Why shouldn't I be where I want to be? Why... | zhaozhanjingi's Blog

Why shouldn't I be where I want to be? Why shouldn't I be with who I want to be? Isn't that what this country's all about? I want to be where I want to be and I don't want to be where I don't want to beThat's what being an American is--isn't it? I'm with you, I'm with the baby, I'm at the factory during the day, the rest of the time I'm out here, and that's everywhere in this world I ever want to beWe own a piece of America, DawnI couldn't be happier if I triedI did it, darling, I did it--I did what I set out to do!"
For a while, the Swede stopped showing up at the touch-football games just to avoid having to deflect Bucky Robinson on the subject of his templeWith Robinson he did not feel like his father--he felt like Orcutt___
No, noYou know whom he really felt like? Not during the hour or two a week he happened to be on the receiving end of a Bucky Robinson pass, but whom he felt like all the rest of the time? He couldn't tell anybody, of course: he was twenty-six and a new father and people would have laughed at the childishness of itHe laughed at it himselfIt was one of those kid things you keep in your mind no matter how old you get, but whom he felt like out in Old Rimrock was Johnny AppleseedWho cares about Bill Orcutt? Woodrow Wilson knew Orcutt's grandfather? Thomas Jefferson knew his grandfather's uncle? Good for Bill OrcuttJohnny Apple-seed, that's the fendi spy bag replica man for meWasn't a Jew, wasn't an Irish Catholic, wasn't a Protestant Christian--nope, Johnny Appleseed was just a happy AmericanNo brains probably, but didn't need 'em--a great walker was all Johnny Appleseed needed to beHad a big stride and a bag of seeds and a huge, spontaneous affection for the landscape, and everywhere he went he scattered the seedsWhat a story that wasGoing everywhere, walking everywhereThe Swede had loved that story all his lifeWho wrote it? Nobody, as far as he could rememberThey'd just studied it in grade schoolJohnny Appleseed, out there everywhere planting apple treesThough maybe it was his hat--did he keep the seeds in his hat? Didn't matter"Who told him to do it?" Merry asked him when she got old enough for bedtime stories--though still baby enough, should he try to tell any other story, like the one about the train that used to carry only peaches, to cry, "Johnny! I want Johnny!"
"Who told him? Nobody told him, sweetheartYou don't have to tell Johnny Appleseed to plant treesHe just takes it on himself
"Who is his wife?"
"DawnThat's who his wife is
"Does he have a child?"
"Sure he has a childAnd you know what her name is?"
"What?"
"Merry Appleseed!"
"Does she plant apple seeds in a hat?"
"Sure she doesShe doesn't plant them in the hat, honey, she stores them in the hat--and then she throws themFar as she can, she casts them replica omega seamaster planet ocean outAnd everywhere she throws the seed, wherever it lands on the ground, do you know what happens?"
"What?"
"An apple tree grows up, right there And every time he walked into Old Rimrock village he could not restrain himself--first thing on the weekend he pulled on his boots and walked the five hilly miles into the village and the five hilly miles back, early in the morning walked all that way just to get the Saturday paper, and he could not help himself--he thought, "Johnny Appleseed!" The pleasure of itThe pure, buoyant unrestrained pleasure of stridingHe didn't care if he played ball ever again--he just wanted to step out and strideIt seemed somehow that the ballplaying had cleared the way to allow him to do this, to stride in an hour down to the village, pick up the Lackawanna edition of the Newark News at the general store with the single Sunoco pump out front and the produce out on the steps in boxes and burlap bagsIt was the only store down there in the fifties and hadn't changed since the Hamlin son, Russ, took it over from his father after World War I--they sold washboards and tubs, there was a sign up outside for Frostie, a soft drink, another nailed to the clapboards for Fleischmann's Yeast, another for Pittsburgh Paint Products, even one out front that said "Syracuse Plows," hanging there from when the store sold farm equipment tooRuss Hamlin could miu miu coffer remember from earliest boyhood a wheelwright shop perched across the way, could still recall watching wagon wheels rolled down a ramp to be cooled in the stream; remembered, too, when there was a distillery out back, one of many in the region that had made the famous local applejack and had shut down only with the passage of the Volstead ActClear at the back of the store there was one window that was the Upost office--one window was it, and thirty or so of those boxes with the combination locksHamlin's general store, with the post office inside, and outside the bulletin board and the flagpole and the gas pump--that's what had served the old farming community as its meeting place since the days of Warren Gamaliel Harding, when Russ became proprietorDiagonally across the street, alongside where there'd been the wheelwright shop, was the six-room school-house that would be the Levovs' daughter's first schoolKids sat on the steps of the storeYour girl would meet you thereA meeting place, a greeting placeThe familiar old Newark News he picked up had a special section out here, the second section, called "Along the Lackawanna Even that pleased him, and not just reading through it at home for the local Morris news but merely carrying it home in his handThe word "Lackawanna" was pleasing to him in and of itselfFrom the front counter he'd pick up the paper with "Levov" scrawled at dior logo the top in Mary Hamlin's hand, charge a quart of milk if they needed it, a loaf of bread, a dozen fresh-laid eggs from Paul Hamlin's farm up the road, say "See ya, Russell" to the owner, and then he'd turn and stride all the way back, past the white pasture fences he loved, the rolling hay fields he loved, the corn fields, the turnip fields, the barns, the horses, the cows, the ponds, the streams, the springs, the falls, the watercress, the scouring rushes, the meadows, the acres and acres of woods he loved with all of a new country dweller's puppy love for nature, until he reached the century-old maple trees he loved and the substantial old stone house he loved--pretending, as he went along, to throw the apple seed everywhere
Once, from an upstairs window, Dawn saw him approaching the house from the foot of their hill while he was doing just that, flinging out one arm, flinging it out not as though he were throwing a ball or swinging a bat but as though he were pulling hand-fuls of seed from the grocery bag and throwing them with all his strength across the face of the historic land that was now no less his than it was William Orcutt's"What are you practicing out there?" she said, laughing at him when he burst into the bedroom looking, from all that exercise, handsome as hell, big, carnal, ruddy as Johnny Appleseed himself, someone to whom something marvelous was bolsas louis happeni