Page 41 of Let’s Give ‘Em Pumpkin to Talk About

Twenty-Five

Day of the SPICE Pumpkin Weigh-off

As if stale cigarettes were a flavor. At first, Sadie worried her general distaste for squash was coloring her opinion of this dish Josh had poured himself into, but watching him spit his mouthful back onto the plate confirmed her own findings.

Without a word, she cleared the plates from the table. Josh got up, also silent, and walked out the back door. She didn’t follow.

Instead she cleaned up from dinner, putting the entirety of the risotto monstrosity in the compost, washing the dishes, and setting out to make a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches as a replacement meal.

From the sink, she could look out the kitchen window.

Josh had gotten a wheelbarrow and was filling it with all the ripe Squash 2.

0s. She didn’t want the namesake anymore.

For all her faults, at least she didn’t taste like burnt dryer lint.

As she was melting the butter in the pan and shredding a mixture of cheese to use in the sandwiches, she heard his anguished cries.

From the kitchen window, she couldn’t see him, but she knew.

He had wheeled the squashes out of the garden, enclosed by fences and netting as it was.

He was throwing the squashes into the woods, one by one, each with a primal scream.

She hoped those seeds weren’t fully matured, otherwise he may have volunteer squash plants cropping up in the woods.

What if they poisoned the deer and the rabbits?

Or worse, they might infest the whole property and start spreading, crossbreeding with the squashes that tasted good to non-Sadie people. But that was a problem for another day.

Sadie took a sip of her wine and said aloud to herself, “What a shitty fucking day.”

It had started with promise. SPICE was a blast, and kissing Josh left sensations that were still settling into her bones.

But then everything turned. Weigh-off lost, Josh more smitten with her than she knew what to do with, and his squash dreams all dashed.

It would be a blow to anyone’s ego. The best thing to do would be to go to bed and try again tomorrow.

When Josh came in, Sadie handed him a sandwich. He sat down at the table again, his face streaky from tears.

“Thanks,” he said.

It broke Sadie’s heart to be one of the many organisms letting him down, but wasn’t it better now than later? She was best in small doses, and he’d eventually have fond memories of what they shared instead of the slow realization that her presence had become unbearable.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she offered between bites of her sandwich.

“No,” Josh said, his voice hoarse from all the yelling.

Once they’d both eaten, Josh followed her out to the garage and up the stairs.

This should have been a joyful night, one that included a celebration of her triumph over him in pumpkin growing, but there would be no gloating and certainly no celebration.

She switched on the window fan, switched off the lights, and they fell asleep beside each other.

Before she drifted off, Sadie heard the hitches in Josh’s breathing.

She wondered if he was crying over the squash or over her. She wasn’t sure which she hoped for.

* * *

Josh was gone when she woke up, presumably tending to Shadowfax or trying to distract himself with other chores. Sadie was overdue for a phone call with her father, a task she could accomplish before meeting Grace for lunch.

He was quick to pick up with his drawling, “Y’ello.”

“Since when were you making video calls to a classroom full of young pumpkin growers?” she asked, wasting no time.

“Since Miss Andrea knew that if she wanted her kids to win, they needed to learn from the best,” he offered.

“Then how come Josh has never won?” Sadie asked.

“I taught him everything he knows, kid, but not everything I know. He’s a little too cocky, coming in with all his gadgets and gizmos and thinking he’s going to, what’s that word, disrupt pumpkins?

I wanted him to learn a little humility first. The earth only gives her truest gifts to those that are worthy of them.

He might be ready now. But it’s too late, I suppose. ”

Her dad made it sound like Josh was dead, or that he was. “Too late for what?”

“I’m not about to train Josh over video calls, and what I have to teach him would need to be done in person. And I’m not coming back. Oh, I suppose you could give him a few pointers before you go. You know as well as me.”

He rolled right past that critical bit. “You’re not coming back?”

“Got myself a lady friend down here named Priscilla, can you believe it? I replied to her personal ad in Wooden Boats magazine. She’s got this old dog trying all sorts of new things. I ate hard-boiled eggs for breakfast this morning.”

Sadie nearly dropped the phone. Her father had always said that if the good Lord had wanted him to eat hard-boiled eggs, then he wouldn’t have made them taste like farts. She must have heard it a thousand times. She never dared to eat a hard-boiled egg herself, so vehement was his hate for them.

“Is she a sorceress?”

Stu laughed heartily. “Not any more than you. You know, helping your uncle out gave me a lot to think about. For one, he came so close to death but fought back, and I admire the hell out of him for that. Then, he had to relearn to do all these things that you or I take for granted. And some of them he has to do different now. And I kept telling him, I don’t know what I’d do if I had to walk with a cane.

It would make me feel so old. And he told me I needed to be a little more flexible in my thinking or I’d roll over and die at the first real challenge of my life. ”

“I thought I was the first real challenge of your life,” she offered.

Stu laughed again. “I’m proud of you. You lived with a stubborn goat like me and you stayed true to yourself the whole time. You were never anyone but yourself. Which is to say a different stubborn goat.”

“And you’re not stubborn for your lady friend?” Sadie asked.

“She’s taught me to let go a little bit. The tide comes in, the tide goes out. You gotta roll with it, she says. She’s got a cute little bungalow and a pet parrot who bites the shit outta my fingers when I get anywhere near it, and she grows mangoes in her backyard. Mangoes!”

“What about your house here? What about the crab apples and pawpaws?”

“I’ll sell the house to Bud. That’s why I put him in charge of fixing it, so it could be to his taste.

And Esther has been pestering me about the land since the tornado.

And talking about you nonstop, I tell you what.

So I’ll split the property and give the trust the forest. It was never really mine to begin with. And you can go back to California.”

Sadie had never heard her father sound like this.

Usually he was all righteousness and responsibility.

He felt responsible for the land he was raised on; he felt responsible to the community members who relied on him.

Where had all that gone? But there was something else she hadn’t heard in a while.

“You sound happy.”

“I am! The love of a good woman is a precious thing. I wouldn’t say she’s changed my priorities as such, but she’s helped me see that I can loosen my grip and trust that things will be all right. Bud and his kids can take over Fox Family Farm. They’ll do great.”

“What about pumpkins?” Sadie asked.

“That’s where those schoolkids come in. Now that I’ve shared what I know with that whole crowd, I know some of them will catch that bug and run with it. I can trust that, too. Now you don’t have the farm hanging over your head while you chase your California dreams.”

Sadie wanted to ask, What dreams? but she didn’t.

She could see that her father had, as he’d said, considered his priorities, which were keeping Fox Family Farm alive and making sure future generations knew about the joys of growing pumpkins.

Sadie felt like she had let him down by moving away, pursuing other goals.

But he wasn’t putting any pressure on her to be anything other than herself now.

Without his pressure, she felt almost formless.

She had nothing to fight back against. It was supposed to feel like freedom, but instead she felt adrift.

“Those kids only beat me by thirty pounds, you know.”

“You were a little rusty,” he assured her. “Plus you had that ding-dong start your plant for you. If you’d been there from the get-go, you’d have won it all.”

“Josh isn’t a ding-dong,” she said.

“Indeed no, I’ve come to love that man. When he moved to Indiana, he needed help knowing which end of the hose the water comes out of. He’s come a long way.”

She was sure that was an exaggeration, but she liked hearing her father’s fondness for Josh. It helped justify her own, to have that seal of approval.

“I’ve come to love that man, too,” she admitted.

“You don’t say,” Stu said, the smile audible across the distance. “That changes everything.”

It didn’t, really. Sexy flings were a part of life. Something to look back on in one’s dotage, a reminder of the days of youth and passion and abandon.

Then she remembered the copies of Wooden Boats magazine Josh had pointed out in the barn. He must have been looking at those personal ads in Indiana, before he ever left for Florida.

“Were you talking to Priscilla before Uncle Fred’s accident?”

“Sure was. I thought since they live in the same town there was a chance she and I could meet someday.”

“Were you always planning to stay in Florida? Why ask me to come if you were planning to give up pumpkins?”

“I had to meet Priscilla in person before I knew for sure. And I wanted to give you one more chance to come back. Priscilla talks a lot about healing. When I told her about you, she said that staying away from Pea Blossom might feel good to you. But it might be healing for you to have another chance in the pumpkin patch. Was she right?”