Golden Delicious (15 page)

“You’re all my brothers and sisters—” I slurred, “—my family,” and then the very strong stranger pulled me outside into the sharp daylight.

That spring the apples grew small—ten percent smaller, on average, than they’d been for any year on record. This might not seem like much, but it had serious, immediate ramifications for people in my town. Some clients—surrounding towns who’d bought apples from Appleseed since the days of Johnny Appleseed himself—demanded a discount or sent back their apples in disgust. It was worryfields—everyone was a little less meaningful. My friend Berson’s mother lost her management job, and the time factory where our neighbor Roger Lonely worked shifted him from full time to part time. Then one of my Dad’s tenants—a maître d’ at the East Margin Grill, a fancy apple restaurant downtown—broke his lease and left town.

A month after the harvest, the Board of Select Cones held a special meeting at the Town Hall. I wasn’t there, but my Dad showed me the article in
The Daily Core
. The article said that there were Mothers in attendance, and that the Memory of Johnny Appleseed was asked to speak to the Board. “It was a very warm winter, is all,” the Memory of Johnny Appleseed was quoted as saying. “Spring was too short and the apples had no chance to finalize. These are like,” he said, “
rough drafts
of apples.”

Select Cone Calumet Johnson held up an apple from one of his own trees. “This is a major disappointment,” he told the Memory of Johnny Appleseed. “Are you
praying
for the apples to return to size?”

“I am,” the Memory of Johnny Appleseed told the Board. “Every day.”

“It’s not only the size of the apples,” Select Cone Rhonda O’Martian was quoted as saying. “They don’t
taste
like Appleseed apples. Has anyone noticed that?”

Then one of the other Orange Traffic Cones on the Board, Select Cone Hedge Miles, took a bite of the apple on the table. “She’s right,” he said. “It tastes flat. Like paper.”

A day or two after that meeting, my Mom took my sister and me for our weekly shopping trip to the Big Why. The Big Why sold fresh, organic inquiries—everyone in town went there for their questions. It was a nice store, clean and well-organized, with classical music playing in the background and the askings organized by section. If my father went with us, he’d load up the cart with doozies: “What is life
for
?”s, or “What does it mean to be ‘authentic’?”s. My Mom liked the practicals: “What’s the least amount of food someone can live on?” “How does one survive a bookwormbite?” Bri liked the nuts ’n’ bolts: “How does a planer work?” “What’s a dovetail joint?”

Me? I let my thoughts wander through the aisles. Most of the time they came back with questions about the page itself. “Why do words have to die?” “Does a sentence have a soul?” “If the sentence ‘A tree dies in the woods.’
dies in the woods, does the sentence ‘Does anyone hear it?’ hear it?”

That day, though, we drove right by the Big Why and kept on going. At first I thought my Mom had made a mistake—I turned in my seat and looked back at the big question mark hanging over the sliding glass doors.

“Mom?” said Briana.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Where are we going?”

“Shopping for questions,” she said.

“But you just passed the Why,” Bri said.

“We’re going somewhere else today,” she said.

We drove down Williams and toward the Appleseed Line. “What the heck,” I said.

“Where are we
going
, Mom?” said Briana.

Soon we’d crossed the border into East Appleseed. My thoughts were pacing back and forth across the floors in the rooms of my mind. What, they wanted to know, was wrong with the Big Why?

Ten minutes into East Appleseed, my Mom pulled the Fart into a crumbly parking lot; to the left, I saw a store with a shabby clock over its door. “What’s this?” said Briana.

I read the name on the store window: “The Big
When
?”

“It’s exactly the same,” my Mom said. “Come on.”

We followed my Mom inside. The store was big and moore, with a funny smell and paint chipping off the walls. I read the signs above the rows—one read “Never,” another “Soon.” “All of these questions are time-based,” said Briana. My Mom ignored her and began pulling questions
off the shelf: “When will there be peace?” and, “When will everyone and everything have meaning?”

“These questions suck,” I said, in earshot of a lady stocking Nows in the aisle.

“
,” my Mom hissed, looking over at the lady. “They’re
fine
. Now pick out a question or don’t.”

Briana went one way, my Mom went another, and I wandered over to the bargain bin. There were some really old, faded questions in there, plus some open-ended ones and some broken asks. Before I even had time to choose one, though, I saw my Mom wheeling her shopping cart to the register. I grabbed the closest question and ran to catch up.

When we got back in the Fart my Mom said, “Pretty rad place, huh?”

“
Rad
?” my sister said.

“Isn’t that what people say? ‘Cool’?” my Mom said. “Was it cool?”

“It was OK,” Briana said.

“It was lame,” I said.

“What questions did you get?” my Mom asked.

“I got one about rain,” said my sister. “When will it rain?”

“It’s supposed to rain tomorrow,” my Mom said, and my sister smiled.

I took my question out of the brown paper bag. “I got ‘When the sky?’ ” I announced.

Neither my Mom nor my sister said anything for a second.

“When
what
?” said Bri.

“When,” I said. “The sky?”

My Mom looked at me in the rearview mirror. “I’m not sure how to—answer that one,
.”

“That’s because he got it from the bargain bin,” Briana said. “None of those
have
answers, dumbass.”

I looked at the question.

“Crap,” I said. “Mine sucks!”

“Idiot,” Bri said to me.

“Bri,” my Mom said.

“I want to go to the Big Why,” I doaned.

Bri looked at my Mom. “Me, too,” she announced.

“No one’s going to the Why,” Mom said. “We already bought our questions for the week.”

“Mine doesn’t have an answer, though,” I said.

“Well,” my Mom said, lighting a cigarette, “some questions are like that.”

“I already have enough no-answer questions,” I shouted.

“Lower your voice,
,” said my Mom.

“Like: why didn’t anyone tell me about the divorcitis?” I hollered. “Like: where is my hair?”

“I said
lower your voice
,” my Mom said.

“Like, why am I so
fat
?”

“You’re fat because you eat so much crap,” my sister said.

“And who’s killing all my thoughts?” I wailed. “And why don’t we have more happiness? What does it all
mean
?”

“
,” my Mom said through clenched teeth, “you stop shouting
right now
.”

“I want
answers
,” I yelled.

“Shut your
mouth
,” my Mom roared.

“I want ANSWERS!” I howled.

“Sonofa
bitch
,” my Mom said. She pulled the Fart over, got out, scorned around to my side and tore open the door.

“What are you doing?” I said.

She grabbed me by the collar and pulled me out of the car with one hand. “Fucking
brat
,” she spat, and pushed me back onto the shoulder of the road. I fell back and dropped my question; it broke on the pavement.

“My question,” I whined.

My Mom stormed back around the car, got in, and slammed the door shut.

“Where are you going?” I asked, starting to cry.

Briana looked at me from the backseat, her face a mix of satisfaction and pity.

“
Mom!
” I said.

“… his fault anyway—” I heard her say, and then, “—goddamned piece of
shit
.” Then she pulled the car back into traffic.

“Wait!” I shouted. I thought my Mom would turn the Fart around, but she didn’t. The car farted farther and farther away—soon I couldn’t see it.

I stood there crying for a minute or two, looking down at the broken question in my hand. It had cracked at the space seam, right between “when” and “the”—now I held “when” in one hand and “the sky” in the other.

I looked around and tried to get my bearings. I was on a strange page outside Appleseed. I started walking in the direction of the Fart. I walked past houses separated by vast white space. Then I passed a prayer center, an office park, and another prayer center. In twenty minutes or so, I
saw the margin for Appleseed. I crossed the thick, smudgy space; soon I was at the edge of the paragraphs describing southeast Appleseed.

As I walked down Williams Street, I heard a rush overhead. I looked up to see a woman—a Mother—twenty feet above me, her green skirt flaring and her long gray hair whipping in the wind. She landed in front of me and lifted up her goggles. “Afternoon,” she said. She smelled like clouds and she had tattoos all up and down her arm. Her skirt was dirty from flight. As it settled, I saw blades and weapons in the folds of the fabric.

I just stood there.

“Saw you walking across the margin,” she said. “Where are you coming from?”

“East Appleseed,” I said. “My Mom took us to the Big When, but she got—angry—and made me walk home.”

“Where’s home?” she said.

I told her my address. “577 Converse Street, Appleseed.”

“What’s your name?” the Mother asked.

“
,” I said.