Apple

The boy bent beneath a white summer sun, shuffling dust and gravel beneath him as he walked. The road shivered in the heat, and he squinted through it and licked his dry lips. Beyond the sunwash lay a dark, inviting wall of shade and forest, the border edge of the park for which he traveled.

Before he would reach the shelter of that quiet place, he would pass through a cluster of buildings swarming with activity and color. A creek tubing center sat ahead on the left side of the road, the front lined with big black rubber tire inner tubes. Some of these were bound with white rope and centered with wooden discs for seats. Stacks of these rideable tubes where being picked from by tourists and workers, like giant black caterpillars being swarmed and disassembled by ants. Across the road was a snack stand and gift shop, and behind these ran the creek.

The boy's jaw tightened as a family station wagon rolled past him throwing up fresh dust. He wiped sweat and messy hair from his forehead as he stared down at his worn and dingy shoes.

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A fly rod rested on his shoulder, old but serviceable, a gift from his uncle. A small wooden box left a sharp lined shape in his front pocket, storage for a few flies and extra line and tippet. An olive drab t-shirt and dirty brown pants hung loosely on his frame. He knelt and rolled the legs of his pants up to his pale knees. The sound of laughter and the screech of an excited child raised his dark eyes forward again. The shelter of the park beckoned to him and he braced himself to pass through the hum of summer vacationers.

They loaded their vehicles with the heavy, bouncing inner tubes and they bought ice cream and sodas and cheap toys. Hidden radios played the top ten hits of summer ‘78, songs from Eddie Van Halen and the Grease soundtrack. Loretta Lynn crooned from a passing pick up truck, and it was the only song the boy recognized.

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An arcade was tucked into the side of the tubing center, and the sounds of pinball and Space Invaders chimed and clunked and chirped out into the hot air. The boy’s gaze was drawn to it, even though he would never step inside.

"How's your mama?"

The boy snapped his head toward the voice behind him. Two local men leaned against a Coke machine, and smiled like foxes.

His face reddened but he said nothing, and walked faster. His mother was notorious for things he didn't fully understand. Strange men stumbled through his front door some late nights, laughing with his mother on their arms. He heard sounds through their thin old bedroom walls, and sometimes he would listen. People in town, especially younger men, made jokes, called her names. His father had vanished one night years ago, and they made jokes about that too.

The men behind him laughed as he made his way into the crowd mulling around the tube center. He wiped sweat again, and stared at his feet as he weaved in and out of the people and their cars and their sticky faced children, and glanced at the tourist girls in their tank tops and at their red faced fathers hoisting the inner tubes and tying them down with hay string while pimple faced teens his own age watched idly with their hands on their hips.

He slipped around a dusty black Chevrolet truck that had pulled up on the road side, and passed nto the shade of high trees. He passed a wooden sign that read "The Great Smoky Mountains National Park", and breathed cooler air as the chaos of the tube center faded behind him.

Following the wide gravel trail that bordered the creek, he headed upstream, passing tubers bearing their black floats, and day hikers, and even a few other fishermen. And he went beyond them.

The trail was soon empty, and the forest had enveloped him in solitude. The boy went a little further until he found a place that suited him, then disappeared off the trail and down into a laurel thicket. He moved up the creek side, looking for a break in the thick undergrowth. He found one, then made his way to the water.

He breathed easily, and his body loosened, and he simply listened to the sound of the creek. He knelt and scooped the cold clear water into his face, and sucked it over his dry lips.

Eventually he took the small box from his pocket, and began to rig the pole. He chose a small pale fly, some unnamed thing that resembled an anemic moth. He threaded the fine tippet line through the eyelet of the fly hook, and twisted it back and around itself. A few passes around and he pulled the line through its own loop and drew it tight, the filament binding like a tiny noose. He trimmed the excess with his pocket knife and pulled on the hook, satisfied. Wiping oil from the sides of his nose with his fingertips, he rubbed it into the grey and brown bristles of the fly.

Suddenly his fingers stopped working and he glanced up. Standing on the trail above him was a girl.

She looked down at him with passive green eyes. He stared back, motionless, as if he were a wild creature. Or perhaps as if she were.

She was a bit younger than him, and pretty. Her skin was smooth and tan, darkened by a foreign sun. White sneakers were loosely tied at the ends of her long slender legs, which ran up into faded and frayed jean shorts. She wore a loose, cream colored t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up on her narrow shoulders. On the front was a hand drawn orange tree. Her smooth brown hair was drawn back and tied loose up off of her slender neck, which was looped with a leather necklace bearing a small brown shark's tooth wrapped with gold wire.

"Hey." she said.

Her voice was soft but sharp, and almost accusing. He looked on and suddenly felt vulnerable. Shifting nervously, he finally murmured a hesitant sound she couldn't understand.

"What're you doing?" she asked.

As if unsure, he looked down at the fly and line still in his hand, the pole tucked into the crook of his arm.

"Fishin'."

"I know that," she leveled. "Why you rubbing your nose on it?"

He looked at his fingers and felt his cheeks flush.

"It helps it float."

She watched him with one eye squinted against the sun dappling through the trees. It soaked into her hair in streaks of gold, and it belonged there.

He swallowed against the awkward silence. "It's s'posed to sit on top the water like a bug."

"Can I watch?"

"What?"

"Watch you fish."

He glanced around, adjusted the rod under his arm.

"Why you up here?"

"I'm just walking."

He looked her over for a moment, self consciously. "Where you from?"

"Pensacola. Florida."

"Sounds far."

She smiled for the first time, delicate lips that curled up neatly at the corners. She reminded the boy of a doll he'd seen once.

"It's on the gulf side."

"Don't reckon I know what that means."

She smiled again. He watched her blankly, and when she said no more he turned and made for the creek.

She carefully began to descend the bank, stepping gingerly into the dark rotted leaf bed beneath a heavy laurel bough. He stopped and turned back.

"What're you doin'?"

"I want to see you catch a fish."

"Well. I got to get down in the creek."

She clambered down awkwardly. Near the bottom she slipped on loose leaves, and slid to a stop against him. He had tried to step back, but found himself trapped against the waterline. He looked down at her and she looked back wide eyed. Her delicate hand pressed against his lower stomach as she steadied herself. She drew it away with a nervous smile. "Sorry."

He felt his cheeks burn and his heart lurch. He looked as if he’d stepped into a snare.

He stammered quietly. "I dunno if you should come."

She tried to sound casual. "I'll be fine. I won't get in the way."

He stared down at her, meeting her green gaze, but only for a moment. Glancing around uneasily, he turned. Together they stepped for the creek that rushed closely by.

The sky glowed between the trees tops above them like a pale blue reflection of the creek below. The dense wood that bordered the tumbling waters was dappled in shade and sunglow, and seemed endless in its depths. The creek washed down out of the unseen hollows of the mountains toward them and held a presence of its own that was enveloping and timeless.

The boy clambered lithely along the coarse sandy bank and sat down, and began to remove his shoes. The girl followed. He watched her from the corner of his eye as she undid her white sneakers and laced them together as he had. She dug her small pink painted toes into the gray sand.

"You might get hurt."

She ignored him. "Are we getting in?"

He stood and felt the cool wet sand under foot. "I am. You might better not."

She seemed to study the creek, the rounded grey stones trimmed in dark green moss, the light shining off slick wet rock, clear water bubbling and swirling and falling into dark boiling pools.

"I'll stay close to the edge."

He shrugged and bent for his rod. "Don’t fall and bust your head."

She ventured out behind him, hopping carefully to the dry topped stones, sneakers dangling from her fingers. She stooped beneath the over hanging trees and glanced up and down the creek. It looked much larger now, and the sound of it rushed around her. The dark length of it was stone broken and marked with roiling white water and clear, smooth pools slashed with quivering rays of light.

The boy kept moving sure-footedly toward the middle of the creek. She watched as he stopped and raised the rod, drawing line out of the reel before him with his fingers. Then his arm craned, and with a smooth motion the line flicked back up and behind him. It flipped forward and the small pale fly at the end of the line glided nearly imperceptibly down onto the water ahead of him. It looked just like a insect alighted and she squinted to follow its drifting movement.

Suddenly it vanished with a tiny splash, and the boy gently and reflexively snapped his arm back. Out rose a small fish, flailing and shining in the sunlight. He drew it near in a single motion, tilting the tip of the rod above him. The girl let out a small chirp of excitement as he grabbed the shining creature in his hand. The girl carefully but deftly stepped across the driest stones to reach him, and he turned to look at her, the faintest trace of a proud smile on his lips.

"Speck."

"Huh?" she said wide-eyed, trying to get a closer look.

The boy gripped the slick squirming body and began to work the hook out of its gaping mouth

"That's what it is. Speckled trout."

She edged closer, looking at the glistening thing between his fingers. He stuck his thumb in its mouth and she stopped. With a twist of his wrist he pried the head back toward the spine. The small click of bone caused her to grimace. The fish shivered in his hand then was still. He looked at her, then spread open his hand turning it in his palm. It lay the length of his hand, the delicate mottled yellow tail-fin clinging against his wrist. She leaned in close. The round eye stared skyward with stark surprise above the gaping mouth. A trace of blood trickled from its gills. It had a mottled brown back that faded into silvery brown spots clustered over its length. These in turn became punctuated by bright red dots that scattered the border of a creamy orange underbelly.

"It’s pretty."

"Yeah. Tastes good too."

She seemed to consider this in silence while he reached into his pocket and pulled out a waxy black string with a dull metal hook on the end. He fed the string through the back of the fish's gill and out of the mouth. He released the fish and it slid down in place against the hook. He hitched the string to his belt, and the fish lay against the his rolled up pants leg.

She watched intently. He washed the fly in the creek and dabbed it on his pants. He looked at her a moment then said, “I got to move on up."

They made their way carefully up the creek. The water was mostly knee deep, but she stayed on the rocks as much as possible. Her feet burned from the cold. She learned to choose when to risk climbing the rocks, and when to bear treading along the safer sand of the creek bed. She slipped once, splashing her shorts and barking her shin against a stone.

"You alright?"

"Yeah, sorry." She strained a smile, but her nose crinkled with pain, and her eyes were watering. He watched a rivulet of blood mixing with the water on her leg and said no more.

They went on for some time. He caught a few more trout, then began to watch the girl more closely. Her interest also waned from the fishing, and she now studied the creek. She turned over a round stone, and recoiled with a small cry and dropped it back into the water. He laughed, to both their surprise. She stared at him. He was smiling but he forced it away, and spat as if to be rid of it.

"Little black critters?" he asked.

She grimaced. "Yes."

He stepped over to her, bent and picked up another stone. He rolled it over in his hand. Small dark shapes scurried across the glistening wet surface, creatures with angular legs and round flat heads and skinny bodies with pairs of bristles coming off their tails,

"Just bugs. Cut one of them trout open and they'll have a belly full .

She peered closely. "Gross. "

He shrugged and tossed the stone down stream. "Let's go over to that bank."

They carefully crossed the creek and made their way up onto a wide dry shore of pale gray sand. Limestone lay piled around, half buried, carved and shaped by years of high water. He sat on one, as the clouds passed and the sun came out hot and bright. She sat nearby and buried her pink toes into the sand and a warm breeze swept across her. He piled his pole and the stringer beside him, and leaned back and stretched in the heat. He watched the thin wispy curls at her neck, and the water droplets rolling down her ankles. She bent over suddenly and picked something up. She looked delighted and held it up to the sky with one eye closed. "What's this? Glass?"

He held out his hand, and she leaned over and handed it to him. He felt her fingers graze across his palm.

He took the piece in his fingers and rubbed it. It was a chunk of pale green-blue glass, frosted and rounded at the edges with years spent in the creek depths.

"It's old jar glass. People used to live up this way. Or came from the loggers maybe." He tossed it back to her and she caught it. "You can keep it, but don't let the park boys know it. They don't like people taking anything out."

She considered this, then tucked it into her back pocket.

They sat for a while in silence, listening to the creek. She had begun to wander, digging for more glass, or drawing in the sand with a laurel branch. She seemed content and comfortable in a way he didn’t understand. "Ain't you got to get back or something?"

She didn't look up. "Nah, my family are staying in the campground, so they don't care as long as I'm back for dinner." She did look at him then, and absently brushed a stray lock of brown hair behind her ear. "Why? You want me to leave?"

He realized then that if she did leave, the shadows of the creek would suddenly be darker and the water would be colder on his skin. "I don't reckon but it's up to you."

"Reckon?" she repeated with a smile, treating the word as a play thing. He bristled at this somewhat, but only sniffed the air.

She suddenly straightened and began studying a waist deep rock pool that had been illuminated by the hot sun. It was clear and shimmering, the stony bed below perfectly visible in the blue-green tinted depths. She raised her arms and pulled her t-shirt over her head. The boy’s chest tightened. She was wearing a pink bikini top covered in pale polka dots. Sweat glistened between her tan shoulders and down the channeled curve of her back. He watched as she tossed the shirt then began to unbutton her shorts.

The words nearly stuck in his throat. "What are you doing?"

She turned to him, holding the waist of the open shorts. "I was just going to swim, it's hot." Her face softened. "Should I not? Will it scare the fish?"

"Well, yeah it would." He swallowed nervously. "I've done fished it though. Won't hurt nothing I reckon."

She thought for a moment, turned and casually let the shorts fall. The bikini bottoms matched the top, pink with white dots. She adjusted the thin hip straps, which had slipped slightly and briefly shown the cusp of a pale tan line curving along the top of her buttocks.

The boy thought of his mother, and wasn't sure why. He shifted on the rock and was suddenly angry and looked away. He turned back at the sound of the water splashing. She had vanished into the creek, but quickly emerged. She gasped and her eyes were wide. She wiped her face with tense fingers. And immediately began to wade toward the bank.

"It's freezing!"

The sight of her, tense and shivering and floundering to the shore, lightened the boys temperament and he couldn't help but chuckle.

"Well yeah, you been in it all day what'd you expect?"

She walked up the bank, shivering and dripping across the dry stones, and sat on a boulder in the sun.

"Ain't they got cold water in Pen'scola?"

She shot him bladed eyes but smiled m

He only grinned, then noticed the goose pimples raised on her skin, the rivulets of water that trickled down her neck and toward the center of her chest, the barely perceptible outlines of her hardened nipples beneath the pink fabric. She reached up and undid the band in her hair and it fell over her shoulders in long shining strands. He shifted again on his stone and his face darkened. He looked down and shuffled the pebbled sand with his toes.

They were silent for a moment.

"Ain't you scared?" he asked.

She turned and looked at him.

"What do you mean?"

"Goin' up the creek with just some ol' boy. Getting half naked and jumping in.” There was an edge growing in his voice. ”I dunno, you just seem not to worry 'bout nothin'."

She looked confused, and seemed to consider this as if for the first time. "I don't know".

"Well." The boy turned away. “I don't mean nothing by it. It's just funny."

They were quiet again for a long time. The boy felt uneasy and nearly angry with himself, as if he had dropped and broken something precious.

But the girl suddenly chirped, "Now what?"

He looked at her and she was standing and putting her shorts back on. She stared at him, her eyes bright. “I don’t want to go back yet.” He didn't know what to say.

He looked back over the creek, and up the mountainside across from them. He was in a state of subjection to the girl and her presence. Interest in the fishing had vanished since she now seemed disinterested as well. He didn't want to find the trail and return to the world, but he knew they couldn’t stay on the creek bank forever. Again he looked up the ridge and at the cut of the creek, and something occurred to him. He considered it for a while, but was afraid the growing silence would break the moment, and she would decide to leave. He blurted out.

"You like apples?" the question felt dull and foolish as it left his mouth.

She smiled and slipped her shirt over her head. "What?"

"Well. There's an old apple orchard up on that ridge a little ways. What's left of one. Indians used it. Might be apples up there by now."

The boldness of this suggestion embarrassed him, and again he felt as if he might've foolishly blown out a warm candle by getting too close to the flame, and was soon to be left in darkness.

But her face lit up. "Really?"

He looked at her, surprised. Her curious green gaze overwhelmed him and he turned his face back down to his naked feet.

"Yeah. Ain't much but some knobby wild apples, but they're good enough to eat."

"Ok let's go. Then I'll head back."

He looked up toward the ridge. He didn't know why the orchard had come to mind.

"It's a little bit of a climb."

"Will it take long?"

"It ain't far. Just straight up."

"I want to see it."

"Alright."

They crossed the creek again, then sat down to put their shoes on. The boy tied the small stringer of trout to a low stout tree limb and let the fish drift beneath the cool water, a sunken, shimmering bouquet of red and yellow and silver and wide dead eyes.

There was no path up to the ridge. They climbed steadily, through underbrush and over bare stone that rose up from the green blaze. The afternoon sun was hot and seeped through the leaves and tree tops. The boy stopped occasionally to let the girl rest but she would only look at him questioningly, breathing heavily but not stopping herself, until he shrugged and went on.

Eventually the land leveled out on a wide flat shelf that seemed cut into the mountain. The lurched over the top of the steep incline and onto this flat, panting and sweating. They rested, then walked on along the shelf, and were now overlooking the mountains. The girl paused and gazed out over the rounded tops that rose and fell into the distance, mountains blanketed and shadowed with green wilderness that hearkened to a time ancient and primal.

The boy soon realized the girl wasn’t behind him and he turned. Her cheeks were flush, sweat beading on her neck, and she breathed heavily. Her green eyes were narrowed over his domain. He suddenly felt a weight of responsibility at having brought her so far, and to a place unfamiliar to her. There was a sense of vulnerability to her now that brought up within him a protective instinct. He embraced it, but also felt a prickle of bitterness and spite at this responsibility; there was also a dark hot pulse of control and opportunity that rose alongside it.

A breeze ruffled a tuft of her hair, and she swept it behind her ear.

“It's hot.“

"Yeah. We're just about there though."

The boy marched on ahead through the tall grasses and weeds of the flat, watching for snakes and wasps. Grasshoppers clicked upward around them, birds chirruped softly from the tree line.

They rounded a bend in the hill, and there they found growing a gnarled grey tree with sparse green leaves. It rose with somber distinction from the grass. They were nearly at it before the girl seemed to notice.

"Oh look!"

She hurried up beside him, face raised toward the limbs above. "Are those apples?"

The boy squinted up through the leaf dappled sunlight. Small red and green apples, gnarled but bright, spotted the limbs above them. He was almost surprised to see them. "Yeah, looks like it. Dunno how ripe though."

The girl was already at the base of the tree straining to reach one. "They're all too high."

The boy couldn't reach one either. "Well."

"Lift me up."

He squinted at her and licked his dry lips.

"What?"

"Boost me up."

She cupped her hands together in a stirrup shape.

He said nothing and walked over. Stooping near the tree, he interlaced his fingers. Her hand rested on his shoulder and he felt it over his whole body. She stepped her sneaker up onto his waiting fingers and gingerly stood. He grunted softly as he straightened and lifted her. She fell against him, and his face momentarily rested against her soft t-shirt and warm flat belly. She smelled like sweat and coconut sunscreen. He felt his face flush and his skin prickle.

She straightened, grasping up into the branches. She wasn't heavy, but her weight lifted away as she pulled herself up. He relaxed and looked up and saw her balancing on a narrow limb, grasping high thin branches. She looked down and smiled for a brief moment.

But the boy's eyes were wandering. They searched up the length of her tan legs, toward the curve of her buttocks that could be seen inside her shorts directly above him. She spread her legs wider to step up on another limb. He felt the grey hot pulse.

"I see some good ones further up.“

The boy said nothing. His heart followed the pulse, and felt like a thing desperate to escape him.

Suddenly the girl let out a short scream and froze. For a moment the boy thought he was caught somehow, as if she had read his mind and found a dark and fractured thought lurking there.

But she was looking up. He saw past her for the first time. A black snake was wound among the branches above her. It glided slowly over the hanging apples and crooked limbs like a smooth rivulet of living oil.

His voice cracked a little, his mouth and throat dry. "It's just a rat snake. Won't hurt you."

She hesitated, said nothing, then reached for a large, mostly red apple near the snake. It stopped moving and seemed to watch as the girl plucked the fruit. She let the apple fall then picked a couple more.

"Catch." She almost whispered this, and glanced sidelong at the serpent.

The boy watched her, and the snake watched her. The apples fell to the grass.

Satisfied, she began to make her way back to the bottom limb. The branches tugged at her shirt, lifting it around her navel. Her shorts tightened against her as she stretched and bent. A bead of sweat ran along her inner thigh and into the crook of her knee. The boy stood motionless, staring upward with his arms by his side.

Grey pulse. Anger. Heat. Trout on the line. Mother.

She dropped lightly from the limb and landed in front of him with a slight exasperated smile. She swept back a curl of hair from her green eyes and looked up at him. The smile vanished.

He stepped toward her and crushed one of the apples beneath his heel.

The snake watched.