A Taste of Justice

John Wiswell serves up a delectable story this week for the Sunday Morning Transport . ~ Julian and Fran, October 20, 2024

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A Taste of Justice

by John Wiswell

Andrei’s paps and mams told him not to put things in his mouth, so he made sure to do it when they weren’t looking. Pinches of earth, when times were right. When Paps fixed the axel on their apple cart, Andrei ate a pinch of earth from underneath it. He didn’t spit up again until the heavy picking season, when the cart was straining and threatening to split in half. He spat, and the rickety thing went abruptly firm and lasted the whole season without further maintenance.

Near the end of picking season, his mams complained terribly of the heat in their hut. Andrei snuck off along the thoroughfare, to the banks of the river. Sticking his head in left his hair feeling frozen from the coolness. He ate a little of the silt from the river and, the next morning, spat it outside their hut. His mams had never looked so comfortable as that afternoon. She scarcely lifted her fan, although at one point she scrutinized Andrei and asked if he had something in his mouth.

At the picking festival, Andrei and Mams and Paps decorated a long gourd to look like a royal judge, and he danced standing on their feet and holding their hands, and they sang tawdry songs he didn’t understand. He made sure to stick some dirt in his mouth that night.

A few weeks later a spell of heat raked their orchard, turning proud fruits into sagging husks. Mams and Paps had a banger of a screaming match over who should have done what. Mams said Paps should have hired extra hands earlier, and Paps kept wailing about not having the money for it. Andrei was too little to understand how the economy worked, but he knew all the dead apples weren’t either of their faults. So he spat, quietly as he could, out the memory of a better night.

Before long, all three of them were singing tawdry songs, and they went on long after the moon was halfway across the sky. Mams and Paps kept finding new ways to apologize to each other, mostly in the forms of kissing different bits of each other. None of that kissing appealed to Andrei, but he would settle for it since his family would now be eternally content.

The next morning their eternal contentedness was disturbed by Judge Buș. He looked impossibly tall, face shadowed under the broad white brim of his hat. He demanded their taxes, in fruit or in currency, or they would be called to his court. Paps tried to explain that their orchard was struggling and invited the judge to come inside for a drink.

Judge Buș said, “I’ll come inside when I take this place. Have a cart filled with your dues to the court or be ready to join your neighbors in a cell. You’ve got until a week from today.”

Some farms to the north were having a better time of things. Andrei snuck up to one that fostered red plums. Each plum strained with its own juice, succulent to the eye. They made Andrei’s mouth water, like his teeth were dissolving.

He knew what to do. He crouched and took a mouthful of the earth.

“You don’t have to do that.”

It was a girl’s voice. She was a head taller than he was, with knees covered in bruises and scabs from playing too much. She carried a wooden saber, and as soon as Andrei looked at it, she tossed it away.

She plucked the nearest plum off the nearest branch and held it out to him. “This tastes better than dirt.”

Andrei didn’t know how to answer. He asked, “Do you need the dirt back?”

“No,” she said. “I’m Zandra. This is my fruit. You’ll like eating it better.”

“I didn’t mean to steal the ground from you.”

“Here, see?” Zandra put the plum to her mouth and bit right into it. Cloudy purple juice ran down the right corner of her mouth and made a mess of her chin. Then she hefted the plum to him.

He contemplated.

He said, “Goodbye forever!”

And Andrei ran away to his orchard, hopeful that she couldn’t follow him or recognize which farm he was from. He tried not to think about how the plum might taste. He focused on his family’s sagging apple trees. He visited the tallest one, where the apples were wilted and miserable. He spat upon its roots.

The next day, Paps made an amazing discovery. A swathe of the orchard hadn’t been battered as badly by the heat as they’d thought. Mams and Paps and Andrei all went out and brought home three cartloads of brilliant green apples so tart that Mams couldn’t keep her eyes open when she bit into one.