5/14/1996 g.g.Ashbrook
There once was a boy named Hal. And when he would tell people his name he would say, "It’s spelt that way, but you say it ‘Hole’, and with a ‘W’ like." And people would look at him all funny, as he would eat his apple cores, and slurp up his banana peels, and crunch down upon the rock like outer crusts of coconuts with his iron hard teeth; and, of course, as he would spoon out eats from his jugs ‘o’ orange pulp.
One day he stopped a lady on the street. She said to him all nice and friendly like. "And what’s your name little boy?"
Around the streets he roamed all that day and night. He would not be able to go home and face the agony, of an open mouth in helpless need of tell his family all day’s occurrences as he did of must all other days as well.
As he walked past walls he seared silent pictograms of yearning and distress into brick and cinder. He walked all to the outskirts of the town, to the mazes of roads traveled by people of the "old ways" in their horse and buggies. The grass behind crude plank fences was a brilliant green; the sky a sorbet swirling of blue and pink. Dirt roads traveling into the past.
He walked for a while down these roads. Hoping that his feet moving would help his head to think his mouth out of its fix of position--as they often helped his head to do other things in times of need. And as he absent mindedly stepped across a road to get to another, he saw off in front of him a most wonderful-beautiful sitting perched on a fence post.
First he only stood and stared, then he walked on over and sat next to her as he felt so compelled to do. The girl was looking off into a grove of dove trees; watching the blossoms sprout open into a bloom of feathers and flapping wings as the young birds flew at last from seasons cocoon; it was the blooming season. All around, the air filled with the owl like calls of happy mourning doves. Wings flapped like petals falling backward up into the air. Hal felt a rush of something good all through him.
He looked at the girl and saw a few pieces of apple peels fall from her hands, and onto the ground where they fell upon the multitudes that had already fallen. The girl was carving apples with three long razor sharp finger nails. The flesh of the apples in her hands became molded to the shapes of sculpted snails. Then when each was finished she would cast in into the air over into the branches of a tree. There the snails would crawl about and live out their day’s in the branches of the tree; leaving behind their trail of honey for the animals to lick off come morning.
Hal looked at the girl at watched her carve, watched the peals fall down upon the rest. Each falling and landing in weightless suspension, forming a meticulous castle of fragments. When the castle got big enough, elves would come and take it away--domicile being held in high regard. The new peals falling afresh into young foundation.
The girl did not speak but Hal could hear her thoughts as a chatter off in the great distance. Once he reached out to feel her arm. It felt of silk; and unloneliness.
And Hal opened his mouth to speak, but not a word could come out. Oh he knew what he would say. He would tell her of the marvelous lands he had been to. How in Arabic countries they pronounce the silent "W" with a wispy rolling "r" sound, and that was how he got the bounce in his stride.
He would tell her of the apple trees in the yard of the Bishop of East Anglia. And how the apples would nag and harass, or bow their praises to each passer by as they could see into each person’s past lives.
He would tell her of the mounted police of Greenland, the secret reason why children laugh all around the world.
He would tell her all this and more... but alas Hal had not his tongue. The lady gave him a most queer look. Hal, just standing there with his mouth open, his eyes screaming out in protest against silence in wordless agony. Images flashed from out his mind only to fall on the deaf and hit the street in epileptic failure.
The lady stuck her nose right up in the air, and little Hal was left there on the street; chewing on his fuzzy paper pop sickle stick.
Sitting there for many days and nights, Hal watched the girl intently, growing thin from not eating, and becoming covered in debris and dirt from the air; while the girl sat seemingly forever healthy and clean.
When the time came that the girl guessed the boy could not speak, she said, "Everything starts out soft, like a fruit that non would think of not eating whole. People are fruit too. Silence is a stem. A mute pulp."
Hal shook his head. So the girl went on carving. And Hal went on watching her.
Another few days passed and she handed him an apple, and said, "Here, eat yourself."
Hal looked down at the apple, it was small, soft, and spongy, and growing and swelling right before his eyes. He thought to pop the whole thing in his mouth, but soon hard thorns grew from out the plump little sides. The skin turned hard and coarse like dry dead wood. Before long he was holding a bowling ball sized mass of -half hard tangles, and half soft ripeness; all intertwined.
At first he thought he missed his chance; that he had best throw the thing away now-and quick. But it occurred to him to try and do things in the way that the girl beside him might. It seemed that she took her time, with things.
So he sat with the had-been fruit in his hands. Looking it over. Just waiting, keeping it in the back of his mind that he did not know everything there was to know at the present moment. Just being content with watching to find out what would happen next.
More days passed as Hal sat watching his fruit patiently, and as the girl sat sculpting apples. He found that at night the fruit stayed warm enough protect him from chills. He found that there was something complete about the fruit now that it was part of it hard and crusty.
Then one morning came a great gust of wind- Hal was overcome by overwhelming spells of exotic wonder. A licorice sweet smell of pie crusts and rare spices and exotic fermented fruits. So dazzled he was that another whole day of this smell passed before he realized that it was coming from the crusted over fruit he was holding. When he noticed this the girl smiled a puppet master’s smile; but she did not say anything. Hal brought the fruit up close to his face.
Some kind of further metamorphosis had overcome the fruit, as he saw. The spots that had never turned hard but remained ever-soft had fermented to perfection. The thorns had turned to crisp light sticks of Licorice. The hard surface was now light and brittle; like a pie crust peppered with crystals of spice and sugar.
He tore open the fruit and a dozen tiny small apples fell to the ground and nervously burrowed underneath the cover of leaves and loose soil. Then he proceeded to eat the fruit he was still holding.
After a few bites, he remembered the girl. He turned and gave her all the rest--which was all- accept for a bit or two from tasting.
The girl ignored the fruit and instead took the boy’s hands. The fruit fell to the ground and shattered; just fruit.
Off and down the trails they ran. For all the rest of their days they never stopped running. They ran all around the world and became famous and loved by everyone for wherever they went incredible luck fell upon the people of that area. They ran through cities and towns, farm lands and pastures. When they ran across a poor land, the rich took pity and build up the local economy. When they ran through a land ravaged by war, the the fighters on either side stopped and burst into tears; embracing one another and sobbing--making immediate plans for tea parties and banquets of pooled resources.
Hal never spoke a word for the rest of his life, and the girl never asked him to. And as long as they ran and were together (which was to the end of their lives) they were both happy, and whole.