Squashed (21 page)

It was nothing, really.

Louise Carothers was behind me in her trailer with not near as many balloons or streamers. Gloria Shack looked like she’d bitten into a lemon. Mrs. McKenna rode in her carriage silent in the face of a new pumpkin phenomenon. Gordon Mott interviewed Dad about what kind of a child I was. Dad lied, which I really appreciated.

Mayor Clint called me “a rising Rock River star.” The
Tribune
reporter interviewed me for forty-seven minutes and said I was the most determined teenager she’d ever met. Max was rolled back to his place near the big scale, where he would stay until Sunday afternoon, when the Rock River Pumpkin Weigh-In and Harvest Fair would be over.

I moved through the remaining festival days with the peace that comes from annihilating a despicable competitor. Wes was at my side. We shook hands with everyone. We smiled at children. We watched bakers stand beside their entries, swatting flies away, promising their husbands they would never do this again. Oral Perkins took a bite of Mannie Plummer’s pumpkin fudge and started coughing, nearly finishing Mannie off right there. We kissed behind the pumpkin taffy poster and behind the 31 Flavors Harvest Turkey. I thought kissing was right up there with blue-ribbon-winning and figured anyone who got both would need a good rest before the week was out.

We rode in hayrides and bought lemonade from every kid who had a stand. We bet Richard two dollars that Bomber Urice, the three-hundred-pound favorite in the great pumpkin-pie-eating contest, would beat last year’s record (seventeen) by two pies. He crashed to the ground after scarfing down his eighteenth pie. Richard stepped over Bomber’s leg and took our money.

The fair surrounded us with big, loving arms. Storytellers told tales. Pigs snorted across Marion Avenue for the 3:00
P.M.
races. Oratory contestants rolled good, rich words from their mouths. But nobody drew a crowd bigger than mine. When you’ve grown the biggest pumpkin in Iowa, people come. They just can’t help themselves.

It was Sunday afternoon, and Max sat over his kingdom. In twenty minutes the festival would be over. I stood next to him in the winner’s circle in my new
turquoise jumpsuit (size 12), which had greatness written all over it, right down to the price, which made Dad gag.

Mannie Plummer stood next to me, a blue ribbon for “Best Pumpkin Confection” pinned to her dress. Frieda Johnson got “Best Overall Baking Category” for her cinnamon syrup buns, which didn’t surprise anybody.

Gordon Mott ran out of things to say about pumpkins and the American spirit. 31 Flavors ran out of pumpkin swirl ice cream just in time, because everyone was getting sick of it. Bill Sudd ran out of customers, tipped back his hat, gazed into the sunset, and ran the Tilt-A-Whirl one last time.

The long shadows were forming on Marion Avenue—Mrs. McKenna’s looked like a giant gourd, a clear sign the magic was going. She hoisted the Rock River flag with the dancing pumpkin insignia in a final blessing as Phil Urice unleashed the giant pumpkin balloon with the town motto—OUR PUMPKINS WE PRIZE/OUR RIGHTS WE WILL MAINTAIN—up, up into the air to fall to earth we knew not where. The crowd cried and hugged each other and made their plans for next year, which would be better than ever.

Winners grinned. Losers said they’d try again. And like a wonderful movie, it was over, leaving the spirit of its story behind. The people sighed and walked off arm in arm, turning back for one last look at Max, the Biggest Pumpkin in Iowa.

Max was loaded onto Phil Urice’s truck, and Wes and I took him home. He went down with a thunk in his
old place in the patch. Wes said he’d made pumpkins everywhere proud, which was absolutely true. But another truth was settling in, and I didn’t want to think about it.

Max had only a few more weeks to live.

The days scrambled together. Max and I rode in the Homecoming Parade lead float under an orange banner that read NO GUTS. NO GLORY. This was a deep honor; even Richard said so. Max wore a Rock River High pennant taped to his stem, and I wore a defensive end’s letter sweater that I had to give back to him after the game. Crash Bartwald jogged alongside in his football uniform, growling and spitting doom. We got devoured by the Ebberton Grizzlies, 21 to 3.

Halloween came, an awful holiday that insulted pumpkins everywhere—all those jack-o’-lanterns on doorsteps smiling like ghouls—any grower with a soul could see they were miserable. Richard came by on his way to Farley Raker’s immature sophomore Halloween party dressed as the Gory Blob from the Cave of the Blood-Soaked Dead. He had worn out his Babe Ruth costume and was going for a new look with eyes all over his head and neck.

“Why,” I shrieked, “can’t people carve a face on a watermelon or a cantaloupe? Why torture pumpkins?”

“They’re
harvest
vegetables.”

“I can’t have a conversation with you. You have fifty eyes.”

“I have thirty-three eyes,” Richard corrected. “Twenty-one more than Bart Tiller.”

“What’s he going as?”

“A mangy killer bat.”

“He did that last year.”

“Last year he was a depraved flying mammal.”

“What’s the difference?”

He raised his ketchup-stained sleeve: “A depraved flying mammal only has six eyes.”

“I hate Halloween!”

Richard hissed and was gone.

The days grew dark and gray. Flowers disappeared. Trees stood bare and lonely. Marion Avenue was back to normal, even though it had felt the touch of greatness only a few weeks before. Wes and I were getting this kissing business down whenever possible, which meant when Richard wasn’t around, but the hard truth of agricultural life pressed upon us. Max’s shell was turning soft. My Vegetable was turning to mush. I knelt beside him in the patch.

“A pumpkin, Max, is not forever.”

The ground was cold and ugly because it was November. It was going to be a long winter.

“I can’t keep you much longer. You’ve got to understand.”

I was rotten at explaining death to a vegetable, especially one as sensitive as him.

“Winter’s coming.”

Max stretched toward the sun. I patted him. “You can’t hang on anymore. You’re losing weight every day.”

I hated November. It was dark and cold and mean even though it had Thanksgiving and all those pre-Christmas sales. I think the Pilgrims should have picked another month that made you feel more like celebrating.

I hated winter. It was a waste of time and talent. Barns closed, tools hung from hooks, unused. Tractors sat quiet and dusty. Soil froze solid, the sun stepped
back, growers slept late and ate
brunch.
Everything stopped and waited for spring. I hated winter even more than Mayor Clint, who’d promised to keep Bud DeWitt Memorial Drive clear of snow, something old Mayor Bumper couldn’t do, who said it was like trying to keep widows off an old bachelor. Mayor Bumper lost the widow vote that year, and everybody knows old bachelors are so cranky they don’t vote. Mayor Clint won hands down, but folks were watching him real close.

Nana said winter was God’s way of making growers catch their breath because the true ones would never do it on their own. She was right, too. If it were up to me, I’d be growing giants all year round, probably half dead from the strain and torture, gray before my time.

But Max didn’t last until winter. One week before Thanksgiving, he knew it was time. I knelt in the dirt with Wes to say good-bye.

“I won’t forget you, Max. You were the greatest squash in Iowa.”

“The greatest,” Wes agreed.

Max, a champion until the end, pushed up for one last reach to the sun. “I’ll plant your seeds in the spring, Max. I promise.” Wes held his stem. I took my cleaver and cut his flesh from top to bottom, again and again, until Max was a heap of chunks and muck. I was crying hard as we combed seeds from his insides and felt the pumpkin glop of an old friend run through my fingers—it ripped my heart, I can tell you—but it had to be done for the cycle to be completed. Max had seeds of greatness that money couldn’t buy. Seeds that maybe could go the distance, like their father.

We lifted them carefully, knowing each one had a tiny embryonic plant inside filled with Max’s spirit. We dried them and put them on a tray in the shed like they were gold, which they were. Then we cut Max’s flesh and mashed it with corncobs and hay. Wes took a spade and I took one, too—we turned the earth over and over, and worked Max back into the soil where he had begun.

It was night before we finished.

We patted the last of Max into the earth. Wes stroked my hair, and warmth shot through me. I took a deep breath, a breath full of promise. I’d breathed it before as a grower lots of times—always when a squash relationship was over and a new one hadn’t begun—always when I thought about spring, the time to till the soil of the last vegetable to make way for the new one. I held the tray of Max’s seeds, thankful I could do the work I loved. Nana said life is a search to find who you are and who you aren’t, and when you’ve found that, you’ve got one of God’s best gifts.

This didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate crossover potential. I did want to have great cheekbones and wear turquoise pants suits and have people notice when I walked into a room. I wanted Cyril to go to Russia and mine salt in Siberia where they weren’t too keen on big-mouth competitors and a pumpkin would probably freeze the third week in August. I wanted to help Wes plant corn. I wanted to try to grow two giants next year, and I figured if that didn’t finish me off, nothing would.

In a few months winter would be over and I’d be starting again. The Rock River would rise with pike, bluegill, and crappies, the roadsides would fill with marsh marigolds. The cottontail rabbits would hop
around the new spring crop. I would bang a sauté pan good and loud to get them away from my pumpkins, scaring the robins who flew overhead. I would shout at the ground to stay warm
please
, is that too much to ask?

Spring would come like it always did.

It was one of those things you could count on.

B
y early April
, Richard could do no wrong. He had hit two home runs and three singles in his past three games, nailed Billy Pike, Circleville’s ace base stealer, for a double play, annihilating the Circleville High White Sox, 7 to 3, who absolutely deserved it,
and
caught a pop fly running into Howie Bucks, the left fielder, who was really ripped. Richard said this season had his name on it. He knew it back in February when Edgar, the Rock River groundhog, saw his shadow and we had an early thaw.

Edgar had been brought from the Northeast by Bob Robertson, who figured a Groundhog Day extravaganza would get folks pumped up about his newsstands. Some growers believed Edgar was one with the ground and could feel the warming of the soil from his hole below. I put as much stock in Edgar as I did in a fortune cookie. We were talking about a groundhog, after all—not a soil thermometer—an animal prone to a short life span for digging its home in stupid places,
like under construction sites, and being mashed to death by giant cranes. If Edgar had been a dolphin or a Seeing Eye dog, I would have listened. These are animals that deserve respect. I was there when Edgar saw his shadow, and it wasn’t much. Cyril clapped when Edgar came out of his hole. Dad called it “professional courtesy.”

The fact that the Rock River started rising the next day just goes to show you how deeply every grower in the area needed spring. It came from nowhere, like a loon landing on a lake—making you wonder if it would float or sink. Flowers bloomed on hills and in gardens, willows sucked spring up their roots and grew full and proud. Windows flew open, screen doors got patched, growers took a great, healthy breath and started breaking up the ground—keeping their eye on the thermometer, because they’d been tricked before. Wes and I got his corn planted and told those shoots to push up toward heaven. He’d grown an inch since winter, which put the top of my head just below his chin. We were an agricultural couple of deep longevity now, and everybody respected it except Richard.

Dad brought out a new tape series that was becoming a hit. He called it, “Tilling the Soil of Your Mind’s Motivation,” and it was stuffed with deep agricultural truths for everyday living. We brainstormed on it together and had only one disagreement. I thought the tape should have a pumpkin patch on the label,
not
a field of wheat. Dad said pumpkins weren’t mainstream motivational symbols, and I said he had the power to change all that. He decided not to. Dad gave me credit in the accompanying brochure, though, which was a great honor. I hung it on the refrigerator with a large pumpkin magnet.