Page 9 of Let’s Give ‘Em Pumpkin to Talk About

Four

E xchanging one pumpkin plant for a chance to crack the tough nut that was Sadie Fox was the easiest bargain Josh had ever struck.

He sat on the front porch of his A-frame cabin in a gliding Adirondack chair, peeling the dried skins from last year’s loofah gourds.

The loofah interiors would then be made into naturally scrubby soaps and sold at the farmers market.

This task busied his hands so he wouldn’t be watching the clock in anticipation of Sadie’s arrival.

Life in Pea Blossom was generally great, even if Josh occasionally feared he’d die single.

Small towns and slim pickings were a package deal.

He rarely let himself acknowledge the creeping loneliness.

Sometimes he worried he’d fade away, like the ghosts of ads for defunct products on the sides of old barns.

Then he’d talk to friends and customers at the farmers market and realize he’d joined a fantastic community that would only continue to grow.

He briefly wondered if his fascination with Sadie was born out of desperation, a seemingly single woman of an appropriate age.

But those gray-blue eyes, rimmed with dark lashes, were more than conveniently nearby.

Like when he caught a glimpse of her tasting pumpkin pie at the guild meeting, when she squeezed her eyes shut for one ecstatic moment and swiped at errant whipped cream with a flick of her tongue.

No, this attraction was genuine. He could tell that she knew how to take pleasure when she wanted it. And he wanted to provide.

There was mystery behind that prickly personality. Her Instagram proved that she didn’t weave only black fabric, as he had joked about. A vivid and colorful world exploded out of that dark shell. He wanted to know more about that world.

Winning her over would be worth it.

When Sadie emerged from the woods via the path between their houses, he tried not to jump out of his chair. Playing it cool was never a skill of his.

“How’s it going, Sadie?”

The way she hesitated before answering conveyed commitment to thinking about her words rather than doing the usual call-and-response. She hadn’t been kidding about disliking small talk. “Pretty good, for once.”

He chuckled at that. “Glad to hear it.” Doom and gloom, in her ever-present black tee and jeans.

Not the same clothes as yesterday’s, as these bore no telltale specks of orange paint.

Her wardrobe could have belonged to a tech CEO reducing decision fatigue or someone who’d let Edgar Allan Poe get to their head at an impressionable age.

“Pumpkins?” she asked.

Straight to the point. “This way,” he said, gesturing to the slate flagstones that led around the back of the cabin.

Before Sadie’s arrival, Josh paused the irrigation system from his phone. He didn’t want the ground to be too damp for her to inspect the plants comfortably. He also manually retracted all the sunshades to give her a good view of every burgeoning pumpkin.

A high, lightweight fence surrounded the patch to keep deer out.

Josh had researched wildlife-proof fencing in New Zealand used to keep feral mice and cats out of preserves.

Mice could get through the narrowest of passages, but not his fencing.

Those loose hogs never stood a chance. The entire area was covered with a gossamer-thin netting that kept the birds out as well.

“Is this a fucking vegetable patch or a bank vault?” Sadie asked just as Josh used an authentication app to unlock the gate. He declined to mention that if Stu took him up on his offer to secure his patch similarly, they wouldn’t be in this situation at all.

What he did say was, “I’m growing some proprietary squashes.”

“Okay, Willy Wonka. And you think I’m some kind of Slugworth sent here to get the scoop on your newest breeds?”

Josh scoffed. “If I thought that, I would have made you sign an NDA before you ever set eyes on Squash 2.0.”

They stared at each other for a moment.

“You’re not kidding, are you?” Sadie asked.

“To the pumpkins!” he said cheerily, holding the door for her.

Squash 2.0 required secrecy and security.

He hadn’t even told Stu about his aspirations: to grow a squash that could revolutionize the culinary world.

A hardy winter squash, able to last months without going bad.

It would be the perfect serving size—one squash per person.

With skin thin enough to be edible, eliminating the need for peeling or scooping.

With seeds as unobtrusive as a zucchini’s, and no slimy fibers, making it even easier to prepare.

All of that plus sweet, deeply flavorful flesh full of nutrients.

If he could dream it, he could breed it.

Or so he hoped. He was a few years into Squash 2.

0, but progress was slower than expected.

Josh wasn’t one to “manifest” or create a “vision board,” but he did indulge in the odd daydream of providing his squash to grocery stores nationwide.

In addition to Squash 2.0, his acreage was dedicated to the squashes and gourds he sold both at the farmers markets and as a wholesaler.

He found tremendous satisfaction in the balance of growing competitive pumpkins and developing his new breed, but underneath all of that, he had to honor the fact that a farm’s purpose was to feed the community.

“What the fuck is all of this shit?” Sadie pointed at the top of the fencing. “Do you have cameras on these pumpkins?”

“Yes,” he said, “watching for bugs and signs of fungus.”

Sadie narrowed her eyes. “What kind of a tech millionaire are you? The kind who made scary surveillance tools employers use to limit their bathroom breaks to ninety seconds? Did you make the shit stalkers use to keep tabs on victims? Or are you responsible for the cameras that identify supposed criminals before they’ve even done anything wrong? ”

“God, no,” he said. “I worked in video games.”

“I suppose that’s marginally better,” she mused.

Josh laughed loudly.

“What?”

“Has anyone ever told you that you rush to judgment a little bit? Think the worst of people?”

She grimaced, and Josh knew he’d hit a nerve.

He certainly didn’t know her well enough to understand what made her feel so threatened, and he hoped he hadn’t gone too far.

He usually went too far being helpful, not being critical.

She bent down and plunged a finger into the soil.

Something she’d learned from Stu, no doubt.

Who had tried to teach Josh, who’d had none of it.

“All these robots growing your pumpkins for you and the soil’s too fucking dry.”

Josh pressed his lips together. It wouldn’t be dry if he hadn’t suspended irrigation, but he would let her claim this win. “Good thing you’re here, then. Pick a plant.”

Still in a crouch, she beheld the plant in front of her.

The way she touched the leaves, with confidence and tenderness in equal measure, was something he was years away from.

Despite the years since she’d been in a pumpkin patch, she kept those skills close to her, like a family recipe she couldn’t forget.

She began narrating her experience. “These look to be in nice shape, I will admit, despite the cracked earth they’re growing in.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Don’t be too hasty.” She got up and began walking the rows, looking at each of the pumpkins the vines were currently growing. Given that each plant was allotted one thousand square feet, it took some time. “You’ve been cutting side shoots?”

“Of course.”

“Fertilizer?”

Josh saw an opportunity to benefit from Sadie’s pumpkin experience. “What would you be using?”

“That’s proprietary,” Sadie said quickly.

Josh half smiled. “Maybe you should be the one making me sign an NDA.”

“And I can tear out this nightmare irrigation system and these god-awful shades?”

She was welcome to drag out the old tent poles and faded bedsheets Stu used. The only thing he’d talk her out of was transplanting the plant to her father’s patch. He wanted her nearby, after all. She looked at him, squinting into the sun, to see his nod.

“Won’t it be a lot of trouble to disconnect one plant from all this bullshit?”

“I’ll figure it out, I promise.”

Sadie was silent for a moment, and Josh waited on the next insult. When she spoke, her voice was quieter than usual. “Thanks. You didn’t have to do this.”

So she was capable of sincerity. In that way, she was more like her dad than maybe even she realized.

For a solid year Stu told Josh that he’d never last in Pea Blossom, that someone with zero knowledge of plants had no business calling his farm Josh’s Squashes.

And now? Stu wore a Josh’s Squashes T-shirt under his trademark rotation of aloha shirts.

Josh couldn’t have been prouder. He loved winning people over.

He rose to meet any challenge. And the challenge before him had tattoos he wanted to trace with his tongue and a soft belly he wanted to use as a pillow.

“It would be no fun to enter the weigh-off without losing to a Fox,” he said.

“Into humiliation, are you?” His eyes went wide. “This one,” she said before he could recover and form a response, pointing to the plant at her feet.

Josh checked his phone’s database tracking progress of the plants.

“You chose the plant that currently has the smallest pumpkins.”

“Did I?” She crouched back down to look at her chosen plant.

The breeziness in her tone made him worry she somehow knew how to assess weight without a single measurement.

He might have some serious competition. “You don’t need to worry about that.

Do you want me to pick a different plant?

I could beat you with any of these. I could probably beat you with whatever flowers bloom on my father’s recovering pumpkins.

” She looked at him with fire in her eyes.

“We could roll a die if you like. You seem like a guy with some of those twenty-sided dice.”

She was enjoying taunting him, wasn’t she? Should he tell her that she looked like someone who had her first sexual encounter in a cemetery? That wouldn’t be his style, even if she’d probably enjoy it. “Just because I worked in video games does not mean I have a D20 lying around my house.”

“It does, though, doesn’t it?”

Blood rushed to his face. Josh was a hopeless dork, but he didn’t want Sadie to think he was a dork. “Fine. We can roll for it.” He dashed back into his house to retrieve a die. “I only have this because it was a gift,” he said on his return.

She swiped the die out of his hands. Turned it over in her fingers, inspecting the artistry.

He’d caught her looking at his hands yesterday and today it was his turn.

He might have expected black nail polish to round out her gloomy aesthetic, but she was unadorned.

No jewelry or polish, nails trimmed closely, nimble fingers.

As the tools of her trade, they needed no ornamentation.

The image of those capable, beautiful hands gripping his bedsheets flashed in his mind.

“It has your name debossed into it and it kind of looks like a little pumpkin.” Her lips curled up at the corners in appreciation for the craftsmanship. “It’s got a little maker’s mark, it looks like? This bee? Am I right?”

“Nate, my farmers market buddy, gave it to me to celebrate the end of my first season. He’s a beekeeper and his wife, Erica, has a business making dice. They both use the same bee logo.”

She hefted the die and tossed it back to him so that he barely had to move his hand to catch it. He shook it in his hands and rolled it onto the flagstone nearest him.

“Thirteen,” he said.

“A lucky number. Which plant is that?”

He exhaled a puff of air through his nose. “The one you originally picked.”

“The goddesses agree with me, then.”

“It’s settled,” Josh said. “I wouldn’t dare cross the goddesses.

” Sadie was genuinely smiling now, and he felt lighter on his feet because of it.

As sexy and fierce as she looked when she scowled, she was lovely when she smiled.

The littlest gap between her front teeth was a whimsical feature on an otherwise serious face.

“How are you feeling?” Josh asked.

“A little excited. I came back here because I wanted to grow pumpkins, and it’s a relief I can still do that.”

“We can both be thankful your father agreed to sell me seeds from his stock.”

“I’m pretty sure he’ll sell seeds to anyone whose money is green.

He has this belief the seeds simply won’t grow well for assholes.

The guy with the hogs doesn’t grow them, does he?

Part of me hopes he does so I can prove Stu right.

Those pumpkins won’t grow well because I’m going to go over there with a jackhammer and a flamethrower and I don’t know, maybe a tank. ”

“No, I’m the only other local growing them, and clearly I need to stay on your good side.

‘Lord only knows why pumpkins grow for a ding-dong like you,’ Stu tells me.

You know I misidentified an acorn squash as a kabocha my first year here?

And your father was so genuinely mad that I got into this business.

Legitimately irate. He reminds me of it all the dang time.

It’ll be written on my tombstone. HERE LIES JOSHUA OWEN THATCHER. HAD NO BUSINESS GROWING SQUASHES.”

Sadie opened her mouth to speak but closed it again.

“What?” Josh said.

“It’s nothing.”

What wasn’t she saying? Was he doing too much?

He was certainly doing the thing where he was overly generous.

Old habits and all that. As a child, his parents argued about finances; he slipped his birthday money into his mom’s purse.

A childhood friend mentioning a fondness for Pokémon?

He gave them half of his cards. His attachments to stuff were never stronger than his desire to make other people happy.

He needed to give her space and extract himself. So he looked down at his phone. “I’ve got a call in a couple minutes,” he fibbed, “but can I get your phone number? I’ll text you everything you need to get access to the patch going forward.”

As he walked back to the A-frame with her number (LA area code, of course) already tucked into memory, he looked back to see her smiling down at her pumpkin-to-be.

It wasn’t enough to give her the plant. He was going to deliver justice, too, and take down Go Hog Wild.