One week, I beelined over to the Reference section and saw that The Book of Apples wasn’t on the shelf where I’d left it. I looked through the entire Appleseed section, but to no avail. When I went over to the study desks, though, I saw the Memory of Johnny Appleseed turning the pages of an oversize book. I approached his table and stood over him—he was reading the section about military technologies in the Fifth Apple War. “I was looking for that,” I said.
He looked up at me. “Still working on that project?”
I shook my head.
“Get a good grade?”
“C,” I said.
“How? I told you the whole story,” said the Memory of Johnny Appleseed.
“I forgot about the project until the day it was due,” I said.
The Memory of Johnny Appleseed smirked and shook his head.
I didn’t move. After a moment, the Memory of Johnny Appleseed looked up at me. “Are you going to just stand there and watch me read?”
“I was really looking forward to reading the end,” I said.
“Early bird catches the worm,” he said.
I stared at him.
“It is my story, after all,” he said.
I just stood there.
“Go away, .”
So I did—I walked out to my Bicycle Built for Two, unlocked it, and rode off the page.
The following day, though, I rode my bike to the Library right after school. I went directly to the Reference section, where a Librarian in a disco suit was stamping and stacking books. I knew my thoughts would be bored in that section, though, so I opened my skull in the lobby and let them run upstairs to Media; only one or two stayed behind in my mind. Then I found The Book of Apples, sat in a corner, and read for the next two hours, absorbing as much as I could. Every once in a while one of my thoughts would find me there and pester me by tugging on my sleeve or walking onto the page I was reading. “Can we go?” one asked.
“Not yet,” I whispered.
“I’m so bored.”
“Then read,” I said.
I was halfway through Appleseed’s anecdotes about language-planting, though, when I saw the lights overhead flicker. The library was starting to close. I knew what would happen next: the lights would go out altogether, the disco balls would drop, the shelves would slide to the walls and a light-up dance floor would be born. Some books would pick up keyboards and saxophones and drums while other books donned disco suits and dancing dresses. Read: flashing lights; booksweat; music so loud you couldn’t hear your thoughts think!
I put the book back on the shelf and opened my skull to collect my thoughts. Some of them scampered into my skull, but a few stood staring at me. “What are you doing?” said one. “I was really into that story!”
“The Library’s closing soon,” I told the thought.
“Can we check the book out?” said the thought.
I shook my head. “It’s a reference book,” I said.
“Then just take it, man,” said the thought.
Reader: Wait—what?
“You should,” another thought said.
“Who’s going to know?” the first thought said.
Reader: That’s stealing, . Stealing is illegal!
The second thought looked at the Reader. “Don’t you want to understand Appleseed’s planting techniques? How the stories are told?”
Reader: Sure, but—
“I’m not—I can’t—no way,” I said.
“Just put it in under your shirt, wussface,” said the thought.
I thought about it. “There’s a Librarian right there,” I whispered to my skull. Next to Mothers and Cones, Librarians were probably the most powerful people in Appleseed: they were dizzyingly smart, highly trained, paid a lot of meaning, and great at disco—they knew all the latest moves.
“We have to get out of here,” I told the thought.
“We want the story, ,” said the first thought. “We are not leaving that book here.”
A Librarian in disco gear whisked by. “Music begins in ten minutes!” he sang.
I smiled and nodded and thought to walk away from the shelves, but when I actually tried to move my feet they wouldn’t lift. I knew right away that it was my thoughts, conspiring to control me. “We need to go,” I told my thoughts.
“No one’s going to miss one book,” a thought of umbrellas whispered. Before I could object further he grabbed the book I’d been reading off the shelf, climbed my shoulders, opened the top of my head as wide as the hinge would go and stuffed the book into my skull. The book was a hardcover—big, heavy, with sharp corners. The weight on my brain made me shriek.
“Shh! Big baby,” said the thought.
I couldn’t see for a second—I blinked and blinked. My vision reversed, flipped upside down. My arm began tremoring. I let out an involuntary yelp. “You’re messing up his brain, dude,” said one thought to another.
I tried to object—to say “Stop!”—but I couldn’t make words; one of the books must have been pressing on my language center. Then even the thoughts of words vanished. I blurted whatever word was available to me. “Darjeeling!” “Pock.” “Historical!”
Meanwhile, the thoughts struggled to close my skull. I could feel them pushing and shoving one another, trying to make room for the novel they’d crammed into their living space. My eyes fluttered; my vision was blue. I clawed at the hinge on my skull but the thoughts held it closed.
Suddenly I heard the swish of guitars and recorded horns—the disco music was starting.
“Oop,” said the thought. “Time to vamoose, .”
The lights were dimming.
“?”
I pulled at the seam of my skull. “Stout,” I said. “Lasso.”
Out on the floor, disco Librarians were starting to assemble. A strobe light yawned, stretched its arms and started turning. I looked out the windows at the dusky purple light.
“Get moving, ,” said the thought.
I tried one more time to reason, to find language to name my thoughts, but I couldn’t. So I forced all my concentration toward a thought of walking: very slowly, one foot in front of the other. I edged away from the shelf, across the Reference section, over the dance floor, and into the lobby. It seemed to take forever to get to the circulation desk. I was sweating and dizzy. At one point I stumbled and a thought said, “Easy. Just act cool, .”
Cool. I tried to remember what that word meant. But I didn’t know.
When we passed the circulation desk, two Librarians in disco suits looked up from a pile of books that they were stamping. “Not staying for the dance?” asked the male discoer.
I stammered. “Yee. I—”
“Say ‘No thanks,’ ” said the thought.
“No—thanks,” I said.
“Sure?” said the female.
“Smile,” said the thought.
I smiled.
“Say ‘Have a good night, though,’ ” said the thought.
“Have a good night, though,” I said.
“Now move,” the thought said, and I pushed open the double doors into the foyer. As I did, though, an alarm rang out—a repeating beep, but a beep that had been eating right, working out, trying to turn its life around. “Dammit. Run!” shouted the thought, but I didn’t—I stopped; I rugged. The Librarians leapt over the desk and stretched their hands out at me. “Hold up just a second there,” said the discoer.
“Shit!” shouted a thought inside my mind.
“It’s the magnetic tags,” said another. “They put them in all the books.”
“Don’t let that fucker touch you, ,” said a thought of violence. “If he does, you punch that fucker in the fucking face.”
The Librarians put their hands on me, turned me around, and led me back into the lobby.
“Roundhouse-kick them!” said violence. “Pull out their esophagi!”
The Librarians stared at me. “Sorry about that,” said the discoer. “Scanner picked something up.”
/> “Not checking out any books tonight?” said the discoess.
“N—no,” I said.
“We’ve had problems with that thing,” said the discoer, pointing to the scanner.
“What’s your name?” said the discoess.
“Don’t tell them!” said a thought.
“Make something up!” said another.
“Head-butt the big one and sweep the leg of the small one!” said the thought of violence.
I tried to think of a name—any name. I gave them the first one I could come up with: “Chris,” I blurted. “My name is—Chris.”
“Chris what?”
“Chris B-ook,” I said. “Book.”
“Chris Book? That’s funny,” said the discoer. “Mr. Book? In a Library?”
“Can you hold out your arms, Mr. Book?”
I stretched out my arms and the discoess patted my shirt and my pant legs. In my mind, meanwhile, my thoughts were scrambling to hide. I could feel them ripping up pages from the book and cramming them wherever they could: in the empty channels and caverns in my skull, in my spinal column, behind my eyes, in my ear canals. The pain was terrible. I tasted words on my tongue, saw words in my eyes: there were letters on the male discoer’s face; the discoess had a W for an ear and her arm was a noun.
The discoess frisked me, stepped back, and looked to the discoer. “Nothing,” she said.
The discoer tapped his head.
“Bend down, please,” said the discoess.
“Everyone act natural!” shouted a thought.
I bent down. The discoess unlatched the lock on my skull and opened it at the seam. The hinge on my skull creaked as she lifted the lid.
I felt her eyes on my brain and I prepared for the worst. They would know that I stole. And then what? “They’ll interrogate you,” whispered the thought of violence. “Torture. Torture like only a Librarian can deliver.”
The female Librarian sighed. “I don’t see anything,” she said. “Just a bunch of thoughts sitting on a couch and watching television.”
“No books?” said the discoer.
“No books, no ideas, nothing,” said the discoess. “It’s like a tomb in here!” She stooped so she could see my face. “Is this place for rent?”
The discoer guffawed and slapped his knee.
“Hardy fucking har,” whispered the thought of violence, from wherever he was hiding in my mind. “I’ll kill both of you motherfuckers.”
The discoess closed up my skull. “My apologies, Mr. Book,” she said. “The alarm must have gone off by mistake.”
“No problem,” said my thought of speech.
“No problem,” I said.
I rushed out of the library and down to the bike racks, where I unlocked the Bicycle Built for Two. I started pedaling away, but I still couldn’t see; the whole world was words and terms. And the noise in my mind—my thoughts, high-fiving and dancing and celebrating—didn’t help either. “Thoughts rule!” shouted a thought of sidewalks. “Fuck yeah!” hooted the thought of violence.
Four blocks from the Library, when I could no longer hear the disco music, I collapsed on the dusky grass. I lay down on my side and my thoughts kicked open my brain and tumbled out of it. “Woo!” shouted the thought of violence, stepping into the grass. “We are badass thought mofos!” he roared. “Aren’t we?”
“That was so cool!” said the thought of walking.
I collapsed in the grass. I couldn’t speak; I was sick with words. The information was blurp reed, yazzing through my > mmm fulcrum.
“?” said a thought of home. “You OK?”
“Are you in need of gutter repair?” I said.
“What?” said the thought of walking.
“The fail is going on all weekend,” I said.
“What fail?” said violence.
“That’s our cornerback guarantee,” I said.
“He’s fucked,” said another thought.
My thoughts colluded to get me standing and walking; I hung over my bike and slowly made my way home. With every step, though, I felt changed; my cells were absorbing the stories—their sentences, symbols, and themes.
Halfway home, we ran into the Memory of Johnny Appleseed praying at the edge of a field of dead trees. “,” he said, and stood up. The knees of his pants were wet from the mud. “You OK?”
“You’re fine,” said my thoughts.
“I’m fine,” I said.
But I knew Johnny Appleseed wasn’t fooled—he could see the apples in my eyes.
D’ARCY SPICE
1987 wasn’t an anomaly; the Memory of Johnny Appleseed was wrong. The apples came back smaller the year after that, and smaller still—no bigger than crabs, in fact—the following year. In 1990, no apples grew at all—all the trees in Appleseed were bare. The Board of Select Cones voted to bring in a soil expert from the margins, but all she could do was confirm that the pagesoil was barren—she couldn’t say why or how to solve it. So the Board of Select Cones summonsed the Memory of Johnny Appleseed and demanded a solution. The Memory of Johnny Appleseed held out his hands to them. “I’m really not sure,” he said. “It has something to do with the stories we’re telling. They seem to be sapping the soil.”
The Memory was dismissed, and from then on, vilified. Or is it villainized? Cast out, outcasted: turned away at his favorite restaurants, denied meaning at his bank, locked out of his own apartment. Soon he was homeless. Rumor was he was sleeping on the streets or in the deadgroves. Sometimes you’d see him outside the Why, handing out brochures.
A host of theories ran through Appleseed: the blight was a curse, prayed upon us out of spite; it was some sort of wildword virus; it was a plot, spearheaded by East Appleseed to destabilize us. Meanwhile, we prayed for a different story, or a better ending to this one.
Overnight, it seemed, Appleseed lost most of its meaning. The applers tried swapping out their central ingredients for another—oranges, lemons, pears—but to no avail. Have you ever had a pearburger? A raw lemon? Ye—uck. Soon, applers began to leave town, hitchhiking over the margins toward richer harvests. The Planters who stayed in Appleseed gave up on perishables and tried their luck with solidifides: they planted chairtrees, for example, or fields of refrigerators.
It wasn’t long before the town’s appleloss hit home. My Mom lost hours at the hospital and had to pick up a shift at Appleseed Mental. That was the thought of small potatoes, though, compared to my Dad’s predicament. First, his tenants started sending in partial-meaning payments, forcing my Dad to hound them—to drive over to the apartments, knock on their doors, and ask them face-to-face where the meaning was. A few times I went with him. Once, we were driving down Belmont Street when we saw a pair of overalls who owed my Dad meaning walking toward the building. We parked the car and followed him inside. The overalls, who used to pick apples at Berson’s Farm before it shut down, answered the door with a four-foot cigarette hanging out of his mouth. When he saw it was my Dad, he nodded and leaned against the doorframe. “Ralph,” he said.
“It’s the ninth, Jaime,” said my Dad.
“Yes, it is,” said the pair of overalls.
“Nine days late,” said my Dad.
“Yes,” said the pair of overalls.
“Where is it?”
“I don’t have it.”
“You have to pay your rent, Jaime,” my Dad said.
“Do I?” the overalls said.
Soon it wouldn’t matter—more than half of my Dad’s tenants stopped paying. Some left in the middle of the night; some stayed behind even when the heat skipped town and the water died in the pipes.
With so few tenants living in the building, my Dad lost faith and fell behind on upkeep. And now that I think about it? That was right around the same time that my thoughts started turning inward, digging into my brain. My Mom took me back to Doctor Coat to see if this might be related to the music pills, and the Coat opened up my head and looked around. When he peered inside, one of my thoughts gave him
the finger.
“Hm,” the Coat said. “Where are your other thoughts?” he asked me, his voice echoing off the walls of my skull.
“Out,” I said.
“Out where?” said the Coat.
“Out, OK?” I said.
“You see?” my Mom said. “He’s had that puss on his face for weeks now.”
“I have a headache, OK?” I said.
“It’s always something, isn’t it, ?” she said.
At home, our phone rang and rang. We were assaulted with calls and prayers from bill collectors, banks, disgruntled tenants. Soon my Dad stopped praying altogether. One day Mrs. Parker, who always paid her rent, prayed to me about a leaking toilet. I went to ask my Dad about it and found him on the back patio, picking pieces from a half-rotten Kaddish fruit. I told him about the prayer for service. “Sounds like a serious situation,” I said. “Do you want to go over there?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, looking out into the trees.
“Should I go over there?”
“Christ,” my Dad said. “Tell her I’ll get there when I can.”
“Today?”
“When I can,” my Dad said.
So that’s what I prayed to her. Hours later, though, Mrs. Parker prayed to me again. “Help!” her prayer said. “The water is up to my knees!”
I didn’t pray back.
“Now it’s up to my waist!” she prayed.
If I was really a good person? I would have ridden out there on my Bicycle Built for Two just to see what I could do. But instead I sat down on the couch with a bag of chips and watched TV, just like the spoiled, selfish piece of shit my Mom said I was. I didn’t move for the rest of the afternoon—not even when Mrs. Parker prayed to me that the water was up to her chin. Not even when the prayers stopped altogether.
YELLOW TRANSPARENT
As I said, my sister Briana was a towntalent in the arts of ancient construction and antiquing. Before I was even allowed to go with them, she and my Dad would take off for the dump in his truck and return with an overwhelm of strange objects. Growing up with her, I didn’t really appreciate the kind of eye it took to spot meaning—I couldn’t tell the difference between a worba and a forba, between a norch and a nouch—but my sister could spot truth in objects that your standard vulture or scav would look right past: she’d see the old in the warboots, hear the subtle sounds in a dead viola, recognize an entropy as a shrine from a goneby religion. When Bri was twelve, my Dad built a shed in the backyard where she could store her collectibles and tools. Once or a twice a summer he’d load up the truck with her fixed-ups and meaningfuls, drive her to the flea, and set up a table for her where she could sell. He’d subtract the meaning for the table and she’d get to keep the rest.
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