Apple in the Earth

by C.T. Millis

  Chapter 18

  Sophie was still wearing the earrings the next day at school. James had trouble not turning around during class to look at their green glint between the strands of her blonde hair. She sat with James at lunch, but smiled at Sonny when he walked by.

  “What do you think he wants from you?”

  “Why would you think he wants something from me, he just likes having someone he can be nice to.”

  “Well, I think-”

  “You’re thinking, Janson? A new trick!” Sonny patted James on the back a little too hard to be friendly. He was facing Sophie, “I noticed you only got one cookie. I figured I’d get you another,”

  “Thanks! That’s so nice of you!” she squealed as he put a cellophane-wrapped chocolate chip cookie on her tray and walked past her. She waited until he was across the cafeteria before she looked at James, “See, no harm, he’s just being nice,”

  “Tell that to the guy he stole the cookie from,”

  “It’s so typical that you would assume he stole the cookie- I think it was just left over.”

  “Nobody ‘leaves over,’ a cookie Soph, maybe half a sandwich, or an apple, but cookies don’t get ‘left over.’”

  “You’re so silly, we’re all just trying our best, right James?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he replied before burying his mouth in his ham sandwich. Mid-chew, he pointed out, “Just remember, he’s nice to you, it doesn’t mean he’s a nice guy.”

  “Mmmmmm, this cookie is delicious.” They both burst out in laughter.

  On their way back to the classroom, James and Sophie passed Sonny, who was across the hallway from the sculpture of the man’s head who founded their school. Sonny was leaning against the wall with a smile on his face and his arms crossed.

  “See,”Sophie drew James’ attention to Sonny, “He appreciates art.”

  “Yeah, Soph. Sonny enjoys art.”

  “I’m not stupid. Don’t talk like I’m stupid.”

  Recess was more of the same. James stitched his way across the monkey bars while Sophie talked about the shrew that James injured. Half of the time, James could see Sonny arranging bets for a game of kick ball. James was happy to turn the other way to go back across the monkey bars.

  It was after school when the trouble started. James found Sophie to walk her home and they were close to exiting the school when Sonny ran up behind them.

  “Jansen! I need your help with something,” James and Sophie turned around.

  “Can I help?” Sophie asked, Sonny shifted his weight between his two feet,

  “Nah, that’s okay Sophie, I don’t want to get girls involved in it.” Sophie looked at James, “You go ahead, I’m just gonna go home, have fun, really!”

  “But Soph-“ James managed to say without whining, but she was gone halfway down the sidewalk so he could not catch up with her.

  “What’s going on?” he asked Sonny. Sonny walked up to James and put his hand on his shoulder and leaned in like he was going to tell him a secret,

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I like your friend-”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you have a problem with that?” Sonny raised his eyebrows and leaned back, hand still ominously on James’ shoulder.

  “No, why would I mind?” Sonny chuckled,

  “I just thought-” he laughed, “never mind, I just want to get to know you a little better, I don’t see why you can’t be her friend- hell-” He said the word hell a little bit louder than most third graders would be comfortable saying around the orange-vested school safety guards. They feared him. “I don’t see why you can’t be my friend.”

  James was confused.

  “We have to get some stuff from the art room,” Sonny said before walking down the hallway. James looked at the entrance of the school, where Sophie left through. He knew it was too late to catch up with her, and she would want him to be nice to Sonny. James followed him.

  The door to the art room was open a crack, and there was no light coming from the inside. When Sonny put his palms on the door and slid it open, no light fell on his face or the hallway to give them away. When Sonny entered the room, darkness took over his face the exact opposite way light does when someone looks through a window on a bright day from within a dark house. The mud on Sonny’s jeans seemed to reach out and pull him into the dark belly of the art room.

  “James, comeon, before someone sees you,” Sonny whispered so loudly he would have made the same amount of noise speaking with his normal voice. James slithered into the dark classroom and Sonny reached behind him to shut the door. There was a moment of darkness before Sonny stumbled to the light switch and flicked it on.

  The school was built on a hill, so half of it was underground. The art room was in that section of the school, and in addition to having no windows; it was noticeably colder than the rest of the building. James wrapped his arms around himself and held back a shiver,

  “What are we doing in here?”

  “Jansen, have you ever wanted to make a difference, do something that would-” Sonny was flopping his hands around in a drawer that held paint canisters, “that would become a memory for someone else?”

  James thought about the balloons released, the potato growing in the light of Mr. Heckerman’s kitchen window. Back at his senses, James realized Sonny was planning something devistational and responded,

  “Not really,” Sonny picked out the canister of white paint, set it on the counter next to him, and looked at James,

  “That’s okay, you’re young, I can’t expect you to understand this right away. . .” he trailed off and put canisters of red, green, and purple paint on the counter next to the white. He reached in and pulled out a yellow tube of paint while saying, “Vandalism,” in an overly adult tone. He continued deepening his voice when he chanted, “Destruction of school property.”

  James opened his mouth to ask Sonny a question before Sonny blurted out; “It’s not that easy! Adults always want what you do to fit into good or bad, like a glove made for it!” Sonny picked up a black tube of paint and put it next to the others. “And if you do something that confuses them, they assume it’s bad, when all you’re doing is trying to explain yourself to begin with.” Sonny’s hand emerged from the drawer with blue paint, he looked down and closed the drawer, “That’ll do, I think.” Sonny moved to another part of the classroom and picked out two equally sized paint brushes with the equal quality of nearly un-bent bristles. He put them next to the tubes and canisters of paint and filled a glass with water next to the sink. Sonny turned to face James and put his palms on the counter behind him, “Can I ask you a question?” James nodded, “Jansen, do you want to change the world?”

  “Well, I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I could see how a little bit of difference would help.”

  “Jansen, do you want to change the world?”

  “It’s just I don’t want to get in trouble or do anything bad,”

  “Jansen,” Sonny began turning pink in the way a cooked animal does, “do you want to change the world?”

  “Sure.”

  “Grab some paint, will y’a?” James grabbed most of the paint canisters. Sonny had one hand holding the water and the paint brushes while he grouped the rest of the paint in the nook of his other arm. Sonny opened the door and turned out the light.

  The school was empty at this point and they walked through without even making an echo from their shoes. They walked through the hall where everyone’s art was pinned to the walls and folded behind the glass doors of locked cases. They walked to the bronzed bust of whoever founded the school, and set the paint, paint brushes, and glass of water on the platform next to its shoulders. It scowled at the wall behind them. James looked around nervously,

  “The hall guards,” Sonny said while opening each of the paint canisters, “decided they would all become seriously ill and go home right after school,” he dipped his paint brush in the red p
aint and handed the other paint brush to James, “after I talked to them, that is.” He chuckled and James relaxed.

  Sonny smeared the red paint across the scowling bronze bust’s lips. At first, he applied them in the pattern that a woman would apply lipstick, then after dipping the brush again in the red paint, he lifted two lines at a curiously tight angle upwards, and finished it with two dots on the end at where the apple of the bust’s cheeks would be if he would only smile. Sonny emptied the red from his brush in the glass of water making an almost a harmonic series of ‘tink,’ ‘swish,’ in the echo of the empty hall while doing so.

  “Jansen, how about you paint a purple star of this kind man’s eyes?” James tried to hide his shaking hand as he dipped his paintbrush into the purple jar of paint and started out the star by drawing a star skeleton point to point, dip, point to point, dip point. James filled it in. By this time, Sonny had one quarter of the face sanctioned off and was filling it with yellow paint. When James was done Sonny asked him,

  “Can you make a green star, just like that, on the other eye?” James nodded and walked around the bust to the other side to swish his paint brush around in the water while Sonnyswept white paint over the entire half of the face that he was on. They finished in time for Sonny to tell James,

  “How about you pint blue in the empty corner of this fellow’s face,” James smiled, the statue looked happier, if he crossed his eyes to blur his vision a bit. While James filled in the blue, Sonny began to trace all of the lines with black.

  Fate rallied against them. The principal himself walked past the hall. Neither of the boys noticed until they heard a slush, which happened to be the effect of the principal unintentionally dropping his Styrofoam cup of black coffee on the industrialized linoleum tile. It took the principal a few seconds to realize not only were there children in the school after it was supposed to be closed, but they were standing dangerously close to the bust of the founder, with paintbrushes.

  A slew of curse words came from Sonny as he dropped his brush and heaved his heavy backpack across his shoulders.

  “Just drop it!” he shouted at James, who when nearly throwing his backpack on accidently knocked the bust. The principal was slipping down the hallway in his expensive tread-less shoes while he tried to run and catch the falling figure. James was nearly out of the emergency exit door when he heard a crash. He turned around to watch the bust, which he previously thought was bronze, shatter into dozens of thick clay shards. It was hollow and the shattered face still contained the smeared personage of a clown. A shard the size of James’ palm slid toward him and hit his foot. It was the sculpture’s ear. He reached down in and in one motion was out the door. James ran as fast as he could away from Sonny who only had to yell

  “Scatter!” once. Without stopping to take a breath, James was tearing his way into the tree house. He collapsed onto his back and held the bronzed ear to his heaving chest while he looked at the beams of the tree house above him. In his mind he almost yelled at himself the questions that would be apparent to any person his age in the trouble he was in. Did the Principal see me? He reached over to a crate and stood on it. Will they send scent hounds after me? He reached up and put the glazed clay ear on top of one of the beams. The paint brush, the door, will they be able to lift my fingerprints? He hopped off of the crate and scooted it towards the window. James promptly sat on the crate and looked for the almost imminent onslaught of police force that he was sure was close to finding him. After he caught his breath and lost most of the blood that shot into his head, he slipped down the ladder of the tree house and walked up the gentle slope to the unlocked door of Mr. Heckerman’s house.

  James could hear Mr. Heckerman in the basement. He took the time to set his bag by the door, and slipped out of his shoes. James went to the fridge where he found some chocolate cake. He used a fork from the drawer to scoop the cake onto a shining plate rimmed with the light blue spittle of blossoms.

  He strolled over to the kitchen window and with a mouth full of cake his jaw dropped. His potato had a flower on it. He put the plate down and cupped the flower in his hands and pulled is face towards it. The stem connecting the flower to the potato itself extended from his palms and stitched its way across the surface of the feral potato. The flower was white with an almost purple sheen when the light hit it at specific angles. It had webbed petals, in that it looked like each petal was connected to the other petals in the way that made it look like a crinoline skirt instead of one folded flower. The yellow pistol stuck out like a rude tongue. It was perfect. James was overcome with just how perfect this flower was. The flower grew from his potato and he smiled with an adult charm.

  “I see you found the flower,” Mr. Heckerman boomed from behind James, making him jump a little. “It’s okay, just me, and I see you found the cake,” James swallowed what was in his mouth.

  “I forgot they made flowers,” he smiled proudly.

  “They do, the potato is a very versatile plant. One part nourishes, another poisons, another gives beauty.” James looked at the potato, how it had the flower as a crown, stems and leaves firmly attached to the bulb of a potato, and below the surface of the water the stretched roots spread out and looked like dozens of orphaned fingers grasping for water.

  “Say, James,” Mr. Heckerman asked,

  “Yeah?”

  “Why do you have paint on your hands?”

  “Oh! I just forgot to wash them after art, that’s all,” James said as he reached over to the sink and scrubbed them clean.

  “You know, that water was once part of a lake, and once part of a cloud, that water has been around since before the dinosaurs!”

  “How?”

  “If there is a body of water, or even puddles, the sun heats it up and it turns into a vapor. This is known as evaporation, and that water builds up and becomes clouds,” he pointed out the window to a puff of white clinging to the blue afternoon sky, “the clouds form an appropriate density, and then they become heavier than the air, and that is how rain is made, it goes back to the lakes and puddles.”

  “And this happens constantly?”

  “Yeah, it’s a cycle, it never had a start, and it will never end.“ James looked up at Mr. Heckerman,

  “It had to start somewhere, because it’s here now. And if it started, it has to end, eventually,”

  “It’s good that you noticed that. A lot of people think it is always and forever, but it will end. Hopefully that won’t happen when we’re alive.” James nodded and looked outside to see heavy dark clouds forming over the sky,

  “I should get home before it starts to storm,”

  “Yeah, if the rain is good, then we can release the shrew in a couple of days, the ground will be soft and there should be some bugs out.”

  “Okay,”

  “Keep out of trouble? Will ya?”

  “Okay,” James wasn’t listening, James was wondering if the Principal saw his face. He was pretty well known around the school after what happened to his father. James remembered something that happened a week after he found out about his dad’s death. A teacher he never met before and did not see since went to his house. It was an older woman with her hands behind her back. She rang the doorbell while James watched her car idle through the kitchen window. His mom was not speaking much yet, but she opened the door with her face lowered. After a soothing muffle and a hug, the woman came into the house and found James. She pulled her hands out from behind her back and held out a light blue teddy bear with wings sewn on its back. Condolences came through her red-lined lips and swirled around the strands of her bleached hair before it reached James’ ears.

  “You’re an angel, you’re just an angel for making it through this,” she smiled, eye level with James, “will you hold onto this for me?” James nodded.