A Chapter From My Last Book, The Berry Pickers

I always enjoyed this character, Ruthie. The impoverished grandmother of James, the main character in the story.

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I’m dozing in the hot sun, laying out in the dirt, my head against the big white rock. Quite drunk, I recall Jimmy’s Ruthie.

I sit up for a moment, I’m dizzy, my mouth feels like a cotton ball. I put my head back on the rock and close my eyes and let my thoughts drift back in time to my grandmother. I loved her, Jimmy B.’s wife, Ruthie. The last time I came back here was 1995 for her funeral. It was a quiet and small service. You don’t have many friends left when you get to ninety-five. I remember a young girl who called herself Margot, beautiful, flaming red hair. She was the one who wrote me that my grandmother had passed. I recall Ruthie’s poverty over everything else. She wore it almost as a badge of honor. When I think of her now, all these years past, that’s the word that comes to mind. Poverty, that word defined her.

As an aging, spoiled baby-boomer, I find the entire story of her life fascinating and foreign and unforgivable. A sadness permeated Ruthie’s existence. A sadness as much a part of her as her sweat and her breath.

Her shack was up on this ridge, one of the last to still stand. The community of berry pickers all scattered in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Mechanization called the end of this life.

Ruthie stayed alone and sad, though not bitter. I recall her vaguely as a woman quite proud and excited about “That new electricity, that come up this way about 1948...” Proudly proclaiming, “I signed right up fer it. Didn’t have but a dime to my name, but I know’d this electric was the wave of the future and I had to get me some!”

That newfangled electricity and her electric coffee pot and the little TV my father bought her, were sources of almost childlike wonder to her. The shack situated up high on the ridge, with a clear line-of-sight south, she’d receive two, maybe four channels if the night air was clear.

Ruthie would sit alone in her ‘front parlor,’ a cramped, dirty little room with only one book on the table, ‘the Good Book,’ some old newspapers and watch that ‘New York City TV.’

Now, in my drunken stupor, I recall the last time I was with her, the last time I saw her alive. I close my eyes and remember her, her voice and the color of the sky and the air that day, and how she smelled…

The old woman pressed the palms of both her hands flat along her lap, trying to straighten the creases in her old, faded blue and white cotton housedress. Then she looked back up at me and words poured from her. “Late July was a slow time, life kind of moved like mud up in them hills. A sweaty-hot month, and nobody wanted to get goin’ too fast to go pickin’ in that hot sun.

“Jimmy was fresh home from the big war. He went and got hisself lost in France for a year or two, we figured he was dead. I suppose I was happy as most when we seen him walkin’ his tired ass up that narrow dirt path, in between them blueberry bushes, smilin’ and a wavin’ like a hero.

“I know’d looking at him that day he’d changed. A lot of boys went to that war and come home different, sad, kind of broke down. Not Jimmy, he walked like a man with a big plan and a bigger dick.

“I didn’t think much of Jimmy or his dick at the time. I turned and went back up on the hill to pick them goddamn berries. I used to like to pick up by the dead lake, Lake Maratanza, they called it. That water was crystal clear all the way to the bottom. Nothin’ lived in it. No fish, no weeds, nothin’. There’s probably some science reason. We all just said it was a magic lake. When it got too hot pickin’, I’d strip off my clothes and jump in. The ice-cold water damn near give ya’ a heart attack. Way up high, on top of the mountain, not even a tree for a mile or so. We called it the ‘sky lake.’ I’d lay on my back and feel like I was floatin’ in the sky.

“I’ll not forget that day, I just climbed up out of the water and up on a big white rock. Jimmy come up behind, while I was naked, and raped me. He said it was my fault, fer bein’ naked and pretty. Later on, after I’d run home, my daddy took Jimmy’s side, saying I shouldn’t a been naked, I said he shouldn’t a raped me. Jimmy said he’d been lonesome, what with the war and all. That’s how it was back in them days. Most men is cowards to the subject of rape, and I supposed Jimmy and my daddy was like most men.

“Anyways, up on that white rock I turned on around, still naked, as Jimmy was zippin’ up his pants. I kicked him full on in the nuts. Kicked him so damn hard he flew’d off the rock like a big-ass, goddamn bird, and a holdin’ his nuts with one hand and the other a flappin’ in the air, he went down into the cold water. The bastard near drowned, doubled over from the gut pain. I watched him struggle as I put my work dress back on.

“He didn’t drown, I’m neither here ner there on that fact, I reckon. Jimmy climbed out of the water by hisself, he never come after me again unless I was alright with it.

“Sometimes I think I married him, so he’d keep that swingin’ dick from rapin’ any other girls up there on the ridge.

“So, anyhow, that’s how we come to be married and whatnot. After he come‘d home from the big war.”

Ruthie could relate the details of being raped on a rock in the sun and then switch right back to the marvels of electricity and running water in the same breath. Nothing seemed to shock or phase this old woman. Her life was, it seemed to me, a running list of facts. No editorialization, or comment offered or expected, just facts...

Running water was yet another marvel of the modern age and another gift of the new electricity, and something not to be taken for granted or wasted. This was evidenced by her scent as her weekly bath drew near. Even in her later years, well into her eighties, Ruthie preferred the magical waters of Lake Maritanza.

Jimmy B. ‘ran’d off,’ to pursue his fame and fortune, and left her ruined in poverty. The children had grown and left the ridge, as did all the others.

Jimmy was destined to become famous as a radio, then TV preacher. As television found its way into American households, Jimmy found a way to capitalize on it. Spreading ‘The Word.’ Making himself famous, until that night when Ruthie said Jimmy caught up to ‘hisself.’

Alone on the same mountain where her story began, the old woman is now buried. Her grave is up amongst the berry shrubs on the north side of the mountain range.

When cell phone towers were coming to the Gunks, in the early Twenty-First Century, her small grave and the tiny cemetery of the other ghosts of this abandoned and forgotten hole in time was partially plowed under and lost.

Before he died my old man wrote out a crude map, using local landmarks like ‘Indian Rock,’ and the mud path out to the Verkeederkill for references to the spot where she’s buried.

I’m enjoying this respite from the crazy old bastard’s stories. I’m half asleep and considering his claim to be my grandfather. Just as he was falling asleep, I challenged him, again, that would make him nearly one-hundred and twenty years old, he said, “Ain’t never had no time fer no math, ‘er science, ‘er what not, I’m a man of God boy. Stop being such a asshole.”

I suppose I should walk out there and find the graves. Maybe some headstones stick up and out of the mud. Maybe I’ll find the stone of my actual grandfather and Ruthie, my grandmother and prove this old man to be a liar and insane.

I think I was about ten, maybe eleven years old, the last time I saw Ruthie alive, Grandma Ruthie, she was quite old. Again, I close my eyes for a moment and remember…

We walked home along the muddy path from the lakeside and up the steep hill, past the brambles and blackberry and blueberry bushes. Her arms full of cattail rushes she’d cut down by the mucky shoreline, at the edge of the dead lake nearest her shack. She stumbled a little, tripping over the thick weeds and broken reeds. Her shoes were covered in the black mud, right up to the top, and it smelled powerful bad. Pausing at the top of the hill looking back at the lake she commented softly, “Pretty ain’t it, what the way the blue sky and clouds is reflected in the water, and the sun goin’ down behind them rich people’s houses on them far hills. The surface is so calm today it’s like a mirror. August is so beautiful and hot, beautiful if it wasn’t for these goddamn bugs.”

She turned and continued on the path past a large field of corn. Its sweet grassy smell filling our nostrils. “My arms are full, boy. Duck your head in there and grab us a half-dozen ears. Be fast and quiet. The farmer will fill your ass with buckshot soon as look at you.”

Arriving at her shack, painted mostly white—whitewashed, at least. It was small and two of the front widows are cracked, and missing pieces of glass, and filled in with cardboard from cereal boxes. Two big weeping willows frame the tiny house. An old Ford pickup, hood open, the driver’s side door missing, rusts in what must have at one time been a driveway.

“Go shuck that corn, boy, and we’ll eat it for dinner. I’ll tend to these cattails, and I’ll boil up some water.”

After the corn had cooked, she brought it to the table on a single plate. The six ears piled high in a pyramid.

“All I got to offer you is butter and salt. There ain’t much else here. I hope that will do ya’.”

I sat down next to her. For the first time, I realized how old she’d grown. The deep wrinkles in her face, the skin of her hands almost opaque. Her hair, still mostly brown, but thinned to a few strands. The same old cotton dress and apron I swear she’s worn all my life. A blue pattern on a white background. A stained old apron that tied in the back, once white, now a greasy gray.

She reached out both her hands and opened the one window not covered in Kellogg’s Corn Flake cardboard, allowing in the hot night air. Taking her three ears and placing them on a dirty towel, smelling of mildew. Swatting away a fly as she tries to spread the butter and shake the salt, she motions with her nose, tossing her head back for me to eat.

“Ain’t been much here since that fuckin’ old man took off. Him and his preachin.’ I fish some in the streams and ponds, what ain’t dead, like the sky lake, I hunt some, with that old .12 gauge, I steal some. I get by. Last week I found a new broom down back of that farmers house, on his porch. It’s mine now. Things ain’t too bad. I’m a thief, but I’m better than that Jimmy B Tester, I’ll tell you that.

“I kept company with that burned face man, from down in that hollow, the little cluster of huts before you come into the town with them five or six old shacks in a circle. He’s been dead a long time, now. I reckoned after all that it was safer fer me to keep to myself alone. I had me one good girl friend, she run’ed the general store and the burned face man. They was my only friends.

One day late September 1947,after that second big war was done, best I can recall, it was still warm up here on the ridge. I was walkin’ home, and over in that field right near the lake where I loved to pick, I look out and I see me the most beautiful blonde mare you ever see’d. I walked up to her, all quiet and gentle. I touched her, and she didn’t bolt ‘ner even move. She stood there and let me rub them short hairs on her snout between her eyes. I’d loved to ride as a girl, and after all I’d been through with Jimmy B. and the life up here on the ridge and the damn berries and all them goddamn kids, I think’d to myself, ‘why God hisself has gone and blessed me and give me a horse of my own.’ It was the happiest I’d ever been fer a long, long time.

“I run’ed home. My heart was light as I recall it ever bein’. I was out in my shed lookin’ fer my old horses’ bit and reins, when that Kippy boy, from down in the town, he come runnin’ up the road, all out of breath and kickin’ up dust as he ran.

“Kippy, the town-boy, he was yellin’ fer me to come quick. They’d found a dead body a floatin’ in the lake!

“I run’ed as fast as my feet would carry me down the path. It wasn’t a hot day, ner a cold one, it was just a day and the runnin’ felt ok, I suppose.”

The old woman reached over and touched my young hand, “I ain’t sure if I shouldn’t be sayin’ all this to one so young, boy...”

I looked back at her eagerly and said, “It’s alright, grandma, please!”

She squeezed my hand tight and continued. “I was breathless by the time I caught Kippy. He was pantin’ hard and pointin’ with one hand. Sure as I’m sittin’ here they was a body floatin’ face down in the water. Some of the men from the ridge was there before us, and one big son-of-a-bitch, we called him Jeffery, he took’ed off his shoes and walked all careful like on the rocks leadin’ down to the shore, like some pussy with soft feet, and swum out to fetch the body. He dragged him back into the shore and as I walked down, it was no mistakin’ the face was that of my friend, the burned faced man.

“We all stood there, wonderin’ if-in we ought to send someone down the hill to fetch the sheriff. The rule was, up here in these hills, ya’ keep the hill business to yerself, then Jeffery started to yellin’, ‘He’s been shot! He’s a been shot!!’ And Kippy started to run off down the dirt path and at that point I reckoned the decision had been made. I tried not to show no grief, as we me and Jimmy was still married—bullshit—that man a be fuckin’ anything what’s breathin’ but me and the burned face man was a secret.

“I was pretty sad, there, about my friend and all, but I reckoned the best thing fer me to do was get out of there, before anyone asked a lot of questions. I started to walk toward my shack, and I remembered the mare and my heart felt lighter! I run’ed back to my shed, grabbed my old bit and reins and headed out to the field. When I got there, I saw Jimmy B. and some of them roughnecks from town with a rope round the neck of my horse.

“I started to cry, and I run’ed toward Jimmy and I was screamin’ ‘that’s my horse, you son-of-a-bitch, Jimmy B.’ He hauled off a slapped me one, that’s why I’m missing this front tooth.” She said, pointing to her mouth, forcing a fake smile. “I see you watching me eat corn and smilin', boy, wonderin’ if the missin’ tooth makes me miss a row of kernels,” and her smile turned sincere, but then quickly vanished to sadness... “Then Jimmy says, ‘yer lucky I plugged your boyfriend there and not you too. We’re takin’ the horse fer butcherin’, you’ll thank me come February, when yer ass is starvin’ fer meat.”

Even as a young boy, I’d developed a deep sense of the sadness that was this woman. Today, so many years since that day, the last time I saw her alive, I can’t think of her and not feel that sadness. Her poverty and sadness a force. Like wind, and sunlight, and cold, Ruthie’s sadness was a force, not manufactured for pity, not a result of her condition, it was a force she was born to. A role she was born to carry. The antithesis of the warm and loving and nurturing earth-mother, Ruthie was the mother of a sadness, a darkness, most of us would be terrified to touch. I was convinced, even at a very young age, Ruthie was placed here in this world, much like a sponge, to absorb some of the sadness, to spare the rest of us.

At the old table, she again took my hand. “In one day, boy, that one September day, that goddamn Jimmy B. Tester, he killed my friend and stole’d my horse and that day wasn’t that much worst than any other day, far as I can tell. A heart can only take so much break, I reckon, so much sad, ‘fore it never comes back. I know’d a long time Jimmy was a broke man, but the day he took my beautiful blond mare ta’ eat and killed the burned faced man, I felt the cold inside him. His bones is froze solid, like he got ice in his belly. That day was the first day I ever felt scared a’ him, even worse than the rape when I was a girl. That night I started sleepin’ with the shotgun in my bed, hopin’ fer the day to come to kill that son of a bitch.”

A small tear formed in Ruthie’s left eye. “The best of the lot of kids I pushed out was James, yer daddy. He wasn’t no Jimmy Junior, Jimmy wanted to name a son after hisself, but I wanted no part of that. The boy was James. He was a good boy, tried to do right by everyone up here on the ridge. Tried to make it a good life fer all. When things started ta go bad, he helped Jimmy organize us all in a union, but Jimmy took all the credit fer that a course. But my boy, James, he was the best of the lot. Sometimes I think I must’ve got lit up on ‘shine and done fucked some other boy, cause James, he was not nothin’ of Jimmy B.” And she smiled a mischievous smile. 

About that time I heard my father’s ’65 Ford Fairlane pulling in front of the old woman’s shack. He came in, asked if I’d been much of a bother. The old woman said no. We spent the day collecting cattail rushes and stealing corn. She bent down and kissed my cheek. Her breath was stale and sour and smelled like the inside of a coffee pot, but we’d had no coffee. She leaned down and whispered in my ear, “One day, boy, when you get yer self all grow’ed up, I want you to promise me you’ll tell the world the story of that evil bastard. Promise me you will, boy.”

I looked her in the eye, a little scared, and nodded my head.

I got in the car, sitting down in the expansive bench seat, my eyes barely over the dashboard. I looked over at my dad as we drove off. I played with the long, silver knobs on the AM radio and listened to the static between stations for a moment. Then I asked him why he never talks of his father. My dad doesn’t answer, he simply stares off down the road.

That was the last time I saw my grandma alive.