This fictional excerpt is intellectual property of Campbell Anderson and may not be used without prior permission from the author.

 

“Consider the fact that there has to be someone who does something, no matter how minor or wild it may be. Someone to invent the first atomic bomb, and someone to discover where milk came from, and someone to develop the theory of gravity, and someone to create the first telescope and wine and fishing rod and written text. Consider what the chances were that these people were in the however-many-zeros-point-one percent for something radical to catalyse: a discovery, or creation, or perception. History is born.” 

After telling Penny all of this, I add a final comment to prove my point about possibility and destiny and whatnot while gesturing to the artwork around us. 

“What makes these art masterpieces unique is that the artists who made them saw the landscapes, frames, concepts and ideas slightly different than anyone else did, and, therefore, our perceptions are affected due to our being here in this extraordinary art gallery at this exact time. How fortunate we are to immerse ourselves in this exhibition, showcasing how mortals see the world.”

“How fortunate we are indeed,” agrees Penny, smiling. “You’ve quite a philosophical side, Charlie.” 

I spy with my little eye a framed oil painting of a human eye; their pupil is a juicy, shiny apple with a leaf at the top.

“Consider the apple. Consider its humbleness as a picked year-round fruit among the many fruits. Consider its redness, its texture and size on the desk before you.” 

I consider what Mr. Hedge is telling the class. Like myself, it has skin, flesh and a core. One side is speckled with a multitude of pinpoint-sized dots. There are faint lines on the outside that look like healing scars. Two khaki-brown leaves, the shape of spearheads, are attached to the top of the apple. I also notice that while most of the skin is red, there’s a patch surrounding the top which is a yellow-green and feels like fine sandpaper. This particular apple is a Braeburn, imported from Motueka. Braeburns are the type that Nana uses in her apple strudels, but for apple pies she’ll include Granny Smiths along with Braeburns.

Some of the students are underway with sketching the apple’s outlines, lightly flicking their pencils every now and then. Top-student of the class, Charlotte, has drawn the outline and specks, and is now shading the patches of skin that are darker. Charlotte is professional enough with her artistic talent that she could draw horse shit and it would still beat anyone’s Mona Lisa. 

Now I, too, put pencil to paper, carefully skimming the sheet with the tip, and ensure none of the edges are too sharp. I notice how the blotch at the top of the apple looks like the mark that an exploded paintball would leave, so I allow myself to be a bit less careless sketching that part. Then dot, dot, dot around the two-dimensional object. Next are the faint lines. How should I add tone to them? I hardly apply pressure to the pencil as I add the minute slashes before moving onto shading the apple with a cloudy-grey sketch.

In the summer of 1983, Koeghn and I found entertainment by going to a park beside the house of an old local resident called Mr. Highbury. He had a brick wall surrounding his house, but it wasn't much of a fence, being only a couple feet high. He had an apple tree that was so full with them, there were several lying at the base of the tree, so Koeghn and I would collect some to play cricket with - without Mr. Highbury knowing. 

It was a quest to find out which apples were the strongest when it came to facing the wooden bat. The truly impressive ones were able to stay intact after an over; the astonishing ones were able to withstand getting smashed. At the end of the day, the strongest apples were those that did not fall from the tree. 

Once when Koeghn hit an apple, upon its descent as it came hurtling down to the ground, it passed through Mr. Highbury’s chimney. Koeghn shot away into a bush.

In a flap of cursing and anger, a balding Mr. Highbury, erupted from his back door, wearing a white singlet, red pyjama pants and slippers. Soot covered his angry face, for he’d been cleaning the hearth. 

Who would bother cleaning their hearth in the middle of summer when it was stinking hot outside? Mr. Highbury’s house was the one kids got told to stay away from. Though he was a widower and lived alone, he was brutally intimidating; to approach him was like playing with fire, but that didn't stop us two from stealing from his tree. He had a ‘no trespassing’ sign and ‘doorknockers prohibited’ and ‘stay off the lawn’ label!

“Did you send this fucking apple down my chimney?” In his hand, he held what looked like a chunk of meteorite, however he was the one with smoke rising off him.

“Er, you got a little soot on your nose,” I called back.

Shaking his fist, he spat furiously with his jaw protruding, so his gold tooth stood out like a sore thumb, like James Joyce’s Ulysses among a shelf of dusty classics.

“You ought to get your puny arse over here and lick up the mess you made!” 

Just visible behind the bushes, which Mr. Highbury was oblivious to, Koeghn imitated the nutter, sticking out his own bottom row of teeth, like a piranha, before covering his eyebrows with one oblong, slim brown leaf, exactly like the madman’s monobrow; it was so thick, you could give it to a rat as a bandanna and he’d instantly become a rockstar wannabe.

Enraged, the old bastard reaches for the baseball bat in his door and that's when us two shot off quick as anything. 

I ought to have cleaned up the mess I made with the boy who got bowled the apple. We’d have licked it up, savoured the ashes, then repeated the match all over again, smashing sixes with those apples, like the legendary Martin Crow, greatest cricketer the nation’s ever seen. The man, the myth, the legend. 

Apples never stop falling. 

From dusk till dawn, I’ll never be able to take a wicket to save my life, but I’ll go for the odd run or two when the keeper dives and misses as I tap the red sphere with the side of my bat. 

Apples never stop coming. 

It’s raining apples. Smash, smash, smash! They’re full of flesh and something hard and red. Hailstones of frozen blood. The blood is my own, dribbling out of my nostrils, ears and mouth, because apples never stop falling. 

I never stop falling.
The tears: salty, gentle, lost water, streaking down my cheeks, like burning fire, or like a butt-naked, hairy-chested All Blacks fan, running across the field. I’m talking about the fellas who drink straight piss, as strong as Colin ‘Pinetree’ Meads, then when they get home and their weary-eyed wives ask if they can tell the time, they’ll turn to the clock on the wall and say, “I’m not drunk”, then flunk onto the carpet, drooling like pitbulls.

Hideous tears dripping onto my over-shaded apple, not looking anything like the object before me. Struggling to see through bleary, blurry eyes and finding it tremendously hard to breathe through a windpipe clogged with rotten cores, I move towards the classroom’s exit, shrugging off Mr. Hedge’s hand on my shoulder.

“Charlie, are you alright? You’re hyperventilating,” he says from a gazillion light years away.

“...Yes… Need… Air,” I manage.

They never stop. They never, ever, ever stop. 

A forest of hands guiding me to a chair. 

But I need air.

I ought to have cleaned up that mess of a summer properly, but I licked it up and left no crumbs on the scene.

Consider, Charlie Whittaker, how you are the worm inside the apple. How the worm’s in your eye. Black - wriggle - blue - wriggle -  breathe. Shouldn’t’ve licked up the mess, like the dog I am.