Picking Apples

Willie was sitting next to Dief, sulking over his homework. This was the part of the arrangement that he didn't enjoy. Fraser allowed him to walk his dog... well, his wolf... and actually paid him, which was an extra, cause Diefenbaker was so cool Willie would have happily walked him for nothing. But not so cool was the fact that, in order to walk Dief, he had to go to school. Because school was boring, school was dumb, and the teachers hated him. And this particular homework assignment was really, seriously, going to drive him mad. What good was poetry? Who wrote poetry? And what was it actually for?

It didn't make it any easier that Fraser had listened sympathetically to his plight, and then decided to help by reciting poetry at him.

Just when he was about to beg the man to stop one of the poems caught his ear. About some Irish dude fishing, and chasing girls. Well, not the whole poem snagged him, just the last couple of lines. “The golden apples of the sun, the silver apples of the moon.”

“Hey, that's kinda cool... what does it mean?”

Yeah, he shoulda known better than to ask. But you know, he was a kid, and a bit of a thick kid too, if his teachers were right. He never learned. Fraser went off on another spiel, and Willie sighed, and shared donuts with Dief, until Fraser realised he was being boring, and made him a milkshake as an apology.

Still, later on, when he was sitting on the fire escape outside the crummy apartment he called home, he kept thinking about it. The golden and silver apples. There was a huge moon hanging in the sky. It looked like he could have picked it, taken a bite out of it if he wanted to.

His mother was in the living room, dancing with her latest boyfriend. His sister was out for the evening, God knew where, or with whom. Part of him was clenched, waiting to run in and beat on his mother's latest guy, if he turned out to be a bad one. But so far it sounded all right.

Well, not all right. He wished she wouldn't bring them home. But this one at least didn't sound like he'd be a beater.

It was a Chicago night. Fraser had told him in the past that the stars weren't as bright here as they were in Canada, where he'd grown up, but they looked plenty bright to him. He leant back, and traced with his index finger. Orion, his belt, his big shoulders. The Big Bear, the Little Bear. Fraser had taught him how to recognise the planets. There was Venus, there, Jupiter, there Mars. He'd never yet seen Mercury. Fraser had said he'd need to be in the countryside for that. One day Willie wanted to see Mercury. Mercury was kind of cool... he was a little mischievous god, a messenger, who had wings on his sandals. Willie would quite like that job, if the gods ever came offering him work. And they wouldn't make him go to school.

Yeah, he wanted to see a crowded sky, a Canada sky, full of stars. Come to that, he really, really wanted to see the Northern Lights.

Gazing up at the sky he felt himself settling into calm, and the noises from the apartment faded, and the chill metal of the fire escape faded, and he was floating, in free space, amongst the stars. He reached out, and plucked one, and it shone between his fingers, glowing, but cold, not warm. He lifted it, and kissed it, and let it go. It fell backward, upward, back into space, and place, and time.

Willie was pretty cold by now, and the noises in the living room had stopped. His mother must be in bed, he supposed. Probably with him, whoever he was. Sounded like they were asleep.

He went back into the house, and dreamt of a garden full of trees like candles.

Next day at school his teacher told him off for not doing his homework, and kept him in at lunch time to finish it. He wrote:

Once in concrete garden
The stars were growing on the trees
And a child on the wrong side
Swallowed his pride
And swept up the shining leaves.

When the teacher read his poem she gave him lines, because, she said, he must have copied it from somewhere.


Edited 2012-04-15 10:26 pm (UTC)

Yes, I know "The Golden Apples of the Sun" is William Butler Yeats...but your writing of this makes me think of William Blake : "...to see a world in a grain of sand"! What you capture here of Willie's world so quickly and sharply and fully seen...it's stunning!

And you have such a deft touch with mixing harsh moments and sad moments with humorous moments and ironic moments. On the one side there's the day-to-day world with which Willie must contend and on the other side there's Fraser with his recitations and explanations. "It didn't make it any easier that Fraser had listened sympathetically to his plight, and then decided to help by reciting poetry at him," and "Fraser went off on another spiel, and Willie sighed, and shared donuts with Dief, until Fraser realised he was being boring, and made him a milkshake as an apology"....oh Fraser!

Oh, wow. That's just marvelous.

Oh, I liked that! Pretty sad ending, though--I hope he told that poem to Fraser, too, and not just the teacher.