Page 5 of Let’s Give ‘Em Pumpkin to Talk About

Three

S adie bristled at the notion of spending all day with a stranger, even if he was a neighbor and seemingly best buds with her father. She called Stu again to update him and get some intel on Josh.

“It was hogs that did the pumpkins in,” she explained.

“I hate those fucking hogs.”

“That makes two of us. Well, maybe three. Josh said he was going to take down the hog business. Something about zoning laws.”

“I don’t know if he needs to do all that,” Stu replied tentatively.

“Have you gone soft on me, old man? I came back to Pea Blossom to take care of those pumpkins and I will avenge their deaths. Or I’ll have Josh do it for me, I guess. I have better shit to do.”

Stu’s raspy chuckle was a surprisingly welcome sound.

Their phone calls usually had a strained formality.

They weren’t great at speaking about their feelings.

Their usual calls consisted of Sadie checking in to make sure Stu wasn’t bankrupt or ill, and vice versa.

Bases covered, they returned to their separate lives.

“So you’ll be heading back to La-La Land?”

“Actually, Josh said I can take over one of his plants. We’re going to go to the Growers Guild meeting tomorrow to make a case for it. What do you think?”

“Josh is an upstanding citizen,” he said. “Very community-oriented, well respected in Pea Blossom.”

“I’m not voting him onto the city council, I’m working in his pumpkin patch. And getting in a car with him tomorrow. He’s not going to murder me?”

“Oh no, you’re in capable hands. Don’t get me wrong, I was skeptical of him at first. When it comes to growing things, he doesn’t have the sense God gave a goose. But he’s grown on me. Ha! See what I did there?”

Sadie didn’t know what to do with this joviality coming from her father. Had Josh’s wholesome demeanor rubbed off on the old man? The fondness in his voice gave her a pang of something. Was it jealousy?

Stu continued. “He’s helped me out a time or two, and he puts up with all my bullshit. And don’t I laugh whenever he comes over to the house riding on his damn horse. You’d never know he was one of those tech billionaires.”

“Billionaire?” she sputtered. Why would anyone with that kind of wealth choose Pea Blossom, Indiana, of all the places in the world? Shit. He had to be mistaken.

“Millionaire, billionaire, what’s the difference?”

“A factor of a thousand, Stu.”

“I don’t know. He’s rich, is what I’m saying. Not that that makes him good or bad. It sure don’t make him smart either. Not like you. You could probably beat him with one of the cuttings you saved from my plants.”

That vote of confidence made her rest easy.

With this new setup, she could talk to Stu about her pumpkin’s progress—maybe even win the weigh-off and make him proud—without upsetting their shaky but mostly peaceful state.

Digging into old wounds and sharing their innermost feelings was not on the immediate horizon, but some increased communication was a baby step in that direction.

* * *

The next morning, Josh pulled up in front of the house. He announced his arrival with a jaunty rendition of “Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits” on the car’s horn.

Damn it. Was he going to be this chipper all day?

On the road to the Thornville VFW for the Growers Guild meeting, Sadie grew more skeptical of her father’s assessment of Josh’s finances.

The decrepitude of the Honda Civic they were cruising in was no show of wealth.

She was aware of people who disguised their money behind seemingly humble trappings like old Volvos and holey fisherman’s sweaters, but those folks tended to be older money.

People who got rich in tech typically preferred flashy cars.

People who got rich in tech also did not move to shithole towns like Pea Blossom, Indiana.

This made him mysterious on top of being suspiciously nice, so she categorically could not trust him. Nice people avoided Sadie, who didn’t want their cheer any more than they wanted her gloom. Maybe he was playing some long game, trying to learn all of Stu’s pumpkin secrets.

That was why she followed Josh back to the patch when he offered to find potential cuttings. Not because he’d found her screaming her throat raw and still acted like she was worth helping. That was a pretty low bar.

Who was this man, whose resting face was far too smiley? Whose gaze was cast long over the flat landscape ahead of him?

Maybe she should have bailed on Pea Blossom as soon as the pumpkins were destroyed; it was foolish to leave California right after her recent work garnered so much attention.

She should be capitalizing on that momentum.

Then again, that momentum might be hurtling her toward a brick wall, and she needed the pause to think about her life and her art.

But did that pause need to be in Indiana, where she had to confront painful memories and a weirdly handsome squash farmer? It wasn’t like her to be swayed by a pretty face that could belong to a con man for all she knew. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

“I grew up in the Central Valley,” Josh offered out of nowhere, popping the anxiety bubble she’d been blowing.

They’d been listening, or in Sadie’s case dissociating, to NPR in silence until now.

“These country roads in Thorn County bring me right back. Blossom County is much more picturesque, you know, with the rolling hills and forests. They’re going to be beautiful come October. ”

She wasn’t keen on chatting about California.

Not while she was already so tempted to return, back to the safe haven of her literal studio apartment.

Josh had traded California for Indiana, inexplicably.

So he’d probably rag on it as an overrated, overpriced, passé disaster zone until she doubled down and booked a ticket home on her phone.

It was the disaster zone she’d chosen for herself, after all.

“I’m going to be honest with you. I’m not great with small talk.”

Josh’s eyebrows shot up and he nodded slowly. “I mean, we can go deep if you want to. I’m here to listen if you want to tell me what’s been keeping you from Pea Blossom for so long.”

She wasn’t about to regale Josh with tales of the charming mix of shouting matches and silent grudges that peppered her last year in town.

And she definitely wasn’t going to talk about her estranged mother, who lived over in Bloomington.

How, at only four years old, in some preschooler rage, she parroted the same words she’d heard her own father say, Get out of my sight .

And then her mother calmly replied, Well, I know when I’m not wanted , and walked out of their lives forever.

Sadie couldn’t remember what made her say that to her mother, but they’d scarcely spoken since. For the rest of her childhood, she received lavish presents dropped anonymously on the porch on her birthday just as often as the day went unremarked.

Naively, young Sadie thought Stu was to blame for her mother’s absence. With time she came to understand that her mother’s worst ideas, abandoning Sadie being chief among them, sprang from her own head without Stu’s influence.

Sadie absolutely could not tell this man that she hated reverting to her most petulant teenage self when someone pushed her buttons.

And Stu was employee of the month at the button-pushing factory.

Not to mention how she dreaded bumping into her mother, who could, theoretically, be in town at any time.

She knew where she wasn’t wanted, and that place was Pea Blossom, Indiana. Her father may have been attempting to fix their tenuous bond with his invitation. But like trying to make a cutting from a hog-trampled vine, it was a touchy business.

Josh again broke the silence that accompanied these spinning thoughts. “So no heart-to-hearts either. Got it.”

Apparently unfazed by her reticence, he changed the radio station to one playing top-forty hits and started loudly singing along.

When the next song came on, a corny piano ballad, he knew every insipid word.

Sadie wrinkled her nose. Josh’s strong voice, perfect for pop radio, filled the car, making her thankful she could stay quiet and observe.

His lack of pretension in musical taste was unexpected.

The car was a piece of shit but his aesthetic was pure hipster farmers market—the plaid, the perfectly shaggy hair, the weathered lace-up boots.

He should be the type to have a curated playlist, boasting one sad bastard after another plucking a banjo and rhyming callipygian with soup kitchen or some bullshit like that. This was a pleasant surprise.

Sadie checked the directions on her phone.

They were driving toward the Prairie Homestead Diner in Thornville.

Apps couldn’t always locate the Quonset hut belonging to the Thornville VFW, which was across the intersection from the diner according to the Growers Guild meeting announcement.

Leave it to the big internet companies to decide Indiana wasn’t worth mapping thoroughly.

“The next left is in a mile. It’ll be obvious. The road dead-ends.”

“Ever been to Thornville?” Josh asked.

“Maybe as a kid for a guild meeting? I don’t have any particular memories.”

“But you know a lot about pumpkins?”

She knew too much about pumpkins. But if they were going to become competitors, she wasn’t about to spill any of her secrets. “A bit.”

“More than me, I’d wager.”

What did tech billionaires know about, anyway?

Exploiting people. Dazzling investors into giving them ungodly amounts of money.

Convincing people they were making the world better while enriching themselves.

Pumpkins couldn’t be exploited or dazzled or convinced into growing. You had to come at them honestly.

“I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”