M Stevens-David
The Blueberry Pie
By Martha Stevens-David
Jan 30, 2008 - 9:36:37 AM

Eb Walker and his wife Emma had been married for so many years that they'd forgotten exactly when their real anniversary date was and human beings being what they are, this date-forgetting every year, commenced a fight that lasted right through till the next year's anniversary. When any of the neighbors were stupid enough to comment that "marriages are made in heaven," Old Eb would cast a jaundiced eye in their direction, sidle a little closer to them so that Emma wouldn't hear and mutter that in his opinion they were really made in hell!
 
Old Eb and Emma had known each other all their lives and really should never have gotten married if the truth be told. They were as opposite as two people could get and then some. They never agreed on anything important in their lives and need-less-to-say, they never agreed on any of the unimportant things either. It seemed to others that these two came together just to make each other's lives miserable.

Eb had grown-up on the State Road about a mile from where Emma lived in the town of Ashland. They'd gone to school together and when asked if they'd liked each other in grammar school, old Eb would cast an eye in the asker's direction and replied, "No! For good God's sake! If you ask me she was even more mean and ornery then than she is now and that's goin some!"
 
If folks asked old Eb how he'd come to marry Emma in the first place, he'd snort and laugh and then he'd say, "All the other fools had gone off to fight in W.W.Two and I was the only able-bodied man left for miles around." Emma, hearin his reply, would give old Eb a look that would scald what little hair he had left right off the top of his head and add, "I don't know about able-bodied, he ain't never been able-bodied from the first day I met him!"
 
It seems that when Uncle Sam beckoned, Eb had meandered down to the draft board in Bangor but they'd turned him down because of his club foot and being nearly blind in one eye. On real bad days, old Eb used to tell folks that that was another reason why he'd married Emma; he was blind in one eye and couldn't see out of the other!
 
Folks were always laughing about old Eb and Emma's latest domestic altercation. Their fights were the talk of the town and they didn't care if folks knew about them either and the state of their marriage was constant fodder for the local gossip mill. In the early days when their domestic brawls got a little out of hand, folks would hasten to notify the sheriff. But, over the years, after several hundred trips out to their place on the Masardis Road, the sheriff finally told the neighbors not to bother to call anymore unless they saw a body lying in the driveway and even then not to call unless that body hadn't moved for at least twenty-four hours!
 
Old Eb had never really worked at a regular job. He jist didn't have the get-up and go that a woman like Emma wanted in a man but like all wimmen the world over, she just knew that she could change him and like all wimmen since the beginning of time, she couldn't. The more she tried, the more he rebelled.
 
In the early marriage days when Emma thought there was still hope for Eb, she'd make elaborate plans to get him to do what it was that she wanted. But Eb would quickly see what she was doing and he'd do exactly the opposite. If she asked him to take out the trash, he'd give the trash bag a couple of hefty kicks on his way by and say that he had some pressin business in town and he'd be out the door in a flash, leavin the over-flowing trash bag right where it was.
 
Old Eb and Emma weren't bad folks; they were just uncommonly bad for each other. Other folk's marriages had rocky spots too but their marriage didn't just have rough spots, it was war every day. They didn't have to be told by all their neighbors that their marriage was in trouble, as Eb said, "It was a mistake from the get-go. Emma wants to get and I wants to go!"
 
Eb was so busy avoiding Emma and her wants and needs that he didn't ever stop to think how he could have changed the whole situation. He was so afraid that if he gave in to Emma's demands even one time, then he'd be cavin in for the rest of his life. So, he just stuck his chin out and strengthened his resolve not to let her get to him.
 
Old Eb didn't care a dite that his once nice little house was falling to rack and ruin. The only things that he'd fix were the things that Emma hadn't asked him to fix. He didn't care that the carpenter ants were happily munching away on the back sill and he didn't care that rain seeped in around the windows no matter what direction the storm came from and he didn't care that the pine floor had completely rotted away around the toilet in his bathroom. He jist didn't care.
 
Emma, seein that the toilet was just about to fall through the rotten floor, kicked the toilet with her slippered foot, turned to him and said, "Maybe you'll jist change your mind when you find your ass sitting down there on the basement floor!" Eb just shrugged his shoulders and walked away. Eb jist didn't give a damn, about anything.
 
As the years passed with no change from Eb, Emma found it more and more difficult to keep her thoughts to herself. One day, when she was particularly annoyed with Eb's lack of production, Emma eyed him silently for a few moments and then she said, "All my life I've worked like a dog. I've taken care of you, kids and cows and everything else on this farm that's needed takin care of around here and I'll tell you one thing, Eb Walker! When I die and git to heaven or wherever else it is I'm goin, I'm not cleanin and I'm not dustin and I'm not pushin those friggin clouds around either!"
 
When folks have lived together a long time like Eb and Emma, each one knows exactly what to do to set the other's teeth right on edge. With Emma, all it took was wakin up each mornin and findin Eb lyin right next to her with his huge belly liftin up the sheets, his mouth hangin open and snoring up a storm. Jist the very sight of his overweight sleepin body was all it took to set her off. She'd jump out of bed, whip the covers off the bed and head for the washin machine. Eb, feeling a draft on his long underwear, would sit-up, look around and then lie down and go right back to sleep. Emma, seein that that tactic hadn't moved Eb from the bed, commenced to dustin and cleanin all around him, jist like he wasn't there but it didn't bother Eb one dite.
 
Emma, over the years, seein that suggestin didn't work, turned to whinin. When that didn't work, she tried cryin. When that didn't work, she tried demandin. That didn't work so she took to withholdin but that didn't work either. With Eb, nothin worked, especially not Eb. The more Emma worked and struggled, the more Eb laid back and took life easy.
 
Emma, havin read somewhere that the Chinese have a "back door" way of doin things decided to try this approach with Eb. She invited her elderly mother-in-law to lunch one day and commenced to whinin to her about all the problems she was havin with Eb. Her mother-in-law, after havin heard all the stories, shrugged her shoulders and said. "I don't know what you think you can do about it, his father was just the same and I never could change him either! It must be genetic or somethin!"
 
But, there was one thing that Eb did care about and that was his blueberry bushes. He loved everything about them. He'd planted a whole slew of them along his rock wall in the backyard and he fussed over the plants worse than a mother hen with her chicks.
 
At the very first hint of spring, he'd rushed off to the Aroostook Valley Co-Op in Presque Isle to buy all the latest kinds of fertilizer and sprays for his plants. He'd prune, spray, mulch and water and wait with baited breath for the first sign of growth. Upon seein the first tiny, green leaves pushin their way into the wan sunlight, he'd rush into the house and mark on his calendar the first note of the year about the plants and immediately compare it with the previous year's growth. He knew almost to the blueberry how many berries each bush should yield.
 
It was the summer of nineteen sixty-three when everything began to unravel for Old Eb. Spring had been a long time comin to the county and Eb had been more irritated and impatient than he could ever remember being. He was mad at everything, the lateness of spring, the abundance of rain, the rash on his ass and Emma in general. He was pissed-off with everything and everyone!
 
His calendar said that it was April twenty-second and there was still three feet of snow on the ground with more predicted. Eb reached up and flicked on the radio and heard the announcer say that the temperature was goin down around thirty degrees that night and another foot of snow was expected by Friday.
 
Eb, thoroughly disgusted by this unwelcome news, reached up and turned off the radio with a quick flick of his wrist. He shuffled over to the kitchen window that overlooked the backyard, shoved the curtain aside, and stood there staring at the piles of swirling snow as if by glaring at it intently, the mounds of drifting snow would suddenly melt.
 
"It'll be colder than zip's ass by nightfall," he thought to himself. "I don't know why I stayed in this Christly place all these years. If I'd of had two brains to rub together, I should have left this friggin state of Maine. I should have gone to a friggin warmer place like Florida or Connecticut." With that, he let the curtain fall into place, then he walked over to the stove, slid the cover back and shoved in another stick of wood.
 
During the long, cold winter, he'd sent away for all the seed catalogues that he could find and night after night, he could be found sittin as close to the wood stove as was safe in his long woolen underwear, pouring over one catalogue after another. Emma would find the books scattered all over the house. Eb would read them for a while and just drop them where ever he was at that moment. Emma would pick them up and notice that all the pages featuring blueberries would be dog-eared and tattered from use. "He's certainly a fool about blueberries," she'd say to herself.

When she'd first become aware of Eb's blueberry obsession, Emma had asked his mother about it. Her mother-in-law avoided her eyes like a dog that's been caught stealin food for a long moment and then she said. "Well, I kin tell you what little I know about that. When Eb was a little boy, he was pretty much the same way he is now. He was very head-strong and stubborn. If I spanked him or told him not to do somethin, he'd turn right around and do the same thing all over again, there was jist no stoppin him. One day, when he was about eight years old, I sent him and his brother to pick some blueberries down along the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad tracks and they found quite a lot too. When they got home, I made a nice blueberry pie. It was Eb's turn to milk the cow and he didn't do it for one reason or another, so come suppertime, the cow was bawlin and bawlin to be milked and I told Eb that if he didn't go milk her, he wasn't going to git any pie. He looked at me for the longest moment, then he shoved his plate away and said, "I don't care about that damn old cow and I don't want any of your damn blueberry pie either! When I git big, I'm goin to eat blueberry pie any old time I want to! I guess he's still tryin to make-up for that blueberry pie that he missed all those years ago." Emma nodded her head, "That sure makes sense to me. Eb is still really a little boy who hasn't grown up." "Yes, and he never will neither," his mother said.
 
Eb patrolled his blueberry bushes like a Gestapo agent in a concentration camp. He visited his blueberry patch six or seven times a day. He'd walk back and forth along the rock wall, stoppin every now and then to pull an offending weed or pick up a rock that had fallen off the wall. He'd drug his old lawn chair over to the bushes and he's sit there day after day waitin for birds to fly close to his bushes. Then, he'd jump up and wave his arms and yell until the startled birds flew away.
 
Emma, seein this action day after day, would sometimes open the back door and yell to him, "Do you know how stupid you look, jumpin up and down and yellin and wavin your arms around like that? You look jist like an ol big fat bird that's tryin to learn how to fly!" Eb would stare back at her for a few minutes and then gave her his standard reply, "The middle finger salute."
 
Emma would slam the door shut and talk to herself until her blood pressure dropped back around normal. Then she'd plan that when Eb finally died of a heart attack from chasin birds away from his blueberry bushes she was going to write on his tombstone, "Killed by a Blueberry." "Let people friggin figure that one out," she thought to herself. Then, she'd begin cleanin the house with a vengeance and usually the first things that hit the trash can were a bunch of seed catalogues from the Aroostook County Co-op.
 
The smell of baked beans and homemade bread usually drew Eb in out of his blueberry patch for supper. As he was stuffin his face with food, Emma, jist to make conversation, asked him how his blueberry bushes were doing. He looked at her, "You know, what with the late spring and all that rain and now no rain at all, I'll be lucky to git enough berries for one pie!" he said as he swallowed and shoveled in another mouthful of bread and beans. "If I kin keep tha birds, aphids and raccoons away from the friggin bushes, I jist might be able to pick some blueberries in a couple of days. They're already startin to turn blue on one side."
 
Emma looked at Eb for a moment and then she said, "That reminds me, I promised that I'd bake a pie for the church raffle on Wednesday." Eb eyed her silently for a minute and then he said around a mouthful of beans, "Listen girly, girl, I hope you don't think that you're goin to use any of my berries!" "Good God no!" she replied, "I wouldn't want you to have a friggin heart attack! Jist for your information, I'm goin to make an apple pie."
 
Wednesday mornin arrived and after a hurried breakfast, Eb walked out to the rock wall to check on his blueberries. He knelt down so that he could have a closer look and to smell the wonderful aroma of the ripening berries. He pushed his nose up real close and jist as he was about to inhale the smell of his precious berries, he felt a terrible burnin sensation on the tip of his nose. Shocked and blinded by the pain, he stumbled backwards and grabbed his nose with both hands. "I've been stung! Tha sons-ah-whores have stung me!" He mumbled to himself and he lit out for the house as fast as his wobbly, fat legs could carry him.
 
Eb flung himself through the door and into the kitchen, all the while screamin for Emma. Hearin his yell, Emma hurried down the stairs and into the kitchen. Eb was at the sink, splashin cold water on his face. "What in the world's the matter with you?" She asked him. When he turned around, all she could see was his nose. It was glowin a bright red and it had swollen up twice its normal size. It was so swollen that his eyes looked like two tiny blue berries peekin out of a big doughy pie. Emma burst out laughin and when she finally caught her breath, she said. "Don't you think it's a little early for Christmas, Rudolph?" and with that, she fell laughin into a chair.
 
Eb, offended by Emma's remark and lack of concern, mad at the wasps and in pain from the sting, threw the towel on the floor and stormed for the door. As the screen door slammed behind him, he heard Emma's partin shot, "If I'da known that all it took was a wasp sting to git you to move so fast, I'd of had them sting you years ago!" "Friggin wimmin!" Eb screamed out the window as he backed the car out of the driveway, "They ought to put all them sons-ah-whores on a rocket ship and send it straight to hell!"

Gravel shot across the road as Eb floored the car and headed down the Masardis Road to the clinic. Emma, not wantin to let an opportunity like this git past, hurried to the phone to let everyone know of Eb's latest predicament. She called everyone she knew and some she didn't.
 
When a couple of hours had passed and still no word from Eb, Emma, feelin a little ashamed and guilty that she hadn't tried to help him, decided to go out and pick Ebb's blueberries for him. "He'll be real surprised when he gits back to see that I helped him out," she thought.
 
She picked the bushes clean and took the large pail of berries into the house. She dumped them into a colander and rinsed them with cold water. Then she set them in the sink and began making the piecrusts. "I'll have enough for a pie for Eb and enough for a pie for my church," she thought. It wasn't long until the pies had finished bakin and Emma put them on the kitchen windowsill to cool.
 
Matters only got worse when Eb had stormed into Dr. Pelly's clinic and demanded to be seen. The nurse had taken one look at his swollen nose and erupted into gales of laughter. This pissed Eb off royally and when Dr. Pelly had finally come out to have a look at him, he'd laughed too. The doctor had cleaned off his nose with some alcohol, checked for a stinger and finding none, taped a big wad of cotton over the wound and that was it, leavin Eb looking like an overweight Pinocchio. Eb shelled out the fifteen dollar co-pay for the office visit and got the hell out of there with the laughter of the doctor's staff ringing in the air behind him.
 
Eb, still seethin by Emma's lack of response to his emergency and her inconsiderate remarks, took his own sweet time in gettin home. He stopped and had a few cold brews at Michaud's Restaurant and endured the teasin and comments about his bandaged nose by the local drunks who always seemed to be sittin in the bar and then he headed for home.
 
As he made his way slowly down Main Street to the Masardis Road, at the intersection of the Presque Isle Road, he met the Pentecostal Church van heading towards Ashland. Rememberin Emma's remarks about makin them a pie, he pulled up as close as he could get to the van that had stopped at the stop sign. He rolled down the driver's side window and stuck his head out.
 
Recognizin him, the Pentecostal minister hesitantly rolled his window down a dite and gaped at him. "Listen, you friggin holly roller," Eb screamed at the minister. "If you think you're goin to git a blueberry pie from my old lady, you'd best forgit about it!" Then he flipped the startled minister the bird, floored the old car and in a cloud of black smoke, headed up the road for home at a pretty fast clip.
 
It was gettin dark when Eb finally pulled into his drive. He wrenched open the door and hurried around the house to the back yard. There was jist enough light left for him to have a look at his precious blueberries. His patched up nose throbbed and burned as his swollen eyes roamed over the blueberry patch and his heart constricted at the sight of the empty bushes. He rubbed his eyes and looked again and it slowly registered that his once laden bushes were now stripped of leaves and berries.
 
Eb, seein that there was nothing left but straggly bushes, let out a scream and he didn't know what to do first, have a heart attack or kill himself. Anger swirled up inside his head and clamped around his brain like a vise. All he could think about was his berries. "I'll kill the bastid who's done this!" He screamed. "I'll sure as shit kill him!" With that, he turned and stumbled for the house. He ran gasping up the steps, brushed past Emma and into the bedroom. He scrabbled under the bed for his gun and finding it; he grabbed the thirty-thirty, jacked it and headed for the kitchen.
 
The first thing he saw was Emma still standing by the kitchen door. He brought the gun up and cocked it. "For God's sake, Eb, what are you doin with that thing?" "I'm goin to kill the bastid who stole my berries!" he screamed. "Eb, put that thing away, your berries weren't stolen, I picked em."
 
That was all Eb needed to hear, he didn't wait to hear any more. He leveled the gun directly at her chest and said in a low voice, "You knew that I've been waitin for them berries Emma, but no, you jist had to go and give my pie to the church didn't you!"  Eb didn't wait for her reply. He brought the gun up level with his swollen left eye. She opened her mouth to say that she had also made a pie for Eb but she never got the chance. Eb's finger tightened around the trigger and he squeezed.
 
The sound of the gunshot ricocheted around the kitchen. The impact hit Emma directly in the chest and she slid down the wall to a sitting position on the floor with a surprised expression on her face. Eb lowered the gun and walked over to her and she lifted her hand and pointed at the kitchen window, then her hand fell back onto her chest.
 
Eb walked over to the window and lifted the curtain and he couldn't believe what he saw. There, on the windowsill, were two perfectly baked blueberry pies. Eb stood there in shock for a couple of minutes then he turned around and walked back to where Emma lay propped against the wall. He stood and looked down at her for a couple of minutes then he staggered over to the table and pulled out a kitchen chair. He sat down and set the stock of the gun on the floor and kicked off his right shoe. Then, he brought the gun up under his chin and slid his foot along the stock until he found the trigger with his big toe ...