Squashed (10 page)

“Forget it, Spider. I don’t know where you’ve been.”

Dad entered, holding a trash can lid like a shield. “What,” whispered Dad, “is
that
?”

“Insurance,” said Richard, handing Dad a biscuit. “How was your day, Uncle Mitchell?”

“Safe,” said Dad, eyeing Spider, who burped and nuzzled my arm. “Very safe.”

“He can sleep in the shed outside,” said Richard. “He won’t leave the property. Hates noise, remember? Gotta go.”

“Richard,” I snapped, “this is not a good thing for me. This does not make me happy.” Spider, however, was happy, gurgling at my feet. Richard backed away. I was doing fine, he said.

“See you, Uncle Mitchell,” Richard said, and waved.

“Young man,” shouted Dad, “you’re not seriously leaving this…this—”

“Dog,” said Richard, almost out the door.

“If you leave now,” I threatened him, “I will injure you. You will never play baseball again, I swear!”

“Would someone,” cried Dad, “please explain to me what that thing is doing in my house?”

“Ellie will,” said Richard, grabbing two biscuits and closing the screen door quietly. “It’s her dog.”

“You’re a dead man, Richard!” I shrieked, smiling at Spider to not get him nervous. “Good dog,” I told him. “Nice dog.” I tore after Richard, down the back porch steps, into the cold, past Max and his bells and my BACK OFF, CREEPS sign. Richard, the rat, was gone.
Spider stood in the doorway gumming a cookie Dad had thrown at him.

“Spider,” I said, “this is Max.” Spider seemed to take that in stride. I pointed to the shed. “And this,” I chirped, “is
your
house.” Spider growled, lowered his tail, and slunk back into the kitchen. It was going to be a long evening.

D
ad, I, and the neighbors
slept about seven minutes during Spider’s first night patrol. We got four angry calls about barking and two angrier calls mentioning rat poison, and I baked another batch of biscuits at 2:00
A.M.
to silence Spider, who responded to a squeaky truck on Bud DeWitt Memorial Drive by reaching his full barking potential. Dad offered him a store-bought English muffin, which he spat out.

Frost was in the air, putting Max in more danger. Most pumpkins can recover from a slight frost, but freezing meant the end. I gobbled six butterscotch cookies because of the stress, and covered Max with an electric blanket roped with extension cords that led up the back porch. By now his leaves were as big as elephant ears, his main vine as thick as Dad’s arm. I measured his circumference from stem to nose around his fattest area: 153 inches. He was an awesome 490 pounds according to my pumpkin estimated weight chart.

Big feeders like Max took 120 days to mature, and I had timed it well; we had 12 days to go to the Weigh-In, and Max was bulging beyond my dreams. I felt the solid hardness of his shell, tucked the blanket tighter, and let the good warmth soak in.

I’d been talking to Max like Wes said, but it made me feel stupid. As a loyal reader of
Seventeen
, I tried to be sophisticated whenever possible, because you never knew who was watching. I’d read Max an article about whether guys like girls with makeup to broaden his scope and take the pressure off always just growing. The article said if you be yourself you don’t have to worry about anything else. I told Max that he was a great champion and all he had to do was be himself, but under no circumstances was he to be any less than that. I thought it was tacky of Wes to tell Grace he wanted to see Max and then get sick, not even show up in school for three whole days, and leave me wondering about everything.

“Max,” I said, pulling my coat tight and adjusting the blanket’s heat. Talking to an electric blanket made me feel dumber, and Spider was yelping at every chipmunk that scurried by. “There are times in life, Max, when we need to gather every ounce of strength and courage and move forward despite the odds.” I got this speech from Richard, who got it from Mr. Soboleski, who got it in part from Vince Lombardi, who probably got it from Winston Churchill.

A cold wind whooshed from the north, and Max shivered. Normally I did not give orders to squashes and was known for giving my vegetables a lot of rope. But this cold was coming in quick even though the farm report had predicted a gentle, warm evening. Nana taught me not to rely on weather people because they
don’t have the good sense to stand outside and see what’s happening.

“You will,” I shouted, “
not
freeze, Max! You will think warm, think victory! You must be a man!”

Spider shrieked as Mrs. Lemming took her nightly bag of trash across the street and put it in the Urices’ garbage can to fool the raccoon that had been driving her crazy for twenty years. Nana told her that raccoons don’t live that long, but Mrs. Lemming said
hers
did and had been sent to earth to torment her all her days. She’d tried leaving a light on, but that hadn’t worked. Neither had a radio. I turned up the heat for Max as Spider yelped through the quiet night.

Morning came quickly and Max made it through, toasty and safe, a tribute to Sommerset Electric and Dad’s motivating powers. I grabbed Richard by the scruff of the neck when he dared to show up for breakfast. “I will kill you,” I promised. Richard threw Spider a Snickers bar, which he devoured.

“He’s got to go,” I said.

“This,” said Richard, scratching behind Spider’s ears, “is the National Guard, Ellie.”

“You left me alone with him.”

“Your father was here, and Max,” Richard said, “
is
still here. Just in case you haven’t heard, another pumpkin bit the dust last night.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere in Circleville. That’s all I know.”

The pumpkin thieves were everywhere now. Uncontrollable. I looked at Spider like the last woman on earth would look at the last man on earth even though he was Elmer Fudd. I adjusted.

“He has a nice face,” I said as Richard and Spider nodded.

But getting Old Abe to see the light was another story. Dad’s dark circles were deepening. I told Dad he could rise above adversity and attack one of his Important Life Goals: Beating Insomnia. Dad said Spider gave insomnia new meaning and had set a deadline: 6:00
P.M.
No more Spider. The dog, sensing a biscuit-free future, licked my hand and curled up at my feet. He wasn’t fooling anybody; still this was the first animal who had shown an interest in me. Spider put his paw in my hand. Contact! I stroked it like Annie Sullivan breaking through to Helen Keller.

“You are here to protect Max from bad people,” I instructed. Spider panted in response. “I will bake you biscuits
if
you obey. That’s the rule.” Spider took this in, not as happily, and snarled. I held a biscuit over his head.

“Take it or leave it, pal.” He lay down in defeat. “Another thing,” I said. “You are making my father nervous. And he doesn’t need outside help, if you get my meaning.”

Dad appeared, inching toward the back door, shielded with his trash can lid, whispering, “Good dog. That’s a good dog.” I decided to go for the direct approach.

“I’ve got to keep him, Dad. I need you to understand.”

“Ellie,” he whispered, “this animal is a terror. Good dog, Spider.”

“It’s only for nineteen days—”

“That,” Dad spat, “is interminable. Whole wars have been fought in less time.”

“Like the Six-Day War,” Richard offered, pleased with himself until I kicked him in the shin. “May I take that back, sir?” he asked, rubbing his leg.

“You may take this animal back.”

“I can’t do that, Uncle Mitchell.”

Dad gave him a
look
that said this better be good. It was.

“Because, sir, Mr. Anker needs total quiet and bed rest and Mrs. Anker is pretty strung out, not to mention that Mrs. Anker’s son broke his leg last month and can’t get around too well, and anyway, I promised.” Dad waited as Richard went for the big finish. “And, sir, not that this would matter to you, but Mrs. Anker’s brother is head of Loward’s Department Store, and she said she’s never been in a place where the salespeople needed more motivating. And I’m sure that Mrs. Anker would mention this good deed you and Ellie are doing for old Spider here to her brother, who would maybe be interested in all that motivational stuff you do for companies.”

Richard watched Dad and waited. He knew Dad had been gunning for Loward’s Department Store (the biggest in the five-town area) as a client for two years and had hit nothing but a brick wall.

Dad harrumphed.

Spider caught a fly with his tongue. Deadly.

“If,” Dad said, “you keep him outside, Ellie, then—”

“I will, Dad. I promise.”

“And,” Dad continued as Spider watched, sensing doom, “this constant racket must stop. You must discipline him, Ellie, to behave that way only to—”

“Pumpkin thieves,” I said.

“Precisely,” Dad agreed, glaring at Spider, who glared back. “He is only a dog, Ellie, and you are an intelligent, educated, enlightened person. Take control.”

“I’ll try, Dad.”

Dad walked out the back door and turned to Richard. “Say hello to Mrs. Anker for me, will you?”

“I will do that, Uncle Mitchell, yes.” A car horn beeped in the distance and Spider went nuts, growling and shaking at the hated sound. Dad, an intelligent, educated, enlightened person, threw a biscuit at Richard who caught it like a line drive and grounded it straight into Spider’s mouth. Dad crawled out the door, not looking back.

Dennis was late to Miss Moritz’s class, looking like he’d slept in his truck, which he probably had, typical of a crummy pumpkin thief. He came in during our re-enactment of Patton’s march into Palermo and got to his seat just as Sicily (portrayed by the Bomgarten twins) fell noisily across three desks and crashed on the floor in defeat. Miss Moritz, her forehead perspiring with enthusiasm, asked how
this
major battle made us feel. I said it made me feel glad I wasn’t in Italy, which a large portion of the class agreed with, including Joey Bongrioriano and Gina Carlucci. Dennis yawned and blew his nose on his sleeve.

Miss Moritz wasn’t happy with my answer or my grades. She did not understand the importance of champion squash training and its effect on lesser life issues such as homework. Miss Moritz wrote a note to Dad with the worst news possible: I was not working up to my full potential. That’s all he needed.

“Ellie!” he boomed. “
What
is this?”

I looked at the stationery in his hand and took a wild guess. “A note, Dad?”

“An edict, young woman!”

Good study habits, he barked, were the road to
success in life,
not
growing pumpkins. Consistency brought rewards,
not
kneeling in the dirt watering an oversized gourd. World history was a pathway to truth, justice, and the American way.

“You will study,” Dad informed me. “You will think clearly and resonantly. You will concentrate on your schoolwork first. Then and only then may you concentrate on that”—he struggled to form the word—“vegetable.”

Between Spider’s barking and Dad’s edict, poor Max was surely shrinking inside. Richard had almost measured Cyril’s pumpkin on the sly, but Cyril ran from his toolshed waving a lead pipe, and Richard took off. He said he couldn’t tell how big it was, but that I should probably be nervous.

“I’m not nervous,” I lied.

“Good,” said Richard. “Be positive against the odds. Makes it easier to get out there on the mound.”

I left Spider in the yard to guard Max and went to see for myself. Cyril’s cousin, Herman, was guarding Big Daddy with a rifle. Herman looked like a squash with small, buggy eyes. Big Daddy looked like he belonged on a recruitment poster for growers. I was dead. Herman grinned and spat, never much for conversation.

I stared at the soon-to-be winning entry of this year’s Rock River Pumpkin Weigh-In and Harvest Fair, my heart sinking to the earth’s roots. “Well, Missy,” cackled Cyril, coming up behind me, “whatcha gonna do with all that second-place money?”

This was Cyril’s first stab at irony. Second-place money was fifty dollars and whatever you could get if you sold your seeds, which could be a lot, but I was never one for passing secrets outside the family.

The Weigh-In winner got it all: fame, respect, a dollar a pound, and his picture in the
Rock River Clarion.
The loser got left behind in the dust. “Don’t spend it all in one place, now,” Cyril continued, winking at Herman, who thought this was so hysterical he dropped his rifle on his toe.

“Say, Cyril,” I shouted, trying to get even, “that
thing
—Big Daddy. Is he solid or full of rot like people say?”

“Ain’t gonna work, Missy,” Cyril shot back. I looked at gargantuan Big Daddy and knew he was right.

I walked off because school was starting soon—head down, hope gone—past Big Daddy, down Backfarb Road, across Bud DeWitt Memorial Drive, right into Rock River High, and smack into Wes and his clarinet case.

“Hi,” Wes said.

“Oh,” I said, feeling dumb. “Hi.”

“You look strange.”

I hadn’t seen Wes for four days because he’d been sick and had hoped for a more thrill-packed moment. I looked at him. “Ellie,” he continued, “are you okay?”