Oh, Appleseed himself was a sorry sight. He was crying as though he was mortally wounded, but when Hamurabi lifted him onto his shoulders so the crowd could get a gander, he dried his eyes with the cuffs of his sweater and began grinning. Mr. R. C. Judkins yelled, “Gyp! Lousy gyp!” but was drowned out by a deafening round of applause.
Middy grabbed my arm. “My teeth,” she squealed. “Now I’m gonna get my teeth.”
“Teeth?” said I, kind of dazed.
“The false kind,” says she. “That’s what we’re gonna get us with the money—a lovely set of white false teeth.”
But at that moment my sole interest was in how Appleseed had known. “Hey, tell me,” I said desperately, “tell me, how in God’s name did he know there was just exactly seventy-seven dollars and thirty-five cents?”
Middy gave me this look. “Why, I thought he told you,” she said, real serious. “He counted.”
“Yes, but how—how?”
“Gee, don’t you even know how to count?”
“But is that all he did?”
“Well,” she said, following a thoughtful pause, “he did do a little praying, too.” She started to dart off, then turned back and called, “Besides, he was born with a caul on his head.”
And that’s the nearest anybody ever came to solving the mystery. Thereafter, if you were to ask Appleseed “How come?” he would smile strangely and change the subject. Many years later he and his family moved to somewhere in Florida and were never heard from again.
But in our town his legend flourishes still; and, till his death a year ago last April, Mr. Marshall was invited each Christmas Day to tell the story of Appleseed to the Baptist Bible class. Hamurabi once typed up an account and mailed it around to various magazines. It was never printed. One editor wrote back and said that “If the little girl really turned out to be a movie star, then there might be something to your story.” But that’s not what happened, so why should you lie?
The End
