The Pumpkin Patch That Filled a School Bus

I almost went over. I almost said, here, take my boots. But I made myself stay where I was, by the wagon, and let it be between her and her boy. She stepped off the chips.

Her first sneaker went in to the laces. She made a noise, a little “oh,” and Brody laughed so hard he fell over, right into the vines, and then she was laughing too, the way you do when something is too bad to do anything else about.

She went in after him.

I helped Roger load the first wagon. Eight kids at a time on the straw bales, two grown-ups on the front corners and two on the back, Mrs. Becker on the tailgate with her whistle, and Roger on the tractor with his feed cap on backwards, which he does for nobody.

“Everybody sitting?” he called back.

“Yes!” twenty-four voices yelled, including the ones who weren’t on the wagon.

He went around the patch at the speed of a slow walk, down along the windbreak, past the pond, up along the fence where you could see the cattle across the road. The kids mooed at the cows. The cows looked at them. A little boy told Roger the cows were saying hi. Roger said yes they were, and that they said hi to him every morning too.

I was standing by the wagon helping kids down after the second ride when I noticed one little girl who hadn’t picked a pumpkin yet.

She was small for six, in a pink knit hat that was too big for her and a coat that had been somebody else’s first. She was standing at the very edge of the patch with her hands in her pockets, looking out at all of it.

“Is your name Emma?” I said. She nodded, very serious, the hat sliding down over one eyebrow. “Have you picked one yet?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know how.”

I knelt down in the mud next to her. “Well, there’s not much to it. You find one you like. Then you look for the stem, that’s the handle, it’s kind of like a handle. And you can’t pick it up by the stem, that’s the one rule. You hold it underneath, like a baby.”

“Do I have to pay?”

“No, honey. Not today. Not ever, out here.”

She looked out at the patch for a long time. Then she pointed at one about ten feet in. It wasn’t big. It was a little lopsided, flat on one side from where it had sat on the ground all summer.

“That one.”

“That’s a good one,” I said. “That one’s been waiting for somebody.”

I walked her in. I showed her where to put her hands. She lifted it herself, and she held it against her chest the way I’d said, like a baby, and she looked up at me with an expression on her face I don’t know how to describe except that I’ve seen it on Brody at Christmas, and I’ve seen it on Kyle a long time ago.

“Can I come back next year?” she said.

I had to look at the barn for a second before I could answer.

“Honey,” I said, “you can come back any year you want.”