* Author :
Gillian Knox
* Narrator :
Karen Menzel (née Bovenmyer)
* Host :
Matt Dovey
* Audio Producer :
Devin Martin
*
Discuss on Forums
PodCastle 900: Sour Fruit is a PodCastle original.
Content warnings for domestic abuse and the death of a parent
Rated PG-13
Sour Fruit
By Gillian Knox
The large open field was encircled by forest. Its sandy soil was home to scrubby flowers and grasses whose spindly roots reached deep into the loose ground, teeming with ants for whom the medium was perfect. Not quite in the middle was an old apple tree, twisting up from the ground, this way and that. Short and stubby. The fruit it produced was the sour, small sort that puckered the mouth with every bite. The sort that farmers had been trying to breed out of existence for countless generations. Yet, it lived. Thrived, even, in the clearing in the middle of the woods.
Fish would run to it when the lake grew too loud. Snuggling herself inside its crooked roots, stretching her small hand upwards to poke into the hole that had rotted through the middle of the old tree, watching the sun as it came through her fingertips.
The tree was the one place on the peninsula where the lake would soften.
It was still there — the constant shush-shush of waves on rock was inescapable — but it faded into the background.
It was a mild day in late September when Fish found the first gift. That’s how she thought of them. Gifts.
Jorgi had been teasing her all through the school day, pelting her with bits of chalk until the lake rushed into her ears, drowning out Teacher’s lecture on Pythagoras. She ran as soon as the bell on Teacher’s desk was rung. Out across the browning prairie grass to the twisted pine trail, over the rocks and into the field.
She cried to the tree, letting all her frustration and childish hatred out with each salty tear. Calmer, she reached up into the rotten hole and her fingers found paper.
There was no real explanation for why a bag of flour sat in the rotted-out crook of the old tree, but Fish knew immediately that it had been left for her. She stood to pull the first gift close to her chest, crinkling the paper and sending small puffs of white out from the corners. It would get on her shirt, and Mama would be cross, but it didn’t matter. Finding the treasure had lifted the weight of the day and quieted the lake enough that she could go home.
Once she got there, though, the flour became a problem. If she were to bring it inside, surely Mama would find it, take it from her, use it in her dry, crusty bread. The kind that hurt Fish’s mouth.
She stood outside the kitchen door, listening to the sounds of bustle on its other side for a full five minutes before deciding. She was the last one in that evening, and there would be no reason for her parents to leave until the next morning. She would leave it outside on the porch, wake early, be the first one out the door in time to retrieve it in the morning, and find a safer, secret space to keep it, far from Mama’s kitchen.
Papa barked when she came in. Where had she been, why had she not been helping Mama, she was a useless girl. Mama nodded along, as though she agreed. As though she wanted Fish underfoot in the afternoons. As though she wasn’t always shooing her away to run in the woods.
Fish said nothing, looking chagrined and soulful so that Papa felt his words held weight.
