Bearing Fruit
—
James Callan
AT THE END OF EACH SUMMER, my daughter and I pick blackberries from the tangle that conspires to take over our lifestyle block. The bushes grow thickest along the stream, appearing like nature’s great torture device—a Jackson Pollock of fruit, thorn, and wine-colored tentacles. The imposing mass bridges the narrow channel, forming a latticed canopy from one bank to the other. If the water level isn’t too high, if it hasn’t rained too much too recently, you can walk or wade beneath the barbed pergola laden with fruit, picking berries from below. Beneath this secret archway, undisturbed by the birds that pillage from above, the biggest, ripest prizes await the young and intrepid.
The berries are delicious—among the best I’ve tasted—but I would not wade in a stream full of eels and overhanging snags for that which I can purchase at the markets, comfortable and dry. Even so, with brown water filling my pockets, mallards eyeing me sideways, weighing the risk of trusting me near their ducklings, I smile amid the writhing scales at my ankles, the clay between my toes, for I watch my daughter flutter with hummingbird grace in the shaded mire, grinning with black lips and clots of tiny seeds between the misaligned nubs of her newly acquired grown-up teeth.
Her face, her disheveled copper hair; this image alone is worth a thousand scratches. What little dappled light confuses our perfect gloom, the patchwork on her suntanned neck and scrawny elbow; this moment is life itself, justifying the turtle shit filling my ears.
“Eee!” She withdraws from the brambles, sucking her fingers. She giggles, only crying when she sees that she’s drawn blood. I plow the dark water with slow-motion strides, taking her small hand, which is stained with a shade of purple to rival black. “Owie…” She turns away, more afraid of the pesky bead of her own blood than the two-foot eel trashing at her waist. I splash the water to spook the critter, soothing my daughter’s tears by comparing her to Sleeping Beauty.
“But Dad,” she says, forgetting her fear and pain, “when Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger, she is cursed to sleep for one hundred years.”
I pat her head, leaving a stain of mud and berries. “Your own curse will be a bath before dinner.” I tickle her, and she laughs with perfect glee. Some of the berries she has collected spill from her bucket, but we have collected so many that neither of us care.
My daughter’s hand dips into the water, and the drop of blood is washed away, entirely forgotten. As we climb out of the stream and shake ourselves dry, I do not tell her what I saw in the grotto: the emerging head and open jaws of an eel, the sudden disappearance of a teeny, downy duckling. •
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James Callan lives and writes in Aotearoa (New Zealand). His fiction has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, Burial Magazine, Reckon Review, Mystery Tribune, and elsewhere. His debut collection, Those Who Remain Quiet, is available from Anxiety Press.
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The berries are delicious—among the best I’ve tasted—but I would not wade in a stream full of eels and overhanging snags for that which I can purchase at the markets, comfortable and dry. Even so, with brown water filling my pockets, mallards eyeing me sideways, weighing the risk of trusting me near their ducklings, I smile amid the writhing scales at my ankles, the clay between my toes, for I watch my daughter flutter with hummingbird grace in the shaded mire, grinning with black lips and clots of tiny seeds between the misaligned nubs of her newly acquired grown-up teeth.
Her face, her disheveled copper hair; this image alone is worth a thousand scratches. What little dappled light confuses our perfect gloom, the patchwork on her suntanned neck and scrawny elbow; this moment is life itself, justifying the turtle shit filling my ears.
“Eee!” She withdraws from the brambles, sucking her fingers. She giggles, only crying when she sees that she’s drawn blood. I plow the dark water with slow-motion strides, taking her small hand, which is stained with a shade of purple to rival black. “Owie…” She turns away, more afraid of the pesky bead of her own blood than the two-foot eel trashing at her waist. I splash the water to spook the critter, soothing my daughter’s tears by comparing her to Sleeping Beauty.
“But Dad,” she says, forgetting her fear and pain, “when Sleeping Beauty pricks her finger, she is cursed to sleep for one hundred years.”
I pat her head, leaving a stain of mud and berries. “Your own curse will be a bath before dinner.” I tickle her, and she laughs with perfect glee. Some of the berries she has collected spill from her bucket, but we have collected so many that neither of us care.
My daughter’s hand dips into the water, and the drop of blood is washed away, entirely forgotten. As we climb out of the stream and shake ourselves dry, I do not tell her what I saw in the grotto: the emerging head and open jaws of an eel, the sudden disappearance of a teeny, downy duckling. •
James Callan lives and writes in Aotearoa (New Zealand). His fiction has appeared in Apocalypse Confidential, Burial Magazine, Reckon Review, Mystery Tribune, and elsewhere. His debut collection, Those Who Remain Quiet, is available from Anxiety Press.
Website | Twitter