The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me

by Sara Nickerson

  I took another drink and thought about slipping into the darkness of the row, hearing the sound of my own breath and watching my hands busy with work. “I guess I just like the bushes.” I laughed, suddenly embarrassed.

  She smiled. “Oh, you and Moose. Peas in a pod. Just watch yourself. You might grow up to be a farmer someday. And that’s hard work.”

  “It doesn’t look so hard.”

  “Trust me. It’s hard.” I glanced at her face. She was staring ahead, but she didn’t seem to be seeing what was right in front of her. “You’re doing a good job for us, hon. We appreciate it.”

  “Well, I love it here.” And as I blurted it out I knew it was the pure truth.

  “Moose loves it, too. He’s a man of few words. I get seven words a day from him, if I’m lucky. But being a farmer means the world to him. I swear he talks to the bushes and the bushes talk back. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “Yes.” I felt the air go out of my lungs. “Perfect sense.”

  Bev smiled. “Back in the day all the kids were like you—real serious pickers and workers. We had grown-ups, too. Migrant workers who followed the seasons. We’re not big enough for that anymore. Had to sell off some acreage we had near here. Sold it after, well—” she stopped and motioned to the hedge. Took another big gulp of her soda.

  “So we’d been relying on the picking machine all these years, and that was fine. We had some good sorters for the machine, and it worked out well enough. Moose and I, we both take on odd jobs in the off-season, to make ends meet. But we don’t mind. We’ve been doing it like this for years. Then this year, Moose went and changed everything. For some reason, he wanted kids back in the field. It came as a complete shock to me. He even put the ad in the Little Nickel without me knowing. All of a sudden one day, I start getting these calls. Parents telling me they saw the ad and thinking this would be a good option for their kids. I said, ‘Whoa—what number are you calling?’ I finally straightened it out with Moose.”

  She shook her head and took another long drink of soda. I thought she was done, but then she went on.

  “So we had a good fight about it, me and Moose. I did all the yelling and he said his seven words, and then he set his jaw and that’s when I knew he’d won. The whole time parents kept calling. This is cheaper than summer camp and most of them want their kids to learn how much work it takes to make a buck. And so”—she raised her can of soda to me, “here we are.”

  I thought about everything I’d learned already, picking berries. “I’m glad,” I said, raising my can to clink with hers. “I’m glad Moose put the ad in the paper.”

  Bev shrugged. “Times have changed, but I guess we can try and hold on to the few precious things that haven’t. I guess that’s what Moose is trying to do.”

  I nodded. I liked how she was talking to me, like I was a real person to her.

  She said, “Can you give me five minutes and help pick this cherry tree?”

  “Sure!” I jumped up and ran to the garage for two metal picking buckets.

  Picking cherries was different from picking blueberries. I found that out right away. But my fingers felt that good busyness, and my arms felt strong and useful, and the sun felt like a friend on my face.

  Bev told me that they were pie cherries, not as sweet as regular eating cherries, and when I popped one in my mouth, it was soft and warm and tart. “Mmm,” I said, working my teeth around the pit. “It’s good. I’ve never picked a cherry before. But it’s fun, too.”

  Bev laughed. “You’re a different kind of kid.” I couldn’t see her face through the branches, but it sounded like she was giving me a compliment. “What other things do you like to do?”

  Probably because my hands were flying over the tree like that, and we were working together, I felt free to talk. “Just regular things. I have a little brother and I help take care of him. I like to read. I like to ride my bike. And watch Westerns on TV. I have two best friends, but they’re away at camp.”

  “Camp. Now that sounds fun. That’s what you should be doing.”

  “No,” I said. “I like this.”

  She laughed.

  “No, really. I mean it. This is important.”

  “Important, huh?”

  “Yeah.” And then I heard myself telling her things, things I’d learned from being in the field, and other things, too. It felt good to talk like that. When I caught a glimpse of her between the thick green leaves of the cherry tree, I was almost surprised she wasn’t Constance or Allie.

  When I’d picked all the cherries I could reach by standing on my overturned bucket, Bev said, “I’ll get Moose to get the ladder for me later. There is plenty here already for a pie.”

  I handed her my bucket, nearly full. “Maybe two pies,” she said. “Listen, thank you for your help. I’ll tell Moose what a nice talk we had today. Don’t you worry—we’ll get you back out there. We’ll get you back picking.”

  “Thank you,” I said. And I spent the rest of the day at the conveyor belt.

  Maybe it was not having the sun over my head. Maybe it was the constant motion of the conveyor belt. Maybe it was the soda pop, which I wasn’t used to, or the loneliness, especially when I took my lunch break and thought of my brother, making my sandwich. Or it could have been the hard work of coming up with a rich inner life, which is not as easy as it sounds. Whatever it was, by the time Mom picked us up, I didn’t feel like myself. I didn’t feel like Missy, or even Melissa. And I didn’t feel like talking.

  But I did have a paper bag of bright red cherries, which was something special from the day. “Measured out for a pie,” Bev had told me. She’d also given me her very own State Fair Award-Winning Cherry Pie Recipe.

  “How was it?” Patrick asked from the front seat, halfway turning around. The windows were all rolled down, but the air was so hot it didn’t even cool us off. “How much money did you make?”

  I didn’t answer. I pretended not to hear.

  Mom glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “How much, Missy?”

  “Twenty,” I said flatly. “Twenty dollars.”

  Mom said, “That’s fantastic!”

  I waited for Patrick to say something, and when he didn’t I wondered if he cared even the tiniest bit. Or if being with Shauna out there—without his tagalong sister to get in the way—was all he cared about.

  “Mom,” I said, when we were halfway home and a block from the Price Rite. “Do we have flour? And butter and sugar?”

  “Yes, of course we do.”

  I looked down at the recipe. “Tapioca,” I said. “Do we have that?”

  “No.”

  “Then could we stop at the store?”

  “What for, Missy?”

  “I want to make a pie.”

  Everyone stayed in the car while I went in for the tapioca. I didn’t know where I’d find it, so I walked up and down every single aisle. In the canned fruit aisle I slowed down. I couldn’t help dragging my fingers along each can, studying the colorful pictures on the labels. Canned pineapple, canned peaches, canned pears, canned cherries and, finally, canned blueberries.

  I pulled the blueberries from the shelf and turned the can over and over in my hand. There was a whole world inside that can. There was a farmer inside it, and pickers. There were bugs and bees and sun and rain. There was a radio playing and jokes being told.

  I set it back, overwhelmed by the lights in the store, the crush of people with their metal shopping carts plucking brightly colored packages from the shelves, just as earlier in the day, I had plucked sun-warmed cherries from a tree.

  I walked slowly back to the car. “I couldn’t find it, Mom. I don’t even know what it is.” She told me to wait in the car with the boys. Three minutes later she returned with a box of tapioca.

  “Are you really going to make a pie?” Patrick asked me.

/>   “I’m going to try.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Dear Constance and Allison,

  Today I made my first ever pie. It was cherry. I wish you could have been here to eat it. Here’s what you do: You get flour and put in a half teaspoon of salt. Then you cut two cubes of butter into little pieces and drop them in the flour. You can mix it up with your fingers.

  Then you get ice water. It has to be ice water. So what’s smart is to get the water ready with ice cubes before you start doing anything else. You add just enough ice water to make it all stick together. But not too much or the dough will be tough.

  So when the dough is just right and able to hold together, you divide it into two balls and wrap it up and stick it in the fridge. Then you get your cherries. Mine were fresh, straight from a tree, so I had to get the pits out. Claude helped with that part. Then you mix the cherries with sugar, a pinch of salt, and this stuff called tapioca, which makes it thicken up while it cooks. Some people use flour for thickening, but not in my recipe.

  Oh, and before you do anything, you should turn the oven on so it will be the right temperature when everything is ready. And also before you put on the top crust, you put tiny bits of butter on top of the cherry mixture.

  Rolling out the dough was the hardest part. Mine fell into pieces and stuck to the counter, but I just sort of pulled it up and pressed it into the pie dish. The top didn’t look so good, but in the end it tasted fine. Actually, it tasted delicious. I sort of didn’t want to eat it because it was so perfect, just sitting there. But then the smell got to me. Plus everyone was begging for a piece, and Claude started to hit me and yell that it was his pie and he made it so he should eat it and not share with anyone. That was funny. We ate half of it right away. It was still warm even.

  The weather has been sunny, but I haven’t gone down to the lake so I haven’t seen BM or anyone else. It wouldn’t be fun without you anyway, so we’ll go when you get back. Nothing much more is happening around here except we painted the living room yellow which is kind of weird. Anyway, I hope you are having fun. When you get back I’ll show you how to make a pie.

  Your Friend,

  Missy

  I’d almost signed Melissa but caught myself just in time. They didn’t know about Melissa. Plus, Melissa would have told them about the blueberry field and the tiny farmer named Moose and the fight called a blood feud. About Al and the voices and how Patrick liked Shauna. About being left in the rain. She would have told them it was Bev who had explained about making the crust, as well as sharing her State Fair Award-Winning Cherry Pie Recipe.

  Melissa would have also told them about her father’s upcoming wedding.

  No, actually. Missy would have told them that. But it was all too much for a letter. It would have to wait until they came home.

  CHAPTER 23

  THE NEXT MORNING, AFTER MOM DROPPED US OFF, Patrick followed me to the garage. The doors were closed and the lights off. “What? Did you change your mind?” I couldn’t hide my excitement.

  Patrick said, “So you really like this?”

  “Sure. It’s great. Bev gave me a soda yesterday.” I pointed to the overturned white buckets. “Under that cherry tree. It’s really fun. And you’ll make more money.”

  Patrick looked at me closely. “Did she tell you anything?”

  “Sure. She told me a lot of things.” I was so happy I was practically jumping.

  “Anything about Moose and Lyle?”

  “What? No. She told me how to make that pie. Let’s go find her. I know she’ll want you to work on the other side of the conveyor belt. There’s a heat wave coming, and we can make it go faster and sort more berries and—”

  Patrick said, “Missy, don’t you wonder why the farmers split the field? Don’t you wonder about the giant hedge? Why they won’t talk to each other?”

  My heart was starting to beat faster, but in a different way. A warning way. “The blood feud?” I said.

  “Exactly. There’s something out here, Missy. Something Moose has that Lyle doesn’t. Have you seen anything? Heard anything?”

  I looked down at our feet, planted in the gravel. “That’s why you’re standing here talking to me right now?”

  “What?”

  I turned my back to him. “I have work to do.”

  “Missy, we’re still doing our jobs. We’re still picking berries. But we’re having fun, too. We found a bird’s nest, and there are these raccoons—”

  “Seriously. Go before I tell on you.”

  “Tell what?”

  “Tell Bev how you and your friends are snooping around. Tell Mom about the way you left me in the rain.”

  He didn’t answer, but when I heard the gravel crunch, I turned back to see him disappear around the corner of the garage. Quietly, I followed, just enough to watch him walk down the hill, a small cloud of dust at his feet. I looked for his limp and when I didn’t see it, wondered if he was changing. Or was he just trying extra hard to walk straight? Whatever it was, I could see that something was different.

  Once he was out of sight, I turned back to the sorting shed. I pushed the button to raise the doors. Inside, I flipped on all the lights, just as Bev had shown me. Next to the machine were flats of berries, already stacked, waiting to be sorted. I got started right away and soon enough, the strange new rhythm of the sorting machine made me forget everything else.

  • • •

  I was just finishing my last crate of berries when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up to see Bev, standing with a soda in each hand. “Looks like you’re getting the hang of it,” she said as we crossed the gravel drive to our overturned white buckets underneath the tree. I popped the tab to my soda and watched the bubbles sputter up through the small hole.

  The first sip was sweet and cold and perfect and made my voice come back to life. “I completely lost track of time,” I said, squinting up at the sun.

  “That means you’ve found your rich inner life.”

  I nodded. “And I finished sorting all the crates, too.”

  “You did? That’s record time. Moose will be happy to hear.”

  “Will he be back soon with more?”

  “Probably. You can just hang out here until he does.”

  “Okay,” I said. We sat in silence together, listening to the buzzing and humming and chirping sounds. Birds hopped and swooped all around us, diving in for the ripe cherries near the top of the tree.

  “Oh yeah,” I said, suddenly remembering. “I made that pie yesterday.”

  “You did?” Bev sounded delighted. “Well! How was it?”

  “I followed your recipe exactly, and it was the best pie in the world.” I thought about the simple moment of measuring flour and salt with butter and water, rolling out the crust. “I let my little brother take the pits out of the cherries, and then he didn’t think he should share it with anyone.”

  Bev chuckled. “My crust got a little too brown. I usually put a strip of tinfoil around the edges, but I was in a rush and didn’t bother. The rest of it was good, though. Moose finished off the last half for breakfast this morning. He loves pie.”

  “Well.” I cleared my throat, pretty sure that if I said one more word about pie I would instantly turn into a fifty-year-old woman. “I was wondering about something.” I paused, trying to get my courage up. “There’s been some talk,” I said.

  “Hmm?”

  “You know. The two farms. Moose and his brother.”

  When Bev didn’t answer I started to get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Her face was a straight-ahead statue, making me know I’d said the absolute wrong thing.

  I filled my mouth with bubbly soda so I wouldn’t start to babble again and ruin everything even more. When that wasn’t enough and the silence was about to make my head explode, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my 3-D glasses.
I adjusted them on my face.

  Then Bev laughed, and my head went back to normal. “You’re missing some lenses,” she said.

  “My best friends and I fixed them up like this and started wearing them at school. It was really fun, even though some people laughed at us. But I have a feeling my friends won’t wear them next year.”

  Bev said, “Why?”

  “Because. Just because.”

  Bev said, “You’re at that age, aren’t you? That age when everything changes.”

  I nodded but couldn’t look at her. In the silence I heard birds again, and crickets and bees. I took in a deep breath and smelled dirt and heat and grass. I said, “I was lonely in the blueberry field, but at least I had the bushes. Maybe while I wait for Moose I could go down and pick some more?”

  When Bev spoke again, her voice was different. “Moose is worried. He thinks some of the kids are sneaking around, looking for—” she stopped. I waited for more but all she said was, “Do your friends’ glasses look like that, too?”

  “Not exactly. They’re decorated. But we all decorated them differently. We all have this, though.” I reached up and pushed the midnight blue Spectacular Button. There, on the gravel right in front of me, was a tiny ant carrying a twig three times his size. “Look at that!” I said, pointing.

  Bev kept still. I glanced over and saw that she was watching me. Her face, in Spectacular 3-D, was something else. She was like the heroine on the cover of one of her romance novels. She smiled and I smiled back. For real.

  “Okay, Melissa,” she said. “Can you keep a secret from the other kids?”

  I nodded.

  “They can’t find out,” she said. “It’s very important.” She put her soda can on the ground and stomped it with her foot. “Grab some picking buckets,” she said. And as she turned and headed for the house I heard her say one more thing. She said it under her breath. She said, “I sure hope Moose won’t feed me to the dogs for this.”

  CHAPTER 24

  SOMETIMES THE BIGGEST SURPRISES ARE HIDDEN under the plainest wrapping. That’s what I was thinking when Bev led me to the very back corner of the sorting garage, to a faded wooden door, a door I’d never noticed before. She opened it and stepped outside. “Welcome to our palace grounds,” she said, sweeping her arm in a fancy way. And I did my best to hide my deep disappointment.