Christopher Boucher - Golden Delicious

Your father stood up. “It’s ours,” he said. “We got here first.”

“I know it,” she said, catching her breath. “I’m the one you prayed to.”

“What’s the story with this thing?” the Possum asked.

“It was my mother’s,” said the spandexer. “But I don’t play.”

“It doesn’t make any sound,” you said.

“Of course it doesn’t,” she said. “I said that in the prayer.”

“You did?” said your father.

“I prayed, it’s a POV Piano — a point-of-view piano.”

“I thought that was the name of the brand,” your father said. “I didn’t know—”

“Watch,” said brightsad, and she pushed a single key on the right side. I heard the clicking sound again.

“Hear that?” she said.

“First person plural,” we said.

“Do you want it, or not?” She pushed another key and the point of view was hers: I didn’t tell them about the stories in these fields, the other instruments beneath the soil. I didn’t tell them that my mother died at this piano. I just wanted to be rid of the damn thing.

Then the Possum joined in. As the spandexer played the point-of-view melody, the Possum (I didn’t care what sound came out of it — I was just so happy to put my paws on the keys again) played the chords.

My Dad stared at the piano. “This isn’t what I envisioned,” he said.

“It is free,” said brightsad.

“I think you should take it,” the Possum told my father. “Just imagine: to be able to see things from another angle whenever you wanted .”

“I really wanted a note -based piano,” my Dad said.

“And you’ll find one,” said the Possum. “But take this one, too! Put it out in the fields! Just in case!”

The Possum was right. This was an interesting object that, at the very least, we might be able to trade down the road. My Dad said OK, and the Possum led his truck into the field. When the truck got to the piano, it knelt down and picked up the instrument in its arms. The piano made a terrible pok when it lifted from the earth, and I heard the sound of snapping roots and vines. The truck put the piano in its bed, walked out of the muddy field, and settled on its tires. Then we got into the truck and the Possum pulled onto Highway Five. I turned back and waved at the spandexer, who was standing in the mud.

On the way back to Converse Street, I asked the Possum why he’d stopped playing piano. “Because of a medical condition,” he said.

“What kind of medical condition?” asked my Dad.

“I developed tinnitus,” he said. “Ringing in the ears. For me, it was one single note. A slightly-out-of-tune A.”

“The note was in your mind?” I said.

“Twenty-four-seven.”

“Wow,” I said. “Even as you slept?”

“It didn’t stop for a minute, not for nine years,” he said. “Then I woke up one morning and realized I couldn’t hear the note anymore. Now I can’t hear that note, A, at all.”

“What do you mean?” my Dad said.

“My ears skip the note. I just can’t hear it.”

“And that’s why you don’t play music anymore?” I said.

“How could I?” he said.

He meant it as a rhetorical question. In my mind, though, I thought: Aren’t there are a lot of other notes? Bs and Gs and Xs and Zs?

“There are,” said the Possum, “but you can’t play a melody if you’re missing notes in the phrase.”

“Wait a second,” my Dad said. Had he just heard ’s thought?

“Of course I heard it,” said the Possum. Then he looked over at me. “Oh, fuck ,” I said to Ralph. I pulled the truck over, and the Possum looked back at the piano, leaning to one side of the bed.

“I think I know what’s happening,” I told the Possum.

“Me, too,” I told Ralph and .

“What?” said .

“We must have screwed up the point of view when we disconnected the piano from the land,” I said.

“Fuck me ,” you said. You knew we shouldn’t have agreed to help Ralph. Something awful always comes of it. “So what’s this?” he said.

“This is all points of view,” you all said.

It was; we could feel the sudden pressure of new narrators — of your point of view, and your point of view, and the passing tree’s point of view, and every morsel of roadside sand ’s point of view. But there wasn’t anything we, I, or they could do except get home, plant the piano, and see if rerooting it would help. And that’s what they — we; he, he, and he — did. We/they made it back to Appleseed and I/the Possum drove the truck out into the worryfields and instructed my/his truck to drop the piano into the soil.

I dropped the piano where they told me to.

So this is my new home, I thought.

By then it was dark, so I went back to my shed, and we went into the house. We ate quickly and then lay down in our beds. The force from all those points of view was tremendous for us. The only way we could sleep was to believe that this would change — that the story, the switching POVs, the pressure, would soon be over. Make it stop, we prayed. We sent out those prayers, but they went unanswered.

I thought my Mom would grow to love Sentence, but she didn’t. I found it cool that “I am.” was always changing — to “I am older,” and then “I am seeing,” then “I am hearing,” and “I am hearing new things,” but my Mom didn’t appreciate it. If the sentence pooped or peed in the house (which happened hardly ever—“I am.” was basically housebroken), she lost her shit . “ Look at this!” she’d shout at me, pointing at the droppings of language. “Whose letter turds are these?” As if there was any question.

When Sentence tried to befriend my Mom, that only made her angrier. I remember seeing “I am aware that time is passing” trying to curl up next to my Mom while she was reading on the gold couch one day. My Mom pushed the sentence off. “ No! ” she told him, and Sentence whimpered and recoiled.

“You don’t have to be mean to him,” I said.

My Mom went back to reading.

A few weeks later, I came home from school and I couldn’t find Sentence — I walked all over the house looking for him. Then I went out to the gym, where my Mom was levitating. “Have you seen ‘I am.’?” I asked her.

“Nope,” she said.

I went outside and then back into the house. Suddenly I heard a very quiet repetitive sound: scuff scuff scuff . Something was scratching. I followed the sound to the pantry door. When I opened it I saw “I am.” standing there in the dark, his “I” ’s wide and panicked.

My Mom came in from the garage a few minutes later. “Sentence was locked in the pantry,” I told her. “In the dark!”

“Really?” she said.

“Did you do this?” I asked.

“Oh, honey — of course not,” she said.

“He was probably scratching for hours!”

“I honestly had no idea he was in there. Or else I would have let him out!”

“I think you put him in there on purpose because you hate him so much,” I said.

“I don’t hate anyone, ,” she said. “Just because I recognize the risks of —”

“That’s such bullcrap!” I said.

“Excuse me?” she said.