Apple in the Earth

by C.T. Millis

Chapter 10

  The sound of James’ feet pounding on the pavement was the only thing louder than the sound of his heart hitting the walls of his chest. He knew, before he saw his house, and before he opened the unlocked door, that his father was home. He kicked off his shoes and ran into the dining room. His mother was sitting at her seat with the lights off. On the table in front of where his father used to sit was a box that was only big enough to hold a bowling ball. The rest of the house was quiet so James knew Sophie’s dad was not there.

  “Mom, what is it?”

  “They finally sent him, it’s the only way they could,” she sobbed, “your father.” James sat down at the table where he normally would have- a pantomime of dinner. He closed his eyes.

  He thought about the last time all three of them were at the table. The lights were on inside and the sun was down outside. They had mashed potatoes, corn, and roast beef. His dad dished out James’ plate for him. As he handed it to him across the table, he looked at James in the eyes and smiled. The room was so bright then all of a sudden in his mind James’ dad turned to paper again, and instead of matching blue eyes staring at James, it was the hollow crayon sockets. His father turned brown and folded into the box that was in front of James now. The room dimmed darker than it did in the poster of, “The Potato Eaters” that he bought that day. The silence gave way to muffles from his mother. James was very still.

  “Can’t you hear me?” He looked at his mother.

  “What?”

  “Your dad can’t see us living like this, your dad can’t see him.” she put her head on the table, “and he can’t see your dad, how did this happen?”

  “What, mom?”

  “You have to hide him.”

  “What?” James stood up.

  “You have to be the one to take care of him now, I can’t do it.”

  “Mom, I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “You have to hide him!” her voice and head raised, her bloodshot eyes met James and she was angry.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll hide him.”

  “You’re a good boy.” James walked over to the box and slid if off the table and into his arms. He picked it up and the weight was familiar. The box that held his father’s ashes had USPS and military stamps all over it. James did not even know that they would ship ashes. He remembered why the weight was so familiar. The year before, he was with his family visiting an aunt. James had a baby cousin who was a newborn, he picked up the baby and it was heavier than he thought it would be, just like his father’s ashes. After he walked up the stairs and into his room, James closed the door behind him. The weight did not leave him when he set the box down on the floor by his bed. It didn’t leave him when he opened up the box and looked at the remains of his father, surrounded by thick plastic. The weight was heavy on his arms and chest when he thought about how his father looked like part of the moon, disintegrated. His father looked like cement and crushed up pills. The weight pulled at his ears when James thought about how he thought people were dust when they were cremated, not small stones. James closed the box and slid it under his bed, replacing the bed skirt over it so nobody could see the box from the door. James felt the pull on his chest when he lay down in his bed.

  He looked up at the speckled-moon surface of the ceiling and felt like he was pressed between two great rocks and every part of him was being compressed. He journeyed on the valleys and mountain peaks of the moon above him, before he imagined descending into the great cavern of a box that held his father and running on the pebbles of the beach he had become.

  When his mother called him down for dinner, he sat down in his usual spot and Sophie’s dad was sitting across from him where his father used to sit. James noticed dinner was the same as it was before his father left, corn, mashed potatoes, and roast beef. This time, the corn was on the cob and when James ate it, he thought about how it did not just taste like the corn, it tasted like the pepper he sprinkled on it, like the butter he rolled it in. James ate quietly so Sophie’s dad would not yell at him for eating like a pig. When he was done eating, James looked at his plate with his hands folded on his lap. When his mom and Sophie’s dad were done eating, Sophie’s dad stood up and told James,

  “You do the dishes tonight, you’ve been good- you might not be a lost cause,” before sauntering off to the living room and flipping on the television. James scraped the bones and bits of potato residue into the trash with the corn ear skeletons along with them. He turned the water on hot enough to steam, and washed each of the plates slowly and thought about himself. James knew he was more than just himself, James knew he was his father, his mother, the tree house, the potatoes.

  Most of all, James felt like one of the potatoes, growing underground, almost protected by the nastiness around him. It kept him wholesome; the mean words, the bad days, the people who thwarted him, stole his friends, yelled at him, his mother’s silence, the weight of his father’s ashes kept him quiet, kind, thoughtful of others like himself. While James dunked the dishes in the soapy water, he imagined he was a king and lived in a castle by the edge of the sea. Suddenly, the spray of water on his face was the wet breath of the ocean, his mother was there, and so was his father, Sophie, Mr. Heckerman, Pandora, Sam from the gas station, Vincent. They were all watching him and waiting for him to tell them what to do. He turned from the ocean and told them,

  “You should create,”

  “What did you just say to me, boy?” Sophie’s dad asked with the tone of a judge accusing a murderer. James had not noticed he walked into the kitchen. James was wide-eyed, but knew what to do. Rhymes.

  “I said I was having trouble with this plate,” James reached into the sink and pulled out a sparkling circle of plaster. Sophie’s dad pulled it from him,

  “What do you mean? It’s just fine, there’s something wrong with you.” He walked to the fridge and pulled out a beer. It was glass with a twist top, and he threw the cap at James after he opened it. “Throw that out.” The cap hit James’ shoulder but still made him flinch.

  James finished the dishes and knew to go right up the stairs and to bed. Sophie’s dad was already closing in on his mother, inching his frame over her at the dining room table where she had not yet moved.

  James fell to sleep imagining the silence beneath his bed. His dreams were in winter. He woke up in the dream and saw a bright white light coming from his window. Ecstatic, he ran to it and flung the curtains aside. The light filled both his room and himself. Snow piled the earth like heaps of white grain. It banked on trees and his fence, which it nearly covered. James blinked, saw it, rubbed his eyes, saw it. He ran downstairs and heard his mother humming a lullaby he had not heard in a year.

  “I’m making breakfast for us, your dad is doing a lot of hard work out there- he’ll need it, how many eggs do you want?” Suddenly, there was a pan and spatula in her hands, and the room was filled with the aroma of morning.

  James ran to the front door, he ran out in the snow without shoes but the snow was dry, the snow was as warm as he was. He could see his father shoveling the walk, and when James yelled out,

  “Dad!” he turned around. James stopped running, he could not see his eyes, he was made of paper again and James did not draw the eyes. His father’s gloves fell off and the shovel dropped soundlessly into the soft snow. The eyes of black grew larger and larger until it covered his hands, his dad was screaming, but James could not see his mouth. The hands turned black and he started to granulate into his winter clothes.

  He wanted to do something to help, so James ran towards his father. By the time he got there all that was left was a pile of clothes. James reached down and picked up his father’s hat. Inside the container of his clothes were grey, sharp, fragments that looked like the moon.

  James looked down into the pile of ashes like it was the ladder of the tree house, like he could descend it. He did and he came into the tree house from one of the windows, but it was not really the tree
house. It was much larger, a great marble hall with velvet chairs. Each was filled with a potato and it was silent except for his own screams.

  When he woke up the sun was still down and everyone else in the house was still asleep. It was Saturday and James knew they would be asleep for a long time. He went downstairs, put on his shoes and a sweater, and went outside.

  The birds were not back from winter yet, but if they were, the sun was at the point where it turned the night sky a deep blue rather than black. They would have called out for it if they were there. James strolled down the street and listened to his own soles of his own shoes scraping with each step. He turned and saw the warm light of the gas station.

  Peter was there, looking out of the window. James waved, but Peter did not flinch. Peter seemed disappointed. He looked down at his hands. James was confused until he realized it was so dark outside still that Sam could only see his own reflection.

  James walked through the door with a chime, and Sam jumped at the noise. He smiled and put his hand to his chest,

  “Wow! You gave me a start there!” he grabbed a white towel from behind the counter and started to wipe a small spill of his soda from when he was shocked. “You’re up early!”

  “Yeah,” James set his hands on the counter, “I had a bad dream,”

  “That sucks, what was it?”

  “I was king,”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,”

  “But it was wrong, all the chairs in my court were empty. I was alone.”

  “I think there is another part of that dream that bothered you,”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well, what has to happen for someone to become king?”

  “They have to have a kingdom?”

  “What else?”

  “They have to have subjects,” Peter was quiet, “What?”

  “Just think about it for a while, its better if I don’t say it, but I think that’s what bothered you about having a dream where you were king.”

  “Otherwise, I’m having a good night.”

  “Very good, me too!”

  At the tree house, James could see the potatoes sprouting through the surface of the soil. He carefully stepped around them and pulled himself up the ladder and into the dark interior of the tree house, not yet lit by the sun.

  For James, there was a cold emptiness to most places. His house was hollow without his father. James’ classroom was somehow silent despite the steady barking talk of the children. His dreams were quiet echoes of being alone. The streets he walked on were abandoned corridors. His room was a cave he slept in.

  The tree house and Mr. Heckerman’s house were both filled with artifacts and inventions. These places were full, and their fullness resonated to the interior of James. He ran his fingers along the rough edges of the portrait he drew of his father, and looked deep into the caverns of his eyes, both eyes were full of the things James could not remember. The wood in the tree house seemed to have more texture than any other wood. The lopsided boards that framed the window extended splinters that looked like comforting hands. The poster of the Potato Eaters looked out at James like they were in a completely different room of the tree house, filled to its edges with people, stares, and the aroma of true hunger.

  From the windows of the tree house, the world itself looked fuller to James. The trees were beginning to form the buds of spring leaves. A thickness of the placing of houses was undeniable. Even the light of the sun invaded the street lights and filled the world with an over extension of bright.

  At most times, James felt like he was empty inside his own head, too weak to pick up the memories he wanted to review, and too worn to be honest with himself. In the tree house, he had an old strength that flooded into him with the morning light. His mind was as varied as the painted clouds of the sunrise, his heart beat as sure as the steady drum of leaves emerging from twigs, sticks, and branches of the abandoned trees.

  James knew that if he did not go home soon, this fullness would end permanently. If his mom or Sophie’s dad saw that he was gone, they would ask where he was. Even worse, they could look for him. They could find him there and he might never be allowed back. The tree house felt like a sweater he was pulling off of himself when he left. It was still there, even with him not in it. It seemed to keep a place for him, his form.

  His house was silent when he went back in and took off his shoes. He heard Sophie’s dad snoring louder and louder until James’ covers, pillow, and walls could not keep it from rattling his head.

  The snoring stopped abruptly and there was a pounding and a loud creak from James’ door that opened quickly.

  “Get up, you’re so lazy, you can’t spend your day sleeping!” Sophie’s dad was in the room and pulling at James’ covers. James was not asleep. He stood up as Sophie’s dad moved to the curtains to let in the morning sun. The street lights were out. There was a strange bump on the silhouette of Sophie’s dad’s wrist.

  “You’re going to make your bed, you’re going to help your mom get groceries today. . .” The noise of Sophie’s dad’s voice faded nodded background of James’ mind as he focused on what was growing on Sophie’s dad’s wrist. His arms were moving so quickly as Sophie’s dad spoke that James had trouble seeing was on his wrist until he took a breath and stood as still as a photograph.

  James’ dad’s gold watch hung from Sophie’s dad’s wrist.

  “Do you understand?” James nodded without looking from the watch. James could see the watch cling to Sophie’s dad’s wrist without loyalty. He saw the watch and Sophie’s dad stroll out of his room.

  He pulled his blankets, pillows, and sheets from his bed onto the floor. The lumpy surface of the exposed mattress looked like the scars on old trees from where their branches broke off during storms. He stuffed the sheets back onto the mattress, imagining it sucked the corners of the sheets under the mattress like a mouth devours spaghetti. He lifted the comforter over his head and made it billow down like a parachute to the bed and threw his pillows in perfect alignment to one another at the top of them.

  James left his room and knew that Sophie’s dad was gone. The door to his mother’s room was open a crack that James made wider. His mom was asleep in the warm burp of the room, and James saw a glimmer coming from the top of his father’s dresser. He opened the drawer that held the watches, saw they were misarranged, and grasped all of them in his hands. He carried every watch, downstairs and grabbed the one in his backpack before stuffing all of them into his pockets.

  He put on his shoes and ran, unstoppable, to Mr. Heckerman’s shed. Inside, he found a hammer, and he dashed up to the tree house for the second time that day. James pulled the watches out of his pockets like spilling water and looked at them all face up. Their batteries were not dead yet and the uneven ticks of them sounded like a heart afraid of the world around it.

  These were not Sophie’s dad’s watches. The watches would be worn by anyone strong enough to take them from James, unless he destroyed them. James lifted the hammer and the resulting noise burrowed inside of himself and made him out of breath. The cracks gave way to pops and James kept pulling the hammer back on the piles and spots of living watch until it was as quiet in the tree house as it was before James ever climbed the ladder.

  He scooped the broken arms, faces, and gears of the watches into his hands before dropping them down to where they bounced around the ladder to the tree house. He put the hammer back in Mr. Heckerman’s shed and grabbed a shovel. James dug in front of the ladder and put the watches, now destroyed, into the hole. He scooped the soil back over the smashed watches with his bare hands and pounded the soil tight again with the shovel.

  James was in the shower, scraping dirt from under his fingernails, by the time his mom woke up. Emerging with the steam from the bathroom, James could smell his mother cooking bacon. The salt in the air was as thick as near the ocean. The last time he was at the ocean, James hung off his father’s back as h
is dad dived into the crashing waves. He could hear his mother’s muffled laughter behind them when they sunk underwater. She took pictures of them at the beach, building sand castles, swimming, posing in the bright sunlight. They did not develop the pictures in time for James’ father’s funeral.

  The funeral itself was empty. James’ dad’s best friend talked about how they met, James’ mom tried to talk but choked on her words, sobs, and tears. James could not cry, he wanted to, he knew it would be one of the few times in his life that it was right to cry. James thought about the good times with his father, he imagined life without his father, he pretended he just watched a puppy crawl under a moving car. James looked at his mother’s streaked face and was too astonished to feel anything like what she felt. James did not cry at all during the funeral, but he curled under his mother’s arm for a long time and breathed slowly enough so she thought he did.

  Downstairs, James’ mother was scraping his breakfast onto a dish painted with small blue flowers. She sat down in her place and watched him scoop bits of scrambled eggs and bites of bacon into his mouth.

  “I heard you’re going to help me get groceries today,” she rested her chin casually on her hand and said everything in an almost playful giddiness.

  “Yeah, I can help,” James started, “I don’t know how much, we usually just get the same stuff.”

  “I know we usually get the same stuff,” James’ mother paused, “but we want to try new things, I know you’re a picky eater, but it’s been getting on people’s nerves around here.”

  “Your nerves?” James was direct,

  “It didn’t used to, but it is now,” she looked down at her hands, “Let’s just try to make this work, okay?” To James, the food tasted like a salt lick, he nodded.

  He washed his own dishes as his mother dried them and put them away. She never ate around or with James except at dinner anymore. She often did not finish her food unless Sophie’s dad was around. Before James’ dad died, she was his mother. After James’ dad died, she was a hollow woman who could not connect with James, could not relate the way she used to. She ate differently, talked differently, dressed differently, she even walked differently. James noticed especially that she walked differently when he followed her out to their car in the garage and she unlocked the doors. He thought about how different she was when she let him ride in the front seat. She would normally never do that. It was not as safe in the front seat. He snapped his seatbelt on and looked at her while she looked away.

  James’ mom slipped out of the driveway with an over-careful speed. The car crawled down the street, past James’ school, and on a long stretch of two opposing lanes. There was nobody else on this road, just like there were no words inside the car.

  “Don’t be mad at me,” James’ mom said without looking from the road.

  “I’m not.”

  “I just can’t take everyone disapproving, everything I do-” she caught herself.

  “He’s not nice,”

  “You need a father,”

  “I have-” James took a breath, “I had a father, and he did just fine.” James felt every bump in the road for the rest of the trip.