Page 2 of Let’s Give ‘Em Pumpkin to Talk About

She heard his exhalation at the other end. Imagined him standing there, next to the hospital bed her uncle Fred had moved into his sunny living room during his convalescence. She could hear Fred in the background. “What’s happening, Stu?”

“And it wasn’t you?” he said after several more breaths.

The cold accusation slapped her in the face, and maybe she deserved it.

Her hesitance to return to Pea Blossom for the growing season was outweighed by a strange sense of hope and fond memories of pumpkin growing.

As a little girl she followed Stu around his pumpkins like a hound, absorbing everything he said.

She hadn’t imagined those memories, had she?

“It wasn’t me, Stu.” Her voice was small. He’d made her feel small.

It was insulting to think she’d fly all the way to Indiana to sabotage the pumpkins.

She could have ignored the curiosity that made her say yes.

With the uptick in the demand for her artwork, she could claim the timing was bad.

This hot iron needed striking. Of course, when did family emergencies care about timing?

Not to mention, her father relied on the revenue from the pumpkin seeds.

She couldn’t exactly fill in that gap herself.

“No,” Stu said at last. “Of course you didn’t. It’s a shock is all.” Something like an apology.

“I know.” Something like forgiveness.

“You gotta move all those pumpkins out so they don’t attract anything else. Maybe some of the plants can send up some new vines. Even if there aren’t pumpkins in time for the weigh-off, we might still collect seeds to sell.”

He wouldn’t give himself time to grieve. Quick flashes of anger followed by stoicism. She knew the pattern all too well because it was encoded into her cells, too.

“Okay. I’m going to move them all to compost now. I’ll let you know if I find out anything else.”

“Okay.” He hung up. Never one for long goodbyes either.

Sadie gathered her thoughts. The obvious temptation was to return to Los Angeles, to pick her next commission from the requests that had been pouring in.

Her last client, influencer Brynn Bianchini, had posted innumerable selfies taken in front of the custom-dyed handwoven beige silk wallpaper Sadie had just completed.

Her caption raved about how perfect the color was, which made Sadie cringe.

It had taken twenty-seven sample skeins of minutely different hand-dyed shades of beige until Brynn signed off on the one.

Each successive skein drained her of creative energy, so of course Brynn ultimately decided on the first skein Sadie offered.

Then there were at least a dozen more samples of fabric until Brynn settled on a subtle moiré pattern. Sadie wasn’t eager for another project as soulless and stultifying as that fucking beige silk, but she couldn’t ignore the paycheck.

There were more just like it waiting for her in California if she wanted to continue weaving on commission.

She didn’t have to stay in Pea Blossom. Fox Family Farm only needed her for the giant pumpkins.

Without them, her local uncle, Bud, made a perfectly fine choice to mind the property, and she could beat a hasty retreat.

She couldn’t jump to practicality and stoicism as quickly as her father had. Instead, she circled back around to anger.

She wanted to prove to him that her skills were still sharp, that she could grow a pumpkin as big as anyone in the state.

To demonstrate that she wasn’t the punk teenager who once kicked a hole in all of his pumpkins in one angry outburst. She hadn’t realized how hungry for victory, for redemption she was until she first laid eyes on the pumpkin patch, but it all came back in a rush.

Los Angeles may be the place that tried to mellow its denizens into a state of dreamy relaxation, but it hadn’t taken the fight out of her.

She’d been able to reinvent herself from a country bumpkin into an in-demand textile artist.

But the bumpkin was still inside her. And she was angry.

She picked up one of the pumpkins. Almost whole except for one big bite, its skin still the palest yellow. She threw it toward the woods at the edge of the pumpkin patch with all her might, like a shot-putter. As she heaved the pumpkin, she let out the most primal of screams.

Everything came out of her in that scream.

That shamefully vicious teenage anger that had made her destroy this patch once.

Her frustration at agreeing to come back to Pea Blossom when she ought to have known it would disappoint her.

Anger with her father for assuming the worst of her.

And sheer rage at whatever had actually trampled the property, losing her father thousands of dollars. Losing her a shot at glory.

One scream wasn’t quite enough to express all of that, so she let out another, heaving a second pumpkin chunk toward the dogwoods and redbuds whose spring flowers adorned the farm.

Who cared about the compost pile? She was going to scream and throw pumpkins until she lost her voice or ran out of pumpkins, whichever came first.

While she was taking a breath, she heard a rustling in the forest to her left.

Her fight–or-flight instinct kicked in, choosing fight decisively.

Ready to rip apart the destructive animals with her bare hands, she turned to the noise.

A hog came bumbling out of the woods, pumpkin guts hanging from its mouth in long strings.

Sadie screamed again and threw a pumpkin at the hog.

It landed just short of him. The hog picked up a piece of the shattered flesh in its mouth and trotted off.

Sadie picked up another piece of pumpkin to throw at it, when more rustling from the woods drew her attention.

An incongruously tall figure approached through the thick foliage.

A path had been cut through the woods between her father’s property and the next, one that hadn’t been there in her youth.

Her first thought was Bigfoot. Then she noticed the figure was not alone.

A man, or possibly a woodland elf, emerged atop a white horse.

Wavy chestnut hair fell to his sharp chin.

Skin a couple shades more bronze than Sadie’s ghostly fair complexion.

His features were both long and sharp, with dark slashes of eyebrows set at a worried angle.

He wore a plaid Western shirt and olive green trousers.

She’d never seen him before in her life; he certainly wasn’t from Pea Blossom.

He halted his horse in the clearing as Sadie held one of the ruined pumpkins against her chest, ready to hurl it at him.

“I heard screaming,” he said. “Is something the matter?”