Page 12 of Trick or Tease

GARRETT

T he next morning, my head felt like it had been used as a punching bag.

I’d forgotten how potent that cheap beer could be when you had too many of them, and apparently I’d had several too many.

The bright sun felt like needles in my eyes as I squinted across the farm.

My sunglasses were doing nothing to shield my poor eyes.

I did spend most of my days inside an office. The windows were tinted so the sunlight I did see was filtered. I usually went into the office when the sun was just waking up and left long after it had gone down.

And that was pretty typical seven days a week.

I couldn’t believe they had me trudging through dirt and dried cornstalks in my good shoes to look at their little hobby project.

My Italian leather was going to be ruined, and for what?

To pretend I was interested in whatever half-baked scheme they’d cooked up to squeeze a few more dollars out of families looking for cheap entertainment?

I understood the nostalgia but come on. We’d been doing punkin’ chunkin’ on the farm for as long as I could remember.

Dad started it when Billy and I were kids, just a fun weekend thing where neighbors could come by, launch some pumpkins with our homemade trebuchet, and drink cider.

It was cute. Wholesome. The kind of thing that made for nice family memories.

But turning it into some kind of business venture? I couldn’t see how they expected to make any real money from it. It seemed like small potatoes. They might make four figures. And I was making eight and nine figure deals. We couldn’t be more different.

“Just wait until you see what we’ve done,” Billy said, practically bouncing on his feet despite what had to be an equally brutal hangover. “It’s going to blow your mind, man.”

I seriously doubted that, but I nodded and kept walking. The least I could do was humor them before I went back to civilization.

Where there used to be one rickety wooden launcher that Dad had built in his garage, there were now four of them.

Four actual trebuchets, each one looking professionally constructed and painted in bright autumn colors.

They were spaced out across the field in a neat line, each with its own loading area and what looked like safety barriers.

But that wasn’t what made me pause.

The big empty field where we used to just watch pumpkins splatter randomly in the distance wasn’t empty anymore.

Scattered across the expanse were maybe a dozen plywood cutouts, each one painted to look like classic movie monsters.

There was a Dracula with his cape spread wide, a green Frankenstein’s monster with bolts in his neck, a werewolf mid-howl, and what looked like a mummy with trailing bandages.

Some zombies in painted poses. I spotted what might have been a witch stirring a cauldron as well.

They looked like something out of a cartoon, bright and colorful and completely ridiculous.

“What the hell is all this?” I asked.

Sabrina grinned, her earlier irritation with me apparently forgotten in her excitement. “Targets,” she said proudly. “Now people can actually aim for something instead of just launching pumpkins into the void. If they manage to hit one, they win prizes.”

“Prizes?”

“Small stuff,” Billy explained. “Candy, little toys, maybe a free cider or something. The point isn’t the prize, it’s the challenge. These things are not easy to hit.”

I studied the setup more carefully. The targets were spread out at different distances, some closer, some farther away. The trebuchets looked like they could generate some serious power but aiming them with any kind of precision would be nearly impossible for most people.

“It’s mostly luck,” Sabrina admitted, following my gaze. “But that’s part of the fun. And we can have multiple people launching at once now, so we can get more people through. We can even set up competitions if people want to go head-to-head.”

Despite myself, I was impressed. This wasn’t the amateur-hour operation I’d been expecting. Someone had put real thought into the logistics, the spacing, the whole customer experience.

“How many people can you accommodate now?” I heard myself asking.

“On a busy day? Maybe four times as many as before,” Billy said.

“Instead of one family waiting around for twenty minutes while another family takes their turn, we can have multiple groups going simultaneously. Plus the competition aspect means people stick around longer, buy more food, more cider.”

I walked closer to examine one of the trebuchets. The craftsmanship was solid. Whoever built these knew what they were doing. The wood was properly treated, the joints looked secure, and there were actual safety mechanisms in place.

“Who built these?”

“Tommy Mitchell,” Sabrina said. “Remember him? He’s got his own carpentry business now.”

“And you think people will actually pay for this?”

“They already are,” Billy said. “We did a test run last weekend and sold out completely. Had to turn people away.”

That got my attention. “Sold out?”

“Could have been more if we’d had the capacity,” Sabrina said. “That’s why we added the extra launchers. And we’re streamlining things to keep it all flowing smoothly.”

My lawyer brain immediately started calculating. Low overhead, seasonal labor, minimal ongoing costs once the initial investment was made. The profit margins could actually be respectable, especially if they could drive volume.

But it was still just a pumpkin-launching operation in the middle of nowhere. How much could it really scale?

“I think he needs a refresher course,” Billy said with a big grin.

“No thanks.”

“Chicken?” Sabrina teased.

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not five.”

“He’s definitely chicken,” Lucy said.

I sighed and walked over to the nearest trebuchet, trying to look like I knew what I was doing.

The truth was, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually launched a pumpkin.

Had to be at least twelve years, maybe more.

Back then it was just Dad’s rickety contraption and a lot of trial and error.

“Need some help there, city boy?”

I turned to find a lanky teenager with a cocky grin watching me fumble with what I assumed was the loading mechanism. He couldn’t have been more than seventeen, wearing ripped jeans and a flannel shirt that had seen better days.

He reminded me a lot of me at that age.

“I’m fine,” I said, though I clearly wasn’t. The damn thing had more moving parts than I remembered.

“Uh-huh.” The kid exchanged glances with a girl about his age, who was setting up another launcher. “You sure? Because you’re holding that backwards.”

I looked down at the wooden lever in my hands. Shit. He was right.

“Jake, be nice,” the girl called over. “Not everyone grew up chunkin’ pumpkins.”

“But he did,” Jake shot back. “This is Billy’s brother. The famous Garrett Hogan who used to hold the distance record.”

Great. Now I had an audience of teenagers who remembered my childhood achievements better than I did.

“That was a long time ago,” I muttered, trying to figure out which end of this contraption was which.

“Here, let me show you.” Jake stepped up beside me and demonstrated the proper loading technique with practiced ease.

“See, you want to put the pumpkin in the cup like this, make sure it’s seated properly.

Then you pull this back until it clicks.

Hear that? That’s your safety catch. We believe in safety first at Hogan Farms.”

I nodded, trying not to look as foolish as I felt. “Got it.”

“Now you aim by adjusting this wheel here for elevation, and this one for direction. Start with Dracula over there. He’s the easiest target.”

I followed his instructions, cranking the wheels and trying to line up what I hoped was a decent shot.

“Ready when you are,” Billy called out from the launcher next to mine. He’d loaded his pumpkin like someone who actually knew what he was doing.

“This is going to be embarrassing,” I muttered under my breath.

“Probably,” Jake agreed cheerfully. “But hey, that’s half the fun.”

I pulled the release lever. The trebuchet snapped forward with surprising force, launching my pumpkin in a high arc across the field.

For a moment, I thought I might actually hit something.

The orange projectile sailed through the air with decent velocity, heading in the general direction of the monster targets.

Then it landed about fifteen feet short of the nearest one, exploding in a shower of orange pulp and seeds. Dracula remained unharmed.

It pretty much went like that for the next ten minutes.

Turned out, I sucked.

Billy grinned at me. “Looks like I won.”

“Won what?”

“Won at life. Deal with it.” He walked away, arms raised in victory while our audience clapped, which pissed me off.

And they knew it. And that was exactly why they were all playing it up like a big victory, all but carrying Billy off on their shoulders. They were loving the fact they were better at something than I was.

But I could see Billy was passionate about all of this. My brother was always a dreamer. He never really focused on any one thing, but he seemed serious about this. And they were all treating it like an actual business. Like they actually might make money.

“Come on,” Sabrina said. “We want to show you the rest of what we’re working on.”

Billy nodded eagerly. “The punkin’ chunkin’ is just one piece of it, Garrett. We’re trying to create a whole experience here. Like a family could come and spend a whole afternoon here.”

I followed them toward what used to be our back forty, wiping my hands on a towel Jake had tossed me. The hangover was finally starting to lift, replaced by genuine curiosity about what they’d managed to pull together.

“See, the thing is, farming has gotten harder every year,” Billy said. “The margins are razor thin, and one bad season can wipe you out completely. Mom and Dad have been lucky, but luck doesn’t last forever.”

“So you’re diversifying,” I said, my business brain automatically kicking in.

“Exactly.” Sabrina smiled. “With the corn maze and the pumpkin patch, it’s giving us several streams.”

I nodded, though I wasn’t entirely convinced. The whole thing seemed ambitious for a small farm operation, but I wasn’t about to crush Billy’s enthusiasm. “I don’t know much about all that stuff,” I said carefully. “But it sounds like people will like it.”

Billy’s eyes lit up. I remembered that look from when we were kids and he’d get obsessed with some new project.

“Garrett, I’m going to prove to you this is a bigger deal than you realize.

You haven’t been around during the fall for a few years.

You don’t know how much it’s grown. People come from all over. ”

He was right about that. The last few Octobers I’d been working through weekends and holidays without a second thought. I assumed things here had stayed exactly the same as when we were teenagers.

“This way,” Sabrina said, leading us toward a section of the farm I barely recognized.

Where there used to be just regular corn rows, there was now what looked like an actual maze carved into the stalks. The corn was tall enough that I couldn’t see over it. We’d gone through plenty of corn mazes back in my day. Never actually made one ourselves though.

“I think you’ve got some good ideas,” I said. “And hey, I’m happy to help while I’m in town.”

Sabrina looked at me with surprise in her eyes. “Yeah?”

I nodded. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be here, but while I’m here, yeah, I’ll help. I can’t chunk a pumpkin for shit, but I’m not completely useless.”

I couldn’t believe I just said that because I honestly planned on leaving tomorrow.

But for some reason, I didn’t want to go just yet. And it wasn’t like I had any work waiting for me back in the city.

“I know exactly how you can help,” Sabrina said with a grin that promised I wasn’t going to like it.