what to do. He looked around for help, but everything was quiet and still. He placed his fingers against her frozen neck, but he already knew.

She was gone. Her skin was blue-ish gray, and there was a layer of frost frozen into her hair, her eyebrows. Her lips were purple. She looked alien and sad. Her hands were placed in her lap, as if she’d been waiting patiently.

When he gained his composure, Clint took off back into town, shouting for help. He slipped, and slid, across the cold ground, until he’d disappeared behind a building.

After that, everything was still again. Everything was still, and quiet, and longing.

Postcard: Found at Stagecoach Antiques in Akron, OH in November 2011.

Steelton, Pennsylvania (Part 2 of 3)

 What made it unbearable for Zella for the next month was the colossal lack of anything. There was nothing. No letter, no body, no answers, no explanation, no updates, no story.

Every morning was the same. She’d take care of what needed to be done around the house, and make her way down to the docks and sit and wait until nightfall. Each evening she would see the same mustached sailor, whom she later found out was named Clint. He would shrug his shoulders and urge her to keep her hopes up. Each time she saw him her desperation increased. Clint could see it in her tired eyes, and he wished himself to be more of a comfort to her, but there was little he could do.

She hadn’t slept much in weeks. She had trouble eating. She was constantly distracted. She was consumed by questions with no answers.

How could a ship just vanish?

They had been on course for the coast of Ireland, delivering something – Zella had always been shaky on what Andrew’s ship actually contained. She liked to imagine that it was something fun and exotic; bananas, giraffes, carpets from the Orient. But she knew that in actuality, it was probably more utilitarian like oils, or metals. Had they crashed? Had they rerouted to some distant destination, adding months to their return?

In her dreams, when she was able to sleep, she saw Andrew’s body trapped in a ship, thousands of feet below in a watery abyss. In these dreams she would swim down, in her best clothes, and rescue his body, trapped on deck underneath a series of ropes and pulleys, and free him and together they would ascend toward the light above, they would rocket up toward the sunlight, the promise of return, the promise of life returning to normal.

But Zella would wake up choking, coughing, gasping. She began to sleep in later and later. She couldn’t afford sleeping in before, for there was too much to do around the house. The horses were growing angry and distant towards her. She would lie in bed, fearful that they were plotting against her because of this, but it wasn’t enough to get her. She felt safe under her covers, lost in her dreams. Her bed was the only place she felt any sort of escape.

Sometimes in the morning, she would walk across the cool wooden floor of their bedroom, barefoot, her gown flowing, toward the window and look out into the misty cool fog that was still covering the area. She would place her hand on the cold glass of the window and feel her body shiver, her spine rattle. She would realize she didn’t have the strength to face the day, and return to bed.

The missing ship hadn’t just affected Zella, the whole town was in limbo now as the winter months set in. There had been other women sleeplessly waiting, in the hills, on cold farms, or alone in the dark of their houses. Children around town were now asking innocent questions about the whereabouts of their fathers and were confronted with the vacant stares of women with no closure and no idea of what to tell them.

It had been a month now, and there was less known than ever.

Zella would meet with some of these women and they formed a support group which met twice a week, in a circle next to the fire in Anna Redgrave’s living room. In these meetings they would knit and cry and eat and share stories about the men they were missing.

They would remember the little details:

“I miss the way my husband would wake me in the morning, by grabbing my toes and pulling them one by one until I got out of bed,” said one.

“I miss the way he would get mad at me, then always catch himself, calm himself, and balloon out his face in a silly way and call me kiddo,” said another. “And we would both start to laugh.”

“I miss the way my husband smelled after returning. He had this smoky, oily, smell – it’s almost hard to fully describe – but I loved it,” said another. Zella nodded, she missed that about Andrew too.

“I miss the way he was around the children,” one woman said, causing several stifled sobs to open up around them. “I miss his patience, and the excitement in their eyes when he was around. I miss the gifts he would bring from distant lands. I miss the stories he would tell them as they fell asleep in their bed. I never know what to tell them now. I make up adventure stories about dragons and sea-monsters, but one day they’re going to get too old and I don’t know if I have the courage to tell them.”

It was a weird event. Not mournful, because none of them believed their husbands to be dead – that was the thing about tragedies like this – but sad. It was as if the men were still at home, still living in each of their houses, just always in the next room over, always constantly out of reach. As if Zella would go to bed each night, and Andrew would return in in the middle of the night, slip into their bed, hold her in his arms, and then sneak out in the dark of the morning, back out into the fog, before she woke. The worst moments, they all agreed, were those of waking up groggy and half asleep, of stretching their arm over to hold the warm chest of their spouse and being startled awake by the sudden cold of bed sheets.

These were the moments that each of the woman – eight in all – shared together by the fireplace.

Zella hated leaving these gatherings. She was always one of the last to leave, and would find reasons to stay until the host had practically shooed her out the door.

Zella could feel herself beginning to unravel and it scared her.

(To Be Continued…)

Postcard: Found at Stagecoach Antiques in Akron, OH in November 2011.

Steelton, Pennsylvania (Part 1 of 3)

October was harsh on Steelton that year. It had been raining for weeks, it seemed, and a heavy fog had settled in. Everything was covered in a sheen of moisture, and it never seemed to go away, especially, for Zella.

Early in the morning she had been out behind her house, running through her daily chores. She carried an excitement in her step as she moved about. She’d grown to hate, but secretly love, this feeling over the years – during those tedious hours before Andrew’s return. She could feel the familiar excitement building in her stomach, the anxiousness. For there was always the worry that everything would be different, that his experiences would change him. The worry that his ship would roll in and he would step off onto shore, and look through and beyond her seated at the bench, under the trees, by the docks. And there was the worry that the first kiss would be a disappointment. Yet, her worries were always dispelled when that first moment of eye contact came, that first embrace, that first kiss buried into his beard, the first night spent together with their legs twisted in knots under the warmth of their blankets. The way his smell returned to her, the smell of tobacco twists and perspiration. She’d breath it in heavily from his shoulders. That was all part of the excitement she felt. Zella wanted to feel the extremes, she wanted to have her emotions shaken, and then vindicated. It was a purge, in a way. It made her feel alive.

He’d been out to sea for two months now.

She walked along through the path in the garden, out toward the stables. It was beginning to rain. She wiped the water from her cheeks, dried her hands on her layered skirt, and pressed on. She pulled a woolen blanket up over her shoulders, like a shawl. She watched the plumes of factory smoke rising above the trees. It was getting colder now and Zella moved swiftly to stay warm.

She listened to the polite patter of rain on the stable roof once she was inside. She loved the quiet of the stables in the morning; the calm of resting horses, the darkness of the space.

She walked over to the supply room and hoisted up a burlap sack of grains, and began dragging it across the dusty, straw laden, ground of the stables. The sack became lighter as she pulled, and Zella looked over to see a trail of grain along the ground.

“Oh god,” she whispered as she saw it. The largest of the horses, Leona, was awake now and muttering in her dark corner of the room. She hurried back along, with a bucket, scooping up the spilled grains in her hands. She began to sweat. On any other day, she would have been annoyed, but today she was too distracted to care.

Eventually, she fed the horses and stood in the doorway of the stable, looking out over the property. She wiped the sweat from her forehead, brushing loose blond hair away from her face, tucking it back underneath the blanket that covered her head. The rain was heavier now, and creating little pools of water in the grass. Something was changing. There was a feeling in the air. Birds took cover in the thick of trees. A small rabbit scampered for cover in the garden. Winter.

She let the cool air brush her face. She felt good and refreshed.

In the afternoon she bathed. She applied her make-up and perfume. She changed into her best clothes, and began the walk down toward the river.

The rain assaulted her umbrella. She had to cling to it in the wind. Each step was taken with precaution, for the mud was sucking at her shoes from underneath. She winded her way through a path in the woods. Leaves swirled around her, moist tree branches rattled and scraped above her. There was a peculiar smell of wood smoke and honey in the air. The clouds were impossibly dense, overhead. It was as dark as night.

She fought her way through the woods and emerged at the edge of town. Uncomfortably, but assuredly, she walked along the soggy streets. Townsfolk darted in and out of buildings, trying to keep out of the rain. She heard the yell of whistles signaling the end of the work day. She took a short-cut back through the alley behind a large square brick factory building. Men were ducking, slipping, out of the back doors of the factory, and across the muddy ground and seek refuge inside the crowded bar across the alley. The door swung open as she passed. She heard a guitar and an accordion over the thick wall of excited voices inside. The bar seemed to swell in the rain, expanding, bloating. Seeing the frivolity of working men made her miss Andrew all the more, and she couldn’t help the excitement she felt to see him again.

At the end of the alley, she spotted the docks in the distance. It was pouring rain now. Zella looked down to see the ends of her skirt were soaked and muddied. She didn’t care, however and took off running, splashing through puddles, squealing with glee, as she reached the bench under the tree and sat to wait.

Soon, she heard the hollow ring of a church clock tower nearby. She sat under her umbrella and waited for the ship to pull in.

She waited and waited into the night.

At one point she got up, and walked over to some sailors unloading crates off a barge. She approached a mustached man, with a cigarette resting on his bottom lip.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said. “They were supposed to get in this afternoon. Guessing the weather might have thrown them off schedule.”

“What am I supposed to do then?” she asked. She wasn’t so much worried, but disappointed rather. There would be no respite from her anxiousness that night. She knew she wasn’t going to be able to sleep.

“Come back tomorrow. I’m guessing someone will know something.” The man tossed his cigarette into a puddle. It sizzled for a split-second, and began to float. She saw Andrew floating alone, face first in the salty water, in the dark; nothing but empty ocean for hundreds of miles in any direction.

She shuddered away the thought.

Zella looked the man over. She wanted more than this. There had to be something more.

“You’re Andrew’s wife ain’t you?” he said, breaking the silence, and reaching into his coat pocket to retrieve another cigarette. “I’ve seen you around here before. He’s a good man. A strong man. I wouldn’t worry.”

“Yes he is,” said Zella.

“I believe their ship was equipped with a wireless. If they got off course, we should know by morning. My guess is with the weather being like it is, they probably docked somewhere along the Chesapeake.”

Zella thanked him, and walked back into the cold, dark, night. She was unfulfilled and anxious, but still hopeful.

She made her way back up to the house. And she was right, that night she couldn’t sleep.

(To Be Continued…)

Postcard: Found at Stagecoach Antiques in Akron, OH in November 2011.