Next Row Over
My great-aunt Florence picked huckleberries in the same high meadows in the southern Washington Cascades every August from 1949 until the summer she was ninety-one. She’d drive up a forest road in a green pickup with a coffee can tied to her belt on a length of twine, and she’d pick from dawn until the sun got hot, and come down with forty pounds. She made jam, pies, syrup. She gave most of it away. She said there’s nothing in the world like a wild huckleberry and she was right.
She started taking me when I was nine. She taught me how to find the good bushes, low and dark on the edges of the old burns, and how to comb the berries off with your fingers so they roll into the can and the leaves stay on the branch. And she taught me two rules, on the first morning, in the truck, before we got out.
“If you hear somebody picking in the next row over,” she said, “and you look and there’s no one there, you keep picking. If they call your name, you don’t answer. Not even if it’s me.”
“Why would you call my name?”
“It won’t be me,” she said. “That’s the point.” She handed me my can. “And never eat out of a bucket you didn’t fill. Not mine, not anybody’s. You eat what you pick. Got it?”
I said I got it. I was nine; I’d have agreed to anything to get out of the truck.
The sound of huckleberry picking is very particular. It’s the sound I associate with every August of my childhood: a soft rattle in the bushes, and then the plink, plink, plink of berries dropping into an empty can, which turns to a duller plunk as the can fills. On a quiet morning in a high meadow you can hear it from a long way off. You always know where everyone is. Aunt Flo, two rows down. My cousin Royce, up the slope by the snag. Plink, plink.
The first time I heard it from the next row over and there was nobody there, I was eleven.
I was alone at the edge of the meadow, by the trees, where the bushes were thick and waist-high. Aunt Flo and Royce were down the slope; I could hear them both, a long way off. And right beside me, on the other side of the bush I was picking, I heard the rattle and the plink, plink of someone else.
I looked over. Nobody. The bush on the other side was untouched, loaded with berries, glossy and dark. Nobody had picked it.
Plink.
I kept picking. My hands were shaking and I dropped a lot of berries. I kept my eyes on my can. The plinking went on beside me, steady, exactly matching my pace. When I moved down the row, it moved. When I stopped to shake out a cramp in my hand, it stopped.
And then, very softly, from right on the other side of the bush, close enough to touch, Aunt Flo’s voice said, “Junebug. Come look at this one.”
That was her name for me. June’s my middle name. Nobody else ever called me that.
I didn’t answer. I could see Aunt Flo, from where I stood, three hundred feet down the slope in her straw hat, with her back to me, picking. I kept picking. After a while the plinking stopped. When I looked up, the bush on the other side was bare. Every berry gone. Stripped clean, all the leaves still on.
I told her in the truck. She listened, and nodded, and drove. After a while she said, “You did right.”
I asked her what it was.
“Somebody who likes huckleberries,” she said. “Same as us.”
I asked her what happens if you answer.
She looked at the road for a long time. Then she said, “Ask Royce sometime.”
Royce answered when he was fourteen. I’d been there, though I didn’t know it at the time; I was twelve, picking at the other end of the meadow. He told me about it much later, when we were both in our thirties, at Aunt Flo’s ninetieth birthday party, in her backyard in Vancouver, with a can of beer in his hand and his eyes on the fence.
He’d heard the picking in the next row, and somebody had called his name in his mother’s voice. His mother hadn’t come up that year. She was in the hospital in Portland. He was fourteen and scared about her and he wasn’t thinking. He said, “Mom?”
He said the picking stopped. And then something on the other side of the bush stood up.
He wouldn’t tell me what it looked like. He said it was tall, and that it was all one color, the dusty blue-black of a ripe huckleberry, and that it was smiling, and that its mouth and its hands were stained purple. He said it held out a coffee can to him over the top of the bush. It was full to the brim with berries, more than you could pick in a day. Perfect ones, no stems, no leaves.
“I didn’t take it,” Royce said. “I almost did. I swear to God I almost did. They smelled so good.” He drank. “Aunt Flo came up the row with her can and she knocked it out of its hands. Berries everywhere. She didn’t say a word to it. She grabbed my arm and walked me down to the truck. When I looked back, it was on its knees in the row, picking them up off the ground. One at a time.”
I asked him what he thought would have happened if he’d eaten them.
He looked at me like he’d been waiting twenty years for someone to ask.
“I think I’d still be up there,” he said. “Picking. Next row over from somebody.”
Aunt Flo died last winter, at ninety-three. In August I drove up the forest road by myself, in her green pickup, which she left to me. I tied a coffee can to my belt with twine. I wanted to pick her meadow one more time.
It was a perfect morning, cold and clear, the meadow red-gold with frost on the leaves, the berries dark and fat. I picked for two hours. It was very quiet. I didn’t hear anyone. I cried a little, picking, because I could hear the sound of my own can, plink, plink, and it was the sound of every August of my life, and there was only one.
Then there were two.
It was right beside me, on the other side of the bush. The rattle. The plink. Exactly matching my pace. I kept picking. I kept my eyes on my can. I knew. I was ready.
And then, very softly, through the leaves, close enough to touch, my aunt said, “Junebug.”
She said, “I’ve got a can for you, honey. I picked it for you. Come look.”
I’m fifty-two. I’m not a child. I knew exactly what it was. I stood in the row with my eyes shut and my hands full of berries and I didn’t answer.
But I’ll tell you the truth. It sounded like her. Not like an imitation. Like her. It had the little rasp she got in the last ten years, and the way she said honey, and it was so warm, it was so glad I’d come up, and she sounded well. She sounded young.
“I picked them all for you,” she said. “Every one. Just like you like. No stems.”
I didn’t answer.
After a long time the plinking moved off. I opened my eyes and the bush across from me was bare. I walked back to the truck without looking anywhere but at my boots. I put the can in the truck bed. I sat in the cab and cried until I could drive.
When I got home, I went to empty my can into the big bowl on the counter, to sort them, the way she taught me.
My can was full to the brim. More berries than I’d picked. Perfect ones. No stems, no leaves. And they were warm, though it had been a cold morning, as though they’d been held in somebody’s hands for a long time.
I picked them. I’m almost sure I picked them. I filled my own can. I remember the sound of it.
That’s the problem with her second rule. Never eat from a bucket you didn’t fill. It assumes you can always tell.
They’ve been in a bowl on my counter for three weeks. They should have gone soft by now. They haven’t. They smell like August, and like her kitchen, and like being nine years old in a high meadow with my whole life in front of me.
I’ve had one. Just one, to see. It was the best thing I’ve ever tasted.
I’ve been thinking about the meadow ever since. I’ve been thinking about it all day, every day. The green truck’s keys are on the hook by the door. I keep looking at them.