Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing (17 page)

“Danged if you didn't catch me, Eddie. How'd you ever solve the case?”

“You made one fatal error, Mr. Crabtree. You left your pipe at the scene of the crime!”

“Drat! Ah was wonderin' what happened to thet pipe!”

An hour later, Eddie and I were lugging the flower bucket through Mrs. Swisher's gate.

“I just wished we could have handcuffed the criminal,” Eddie said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Too bad the cuffs would only fit around his thumbs.”

The sheriff was leaning against a post on Mrs. Swisher's front porch, while she pointed with great agitation at the spot where the flower bucket had been. The sheriff was just stifling a yawn as we walked up.

“Good heavens!” Mrs. Swisher yelped at us. “You found my flower bucket! That is so wonderful, boys!” While she went to get her purse to give us a reward, a whole nickel as it turned out, Eddie told the sheriff how he'd solved the case.

“Mighty good work, son,” the sheriff said. “So your big clue was that corncob pipe. Very interesting. Maybe I should start eating those Yum-Yums myself. Now that crime is starting to pick up around here, I probably will. I'm mighty thankful for the help on this case, Eddie. I may have to call on you again.”

Well, that compliment inflated Eddie's head so much I expected his feet to float right up off the floor. Eddie didn't even mention my help in solving the crime, but, after all, he had done the hard part—he had eaten the Yum-Yums.

“Do you think Mr. Crabtree will get the chair, Sheriff?” Eddie asked.

“The chair? Oh, yeah, no doubt about it.”

Word spread like lightning among the neighbors about how Eddie Muldoon had solved his first case with his crime-solving kit, and everybody seemed pleased that Eddie hadn't eaten all those Yum-Yums for nothing.

A couple days later my mother drove me up to Rancid's shack. “I heard you were supposed to get the chair,” she told him. “So I brought it up.” She pulled the chair out of the trunk and handed it to the old woodsman.

“Why, thank you kindly, missus,” he said. “Ah can use another chair, jist in case Ah ever gets company.”

“Oh, I didn't know you had a chair already.”

“Yup. Mrs. Muldoon brought me one. Thet makes three Ah got now.”

“Three?”

“Yes, ma'am, it was the durndest thang—pardon maw
language—but the very day Eddie solved my crime, the sheriff pulls in the yard and gives me one of the chairs from the jail. Said he'd heard from Eddie Ah was supposed to get the chair, and he just wanted to make sure Ah did.”

This is the time when I most enjoy huckleberry picking— three feet of snow outside and the wind howling out of the north. It is much more enjoyable to sit by a warm fire and think about picking huckleberries than actually to pick huckleberries. August is the usual time for huckleberry picking, except then there is the real possibility that you might actually have to go out and pick huckleberries.

There's much talk around here about picking huckleberries. A reporter stopped by Gert's Gas 'N' Grub a while back and tried to interview some of the men sitting around over lunch about a recent shooting. But, as the reporter said in her story, all the men wanted to talk about was picking huckleberries. Talking about picking huckleberries is a local art form, at least among the male population. It's a test of a man's woodsmanship to find huckleberries even
in a bad year for huckleberries. That is why there is almost never a good year for huckleberries, because then even city folk could find them.

“Bad year for huckleberries,” Ben says.

“Not if you know where to find them,” Joe says. “Got three gallon last Sunday.”

“Got four gallon myself,” Ben says. “All of 'em big as marbles.”

“Mine was the size of grapes,” Joe says. “Never seen such big huckleberries. The bushes was so loaded with berries they laid over on the ground.”

Joe's statement is true. He really never has seen such big huckleberries, including those he just got. It is also important to note that both Ben and Joe say they “got” huckleberries. They are careful not to say that they
picked
the huckleberries. Their wives picked the huckleberries and that is how they
got
them. Ben and Joe spent their time scouting around over the mountain in search of the mythical patch with berries the size of grapes. That is how picking huckleberries is done and has been done for thousands of years. It's the natural order of things.

Over the years, my wife, Bun, and I have developed a system for picking huckleberries. I drive her up to a fairly decent patch in the mountains, and she sits right down and begins to pick, the berries playing a little tune as they
plink-plink-plunk
into the bottom of her bucket. It takes a great deal of patience and about three million huckleberries to fill a gallon bucket.

“These berries are great,” Bun says. “Why don't you pick right here?”

“You think these berries are great?” I say. “There's got to be better berries than these around. I'll do a little scouting.”

So I go off scouting. What I'm looking for is something on the order of a huckleberry patch I discovered when I was sixteen years old and camped out near the falls on
Pack River. The berries were as big as grapes, and so thick the bushes lay over on the ground. I picked my hat full in five minutes. Once you've known a patch like that, you can never settle for anything less. And that is why I scout while Bun picks. By the time I've covered a mountainside and returned, Bun has her bucket full.

“Find it?” Bun asks. She knows about the legendary patch, the unattainable patch.

“Nope,” I say. Then we drive home. Bun's berries are enough for a pie and some huckleberry pancakes, maybe even some huckleberry muffins. I usually wish we had got more huckleberries, but that would have meant … I can't bring myself to say it.

That, at least, was our huckleberry picking for many years. Then Dave Russell showed me his huckleberry picker and allowed as how it enabled him to pick about eighteen gallons in an hour.

“Really?” I said.

“Well, a gallon anyway.”

A gallon is a lot of huckleberries to pick in an hour. The best I'd done at that point was a gallon in ten years. But I'd done a lot of scouting, and that's not something to be scoffed at. If I could pick a gallon in an hour, well then, I might get serious about picking. I studied Dave's picker very carefully and then went home and built one of my own, pretty much along the same lines, although mine was a bit more cumbersome and somewhat less attractive. It consisted of a wooden box with nails studded straight out along the mouth of the thing—“The Thing,” that's what Bun called it—but the idea was basically the same as Dave's. The principle of the picker was right, if not the details. The principle was that the nails would serve as little claws to rake the berries off the bush and into the box. It didn't work worth a darn.

Dave had got me interested in huckleberry pickers,
though, and a little while later I was poking around a local farm store and came across a commercial huckleberry picker. I took it home and showed it to Bun, who was much relieved she'd never have to be seen with “The Thing” anymore. We immediately rushed off to the mountains to pick huckleberries. The new picker was a marvel, and in scarcely more than four hours I'd picked a whole half gallon of huckleberries—and leaves and twigs and assorted insects. It made me proud.

A short while later we went huckleberry picking with my brother-in-law, Dolph, and his wife, Norma, Bun's sister. Dolph fancies himself a pretty fast picker (a city person for many years now, he's forgotten about scouting), but I beat him hands down with my little commercial picker.

“I don't think that picker's so hot,” he said. “I can build a better picker than that.”

“Can't,” I said.

“Can,” he said. “And I will. That thing of yours is just a tin can with wires on it.”

Dolph happens to own a manufacturing company and has at his disposal huge metal chompers and benders and welders, and all kinds of computers to run the machines. So he put about a million dollars' worth of machinery to work creating his little huckleberry picker, probably the world's most expensive picker up to that time. He probably could have bought a Yugo for what that picker cost, but he was proud of it and couldn't wait to try it out. He was certain it would beat my picker. In the meantime I had bought a new picker, a fancier model, and this baby was fast! It left Dolph's picker in the dust.

“I'm not finished yet!” Dolph cried. He returned to his plant and set computers to humming and huge machines to slicing and welding and stamping, and out of this thundering and clanking roar popped another little huckleberry
picker. This one was made out of some rare and expensive metal alloy, lithuanianium, I think, but I'm not sure. This baby was high tech. It looked as if it should be on the space shuttle, possibly to take over the controls in an emergency.

Sensing that Dolph's pickers were gaining on my pickers, I invested in several more commercial pickers.

Dolph's latest picker had me worried, but nevertheless I went off into the mountains with him, determined to push one of my new pickers to the utmost. I needn't have worried. His picker pulled ahead by a couple of gallons, but then it went crazy and began spitting berries over the top of his head. My picker soon closed the gap and then went on to win.

“Stop with all the huckleberries!” Bun shouted as I walked in the door. “We'll have to build on an addition just for huckleberries.”

“There's more in the truck,” I said.

I didn't hear from Dolph for several weeks, but I've known him for forty years and more, and I was certain he hadn't given up. And he hadn't.

The next time he showed up at my house, Dolph was pleased as punch. “Come out and look at my new picker,” he said.

“Why didn't you bring it in?”

“Can't,” he said. “The components are too big.”

Components. This was serious. Huckleberry pickers aren't supposed to have components.

We went out and Dolph took the picker from the trunk of his car. This thing was weird. If I'd found it on the floor in my house, I'd have pushed it out the door with a stick. It looked like something you could be arrested for in some states.

“What is it?”

“It's the world's first electric huckleberry picker, that's what!”

“Electric? How are you going to power it up in the mountains?”

Dolph pointed to a portable generator in his trunk. It was surrounded by a huge coil of extension cord.

“The generator and extension cord are just for testing it out,” he explained. “I still have to figure out a portable power source.”

“I bet,” I said. “Let's go down to Gert's Gas 'N' Grub and have a cup of coffee, and you can explain how it works.”

We got a booth at Gert's and ordered coffee and donuts, donuts having a low potential for ptomaine poisoning. Dolph started explaining his latest invention.

“What I do is flip the
on
switch and these little steel fingers begin to vibrate, and they very gently vibrate the berries off the bush and into the container, without disturbing the leaves on the bush.”

“Ha!” I said. “This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! Vibrate the berries off the bush! You got to be kidding!”

“You're just jealous,” Dolph said. “This baby is going to leave those little store-bought jobs of yours at the gate.”

“Oh, yeah!” I said. “No way!”

Just then Gert walked over and served our coffee and donuts. “What are you boys gettin' so worked up about?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said. “We were just comparing our pickers.”

“I can't imagine that would be such a big deal,” Gert said.

“Oh, it's just that we're having this little competition,” I said, “to see which one is the fastest.”

“Doesn't sound like something I'd want to risk money on,” Gert said.

“Well, if you did,” Dolph said, “you'd want to bet on mine. It's electric.”

“An electric one,” Gert said.

“Yeah, it's really pretty fantastic,” Dolph said.

“I'll bet it is,” Gert said.

“You want to see it?” Dolph said.

“Not really,” Gert said.

“It vibrates,” I said.

“I imagine so,” Gert said. “Yours do anything special, Pat?”

“Naw,” I said. “It's just a regular old-fashion one.”

“Sometimes old-fashion is best,” Gert said. “At least you don't have to worry about getting electrocuted.”

About then Charlie Higgens walked in, and Gert called out to him. “Hey, Charlie, you ever hear of an electric huckleberry picker? This guy over here claims to have one.”

For some reason I felt mildly disappointed, I suppose because Dolph's picker was getting all the attention.

Bun put her foot down and wouldn't allow me to pick any more huckleberries, so Dolph and Norma went without me. I didn't get to see the electric huckleberry picker field-tested, and I'm really sorry I didn't. According to Norma, who phoned later, the electric picker worked surprisingly well—for a while. But then the vibrations began to increase in intensity, going faster and faster, and the
off
switch failed to work, and the picker began to rattle and whine, and sparks were flying out of it, so Dolph couldn't put it down for fear of starting a forest fire, and then pieces of his picker began flying every which way, and finally—Norma was almost in tears at this point in her report—the picker disintegrated right in Dolph's hands, even as he was screaming at Norma, “P-p-p-p-p-pull th-th-th-th-th-the pl-pl-pl-pl-plug!”

The last I heard, Dolph was finally able to sleep nights without vibrating out of bed. Next summer, though, I
know he will be back with an even more fantastic picker, maybe one equipped with its own atomic power plant. I doubt I'll go along to see that one tested either.