When Jeremiah became the king of Dakota, he was determined to live in a perfect land. Over his first forty years of life, he had observed his father, King Luther, accept fault, frailty and failure amongst his servants. He was determined to end such weakness upon his ascension. He would live a perfect life.
Despite his complaints during his father’s reign, Jeremiah had enjoyed an immense royal life as evidenced by his appetite for food and wine. He dined on the most succulent veal, noodles and creamed mushrooms followed by vanilla crème brulee. He ravenously devoured the land’s choicest lambchops with lemon garlic butter roasted potatoes and marinated white beans and chocolate souffle as dessert. From the palace vineyards, he drank heartily of the Petite Syrahs, Cabernets and Barolos. Surprisingly, he also had a special fondness for apples of all varieties.
One afternoon, following a busy morning of proclamations and declarations, along with a single beheading, King Jeremiah took his usual two-hour nap and awoke to a single Envy apple on a silver platter by his bedside. After rolling to his side and pushing his large girth up into a sitting position, he reached for the red, red apple and took a large, crunchy bite.
After he chewed and swallowed his first taste of the crisp fruit, he brought it to his mouth for a second and with his teeth about to sink in, he saw it. Instead of moist, white flesh, he recoiled from a quarter-sized rust colored spot. This was a bad apple!
King Jeremiah leaned to his side table and snatched his bell, ringing it up and down again and again until his valet de chambers burst through his bedroom door.
“Look, look at this diseased fruit,” the king bellowed. “I narrowly averted tragedy, no thanks to you! Hear this, Randolph: The harvest is obviously tainted and imperfect. I therefore order that all apples from this year’s harvest be marshaled and fed to the royal horses. So let it be written!”
“But your majesty, one bad apple doesn’t mean a bad harvest. Certainly there are many good apples from this harvest that would please your excellency,” Randolph said as he bowed low. At the bottom of his bow, he wiped a large bead of sweat from the end of his nose.
“Perfection. Perfection is what I seek and is what I shall have. If one is bad, all are bad in these royal eyes.”
Randolph bowed again and said, “Excellent your excellency. The apples will be gathered and fed to the royal horses.”
“But not to my horse, fool. The king’s horse deserves perfection as does your king.”
Satisfied that he had raised the kingdom one level closer to transcendence, the king rose and walked from his royal chambers to the castle’s throne room for the christening of his niece. A great banquet followed, and the meal included the kings’s personal favorite, veal.
The assemblage watched and waited as the king was served his meal, for it was customary for royalty to take the first taste of the food in Dakota. As Jeremiah sliced through the tender filet and stabbed with fork his first cut, he stopped halfway to his mouth and brought the meat instead to his right eye. After inspecting it, he slammed the fist holding the fork on the table, the veal flying away and landing in the lap of Lady Lorelei.
“Bring the royal cook out at once,” the king commanded.
The cook emerged from the kitchen and dropped to his knees ten feet before reaching the king, moving to the royal feet with his head bowed to the mosaic tile floor. “Your highness?” the cook squeaked.
“The veal, it’s full of gristle! What have you to say for serving this imperfect meal to me?”
The cook bowed even lower, his lips an inch from the floor. Without looking up, he said, “Forgive me, merciful king. Perhaps this one animal was diseased and unworthy of the honor you bestow upon it by serving it at this royal feast. Please, your highness, allow me to quickly prepare another.”
The king stood abruptly and shouted, “No, this is my command! All the calves in the kingdom will be slaughtered. All the bulls and cows as well. Nothing imperfect can be allowed. We will buy new cattle who will meet our perfect standard. Until then, every royal meal will include fried chicken as the main course. So let it be written!”
The record keeper of the kingdom recorded the words of the ruler and over the next week, all the cattle in the land were butchered.
Several weeks later, as Jeremiah reclined in the King’s library while his valet read to him, his sommelier brought a carafe of Petite Syrah, his favored wine. The sommelier poured the wine and the king raised his glass, silently toasting both his dead father and mother. He brought the goblet to his lips and took a healthy drink – which he promptly spit out at his valet and sommelier and on the Persian carpet, a three-hundred-year-old mainstay of the palace.
“What is this? Are you trying to poison me with this..this..poison?”
The sommelier backed up three steps quickly. “Excellency, this is your select grape from the mountain vines along the western edge of the royal grounds. It has produced the finest wine for decades. Perhaps this one bottle was contaminated – “
“If one is bad, all are bad!. This wine is tainted. All the wine must be tainted. Go! Go to the royal barrels and dispose of all of it. And all the vines must be uprooted and replanted. Go!”
The sommelier bowed deeply and ran from the room. Into the river, all the wine was poured. Up from their roots, all the vines were pulled.
Year after year, Jeremiah insisted on a perfect standard for the apples and veal in the kingdom, and so year after year, the harvests of apples and the flocks of cattle were destroyed and not eaten. There was no wine in the land either, since the new vines produced no grapes as they matured.
One bright May afternoon, as the king was strolling the royal gardens, he grasp his left arm, stumbled and lost his footing and lie on his back. Suddenly, his hands came to his chest, he breathed deeply and on his royal exhale, he died.
The royal doctor was brought to the king’s body to determine the royal cause of death. When he finished his review, he reported to the kingdom:
“Be it known that his Highness, King Jeremiah, died on the twentieth of May in the year two thousand twenty. His royal highness was felled by heart disease which he had not previously exhibited. It is the opinion of this examiner that the change in the king’s diet after his purging of the apples, wine and veal in the land removed the protective qualities of these foods and subjected the king to this disease. We, his loyal subjects, remember him perfectly.”
Upon reading this proclamation to the people of Dakota, the royal doctor turned to the king’s valet and said, “If only King Jeremiah had gotten rid of just that one bad apple.”
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