The Apple Thief

“Hey, Stop!” he heard a voice shout frantically. With the taste of sweet red deliciousness, fresh in his mouth, this young runaway sprints to avoid the shouting man and the rest of the authorities now approaching. Bobbing, weaving and as swift as a mustang, he viciously flees the small town of Braxtonville. With a population of nearly twelve hundred and only two churches, hiding in the small town would be futile. Whether this nameless runaway took that into consideration was probably unlikely. Rather running as fast and as far as one could, was probably the only thing this youngster was thinking.

Autumn red hair cascades towards the back of his head, as he sprints. A small chunk missing on his right side from a near missed capture. He had a tremendous head start, but they chase him on horses. They chase him like they would not stop till they caught him. The determination to seize the larcenist was only matched by the determination to escape.

Braxtonville was a small town, where town gossips hit the last resident by noon. In the event of a tornado, families who did not have basements would meet in the basement of St. Michaels, the town’s most center church. Sundays were like a town holiday, where everybody wore their Sunday’s best. Traffic lights were nonexistent, and franchise was an unfamiliar term. The town had four small family owned businesses and a few flickering street lights. The main lighting at night emanated from all the closely placed homes to justify naming this town.

Just outside the town, the young fugitive approaches a wall of light met with a welcoming abyss. The beautiful night sky screams its silent beauty with a clean observation. The purity of the darkness made the stars feel like they were hitching a ride. He felt the country air dancing on his face and nestling in his nostrils. Braxtonville, as most townships, was surrounded by country. The rural life, farms and barns are the foundation of this community. There were just as many barns in the country as there were street lights in the township. In the country, farmland and forests made up this rural part of the state. With only a few patches of townships disseminated throughout, nature is in control from a bird’s eye view.

With the town lights at his back, the presumed apple thief, makes his way towards a nearby abandoned farm. In foreclosure, nobody had lived there for years. The two story white siding farmhouse was boarded up. Charred stained claws reached out from the window openings, what the wood boards could not conceal. There was a smoky darkness spread throughout the house, like marshmallows left unattended too close to a flame. Though the barn did not seemed to have been touched by flames. However, it had been abandonly unkept. Sunburnt wood, shriveled to reveal slight spaces between. The barn was nestled up next to a tractor that no longer bore its color, as rust continues to infiltrates unopposed. Memories and imagined better days emanate from rotting edges and unconditioned wood that has been ravaged by the seasons.

A great place to hide, he thought. With determined eyes, he heads towards the loosely opened barn door. Wood in structure with a few boards missing, the gaps between boards were slightly widened. There are two big wooden doors. The left one was off centered and tilted toward the left. He carefully slides inside, noticing commotions from the town authorities. They were looking for him. Walking onto the property, five gentlemen approach the front door and try peeking inside. Focusing on the men, from the gap within the crooked barn doors, he gently backs up into the corner of an empty stall, so he thought. “Hello there,” a voice sprung out of the corner shadow. “Shhh,” they will hear you, stressed the fugitive; startled by her gentle voice.

“Why are you hiding?” The young female whispers subtly from the back corner, where the shadows create wall like barriers that consumes everything. The gentle voice cautiously aims for his ears, cognizant of his belief that people are searching for him. “I was eating some apples I found, when suddenly these guys started yelling and chasing me,” he explained. “I don’t know what they want, but they freaked me,” exhaustedly expresses the fugitive in hiding. He continues with his explanation, when suddenly he pauses like the last person to get a joke, while everyone already laughed, “Wait, why are you here?”

A piercing shock zipped down his spine. As he was so focused on avoiding capture, it hadn’t dawned on him that he was in an old abandoned barn with an absolute stranger. Instinctively backing up, he anxiously looked around, as he could not find the speaker. Not a sprinkle of light had been welcomed into that area. The only light entering that barn was from the off-centered front barn door. The light reached out like an old man’s crooked fingers reaching out as far as it could; towards something it cannot reach. Although welcoming, that light was emanating from the pursuing men.

It was so pitch black that he could hear the young stranger breathing perfectly. Too scared to turn his head, although his vision has been totally muted. “Who are you?” “Why are you hear?” He barely breathed out to avoid detection. He had so many questions, however his mind eluded him, as it was hiding from fear somewhere within.

“I live here,” the friendly voice cautiously announced. “My parents don’t allow me to go inside the house.” “I have to live, eat and sleep out here.” “This is my room.” She continues to explain her living situation until she was interrupted by whistling and shouting. The men jumped off the front porch, and start walking around the house. “We have to find a way out of here,” he nervously mumbles, but purposefully for her attention.

“I am not allowed to leave here, I’ll get in big trouble,” she explains to him. “My parents will come back soon, maybe they can help you.” Trying to comfort his nervous energy, she reminisces about her family and farm. She continues as if the farm is currently being tended, and that everything is going to be alright. However, having seen the fire damage on the house, and the fact that this farm land had been obviously abandoned for many years, she wasn’t very comforting . He began thinking this young thing was hallucinating, mentally ill or abused; nothing she said was making any sense.

“No, I have to get out of here,” he exclaims. “No one is coming.” “There is no farm!” “I don’t know where your parents are, but they are not at this farm or that house,” he explains with frustration. He then realizes his voice slightly heightened, and a shock of, “what are you thinking,” viciously rides down his spine.

“I think I heard something over here,” the bulkier man says. He appears to be leading the group. Soft around the belly, however dense everywhere else. He stood postured with a cigarette dangling from the tip of his fingers, positioned at the last possible place before falling; teasing a drop. Three men, two lanky and one short come from behind the house. They met up with the two brothers up front; all looking at the foreman’s finger pointing at the direction of the barn.

“We have to get out of here, they are coming,” the hidden fugitive exasperates. “Come on, we have to go!” His impatients intensifies with her indifference. She had no intentions of going anywhere. She couldn’t. She said she couldn’t, and for some reason, he was starting to believe it. With panicked stumbling movement, he bumps into something in the darkness. A crash announcement to all those attentive, “here I am.” He might as well of just said it. And then she said it…. “Here I am!”

She continued her announcements, “Here I am!” “Here I am!” Here I am!” She is attempting to gather everyone’s attention. “Here I am!” she ecstatically proclaims, as if no one has ever heard her speak before. “Here I am!” Now shouting at the top of her lungs; crying for the attention she craved for so many years. “Here I am!” she desperately cries, as her loneliness was about to be terminated. Her many years of solitude finally over. How could that be, he thought. His mind baffled. How could she have survived on her own, he wondered. There’s no way that she lived in that barn without having left at least once, he thought to himself. He was sure of it. However, there she was, screaming, “Here I am!” As if she was calling for her rescue.

Then, the panicked fugitive noticed a slight giggle in her voice, a crinkle in her lip, and a sparkle in her eye. Then her giggles subtly start intensifying, like a cracking dike ready to burst. Until finally the dam broke, and she was flooding the darkness with hysterical laughter.

The rusty hinges scream from the pain caused by its movement, as extra force is used to open the barn door’s arthritic arms. “There he is,” the lanky mustached cowboy hollers, as the light flushed out the darkness, causing the shadows to flee in terror. “Whoa there boy, easy there,” another gently converses, as he came up from behind unnoticed. With the apple thief startled, he thrashed about the old barn, now fully lit by the invading light. On hind legs now, this beautiful wild colt, displays its distress. Stranded from his heard, he has the same fiery colors on his coat as he has in his attitude. The young colt saw the stout man with the cigarette approach. They locked eyes for a brief anxious moment, until the man ended it with a chuckle. Then a lasso came across, and then another. Then one more rope, until the young colt was pulled down and captured. He fought with all the strength of his youth to no avail. He kept looked around for help, crying out as loud as he could. Where was this mysterious figure he was talking with earlier. Why wasn’t she helping.

“Easy there, good boy,” the older of the brother’s attempt at calming the young colt, while brushing his soft strawberry like coat. “Well I think that’s it,” the crew leaders states. “Did anyone find anything else,” he continues. “I did find some old horse bones in the barn,” the younger of the two brothers announces. “They have been there for quite a while though,” he says with a slight chuckle. “There hasn’t been nothing around here for who knows how long,” the crew leader says as he puffs on his half-finished cigarette.

With the young colt, “apple thief,” secured in the back, the men drive off. The young colt now slightly calm and exhausted from all the excitement, can only think about one thing. Who was that in the barn? Where did she come from? Where did she go?

Back on the farm, the house boarded up and burnt. The dishevelment of the barn was slightly disturbed, and the doors were left wide open. Shadows screaming as they escape their entrapment in the barn, while rays of light from the peaking sunrise saturates the inside of the old structure. Emptied like a carcass after a vulture frenzy, the light really showed the thinly ribbed barn. It appeared anorexically dehydrated, and the dawn exposed how the barn’s wood thirst for life.

And there in the corner it laid. In a small stall in the back where some shadows stayed, and continue their efforts in performing. There it laid. A completely naked skeleton of a young filly, intact with the exception of the slight disturbance by the curious hands of a cowboy.