LOW-HANGING CHARITY

Love In The Time Of Blueberries

There is no greater glory than to cry for love

by author

In the 1980s, my grandfather ran blueberry-raking crews in Maine, and I was on the crews, a boy-shaped cork adrift on waves of blue romance.

Minus the romance.

In the first twenty minutes of berry work, you sweat out and steam out every last drop of the romance.

The berries we picked were “lowbush,” meaning sadistically low. To reach them, you had to take your body, that beautiful vertical line, and bend it into a question mark, which is against God’s will.

And “picked” is the wrong word. You don’t pick blueberries, you rake them into buckets with a blueberry rake: a handheld contrivance with nine-inch tines on the bottom and a handle on top.

by author

So, you’re out there breaking the back and sweating the sweat, filling up bucket after bucket while the sun’s raw light fills the meat bucket that is your body, fermenting there into a hardy vintage of melanoma.

I was five years old when I got into the business. The sun’s thumb mashed the top of my head hard enough to plant me beside my empty five-gallon abyss.

I plucked one berry, dropped it into the bucket, and watched the berry fall. I had time to blink and it still hadn’t hit the bottom. I had time to do the math:

This bucket — eater of worlds — will never be filled.

I am standing next to five gallons of eternity.

Finally, the berry struck, drumming the bottom of the bucket, making the exact same sound as a stone on the lid of my coffin.

I dropped my rake. The sunlight slamming me from above and the bucket’s emptiness slamming me from below squeezed out the last drop of my hope.

I cried.