Earned Apples

by Bosley Gravel

 

The Apple Lady was in a good mood tonight. She sat on the edge of the curb outside apartment number fifteen and smoked a long white cigarette. Wess smiled at her, sat down, and took off his left sneaker. He shook a pebble from his shoe.

"Is there a scoop tonight?" she asked.

"Maybe," he said, and pulled the shoe over his heel. He began to tie the laces, but the fiber was rotten and it broke in his hand.

"How's Ernie? Getting along with his wife?"

"I reckon," Wess said, and rigged the lace on his shoe. He tossed the broken length to the cement and pulled a pack of generic cigarettes from his shirt pocket, produced a crumpled butt and lit it off the Apple Lady's borrowed smoke.

They sat in silence for a moment. Jed, drinking from a bottle of blue mouthwash, wandered by, his cat, Mr. Brown, at his heels. Jed wished both them a good evening, and shambled on. His white hair stood straight up, reminding the Apple Lady of Albert Einstein, and Wess of his drunken uncle.

"Well," she said, "Is there news, or is there news?"

"Ernie beat up Carol, she left him, and Sarah is in his apartment right now."

"Well goodness," the Apple Lady said and brushed an ash from her plump thigh, "What's your mama say about that?"

"She doesn't say anything about things she don't know."

"I see," she said and tossed her cigarette butt away.

Jed was tapping on the door of apartment twenty-three.

"Honey, " he said, "Honey, let me in."

Wess and the Apple Lady watched Jed as he stumbled a little and half-heartedly knocked on the door. After a moment the door swung open, a thin lady, her raven colored hair in a sloppy bun, looked Jed straight in the eyes.

"Honey let's him sleep in there when his mom won't let him in," Wess said.

"He still lives with his mother? He's gotta be fifty."

"Yeah," Wess said.

Jed grumbled something to Honey.

"Be gone with your bad self! Peddle your foolish stories elsewhere, old man!"

Jed bugged his old eyes and spat to his left, Honey slammed the door.

"Bitch," he said to his cat, "Snotty little bitch."

The Apple Lady lit another cigarette. Wess followed suit.

"Is your mama getting along good with her boyfriend?"

"Yeah, " Wess said, "She must be, she's gone all the time."

The Apple Lady belched, "Humph," she said directly afterward.

Jed was wandering again, this time he knocked on apartment twenty-seven, and without waiting for a reply curled up in the door frame. The cat snuggled into the crook of his body and keeping its eyes opened lay its head down.

"You want to know something," the Apple Lady said. "I'm twenty-six years old, I have a good husband. I'm going to school, and some day I'm going to get out of here. The ghetto is no place for kids. That's what I'm waiting for, to get out of here, so I can have me a little baby. How old are you, anyway? Fourteen? Fifteen?"

"Twelve, " he said.

"Twelve? " she said and laughed. "Your only twelve and you've already got the eyes."

"The eyes?"

"You've got them, don't worry. I got them, too."

The door to apartment number nineteen opened. A tall man with a shaved head came out and quickly passed by them. He ignored the Apple Lady, but spoke to Wess, "What's shaken little brother?"

Wess nodded in reply.

"Who's that?" she asked.

"Mike, Ellen's boyfriend."

"Oh," she said. "Is he good to her?"

"More or less. He drinks a lot of beer."

They were silent again.

"You going to go to college?" she asked.

Wess smiled showing a chipped tooth.

"Funny," he said.

"Not really."

"Don't preach," he said. "Don't you dare preach."

"Sorry," she said.

Wess lit another cigarette, off the butt of the previous one.

"I just bought some apples," the Apple Lady said.

She stood up and opened the door to her place. A minute later she came back with two red apples. She gave them both to Wess.

"Thanks, " he said and stubbed out his smoke. He polished the smallest of the two.

"The eyes, Wesley, you've got the eyes. You see everything. It's a talent," she said. "It's a blessing from God. The eyes will keep you from ever getting bored."

He bit in to the apple, devouring a quarter of it in a single bite.

"Bored? From God? Funny." he said, rolling his eyes a little.

"No, " she said. "It's not funny. You've got to use it. Do you understand?"

"No," Wess said without apology. "I don't know what your talking about," he took another bite of the apple.

"It's about sight, " she said. "It's about seeing the world as it is, not as it pretends to be."

He finished the apple, core and all, in two quick bites.

"What do you see about me?" she asked. "You know everything that goes on around here."

"It's the ghetto," he said with his mouth full. "We can't hide what we really are."

The Apple Lady's eye reflected a bit of light from the porch light.

"What do you mean?"

"Nothing," he said. "I don't mean nothing."

She was quiet for a moment.

"Do you--"

"I've got to go," Wess said and picked up his second apple and walked away.

The Apple Lady's lips turned down.

"Humph," she said, and went inside her apartment.

* * *

The next day was Saturday; Jed found his cat at three-thirty pm. Its head crushed, the murder weapon, a small carpenter's hammer, was propped against the corpse. Jed, weeping, called the police department from the pay phone. They sent a police officer, a huge man with dark skin and blood shot eyes. After seeing Jed, drunk, crying, and holding a dead cat, the officer scratched a few words in his note book and left, everyone knew nothing would come of it.

Wess watched from the window of his apartment. The Apple Lady, whose real name was Carrie, sat out side her apartment watching Jed pace up and down in front of the complex confessing a true love for the dead cat.

Half an hour later, an old junkie catholic priest that owed Jed's mom a favor came and said a small eulogy for the feline. Jed's mother in her bathrobe, her blue hair in curlers, the priest, and Jed gathered in a small dirt patch, the common area of the complex.

Wess joined the Apple lady, and they watched the priest pray as large tears rolled down Jed's dirty face. The mourners all hung their heads down looking at the shoe box that contained Mr. Brown.

"He was _best_ friend," he cried, "I _still_ love him! I ain't gonna put him in the trash can."

"I already told ya, you ain't gonna bring him back into my house!" Jed's mother hollered back instantly.

"You bitch," he said, his voice expressing unfathomable horror.

"No good jackass, just like your father!" she said, and smacked him with her cane.

"This is a funeral," the priest said between gritted teeth.

Jed's mother hobbled away towards her apartment. Jed kicked the priest in the shin, picked up his box, howled mournfully and ran towards the street.

"I wonder if he'll be okay," Wess said.

"I dunno," the Apple Lady replied.

The priest shook his head and cursed, "Bunch of crazy lunatics," he said to Wess and the Apple Lady. He walked away, looking back once, with a look of frustrated disgust on his face.

"That's redundant," the Apple Lady said.

"What's that mean?" Wess said suddenly cheery.

"It means saying the same thing twice."

"Oh, like, you got any apples lady? You got any apples lady?"

"Something like that," she said. "What do you know about the cat?"

"Nothing," he said. "Somebody was probably just bored."

"Oh," she said, and went inside, returned with two apples and gave them both to Wess.

* * *

The Apple Lady was in a good mood tonight. She sat on the edge of curb outside apartment number fifteen, she smoked a long white cigarette, Wess wandered by.

"What's the scoop tonight?"

"Nothing."

He was holding out, she could tell. It was just a matter of the right questions.

"How's Jed?"

"Haven't seen him," he said. "But I heard they got his body downtown in the morgue."

"No," said the Apple Lady, "You're kidding?"

"Nope, drank himself into a coma, or something, then dropped dead."

The Apple Lady shuttered.

"Over the cat?"

"Maybe, how would I know?" he said.

"Humph," she said.

"Humph," he said back.

The Apple Lady picked at some maroon polish on her thumb nail; Wess practiced blowing large smoke rings, and watched proudly as they sailed into the breeze, contorted into meaningless wisps, and then faded to nothing.

"You got apples tonight?" he asked.

"Sure," she said.

A siren went off somewhere down the street.

"The ghetto's not so bad," he said. "I think it's a fine place for kids."

"Grown ups, maybe," she said. "Kids, I don't think so."

"Humph," went Wess. "I find plenty to do."

 

First published in Vol 1 Issue #12 of The Deepening

Bosley Gravel was born in the Midwest, and came of age in Texas and southern New Mexico. He has worked numerous dead end jobs, and now makes a living working on computer networks and various related activities. He has been making up stories from an early age, and from time to time they end up on paper. Credits: http://my.bleedingservers.com/vain.html