My friend Shadow believes that the boy Franklin is calling for his dog, Apple, late at night. I believe this too. The boy Franklin, of course, was last seen in Bramble in 1910, while being dragged away from his family’s farm by coyotes. It’s present day right now.
My friend Shadow and I slept in a tent in the warm yellow grass in his backyard. I heard the child’s voice say, Hey Apple! Come here, girl, over and over when it was very dark and very late. Apple heard it too, also from the tent, which was sealed with a zipper. The women were asleep inside, rioja with dinner and after.
The last topic of conversation, before my friend Shadow and I retired to the tent, was a new street drug in Bramble. We had agreed that the introduction of a new street drug to our native street drugs could spell trouble. Still, there was a nifty bit of marketing at work. When it first appeared in our shadow economy, the drug was called Twenty-one. A few weeks later, there was also Twenty, then Nineteen. The countdown continued, with the warning that you must start from the beginning. It wasn’t clear yet what would happen after One.
Surely, the obvious morbid metaphor wasn’t at work. Whatever was going on here, it wasn’t a teaching tool, or an elaborate sermon. These clever pushers had gamified drug use. We four alternately recoiled and marveled at the concept. Were we interested in trying Twenty-one? I think someone said, why not? but the memory goes wine-dark. I was in an alternate reality that long night, but it was a real place.
Breakfast was sad cereal. The milk was skim and bitter. We had had grander plans. My friend Shadow and I hadn’t recorded the boy Franklin’s voice because we are not liars, and we weren’t interested in monetizing our experience of the otherworldly.
~
Sean Ennis is the author of Hope and Wild Panic (Malarkey Books) and Cunning, Baffling, Powerful (Thirty West). He lives in Mississippi.