Kit's Law by Donna Morrissey

temperature, while her eyes scanned the road from Haire’s Hollow, then swept down over the gully and the wind-driven sea, checking for snoopers.
    “Follow ahead, Jose,” she called out, “and don’t ramble too far in front. I don’t wanna have to go searchin’ for you, this day.”
    “Don’t wanna go berrypickin’, don’t wanna go berrypickin’,” Josie kept muttering, cutting up to the mouth of the gully and heading across the meadow. I followed behind, the heat from the Thermos of tea inside my backpack like a hot sun burning through my skin. The Queen Anne’s lace, knee-high with the grass, were wheat-brown beds of fluff, stilled beneath the thin sliver of frost that veiled them.
    “You sure it’s the right frost?” I called over my shoulder to Nan.
    “You can tell by the way it creeps up the window in the mornin’,” said Nan. “When it’s clear like ice and ribbed on the bottom—that’s the killin’ frost. Your berries are dead. Good for moose and caribou pickin’s. Now, there’s them that picks ’em anyway, and that’s why their jam is as tart as a whore’s arse. It’s when the frost is still white, more snow-like than ice, that’s when you picks ’em, that’s when they’re the plumpest from their summer juices. Now, too, there’s them that picks ’em too early, and their jam is just as tart because the worm is still inside the berry and gets cooked into their jam.”
    “Margaret Eveleigh said there’s no worms in berries.”
    “Bah, Margaret Eveleigh!” Nan snorted, her bucket clanging against a tree trunk as we left the meadow and fought our way through the woods. “What would that little snot know about pickin’ berries? For sure her mother’s jam is the worst I ever put in me mouth. Pig’s mash! And that’s why none of ’em got any berry patches left any more and schemes to find mine; becuz they cooks the berry before the worm gets a chance to get out and plant their next year’s pickin’s.”
    “Margaret said worms don’t have mouths to carry seeds.”
    “Oh, and is that what Miss Hollywood Star says,” Nan said, panting heavily and dropping the bucket at her feet. “Well you tell her that the worm is the bleedin’ seed, and when it crawls into the ground, it plants itself, and there you got next year’s berry. And if her mother and everybody else caught on to that, I wouldn’t be the only one left with a berry patch, and them nosyin’ up me hole to find it.”
    Nan kicked the bucket to one side and sat down on a rock, resting her back against a white birch. “Sit for a spell, I catches me breath,” she said. “Sit down, Jose, we might see a partridge. Jose! Jose!” she bellowed as Josie kept charging through the woods. “Sit down, we looks for a partridge.” Nan watched till Josie kicked the leaves off a rock and squatted down, before hoisting the gun off her shoulder and resting the butt betwixt her breasts. “Margaret Eveleigh, bah!” she went on, quietening her voice and aiming the barrel towards the bush in front of us. “It’s the timin’, Kittens. You got to wait for the right timin’, and it ain’t always as easy as lookin’ at the frost on the window. Look at your poor mother over there. She haven’t got the sense God give a nit, but, be the Jesus, she knows when to lit out a door when she’s tryin’ to get her own way with something. And she knows how to back down from a fight, even when she’s the one that started it. And that’s what the likes of Margaret Eveleigh won’t ever know, when to keep her trap shut, and when to keep it open. Shhh … ” Nan grabbed a tighter hold of the gun and squinted hard into the bush. She looked over to make sure Josie was still sitting there, and cocked the trigger. A twig snapped and something brown and furry appeared through the leaves.
    An ear-splitting crack sounded through the air as Nan pulled the trigger.
    “Aagghh!” she bawled out as the gun jumped and the barrel slammed against her