The Apple of Mars

My brother has never been a real open fellow. It was easier pulling teeth out of a donkey’s mouth than getting him to say more than three words about anything! But I always felt close to Mac, not because of anything we said to each other but because that we never had to say a word. We had a special bond as brother and sister that I cherished more than anything. I’d never admit this to anyone else in the family, but Mac was always my closest and most loved family.

There was a change though, after he came back from a five-year-long trip to the south. He told us he just wanted to see how the apples in Appleoosa were growing and if there was some sort of special breeding that made it easier to grow in the dry desert. When we asked him about it, he would just tell us that it wasn’t important, that it didn’t work out, that he had some trial runs for our apple orchard to make them grow better. None of us believed him for a minute, but Bloom and Granny let him be. Granny told me I should to. That I should let him tell us in his own time what was bothering him. I really tried to get over it and just go back to how we were before, but so much had changed. He talked more, about stuff I never heard about before. He built a range out in the practically-empty north fields where he would go shooting Grandpa’s old rifle for hours. And there was a look he had, when he thought he was alone or was thinking about something, a faraway look like he was somewhere else. Or wishing he were. It hurt to see that he wanted to be somewhere away from us. Maybe that’s why I kept pestering him about where he really was for five years. Looking back, I know I behaved mighty terribly towards him, but he was patient and always had a little, caring smile that was so infuriating I threatened to beat it off his face more than once. I loved- love- my brother more than anything. I just wanted to be a part of his life. I wanted him to trust me.

When we found him that fateful morning, lying against a stack of hay bales out in the field, I had no idea was going on. I didn’t want to believe what I saw, what the doctor told us. Heart failure, he said. His heart just up and gave out in the middle of the night. At least, he said, it was quick. No pain. I don’t really remember what happened for a week after that. I know I cried. I know we had a funeral too. I remember Granny and some cousin talking about how weird and specific Mac was in his funeral wishes. Open casket, well-ventilated mausoleum, door that opens from the inside. I was just in a daze. Then Granny sat me down and put a massive, barely-maintained notebook in my hands saying Mac wanted me to have it and that I couldn’t read it until he had been gone for a long while. She said he put it specifically in his will that I was the only one allowed to have his journal. Honestly, I almost threw the thing in a fire and cursed him for leaving, going away for five years then dying on us after coming back. But he left it for me alone, and I knew I had to read it. So I waited.

I don’t know if I believe everything he wrote. How could I? All the strange creatures and places. I read and reread the whole thing, and I keep wanting to just imagine it’s all some crazy lie or some story he wrote just to mess with me, but something about the way he tells it makes me believe. I’m not telling you this story because I want you to trust this all as fact. You can make your own decisions. I just want you to know to story of my brother, Malcolm Apple of Mars.

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Jack, if you are reading this, then you have found my body and think I’m dead. It’s not the first time I’ve died nor will it be the last. I’ve changed a lot in the past six years, from when I left the first time to when I am writing this journal now. I don’t know when I will leave you again, whether it’s been a month or a decade since I wrote this manuscript, but I know that I’m not the Mac you grew up with, that I’m too different a person. To you, it seems so sudden that I became what I am now, but to me, it felt like a lifetime. In a way, it was. I want you to know that I forgive you for the terrible things you said to me when you were angry. I know you felt betrayed because I wouldn’t tell you what happened to me. It’s because of how close we are that you did that, and for that I can’t fault you. You’re reading this with your jaw dropped too, I know, because you can’t hardly believe I could write all this and sound so different from the quiet Big Mac you knew.  My time away made me a different man than I was, and I think now that I’m gone, I can finally tell you the truth about where I was for those five years I left you and Granny and Bloom. You know that I’m not a liar, regardless of what I kept from you. You used to believe every word I said like they came from the mouth of the Princess herself. I’m asking you to put that same trust in me again because you, of all people, are the one person I most wanted to tell.

This journal is filled with those travels across the distant world we know as Mars that hangs in the sky as a bright spot part time through the year. I know how hard it must be to believe all this, of the people and creatures of that distant red world, as I had difficulty trusting it despite experience. If you choose to think of this as a book of fairy tales and fiction, I wouldn't blame you. However, know that while I may once again be on that planet the natives of which know as Barsoom, I am still thinking about you and the others everyday and how I wish I could show you the wondrous dead cities and dry sea bottoms of the dying planet, or introduce you to the honorable Red Men I have met upon it and the powerful Green warriors I've seen ride their terrible mounts across the dusty, moss-covered plains that were once oceans. It is my greatest desire to show you of this other place I now call home. Maybe someday I could. For now though, I will have to suffice with this journal and all my notes that come with it of how I came to know Barsoom.