Strange Fruit and Missing Children

Certain things remind a mother of something...

Why is it that the freshest fruit seem to rot the quickest? The things that are too beautiful for this world are taken from the palms of our hands as quick as they were given. These beautiful things are so fragile, too fragile, to be trusted in our care. This world is not meant for fragile and beautiful things. All fragile things break. All fruit rots.

A pair of tiny, gangly legs hang out of an ancient oak tree's branches in the Alabama summer heat.

A soft breeze sifts through the branches and sweeps away the warm haze that crept around like an invisible fog all afternoon. In the distance, birds sing the song of summer as they fly in a cloudless sky. A mother sits on the white porch of a tall faded yellow house, whose porch swing creeks next to her in the same wind that rustles the oaks leaves. A new gust carries the scent of fresh peaches and strawberries over from the adjacent orchard and berry fields that still echo with mischievous laughter each time she passes.

Curious eyes peer down a path between two, of the many, of large peach trees in an orchard. The air is cool in the orchard shade, and a child with two ripe peaches in either hand escapes down another row under the protection of the shadows.

The mother sits in solitary apart from the two brown rabbits who bound and thump together in the grass before disappearing into a nook between two oversized tree roots. The mother gazes into the field ahead from her porch. The grass is a deep shade of green and has remained lush despite laying prone to the sun's unobscured rays day after day. The oak, whose thickest branch bears scars from where a rope swing once hung, stands tall.

The juice of a stolen peach runs down the chin of a hungry child who has taken refuge within the branches of a tall oak tree. The child's tiny hands drop the first peach’s pit into the plush grass below before embarking on the journey back down the neck of the rope swing.

The shadow of the oak and the house stretch as the sun moves across the wide sky. A dog with floppy golden ears paws at the inside of the houses' screen door. The mother reluctantly unlatches the door, setting the dog free before returning to her seat. A slightly wetted ball falls from between the dogs clenched teeth and into the lap of the mother. It glistens as she holds it in the sun.

Laughter spills inside through open windows. The child throws a red ball with all it’s might as an eager pup dashes after it. Small shards of glass scatter across a hardwood floor as a red rubber ball bounces with reckless abandon among the fragments. An angry mother storms outside. Her voice sends nearby birds to the heavens for sanctuary.

The rubber ball rolls from the mothers hand and gently bounces down the two steps that lead to the porch, and settles in the grass. The dog whimpers and rests its head on the mothers leg. Both floppy ears twitch as the whispers of the wilderness call attention to the two nearby squirrels who chat in a language unintelligible to human ears. The mother watches as they run by the base of her feet towards the oak to retreat high into its branches to taunt the dog, who barks as it guards the trunk. The mother sighs with the wind when a faint ring echos from the kitchen. The mother stands with hopeful ambition and runs into the house. The front door swings wide and hits the wall as she rushes through. Pictures on adjacent walls shake violently, the mother takes an abrupt turn, unintentionally bumping a china cabinet that rattles its porcelain bones. The floor quakes with each stride, the mother swarms with the force of a typhoon as the phone rings for the third and final time. Her hand wraps around the the telephone that hangs stif on the wall. Her breath is rapid and her heartbeat races with anticipation.

The child looks to it’s feet as the wrath of the mother turns like a tropical cyclone and rains around them both. Tears wet the child's cheeks as the second peach, a gift for the mother, falls from behind the child's back. The mothers anger turns it’s attention from the broken window to the stolen peach that sits in the grass behind the thief. The mothers voice wicked and thunderlike. The child cries. The peach is squished beneath the foot of the child. Down the hill, towards the horizon, the child trades it's own human legs for that of a much faster beast. The child slips away from the arms of it’s mother and into the vast unknown.

The mother falls to her knees on the tiled floor. The receiver dangles from a spiral chord. Her body silently vibrates as the last remaining ray of hope is blackened, shriveled, and squished like a peach forgotten in the grass of a front yard. The mother curls her knees to her chest and lays on her side by the wall as the phone buzzes. A ray of light illuminates the dust that hangs suspended for an eternity in the kitchen air. The mother is alone. Hours pass before her ghost  floats through the empty halls of a house she once called home, for the last time. Outside, a strange looking fruit swings from a necklace of rope on the same branch the necklace once hung as a swing.

A child sits in the lap of it's mother in the shade of a large oak tree. A puppy runs circles around them as they laugh in the warm Alabama summer air that always smelled of strawberries and peaches. The mother only had her child, and the child only had it's mother. Though their family was plagued with loss, the wounds of the past were long healed, and the scars were fading with each passing day. They had eachother. That is all they ever needed. White cotton candy clouds floated with ease across the sky in a summer that had happened in a dream so long ago. The child and the mother both stand hand in hand, and step as if they were kissing the earth goodbye with their feet. After one last look at the house they spent their lives in, they sprouted the white wings of a dove, and flew away to a land where no fruit would ever rot.