Harvest

The sun had not even begun to crest the horizon when I heard the clang of pans in the kitchen, followed by the crack and sizzle of eggs frying. Grandma Nellie did not even try to be quiet. She wasn’t too used to having others in the house. Besides, it wouldn’t be long before MaNet, her daughter and my grandmother, would creep into the bedroom to gently rouse my brother and me. The smell of bread toasting to a near black wafted like lit charcoal across the bed linens and was quickly replaced by the sweet, salty scent of bologna hitting the cast iron.

“Too early,” my brother mumbled from beside me.

He was only four-years-old and still a child, Evan was, but I was a full-on six and three quarters and had started in at real school already so I was practically an adult. The idea of spending an entire month of the summer on the hundred and fifty acre farm my great grandmother had owned for decades excited me, even if it meant stirring before the roosters. We were only three days in, but I’d already begun to wake up as soon as I heard footsteps going into the kitchen. I’d be well awake by the time the screen door slammed and then, a few minutes later, slammed again to welcome Grandma Nellie back from the chicken coop, fresh eggs cupped in the nest of her apron.

“You boys eat up now,” Grandma Nellie said as my brother sloshed the orange juice around in his glass and forked lazily at the spread on his plate with an exaggerated yawn. “Y’alls got a busy day ahead.”

I spooned a dollop of butter onto my near-black toast. It was lumpy and a little runny and not nearly as yellow as the stuff my mother brought home from the store, but I had to try it. I’d churned it myself the day before. Well, mostly. MaNet had helped, but she said I’d done the hard part.

Everything had a different taste to it on the farm, like it was fuller somehow—like it was the real deal and not whatever was on the shelves at the Piggly Wiggly—though Grandma Nellie assured us that most of what came in from the fields, except for what we kept for ourselves, went off on trucks to stock a lot of the grocery stores from that little southwest corner of Georgia all the way up through Alabama. Still, the milk had a tang to it that was magical compared to the woody, paper taste added by those ripped open cartons from the school cafeteria. The spinach was rich and earthy and powerful. And the corn! The corn was sweeter than the hard caramels MaNet kept in her pocketbook and would sneak over to us when Papa Cullen wasn’t looking.

After breakfast, my brother and I donned our overalls and sat on the outdoor picnic table while Papa Cullen slathered our arms and shoulders in a thick, white layer of sunscreen. Grandma Nellie went off to the shed to retrieve a five gallon plastic bucket for me and a smaller, metal one for my brother. While the creamy, beachy scent of coconut overwhelmed us, MaNet danced into the chicken coop, swaying to and fro to mesmerize the hens. I watched as she swooped downward just as quickly as a fox, grabbing the neck of a chicken and lifting her above her head and down with a snap: swift and sudden and final. Evan didn’t notice though; Papa Cullen was busy putting a triangle of lotion on his nose. But later, he’d see the feathers and still ask for more at dinner.

“Green beans and okra, boys. Just like I showed ya yesterday,” Grandma Nellie directed as she placed the buckets at our feet. “Fill ‘em as much as you can carry. And stay away from the peanuts. They ain’t ready.”

Evan was already several yards away, sprinting toward the field, his little metal bucket clanking against his knee as he ran. MaNet plopped the dead hen on the table, and I swear I saw her leg twitch a little from the thud.

“Keep an eye on your brother,” she told me. “You gotta be the big boy and look after him while you’re out there. We’ll be right here if you need us.”

I showed Evan again how Grandma Nellie had spread her fingers wide, tracing the length between the tip of her thumb and the top of her index finger to measure out the length of a good, ripened pod of okra. I showed him where to pinch it off of the plant. They were fuzzy in our hands and smelled like fresh cut grass each time we plucked one. Evan pursed his lips and balanced one under his nose, laughing at the way his new mustache tickled.

We worked diligently, filling our buckets until we had to use two hands to lift them off the dark, tilled soil.

“Woohoo!”

We heard the call slink over us and lugged our buckets back to the house, proud of our haul.

The picnic table was set with paper plates nestled into straw holders, two cans of Coke, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts still on cut diagonally. MaNet said she’d jarred the strawberries in the jelly herself last summer and, if we wanted to learn, she could teach us how before the month was out. We devoured our lunch eagerly—hungry after a hard day’s work in the fields—while Grandma Nellie hummed a song and hung out her laundry on the nearby line. The peanut butter was thick and crunchy, and its earthy kick made the tartness of the strawberries pucker the insides of our mouths. Even the white bread tasted exotic as it met with the green scent of the okra as MaNet dumped it from our buckets into a bowl. The whole of it, as simple as it was, as many times as we’d had it, was fresh and hearty and light and realer than anything we’d ever eaten before.

“Now go get me them green beans,” MaNet said as she collected our plates, and off we ran.

It was easier to tell when the green beans were ready, and they snapped easily from the vines. Evan offered up a contest to see who could fill their bucket the fastest.

“Not fair,” I said. “Mine is way bigger than yours.”

“So,” he countered. “You got bigger hands.”

“That don’t make a difference.”

“You can reach higher.”

He crossed his arms and scrunched up his nose until I shrugged and agreed to his terms. I dove into the vines. I had twice as much work to fill my bucket, and there was no way I was going to let him win.

The sky was pale blue and flaming yellow when I finally looked up. The heat was beginning to burn small little suns on my chest from the brass clasps in my overalls, but I didn’t care. My bucket was nearly half full already. I beamed as I turned to show it to my brother.

He wasn’t there.

“Evan?” I whispered at the top of my lungs. I couldn’t risk them hearing me at the house. They couldn’t know I’d lost him. “Evan?” He was my responsibility in these fields. I had to prove that I was a big boy now. "Evan!"

There was no answer. I squinted down the long row, but was only met with more dirt and green. I pushed through to the next aisle, but I was alone. I tried to jump, but I couldn’t see over the trellises, and besides, a few yards away were the taller stalks of corn, already taller than Evan or me or even Papa Cullen.

Then I heard it, off in the other direction, a shriek followed by a low, muffled sob.

I ran, cutting through the rows of vegetables without the care Grandma Nellie had insisted we give to avoid breaking the plants. My feet compacted and tilled the soil as I went, pushing it down and then flinging it back with each swift lift of my toe. I couldn’t stop until I reached the cry.

I broke through the last row near the edge of the property and froze. There was my brother, crumpled against the earth. Tears streamed down his cheeks. His hands and lips and chin were stained a deep crimson. It was nearly black in the shade of the vines which clung to the fence lining the property.

He wailed louder when he saw me.

“It cut me,” he said, holding out his finger where a radiant drop of blood clung to the tip. It was brighter than the other red that covered him and caught against the sun like it wasn't even real. He shrugged, stuck his finger in his mouth to suck the blood away, and then plopped another large blackberry onto his tongue.

I sighed and shook my head the way I’d seen MaNet do and then stepped forward to join him.

The vines along the property were covered in them: big and bulbous and bursting. We laughed as we plucked them off the brambles and popped them into our mouths. The juices flowed out of the corners of our smiles.

“Be careful of the thorns,” Evan warned me.

They tasted like summer, the blackberries did. Rich and sweet and filled up with every ounce of sunshine they could handle. They were tart and they were holy, like the ancient gods of the South had planted them there just for us, to show us what summer was meant to be, how we were meant to consume every last bit of it so that it could last, inside us, forever.

“You boys are gonna ruin your supper,” MaNet said. She was a couple yards away, at the edge of the field, hands on her hips and head moving side to side like she was still dancing in the coop, but there was a sly smile on her lips.

We hadn’t even noticed the sun going home. The sky was streaked with tangerine and persimmon. And the blackberry was just beginning to close in from the Eastern side.

“Y’all get on back up to the house,” she said, then plucked a berry for herself and laughed as she popped it with her tongue.

Evan wiped his hands on his overalls and grinned. And I smiled too.

“Bet I won the contest,” I said.

“Nuh-uh!” Evan cried.

We broke back through the field to our buckets, the wild of summer filling our bellies and making us fly.