There used to be an old apple tree that grew in the backyard, its branches sweeping low to the ground under the heavy weight of the fruit. The thicker apples touched the tops of the grass. It was a cocktail painting of shiny reds, ripe greens, faded browns, and the clearest of blues—a mid-afternoon sky— bordering the image. The deer always fed on the lowest apples, the ones that were left uncollected during the cider season, but the best apples grew in the upper branches; it was for these that so many Autumn days were spent with scratched knees, torn pants, and the tartness of fresh, acidic juice dripping down chins and forearms.
Some of John's most vivid memories were of this tree; spinning in circles under it with his cousins while his mother called them in for lunch, crouching in the tall grass with his sister to watch the flies swarm around a rotted core, standing alone on its highest branch to watch the orange glow of fire on the horizon.
Of course, these were all before the war reached his house. Then one day, as if by accident, his village was the front line.
He could still remember it perfectly; he had been sitting on his kitchen floor with his older sister Harriet, coloring with charcoal on large oak leaves they had dried by the fire, when the shouts came from the street. He had run to the door to see what was happening. Alice, a girl who was only a year or two older than John, had stumbled across the cracking pavement, yelling hoarsely.
"They're here! The soldiers are here!"
Harriet had grabbed John around the waist and pulled him back into the house, but not before he saw the first bullet rip through Alice's stomach.
Harriet had run to the closet, where they kept their pre-packed bags. It was a simple precaution; they hadn't been able to tell exactly when the soldiers would arrive, but they knew they wouldn't have time to pack when it finally happened. She had thrust two of these into John's arms. He could still remember how he had dropped one of them, one with food in it. One of the cans that burst open on impact must have held peaches because for years after, the bag smelled sickeningly of the sweet fruit.
Harriet had run to wake their mother, who was sleeping off the bottle of rice whiskey she had traded for in town. Her speech was still slurred from it as John helped her into her coat. They had climbed through a back window and run up the dirt path to the top of the hill. John had let go of his mother's hand and run to the apple tree, a sharp rock in his hand, to scratch out the names he and his sister had carved into the trunk years before, when John was just learning how to write. The less the soldiers knew about his family, the better. It had been late summer. The dry grass had crunched beneath his feet as he ran.
They should have kept moving. He shouldn't have turned back. Just as he had reached the tree, the first soldier had rounded the corner of the house. His mother had screamed. With one shot, the soldier had silenced her.
"Run, John!" Harriet had yelled to him as she turned and fled down the opposite side of the hill. The soldier had turned, spotting John almost instantly where he stood beneath the tree. As bullets sprayed the ground next to him, he had jumped into the tree and begun climbing.
The grass at the base of the tree was too thick, and the summer had been too hot. All it took was one flick of a lighter from the soldier's pocket and the fire was already growing. The soldier hadn't laughed, hadn't teased, hadn't even stayed to watch the tree burn. With an entire town to destroy, he had more to do than think about one nine-year-old boy.
John had cried as the fire grew, consuming the apples with a constant hissing. As the flames had licked at his bare feet, he had known he was going to die. This hadn't been a new concept to him; he had lost three friends that year alone—one to starvation and two others to disease. He understood death better than he understood most things. Death was easy, it was final. It was life that was complicated. With this thought, he had scanned the ground below him. If he was going to die anyway, he was going to make it quick.
Without a second thought, he had leaped from the tree, sparks and ash circling around him as he fell through the open air. It had almost been funny to him that the only thing he could think of as the ground loomed closer was an old song his mother had sung around the house when he and Harriet were younger, back when the war was someone else's concern.
"I love you a bushel and a peck.
A bushel and a peck though you make my heart a wreck.
Make my heart a wreck and you make my life a mess,
make my life a mess, yes a mess of happiness
about you."
It had been the only song he had ever heard his mother sing. She would sashay around the house, hanging dripping laundry from every surface to dry as John and Harriet chewed on pine sap. It was always hard at first to not spit out the bitter, brittle chunks, but it was worth the wait when the rich sweetness of pine burst through his mouth and throat. He would laugh, coughing through the woody bark aftertaste as his mother hummed loudly. That song represented happiness and joy for him. It reminded him of better times, which was why it had been so funny to him that he had thought of it as he fell to what he was sure was certain death.
It was still funny to him almost 15 years later as he leaped from the second floor of the burning house he had been hiding out in for months. The already cracked window exploded behind him in a shower of glass shards and splintered wood, a showering force that pushed him away from the building as he fell. It was the same scene, replayed in his memory a thousand times, taking place again in this broken reality. His silhouette against a fiery background, his outstretched arms welcoming the impact as his body fell toward the ground, and the song his mother used to sing when she was happy echoing in his ears.
This time, unlike when he was a boy, he laughed as he fell.