Chapter 12 #2
She blinks once. “That’ll be-” She names a number that would buy six gallons of blood in a B-movie.
I pay and she slaps paper around our wrists in colors that look like event passes to the Harvest Superbowl.
Skully holds his out for her like he’s accepting a backstage lanyard at an after-party.
The girl looks at him, looks at his face, and then looks at me the way you look at a cat that brought home a bat.
Bonehead wiggles his fingers and grins when the wristband cinches.
“Bracelet,” he says, satisfied. The girl’s mouth does an O.
She’s two seconds from asking for a photo.
I level a smile at her that is all teeth and decorative poison. “Do you know where the wheelbarrows are?” I ask, bright.
She points, chastened by the sheer force of my girlfriend energy. Or maybe she’s just fourteen and I’m wearing a sweater that implies theology with gourds. Either way: victory.
The wheelbarrow station is chaos; existing as a ring of metal barrows webbed together with sticky toddler fingerprints and dried mud.
There’s a sign that says PLEASE RETURN YOUR BARROWS and another that says NO RIDING IN THE BARROWS, which is so specific I’m certain someone once launched a child straight into orbit.
Bonehead immediately zeroes in on the biggest one, hefts it like it’s a toy, and balances it on one finger like a circus strongman showing off. The moms nearest us make little oh-my-God noises. I make a bigger one in my head and smother it under bravado, but my thighs know the truth.
“You’re ridiculous,” I say, grinning despite myself. “Do that again when I’ve got my camera ready.”
He beams like I just knighted him.
“Okay, now maybe…put it down gently? Before you make me fall in love with you all over again.”
He sets it down so gently the earth blushes.
“Okay,” I tell the boys, hands on hips. “Strategy. We do one exploratory lap to identify pumpkin neighborhoods, then we commit to a row and harvest with intent. No impulse gourds. No pity gourds. We buy only the chosen.”
Skully lifts two fingers. “Counterpoint: you will bring home sixty pumpkins named things like Count Lumpula and Miss Roundabout and then cry on the kitchen floor because you love them all equally.”
“First of all,” I say, “that is love. Second, don’t act like you won’t cradle a pumpkin like a bass guitar and practice your set.”
Marrow glides a step closer, voice low. “If you wept among the gourds,” he says, “they would float, and the field would become a sea of small orange moons, each reflecting your grief back to you until you laughed.”
“Marrow,” Skully says, “it’s literally ten in the morning.”
“I contain sunrise,” Marrow replies, and smiles so gently at me I have to look away otherwise I fear I’d spontaneously pledge my organs.
We begin. The path into the patch is a dirty artery spreading into little capillaries of trodden vine between rows.
Corndogs steam at a food stall to the left as children drag scarecrows by the ankles and a country song about tractors tries to colonize my mood and fails.
The pumpkin smell—of earth and sugar and the dream of pie—is everywhere, and underneath it is the metallic tang of my pulse on overdrive because this is my habitat.
October in October. I am at home in my name for once.
A little boy in a dinosaur hoodie stares at Bonehead’s biceps like he has seen the mountain he must climb. “Can you lift a car?” he asks, tiny and reverent.
Bonehead tilts his head, considering the question seriously. “Yes.”
I light up like a jack-o’-lantern set on fire. “Oh my God, please do it. Just one. It’d be so hot.”
The mom starts yanking her child away before I can commission a demonstration, which is honestly a crime. I pout, still picturing Bonehead bench-pressing a Corolla while I sit cross-legged on the hood cheering him on.
Skully shouts after the boy as he’s dragged off, like the shit-stirrer he is. “He can also juggle,” he chuckles, and the kid gasps like he’s just glimpsed divinity. Bonehead looks alarmed. I cut my eyes at Skully, but my grin betrays me.
Because yeah—if anyone’s going to juggle cars, it’s my strongman, and I’d sell tickets. Then claim him right there for everyone to see. Because he’s still mine and the world needs to recognize that.
We stop at the first row like pilgrims at a shrine.
The pumpkins here are big and round—uniformed.
I crouch, palm sliding across a smooth flank, thumb tracing a nick where a bird tried its luck.
“Hello,” I tell it. “What are your sins?” The pumpkin reveals itself as a Libra who apologizes too often. I pass. We keep moving.
The ground is uneven, little ankle-killing ruts everywhere courtesy of the rain.
I wobble, and before I can face-plant Skully swoops me up like he’s been waiting all day for the excuse.
One arm cinched scandalously low around my waist, the other braced under my thigh—indecent enough to make half the patch gasp as if they were paying attention.
Instead of shrieking or demanding release, I hook my arms around his neck like he’s my getaway driver. “Finally,” I whisper, grinning up at him. “Steal me, outlaw. I’ve always wanted to be a pumpkin bride.”
His mouth tilts, not quite a smile—more like a smirk that says he’ll absolutely run with this bit until someone kicks us out. His eyes spark with that conspiratorial gleam that makes me feel like the punchline and the crime scene at the same time.
And then, of course, a phalanx of soccer moms in matching flannels descends, their perfume and judgment cutting through our performance like a chainsaw in a church.
They swarm like benevolent locusts, high ponytails, frosted lip gloss and laughter that sounds like brunch reservations.
One of them clocks the boys and lights up like a jack-o’-lantern on fire.
“Oh my gosh,” she says, hand to chest. “Are you guys on the hayride promo? Because-” She gestures vaguely to my men as if they’ve been delivered to her personally by Pinterest.
I inhale my jealousy like smoke and smile with bright teeth. “They’re with me,” I chirp. “I rent them by the hour. It cost me my soul and countless orgasms.”
Skully chokes. Marrow bows minutely. Bonehead says, “We smash pumpkins!” at a volume that makes a baby cry.
The women blink. Assess me like I’m a rival sorceress encroaching on their coven, then file it under too much eyeliner, too dangerous to duel and retreat with little giggles that scratch my mood raw.
I watch them go, teeth bared in a smile that isn’t nice at all, and decide—out of the goodness of my shriveled pumpkin heart—to hope their bones stay strong until I can steal them for crafts.
See? Personal growth. Compassion! I’m evolving!
Skully’s mouth is right by my ear. “Jealousy suits you,” he murmurs, dry as October leaves.
“I was not jealous,” I say, my voice all sugary sweet. “I was merely auditing their souls.”
“To what end?” Marrow asks, genuinely curious.
“To see if any of them were good enough to feed to the corn,” I say breezily.
Bonehead nods, impressed. “Corn hungry.”
We turn down another row. These pumpkins are weirder—warty, lopsided, strange as dreams. I love them immediately. “This is it,” I announce, pressing my palms to my cheeks like a pilgrim seeing the relic. “This row has the vibe.”
Skully lifts a pumpkin with a flat top and props it on his shoulder like a beat-up amp. “I’ll play the bangers,” he says. “You scream when your favorite chorus hits.”
“Always,” I say, and he flashes me that brief, real smile like a cut in the film where truth bleeds through.
Marrow kneels by a cluster of small, pear-shaped gourds, fingers gentle.
“These are like the curled fists of infants,” he says softly.
“Tiny, furious, full of demand.” He looks up at me.
“You could line them along the windowsill like a macabre day care line up. A sentence about harvest that ends in exclamation.”
I consider the sill, the optics, and my soul. “We’re adopting six.”
Bonehead has already loaded the barrow with two size-of-torso monsters and a long weird one that looks like a snake swallowed a bowling ball.
He pets the long one like it might purr.
A dad in cargo shorts pauses to admire our haul and gives Bonehead the respectful nod of one man recognizing another’s capacity for lifting.
Bonehead nods back, solemn, and then the dad’s wife looks at me and I look at her and we both know she is going to think about my men later in a way that will make her salad taste like sin.
I am generous. I grant her this. Blessed be the wives of suburbia; may their fantasies be bountiful and their husbands forgiving.
We are making great progress down my chosen lane when a goose decides to unionize. It hisses at Bonehead, neck doing that S-curve of righteous fury, and Bonehead hisses back with such enthusiasm that two nearby teenagers nearly baptize themselves in iced cider before turning and running off.
Instead of stopping him, I clap my hands like a proud stage mom. “Yes! Establish dominance, baby!”
Bonehead puffs his chest, pointing at the goose like he’s calling it out in court. “He started.”
“I’ll testify,” I say solemnly. “Jury of pumpkins, you may approach the bench.”
Skully flicks his eternally unlit cigarette. “You both have the same emotional range,” he tells the goose.
The goose considers pressing charges, reconsiders, then waddles off muttering slurs in Goose. Bonehead hisses after it like a victorious gladiator, flexing his jaw like he just saved Rome. I clap like a lunatic at a coliseum. “Ten out of ten! You may now claim your prize goose-wife!”
He beams at me, chest heaving, and I melt a little, because of course my type is feral dockhand turned monster husband.