Apples and Self-Interview
two stories by Richard K. Weems
Cheap Stories, volume 3
Apples and Self-Interview
two stories by Richard K. Weems
Published by Written by Weems, Ink.
Smashwords edition.
© 2011 by Written by Weems, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Cover artist unknown (discarded work).
Author photo by Svea Barrett.
Also by Richard K. Weems:
Anything He Wants
The Cheap Stories eBook series:
The Fine Art of Fletcherism and two more stories
Paradigms and Curbside Boxes
Apples and Self-Interview – two stories
Falling – avant-garde fiction
The Need for Character – flash fiction
Soup – three flash fiction pieces
Mercy – three micro-fiction pieces
Violence and Sitting Danny Rolling – two essays
Democritus’ Atom – two stories of extreme sexuality
Rules of Combat and Dangerous Theater – two essays
CONTENTS
Thanks go to the following magazines for publishing earlier versions of these stories (all rights reverted to the author upon publication):
“Apples”: Sparks Magazine
“Self-Interview”: Pif Magazine
for Svea, my BabyMine
Apples
If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.
—Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat
It was a falling dream, quick and sudden and scary. My alarm clock woke me, though I couldn’t remember why I had set it. I forgot many things: people’s names, the way back from the corner drugstore, the alphabet sometimes. I forgot how to pronounce words like ‘photography’ and ‘knight,’ but I didn’t worry about it—the State paid for my house. It came with a houselady who cooked lunch and helped with the chores.
The night before I finished the Popov at Joey’s and watched the Late Nite Movie, Channel 8, WMUT. Vampires, trapped underground for a centuries by Renaissance vampire hunters, emerge in modern London and take out their rage on their captors against whomever they run into. Being trapped was the part that scared me: locked in a cold box, no room to move for all those years. I drank by myself—Joey didn’t want any, hadn’t wanted any for a while now, and he went to bed early. It was a harsh drunk, when your eyes won’t stay where you want them to. I had trouble getting back over Joey’s fence. I couldn’t remember setting the alarm. I only set it on special days, like Christmas.
I got up. I didn’t change out of my pajamas because I wanted to have breakfast in them. It took me some time to pee because it wouldn’t come out.
The kitchen was dark, so I opened the shades. The grass in the backyard was starting to brown. An old man with a green mini-tractor used to take care of the lawn every other Tuesday except holidays. The old man’s hips hung over the seat, and he drove the mini-tractor around and around the backyard and did something right, because the grass was green then.
In the kitchen, I met up with the sight of the houselady stooped over the dishwasher. Flower print spread over a light bulb.
“Rinse first,” she said while she jostled about cups and brought some up onto the counter. “I’m going to have to run most of these all over again.”
I hummed and stepped around her for the cereal cupboard. The houselady always bought nutritional cereals, Crackling Oat Bran and Shredded Wheat, full percentages of the US RDA on the sides of their boxes, but Joey always made sure I had a box of Froot Loops or Cookie Crisps. He had been in a house like mine, he told me once, and knew what it was like. I grabbed the Loops and put them down on the counter and went to the refrigerator for milk while plastic clattered behind me.
The calendar on the freezer door had a picture of a girl in a blue bikini standing in a motorboat. She was Hawaiian or Samoan, a Craftsman chainsaw in her grip. Along the bottom of the picture, the chainsaw’s blade length, horsepower and retail price. The corner store kept a pile of these calendars for free by the register. A couple of the houselady’s magnets held up the corners of the picture—unfurled scrolls, quotations from the Bible written in calligraphy. I was most fond of January, and sometimes I turned the pages back to stare at her for a while. January wore an orange bikini and stood in front of a log cabin as she held up a portable jigsaw. Her tan was close to the color of her bikini, and she looked like Vanna White from Wheel of Fortune, but today was the sixteenth of May, and I didn’t want to stare at January with the houselady in the room. There was a thick red X marked over today’s date. Nothing else in the sixteenth-of-May box except a waning crescent.
I opened the refrigerator. Next to the two-percent milk was the plastic Tupperware box the houselady used to store muffins or cake or cookies.
“What’s today?” I said.
“Tuesday,” the houselady said. She put her hands on her lower back as she straightened.
“Okay,” I said. “But what’s today?” I pointed at the Tupperware, though the refrigerator door blocked her view of the interior.
The houselady stared at me and scrunched her brow. She’d told me her name a few times, but the only name I could remember was Trudy, who was the houselady I had for years and years, an old, old woman who didn’t come anymore. This one had only come in a few months ago. “What is it today?” I asked again, and still she stared. Maybe she had a coffee party after her shift.
I heard a piff outside. I went to the sink and pushed my face against the window to see into Joey’s backyard next door.
Joey had on his Redskins football helmet as he shot a pellet gun into the apple tree in his backyard. An apple fell, and Joey yelled, “Got another one.” He raised the gun in the air. I ran upstairs and changed into my outside clothes. I didn’t go out until I was all buttoned up. The houselady called my name, asked when I was going to be back, but if she didn’t want to talk, neither did I.
I stepped slowly over the low chicken-wire fence and tried to sneak up on Joey, who was aiming and had his back to me, but he turned before I could grab his shoulders and spook him. Joey had radar. He was a veteran. Korea gave him a scar on his stomach and a red spot on his head and monthly checks large enough for him to live in this house on his own. Joey also couldn’t smile with the right side of his face. I knew his house better than I knew mine.
Joey and I met when I bought a creamsicle at the corner store with money the houselady let me have. Joey was coming in the front door as I was going out, and when we bumped I dropped my creamsicle, so Joey took me back inside and bought me another. It was the only ice cream with a stick I ever saw Joey buy—Joey liked ice cream sandwiches. Then he invited me over to his house to watch TV. He bought two bottles of Wild Turkey and we drank most of them that first night together. Joey fell asleep in his TV-watching chair and I watched a late movie about giant ants and couldn’t remember how I got home.
“Good morning, buddy.” Joey put the Redskins helmet on my head, gave me his pellet gun and ran back inside. There were fallen apples, whole and broken, in the grass under the tree. I cocked a pellet and shot at an apple, but the gun was the one with the bad sight. A couple of leaves jerked from the puff of air. I aimed a little to the right of the apple and fired again. I hit the apple up near the stem. I had to hit it two more times before it rocked and fell.
“I got one,” I yelled. I shot at more apples and more apples fell. “I got another,” I yelled again.
Joey came back outside with his Bears helmet and his new pellet gun. I wasn’t a Redskins fan. I liked the new gun, a blue steel pump-action that looked like a genuine .22 Galil as long as you didn’t look at it for too long, but I never got to use it. Both Joey and I shot at apples, and apples fell. “Got another one,” I yelled. “Got another one, goddamn it,” Joey yelled. A bad apple fell onto my head. Juice and apple chunks dripped onto my facemask. I shot at apples until Joey grabbed my gun by the barrel.
“Enough,” he said. He took the Bears helmet off, and I laughed. “Helmet head,” I called him.
Joey said, “You’re up early.” He brushed his hair back with his free hand. Then he licked his fingers and palm and brushed at his hair again, but nothing worked. “I thought you were going to sleep later,” he said. “How was the movie last night?”
I took off the Redskins helmet and shook off bits of bad apple still stuck to it. “It was a vampire movie,” I said. Joey nodded. I brushed my fingers through my hair and Joey laughed.
“I didn’t get to shower yet,” I said.
I asked Joey what today was and he said, “Tuesday, I think.” He went to the back door, picked up an apple basket and threw it to me. I dropped the Redskins helmet and pellet gun in time, but the basket passed between my open hands.
“Yeah, it’s Tuesday,” Joey said. “The groceries came yesterday, so it must be Tuesday.” He picked up the other basket and said, “Pick them up before they get rotten,” pointing at the fallen apples in the grass. Joey and I picked up whole and mostly whole apples. Joey said, “Leave the bitty pieces. Give the worms some breakfast.”
Joey and I drank gin in the living room while the pies baked. Joey and I hadn’t gotten drunk in a couple of weeks, not since he went out to some bars when his check came in. I waited all night for Joey’s lights to come on, and Joey had Band-Aids bruises the next day. He told me he fell and couldn’t do too much, so until he felt better, he sat around and didn’t drink. We watched TV all day and night, and he didn’t drink at all. When Joey did try getting up from his TV-watching chair, he grabbed his ribs and groaned and cursed. But now we were both drinking again and Joey only had one yellow patch left under his eye. Joey looked through the TV schedule, and the apple pies had extra cinnamon in them since some of the apples were a little sour. The living room filled with the smell.
“Damn, Beaver’s not on today,” Joey said. “There’s a telethon on,” he said. He threw the schedule on top of the TV and it stayed, though just barely. “You hungry?”
I said, “I didn’t have breakfast yet,” and I finished my drink. The Gordon’s was next to Joey across the room.
Joey said, “So?”
The cinnamon smell bounced around my empty stomach.
The oven timer went off, and Joey got up. “The pies,” he said. He took the gin to the kitchen with him, and it took me three tries to get up from the sofa.
Joey put a lot of vanilla ice cream on my second piece of pie. The ice cream helped cover the sour the cinnamon hadn’t gotten to. “You’re eating slow,” he said.
“Is it a holiday today?” That red X.
Joey stabbed around his piece of pie with a fork. He said, “There’s a pellet in here.”
“I tried to get them all out,” I said.
“Well, you missed a couple.” Joey wouldn’t look at me.
“You only found one,” I said.
“Bit one before,” Joey said. “I didn’t tell you right then because you were drinking.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I tried,” I said.
“You have to fork through to find the pellets.”
“Sorry,” I said. “It’s real easy to do,” Joey said, and I said, “Sorry.”
“The pie is fine besides,” Joey said. “Good apples.”
“Should be,” I said to my plate. “Your recipe.”
“What does that mean?” Joey put down his fork.
“Sorry,” I said.
Joey said, “Don’t worry. It’s a happy day for you. Don’t worry.”
I put down my fork. Happy day.
Joey picked up his fork, and he ate and looked at me again. “Did you watch Beaver last night?” he asked. “Wally had these two girls who wanted to go with him to a dance. Beaver thought he shouldn’t take any girls out. ‘Girls are yucky,’ he said. It was good.”
“I think I missed it,” I said. “I think I went home.”
“Happy birthday,” Joey said.
I didn’t pick my fork up. My ice cream was melting. I was fifty-eight.
No horror movies that night, but there was a kung-fu movie on Channel 27: Spikes of Death. Joey and I watched it and finished off the second bottle of wine he had bought to celebrate my birthday. The pie was gone and it was getting hard to watch the TV. I kept drifting and staring at the blue wall over the sofa. I tapped the arm of the sofa with the hammer Joey had bought me.