Flora

Finn’s boots creaked as he squatted down in front of me. A strong, sweaty smell came from him. His narrowed green eyes scrutinized me with concern. Parked across the road was his three-wheeled motorcycle with its storage trunk.

“We didn’t order anything,” I said.

“You didn’t, no, but I was bringing you something anyway. What the bejesus were you doing?”

“I was just…” I started pushing myself up from the ground. His strong hands hauled me the rest of the way.

“When I came around that curve, you didn’t look up or move a muscle. You were like a catatonic.”

“A what?”

“Someone who’s been shocked so bad they sit staring at nothing all day. I’ve seen soldiers like that.”

“I was just thinking, is all.”

“And were they productive, your thoughts?”

He was smiling now, the skin around his eyes had little crinkles, and it struck me how sadly timed things could be. Here I had been planning for days what I would say to him when he came again and wishing Flora and I would run out of things so we’d have to order again. But just now I was trying to hold on to the voice that had spoken of shade and called me darling, and the scary thing that had preceded that, the horror of losing myself, which was already fading. And here he was, actually asking me about my thoughts, which nobody had bothered to do since Nonie. But as they were not thoughts I could tell anyone, I made up something.

“I was thinking about my grandfather’s path through the woods—it’s just down there. He had a shortcut made for his patients so they could walk to the village without having to go round and round on the road. Only we didn’t call them patients, we called them our Recoverers. And I was thinking whether we could repair it to surprise my father when he came home, but it’s all grown over and there’s this dangerous crater right at the beginning. We would probably need a tractor or something to fill it in.”

“Will we go and take a look at it?”

It was a strange way of putting it, like he was consulting the future.

“Don’t you have to deliver people’s groceries?”

“Like I said, I was bringing you something.”

“Me?”

“Well, the both of you. I found some okra.”

“Okra?” I repeated stupidly.

“She was so disappointed when we didn’t have it the other day.”

“They grow it down in Alabama,” I explained, wanting to encourage him to keep our families separate. “That’s where Flora comes from.”

“Ah, Flora.” He sounded relieved to have been supplied with the name. “They must grow it up here, too, because they were selling the first crop at the farmers’ market this morning.”

“I could show you the shortcut,” I said. “It’s just down there, around the curve. But it’s awfully rough in there, so we’ll have to be real careful.”

“Well, you lead the way… em, how do you like to be called?”

“Just Helen. I don’t have a nickname.” Too late it came to me that he hadn’t remembered my name, either, and was trying to get around it. “What do you like to be called?” At least I had not said his name.

“Finn is fine. It was all last names in the Army and I’m used to it. My birth name is Devlin. Devlin Patrick. Devlin was my mother’s brother who died and Patrick was the saint. There are slews of Patricks in Ireland.”

“Are you Irish?”

“Born Irish, but I’m an American citizen now. How else would I be wearing U.S. Army Parachute Infantry boots? My father’s cousin adopted me when I was ten. They were Finns who’d settled in Albany, New York, and did well for themselves.”

“Did your parents die?”

“No, but they had five kids and no money, and my father’s cousin and his wife had money but no kids, and they asked if they could have one of us boys.”

“You mean your parents sold you?”

“It wasn’t a term anyone used, but there were benefits to both sides.”

“But how did you feel about it?”

“Oh, I was thrilled to be the one chosen. I couldn’t wait. Everyone wants to go to America.”

We scuffed on downhill toward my grandfather’s shortcut, Finn half-smiling at his parachute infantry boots and probably remembering things while I imagined what I would feel if my father suddenly said, “Helen, I’ve got a proposition. How would you like to go to America and live with ———?” But I was already in America, where everyone wanted to go, and the only cousin I had was Flora—and my father was paying her to live with me.

“You were ten, like I am,” I said. “Though I’m going to be eleven in August. Didn’t you miss your house in Ireland?”

He laughed his high-pitched laugh that sounded like a cry being squeezed out of him. “What house? My brother and I shared a room with my father in town, and the girls, who were still little, stayed with my mum and her people in the country.”

“Didn’t you miss your brother? Was he jealous when he didn’t get chosen?”

“Ah, that’s another story,” he said, looking suddenly unhappy, “and that’s enough about me.”

When we got to the hairpin curve I told him about the ruffians who came from the other side to shoot out the street-light and he fell into the same trap I had with Nonie. “Why didn’t they stay on their side of town and shoot out their own streetlights?” he asked. “Because,” I said wryly, “they already have,” making him laugh.

“Remember it’s all grown over,” I warned, when we were at the entrance of the shortcut. “Don’t expect to see a path or anything. And just a little way in, there’s this horrible crater. I should probably go first.”

“I see the path, it begins here,” he said, diving ahead of me into the brush, “then it follows that old fallen railing and down there it dips out of sight.”

“Watch out for that crater. Flora couldn’t see anything when I brought her here.”

“That’s because she didn’t spend two years of her life studying the ground and learning how to use it to keep yourself alive.”

I followed behind his fast-moving boots, wondering what it would be like to be a boy.

“Now your grandfather,” he called back, “why was it he built the shortcut?”

“So the Recoverers could walk straight down the mountain to the stores without having to walk miles of extra circles on the road.”

“The Recoverers were the patients?”

“Well, they weren’t really patients anymore. They had finished with their treatments at other places in town, like Craggy Bluff, if they were inebriates—”

“Now that is a lovely word I haven’t heard for a while: inebriates.”

“—Or if they had had TB they would have been at Ashland Park, or, if they had TB and money, up at Highmount. And if they had mental problems, they would have been treated at Appalachian Hill. When they came to us they were pretty much recovered, but they still weren’t ready to go back to where they came from.”

“Like me.” He laughed. “Did you know any of these Recoverers?”

“Oh, no, they were all gone before I was born. The last one left in 1916, when my father was sixteen. I don’t think the shortcut’s been used much since. My father is the age of the century, so it’s easy to remember his age.”

“The year of the Easter Rising.”

“The what?”

“Some very bad Irish history that happened in 1916. Nobody talked about anything else when I was a boy.”

“You better be careful.” I had to pant to keep up with him. “There’s this crater just—”

But, uttering a sort of war whoop, he had already disappeared over its edge.

“Mr. Finn?” I crept closer, fearful of falling in myself. “Are you all right? Did you fall?”

“Of course I didn’t fall,” came his voice from below. “I jumped. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, if this isn’t the