BY DR. AGONSON
There’s an old, dead tree, all twisted up and rotten. I suppose the gods had disliked it, for its outer bark was blackened as though by fire, lending some credence to the old wives’ tale that the tree had long ago been struck by lightning. At least, that’s how the tale begins.
It truly was a dead tree, any botanist might tell you so, and it had stood in that region, I shall not tell you where exactly, since before I was born. It was dead, one could not deny; dead in every aspect save one: The tree brought forth fruit.
I suppose the twisted thing had once been an apple tree. It sprouted no leaves in springtime, its branches were withered, and you could see into its trunk and espy there a hollowness as of something eaten up from the inside. That god accursed tree was surely dead, but it gave life.
Every year, one bright-red apple grew from its uppermost branch. Only one. Not great in size. It was ordinary in every outward respect. Legend held, however, many things regarding its efficacy.
It was a well sought after prize, and the hope of all our countrymen were placed upon it, year by year. Rules needed to be put in place to keep people from murdering each other. At heart, these rules were simple, though they may seem complex to hear.
When the fruit was first known, the news was spread, and people were asked if they wanted it. Those who would have it, then, were gathered together to a spot near the tree. You could only seek it once, I might add, and so it was mostly young men who came. If a man had sought it out before, he was expelled from that circle of seekers.
When this had been accomplished, the young men would then determine by what rite they would compete. Sometimes a race would be held, or a feat of strength; often though, the dialogue would give way to blows, each boy advocating for his own, particular virtue to be the test, refusing any other, and when that first fist was flung, that was considered a decision as well.
The winner of the fight, or the race, or the one who could hold his breath longest, won the apple.
My father competed once, though not as a boy. He entered that circle of young men and declared his intention to have the apple. At first they tried to expel him for being too old, but it was remembered that it was not age that disqualified; he had never sought it in his youth, and so he still had a right to seek it now.
That was a year that gave way to blows. As my father tells it, it was the best luck for him that it did, though he had not tried to make it so. A footrace would have left him behind, and he never understood the games these children played; he would not have been able to win had the whole thing not devolved into a primitive struggle. He was taller, older, stronger, and he struck each child down.
My father had not sought this fruit in his youth because he was, in truth, a timid child and given to bouts of philosophy. He had reasoned that happiness was found elsewhere than in such struggles for the worldly goods promised to those who ate that strange fruit.
Yet, that year, he found no philosophy to meet the sickness of his wife, and when that old witch had told him that, when the time came, either I or my mother would die in birth, he fell into long contemplation. The only answer he found was the apple, which was said to be able to rewrite one’s fate.
That year it fell to blows, and a man, a desperate man, can defeat many children.
He might have taken the apple for himself. Many a youth, promising some altruistic reason, finding that prize in his hand, was unable to refrain from consuming it. My father, it is said, is the only one who ever gave it away.
Perhaps that is what the tree was waiting for, why it had, even after death, given its fruit year after year, for it ceased to bear fruit in the next, or any after. It is but a dead tree now, a dead tree with an ancient story.
My mother ate the fruit while she was pregnant, and neither of us died.
Tale Told 