Squashed (20 page)

Cyril was strutting around his trailer as Herman backed it into position. I huddled around Max with family and friends and wondered why bad things happened to good pumpkins.

People gathered at the side of Phil Urice’s truck like a funeral line about to view a body, stretching halfway down the block. Nana watched me, and I couldn’t meet her gaze.

“Cyril Pool!” cried the weigher. “Number Ninety-four!”

It had to happen. I tried not to look as Cyril paraded from his trailer patting all his ribbons, but I did look, and tears stung my eyes. I shook my head to stop them, telling myself it didn’t matter. There was always next year.

Cyril grabbed an end of the blanket as Phil and Bomber Urice pushed the huge pumpkin from the hay.

“Easy, boys!” Cyril shouted. “I said easy now!”

I shut my eyes, but the tears wouldn’t give up. I had to pull myself together, not cry in the straw like a second-place jerk. I looked at Nana for one shaky second and she looked back with all the strength in heaven and zapped it into me.

My hands shot under Max’s blanket and grabbed
the Ziploc bag with that clump of black, moist earth. My great-grandfather tilled it and my father worked it and my grandmother used it to grow magic. My cousins hoed it and my uncle stomped it down and my mother planted a rose bush in it that shot to the sky like a bright yellow miracle. There wasn’t any soil energized with more love and perspiration that God had ever created.

The four men around Big Daddy were joined by a fifth, then another. “Hoist him, boys,” said Phil Urice, “on three. One.” The men moved Big Daddy higher. “Two.” Cyril was screaming they’d better be careful or he’d have their hides.

I ripped open the bag and shoved my hands inside, squeezing the soil through my fingers. I remembered Mother’s hands, which were always dark from the earth, and how she loved that garden, whether it was a good year or an average one.

Phil Urice hollered “Three!”

Big Daddy slid onto the great scale with a grunt.

The Cyril people were applauding, the Ellie people were booing. I closed my eyes and listened to my heart.

I remembered who I was.

“Six hundred sixty-eight point two pounds!” cried the weigher. “A new Harvest Fair record!”

Mrs. McKenna congratulated Cyril, who was bowing like a big creep, but somehow it didn’t matter near as much as I would have figured.

That’s when Nana elbowed me.

“Get ready, honey,” she laughed. “Something’s moving in the air.”

I looked, and something was happening because the weigher said, “Hold on now!” I wasn’t close enough
to see, but Richard was. He stepped to the scale, shouted, “Yee-ha!” and threw his mitt in the air. Dad ran over and stared at Big Daddy, who sat huge and mean—so much of him that a few inches hung over the scale.

“What’s that?” asked several in the crowd, pointing to Big Daddy’s bottom. Mrs. McKenna’s hand froze in midair. Oral Perkins’s mouth was open like a dead fish’s.

There was a gurgle. Then a shake. And like a bolt from heaven, like all the badness and rottenness that was inside Cyril and the way he’d treated every grower within two hundred miles just couldn’t be contained. It was like a hundred Fourth of Julys all rolled into one, better than the best fireworks that had ever shot into the sky, better than sitting with a champion squash in the moonlight holding the hand of the one you love.

There was so much of it, it just couldn’t stop. All that bad that was in Cyril had gotten into Big Daddy—formed right there good and heavy at his base—and like all badness, it couldn’t stay hidden forever. Sooner or later it had to come out, and it was coming out now. Starting to seep—thick, orange, smelly muck—dribbling out of Big Daddy’s dark spot for all the world to see.

“Step back!” the weigher cried.

“Thank you, Lord,” said Nana.

And that ooze was gaining strength, like the Rock River when it was really something to see, when the water just kept flowing downhill, past rocks and turns, moving faster and faster. Out the orange glop came, moving like white water. Someone had turned on a waterspout. There was so much of it, it started
running down the scale, dropping to the street below, falling thick and rotten in a big puddle right there on Marion Avenue and stunk like old meat. Cyril ran to his pumpkin and tried to patch him up, like the little boy who put his finger in the dam, but it was too late. That pumpkin started shrinking, the rot had pushed down to the base and Big Daddy’s sides were hanging over the scale. It was a great moment in pumpkin history.

“She’s going to blow!” called the weigher.

“Yes!” shouted Wes.

Yes!
I shouted inside, but couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. But I didn’t have to do anything.

There was a rumble and a heave. The shell that was Big Daddy cracked from the bottom to the top and rivers of rotten orange liquid sprayed down the scale and across the heads of the people closest up. They backed off disgusted, wiping the gunk from their clothes. Then the top that was Big Daddy heaved once, twice, and collapsed like my first chocolate soufflé, pushing more glop down the great scale Mrs. McKenna’s grandfather donated to the festival in 1953.

Dad started laughing, the way he used to let loose before Mother died—big and full, starting from his stomach and working its way up. It was just like Wes laughed, I hadn’t noticed that before, and now the two of them were laughing great and deep. The Ellie people were stomping and applauding. Cyril’s face was curled up in pain. He fell to his knees: “No!”

“Oh, yes!” shouted Wes, slapping his thigh. “Rot’ll do that. It’s an awful bad thing!”

“Awful bad!” Dad yelped.

Yes, indeed. It was beautiful!

Gordon Mott grinned as Max and I rose to reach
our full agricultural potential. Click. Big Daddy lay at our feet—soup and slop. Click. Mrs. McKenna shifted like a queen who was losing control of her kingdom. “There will be,” she croaked, “a brief intermission while we clean this…mess up.”

Click.

But the crowd wasn’t having any, and they weren’t going away. The sheriff dragged Cyril from the scale as garbageman Pete Ninsenzo checked the damage. It was great, wonderful damage—big, yucky, and deep. Pete and two men carried what was left of Big Daddy’s shell away. The Rock River Volunteer Fire Department backed their truck in close and yanked out their hoses. Nobody cared how long it took to clean the mess up. It could have taken all night, all week, nobody was leaving.

The Ellie people started shouting my name. Phil Urice gunned his truck into place as Cyril moved off in agony.

“Ellie! Ellie!”

The Volunteer Fire Department hosed down the area, and you couldn’t tell there’d been a recent death there at all, except for Cyril’s wailing in the distance and a few soaked streamers still hanging from the scale. Mrs. McKenna’s lips looked like they’d been yanked tight with string. Mr. McKenna was chuckling off by the 31 Flavors Harvest Turkey. Miss Moritz’s eyes were filled with the wisdom of history as she stood arm in arm with General Patton sipping pumpkin brandy in public below the scale where the great pumpkin Weigh-In winner was about to be announced to the crowd who already knew.

Francis Lueking’s pumpkin was shuffled on and off
like a bad act. “You did fine,” she whispered to her squash. “It just wasn’t our year.”

It was my year!

“Number Ninety-six! Ellie Morgan!”

Nana hugged me hard. Wes helped me down from the truck like I was Cinderella. The Sweet Corn Coquettes lined up ready to shake my hand. I sucked in my stomach and tossed Mother’s earrings. My eyes met Dad’s, and our hearts knit together for all the world to see.

Foot-stomping and cheering people lined Marion Avenue underneath the hazy spotlights. A drumroll sounded. Mr. Soboleski blew his whistle. Dad, Wes, Richard, and Phil Urice marched forward to lift Max to victory. Mayor Clint rolled up his sleeves and grabbed a corner of Max’s blanket to show he was a man of the people. The men shouted, “One, two, three,” and hoisted Max like the true star he was onto the blanket.

“Ahhhhh,” said the crowd as the blanket groaned under Max’s humongous size. The men grunted and groaned and slid him onto the scale.

“Ohhhhhh,” said the crowd.

“Six hundred eleven point seven pounds!” cried the weigher. “And solid, ladies and gentlemen. Through and through! We have ourselves a winner and a new Harvest Fair record!”

Yessirree!

There could have been a space shuttle launch right there on Marion Avenue and nobody would have noticed. The whoop that came from the people set the ground to moving. I jumped and raised my arms in victory. Orange confetti flew from hands like little butterflies. I hugged Max and took a bow.

Crash Bartwald and two defensive backs lifted me on their shoulders and paraded to the 31 Flavors Harvest Turkey, where the entire school gathered to show the adults where the real power in town was. Then everything started to blur. The clapping, the people. Dad waved from the crowd like I’d just been elected president. Wes stood with me. Richard jumped on a truck and made loud, immature sophomore noises. JoAnn and Grace threw confetti. The
Tribune
reporter asked me a question, and I couldn’t think to answer. Justin asked how I felt about winning, which seemed really stupid, and I knew he’d make a great reporter someday.

People wanted me to say something, give a speech, make a comment, go on the record, be wonderful. But there was nothing to say because Max said it all. I was a grower and I’d done it. I’d killed myself trying and I didn’t want to talk about it right now. I wanted to
feel
it, like a pumpkin soaks up the sun. I wanted it to be quiet, like it was in the patch, for just a moment. In the patch I could always catch my breath, I could always pick up the earth and let it run through my fingers. I could remember who I was.

Wes asked folks to back off real nicely. He put his hand around my shoulder and I leaned into him, glad for his protection. Max, the Biggest Pumpkin in Iowa, was covered with streamers and having a wonderful time. It was then that Wes leaned down and kissed me. Quick, you know. Not too dry or wet, but moist and full of promise—like good soil. My first kiss, with ninety million people watching, including my father and grandmother and loudmouthed cousin. I kissed him back and felt the sewers shake under Marion Avenue. We turned and faced the crowd, our couplehood sealed
in front of the entire world—the Past President of the Gaithersville Ag Club and the Winner of the Rock River Harvest Fair and Pumpkin Weigh-In who had just set a festival record with a 611.7-pound giant, which also happened to be the greatest pumpkin in the world.

Who said agriculture is boring?

T
he blue ribbon
Mrs. McKenna pinned on me was better than any of the blue ribbons she’d pinned on Cyril’s smelly shirt for the past four years. Those were a wimpy shade of robin’s egg blue, but mine was midnight blue, the color of a new Crayola crayon you’d use to color an important sky. The ribbon was long like a sash and had bright white letters. It read: 1ST PLACE, ROCK RIVER HARVEST FAIR AND PUMPKIN WEIGH-IN—GIANT PUMPKIN ADULT DIVISION, which, you’ve got to admit, is a terrific thing to say. At the bottom was a gold tassel that looked wonderfully official against my floppy orange blouse. Richard said I could probably rent a car with it even though I didn’t have my license yet. Louise Carothers got measly second place and a short red ribbon with no character whatsoever and absolutely no tassel. I held my winner’s check for $611.70—Max’s weight at a dollar a pound. Frieda Johnson covered Max with a giant horseshoe wreath.
Wes put an orange derby hat over his stem, which made him look handsome and debonair.

Dad watched, beaming, his arm around Nana, waiting for me to reach my full potential and motivate the audience. Gordon Mott, the
Tribune
reporter, and Justin waited for my golden words.

I stepped to the microphone and said, “Thank you for believing in me and being my friends.”

The people smiled at this and moved forward. They wanted more, and there wasn’t any. Winston Churchill could have aced this gathering, General Patton would have whipped everyone into formation, but being a grower, I let my vegetable speak for himself. I stepped back as Max took center stage.

The sheriff was the first to shake my hand, and now I was shaking all the hands that shot my way. Dad jumped onstage and hugged me with total pride. Wes walked up, My Boyfriend, and hugged me with all the love in the universe. Mannie Plummer hugged Mayor Clint who she’d never voted for and probably never would. Jock Sudd shook Phil Urice’s hand and Roxye snapped a picture of it in case they went back to hating each other in the morning. Spears tried to hug Aunt Peg and had to settle for a handshake. Grace hugged her mother, who hugged her happy Harvest hat because change comes hard to people of deep tradition.

Max soaked up the love like it was sunshine as Mother, Grandpa, and Bud DeWitt smiled down from Above.

Phil Urice’s truck with me, Wes, Richard, and Max was moving down Marion Avenue for the four-block
Parade of Champions that nobody had turned out for during the past four years because who wanted to look at Cyril and his extreme grunginess shoving it in everyone’s face so early in the morning? Roxye had decorated the truck with orange balloons and SQUASH ’EM, ELLIE! signs, and we rolled down Marion Avenue like returning astronauts from deep space who had captured the hearts of all America and who had done something magical and wonderful that everyone wanted to do, if everyone was being totally honest with themselves. I was waving and smiling, not like a Sweet Corn Coquette, mind you, but like a true growing champion. Richard was watching Wes and me closely with a look that said if we got cuddly, he’d jump out. Max stood tall and proud, the Biggest Pumpkin in Iowa, as the people heaped tons of confetti from rooftops and trees in celebration of our momentous victory over evil.