Daddy's on the Porch

Daddy’s on the porch

Singing to himself

Waiting for the fever to go down

And Beth’s in bed

Hallucinating

Trying to tell the time

How long’s she been in bed?

Six days?  Seven?

She sweats so much we gotta change the sheets

Every few hours

She died on a Thursday

That’s what I remember

Eleven brothers and sisters

And all of us sitting around on the porch

Listening to Mommy wail on the doctor

Wail on Daddy

Wail on anybody who would come near her

Beth died of something

You can cure these days

The last thing I remember was each of my brothers and sisters

Getting up from wherever they were on the porch

And walking off into different directions away from the house

Away from the sound of Mama howling

And Daddy saying Beth’s name

And the clock going tick tock, tick tock

Like it didn’t care what’d happened

Like it was gonna push time forward

Whether we wanted it to or not

I was the last one on the porch

When Daddy came out

And sat down next to me

He lit a cigarette

And scratched at his beard

Like it was something he glued on

Then he said ‘Yup’

And he walked off too

Just like everybody else had

Mama was laying in bed with Beth

Waiting for the doctor come

With the coroner

To take her away

To take ‘em both away

We might as well have buried Mama with Beth

Because we never got her back after that

Just a tower of tears that looked like her

I never wanted kids because of Beth

Because of what happened

How it split the family

How we all walked off

And some of us never returned

But I had a kid

And her Daddy told me not to worry

Because medicine had made it so that

What happened to Beth

Would never happen again

And I felt good about that

Then my kid goes off and has a kid of her own

And one day the phone rings

And I answer, and it’s her, my kid, my Nicole,

And she says her girl’s sick

And she’s real worried about it

I say, ‘Honey, what’s she sick with?’

And Nicole says it

The thing

The thing Beth was sick with

And I almost drop the phone

But I can’t

Because my girl needs me

And I say ‘But I don’t understand’

And I don’t understand

There’s a cure

But of course there ain’t no cure

There’s just something you can take

A shot

That’ll stop you from getting it

And my daughter didn’t want to get the shot for her kid

The way I did for her

Because she read something in a magazine

Saying she shouldn’t

And so she didn’t

And so my granddaughter’s in the hospital

And my daughter’s talking to me from a stall in the women’s room

And I’m in my kitchen

And I walk into my living room

And there it is

A picture of Beth

And I hear the clock

I hear the clock

Tell me what time it is

Johnny Appleseed

The last tree I planted was on the California shoreline.  I put the seed under a few inches of dirt, and then I went to travel the world.  All I had my empty bag still on my shoulder, promising something I could no longer supply.  Everywhere I’d go, people would ask me to plant a tree, and I’d say—‘Sorry, I’m out of seeds,’ and I’d see the disappointment in their eyes.  Out of seeds?  Aren’t you Johnny—‘Yes,’ I’d say, ‘I am, or…I used to be.  I’m not sure who I am anymore.’  Then, they’d walk away from me, and I’d go find a spot of land to sit on until the wind whipped up, and the moon came out, and the path before me was clear.  Go here, Johnny, go there, Johnny—What did you forget?  You forgot your breadcrumbs.  You forgot to leave something behind you.  And then…it happened.  A circle.  I found myself at the first tree I ever planted, in an orchard, in Massachusetts.  It was a crisp autumn day, and two children were apple-picking with their parents.  I watched them and thought—Where are my children?  Who have I ever picked apples with besides myself?  Then one of the children noticed me and pointed me out to their parents, fear circling the drains of their eyes.  I was shocked.  No child had ever looked at me with fear before.  It was only then that I realized I had grown a beard, that my skin had wrinkled, and my hair had gone grey.  I was old.  I was an old man.  When did that happen?  And how?  I had never aged.  But that was before I planted my last tree.  I started running.  I ran, and I ran—the whimpering of frightened children echoing behind me—I ran until I reached the spot where I had planted that final apple tree.  I wanted to sit under it—under the last thing that I would ever bring to being—and I wanted to die there—that was where I wanted to join the earth and be absorbed into the tree, the roots, the branches...

But when I got there…

Nothing.

No tree.  Just a convenience store.  A gas station.  Right on the water.  Right on the edge of everything.  Slurpees and hot dogs.  I was…worse than dead.  I was…It was as if I had never existed at all.  And all the other trees and all those apples meant nothing.  They were vacant poems.  They were the past, where I wanted to die.  This was the future.  Who the hell would want to die in the future?  You want to die in the middle of your last memory.  Your last best memory.  And then I saw her.

Paula—with Babe behind her, holding an umbrella over her head to shield her from the California sun.  ‘It’s all right,’ she said to me, as I fell to my knees in front of her, unable to cry tears, because even my tear ducts were irrelevant.  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, as she put her hands on my shoulders, as she brought me back to my feet, ‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘I have a place for you.  I have somewhere you can go.’  And then she brought me here.  And she made me young again.  And she made me feel special.  And this is where I’ve been ever since.  And I’m still not Johnny Appleseed, but I’m somebody.  And maybe one day I’ll figure out who that is.