The Blackberry
By Judith Cullen
© 2014
Continuing . . .
Weeks went by and
Kuja never did come home. Kiley and Cara slowly acclimated to the new
environment and started to get to know their neighbors in the little cul de
sac.
There was Sheila and
Tom across the way, with their sons Roger and Dan.
There was Mrs. Wiley
who lived alone in a little cottage-like house with arbors full of flowering
plants and azalea bushes the size of industrial packing crates. She had painted her front door bright purple,
and had three cats. Sprinkles had
already made a loud and somewhat unfriendly foray into the territory of the
Wiley cats.
Then there was Dave
and Marcy Hall, her next door neighbors.
Marcy was the adult
leader of Kiley’s troop. Cara had been
envious beyond belief at Marcy’s garden.
It was an artistic arrangement of raised flower beds and winding hedges,
all filled with beautiful plants with useful purposes. Marcy was happy to enumerate the uses of each
plant, it’s healing and dietary properties, and how to prepare it – whether
tincture, salve, or solution. Cara was
overwhelmed, and could not help but be in awe of Marcy.
“How did you learn
all this? Was it from the Girl Scouts.”
Marcy laughed. “Actually I learned some of it from the
Scouts. My Mother was an executive, and
worked for GSA for many years. It has
always been a part of my life, which is why I get so much joy from volunteering
for it now.”
Cara knew that the
Hall’s children were both in college, and that Dave worked as a Botanist for
the U.S. Geological Survey in a local office.
“I learned a whole
lot from Dave’s Mom, though. She’s the
real deal – a tribal healer and herbalist. She’s just amazing. She knows so much more than I can ever
know. But I keep on learning!”
“You already know a
whole lot more than I do, and I think it’s pretty amazing,” Cara had replied.
Next came Cara and
Kiley’s little one story fixer-upper, and then an empty lot on that end of the
circle. The lot was overgrown with weeds and unending canes of wild blackberries
which kept trying to insinuate themselves into Cara’s yard.
It was odd, she
thought. All their properties were
backed by a wooded strip of land which lead down to a nearby stream – all very
wild. But most of the wild plants seemed
to forsake the empty lot. It was
dominated by the blackberry. In the
summer, Cara thought, it would be glorious – a riot of sun-ripened, juicy
berries that would taste like eternal summer. She could imagine preserves,
pies, compotes and the satisfaction of making it all herself, with a little
help from Kiley. It had been years since
she had done any canning or preserving and this might be an opportunity to
enjoy that again. Right now, though, the
blackberries were just an annoyance.
Sprinkles the cat
would not leave the blackberries alone.
Cara kept finding her, time and again, hissing and spitting at the
fence, just beyond the reach of the plant.
Finally, Cara had enough.
She dropped off
Kiley at swimming lessons one Saturday morning and returned home determined to
do something about the blackberries. She
dressed herself in jeans, t-shirt, boots, and a long sleeved flannel shirt that
was one of the things of Frank’s that she had kept: it was warm and
comfortable. She put on her thickest gardening
gloves and, armed with the loppers and a rake, she approached the fence to do
battle.
Twenty minutes later
she was making progress but it was loud progress. For every twining cane she cut off, the vine
seemed to jump at her and cling. Every
time she cut one she had to detach it from clothes before she could add it to
the mounting pile of chopped brambles near her yard waste bin. The first few times she had just dealt with
it, but it was starting to get on her nerves.
Why did they have to grab her every single time? Why couldn’t they just go down with dignity
and accept defeat? She cut off a
particularly thick cane, reaching over the fence as far as she could to grab as
much of it as she could. When she
stepped away she found it had wrapped around her left leg. By the time she’d pulled it loose it itself
stuck to the back of her shirt, and in reaching around, it grabbed her arm and
viscously scratched it. Cara swore loud
and long, and began slashing at the cane with the handle of her loppers, while
the blackberry scratched at her even more.
She was spinning around in circles, screaming when Marcy ran into the
yard and pulled the long clipping from around Cara.
“I heard
screaming. It was frightening. Are you all right?”
Cara grabbed the
hated vine with her loppers from were Marcy had discarded it on the ground, and
dragged it over to the waste pile. Then
she started violently beating the pile with the rake, grumbling angrily. Marcy came rushing to her rescue.
“Now, now! Look, you’ve made your point. You’ve
won. Why don’t you just put the rake
down and come over to my place for something soothing.”
Marcy pulled Cara
away from the pile of wilting brambles and turned her to look at the
fence. Cara had made a great deal of
progress. You could actually see the
fence now and very few thorny fingers of blackberry toyed with the top edge of
it. Cara realized that she had been
growling at the plant just like the cat had been. Something about that plant drew out the
aggression in then both. She drew in a
long breath and let it out slowly.
“Yes, I think maybe
you are right. A cup of perspective
sounds like a lovely thing just now.”
She smiled at Marcy, hoping to convince her that the scary person with
the murderous gardening tools had fled.
“And some tea might be nice too.”
“Then I have just
the thing for you. We can see to your
arms as well. By the looks of your shirt
sleeves, and that scratch on your cheek, the blackberry put up a good fight.”
Cara ran a finger
across her cheek and looked at the smear of blood on the tips of them. She started a low growl again.
“That is my
cue. Time for tea!” Marcy pulled her away before things got out
of hand again.
***
“Wow! It got you but
good!”
They were sitting at
Marcy’s kitchen table sipping tea, as Marcy dabbed an herbal salve on Cara’s
sliced up skin.
Cara shook her head,
“You know, I just don’t understand it. I
have dealt with this before. I’ve
cleaned up brambles and weeds of all sorts.
But this one is different. It’s
like it is possessed and has a mind of its own.”
“Perhaps it does” a
deep voice from the hall door interjected.
“Hello my Love. Welcome home.” Marcy smiled as she and Dave
wrapped each other in a hug and she kissed his nose.
“Hi Dave,” Cara
waved from the table.
“Dave has been out
finishing a field survey for work,” Marcy said, “Come and see the war wounds
our new neighbor has earned doing battle with nature.”
Dave helped himself
to some tea and took a seat the table, and took a longtime studying Cara’s
scratches.
The silence was
uncomfortable and Cara broke it. “You said “perhaps it does.’ What did you mean by that?”
“It is a legend of
my people, the Snohomish. It is among
our oldest tribal stories. Way back when
the land was still young, the Blackberry was a tree – tall and vertical like
other trees. Its branches reached long
and high, its thorns were sharp, and it bore sweet fruit. The tree lived at peace with all creatures
and its succulent fruit made it popular among animals and birds. Yet, one day something changed in Blackberry’s
heart, though none ever knew why. It
grew envious and covetous. It began to
reach out and grasp any creature that came within its reach, trapping animals
with its thorns and holding them aloft until they were dead. This violence fed the Blackberry and it grew
higher and mightier, the earth beneath it made all the richer by the bones of
its victims.
“It did not take
long for the animals to complain that the Blackberry had exchanged the ways of
peace for an evil path. There was no
hesitation. The Great Wolf seized a heavy
club and climbed the tallest tree nearest Blackberry. From the limbs of the mighty fir it began to
beat the evil tree down, and down, and down.
With each impact the Blackberry was smashed to pieces until every branch
had shattered and fallen to the ground.
“From that day to
this, the Blackberry has been a bush and never again a tree. The judgment of the High Ones was to render
the Blackberry weak, robbing it of its mighty status, so it could never again
misuse its power and harm the creatures of the wild.”
There was a pause of
silence again. Then Cara blurted out, pointing towards the empty lot, “That’s no
weakling bush! Can we get the Great Wolf back here? Does he have a cell we can call, or an email
address?”
Dave laughed, “That
out there is not the blackberry of our legends, Cara. You’ll find that the native blackberry is
still a bush, still duly humbled as the high ones. This plant is not native to these
shores. It is an invasive tourist brought
by Europeans for berry production. It is
known as the Himalayan blackberry.
The European settlers didn’t
know quite what they had, and they lost control of Rubus armeniacus.”
“The whole genus has
power issues, I think,” Cara muttered.
. . . to be Continued.
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