The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me

by Sara Nickerson

  I froze.

  Someone called out for the time, in that funny way that made it sound like a joke. It could have been one of those Smith brothers Shauna was always talking about.

  “Shut up!” hissed another voice, one I didn’t recognize, practically in my ear. “We’re not supposed to be over this far!”

  The first voice called out again anyway. “What–time–is–it?”

  And then came the answers, echoing from different corners of the big field. Some of them were close. Too close.

  “Same time it was yesterday at this time!”

  “Time for you to shut your mouth!”

  “Time for you to get a watch!”

  I’d heard it all before, but it all still made me smile.

  “Seriously,” he called again. “What time is it for real?”

  And that’s when another voice shouted back, loud and clear. “It’s a quarter to—the monkey’s poo!”

  Laughter erupted from all sides of the field. I couldn’t help it—I laughed, too. All the way along the path to the house I giggled at that new answer.

  Back in the coolness of the garage, Bev handed me a crisp, new twenty-dollar bill. “That’s just a bonus, hon,” she said. “For all your hard work.”

  I thought about telling them, about the voices on the other side of the hedge being so close, but I stopped myself. I was afraid they would pull me from the Little Field and I’d have to go back to sorting berries. Anyway, I told myself, I would be able to keep watch out there. I’d be helping them by staying.

  When Moose handed me a brown paper sack, I didn’t have to peek to know what was inside.

  CHAPTER 31

  DRIVING HOME, PATRICK ASKED MOM IF SHE WOULD take him to the lake. “Now?” she asked.

  “Well, I need to get my suit and towel first. But, yeah, a bunch of kids are going. If you drop me off, I can probably get a ride home.”

  Mom thought about it for a minute. “Okay,” she said, and told him to be home by dinnertime. “You too, Missy?” she asked.

  From my spot in the backseat I studied my big brother’s face, the way his jaw got stiff at the mention of me coming along. So I said, “Maybe,” just to watch his jaw get even tighter.

  Claude reached over and tried to grab the paper bag from me, the one with the berries from the Little Field. I leaned close to his ear and whispered, “We’ll have them later, okay, Mr. Claudio?” He sucked on his fingers, thinking this over. Finally he nodded.

  “The lake used to seem so far away,” I said loudly. No one answered so I added, “When we used to go out there as a family.” No one answered again.

  Mom asked me to stay with Claude while she drove Patrick. As soon as the front door shut, Claude pestered me for the blueberries again. “Big boo-berries, Missy!”

  I took the paper bag to the kitchen and tucked them in a corner of the pantry. “Bad Missy!” He charged after me like a little bull. “Bad!”

  I tried not to laugh. “They’re for later, Claude,” I said. “I promise. Let’s do something special now. Something really fun.”

  I led him to our room and crawled underneath my bed. Digging through my Intruder objects, I finally found all the pieces to my old castle set—the walls and furniture, knights and dragons, horses and princesses. I tossed them out, piece by piece, and heard Claude’s happy squeal with each new treasure. When I was done, he shoved his big head underneath the bed. “No more, Claude,” I said. I rolled out and brushed the dust from my shirt. “Let’s play.”

  I set up in the middle of the room. First, I organized all my big pieces. Then I connected the base for the castle, stacked up the walls, and added the windows and the drawbridge. Claude picked up the prettiest horse and smashed it against the tower.

  I pointed to the fake water that circled the castle. It had always been my favorite feature. “That’s the moat,” I told him. “There are alligators in it. Be careful or they will eat your horse.” Claude shrieked with delight.

  I imagined Patrick at the lake in his new swimsuit. I imagined Shauna, too. Talking and laughing and swimming out to the floating dock.

  The lake used to be my favorite place, back when I was a little kid. It had seemed so far away, like it was a big adventure to get there. Even though it was a state park and had an official name, we just called it Deep Lake.

  Deep Lake had everything: a campsite, and a dock for fishing, and boats you could rent, and two different swimming areas, one on either side. On perfect summer nights, my parents would pack up hot dogs and buns and a can of Boston baked beans and also a package of marshmallows, and then we’d drive out to the lake.

  It was just the four of us then, Mom and Dad and me and Patrick. We’d go as soon as Mom and Dad got home from work, and while other families would pitch tents and spend the weekend, we called what we did Friday Evening Campout.

  At the far side swimming area, near the campground, we’d find an empty fire pit to set up camp. First, though, we’d leave our bundle of wood and our cooler of food and head straight to the lake to swim. When the sun went down, we’d dry off quickly and run back to our camp. While Dad started the fire, Patrick and I searched the woods until we found four perfect sticks for roasting hot dogs and marshmallows. Mom warmed up the beans in a camp pot that was blackened on the bottom. We’d tell stories and eat more marshmallows in front of the fire until I got sleepy. Then, in the dark, we’d load the car and drive slowly away, past the glowing patches of light from other campsites.

  As I looked at Claude, battling a fairy princess against my favorite knight, I felt sad for him, sad that he’d never had a Friday Evening Campout with both Mom and Dad. But I guess that meant he wouldn’t miss it like I did.

  “Play, Missy!” he shouted in my face.

  I picked up another knight and placed it on my favorite horse. I galloped it around the castle shouting, “I will get you and eat you up!” Claude laughed so hard he fell over on his side.

  Even though I was having fun with Claude, I couldn’t stop thinking about Patrick. I wondered what he was doing at that very moment. I imagined him on the other side of the lake, the one without campsites. My dad had taken us there when we wanted to go fishing, because you could fish off a long wooden dock. It was the side you could also rent rowboats and buy other things in the store that smelled like lake water, things like sunscreen and potato chips and worms for fishing. Lake water is the best smell there is.

  Also on that side was a swimming dock. It’s where the older kids swam because there was a lifeguard on duty, sitting in a tall chair, and a diving board off the dock, and also a floating dock, way out that you could swim to.

  The summer before, I’d gone to the lake with Constance and Allie. The rule was we had to stay in the lifeguard area. I showed them all the great things, like where to fish and buy worms. Just as long as I didn’t look across to the other side, where the campsites and all my family memories were, I could have an okay time.

  Patrick went once last summer, on his own, and then not again. He had Dad drop him off in the morning and pick him up in the afternoon. When he got back his face was red, but not sunburned, and he went straight to his room. I followed him. That’s when he told me they had called him Praying Mantis Boy.

  “Who did?”

  “My friends.”

  “Those aren’t friends if they’d do that,” I said to him.

  “Oh, Missy.” His voice was like Mom’s when she got tired of trying to explain something. He didn’t say anything else, so after a while I stopped asking him questions and just tiptoed out of his room. We never talked about it again.

  I wondered if his new fancy swimsuit would make any difference. I wondered if he would look across the lake to the campground side, and remember our Friday Night Campouts. I wondered if he missed them as much as I did.

  Claude’s horse was being eaten by an alligator.
Just as my knight jumped in to save it, I heard the front door close. “Mom?” I called.

  She came and stood in the doorway. “How’s Mr. Claude?” she asked.

  “We’re playing with my old castle. How’s Patrick?”

  Mom smiled. “He met up with his friends. He’s getting a ride home later. Will you help me with dinner? Just peel some carrots? I just need fifteen more minutes to finish up my work for the day.”

  I told Claude we’d finish playing castle in the kitchen. I set up a chair next to the sink and while I peeled carrots, Claude stood on the chair and dunked his horses in the water. He draped his knights with long, thin carrot peels. “Play, Missy,” he said.

  But I couldn’t even pretend to play anymore. All I could think about was Patrick, his new friends, and all the fun he was having at the lake.

  CHAPTER 32

  THAT NIGHT AT DINNER, PATRICK TOLD FUNNY STORIES about the lake. He told about Giant Johnny and the Smith brothers and how some guy they called Earlobe found a dead fish. Claude laughed so hard food flew out of his mouth.

  “Do you know these kids, too?” Mom asked, turning to me. “With all their strange names?”

  I shook my head. “I’m too busy working. And besides, I don’t see what’s so funny about throwing a dead fish around.”

  While Patrick cleared the dinner dishes, I made a loud announcement. “Everyone sit! Get ready for a surprise dessert!” Then I went to the cupboard where my mom kept her special things. I had to stand on a chair and on my tiptoes to reach what I was looking for—the set of delicate crystal bowls, a wedding present for my parents, way back when. We hadn’t used them since Dad moved out.

  One by one, I took out four bowls from the darkest corner of the cupboard and lined them on the kitchen counter. Then I took Moose’s brown paper bag and carefully divided up the Little Field berries.

  “Ta-da,” I called, walking to the table with a bowl in each hand.

  “Ta-da,” I said again as I set the two bowls on the table, one in front of Claude and one in front of Mom. Claude clapped his hands. He knew all about these berries. Mom and Patrick just stared.

  I spun around, back to the kitchen, and grabbed the other two bowls. “For you,” I said to Patrick, setting down the bowl but avoiding his eyes. Claude had waited, just like a grown-up little man. The beauty of the bowls must have brought out something in him; some sort of signal that this moment was special.

  Patrick looked from the bowl to my face, then back to the bowl. He picked up a berry and examined it closely. “Where did you get these, Missy?”

  “Where do you think? Moose gave them to me after I was done sorting.”

  Patrick shook his head. “These aren’t regular berries. There are no berries like this in our field.”

  “Of course there are. Where else would Moose have gotten them?” I glanced over at Mom and saw that she was too busy staring at the crystal bowls to notice the berries, or our conversation.

  “I hope you don’t mind I got out the bowls, Mom. I should have asked first.”

  She looked up at me, shaking her head. Her eyes filled with tears.

  “Oh, Mom. I’m sorry–”

  “No, Missy,” she said quickly. “It’s okay. It’s good. They are such beautiful bowls and they belong to our family. We should eat out of them. We should always remember to enjoy beautiful things together.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  Mom cleared her throat and smiled. She picked up her first berry. When she popped it in her mouth, her eyes opened wide. “My goodness,” she said. “I’ve never tasted a blueberry like this before.”

  Patrick continued to stare at me. “So, Moose gave them to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But do you know where he got them?”

  “I told you. His field. Where else?”

  “Right,” he said. And at that moment, I had exactly what I’d wanted.

  Later, while Mom was giving Claude his bath, Patrick and I stood at the sink, hand washing the crystal bowls. “So how was the lake?” I asked him.

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Did you go off the diving board?”

  “A few times.”

  “Swim out to the dock?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who drove you home?”

  “Shauna’s mom.” He handed me a clean bowl to dry. When I turned it in my hand, it sparkled like it was filled with a hundred little lights. “Missy,” he said quietly, “where do you go during the day?”

  “What?” My hand froze on the bowl.

  “When you say you’re working in the sorting garage, where are you really?”

  “I’m in the sorting garage.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  “But how do you know?” I carefully set the dry bowl on the counter and waited for the next one. My heart was beating a warning signal. Da-bump. Da-bump.

  Patrick said, “Shauna went up there today and you weren’t there.”

  “Maybe I was going to the bathroom.”

  “She waited.”

  “What?”

  “She watched and waited. She said you weren’t there. She waited for an hour.”

  I tried to make sense of what he was telling me. “You’re spying on me?”

  “No. We just need to find out about something.”

  “What?” I demanded. “What do you need to find out?”

  “Well, we all thought since you were up in the sorting garage you might have heard something useful.”

  “What do you mean by we all?”

  “What?”

  “You said we all.”

  “Missy, listen. There are some things you should know about Moose.” He handed me another bowl. “Come out with me tomorrow. Come out and meet the other kids. You’ll like them. I know you will.”

  “But what do they want from Moose?”

  “They just want to find something. A long time ago Moose stole something from Lyle. But Lyle can’t come onto his field to get it back.”

  “How do you know all this? How do you know anything about Lyle?”

  “Some of the kids, their parents worked in the fields years ago. They remember what happened. They knew Lyle really well. So we went over there. To meet him.”

  “You crossed over? To the other side of the hedge?”

  “We did, Missy. I told you we found an opening. Close your mouth.”

  I couldn’t close my mouth. It felt permanently open in a shocked way.

  “Missy, really. Lyle’s a nice guy. He uses picking machines but said we could even pick for him, if we wanted. He said he’d pay us more than Moose.”

  “What do you know about anything?”

  “I know that Moose is a thief. And a liar. I didn’t know for sure until you brought those berries home. Now I know. I know what people are saying is true. About the Little Field.”

  My stomach twisted. He wasn’t supposed to know. No one was supposed to know anything about it. “Well,” I said slowly. “I don’t know anything. Like I said. Moose just handed them to me in a brown paper sack. Are you done washing that yet?”

  Patrick looked down at the sudsy water. “But Shauna said—”

  “Who are you going to believe? Me or Shauna?” I grabbed the crystal bowl from him and rubbed it dry. “Are we done?”

  He looked in the water. “Yeah,” he said. “But, Missy—”

  “I’m going to bed,” I said.

  Later, I would think about that night and how it started something in motion. Or maybe it was all in motion anyway, and I just turned it up a notch. I do know this: If I’d thought it through, all the way to the very end, I wouldn’t have done it. I would have kept those Little Field berries a secret, like I knew I was supposed to.<
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  CHAPTER 33

  IT WAS THE DAY THAT WOULD END UP BEING NOT ONLY the hottest of the summer, but also the hottest in the entire recorded history of our town. Maybe it was the heat that did it, made everyone do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. I’ve heard that heat can do that to people. I know I didn’t sleep much the night before the hottest day, and part of it was the twisting around in sweaty sheets. The other part, though, was that my head was spinning from what Patrick had told me. He had gone to the other side of the hedge! He had met Lyle! He was calling Moose a thief! And a liar!

  With too many thoughts and very little sleep, I didn’t feel so good when I walked into the kitchen that next morning. Patrick was there already, slapping meat onto a slice of bread.

  “Good morning,” I said fake brightly. I pushed the button on Mom’s Mr. Coffee and looked around for something else to do so I wouldn’t have to look at him.

  “Okay, Missy. I mean it. Tell me where you got those berries.”

  “I told you already.”

  “You lied. I know you’re not in the sorting garage when you say you are. I know you came home with berries that look like they’re from another planet. I know there’s a field of berries that Moose is hiding from Lyle. So tell the truth.”

  “It sounds like you know everything already. Why bother asking me?”

  He clenched his jaw. “Missy—”

  Right then Claude stomped into the kitchen with a doll stuffed underneath his pajama top. “My baby!” he shouted, patting the bump.

  “You have a baby, Mr. Claudio?” I turned all my attention on him. I bent down and poked his tummy. He laughed.

  Patrick chopped my sandwich in half, the wrong way. “You are such a liar.” He stuffed it into a sandwich bag. “Do you want an apple or a banana?”

  “Apple.” I stayed where I was, on the floor with Claude, to hide my face. I tickled him. I made a funny blowing noise on his cheek. He giggled and squirmed, karate chopped my head, and bit my thumb.

  “No biting, Claude,” I said sternly, while trying not to laugh at his strange mix of person and animal.