This Life Is in Your Hands_ One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone - Melissa Coleman [65]
“Shush!” I’d say before she cried out. “They’ll catch us.”
There were so many berries in the hollow, you could sit in one place and eat handfuls without having to move. The best ones were nearly as big as Helen’s big-bush berries. We pulled them off in handfuls and blew away the leaves before depositing the berries in our mouths all at once, the juice dribbling from the corners of our lips.
“Boom!” went the seagull gun, and we jumped. “Shush,” I said to Heidi. A car crawled by on the gravel road, raising puffs of dust, and we hunkered low in case it was the dreaded Herrick. From that position, I realized we could eat the berries right off the bushes with our mouths, like the bear in Blueberries for Sal. It was much easier that way, and more filling.
When we got home Mama took one look at us and said, “You’ve been into the blueberries.”
“Nunh-uh.”
“Well, your faces are covered in blue. You better wash before Papa sees.”
“I have a tummy ache.” The sick feeling would remain, I knew from previous experiences, until I pooped all the blueberries out like bear scat.
“You ate too many blueberries with spray on them,” Mama said.
“Nunh-uh.”
“Well, whatever you do, just don’t tell your papa.”
“Did you hear they accidentally dug up some graves above the gravel pit?” our neighbor Jean asked Mama when delivering the bread and sticky buns she baked to sell at the farm stand. “Yeah, just across from our driveway.” Heidi and I slunk nearby like foxes around the chicken coop, our mouths watering at the thought of cinnamon and honey on our tongues, hoping a stray bun might find its way into our dirty little hands.
“The guys were digging gravel when they struck something buried in the earth up there,” Jean said. “Turned out to be a coffin.”
Mama made the appropriate facial expression in reply.
“There’s that one big gravestone for the Blake family over there. When I went over to check it out, I noticed the husband and wife died the same day in 1894. That’s kind of odd, I thought to myself. Then I looked at the dates for all the kids. November 23, November 29, November 30, all in 1863. Six of them died within three weeks of each other. That poor mother, I thought. So I asked in town if anyone knew what happened. You know what Louise Grindle said?”
Jean paused and pushed up her glasses, working her audience. Mama was busy arranging vegetables, part listening, but something about this story made her stop and look up.
“Diphtheria, she told me,” Jean said. “It used to wipe out whole towns. Very contagious before people knew about those things. Often brought back from sea. A terrible way to die—they get this thick membrane in their throats and can’t breathe. They choke to death.”
“Oh,” Mama said, looking as if she felt a constriction in her own throat.
“Yeah, well, I was thinking to myself,” Jean added in a casual tone, “what with those graves opened up, who knows if there might be old diphtheria germs floating around in the air. I’m taking Becca in to get her DPT shots. Diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus. I know you and Eliot don’t want to get shots for your kids, but you might want to think twice about it.”
“I’ll mention it to him,” Mama said.
“Well,” Jean said, smiling a bit, “you can pretty well assume the Blakes were eating a good pioneer diet. Some of these diseases don’t care how healthy you are.”
“Hmmm,” Mama said, not liking to be bossed into anything.
“Scram,” Mama added, when she saw Heidi’s and my fingers on the glass lid of the wood breadbox containing the cinnamon buns. “Hands off!”
Mama and Papa didn’t like the idea of inoculating their children with vaccinations that might contain harmful chemicals, but the local school, where I would be attending kindergarten, required it. After some debate, Mama took me in to the doctor’s office to get the necessary shots. The first time we went, I got to push the button for the elevator, an entirely novel