The Kool-Aid was icy cold and tangy-sweet and I finished it in one grateful gulp. Al said, “Most kids eat lunch over there, in the shade of that big chestnut tree. If you sit too close to the hedge, you’ll get prickles.”
“Where are they?” I asked him. “The other kids?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what they’re doing half the time. Everything is different now. Not like the old days. But you’ll see them around.”
While I asked Al about the bathroom, Patrick grabbed our lunches and started for the shady spot underneath the tree. Al pointed to a dirt path at the far edge of the field. “Follow that around the curve. There’s an outhouse at the end. Watch out for bears.”
“Really?”
He winked. “A person should always watch out for bears.”
When I caught up with Patrick, he was already on the ground, his back against the tree trunk, chewing on his sandwich. Berry picking had given him an appetite, something new for my skinny brother. I stood over him. “I have to go to the bathroom.”
“Okay.”
“You don’t want to come?”
He shook his head.
“There might be bears.” I waited a moment, hoping that might change his mind, like he’d either want to see a bear or protect me from one. But he didn’t, so I turned and followed the narrow path of beaten-down grass, up and around the corner. At the far end of the path I saw what looked like an old wooden coffin tipped up on its end.
The door creaked open on rusted hinges. When I stepped inside, I almost choked. The toilet seat was a hole cut out of a plank of wood, balanced over another hole dug straight into the ground. Fat black flies buzzed in crazy circles around the hole, guarding their treasure. An ancient roll of toilet paper balanced on a nail stuck in the wall. I looked up. Instead of a ceiling, there was just a square space of clear blue sky.
I’d never seen an outhouse like that before—only those sweet-smelling plastic kind that you see at fairs and construction sites. And I wouldn’t say I liked it, exactly. But it was real. Like everything else in the blueberry field, it was real.
I got out quick and ran back up the path to the tree. I did my best to describe the outhouse to Patrick, the crazy flies, the patch of sky overhead, the seat that was a plank of wood, and the hole dug straight into the ground. I said, “I wonder what happens when the hole gets full?”
He laughed and I laughed. Our hands were stained and dirty and looked like strangers’ hands against the pure whiteness of our bread, but it didn’t bother us. We ate our sandwiches and stared at each other in amazement: the best food we’d ever eaten!
Bugs marched through grasses and scuttled in the dirt, keeping the earth alive. Had they always been there, those bugs? How had I not seen that the world was in motion, every inch of it, every moment? I leaned back and through the thin fabric of my T-shirt felt the rough bark of the tree. I crunched an apple down to the core, and wondered about the farmer who had grown it.
“This came from an actual tree, Patrick,” I said suddenly, holding up my apple core. “Someone picked it. Like we are picking blueberries.”
Patrick snorted. “Of course, Missy. Of course.”
But what I was really trying to say was this: Your dinner comes from a grocery store and then—WHAM—it doesn’t. It comes from dew and dirt and sunshine. From old man hands and clanging metal buckets. It comes from flies and heat and voices without faces.
It comes from me. Melissa.
CHAPTER 9
AFTER LUNCH, MY FINGERS SLOWED DOWN, BUT MY mind raced with crowding thoughts: This is too hot; I’m going to be sick; I might even die. Sweat rolled down my neck, trickled past my collar and all the way down my back. I said out loud, “This is pure misery, Patrick. Pure, pure misery.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“Don’t you think it’s time to go?”
“What does the sun tell you?”
I knew he was teasing, but I squinted up anyway. “It’s two o’clock,” I said, surprised at how the sky-clock made perfect sense. “I’m pretty sure. Let’s go.”
Patrick said, “I want to fill this bucket first.” I could tell by his voice he was doing the math on forty-two cents and all his pounds, planning out his back-to-school jeans and high-top sneakers shopping trip. “I’ll meet you there.”
Walking back through the row, I stopped to pick a handful of berries. I looked for the most perfectly blue and plump and firm ones, the ones that seemed to jump into my hand. I dropped them gently into the pocket of my T-shirt. At the weigh station, Al poured my big bucket into a flat wooden crate and smoothed them with his giant hand. “You pick nice berries, Melissa,” he said. “You and your brother are good hard workers with no shenanigans.”
Shenanigans. I said the word to myself, over and over, and decided to use it every chance I got. Al added up my pounds and wrote the number on a slip of paper. “Take this up to the office. Bev will give you your money.”
As I walked up the tire-track road, the giant hedge cast a dark shadow, reminding me of the second farm on the other side. I stared at my feet and the small cloud of dust they kicked up. From the golden grass at the edge of the road, brown grasshoppers popped like crazy springs when I stepped too near their hiding spots, startling me every time.
The window underneath the OFFICE sign was closed. I knocked lightly and waited. When I’d waited and knocked again and got no answer, I crossed the gravel drive and sat where the giant hedge threw down a small patch of shade in the scraggly weeds.
As I sat and waited, a long line of black ants marched in front of my feet. Their line stretched out all the way down the drive and then curved into the hedge and disappeared. Where were they going?
I tried to imagine what it looked like on the other side of the hedge. Was it an exact mirror image? Or a dark and twisted land? The prickles from the hedge scratched at my back, and I got the creepy kind of shivers. I scrambled to my feet and ran back across the drive to the office window. I knocked again, this time for real. Bang, bang, bang.
“Hold your horses!” came a shout from behind the closed door. A moment later the door opened and a woman stepped out. Before she closed it again I caught a glimpse of the kitchen behind her, and I even smelled something cooking.
She settled herself into a tall chair and, with a yank of her arm, opened the window all the way. She leaned forward and squinted right into my face. “What’s the matter? You looked spooked.”
“What? No—”
“You want your money?”
“Yes, okay.” I dug the slip of paper out of my pocket. “Al said I—”
The woman reached out and took the paper. “Most kids wait until three o’clock. That’s the official quitting time. We don’t like them hanging around up here, getting into berry fights or dumping gravel down each other’s pants.”
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry. Al didn’t tell me.”
She smiled then, and everything about her face softened. “Well, you must be the type of kid who wouldn’t do that.” She pulled out a clipboard and asked for my name.
I started to say Missy, but remembered Melissa just in time. She scanned the list and then frowned. “Funny, I don’t see you.”
“My mom, this morning. She probably told you my name was Missy. But I mostly go by Melissa.”
She nodded. “Missy McKenzie. I see you right here. Now I remember. You have a brother, too. Your mom is a nice woman.” I watched her cross off Missy and write Melissa. Next to it she wrote thirteen pounds.
“She said you were nice, too.”
Bev sighed. “I’m nice first thing in the morning, when I have a cup of coffee in my hand. Right about now, though, I’m not so nice.”
I glanced down at her hands, counting out bills and change from a metal box. Next to the box was a paperback book, with a woman and a castle on the cover. The wom
an wore a red cape, and her tumbling dark hair reached the middle of her back. “You like to read?” Bev asked. “You want a soda? I don’t usually offer, but—”
“No, thanks,” I said to soda, even though I wanted it so badly my throat tightened at the thought. “And I do like to read. I like adventure stories. And fantasy.”
“Oh, those. I guess I liked those as a kid. Now I like romance. Do you like romance?”
“Not really,” I said. “I’ve seen enough romance.”
She tipped back her head and laughed with her mouth so wide open I could see all the way down her throat. It scared me right then, thinking of the inside of bodies. It scared me thinking that the inside of all our throats looked more or less the same.
“You’ve seen enough romance, huh?” She chuckled as she pushed the money across the counter. “There you go, hon. It might not seem like much today, but put it in a jar and count it on Friday. It adds up.”
I tucked the bills and change, five dollars and forty-six cents, into my pocket and said good-bye to the lady named Bev. I looked up at the sun, reminding myself that, next time, I would wait until three o’clock. From my tiny patch of shade near the prickly hedge, I sat and stared down the tire-track road. Finally, I saw them, small groups of kids, trudging up the hill, trailing sweatshirts in the dirt. I thought: These are the faces behind the voices. And I wanted to hide.
But I stayed still and kept watch for Patrick. Cars pulled in, one right after the next, and kids peeled away from their groups to pile into various backseats. When our own car turned into the lot, I jumped up and dashed over. First thing Mom said was, “Where’s your brother?”
I threw my extra clothes on the floor and crawled in next to Claude’s car seat. “He’s coming. Any minute.” I wiggled my purple fingers at my sticky-damp brother, making him laugh so hard he got the hiccups.
“You two were supposed to stick together out there.”
“We did.” Hot vinyl stuck to the back of my bare legs. When I lifted them off the seat they made a sucking sound. “Mom, it’s so hot back here!”
“What do you want me to do about it, Missy?” My mother tapped her fingers impatiently.
Panting like a dying cat I asked, “Can’t you turn on the air-conditioning?”
“It’s broken, Missy. Roll down the window.”
I watched over Claude’s round, hiccupping head until I finally saw Patrick, his skinny shoulders and slight limp, making his way up the hill. “There he is, Mom. There’s Patrick.”
“Pat-ick!” Claude shouted, and Patrick glanced over, grinned, and waved.
I watched him step up to the office window and hand his slip to Bev. I watched him shove the money deep into the pocket of his shorts. As he settled in the front seat of the car, Mom glanced at his stained fingers and flushed cheeks. “Well?” she asked. “How was it?”
“Great!” He turned and said to me, “Twenty-two pounds, Missy.”
“Wow,” I said. “You might win the prize.”
“Go!” Claude shouted, and we all laughed.
The breeze, when it filled the car, brought with it the smell of pine needles and honeysuckle, summer grass and fresh dirt. It had always been there, the breeze, but that was the day I understood it carried scent, and that scent was made up of countless ingredients, some I could recognize and some I could not.
I felt the back of my T-shirt, soaked with sweat, and looked at Patrick’s neck, pink from the sun and covered with a thin layer of dirt. I reached into my T-shirt pocket and carefully cupped the small handful of perfect blueberries I’d saved for this moment. I held one up to Claude, who opened his mouth and let me plop it in, just like a baby bird.
CHAPTER 10
THE NEXT MORNING PATRICK WAS AT THE KITCHEN counter making sandwiches and I was across from him eating cereal when Mom walked in, holding Claude, who was droopy from being pulled out of his warm bed. She shook her head. “I don’t know about this.”
I stopped chewing. Hadn’t she noticed Patrick making our lunches, without being asked? Quickly, I put my cereal bowl in the sink and eased Claude from my mother’s arms. I found his sweater and buttoned it over his kitty pajamas. “I dreamy cats,” he said. His sleepy eyes moved from one corner of the kitchen to the other, trying to figure out where they all had gone.
Patrick finished making our lunches and then gulped down the smelly protein drink that was supposed to give him muscles. While Mr. Coffee spit out its last drops, I shifted Claude to my hip and pulled Mom’s favorite mug from the cupboard. I filled it with dark, steaming coffee and stirred in a tablespoon of cream, just the way she liked it.
She smiled when I handed it to her. “Thanks, honey.”
In the backseat of the car, I read Claude his favorite picture book and even did all the voices. When I was done he said, “More boo-berries?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll bring you more blueberries today.”
I glanced at my mother’s face in the rearview mirror, hoping she would hear how nice I was being and how happy Claude sounded. I could only see her eyes and forehead, but that was enough to know that she looked tired.
I felt myself getting light-headed—a feeling I had a lot right after Dad first moved out of the house. It was the feeling that I was about to lose something big and important, that my life was about to spin away, and that I’d be left swirling somewhere, either high into the air or down a deep drain.
When the car turned onto the country road, I leaned my head against the window to study the same horses, the same cows, and the same weathered houses squatting in their damp brown fields. I didn’t want this to be the last time I’d see them.
“We’re closer to the water here,” Mom said suddenly. “You can feel it in the air. It’s just . . . thick.”
She let out a sigh, like she was thinking of something all her own. It made me remember that she had been a person, long before she had become my mother. She had been a person with thoughts and feelings that didn’t have anything to do with me. How strange.
Al looked happy when we ran up to his cart, flushed and breathless. “Where’s your sweatshirt, Melissa?” He handed me my two buckets and penciled M-e-l-i-s-s-a in his notebook.
“I got so hot yesterday,” I said. My only extra layer was a long-sleeved T-shirt, leaving my bare legs covered in goose bumps.
Al said, “It’ll warm up soon. Let’s put you back on row thirty-six. You’re probably almost done with it, aren’t you?”
Patrick and I answered at the exact same time. Only I said no while he said yes.
Al narrowed his eyes and looked from Patrick to me. “You know,” he started, “a lot of kids don’t like to stay on the same bush, or even the same row. They jump from bush to bush, looking for the best berries. Bush Hopper. Row Hopper. The trouble with being a hopper is you never settle down and see what’s right in front of you. You’re not being fair to the bush, the row, or yourself. Stick to a bush until you’ve picked all the berries. Don’t skip it because the one next to it looks more promising. I’ll tell you something. The berries down the row are just the same as the ones in front of your face. And this is not just about berry picking, either. This is about life.”
It was like in a movie—the part near the end where the old guy delivers the line that makes everyone stand perfectly still or clasp hands or turn to one another and hug and laugh and cry. I said, “Okay, Al. Okay.” And I meant it.
But back on the tire-track road Patrick snorted. “I didn’t know blueberries were a religion.”
I punched him on the shoulder. “Hey, think of it as camp, remember? Constance and Allie say they always teach you that kind of stuff at camp.”
We reached the wooden marker with the faded 36. I took one side—same side as before—and Patrick took the other. The field was quiet, wrapped in its heavy fog and damp chill. Taking in a deep breath, I began to recognize the smell
that came with morning—clean and sharp and sweet. It was the smell of early morning dirt, still wet with dew, and later I would notice how it changed into something different, something soft and rich and smooth with the warmth of the sun.
And that’s when the voices would come out, too, with the sun. Another secret of the blueberry fields.
CHAPTER 11
I WAS ALL-THE-WAY BURNING HOT BEFORE I EVEN noticed that the sun had turned to high. Also, the voices were out, and I wondered how long they’d been shouting. I shaded my eyes to check the sun, just shy of its noon position. “Patrick,” I said, “time for lunch.”
At the weigh station, Al set our buckets on the old metal scale and wrote numbers next to our names. When he handed us our paper cup of cherry Kool-Aid, my throat tingled even before I drank it. With lunch bags in hand, Patrick led the way to the same shady spot underneath the giant tree.
“Don’t you have to go to the bathroom?” I asked my brother.
He shook his head, already biting into his sandwich.
Once again I followed the narrow footpath. A pencil-thin garter snake cut a quick line next to my feet, and I watched until it slid into the dry grass and disappeared. At the remote edge of the field was the little wooden coffin outhouse, standing on its end. I was in and out in less than a minute, before the flies had time to settle on me. It wasn’t so bad, really. Our toilets at home with flushing water, now maybe that was the strange thing.
That’s what I was thinking as I walked back along the narrow path, feeling the sun on the top of my head. The idea of pipes and tubes, underground sewers connecting us all in ways I’d never thought about, was so new to me, so enormous and unexpected, that I didn’t notice what had changed until I got close to the tree. My brother was still there, just as I’d left him. But there was someone else underneath that tree, too.
The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me Page 5