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On a borrowed minibike, trespassing unknown trails, Jimmy soared off a precipice. He flew out over the huckleberry bushes and sticky-pitched Mountain Hemlock trees that grow wild through the woods.

Ruptured spleen, they told us, and rapid internal bleeding. They did all they could, but my cousin was gone. He'd never be back to climb trees or steal any more huckleberries.

The summer before, when Jimmy was fifteen and I was twelve, he found new ways to tease me. That afternoon it was a small thing, a childish thing, between us. Jimmy didn't play fair at hide and seek. He climbed the tallest evergreen tree, the one with the sticky pitch and the branches all crazy, sloping up instead of down. He sang my name in a low, wavering voice, like a ghost calling for me through the woods. He only fooled me for a second.

Grandma told me not to bother with Jimmy if he was going to scare me like that. She handed me a pie tin. Fill the tin with berries, Grandma said, and we'll bake a pie.

Out in the huckleberry patch, bees buzzed around my ears, but I didn't get stung. I picked the berries right into the tin, mounded them up. They were the last berries of the season, and I didn't spill a single one of them on my way back to the house.

Grandma showed me how to make the crust, forking lard into flour, sprinkling ice water to keep it tender. Then she stopped and placed the fork on the table. I think she felt it when he came into the room, how things were changing with Jimmy.

He was there, leaning against the refrigerator with stained fingers and a mouthful of berries. I suppose he'd meant to eat only a few, but that way the tartness explodes between the teeth — well, it's hard to stop eating once you start. You want to taste the thrill of that first berry again.

The berries were in a pie tin, Grandma scolded. They were set up high on top of the fridge. Anyone could see that they weren't for eating. A boy's got to think things through, or else he'll never call himself a man. Jimmy looked out the window the whole time and not at us. Of course I didn't see it in him then, not really. That came later, when all sorts of signs and signals show clear — looking back at memories of a loved one lost.

With the few berries left, Grandma made a miniature pie in one of her special tins. She whipped up heavy cream for topping, and I shared it around — cream and tart and sweet bites for everyone ... except Jimmy.

I would have shared with him, a huckleberry pie communion, but when the pie came out of the oven he was off in the woods by himself. I guess he didn't hear me calling. I stood on the porch alone, holding the plate of pie as it cooled. I can still see the crimson juice soaking the crust.

Putting up the clean dishes after dinner, I heard the screen door creak when Jimmy came in from the woods. Sweaty and thirsty, he took a long drink of water from the metal dipper Grandma kept hanging beside the sink. Then he grinned, those freckles like huckleberries squashed across his nose. I tossed the dishtowel over his head and ran, calling back to him, "You're it!"

And we played hide and seek in the dusk, scooting between fireflies, listening to a river of wind flow through the trees, stumbling on roots in the half light but never falling, never getting hurt.

One day the following summer, Jimmy and his buddies, with hair over their ears and eyes and a few joints to share between them, loaded minibikes in the back of a pickup. They pushed the truck out of the driveway and on down the street, beyond earshot, before firing up the ignition.

None of us heard him go. On that clear June morning out in the woods, Jimmy didn't think to check the trail before riding on ahead of the others. He spun wheels in the dirt as he took off, catching air where the trail rose suddenly, accelerating to the next rise, hungry to taste the thrill again — blowing right past the wild huckleberry bushes hidden in the woods, their berries not yet ripe.

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Lisa Ohlen Harris is originally from the Pacific Northwest, but now she writes from North Texas. This is her second publication in flashquake. Visit Lisa's web site at www.lisaohlenharris.com.

Copyright 2006, Lisa Ohlen Harris

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