Pineapple on Canvas: The Odd Adventures of a Toy in the City

The one about Yell-y McYellerton and the Subway Punch.

     Ever since the Big Adventure That Put The Bully in his Place, Papple had taken to following Ella around on the subway when she went to work—he liked making sure she was safe but he also enjoyed the freedom of exploring the city while he waited for her to get off work. Sadly, he never bumped into Henry again, but he felt certain this was because Henry's wish had come true and he and his Boy had been transferred to California.

     Oftentimes, Papple would take the other kids with him, and they saw the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State building and other iconic New York destinations together. S.K. adored the Met museum, Kitty was in love with Tiffany’s, Sweet Lou snuck into Shea stadium with the same reverence as Sir’Duke did Madison Square Garden. Zoe couldn’t get enough of the Circle Line, and Maple was always planning picnics in Central Park. The new freedom they had thanks to Henry was eye opening!

     Maple was the hardest to bring along due to his size, and at first he had taken to disguising himself in young children’s clothing each time they went out. However, this stopped when he inadvertently caused mass panic in Battery Park, when disguised in Gap clothes and a hoodie, he was mistaken for a lost child. In the end, Sweet Lou made stilts for him so that Maple could disguise himself as a rather short adult and avoid any further issues.

     By and large, while the other kids enjoyed the city, they didn’t quite love the hustle and bustle of it as much as Papple. Papple didn’t have a favorite place in the city; his favorite place was always the places he hadn’t been yet. The other kids were hesitant to go out without Papple, who was now comfortable venturing on his own.

     The other kids didn’t mind staying at home as they were often very busy tending to Ella’s laundry, food ordering and other such jobs. Sir’Duke had even been cheeky enough to change the lyrics of an iconic Neil Young song, from “a man needs a maid” to “Ella needs a maid” whenever he and Sweet Lou got together to sing and play the ukulele.

     One morning on a random summer day, Papple got a very early morning text, which startled him awake and he actually rolled off the side of the bed. Scrambling back on the bed, Papple looked over and saw Maher was still fast asleep so he knew it must be very, very early.

     While it had taken a while, and a lot of whining, to convince Maher to let him spend every night on the bed, Papple had eventually worn Maher down and was now able to sleep on Ella’s side of the bed even on the nights that Ella was not over. He loved the scent of her hair from the pillow and would often be caught face down breathing in the scent, which Maher partially understood but also found a bit odd. Groggily, Papple looked at the text that had awoken him on the stuffed toys’ special e-group chat.

     “Checking to make sure you were up because it’s board meeting day for Ella so she is headed in early,” wrote Sweet Lou.

     Papple thought long and hard, the night was a bit of a blur as he had been hanging out with Maher at Marlon’s place the night before and had managed to sneak in a drop of wine. Cringing, he remembered telling Marlon, “Papple no like you new girlfriend. Not for Marlon!” before Maher had shoved him into a bowl of cut fruit. Papple thought she was exceedingly rude and vain, and she smelled like slightly sour milk to boot.

    Wiping the morning mist from his eyes, Papple replied. “Me forgot. Thank you for reminding Papple.” Papple looked over at the clock, and saw it was five forty five a.m. He grabbed a small hand towel from the clean laundry bin and rolled it up in a ball and placed it under the sheets.

     Normally he waited for Maher to leave before he went on his excursions, but this time he couldn’t wait. The hand towel served as a tired and tested decoy to make sure Maher wouldn’t try to look for him--Maher would just assume the lump on the other side of the bed was a passed out little pineapple.

     Papple snuck out of the apartment and down to the subway to begin his morning trailing of Ella. Calling the elevator was second nature to him now; he found it funny how panicked he had been that first time.

     With prompts from the other toys about Ella' schedule and timing, he would ride the E train subway to her Wall Street station and wait for her in the corner of the entrance, although he would always smell her before he saw her--the scent of rosemary-lavender would reach his nose and wake him up just like good cup of coffee.

       This particular day, after Papple made sure that Ella was safely dropped off at work, he decided to take the train all the way uptown to go and check out a few sights in Harlem, including the Apollo theatre and a grocery store, a type of store he always heard people talking about in the elevators but didn’t quite know what they were all about.

     After an adventurous morning, Papple learned that grocery stores were not the place for him, when, after checking out the fruit bins and trying to interact with the various fruits there, he had been mistakenly grabbed, sniffed, inspected and placed in a basket for purchase. Papple had luckily escaped the happy shopper before they reached the checkout counter.

      On the subway ride back, Papple saw her again. This time she was sitting beside a girl that looked, to Papple, to be younger than Ella but older than her. The older girl had on a pair of headphones and held onto the girl’s hand.

    The girl looked over and immediately picked Papple out from the crowd and gave him the shyest of smiles. He returned the gesture. She was the only person that seemed to even notice Papple.

     Without thinking, Papple jumped off his subway seat and walked across the crowded train to sit beside the girl.

     She whispered, “I remember you,” and reached out to hold his little hand in hers. There they sat in silence for the rest of the ride until the Incident happened.

          Papple knew the man was trouble, he could smell the rot the moment the man came on the car. The man, with a shaved head and tattoos up and down his arm, looked blurry-eyed into the crowd and the crowd avoided his gaze.

     “Look at this blanket wearing terrorist,” the bigot exclaimed, stumbling over to Papple’s new friend.

     The little girl shrunk at his words and her sister cowered. “Please sir, we don’t want any trouble,” said the older girl. “We are Americans and we love this country.”

      “The heck you do, just coming here and taking away all our jobs. Go back to your country and kill all the people there,” the grown man yelled, getting closer and closer to the young girls until he was inches away from their faces.

     Everyone on the subway stood still, as if time had slowed to a halt.

     “No one wants you here,” the man continued.

     Papple felt his little heart beat so hard that it almost ripped out the stitching on the “I heart Maui” tattoo he had on his stomach. The anger ran up and down his fluffy little body until the moment it reached the bottom of his tangerine feet and rocketed him like a missile up into the air.

     Pushing out a hand, which seemed like it had grown to an exceptionally large size, Papple sucker-punched the jerk in the throat, a move he had been practicing with Marlon, and drowned the rot smelling man's insults into a gurgle. The momentum of the punch pushed the man against the train doors, just as the train was pulling into City Hall station and both he and Papple tumbled out.

     Papple rolled across the ground and away from the crowd, which had gathered, with curled fists, to deliver justice to the horrid creature themselves. As Papple looked across the platform, he saw her anxiously trying to a look for something, and that something was him.

      Papple caught her eyes just as the door was closing and, even though it ached very much to do it, he did a little shuffle dance to show her he was okay. She rushed to the door to reach her hero, but the door closed well before she could get there. Papple was secretly glad she had not been able to come out. She was safe and that was all that matter to Papple at that very moment.