Wild Pickings Up the Holler

Paint on our farmhouse screen door chips off in desiccated white blocks against pale brown wood beneath. Fine mesh screen bubbles loosely in the frame. I push and the door swings easily, even though I’m so small. There’s a yawning creak as the spring expands, then a fast-winding screech and multi-layer smacking as the door shuts behind me. I carry an empty water pail by its metal handle and savor the feel of the shifting momentum swinging with my steps. My brother wears a backpack and holds a white-speckled blue stockpot. His hair is impossibly blonde from all the summer sun. Our sister is inside nursing a head wound from an incident in the barn yesterday, so it’s just us two today.

My brother sees me and asks, “You ready?” I nod, but a hornet divebombs him suddenly, and he jumps away, shouting in alarm. I make an ‘oh no’ expression with my face and tell him to run even though he already is. I chase him through the yard and out the wooden gate, which clacks and latches behind us over the sounds of our feet slapping the dirt and gravel road. We’ve ditched the hornet but keep running, giggling and howling, until we shuffle, huffing, and settle into walking. Blank, fluffy clouds slink across a brilliant blue sky as cicadas buzz through the holler.

“Come on,” my brother says, waving his hand for me to follow. He clomps down a grassy trail off the road heading for the big concrete water tank. He’s so much taller than me; grass tickles my face and arms where it barely reaches his waist. “Snake!” He stops to put the stockpot down. “It’s a Black Racer! Hang on…” He chases after it, even though I doubt his logic; but he loses it in the tall grass beyond the tank. “Oh well… It’ll be there for you later,” he says and flashes a sinister smile. I stick my tongue out and blow a raspberry with my thumbs in my ears, fingers waving beside them. He laughs, starts to climb the rebar ladder up the side of the water tank, and tells me to hurry.

At the top, I see he’s already removed the heavy cement cap from the tank. “I wanted to pull it off,” I mewl, my lips already buckled and my head slumped in an instant mope. My brother fishes the blue and white water Thermos from his backpack.

We’d built the tank as a family near the spring by the road the previous summer under the tutelage of my father. His skill for engineering and mechanics was matched by his fitful rages over our misapplications of instructions. Appalachian mugginess, biting flies, and sweat bees didn’t help, either. We’d built that tank ourselves, and now I wanted to heft the lid I could barely lift and know that I’d helped put it there.

“It’s okay, little dude...” he says. “I’ll letchya put it back on, okay?” I nod assenting.

As my brother unscrews the Thermos lid, thick plastic threads move gently against each other. Kneeling, he lowers the jug through the tank opening, and a surge of clear water flomps and whooshes into the container before he pulls it up and reseals the lid. “All yours! Don’t fall in…”

I bend my knees, reach down, wrap my palms beneath the handle, and lift. It’s unwieldy. Everything strains in my little body. I crabwalk the cap over to the rectangular opening and crash-land it in the angled grooves. I’m smiling.

He pats my back and says, “Let’s boogie…” We scale down the tank; my brother grabs the stockpot, and we set back onto the road. We pass a spur to the ‘Danger Cave’— the one where the spelunker died— and I shiver, thinking about being pinned and crushed by a boulder. Up ahead by the wild apple trees, a trail splits a meadow rising to meet the forest. We stop to pick green orbs for my pail and to taste them. My lips pucker and smack and we whoop as we enjoy our sour delights.

We run the meadow path to the abandoned log cabin near the woodline. Hundreds of bright red little wild strawberries grow against the stacked timber. We pluck handfuls and drop them atop the apples, crunching into them as we please. My brother wanders into the thicket where a brook runs, and he hops rocks over the babbling waters. I follow and mimic.

The stream meets the road again at a crumbling hillside. We set everything down to climb the slope, giggling even before we roll. We hike up and tumble down the soft earth repeatedly. Soon enough, my brother dusts himself off, grabs his things, and tells me to keep up.

We cross the road and negotiate a steep woody decline to a limestone cliff. We enter a cave we call The Subway Tunnel. It’s dark for a moment in the middle before opening to a towering waterfall. A sandy island sprouting ferns and flowers rises from the creek below dripping gray stone walls. We linger for hours. Hunting salamanders and newts, we admire their colors and stare into their blinking eyes. We collect crayfish, wonder at their alien strangeness, and enact battles in the blue stockpot. Once one loses a pincher, however, we lose our stomachs and return the crustacean gladiators to their blue waters. We beach ourselves to eat peanut butter sandwiches my brother packed. We gulp water, listen to the delicate falls, and are spellbound by light and sound bouncing off the limestone and greenery. We say very little in this place.

When we’re ready, we grab our things and retake the road. Milk thistle, sunflowers, dandelion bombs, and tall grasses rise in a strip between treads on the truck trail. We collect plump blackberries at the brambles beyond the dirt hillside. Our fingers stain as we top the pail with them, popping dusty tasters as we forage. After, we sing “Yellow Submarine” and kick rocks all the way back to the farmhouse.