The Pear Tree and the Boy vs. The Man Bull

“Never touch it!” Dan replayed each warning his mother and father had given him as he looked out the window. A warning about the punishment from above that would befall any boy or girl who disobeyed their parents by going near the pear tree. By touching it. But Dan was curious. And starving. A curious, starving child.

“Dan!” he heard from behind him: it was his sister, Delilah. Delilah who always appeared like a messenger of death. Daddy’s good girl. Dan would let her keep that spotlight; he didn’t want it for himself, anyway. Dan wanted much more than to be some golden child. Much more than his miniscule existence inside the cottage they called home; than being forsaken over his older sister’s shadow; than being beaten for the smallest acts of curiosity.

Dan would have to wait. Delilah watched him like a hawk daily and nightly, so he retreated and walked to the dinner table like every night of every day. They sat and ate at the dinner table: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They would never say much past “please” and “thank you” and the standard “How was your day?” to the family patriarch. That night was no different as they passed the short ribs, the sourdough, the roasted chicken, and the butter. There were also a few slices of cheddar. It was the same meal as every Friday and Sunday except this time they switched out the butter for cream cheese. Dan preferred butter but in reality he would have preferred jelly or strawberry jam or his favorite, raspberry preserves. But Dan hadn’t gotten any of those in years, since his fifth birthday.

The berry fields were the first to go, then the apricot trees, followed by the peach trees. All hope disappeared when the cane trees dropped their last leaves. Then followed every other field and tree that produced any sort of sweet nectar. That family, just like every other family in Aroma Valley, never understood why it happened. No one gave nor had any explanation.

Of course, with the extinction of the berry fields and apricot trees and all the sweet-producing nature went the gummies and the chocolates and jellies and even the raisin bread. All the sweet stuff to put smiles on people’s faces. On little boys and little girls faces. Naturally, faces transitioned to a sourness that matched that of the cheeses and cured meats every family fed off seven days and seven nights a week.

Then one day shortly after Dan’s twelfth birthday, the tree spurted its first branches. No one paid it any special attention at first; it was just a small trunk with a few branches; not even when it grew to one foot, then two, did anyone pay it any special notice. Dan’s father almost stomped it to its premature death in his daily brutishness. But then, one day while returning from that oafish butcher with his family’s daily dinner supplies, Dan noticed it: a pear. It was tiny, almost as tiny as Dan compared to everyone else in Aroma Valley. He touched it, brown and the skin rough to the touch.

“Dan!” he heard from behind. The touch ended too soon as Dan’s father appeared only a minute after Dan first set his fingers on that pear. The man quickly grabbed his child from both his arms and flung him like a rag doll, dragging all ninety-five pounds of the boy back into their cottage home.

Dan spent months after months looking at the pear tree, and debating when he’d make his move, if ever. He was always being watched by Delilah, and his mother, but specifically by his father; that man bull wouldn’t let his eyes off Dan every moment he was home. Das was determined, though. So he waited for one night when everyone was asleep. He had to make sure, so he tucked himself into bed but stayed up. He waited until every door in that cottage slammed shut, and for the man bull to slam twice. He got up from his bed and started to tiptoe very, very slowly. Tiptoed as his toes felt the coldness of that wooden floor. Dan hated that feeling; it made him feel uncomfortable, and fearful. Coldness caused fear inside Dan for some unknown reason. The fear increased as he opened the door and the window struck his cheeks, making him squint a little. This wasn’t going to stop Dan, as he continued tiptoeing; the man bull's vigilante ear could extend for miles as he had proven throughout the course of Dan’s young life.

Dan got closer, the wind somewhat easing down and easing him into the outside world Dan felt was his only solace in his otherwise mundane life. It was there; tall, full of life, welcoming, unlike anything Dan had ever seen. Dan walked closer, looking at all its children: pears green, yellow, brown, and some with tints of red in their yellow bodies. Dan walked closer and extended his arm, his stubby fingers sweating profusely, the sweat the only warmth his tiny body had to combat the cold wind. He finally made contact with a brownish one; something about its ugliness drew in Dan: rough, swollen, misshapen, much like Dan every time the man bull beat him for accidentally breaking a cup from the kitchen, or the few times he accidentally wet his bed after drinking too much milk with his stale sourdough bread; nothing was ever wasted in Dan’s home except for childhood innocence. Dan grabbed that brownish outsider and held it in his hands, holding it and caressing it like an infant needing nurturing.

Dan was ready to do what he had only dreamed of: devour it. End its existence. Dan took his first bite, almost as if some unknown, ungodly force had taken over his hands and started to bring the fruit up to his mouth; the juice, its succulence, entered the boy’s mouth and mixed with his saliva; even then, the taste was unearthly, a first taste at Nirvana. Dan enjoyed that first bite, every juicy chunk in his mouth, traveling from his teeth to molars to tongue. Then he took his next bite. Then his third and repeated the cycle of enjoyment before finally being forced to swallow; at his prepubescent age, his mouth’s width was only so vast.

Then Dan heard it; his gruff breathing. Dan stood frozen, he couldn’t move just like every time he knew he had been caught by the man bull. Dan wanted to utter “Dad…” Dan wanted to say anything to serve as a plea. But the man bull didn’t listen to pleas. The human bull started moving, and yet Dan stood still: frozen. Dan knew what was coming: the end. She suddenly appeared; the woman who brought Dan into the world but never did anything to ensure his safe existence in it. She stood there speechless, like always.

The man bull grabbed Dan by the collar of his blue pajama shirt. “I told you to never touch that tree!” he yelled at Dan, who just looked directly into his purple eyes. The same purple they reflected from day through night ever since Dan could form memories. The man bull grabbed Dan’s wrist next, wrangling it as it still clung onto the pear’s core. Dan refused to let go; it was the final remainder of the most beautiful taste at life the boy had ever lived. The man bull continued his punishment, but Dan fought back for the first time ever: it was an unfair battle Dan was going to fight until the bitter end. The man bull began to squeeze every little finger protecting the core, little fingers that were also part of him. Dan continued to fight back until he felt a slight cracking; it was painful, but it wasn’t the ugliest pain the boy had felt. He was still waiting for that as he started to slowly budge; the core starting to come apart in his little fingers, juice running down to the boy’s little finger tips, reminding the boy of the beautiful, sweet taste that was so short-lived but so worth the ugly aftertaste.

Dan couldn’t fight anymore as the core slipped right through his fingers but never hit the floor; the man bull proceeded to crush it after stopping gravity's flow. Dan turned to look at his mother, who simply looked in horror but did nothing else. The man bull wasn’t done and they all knew it; he had to show his boy a lesson. Before his next blink, Dan found himself on the floor, his head and left hand throbbing and his index finger burning. The man bull made his way and grabbed Dan by his leg, starting to drag him back to that cottage that they called home. But Dan wasn’t going to break entirely that easily; he clung onto the grass, digging his fingers into the soil. This defense lasted for about six seconds before the man bull’s brutality won the first battle: Dan was once again in the complete grasp of the man bull.

It was going to be the ugliest beating yet. Dan knew this, the woman who had given him life but never protected it knew this, and Delilah knew this as she stood by the doorway watching. Her look of regret let Dan know who had executed Judas’s kiss on him. First it was a kick to his stomach, the man bull’s slippers somewhat minimized the pain, but only a little bit. Dan felt the oxygen slowly exiting his body. He looked up at the man bull, whose purple eyes were full of rage, not an unfamiliar site. Dan, this boy of only twelve, looked straight into the eyes of the man who had given him life and, for the first time since his fifth birthday, smiled at him. The man’s purple rage increased as he lifted Dan from the collar of his blue pajama shirt, the rage combating the sweet joy in the boy’s eyes. The man bull threw the boy onto the couch and leaned over him, his sour breath entering the boy’s nostrils. Nevertheless, the sweet memory of that succulent pear was stronger. Dan remembered every moment of that sweet encounter and his smile grew. Like the strike of a fly swatter, Dan felt the man bull’s hands touch his face; heat immediately radiating through his left cheek, then his right, and it quickly became a back and forth sensation as the man bull continued striking, but the smiling continued. The smiling continued as Dan remembered every bite of the sweet escape and knew it was well worth the pain that followed. The man bull continued for almost an entire minute until finally stopping. Briefly. Dan kept smiling and he looked up at the man bull, whose eyes were now a purple inferno. The man bull’s hands once again flung across the boy’s face, but the pain was nothing more than a mosquito bite in comparison to the boy’s sweet memories. Memories courtesy of the pear’s patriarch, a producer of sweets escapes. The pear tree.

Dan smiled faintly as his blood continued running. The man bull looked down at him, more bubbling saliva matching the flow of the boy’s blood. His chest was heaving up and down, almost as if he had a beating heart. Dan simply closed his eyes, indifferent to the next blow. Or the one that followed. And the one after that. No proceeding blows could erase the sweetness Dan had experienced. Dan had a weapon against the man bull. Dan could finally smile through the pain.