Every once in a while I’d see the Memory of Johnny Appleseed in the waiting room, too. As people forgot who Johnny Appleseed was, the Memory of Johnny Appleseed experienced health problems: contusions, confusions, delusions. He’d show up with his holy satchel and wait to be seen. They’d patch him up and he’d go back out to work in the fields.
One day, I was walking the halls of the hospital when I opened a door to an emergency staircase that I’d never seen before. It led me all the way down to the basement; I opened the heavy basement door to find a dusty storage room with cinder-block walls. There wasn’t much there—just some old bicycles, a vending machine, and a historical couch. That couch, I decided, was from the Revolutionary War. It had probably helped fight for our freedoms! And now here it was.
I put some meaning in the machine and chose a pack of gummy tables.
“Good choice,” said the vending machine.
“Right?” I said. The candy dropped to the bottom of the machine; I found it and ripped it open.
“Have you tried the gummy refrigerators?” said the vending machine.
“Refrigerators?” I said.
“They’re awesome,” she said, pointing to her navel. I looked through her belly to the stacked bags labeled GUMMY FRIDGES. “There’s some chemical that keeps them actually cold. And when you open up the gummy door there are gummy perishables inside.”
The vending machine’s name was Laura—she was a student at East Appleseed Voc. When I told her my name she said, “Your name is just an underline?”
I nodded and ate a table.
“I’ve never heard of anyone with that name before,” she said.
“It’s French Canadian,” I said.
“Is that where you’re from?”
I chewed. “I’m from the margin,” I said. “We moved to Appleseed when I was three.”
“Ooh la la,” she said. “Are you meaningful?”
I shook my head.
“Isn’t everyone in Appleseed meaningful?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “There are some nice houses, but.”
“You probably are and you don’t know it,” she said.
“Maybe,” I said.
We talked for a few more minutes and then I went back upstairs. I returned to the basement when I visited the following Wednesday, though, and again two days later. Soon I was spending hours with the vending machine. Chips, candy, mints—I spent all the meaning I had on her. I liked sitting on that veteran couch, talking to the vending machine and filling up on salt, corn syrup, sugar, and oil. For a long time, I think I associated that sadfood with the syntax in my heart.
Who am I kidding? I still do that now! If I told you what I ate last night—what, and what it was made of, and how much, you’d probably close this book right now.
Soon, Laura was calling me from the basement of the hospital almost every night. My Dad would answer the phone in the kitchen and hand it over to me, and I’d carry the receiver around the corner into the living room, stretching the coiled cord as far as it would go.
By that point I was visiting my Mom three or four times a week and spending almost all of those visits in the basement. One day I stopped by the hospital unannounced and I found my Mom wheeling the corpse of a problem down the hall. I talked with her for five minutes and then said, as casually as I could, that I was going downstairs. “Why are you always going down to the vending machine?” said my Mom, a star in her eye.
I shrugged. “I’m hungry,” I said.
She stared at my belly. “How can that be?” she said.
I was always careful, when visiting Laura, to keep my distance—to sit at the far end of the couch or on the steps across the room. But one day I was eating some FatCrackers and she looked over at me and said, “Hey.”
“Wha,” I said.
“You’re too far away,” she said.
“Mm?” I said.
“Why don’t you come sit next to me?”
I swallowed. “I can’t.”
“I want to be close to you,” she said.
“I can’t,” I said again.
“Of course you can.”
I said, “Do you know what divorcitis is?”
“What what is?”
I told her about it—the nausea, the skin irritation, the pre-divorce. When I mentioned that word, though, she laughed uncomfortably. “I’m not talking about marriage, . I just want you to sit next to me.”
“I’m telling you,” I said. “It won’t end well.”
“My parents are divorced,” Laura said, “and it’s not because of any sort of virus. My Dad was cheating on my Mom with his boss.”
I thought about that. “He must have had the virus. It was the virus that made him cheat.”
“But how could he get close to her in the first place if he had divorcis-whatever?”
I tried to sort that out in my mind, but my thoughts were feuding and giving each other the silent treatment.
“People just, fall out of love,” said the vending machine. “Or stop getting along. Or act stupid. That’s what causes divorce.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just know I’m not supposed to get close to anyone.”
The vending machine’s display dimmed. “Is it something about the way I look? Is it my weight?”
“No, it’s nothing,” I said. “I just told you—”
“You know what? That’s fine. Don’t get close to me. Stay far away. Way far away.”
“I don’t want to stay far away,” I said.
“I think you should, starting right now.”
“I just need to give the music pills more time to—”
“Can you please leave me alone?” she said.
I stood up. I thought about walking toward Laura and kissing her right then and there, to translate how I felt, but I was afraid I’d get sick.
“Please leave,” said Laura. “I don’t want you here.”
I turned around and walked up the stairs and out to the Bicycle Built for Two. I unlocked it and pedaled home.
I didn’t see Laura that whole week or the next. I thought she’d call but she didn’t. I called her twice, but she didn’t pick up the pay phone the first time and the couch picked up the second time. “Yes?” he said.
“Is Laura there?” I asked.
“Hah?” said the couch. He must have been partially deaf from being too close to concussion grenades during battles in the war.
“Is Laura there?” I said again.
“Is who where?” he said.
I hung up the phone.
Whenever I visited the hospital after that, I stayed upstairs. One day, I was reading my truebook and Nurse Candle said, “No snacks today, ?”
I shook my head and continued reading.
I thought about going down to the basement to talk to Laura, but then that thought left with all of the others. What would I say to her that I hadn’t already?
But that weekend, a twig snapped in the wilderness of my skull. Did I want to live my whole life alone? I would not, could not, let the future—divorcitis, music—sloan me. I resolved to go back down to the hospital basement, put my hands on Laura’s square shoulders and tell her how much I liked her. That I might even love her. Then I’d lean in and kiss her.
That Monday, I didn’t even go upstairs first—I walked right from the bike rack down to the basement. When I turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs, though, I saw a very different Laura: she was slimmer, and wearing a belly shirt, and she’d changed her hair: it was teased high and shone with glitter. There was another vending machine in the basement as well—a soda machine with a fluorescent green chest. The two vending machines were sitting on the veteran couch, their faces close, saying words I couldn’t hear.
I walked over to them. “Laura?” I said.
Both vending machines turned to look at me.
“Hello, ,” she said coolly.
“Hi,” I said.
“You want some gummy fridges?�
� she slurred.
“No,” I said. “Can I talk to you?”
“About what?” she said. “There’s nothing to talk about, .”
“I have some things I want to say,” I said. I looked over at the other vending machine—he was smiling dumbly at me.
“This is Chad,” said Laura. “Chad, .”
“Yo,” said Chad. “This the divorce guy?”
“Could you give us a second?” I asked Chad.
“I think Chad’s fine right there,” said Laura.
I stepped forward. “Laura,” I said, “I’m not going to let anything come between us.” Then my stomach seized, and I ran to the garbage can and threw up.
“Dude!” shouted Chad.
I wiped my mouth and walked back over to Laura. “I really like you,” I told her. “Maybe even—”
“,” said Laura. “I’m with Chad now.”
All my thoughts were speaking at the same time—I couldn’t hear a single one above the others. Without thinking about it, I leaned forward and tried to kiss Laura.
“Whoa!” said Chad, jumping off the couch and pushing me back. “That’s my girlfriend you just tried to kiss.”
“Chad,” said Laura.
“Unless you want me to kick your ass right in front of her? I’d walk up those steps right now. Comprende?”
I should have turned around—should have left that basement and never gone back to it. It was over—couldn’t I see that?
But I stayed where I was. “No comprende,” I said, bumping my belly against Chad’s plastic chest.
“Guys,” said Laura.
“Is this a joke?” Chad said, and he pushed me back against the wall. My head hit the cinder block; my ears rang.
I thought, I could kill this guy. “I’m warning you,” I said. “Leave me alone.”
Chad stepped right up to me, squishing me against the cinder blocks. I felt the air leave me and I thought I might pass out. “Or what?” gritted Chad.
Sometimes you don’t know what you know. It’d been months since I’d watched that tape about size-changing, and I’d only tried it that one time. At that moment, though, a thought said to me, You asked for it. Another said, Go small, . Go small.
It wasn’t difficult to become a sentence. You just arranged your thoughts in a line in your mind. As I stood there before Chad, I began to shrink: to five feet, four feet, three feet, two.
“What the fuck,” said Chad, stepping back. He looked at Laura and she smirked.
One foot, six inches, three inches, one inch. By then, both vending machines were staring incredulously. “Dude, what are you doing?” asked Chad.
“Stop laughing,” I said.
“It’s funny,” said Chad.
“I’m going to freaking kill you,” I said. By that time I was as small as a fingernail—I was that angry. I ran across the floor, up Chad’s body and into the meaning slot.
“Crap!” said Chad.
“!” shouted Laura.
I jumped into Chad’s chest and bolted through the rows of cans. I pulled a lever and freed them. “No!” I heard Chad shout.
“Thank you,” said a can of ginger ale.
I climbed a can of grape soda and pulled the tab—the purple bubbly spilled over the other cans and the wiring and machinery.
“Shit!” said Chad. “Dude, stop!”
I ran up into Chad’s brain: springs and wires and coils. When I looked behind the meaning-changer I found data storage: stacks of memories, some piles of ideas, a few emotions. I took ten years of memories and his love for Laura. I left him blank. Then I ran through a vent in the back of his mind and down his power cord, and through a tiny crack in the mortar and out into the fields behind the hospital. Chad wept and Laura hollered, but I left them behind and ran as fast as I could toward my Bicycle Built for Two, resizing with every step, the love and memories clanking together in my arms, my eyes full of tears.
CORNISH AROMATIC
See? I told you that there’d be a story about the Appleseed Free Library, where my Mom and I used to go every Wednesday. This is that story! Like I said, that library—which, like most libraries, doubled as a disco—was more or less the heart of Appleseed. Located in the direct center of town, you could still see all of the bloodlines running just under the surface of the grass, through the walls of the foundation, and into the Library’s basement. Someone once told me that there was a machine in that room that pumped actual blood—hundreds of gallons of bookblood a minute.
I used to look forward to those Wednesday nights, to farting with my Mom down Longfellow Drive, onto Highway Five, and into the parking lot of the AFL. It was always just me and her—my sister and my Dad weren’t really that into reading. My Mom, though? She read as if her books might disappear when she took her eyes off them; she probably read two or three books a week.
Anyway, we’d return our books to the desk and split up to wander through the shelves. The AFL didn’t have the best books, or the newest books, or the rarest books, or the nicest books (a lot of the language was rusted or bent, in fact, destroyed from so much reading), or the tallest books, or the loudest books, or the orangest books, but it had the strangest books I’d ever seen. They had books with naked words; books with hooks—literal hooks; books that, when you opened them up, spat at you. They had books made of dust and books made of cheese, books shaped like chairs and books as soft and furry as a winter coat. Some of those books were visible—i.e., you could see them—and others were beyond vision. With those books, you didn’t even know you were reading until all of a sudden you sensed the words on your eyes, heard the pages turning, felt the warmth of the book on your shoulders.
Sometimes I’d fall asleep and wrap the books over me. I’d make myself a small house of books and fall asleep in it. It felt like being back in the womb—it was that warm, that safe.
Reader: As you imagine it, at least.
Sorry?
Reader: Not like you remember the womb.
Of course I do. You don’t?
The Reader furrowed her brow.
I remember every moment of it! There were words in that womb with me, I’m sure of it. The Library was like those pre-page days—warm and verbal. Everything you could ever want or need was right there with you. You never had to worry about being alone—you were never alone! If you ever got scared or depressed—when your mind spun with worry, or you lost all faith—you could just listen for that heartbeat right next to your ear, all around you, actually, and you’d feel safe again.
Even though my Mom stopped going to the Library with me (“All you had to do was keep your mouth shut and read the words,” she’d shouted at me when I asked her to go. “But you couldn’t just let sleeping words lie!”), I continued to go by myself. I liked to open up the books and see the sentences move. I also went back there, though, because I missed her—the old her, the happier Mom. I missed going there with her; I felt closer to her there.
Another reason that I liked the Library? It was good exercise for my thoughts. Don’t tell them that I said this, but some of my thoughts were kind of losers. Not like, in thoughtgangs or anything like that; they were just lazy. Most of them lounged around on a couch in my skull, playing video games. Either that or they were troublemakers, wanderthoughts, renegades too dumb to know which parts of Appleseed to avoid. If a thought of mine went missing, I’d inevitably find it in one of the seediest parts of Appleseed: down in the Quarry, out at the Meadows, or sitting on a stool at Appleseed’s only bar for thoughts, the Think Tank.
Hey, look at that. My shoelace is untied. Do you know where I found this shoelace? It was crawling in the sand by Kellogg River, burrowing. Me and my uncle went out there specifically for shoelaces, and we’d searched all morning. I remember that day specifically, because—
Anyhoo.
And I wasn’t the only one in Appleseed with wandering thoughts—thoughts with minds of their own. Some thoughts lived on the streets: they were orphans, nomads, wanderers with no mind to g
o back to—just the thought of a shelter or a bench in McShane Park. It was important, I thought, to try to keep my thoughts together. The Library was one of the few places where I could open my skull, lean down and let my thoughts scatter and roam. They could go to their sections, my Mom to hers, me to mine.
Usually I’d read books about Johnny Appleseed. One of my favorites, The Book of Apples, was shelved in the Reference section—it told the story of how Johnny, born in the Massachusetts town of Lemontown, moved to Appleseed intrigued by the blank pages and the rich soil. The middle of the book was devoted to Appleseed’s philosophy—how he believed that apples held all the knowledge we needed; that they held our oldest stories; that they were, in essence, brains. There were also drawings based on one of Appleseed’s stories—one showed a naked vending machine in a secret Appleseed mountain garden, evil earthworms all around her; another showed historical applenuns and bessoffs praying on the Town Green. Plus, there was a whole section in the book devoted to apple fads and fashions, like that very short time when apples were worn as hats. Did you know that the apple-hat fad contributed to the First Apple War? A conservative appler named Jed Berson was so offended by Lox Homicki’s apple hat that he shot it right off his head with his revolver. Homicki wasn’t injured, but he demanded that Berson replace the hat. Berson refused, and both summoned backup. There was a standoff, and the war began soon afterward.
The Book of Apples also showed dozens of pictures of Johnny Appleseed: Appleseed walking with his holy satchel, Appleseed digging with his spade, Appleseed kneeling among the saplings. Because the Memory of Johnny Appleseed was old—white beard, vagabondy clothes—that’s how my thoughts thought of him. But the book showed Johnny Appleseed as a young hipster, with a top hat and an ambitious beard.
Like a lot of the books in the Library, this one was too old and too rare to circulate. So I read it right there at one of the tables, over three or four weeks’ time. I learned all about the different kinds of apples—Champion, Yellow Transparent, Hambledon Deux Ans—and about the last years of Johnny Appleseed in Appleseed, before he followed the smell of apples south and never returned.
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