The Pumpkin Patch That Filled a School Bus

“And the wagon. Are there rails on it?”

“There will be by Friday.”

“And the bus. The district runs a bus for in-county trips, the cost is just mileage and the driver’s time. Six miles, I think the parent group can cover that out of the popcorn money.”

“I’ll pay for the bus,” I said.

“You’ll do no such thing. You’re giving us the whole farm. Let the popcorn money do something.”

By noon Roger had called our insurance man in town, Jeff, who has written our policy since we bought the place. Jeff emailed a certificate to the school office before lunch was over. By two o’clock the principal had signed off. By Tuesday afternoon the permission slips had gone home in twenty-four backpacks.

Friday. One o’clock to two-thirty. Dress for mud.

I did not tell Courtney. I want to be clear about that, because I’ve thought about it since. I didn’t call her and I didn’t hint. I didn’t think it was my place to deliver the news. It was a school field trip, and it would come home the way school field trips do.

It came home Tuesday night. She called me at seven-fifteen.

“Did you do this?”

I was standing at the sink. Roger was out in the shop with the welder going, building rails for the hay rack. I could hear it buzz through the window.

“Did I do what?”

“Diane. There’s a permission slip in Brody’s folder for a field trip to the Mueller farm. Your farm. Mrs. Becker said a local family offered.”

“I offered. Yes.”

“After I told you.” Her voice was tight and thin, like a wire. “After I told you we weren’t coming, you went to his school.”

“I went to a teacher who couldn’t afford to take twenty-four children anywhere this fall,” I said. “I didn’t go around you. You can sign the slip or not sign the slip. That’s your right. He’s your son.”

“Oh, and be the one mom who won’t let her kid go to his own grandma’s farm? With the whole class going? You know I can’t do that.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way, honestly. I’d thought about twenty-four kids and six hundred pumpkins. But I could hear it from her side, standing in her kitchen with that slip in her hand, and I understood she felt cornered.

“Courtney,” I said, “I’m sorry it feels like that. I wasn’t trying to back you into anything.”

“Well, you did.” She was quiet a second. “And they put me on the chaperone list. All the aides in the wing go on the trips. I don’t even get a choice.”

Then she hung up. Not hard. Just done.

I stood at the sink for a while. Then I went out to the shop and watched Roger weld. He finished the bead, flipped up his hood and looked at me.

“She knows,” he said. I said she knew. He asked if she was mad, and I said she was something, and I left it there.

He nodded and flipped the hood back down. That was Roger’s whole opinion on the matter, and it was enough.

Thursday we got ready. I don’t know if I’ve ever worked so hard for a free thing in my life.