The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me

by Sara Nickerson

  The man was old, but not in the shriveled sort of way. The bulk of him filled out every inch of his plaid shirt and farmer overalls. He had a cup in his hand, a red plastic cup that fit over the top of a thermos. I smelled coffee. As the old man brought the red cup to his mouth, I noticed his hands. They were the biggest hands I’d ever seen, with fingers as thick and round as those pale German sausages that are creepy to look at but end up tasting pretty good.

  The old man blew over his cup and squinted across the cloud of steam. “Well,” he said finally, “how old are you kids?”

  I cleared my throat, still staring at his enormous fingers. “Twelve,” I said. “And my brother is almost fourteen.”

  “Can’t he speak for himself?”

  “Of course he can.”

  Patrick jabbed me with his elbow.

  The old man chuckled, deep and low. “Okay, then. Hello and welcome to Moose G’s Blueberry Farm. My name is Al. You don’t have to call me Mister Al or anything like that. Just Al. Have you picked berries before?”

  Patrick and I shook our heads. I was scared right then, scared that the man would send us back up the hill and straight for home.

  But he didn’t. Instead, he set his plastic cup on the counter, next to a white scale with a chipped, round face. “Well,” he said, “it’s not as complicated as brain surgery. Or even wood shop. Do they still have that at school? Where you build things with wood?”

  Patrick said yes while I said no and then we both said together, “I don’t know.”

  The man picked up his cup again. “Well you should find out. It’s a useful skill, working with your hands. Your hands are important. Hands and brain, working together. There is a connection. Like I said, this job is not as complicated as brain surgery, but it’s not so easy, either. After a day or two your fingers will get the hang of it and you’ll be ready to turn professional. If you keep your noses clean. You know what that means?”

  Patrick said yes and I did, too, even though I wasn’t exactly sure.

  “It means stay out of trouble.” Al sat back and looked at us so long and hard that I wanted to squirm. But I forced myself to stay frozen, so as not to appear like I had anything to hide. Because sometimes when someone stares at you like that, you start to think you’ve done something wrong, even when you haven’t.

  Finally Patrick said, “We will, sir.”

  “Don’t call me sir. I’ll send you home for that.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  He motioned behind him with his frightening thumb. “See this hedge here?”

  We nodded.

  “It’s there for a reason.”

  I said, “Our mom told us.”

  “So you know. You know to stay on the right side of this hedge here, no matter what anyone tells you. And if you see someone on your row who shouldn’t be there, yell ‘Row Hopper’ real loud and I’ll set the dogs on them.”

  I glanced around. Along with the idea of people sneaking up on me in the middle of those bushes, dogs made me extremely nervous. “Why would anyone be on my row?”

  “What?” he barked. “Speak up.”

  “Why would anyone be on my row? If it’s mine?”

  “Oh, all sorts of crazy reasons.” He settled back on his stool, like he had a good story to tell and the whole morning to tell it. “The biggest reason is to steal your berries. We used to have a Row Boss out here. Someone to sneak up on you kids and make sure you were keeping your noses clean. Can’t do that anymore. We’re just starting up again with pickers, after relying on the picking machine for years.” He stared at us until I felt the need to say something.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Nodding, he reached behind the counter and, with a clatter of metal, brought out two small buckets. He handed one to me and one to Patrick. The buckets were old tin coffee cans fitted with a long piece of wire, like a stretched-out coat hanger. The wire came together at the top to make a hook.

  “These little ones here, these are your picking buckets. You slip this hook inside your belt buckle or a belt loop. That way both hands are free to pick. See?” And he showed us how to attach the hook at the end of the wire so that the can hung from our belt loops.

  “Those are five-pound cans; they hold five pounds of berries. And those—” he pointed to the stacks of bigger metal buckets lined up all around the shed. “Those are your dumping buckets. You carry one of those out with you. When your little picking bucket gets full, you dump it into the big one. When the big one is full, come to me. I’ll weigh it for you, write down the pounds you’ve picked, and give you a new big bucket.”

  I slipped the hook into my belt loop. The can rubbed against my thigh.

  “The big buckets, when they’re full, will weigh anywhere from sixteen to twenty pounds, depending. So, let’s see. What I need to do is write your names in my little book, here. That way I’ll keep track of your pounds.”

  Al flipped open a notebook. The cover was stained and worn, and the blue lines of the paper had faded at the edges. “You’re the first pickers out this morning. Your names will go on the very top of the list.” The stubby pencil he pulled out disappeared between his sausage fingers. “Okay,” he said, turning to Patrick. “Age before beauty.”

  I laughed.

  “Patrick,” my brother said.

  “And what about you?”

  “I’m Missy—no, wait.” I took a deep breath. “Melissa.”

  Patrick snorted. But when I saw those extra-large fingers spell M-e-l-i-s-s-a in the blue-lined notebook, I didn’t even care.

  The old man named Al told us to stash our lunches in the coolers behind the shed. “You don’t have any electronics with you, do you?”

  “What?”

  “Cell phones, a Walkman—”

  “What’s a Walkman?” I asked.

  “It’s what we used to call the musical device you kids plug into your ears.”

  “Oh, you mean like an iPod? Or a—”

  “I don’t care what you call it these days. It’s not allowed out here. The only music allowed must come from an actual radio. With nothing plugged into your ears!”

  “Okay,” Patrick said. “We didn’t bring anything like that.”

  “Good for you,” the old man said. “Half the trouble in the world would be solved if we yanked those little wires out of ears. People need to know what’s going on around them. They need to be able to communicate at least as well as a monkey. How’s anyone supposed to do that if they always have their ears plugged into some space-age contraption? Can you explain that to me?”

  I shook my head. “My mother says the same thing.”

  “Good for her,” he said. “I hope you listen.”

  I cleared my throat. There was one more thing I had to know. “Can you tell us about the contest?”

  He narrowed his eyes as he blew into his cup. “What contest?”

  “In the paper. It said there would be a prize for the best picker.”

  He sipped on his coffee and shook his head. “That crazy fool. This is the craziest idea—” But then he stopped and sighed. “Well, I don’t know any darn thing about it. But I do know about this. Work hard, pick clean, respect one another, and respect the bushes. That’s what I know. That’s what I’ve always known. I can’t control the rest. Hard work is its own reward. That’s the prize I care about. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” we both said.

  “Start on row thirty-six. Walk down until you see the little wooden marker with the number thirty-six. One of you on either side. And call me Al.”

  We picked up our big metal buckets and had just started back down the tire-track road when Al called out after us, “And the biggest rule of all out here? Don’t believe everything you hear!”

  We kept our backs straight and didn’t turn around. “That was weird,” I whispered whe
n I was sure Al couldn’t hear me. Then I got the giggles so hard Patrick had to hit me on the shoulder to make me stop.

  • • •

  I am not embarrassed to admit that my favorite stories always start with a step into the dark. Like Alice falling down her rabbit hole, or Lucy pushing her way through to the back of the wardrobe. Life could be absolutely normal and then, just one step later, absolutely not. I knew it was silly, but for a moment I wondered—could magic like that really happen? The air felt so heavy with unseen worlds it made me dizzy with hope.

  The bushes were about a foot taller than me, lined up like soldiers, with branches so thick that they touched at the top, making the ends of each row look like entrances to tiny dark caves. Patrick went first, plunging into the opening that, like a giant mouth, swallowed him whole. When I ducked my head and stepped through the opening on the other side of the row, the branches slapped against my face like tiny wet hands. “Patrick! I can’t even see!”

  He didn’t answer, but I could hear him clanging up ahead of me. I kept my head down and followed the clanging bucket sound, up the row until the bushes stopped hitting at me. When I straightened up, the back of my sweatshirt was soaked from dew, but I barely noticed because I was standing in the middle of a tunnel of green so thick, I could only see the sky as thin slivers of blue.

  “Patrick!”

  “Keep walking,” he called. “It thins out a little farther up.”

  But I stayed where I was because blueberries, frosted blue and hanging in juicy fat clumps, were right in front of my face. I watched my fingers reach out and pick one. It made a tinny pling when it hit the bottom of the bucket hanging from my belt loop. Food.

  Food was growing on a bush. I could see it. I could reach out and touch it. I could touch it before anyone else and put it in my bucket. And what I put in my bucket would end up in a store for someone to buy and take home and cover with cream. Or drop into their cereal in the morning. I was responsible for putting blueberries on someone’s table so they could finish their cornflakes and go off to work. I was suddenly a part of the world—the actual world. So I wasn’t Alice or Lucy. My feet were on solid ground and it was just plain old earth. But even so, it was magic. Actual magic.

  “We’re picking blueberries, Patrick,” I called. “We’re actually picking blueberries that will be sold in a store.”

  The row between us was like a wall. From up ahead I heard the pling, pling, pling of berries covering the bottom of his bucket. “Of course, Missy,” he answered in his matter-of-fact Patrick way. “What did you think?”

  CHAPTER 7

  AT FIRST, EVERYTHING WAS WET. THE TIPS OF MY fingers, white and wrinkled, looked like they’d soaked in a bath too long, and even my toes were numb from the dew-covered grass seeping through my shoes. The field was so quiet that all I heard was the rustle of branches, the sound of berries dropping in the bucket, and my own breathing.

  But then all that changed, and I didn’t even see it happening. Which is how it is with change. Things are one way and then—WHAM—they’re another. Your parents are together and then—WHAM—they’re not. Your friends wear 3-D glasses to school and then—WHAM—they are embarrassed when you pull yours from your pocket.

  Too many whams.

  But that’s not the point. The point is: Suddenly, I wasn’t cold, or damp even. And my fingers weren’t wrinkled. And it wasn’t quiet anymore—there were voices. And I had no idea how the sun had gotten hot like that, or when the voices had started.

  “Hey, Patrick?” When he didn’t answer I unhooked the little bucket from my belt loop and bent down to look for his feet. They weren’t there. “Patrick?”

  Your brother is across from you and then—WHAM—he’s disappeared.

  I walked down the row, peering through the gaps in branches. “Patrick!” I called, panic rising in my voice.

  And then, from somewhere across the field, another voice echoed, “Patrick!” And then other voices chimed in, too, laughingly shouting out my brother’s name. “Patrick! Patrick!”

  Those voices.

  I shut my mouth and continued quietly up the row, bending down every few steps to look for my brother’s feet. And finally I saw them, planted on the other side, familiar and solid and real. I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

  “Hey, Missy,” he said.

  “Patrick!” I squeezed between bushes and whispered in his ear, “I thought I lost you.”

  “The berries were better up here. Look—” he pointed to his big bucket. It was nearly full. “Why are you whispering?”

  “I don’t want anyone to hear me. Didn’t you hear the voices?”

  “No,” he said. “But you don’t have to whisper.”

  I sat right down in the middle of the row, shaded my eyes with my hand, and looked up. Patrick’s neck was beginning to turn pink. I said, “Your mouth is purple.”

  He glanced down. “Yours isn’t.”

  “I haven’t eaten any.”

  “You should. They’re good. But don’t sit in the dirt, Missy. That’s weird.” He pointed to some scraggly weeds. “Sit there, next to the trunk.”

  “Trunk? Is it called a trunk?”

  “I don’t know. A stem?”

  “It’s thicker than a stem. A stem is like a flower. But a trunk is like a tree. And it’s not like that, either.”

  “Then it’s a strunk,” Patrick said, and I laughed because ever since Dad moved out, Patrick hardly ever made silly jokes. His jokes didn’t stop suddenly—more like a faucet of water slowing down, first to a trickle and then to an occasional drop. So I probably laughed harder than I needed to, at the drops. But I was always so glad when one came out.

  Down in the shade, sitting on weeds and overturned earth, I reached for a berry hanging near the bottom of the bush. I’d eaten hundreds of blueberries in my life: in pancakes and muffins, in smoothies and pie. I’d eaten them without ever thinking about where they came from, how they grew, how they ended up in a store. But that first one in the field, straight from the bush and warm from the sun, was the sweetest, most real taste my mouth had ever known.

  So I sat in the shade, eating every blueberry I could reach while Patrick worked hard to fill his bucket. I listened to the voices, calling from all over the field. I must have broken the silence spell by yelling for my brother.

  They called out for each other’s names. “Who are you?”

  And answers came back like this: “Freddy Krueger! Which row are you on?”

  They called out for information: “What time is it?”

  And answers came back like this: “Time for you to get a watch!” Or “Same time it was yesterday at this time!”

  They called out to complain and to joke and to tease. “Do you hear them now, Patrick?” I asked.

  “Of course, Missy.”

  I wondered if Al had put us on rows all over the field to keep us apart. I wondered if it had anything to do with the hedge. “Well, I don’t like it,” I said quietly. “It’s creepy.”

  “Just ignore them. Get back to work.”

  I got back to work, but I didn’t ignore the voices. As I picked, I tried to sort them out—where they were in the field, how old they sounded, how many there were. They called one another names, like Earlobe, and Giant Johnny. Smith One, Smith Two, and Smith Three. There was a radio that turned on and off—or maybe several radios. It was hard to tell. And it was hard to tell what people were actually like, when you couldn’t see their faces.

  It was too easy to lie, all hidden like that.

  CHAPTER 8

  SOMETHING I LEARNED FROM MY MOM’S OLD COWBOY movies: When the sun is directly over your head, it’s twelve o’clock noon. By noon, my big bucket was nearly halfway full and I had peeled down to my very last layer: cutoff shorts and a thin white T-shirt. When I touched the top of my head and it was as red-hot a
s a coiled stove burner set on high, I suddenly understood cowboy hats.

  “When can we eat, Patrick?”

  “What time is it even?”

  “Noon. High noon. According to the sun.” From some deep place in my stomach I felt a hollow rumble. “Can’t we just go now?” The bushes were closing in on me, and I had to go to the bathroom so bad.

  “Yeah,” Patrick said. “Okay.” I heard a clang and then the soft sound of berries tumbling from his small bucket to his big one. “There,” he said. His voice was proud.

  I grabbed my own big bucket and pushed back through my row, barely noticing how the branches slapped against my face and arms. The dew was long gone and my toes were dry. When I stepped out from the cover of the blueberry bushes I saw the giant hedge, just on the other side of the tire-track road. It made me shiver, even in the bright sunlight.

  With stiff arms we carried our buckets. The grass that brushed against our legs was golden brown and smelled like bread baking in an oven. We found Al at the weigh station, perched on his stool and swatting at fat black flies with a rolled-up newspaper. I glanced at his hands. If this were that other kind of story, my favorite kind, Al would be part ogre.

  Patrick hoisted his big bucket over to Al, who set it on the large white scale, making the thin red needle jump and shiver before it settled on a number. “Twelve pounds before lunch,” Al said. “Are you sure this is your first day, son?” And Patrick smiled. When he wrote the number in the notebook next to my brother’s name, his fingers rubbed together, dry as paper.

  He turned to me. “Your turn, Melissa.” I lifted my bucket, smiling at the name. “Six pounds,” he said, squinting at the needle. He made a neat number six next to M-e-l-i-s-s-a, then pulled a big pitcher and poured bright red liquid into two white paper cups.

  “It’s Kool-Aid,” he said, handing us each a cup. “Cherry. Worst thing that can happen to you out here is dehydration. That’s when you start to see little men marching on the ground. So help yourself to water, if you didn’t bring your own.” He motioned to a large water jug at the end of the counter.