Picking Blueberries (2 page)

"She's right with it,"
Dick heard Father say. Then Father noticed him, and got off the
floor, and Betsy smiled at him, and her eyes were wet.

She moved into the
house the next day. She brought a big cooking pot with a heavy
bottom and a rocking chair. The pot went into the kitchen and the
rocking chair, into the living room.

She babysat a lot
after that, and she sang so much that Dick was really happy that he
could have her so much to herself.

Then she worked in the
restaurant during the day, so that the play sessions she had had,
were over.

Then she started
looking really sad.

Then Dick noticed that
she was getting fat. He liked what it did to her breasts, which he
almost couldn't stop looking at as the tops of them swelled over
that dress she always wore. He thought of it as her Princess
Dress.

But then Dick could
see her face puffing out, and her waist looked tight.

He didn't know why. He
asked her, but she said it was nothing. He kept asking, and one day
she said, when they were in the living room, trying to talk over
the sound of Mother in her room, "Why doesn't he do something?"

But she was saying it
to herself, and not to Dick, as he opened his mouth to ask who
what, and she had gotten up already to go to the kitchen to cut
herself some bread.

When Betsy picked up
Jane now, she made noises just like Mother made to Jane. "Ee ee ee,
oo oo ooh" she said.

The sleeves of her
Princess dress were dirty.

One day she told Dick
a story about rats. He had nightmares that night. He wanted to go
to someone, and went up to her room in the attic. He had never been
there. It was dirty. She was sleeping on a couch, wearing some sort
of dirty kimono that was half open. In a panic, he left.

The next day was
Saturday. At breakfast, Father answered the phone. "Sure he can,"
he said. "He's not doing anything."

In a few minutes, the
van beeped, and Father said to Dick, "That's your ride!"

Dick got into the van
to find a bunch of girls from The Community already in it. Mr. Fox
was driving, with Miss Prescott beside him. She turned around.
"We're going to pick blueberries for my pies."

He sat between two
girls on one of the side benches. In the middle, the floor was
piled with fruit boxes and baskets with handles.

They went out a long
way into the country. Dick couldn't remember being out in the
country before. He looked out the back window, as the sides were
metal. Cows got left behind, red barns, crows, a field of corn. A
U-Pick Peaches sign. He wanted to smell, but couldn't smell
anything except someone's perfume that reminded him of dust.

Still, this was
fun.

They turned off a
bumpy road onto a dirt one, drove a few seconds more, and then
stopped. Mr. Fox slid open the door. Miss Prescott appeared behind
Mr. Fox, and putting her head on his shoulder, spoke into the van.
"Take out the picking shit."

Dick and the others
pulled out the boxes and baskets, and each took a basket. Miss
Prescott directed them all to the blueberries. They grew as an
orchard, on a short forest of trees.

"Everyone pick. No
eating. Go!" she said. And then she sat down under a tree with Mr.
Fox.

Dick and the girls
could reach and pick everything, and they picked conscientiously
till every tree was empty. Dick didn't eat more than a handful, as
it was so much fun seeing the fruit boxes fill.

Some of the girls were
putting the last boxes into the van when Miss Prescott yelled,
"Into the van!"

They were already
putting the boxes into the van, and so one of the girls stood still
with her box, looking back with a hurt look at Miss Prescott. But
Miss Prescott was looking away, so she sighed, stacked the last box
inside, and had just jumped out again when Mr. Fox yelled, "Get in
the fucking back!" and he ran to the driver's side door, then must
have remembered that the back couldn't close from the inside.

And then Dick heard
the sound, and looked behind him.

A pickup truck slewed
off the dirt drive at the far end of the orchard. A man stuck his
head out of his window as he drove. "Thos'r my trees!"

Mr. Fox shoved Dick's
backside into the van and ran to the driver's door. He jumped in
and the van jerked away, sliced hard left and bumped once, so hard
that blueberries jumped, and pattered on the floor. Dick and the
other girls fell off their benches, hitting the wooden fruit boxes
with legs and arms. One gashed girl began to cry, but Dick climbed
back onto the seat, hanging onto some metal. He looked out, but the
pickup man didn't chase.

In the flash before
the van spurted out of the orchard, Dick saw the man standing
beside his pickup in the middle of the blueberry trees.

The field of corn got
left behind also. And the crows, red barns, and cows on the drive
back to unload at the café.

Oh, yeah. By this
time, Dick and Jane had a new babysitter, but not a live-in one.
Dick remembered her as the one who liked playing records at full
blast, rocking hard and fast in the rocking chair.

Anna Tambour
's
stories have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies,
including
The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy
,
Interfictions
and
Asimov's SF
. Her short fiction is
collected in
Monterra's Deliciosa & Other Tales &
(described by Rich Horton as "a revelation and a delight") and her
first novel is
Spotted Lily
(described as "a wicked,
thoroughly unpredictable romp" by
Locus
). Both are available
from
infinity plus
ebooks
.

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