Summer and Salt

Summers in the wood as cool as a cave. Perpetual dusk. Crunch under foot from that which has succumbed and now nourishes. Twigs. Leaves. Kicks at the toadstool and watches the spores poof into the air. Hears the creek. Don’t wade, there are sink holes and water moccasins, she says. Poisonous and stealthy, gliding through the gentle, dark current. Green moss on a rotting log. What was that? Branches rustling in the breeze? An animal?

Untold hours in this cool, quiet refuge. While the sun bakes the tin roof of the farmhouse, the side that is not shaded by the big oak. Ticking and popping. Metal trying to breath. Flexing and twitching like a sleeping dog.

Alone and without playmates. Nary a companion, save the trees and the water and the unseen beasts. How naturally unnatural he realizes as an adult smothered by asphalt and machines and crowds and devices that speak and listen but without knowledge or wisdom. Worlds away from the boy who would shed his clothes in the forest. Unafraid and unashamed.

At the edge, a field, a bottom that floods. Tires and beer cans when the water recedes. And then a sloping manicured patch surrounding the house. A quilt-like pattern from wild to tamed to civilized. A man and a woman and a child hold forth, fending off nature that would reclaim what is hers. At the border between field and home a gnarly tree, solitary, bursts with small, green globes. The ground littered with sour fruit. The boy plucks a prize from a branch. Holds the apple to his mouth and exhales. Polishes the apple on his shirt. The dull dusty matte shines and makes him smile at his meager achievement. From his pocket a shaker, purloined from the kitchen, filled with crystals. Licks the skin of the apple and shakes, salt sticking to wet greenness. Don’t eat so much of that, she says, it will dry out your blood. Bites into the tartness rendered oddly sweet by the salt. Summer salted fruit. Apples. Watermelon. Musk melon.

Throws the apple core into the field. Takes a full stemmed orb, rotting on its underside, from the ground and heaves it. Mentally measuring the distance. Farther than last year. Not as far as next. Shaker back in one pocket, a small apple in the other, he walks home. Happy where he is and with his own company.

A man sits in the heat in the heart of a city and writes. Wishing he had a salted apple to eat.

And another to throw.

Mick