Page 23 of Let’s Give ‘Em Pumpkin to Talk About

“Absolutely. I know he asked me back to give him the best chance at winning the weigh-off, but I wonder if his brother’s accident is making him finally face his mortality. Maybe he wants me to carry on his legacy, which would be a change of heart for him.”

Josh had tried broaching the subject with Stu a few times, hoping to gently prime him for selling the property. But any talk of the future of Fox Family Farm prompted Stu to tout his immortality, effectively shutting down the conversation. “Would you take the farm over if he asked?”

“No way,” Sadie said. “My cousins can take it if it’s important for him to have a family legacy. There’s no point in me inheriting it. I don’t want kids, so I’d be the end of the line anyway.”

She said “no way” with such finality that it pierced his heart. He wished she’d expressed some kind of ambivalence, some idea that being his neighbor would offset the burden of inheriting her father’s farm. “You want to live in LA forever?” he asked.

“I like my life there. It’s quiet. I work from home.

There’s a lemon tree in my backyard and I can get amazing tacos any time of day.

My best friend out there is, weirdly, also my landlord.

She inherited the house from her father and charges super cheap rent to make amends for her dad’s wealth hoarding. ”

“Do you attend a lot of openings at galleries?”

Sadie rolled onto her side, and Josh mirrored her.

When a lock of hair fell across his face, Sadie reached out and twirled it around her fingers.

It was the sweetest, most playful thing he’d seen her do.

“You know how there are always parts of a job you don’t like and that is why you do it for money? ”

He chuckled, returning to his back. Sadie yawned.

Pea Blossom, of all places on earth. Josh was foolish enough to believe he could have everything he wanted here, even if Sadie was so positive the same could never be true for her.

“Is Pea Blossom better than you remember it, or does it feel the same?”

Soft breathing was his only answer. Sadie’s brow was crinkled; of course she slept angry, too. Since she hadn’t expressed any feelings about sharing a bed with him, he crept downstairs to the couch.

* * *

Josh awoke completely unmoored in space and time.

He might have slept through another tornado and been transported to Oz.

Then he remembered he was on his couch and he’d mutually masturbated with the woman who’d been dominating his every fantasy for the past month, someone who might still be in his house.

His orgasms must have had a potent sedative effect.

Upstairs he found no trace of her—toys gone, bed made.

He showered and gathered his thoughts. Foremost, he needed to help Stu deal with the tornado aftermath.

There was still the matter of Go Hog Wild, a project relegated to the back burner for the moment.

He also needed to mind his own dang business because it was a farmers market day and he had squash to sell.

Once showered and dressed, he decided on leftover pizza for breakfast. The kitchen looked like a poltergeist had taken up residence.

Somehow half of the cabinets and drawers were left open.

He’d slept hard, but wouldn’t he notice a bear rifling through the kitchen?

On one hand, it must have been Sadie, but on the other, she’d left no trace of herself elsewhere. What happened?

To prevent replaying the previous night in his head nonstop, he busied himself with farmers market chores.

He prided himself on offering the freshest vegetables, straight from the vine into people’s hands.

Winter squashes were finally coming into season.

Not to mention decorative gourds. While the yellow squash and zucchini made for wonderful light summer fare, Josh and his customers vastly preferred these later season treats.

Delicata, butternut, and acorn squash were always big sellers.

But their cousins Georgia Candy Roaster and Long Island Cheese delighted customers for their deep flavors as well as their silly names.

Perhaps if he hadn’t been so occupied with Sadie, he would have developed more recipes. But a little fun was okay, he told himself.

He picked everything that was ideal to sell. Once he was ready for the market, he called Stu back up again, who answered after many rings. “Y’ello,” he said.

Josh smiled, missing his old friend and mentor. He could rely on a variety of dad-like behaviors from him, and Josh was grateful for them. “Do you have time to talk tornado damage?” Josh asked.

“Do I have time?” Stu asked himself. “Sort of. My brother’s bed linens need cleaned, but he can stew in his own juices a couple minutes longer. What’s he gonna do, get up and fight me?”

Josh was still thrown off by the way people spoke in Pea Blossom. When Stu told him the plants “need watered” or the barn “needs swept,” it took him an extra second to translate the dialect into something he, a native Californian, could understand.

“How’s Sadface?” Stu asked.

“Sadface?”

“Sadie hasn’t told you that’s her nickname? Ever since she was a kid. Her mother used to say it when we were together, and unfortunately it stuck. I dare say she’s embraced it.”

Maybe that was why Sadie went no-contact with her mom. And while Stu’s response wasn’t bad, it made him wonder if the man had ever told Sadie that a nickname like that wasn’t okay.

While Josh too frequently jumped to “fixing” others’ feelings, he hoped he could sit on his hands and listen to Sadie whenever she opened up to him as she had last night. Not to mention, he didn’t think Sadie’s face was sad. Fierce? Permanently skeptical?

And her face last night? Exquisite. Sadie at her most beautiful, lost in pleasure.

Then he remembered he was on the phone with her father and slapped some sense into himself. “She’s fine, I think. I’ve got her set up in the unit over the garage.”

“You might as well set up an apartment for a will-o’-the-wisp,” Stu said.

“What do you mean?”

“She isn’t like you and me, Josh. She doesn’t feel tied to the land.

I knew I could get her to take care of my pumpkins because we share a competitive streak, but without them, and without the house to stay in, I suspect she’ll leave sooner than later.

She has other priorities, and they are never in Pea Blossom. ”

Josh doubted Stu was coming from a real place of authority. Parents always liked to act as the preeminent experts on their children, but children do an awful lot of growing up away from home. “It must be tough for you to be away during all of this,” Josh said.

“You know, if you’d asked me a month ago, I’d’ve said yes.

But now that I’m here, I might be realizing I was bound to that land a little too strongly, and perhaps releasing my grip is a good thing.

When Sadie told me about the pumpkins, I was numb for about a day.

I spent the next day drunk as a skunk, and by the third day I was over it.

They’re only pumpkins. I sell their seeds for money, but what is money anyway?

I tell you, being down here and taking care of my brother has shown me what matters a whole lot more than money.

And that goes for the house, too. You and Sadie don’t need to worry about a thing.

My other brother, Bud, is going to deal with the repairs. ”

Josh heard what sounded like a woman’s voice in the background, laughing. It could have been the television. Or maybe Josh wasn’t the only one who’d found some fun.

Once, over a few too many beers, Stu revealed his romantic tendencies after he lamented his own single status. Don’t compromise, Josh. I’m still holding out for my dream woman. I hope she knows she can find me in the pumpkin patch. Maybe he found her in Florida instead.

Did Sadie know? If it took that many beers to get Stu’s heart to float to the surface, he doubted it.

Nonetheless, this was all surprising coming from Stu.

He’d told Josh about how many generations of Foxes had been stewards of that land.

That it wasn’t a duty but an honor to serve the people at the farmers market and teach them about the food that came as gifts directly from nature.

Sadie might have been onto something when she said her uncle’s accident might prompt a big perspective shift in Stu.

Not to mention, he’d been dealt terrible blows by the rogue hogs and the tornado.

He might not have fully processed everything.

What if this was the best time to ask Stu to sell him the property himself, as is?

Sadie confirmed she didn’t want it, and she didn’t particularly care about family legacies.

Josh wasn’t quite ready to scale production, but being a good businessperson meant sometimes you had to take a risk when an opportunity presented itself.

But he decided to give Stu a little more time.

Stu talked about fishing for a while, going on about how much he loved fishing from a wooden boat. Then he remembered it was a market day and told Josh he ought to be working, and hung up on him abruptly.

The phrase “wooden boat” reminded him of magazines he’d seen in Stu’s garage.

Before devoting himself to farmers market tasks, he decided to investigate.

Stu’s garage hadn’t been damaged in the tornado, so it was easy to find the stack of Wooden Boats magazines.

They were all well loved, and more tellingly, dog-eared at certain pages.

Personals ads. “Wooden boat owners looking for love!” Had Stu replied to one of these ads?

Was he planning to go to Florida before his brother’s accident?

Perhaps a budding romance was untying whatever bound Stu so tightly to his land.

If Josh wanted to expand his farm and get serious about bringing Squash 2.

0 to the market, the stars were aligning.

He spent the rest of the day tending his crops and preparing for the evening farmers market, thinking about his future.

Being a small-scale farmer was nice, but he wanted to do more.

With a bigger farm, he could create jobs in Pea Blossom.

With Squash 2.0, he could have a nationwide presence.

By spreading love for giant pumpkins, he could get more people into gardening, if competition appealed to them more than growing their own food.

Meanwhile, he didn’t hear from Sadie all day. Josh reminded himself she wasn’t a damsel in distress and she had other avenues to get what she needed. What did she want or need from him anyway?

Nothing he wasn’t willing to give.

After another shower, he loaded his Civic with crates of squash, and products from last year’s loofah crop. He arrived at the farmers market ready to hear the buzz about what damage the tornado caused and how people were doing. It was sure to be a more somber affair than usual.

He began ferrying his goods from his car to his booth, all the while thinking about Sadie.

He wanted to be sending her flirty texts, ones that made it clear he was hoping that “onetime show” might have an encore performance, but he refrained.

What if it was possible Sadie might leave without saying goodbye. Was she already gone?

Josh’s market friend, a tall Black man and beekeeper named Nate, approached his car to help with the unloading.

“You okay?” Nate asked.

“One of those days,” he said cryptically.

“Did the tornado get you at all?”

In many ways the tornado had turned his life upside down. But not in the ways Nate was asking about. “No, thank goodness. What have you heard?”

“I heard a tree went through Stu’s house. Does he know?”

“Yeah, Stu knows,” Josh said. “I called him.”

“You’re a good neighbor,” Nate said. “I heard the Kents lost the roof of their barn, and that some cars got flipped over in the Kroger parking lot, can you imagine?”

“I hope no one’s hurt?”

“So far, seems like old Stu suffered the worst of it. Couldn’t the tornado have swung a little west and taken out Zach’s property instead?”

Josh’s eyes flashed. In the tornado aftermath, he hadn’t had a chance to tell Sadie about his meeting with PJ at the library. “I’m the tornado coming for Go Hog Wild.”

Nate tilted his head. “What are you talking about?”

“After Zach’s hogs destroyed Stu’s pumpkin patch, I promised Sadie that I’d put that business under. And now I know how to do it.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I had PJ—the lawyer who brings me that amazing zucchini bread sometimes?”

“That bread!” Nate interjected, singing the words with operatic emphasis.

“They spent some time looking into legal loopholes, and found one. The property recently got annexed into Pea Blossom so they could use municipal plumbing for all those cabins. When it was part of unincorporated Blossom County, the noise ordinance was only overnight. Now that the property is in the city proper, the noise ordinance is in effect twenty-four hours a day.”

“And you would have some gadget listening and reporting every damn gunshot.”

“Exactly. Five hundred dollars a pop, literally.”

Nate laughed heartily while Josh waited patiently for his chance to deliver his big idea. Nate had complained about not having enough space for years. And Nate’s wife had all sorts of nerdy aspirations beyond casting dice in resin.

“Maybe you can buy Zach out.”

Nate was stunned into silence. Josh continued. “Think about it. More hives for you, more space for Erica. There’s all that forest and a bunch of cabins, she could make some sort of fantasy D&D retreat center.”

“And we could be neighbors.”

“That’s right. And I’m wondering if the time is right for me, too.”

Nate’s eyes flicked somewhere past Josh.

“I didn’t think I was ready to try to buy Fox Family Farm until I’d made more progress on Squash 2.0, but maybe I should make an offer so Stu doesn’t have to waste money on the wreckage of his house.”

Nate opened his mouth to speak, but Josh was on a roll.

“You expand your business, I expand mine. We live like kings. What do you say?”

Nate forced a pained smile. “Hi, Sadie. Glad to see you in one piece.”

Josh wheeled around to see Sadie before him, a crate of foraged produce in her arms. At first, he was immensely glad to see her, too.

She hadn’t left him with nothing but a kitchen of open drawers and one unforgettable night, after all.

But the wounded expression on her face sent his stomach into free fall.