He shrugged. “I can’t keep track. I’ve been trading for as many different types and versions as I can.”
For two months or so, I worked in the fields across the street from my house as the Memory of Johnny Appleseed’s assistant. We pulled up old crops, turned the soil, and planted the seeds. I’d also accompany him on his trades. He met with some real characters! Once, we took the Bicycle Built for Two to Small Pear to meet a marginalia-man called Eyes. Eyes had a line of eyes that ran all around his head, and he had his seeds collected in tiny plastic bags. “These,” said Eyes, “are pumpkin seeds.” He handed them to the Memory of Johnny Appleseed. “Thunderseeds,” he said. Then he found another bag. “These are motherseeds,” said the Memory.
“Motherseeds?” I said.
I looked at Johnny. Motherseeds! “How much for those?” I asked the seer.
“What about apple seeds?” said the Memory of Johnny Appleseed.
“Here,” said the marginalia, and he held up another bag. “Finest apples this side of East Appleseed.”
“How much?” said the Memory.
“Five truths,” he said.
The Memory of Johnny Appleseed’s eyes narrowed. “Give you four,” he said.
“Fuck you,” said the marginal. He closed his knapsack and turned to walk away.
“OK,” the Memory said, grabbing the sleeve of Eyes’ coat. “Four truths, one theory.”
“What about for the motherseeds?” I said.
“Two ideas,” he said.
I handed him the ideas and he gave me the packet of seeds.
When we got back to the deadgroves we went right to work. We were running out of space in the deadgroves, so Johnny directed me to a patch of nothings and told me to pull them out.
“Really?” I said. “They’re almost ripe.” They looked like this:
“We can either grow nothings here,” said the Memory of Johnny Appleseed, “or we can pull the nothings and plant mothers and apples.”
I stepped into the field and began pulling up the nothings by the roots. Then I turned the soil and planted the seeds we’d traded for. After half an hour or so, Bob Lonely came walking across the street. “Afternoon,” he said.
The Memory of Johnny Appleseed nodded to him.
Mr. Lonely looked at the pile of nothings. “Those nothings ripe?”
“Ripe as they’re going to get,” said the Memory of Johnny Appleseed.
The pulled nothings were screaming, and dying, in the sun.
“Are they—screaming?” Bob said.
“They’re singing,” said Appleseed.
Bob nodded and turned back toward his house.
The sun roiled overhead. The next morning, the deadgrove struck up a conversation with the sun, and the soil asked the sun out for chai, and then, out for a formal dinner date. Soon the sun and soil were spending a lot of time together. And then, lo and tone, I walked out into the fields with the Memory of Johnny Appleseed one morning and we saw stalks starting to sprout.
“Isn’t it amazing?” said the proud page.
Appleseed put his hands on his hips. “It’s a fucking miracle,” he said.
I started planning for a new life: life with a Mom. Two Moms, even! On my clipboard, I made a list of places we could go: to the Big Why, the Library, on a hike up Appleseed Mountain, to see a matinee at the Bing. Would this Mom like music? Would she appreciate the Ulcerative Colitises?
The rows of apple seeds didn’t sprout; neither did the pumpkin seeds. But two days after we planted the motherseeds the stalks were eye-high. I stepped up to the first row of plants and I could see, between the sheaths, human faces. When I looked closer, though, I saw a beard and an Adam’s apple. My thoughts swore in disappointment. These weren’t the faces of mothers after all; they were the faces of fathers, their eyes closed and their lips pursed.
When I showed the Memory of Johnny Appleseed the father faces he put his hands on his hips and spit into the soil. “Shit,” he said. “That damn omniscient—he sold us Dads instead of Moms.” I could tell he was embarrassed.
“What are we supposed to do with these?” I asked.
“We could just turn them over, bury them,” the Memory of Johnny Appleseed suggested.
I thought about that. “And grow what?” I said.
“Corn?” he suggested.
In the end, though, we decided to reap the crop—to let the fathers grow, pull them when they were ready, and then bring them down to the flea bee and see what we could get for them. This was during the blight, after all; everyone was down on meaning and we thought there still might be a good local market for Dads. Everyone needed a father—villains needed them, nomads needed them, even those with fathers needed fathers.
Another few days passed by—I spent them by myself, alone in the house. That weekend, though, the Memory of Johnny Appleseed prayed to me from across the street and told me that the sheaths were uncurling, that I needed to get over to the deadgroves right away. When I got there I saw: some of the fathers were waking up, rubbing their eyes and stretching their arms and stepping out of their stalks. Most of them were dressed in work suits and carrying briefcases. Each ripe father dutifully placed one foot on the field and then the other. Then they all checked their watches and straightened their ties.
One father approached me. “Dad?” I said, but he walked right past me and bolted across the grove.
Then another father stepped out of its stalk. “Dad,” I said, but that one walked right by, too.
Soon, a steady stream of fathers was storming across the street. In the groves, meanwhile, more fathers were waking up. One of them stepped out into the deadsoil and smiled at me. “Name’s Jim,” he said.
“,” I said.
We shook hands. “Very good to be here,” he said, looking around at the fields. “You’ve done a great job here. I’m really proud of you, Son.”
I hadn’t heard words like those in I don’t know how long—maybe never. “It was nothings,” I said.
“But now it’s somethings, and that’s because of you, because of what you did. Show me around?”
Jim and I walked past the rows of dead trees. I introduced him to the Memory of Johnny Appleseed, who was helping other fathers out of their stalks. “I’m Jim,” he said to the Memory of Johnny Appleseed. “And you are?”
“The Memory of Johnny Appleseed,” said the Memory of Johnny Appleseed.
“Great to meet you,” said Jim.
Just then, I saw my father’s truck pull into our driveway. He got out of the cab and watched a school of fathers pass him. I saw him look across the street. Then he began marching mechanically toward us. “What—” he said, his silver skin shining in the sun. “Who are these people?”
Jim extended his hand. “Name’s Jim,” he said.
“They’re fathers,” I said.
My Dad tried to compute this. “What are they doing here?”
“Dads are really popular right now,” I said quietly.
“But you have a Dad,” said my father. “Me.”
“I know,” I said. “I thought—if we brought them to the flea bee—”
“OK, but you should have asked me about this first,” he said, rubbing the soot of toil off his forehead. “This is a really meaningful risk.”
“The seeds were only—”
“Fathers have huge appetites,” my Dad said. I could smell the work on his breath. “What do you plan to feed them?”
Across the street, fathers were looking for tasks. Two had opened the hood of my father’s truck and one was fixing the steel banister on the front step.
Jim looked at his watch. “Gosh darnit, I’m late,” he said.
“Late for what?” said my father.
“I’ve got a meeting at the office,” he said, straightening his tie.
“Will you be coming back?” I said.
Jim winced. “Probably not,” he said.
“Not ever?” I said.
“I’ve got a lot of work to
catch up on,” Jim said. “, you take care of yourself, all right, Son? You have a good life now, you hear?” Then he chucked me on the shoulder and charged toward the street.
“Jim,” I said, weakly.
“Forget that one,” said my father. There was sudden meaning in his eyes. “Go back out to the fields. Keep them in their stalks until we figure out how to store them.”
I was dizzy. “How do I keep them there?”
My father ran his hands through his tired hair. “Do whatever it takes,” he said. “Try to reason with them. Tell them a story.”
My Dad ran toward the house and I went back into the groves. By then it was almost dusk, and more difficult to see—the running fathers made shadows on the white page.
When I reached the fatherfields, though, all was quiet. The only fathers left in those fields were not yet ripe, still sleeping in their stalks. I went from stalk to stalk, looking at their sleeping faces. Some fathers were mumbling to themselves; others were wheezing and snoring.
I won’t ever forget that chorus of snores. It sounded like family.
WORRYFIELDS
PRAYER PIANO II
We left that piano out in the worryfields for anyone to play, but most people seemed to ignore it. Once I saw a Canada out there, sitting at the bench and staring at the keys, but I didn’t hear any music or changing points of view.
For a while, I didn’t think about the piano too much—it just sat there in the fields, switching points of view every now and again. That spring, though, I started spending a lot more time in those fields. By then, I think I was just craving company. I liked to watch the worriers pacing back and forth in the high grass, wringing their hands, hugging themselves or praying. I’d started praying again, too—not to my Mom, who I still hated for leaving, but directly to the Core. “How can you leave me here?” I prayed to it, my knees sinking into the page.
As usual, there was no response.
“Isn’t every single person holy? Even me?” I prayed.
A hole appeared in my palm.
“Not holey,” I prayed. “Holy! Like, sacred!”
Nothing.
Walking back from the worryfields one day, I passed by the piano and, on a whim, sat down on the stool. By that point the keys were warped and weather-stained. I pressed a note and heard the point of view of close worriers.
But mostly I was concerned about Bob. What would I tell him?
I pressed another note and the POV switched to a chorus pacing the edge of the field.
How are we supposed to live knowing that we may or may not have cancer somewhere in our body?
Another key called the point of view of the page.
Why is everyone looking at me so strangely? Do I have something on my face?
All that shifting point of view made me hungry. I stood up, walked home, and had a potato chip sandwich.
The next day, though, I went back to the piano. When I sat down at the keys this time, I tried two notes simultaneously. I heard whispers from the trees, the whining of a cloud, the gruff of a shingle.
Soon I was making chords, just like I’d seen the Possum do: three notes, and points of view, at once: my father’s point of view at the labor factory, fixing the Supply-Demander/the Memory of Johnny Appleseed, trading for seeds/a bird in the trees. I heard “… bad gasket?/trustworthy/shee-twee-bee!” simultaneously.
As I was leaning into the chord, though, my foot happened to push the foremost left pedal on the bottom of the piano. “Bee-twee-shee!” said the bird.
I stopped and looked down at the pedal. Then I pushed the right pedal. “Shee-twee-bee!” said the bird.
I played a different note and pushed the left pedal with my foot.
“Morning, Ralph,” said the Forebarrel.
“Morning,” I said. “What’s on tap for today?”
“Need you to take a look at the Demander in Building Six,” the Forebarrel said.
“Will do,” I said.
At first I didn’t understand what was happening; it took me a few minutes to recognize that the right pedal was moving the story forward in time and the left pedal reversing it. Every day that week, though, I went back to the piano and practiced. Soon, I was a good enough point-of-view piano player that I could shift the POV to a nearby tree in the margin, and then to the Memory of Johnny Appleseed in the deadgroves, and then to my house, at any time in their history. I saw my house as a young cabin, hiking a strange mountain with his fathershack. When I melodied further back, I saw Johnny Appleseed—the real Johnny Appleseed—stopping to tie the leather laces on his boots.
I practiced melody after melody—varying pedals, notes, and speeds—until I located, somewhere in the past pages, my mother praying to my father. I picked up the story midverse:
“I can’t, Ralphie,” she prayed.
“Why not?” he prayed.
“Because I have work to do still. We’re repairing holes day and night.”
“But why do you have to fix it?” prayed my father. “Why you?”
“ is our son! We should be the first ones on line to help Appleseed.”
There was silence.
“I miss you,” prayed my Dad. “We all do.”
“Any word from Bri?” my Mom prayed.
My Dad prayed that there wasn’t. “You?”
“We’re looking,” my Mom prayed. “We’ll find her.”
“You’ve checked all the auction schools?”
“Of course we have,” my Mom said. “And I’ve put out a national call to the Mothers’ Network.”
“I’m just praying that she’s OK,” my Dad said.
“Me, too—twice a day,” my Mom prayed. “What about ?”
“He’s fine. The same.”
“He won’t answer my prayers,” my Mom prayed.
“He says he’s angry at you,” my Dad prayed.
“I’m worryfields about him.”
“You should tell him that,” my Dad prayed. “You should visit.”
“I will,” she prayed. “Soon as I can get away.”
“He would love to see you,” prayed my Dad. “We all would.”
A few days later, I played the song of Mothers’ Day—the national recruiting day for the Mothers of America. That was the day my Mom left us—remember? I saw that sequence again, my Mom walking out into the backyard with hardly a goodbye and lifting up into the air. We ran out after her and Bri shouted up into the sky. She wasn’t the Auctioneer that day—she was just Briana, my freaked-out sister.
Playing this song now, from third person, I could see my own face, still and dumb and silent. Why wasn’t I crying, or shouting, or saying anything at all? I should have protested more, or at least told my Mom that I loved her.
I played a pausechord, found the first-person harmony, and resumed the scene from my own eyes again. Inside my head my thoughts were howling. “Find the words,” one commanded me.
“What words?” said a second.
“The words to make her stay!” said the first.
Then I heard a noise overhead and saw something looming over the roof: a giant, dark shape. I put my hand over my forehead to shield the afternoon sun. “What is that?” said the Reader.
It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. When I looked closer at it, though, I realized what I was seeing: those were skirts—thousands and thousands of warskirts. As the school of Mothers oomed forward in recruit formation, my mother floated toward them and joined the giant mass; soon I couldn’t distinguish her shape from anyone else’s. I understood then why she’d left so quickly; she was rushing to stay on schedule.
My sister turned to me. “Nice job, assface.”
“What did I do?” I said.
But I knew: these were my stories—every one of them.
Bri stormed inside. The Reader and I stood in the yard, watching other recruits—some of them lugging suitcases or duffel bags as they flew—join the formation. As the fleet hovered, I said a prayer. “Mom?” I prayed.
<
br /> “What?” she whisperprayed back.
“Be careful,” I prayed.
“Of course,” she prayed. “Don’t worry, OK?”
Then the entire fleet began floating forward. They tightened formation, banked left, flew behind a cloud and disappeared.
The last song I ever played on that point of view piano was a third-person from our very first days in Appleseed, after I’d just begun to speak. I didn’t yet have a room—we were all still figuring out how we’d live in Appleseed. When I released my foot from the pedal, I saw my Mom and Dad standing in the basement. “It’s too cold down here for him,” my Dad said.
“But it’s spacious. It will give him room for his art,” my Mom said.
“What art?” my Dad said.
“He can draw if he wants to,” she said. “Or write.”
“Write what?” my Dad said.
“Whatever he wants,” my Mom said.
BASTILLE SQUARE
By the fall of my senior year Appleseed was riddled with bookwormholes. It wasn’t strange to see holes in the middle of fields, human-sized holes on the sidewalk, car-sized holes in the road. There were accidents all over town: people twisting their ankles or tripping on new holes; veggiecars, swerving to miss a hole, crying right into other veggiecars.
As the bookworms took over, characters disappeared. Take my cousin Patrick—one day he was here, the next day gone. The same with the Memory of Johnny Appleseed; all of a sudden he couldn’t be found. After enough of these disappearances, the Building Cones started covering up the holes with steel plates to curb injuries.
Reader: You mean like manhole covers?
What’s a manhole?
There were all sorts of rumors about where these holes led. Some people thought they led to the Core; others, to a world of Memories. Large Odor said he didn’t think they led anywhere. But that fall, Orange Traffic Cone Scientists sent two dogs down a bookwormhole and said the dogs came back smelling of prayers.
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