II: A GRAFTING
Two pages over, the Memory of Johnny Appleseed drove his shovel into the fibers. When the hole he’d dug was deep enough, he pulled a single seed from the Reader’s apple and dropped it into the soil.
As the Memory was covering up the seed, Ralph drifted over to check on him. When he saw what the Memory was doing, he told him to wait right there — that he’d be right back. Ralph ran out to his truck for an emotional wrench and a bucket and carried them to the happiness hydrant on the corner of Apple Hill and Converse. When he turned the bolt on the hydrant, happiness flooded the street. Ralph filled the bucket and left the faucet running; then he carried the bucket of happiness out to the Memory of Johnny Appleseed. The Memory took it from him and carefully poured the happiness on the apple seed.
Within paragraphs, the first saplings of happiness-fueled stories began to peek through the pages. The stories were restorative: soon, the holes in the pages and people started closing. In the center of town, the windows grew back at Small Pear and the Bagel Beagle opened for business. Someone turned on the lights at the Big Why, and a truck arrived with a new batch of questions. Cordial Carl did some deep breathing and fired up his grill.
Heartened by the sounds of the auction, people started pulling off of the highway and into Appleseed; soon they were arriving in droves. And all of them needed food and housing. With two new apple orchards up and running, Ralph reopened Belmont and Woodside and shifted to part-time at Muir Drop; then he quit altogether.
III. JUPITER
In the new stories, 
wasn’t so alone. He was still bald and overweight, but he had a good strong heart, a zell imagination, a tough soul. His house was still alive and everyone inside it safe and sound. He didn’t always see I to I with his mother, a nurse at Appleseed Hospital, but they got along OK — sometimes they’d go to Appleseed Library together and then talk about what they were reading. He was closer with his father, Ralph, who he worked with at the apartment buildings. had a pet sentence, a few good friends, and even a girlfriend or two. In high school he worked at a community theater and started writing stories in his spare time. He stopped eating so many chips, and learned when to stay quiet and when to speak. When he was eighteen, he graduated from Appleseed High and went on to college.
At the end of the story, the Reader finished reading. Not great, you decided, but not bad, either.
MOTHER (AMERICAN)
The Reader straightened up and wiped her brow.
“Well?” Diane asked her.
The Reader looked down at the silent page and shook her head. “I don’t know. I thought — if we put these together — he’d come back, but—”
They all stared at the lump.
“Maybe he was dead too long,” the Memory of Johnny Appleseed said.
“My poor boy,” said Ralph.
“Ormaybewejusthaventfoundtherightwordsyet,” said the Auctioneer.
Diane leaned down to the page. She made a few more sentences — the simplest, truest ones she could:
“You are good.”
“You are loved.”
“I have always loved you. I always will.” She planted them and pushed page over them.
Suddenly, I was pulled through the words without warning: back through letters and pages, back to the body of —I found my fat stomach, my still feet, my cold brain, my dead thoughts, my closed eyes.
I heard my family’s words. “My poor boy.” and “You were wonderful the way you were.” And, “I have always loved you. I always will.”
The words were breath in my lungs; I heard the story directly above me. I blinked. Where was the surface — the light and the air? Was I still ? Was I at all?
MCINTOSH
Standing over the pagegrave, ’s parents hear a sound — a flicker in the margin woods. They turn to see words, sprinting through the trees, across the worryfields, at breakneck speed: “I am sorry!” becomes “I am running and running!” and then “I am saving you!”
On the page above you, you hear the language, “I am.” hooing: “I am missed you!” “I am here now!”
You blink and cough page out of your mouth. You see a flash of light above and you claw for the surface.
“I am wanting you to breathe and live!” says the sentence. “I am you will live!”
Then Sentence breaks through the page, grabs hold of you with the teeth of his “I,” and pulls you up out of the page. “I am you will!” he says. “I am you will!”
The light fills your eyes. The sentence licks the page off your face. You squint in the sun. When you’re able to focus, you see them alclass="underline" the Auctioneer speed-praying, the tears falling into your father’s glasses, the weary smile on your mother’s face. You are. You are home.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHRISTOPHER BOUCHER teaches writing and literature at Boston College, and is the managing editor of Post Road magazine. His debut novel, How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive (Melville House), was widely praised. Golden Delicious is his second novel. He lives with his wife and two children in Newton, Massachusetts.