Town in a Blueberrry Jam by B. B. Haywood Page A

herself to be escorted away from the judges’ table by Hopkins the butler. It was clear from his grim expression that he knew he was on shaky ground even touching his mistress, but she finally turned to him and gave him a hard nod. At that point, he released her, and with Haley in tow, the three of them had stormed from the building.
    Meanwhile, Sapphire Vine stepped to the front of the stage, where she flashed a radiant, obviously well-practiced smile and waved out at the audience, tears of joy streaming down her face. (Whether those tears were real or carefully and purposefully leaked was yet to be determined, Candy decided.)
    But Sapphire hadn’t stopped there. Caught up in the grandeur of the moment, she stepped down from the stage and marched out into the audience, hugging anyone and everyone she came to—grandmothers and schoolteachers and bankers and burly lobstermen and little girls, whom she lifted off the ground and twirled happily about.
    She’s really into this , Candy had thought as she watched the rebroadcast for the second time on Sunday. She must have been really desperate to win this . . . but why? Has her life been that empty? Did she need this positive affirmation that badly?
    Eventually the images on the TV had faded, to be followed by rebroadcasts of the previous week’s town council meeting or committee meeting or some such thing, and Candy had reluctantly flicked off the set.
    She thought that, if it were broadcast again, she would tape the pageant so she and Maggie could watch it whenever they wanted, perhaps accompanied by a pitcher of blueberry daiquiris (a specialty of Candy’s, made with fresh blueberries, natch, plus blueberry schnapps and white rum). She knew that taping the pageant for perennial mocking might be crass, but hey, when you lived on a blueberry farm on the outskirts of a sleepy seaside village in Maine, you had to get your pleasures where you could.
    In fact, Candy thought as she turned off the Coastal Loop onto Main Street and looked around for a place to park, she could hardly wait for lunchtime so she could talk more with Maggie about it. They’d already had three or four phone conversations that had descended rapidly into tear-filled bouts of uncontrollable laughter, but there was no doubt they would be talking about the Blueberry Queen Pageant, and the new Blueberry Queen herself, for months, perhaps years, to come.
    Life, as they say, was good.
    But it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

TEN

    Candy’s first stop was the Black Forest Bakery. She had promised Herr Georg she would drop off a few pounds of blueberries she’d raked the day before. The larger harvest would take place in the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime she was harvesting small batches for herself and a few others like Herr Georg, who loved to bake with fresh blueberries.
    She and Doc were pleased with their crop this year and were expecting a good yield, though they would harvest only about seven acres—half their fields—this season. As was common when growing wild blueberries, the fields were harvested in two-year cycles. Half of the fields were in the sprout year. The plants would produce bud sets by the fall, and the following spring those bud sets would flower and produce blueberries in July and August. The other half was ready for harvesting this year.
    The system worked well, producing an abundance of long, unbranched shoots that made for easy harvesting of the fruit. It also helped control pests and diseases, since after the field was fully harvested, it was burned, or sometimes mowed, to take the plants back to their roots, and the two-year cycle began again.
    In a single day, working by herself and using a short-handled metal rake, Candy could harvest several hundred pounds of blueberries, though that was admittedly back-breaking work. So far she had gone easy and was delivering only about sixty pounds to Herr Georg today.
    He was thrilled with what he saw. “Oh, they are