Story-A-Day #197: Apple Sauce

APPLE SAUCE

The field is littered with them. You would think this was an orchard, but as far as the eye can see, there is only a gently rippling blanket of short green grass – that and the apples, shrivelled little shells.

It’s like a dehydration experiment gone wrong, like someone was trying to create the opposite of applesauce.

Each one of them if a small browning globe slowly caving in on itself, like the pressure is too much to handle. It’s a surreal sight for sure, not just the apples in the grass, but the symmetry with which they are dispersed. Each one lies approximately four feet from the next, in every direction, as far as the eye can see.

It crosses my mind that someone half inclined to create an orchard might have done this; half inclined because they got the spacing right, but the apples are easy prey for the circling crows above without the shelter of a few inches of earth.

I cannot figure out the motivation, just as I can’t look away. There is no way this was an accident, a spilled truckload or something of that ilk - it is too symmetrical. Someone has done this intentionally.

The question is why, and to what ends?

It could be modern art, but where’s the audience? Where are the supporters and deriders discussion the merits or inanity of the display? Where is the artist?

It dawns on me then. The field must be ringed with cameras. I picture the looks that have surely crossed my face since I first paused here almost an hour ago; the befuddlement as I entered the field, the brow etched in perplexed thought, the enlightenment and defeat of each new potential solution to the riddle. There would be a show in there, but again, who is the audience.

I watch a pair of crows crash down into the field about twenty yards away. They scramble at each other for a moment before one flies off to the nearby tree line. The victor drives its beak vicious into a nearby apple, quickly reducing it to a pulpy mash.

Perhaps there is no solution to this riddle.

Perhaps it was an act of boredom.

If the last is the case, then the irony is rich because this odd display has provided a cure to mine.

I make my way back to the dirt road and set off back for home. I’ll probably check back in a day or two to see what has happened. Will the apples be gone by then? Maybe they will have been replaced by oranges, or possibly steaks. Maybe the field will be empty once more.

I’ll be sure to find out in a couple of days.