How To Tell Time

There’s an old creek that used to be a river that used to run by the old Miller farmhouse. Except the old creek dried up, too, so there used to be an old creek that used to be et cetera. Every Sunday afternoon, after Momma’s done making me pick up after myself, why don’t y’all ever pick up after yourself, she lets me run out to the used-to-be-creek and pick blackberries with Kenneth. Kenneth’s momma makes him go to church on Sundays and also Wednesdays and also sometimes Fridays in the night and so I don’t complain much when Momma yells about me picking up after myself ‘cause at least I don’t have to listen to Reverend Paul talk about nothing like my soul or angels or such.

There’s never anything to do at the used-to-be until Kenneth gets here. This one time I started without him, poking my hand straight through the bramble and coming back with five or six or ten too-juicy blackberries. I just couldn’t wait. Momma was having a bedroom day, Momma just needs a bedroom day and I’ll be right as rain right as rain, and we’d run out of cereal two days before. So I ate them blackberries right up quick and sucked the juice from in between my fingers and from around my wrist and kept sucking until I realized that I cut my hand on the prickles and was just licking up blood. It’s the same color when you’re hungry. I didn’t know that until that one time. When Kenneth finally came running he warned me that if it happened again I might turn into a vampire ‘cause that’s how it works if you drink enough blood. So I don’t start picking until I see his brown head swinging my way no matter how loud or long my stomach’s been yelling.

It doesn’t take too long today until Kenneth bobs his body over to me and to the blackberries. The kids at school call him a scarecrow ‘cause his head’s too big for his body and all his middle pieces, his elbows, his knees, they’re all too knobbly for his end pieces. His momma says they’re just teasing, kids, they always teasing, but she tells us not to ever ever go near Black Ridge field anyway, just in case. I don’t tease Kenneth about the scarecrow of his body and he don’t tease me about the flat brown of mine. It works out good ‘cause I’m not the best at smiling about it like Kenneth. Kenneth always has a loose smile ready to aim your way.

I start to pick at the berries slow, slow. They’re so plump that when I pull it off the vine, its black-red guts already seep out into the empty creek bed and roll around all quiet, like they can fill back up the whole river if they’re patient enough. I hold out a wet hand toward Kenneth.

“Here.”

He takes it gingerly and inspects it before crushing it flat into his tongue. This one time he found a bug crawling right along on his blackberry and Kenneth does not like bugs, not at all. Juice slides down his chin as he grins down at me all deranged and berry blood-ish. He hands me a tight-petaled little flower.

“Here. Momma said you can come over for dinner if you want.”

I turn my face toward the dirt, swirl a damp finger through a patch of green summer leaves. I didn’t like how Kenneth’s momma looked at me when I had dinner with them. Like I was a too-small too-dirty thing. Uppity, my momma said, her lips pursed like sour candy. But I didn’t really know what that meant and even though he’d know what it meant I couldn’t ask Kenneth ‘cause it was his momma my momma said it about. I thought it had something to do with how Kenneth’s daddy worked down at the mines and my daddy went and left us all behind. That makes people look at you funny, like you’re something sad on the shelf at a toy store where all the other toys been snatched up or sold out or got their own matching daddy toys, I don’t know.

Momma promised a blackberry pie if I came back with enough berries today. If I ate just one slice today, I could probably make sure Willa had two and some for breakfast tomorrow, too, if there wasn’t any cereal left.

“Okay,” I finally say, shrugging another berry under my tongue and clutching at my flower. If I ate dinner at Kenneth’s then Willa could have pie for lunch tomorrow, too. Willa didn’t much like blackberries, cause she was too small, I think, and they are too sour. But they grow right here in the used-to-be creek and Momma didn’t have to go to any store to make us a pie. Unless we ran out of flour but that never happened.

Kenneth sinks his knees right into the muck and helps me pick blackberries in the sun. His face is screwed up tight as he yanks yanks yanks each one off the bush. Every time he pulls at one, red slithers down his arm. If he notices he doesn’t care and usually Kenneth cares ‘cause his momma yells at him for staining his clothes, says she won’t let him come pick berries with me if he’s gonna ruin all his nice shirts like that. But the juice must’ve ran all the way down to his pits by now and Kenneth hasn’t even wiped any of it away once.

I squish some leaves between my palms. Watch the berry guts run into the creek, run into Kenneth, run wherever it can get away without us stopping it. “Kenneth, aren’t you gonna tell me one of your stories?”

He sighs out a big, sweet-mouthed breeze. “I don’t got no stories today.” His hands crush a blackberry and scrub its insides on a leaf.

I frown. “You always got stories.”

“Well not today I don’t.” Crush. Crush. Crush.

Sometimes Kenneth always had a loose smile but sometimes that always smile got all tangled up in his teeth and his eyebrows and his whole brown face trampled in on itself and he went on all angry at me or at his momma or at Reverend Paul or at whoever deserved it that day.

I stuff seven blackberries into my mouth and chew my way into a smile. Shove the sight of me at Kenneth and give my best crazy open-mouthed grin. He squints one eye at me.

“You’re crazy, Trisha.” But his loose smile is back and I choke on blackberries and laughter when he tries to copy me. I toss the bundle of blackberries I collected into the small nearby bucket and do a blackberry jig, feet wild, hands wild, mouth leaking like a faucet.

Kenneth laughs so hard he cries and runs away to take a piss behind a nearby tree. When he comes back his eyes are wet and his face is smeared red.

“One time there was this dog…”

I slump down, eager for his story. Kenneth always saved the best stories for Sunday afternoons at the used-to-be creek.

“And this dog was the best dog a boy could have.”

“Or girl?”

“Yeah sure. The best dog anybody could have.” He looks out toward Black Ridge field. “But this dog was real curious, always getting into stuff—”

“Is he gonna solve a mystery?” I ask, gripping at the grass.

Kenneth looks down at me reproachfully. “This is a big kid story.” I mime zipping my lips. “Thank you. No, this dog was always tearing up the house or getting into shoes or food or trouble. But he couldn’t help it. He was just always wanting to know what the world was about.”

Kenneth’s voice cracks and something in my insides stand real still, crouch down small behind my guts. I think of Zeke, how Kenneth’s momma’s yelled out about that damn dog when it pulled at the nice tablecloth with the pretty edges at Sunday dinner one time.

“Well one day it saw a real pretty girl dog and wanted to bring her some flowers. Woo her. The dog gets it in his dumb dog head to go tear up a garden. She’ll get all the flowers in the whole dog’s world that way.”

I look over at the dainty yellow petals Kenneth brought me. Red juice beads up on my palms. I wipe it away on my pants but they still feel sweaty.

“When the evil witch came home—”

“Who’s the evil witch?” I whisper.

“There’s an evil witch, didn’t I say? Well there is. It was her garden. Her magic marigolds. Yellow and orange and red all littered about, all destroyed. And well that was it. She put a curse on that dog. Told her evil wizard, there’s an evil wizard, too, she told him right there to zap that dog with a sleeping spell and that was it. That was it right there. That girl dog got a pile of marigolds and the last thing that curious dog saw was a pile of dirt where flowers used to be.”

I don’t know if Kenneth meant to make my face crumple like it did but I couldn’t help it. His story didn’t feel like a big kid story ‘cause there were witches and wizards and magic spells but it did feel like a big kid story ‘cause now Zeke was dead and Kenneth was eating blackberries and telling me so.

“I hate the evil witch and wizard.” I throw his ugly death flower into the used-to-be.

Kenneth’s face darkens but he shrugs. Looks over at me and shrugs again. His cheeks are wet and his loose smile is all wrapped up in the other parts of his face again. I don’t feel much like dancing anymore or like I ever even wanted a daddy in the first place. I couldn’t go over to Kenneth’s house tonight, not even if we had no food, not even if Momma cried all day in bed, I just couldn’t.

We pick at more blackberries in silence. Kenneth sticks his whole fist in his mouth.

“What in the world are you doing?”

A wet fist emerges. “I prickled my finger. Gonna turn into a vampire.”

I eye him dubiously. He didn’t need his whole fist for that but his watery brown eyes said yes yes he did need his whole fist shoving all the blood back in his body where it was safe and warm and still running.

“If you turn into a vampire what am I gonna do?”

Kenneth shrugs again. “I’ll turn you into one, too. Then we can go wherever we want, far away from here forever.”

“I gotta bring Willa. She’s only just a toddler.”

“I don’t think toddlers can be vampires,” Kenneth frowns.

I shove a blackberry near his mouth and he chomps down at it right from my fingers. I laugh.

“Well then we’ll have to wait a few months. Or maybe one year. We should learn how to tell time perfectly before staying alive forever.”

Kenneth rolls his eyes. “I know how to tell time. Look.” He points at the mucky used-to-be creek. “That means it’s summer.”

He points at a rotted log. “When that shadow hits the way bottom of that root that means we gotta go home.”

He points at me. “And I know it’s Sunday ‘cause you’re here and I’m here and we’re eating blackberries.”

It wasn’t what I meant but I nod at him anyway and hold my palm out to the bramble bush. I grab a fistful of blackberries and wince as a sharp edge nicks my skin.

“Okay, ready?”

Kenneth reaches into the blackberry bucket and holds a full fist up. “Ready.”

We stare right at each other, unblinking.

Turn our lips up loose and sad.

Open wide.

And eat.