Page 36 of Let’s Give ‘Em Pumpkin to Talk About
Twenty-Two
Day of the SPICE Pumpkin Weigh-off
E very bump in the road sent Josh bouncing on the rental truck’s springy seat. He had one hand on the gearshift and the other on the wheel. His right hand would be on Sadie’s thigh if the spacious cab didn’t make it an awkwardly far reach.
The past three weeks had been intense. Sadie likely caused a run on sunscreen for all the time she spent tending her pumpkin.
Josh had chuckled watching her lugging the hose toward her plant, cursing under her breath when it misbehaved.
Meanwhile, he unlocked his phone to tweak the flow rates of his irrigation system, copying Sadie’s aggressive watering.
They’d fallen into a routine, throwing out the sleepover rule. They both got tested for STIs and let Sadie’s IUD suffice for birth control. They slept together every night, often drunk on sex, occasionally drunk on beer, passing out under Josh’s ceiling fan.
He’d also thrown out his own rule about honesty. An honest person would have told Sadie how he felt about her. That her ferociousness—out in the garden, in bed, even in the kitchen—was something he’d come to admire.
Not admire, love .
He should be honest about what it felt like to be inside her, to watch her skin flush as she came.
How he relished that moment her sharp eyes transformed into something approaching softness.
Instead of telling her any of that, he hummed along to the radio on this, the most momentous day of his life.
Josh had planned the day’s itinerary minutely, down to the food vendors he planned to patronize. Sadie was welcome to interject with her opinions, and she no doubt would, but he was prepared to lead the way.
Sadie had made them a hearty breakfast, a scramble of eggs and potatoes from the farmers market, plus toast with butter and Nate’s latest batch of honey.
Then she’d loaded two thermoses with hot coffee while Josh maneuvered the forklift around from the pumpkin patch to the rear of the truck.
First, they would leave the pumpkin payload in the Agriculture Building.
Then they’d take in the Sheep to Shawl contest, so Sadie could observe local spinners and weavers at work.
“You nervous?” he asked Sadie, turning the radio down during a commercial break.
“Not especially,” she replied. “The pumpkin is cut, it’s in the truck, it’s out of my hands now.”
“Not even a little bit?”
She held up her hand to show him it was steady. He glanced at it momentarily before returning his eyes to the road.
“I’m nervous,” he said. “I’m both an underdog and an interloper. And I’m always anxious when it comes to being judged by others. I want the Growers Guild’s approval. Sometimes I think winning means I’ll get it, and sometimes I think winning will lead to resentment. Still, I want to win.”
He wanted to win more badly than he’d ever wanted anything, in fact.
For a time, he hoped Sadie could pull out a win.
But now, with their bet on the line, he needed to win.
To cap this time off with something magical.
He knew he could still invite her on a vacation before she left.
But she still spoke of returning to California as a foregone conclusion.
Perhaps she had done some soul-searching and had realized LA made her the happiest out of any place she could be.
Or maybe she was running back to what she knew because other ideas were far scarier.
He understood. He’d been there before. It was funny to think of settling on his little farm in Indiana as the scary option, but it had been at the time.
When they approached the gate to the state fairgrounds where SPICE was held, Josh told the waiting staff member that he was carrying precious cargo.
Their eyebrows shot up at the size of the truck required for the task.
They directed him to the Agriculture Building, not that Josh needed the directions.
He took a moment to study their two pumpkins as the forklift lowered them from the truck.
He basically knew how much his pumpkin weighed, thanks to his studious monitoring.
Sadie’s pumpkin also looked great. The pale orange of the skin had sustained neither sun damage nor rot.
The pumpkins each slumped gently out of the archetypal pumpkin shape, making the two giants difficult to assess by eye. But he felt okay.
Once their pumpkins were wheeled away, Sadie looked at Josh expectantly.
She’d worn a black baseball cap in addition to her usual uniform; the sun was out on this brisk October day.
She’d busted out this headwear in those last frantic weeks, when there was so much work to do that she could no longer maintain her usual crepuscular habits.
Smitten as he was, Josh thought she looked cute in the hat.
More accurately, she looked like she was ready to pitch for a vampire baseball team.
“Where to?” she asked.
“Arts Building,” he replied.
“Sheep to Shawl?” she asked.
“You bet.”
“I might have joined the Blossom County guild team if not for the conflict with the weigh-off.”
Sadie hadn’t mentioned this before. “You? Join a team?”
“It’s not like they’re jocks, Josh. It’s a bunch of weirdos with spinning wheels.”
As they walked toward the Arts Building, she scooped his hand into hers.
She’d been doing that more and more. A few nights before, she had invited him to see the fall’s newest installment in a haunted house movie franchise she enjoyed.
Josh learned he was much more afraid of haunted house movies than he might have guessed, and that Sadie was an affectionate movie watcher.
Her hand either gripped his thigh or curled into his own throughout.
Even with the string of nightmares, he’d happily see next year’s film if it meant he could see it with her.
Sadie and Josh waved to the team of Blossom County weavers, who were working furiously while dressed as characters from The Wizard of Oz .
The weaver was producing a blue-and-white-checked cloth, similar to the gingham pattern from Dorothy’s dress in the film.
Other teams were dressed up as well—one all in kilts as they wove a tartan, and a youth team from a local arts high school dressed in various kinds of drag attire and weaving a series of Pride flags into their long fabric.
Each team had one competitor treadling away at the loom while the others prepared yarn for the weaver.
Someone picked dyed wool out of baskets and smoothed it between two handheld paddles.
A few people sat at wheels, spinning the wool into yarn.
Finally, someone took the spun yarn and wound it onto the bobbins for the shuttle the weaver threw back and forth as they worked.
The team members were in constant communication about which tasks needed prioritizing, and Josh immediately imagined Sadie barking orders over a loom.
Forget the weigh-off, she should absolutely be doing this.
“I’m glad I’m doing the weigh-off instead of this,” Sadie said, puncturing his vision.
“Oh yeah?” he replied.
“The youth team is running away with this, and I hate to lose to fresh blood.”
“You might be losing to fresh blood today anyway,” he said, pointing at himself.
“Yeah, but I can trash-talk you and not feel bad about myself.”
“Ready to move on?” he asked. “There’s so much to see.”
“I am,” she said, and he picked up her hand to lead her out of the building.
They looked briefly at the various ribbon-winning entries in the glass cases lining the walls of the Arts Building.
Patchwork quilts and crocheted afghans and embroidered tablecloths were spread out, colorful as perfectly plotted flower gardens.
Sadie’s decisive eyes scanned the cases, and she nodded subtly at the items that impressed her the most. At Josh’s urging, she narrated her observations, casually dropping staggering amounts of textile knowledge.
He’d never look at a granny square the same way again.
Outside the Arts Building, Josh spotted a food vendor he’d failed to notice in past years.
“DOLE WHIP?” he cried.
“God, you California kids are all the same,” Sadie said. “Everyone wants to be too cool for Disney but somehow no one is.”
“I’m not too cool for anything, and especially not Dole Whip.”
He let Sadie’s hand go and made a run for the booth. Luckily the line was short—who wanted cold food on a chilly October day?—and he ordered the largest size they had, a teetering spiral of mysteriously nondairy frozen pineapple dessert.
“I got one to share,” he said excitedly.
“With the entire state of Indiana?” Sadie asked. But he handed her a spoon and they attacked the frosty treat.
“Haven’t you had this at Disneyland?” he asked.
Sadie shook her head. “Never been.”
Of course Sadie wouldn’t be an annual passholder, but he figured everyone who lived in California got dragged along at some time or other because of visiting family or a bachelorette party or something.
“Maybe I should go, though. This is fucking delicious, I have to say.”
Or you should stay . You could stay right here and have Dole Whip at SPICE every year. You could join the Sheep to Shawl contest and kick the butts of the youth, and I will let you know the results of the weigh-off. Doesn’t all that sound good?
He handed the dish of Dole Whip to Sadie and checked the time. “We gotta go!”
“What’s next?”
“Pumpkin seed spitting contest.”
There were two possible ways Sadie could respond. But he smiled broadly when he got the one he wanted.
“Oh, prepare to get your ass whupped.”
They scurried back to the Agriculture Building, hustling past the cheese sculpture and the Gourd Society exhibition Josh would have to circle back to visit. A crowd was growing around the cordoned-off rectangle of flooring with distances marked in electrical tape.
“It’s broken up by age division.” Sadie’s tone was as serious as someone reporting grave news on television.