Free Golden Delicious by Christopher Boucher Page A

another.
    “What,” said the second thought.
    “That worm’s a sentence,” said the first thought.
    “No shit,” said the second thought.
    And then I remember going to the Bing with my Mom one day for a matinee—she took me every year for my birthday—when I noticed a gang of wormy sentences sitting in the far-left corner of the theater. They were whooping it up, really making noise. The movie was
The Legend of Goggles Beaman
, about a pair of goggles that is raised in the wild, believes himself to
be
wild goggles, and then must return to society.
    In the middle of the film, though, something went wrong with one of the projectors and the screen went dark. All of a sudden the lights came on. “What the FUCK!” a sentence with long hair yelled at the screen.
    “So weird,” I said to my Mom.
    “Probably just a problem with the reel,” she said.
    “I’m going to go get some more popcorn,” I said, and I walked out to the lobby.
    As it happened, I was in line right behind two sentences—they ordered Jujubes and Fun Dip. When the second worm paid, he put his credit card down on the glass case and I snuck a look at the name on the card: “You will be left all alone.”
    I went back to the seat and held my popcorn out to my Mom. She looked at the giant bag and smiled. “No thanks,” she said.
    Just then the lights lowered and the screen lit up. The worms continued their chatter, but I tried to ignore them—I stuck my hand in the buttery mess and shoveled some popcorn into my mouth.

PRAYER PIANO
    Sometimes it seemed like the pages of Appleseed would turn forever. At others, though, you could sort of hear the townspine breaking, smell the glue melting, see pages tear off into the wind.
    One day when I was fourteen, my father heard a prayer about a free piano. This sounded meaningful, so my Dad prayed back that yes, he was interested. The prayer prayed back the name of the manufacturer—a name we didn’t recognize. Fine, my Dad prayed back. You have to move it yourself, said the return-prayer, and my Dad prayed that we would. But his truck had the flu, so we needed to borrow one. “Could we ask Joump?” I said.
    “Let’s go see the Possum,” my Dad said.
    The Possum was, or was not, a possum. Everyone called him one, though, because he was covered in fur. I don’t know if he was really hairy, or if in fact he was a possum with normal hair. One fact about the Possum? I’d never seen him eat anything but energy bars. Also, beer. Do possums eat energy bars?
    The Possum had a shed at the edge of Appleseed, out near the Appleseed Library. Someday I’ll sow that story—the story of the Library. That library had secret books,books that I’d never heard anyone talk about or mention in conversation. (Not that people
talk
about books. But if they did.) Once I opened a page in a book and I saw that all of the words were naked. I’d never
seen
naked words before! For example.
    I was standing at the door, lost on a road in my mind, when the Possum opened it. “!” he said. “Ralph! Come in! I’m cooking—you want something?”
    “We’re not hungry,” said my Dad, “but we were hoping that we could ask you for a favor.”
    “Anything!” said the Possum.
    We drove out to South Appleseed to see the piano. The owner said that she might or might not be home, but that the piano was easy to spot: she prayed it stood in a field about a hundred yards from a big blue house. “Why is it in the
field
?” my Dad had prayed. “Because,” she prayed, “I just couldn’t take it anymore.”
    We located the blue house and, a hundred yards away, the piano, vowing like a soldier against a backdrop of flat, electric green. The piano and bench stood all alone in that field, and it looked like they’d been there for some time—the piano was sunk up to its knees in mud. Moss grew over the instrument’s chest, and vines crawled up one shoulder. “It’s a part of the earth,” I said.
    “Does it even work?” asked