Squashed (22 page)

Rumors were everywhere about Dennis and Ralphie. Judge Park made sure those boys understood the value of a pumpkin. Dennis was in a work-release program at the Circleville Pound—Grace heard he was cleaning the cages of rabid dogs. Ralphie was at military school—Richard said he saw him chained to other vicious teenagers, picking up cigarette butts along Route 7 with his teeth. I felt the judge was more than fair.

April 12 brought Cyril’s annual Death Walk, which he took rain or shine, stopping at patches throughout the county, nosing around, giving the ground his nasty stare. Most growers put up with him, the way you’d listen to a life insurance salesman before you booted him out the door, except for Mannie Plummer, who shoved a rifle in his face and ordered him off her land. Mannie did this with life insurance salesmen, too. She decided long ago her life wasn’t worth anything to anybody if she was dead and that when the time came, she was taking her money and her pumpkin fudge recipe with her.

Cyril stuck his rotten nose over my fence, which I’d been expecting. “Well, Missy,” he sneered, “whatcha gonna have for the Weigh-In this year? Nuthin’ much, I ’spect.”

“You wish.”

I was tilling the soil a secret way with the tiller Dad gave me for Christmas—in big circles the size of giant pumpkins to get it used to what was going to grow there. Tilling the soil is part of a grower’s signature. I didn’t want Cyril catching any of my secrets, so I said, “Come to see how we do it in the big leagues, Cyril?”

Cyril spat on
my
ground. A chipmunk would have
fainted from the fumes. He stared at me, and I stared back. This was a man who didn’t deserve spring. All that beauty, all that freshness, all those splashes of color were wasted on him. We stared at each other for a while longer, which was really killing my mood. He walked away finally because there wasn’t anything to say. There wouldn’t be anything to say until August.

I had started my seedlings indoors in peat moss pots with sterilized potting soil. Frost could just sneak up on you without notice around here, and I wasn’t about to stick sensitive seeds in the ground to have them wiped out overnight. Wes had been talking to Max’s seeds all winter—speaking his heart out to them in the cold shed, where they were sealed up in a trash bag. You’ve got to be real sure of yourself as a person to pull this off. He was with me now, tucking seeds inside the pots, telling them about their daddy.

“Six hundred eleven point seven pounds, he was,” Wes said. “Now which of you guys thinks you can beat the record?”

Dad wanted to have a seed planting party to applaud Max’s seeds to victory, but I said it would be like inviting people along on your honeymoon. Some things need to be done in private.

I turned my grow light on the rows of little pots, keeping it six inches away to make sure the soil stayed at about eighty to eighty-five degrees—perfect for pumpkin growing. I had buckets of homework thanks to Miss Moritz, and did it at the kitchen table in case the seeds needed me. Miss Moritz had moved from World War II to Richard Nixon and the Watergate era. I was finishing my thousand-word essay “How Watergate Changed America and What It Means to Me and My Generation,” building my thesis beautifully, I
thought—how the seeds of Watergate injustice had been planted across the country and probably affected Dennis and Ralphie in their mothers’ wombs (unless they were hatched), pushing them to lives of deep trickery and lonely exile. Miss Moritz wrote a note to Dad saying I related all important world events to pumpkins and that this could affect me later in life. Dad wrote back and said he’d gotten used to it.

Ten days after the little seeds had connected with peat moss, up came strong green sprouts—Max’s kids! I was clucking at them, misting them with a gentle spray. They were beautiful. Soon the third leaf appeared on each one and we were ready to go outside and do what we had to do.

Wes and I loosened the soil in a twenty-foot circle to below one foot and conditioned the patch with composted cow manure, which was never a treat, but we were starting again, and I needed to get used to being miserable. Richard and Nana dragged a bag of genuine Morgan topsoil over from Nana’s field, and we worked it into the ground, digging deep, feeling its magical powers take hold.

I waited and watered. Wes was watching his corn grow, and we worked together tending each other’s fields, smelling springtime, and being in love. He’d given me his class ring, which clanged around my neck on a gold chain like a medal. It slammed Sharrell in the eye when she was wiggling down the up staircase and I was rushing up the
right
way. It left a small gash below her eyebrow. Nobody believed it was an accident.

The sun was good and strong, and my plants grew quickly. I watched the vines, letting only one pumpkin grow on each. I was checking day and night because we were entering into deep battle soon. The rule goes
when you have a nice one the size of a soccer ball, pick off the rest and then kill yourself trying.

One pumpkin vine was different. It had a fruit the size of a watermelon. I didn’t want to get too excited about this because it was still early in the season. Still, anything could happen, as we say in the growing biz. I knelt down in the dirt to make contact.

“Listen,” I whispered. “I knew your father.”

My pumpkin sat firm at this.

“I want you to start pushing out now. Pushing out good and strong, because you need to get tough. What we’re about to go through is no picnic, believe me. You’ve never lived until you’ve made it through an ice storm in October.” The pumpkin hung tough, which was a good sign he was champion material. Wes came by, and we sat with him for a while. I hadn’t named this new vegetable yet. That came later, when we really got to know each other.

My dog, DeWitt, was barking at the raccoon that drove Mrs. Lemming crazy. Mrs. Lemming was back in town and leaving good garbage once again. DeWitt was still a puppy, not great to look at (low to the ground, short-matted brown-and-white fur), but he was everything you’d want in a pumpkin guard dog. He hated beef jerky.

“Good dog, DeWitt.”

DeWitt crouched near the patch, sharpened his claws on a rock, and watched for predators. I was ready for anything this year and not taking any chances. You could never tell what heinous thieves might spring from the dust.

The Iowa sun crashed down like God was recharging the earth and flowed into my pumpkin who was stretching to reach his full agricultural potential. I
leaned into Wes, running my fingers across the ground, and knew Max was in there as his boy pushed to grow from the soil that was full of his daddy.

It was perfect, that’s all.

A perfect moment in agriculture.

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JOAN BAUER

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