The Night Our Whole Road Carved Pumpkins

I knew what that would do to Jacob and Corbin. I did not want to be the reason.

My husband, Buck, was not there either. He is a lineman for one of the electric co-ops, and he was in Florida with a crew putting poles back up after the hurricane. He had been gone eleven days and would be gone at least ten more.

He called that night from a motel in Fort Myers. I told him what happened. He was quiet for a long time.

“You want me to come home?” he said.

“No,” I said. “They need you there. I can handle Warner.”

“I know you can,” he said. “That’s what worries me a little.”

He was right to say it. I had a temper when I was younger, and Warner was the one who always knew how to light it. But I was not twenty anymore. I had a daughter watching every move I made.

Dad came out of the house while we were still standing in the ruts. He walked slow, the way he does now since his knee. He looked at the field for a long time and did not say anything.

Then he said, “I told him he could cut the back forty for hay this fall.”

“This isn’t the back forty, Dad. This is the corner.”

“I know it.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “He’s been counting on that hay money. He’s been out of work since March.”

I knew Warner had been laid off. The glass plant in Lancaster had cut a whole shift in the spring, and he was one of the ones they let go after nineteen years. I knew it was hard. I did not know how hard.

“That’s not a reason,” I said.

“No,” Dad said. “It’s not a reason. But it might be part of one.”

There was something else Dad did not say out loud, and he did not have to.

At the spring lamb show in April, at the fairgrounds, Sylvia’s Hampshire wether had taken champion in the junior division. The reserve champion was Jacob’s lamb. Jacob is eleven. It was his third year showing. It was Sylvia’s first.

I remember Warner standing at the rail that day with his arms crossed. When the judge slapped Sylvia’s lamb, Warner turned around and walked out of the barn. He did not shake her hand. He did not shake mine.

Somebody near him said something. I heard about it later. Something like, beat by a little girl in her first year. And somebody laughed.

I did not think much about it at the time. Kids win and kids lose. That is what the show ring is for. But I had seen Warner’s face that day, and I had seen it again from the fence while he was spinning those loops.

It was the same face.

That night Sylvia did not want to talk about it. She did her homework at the counter and went to bed early. I sat on the porch steps outside in the cool and listened to the crickets and tried not to drive over to Warner’s house.

Around ten, she came out in her nightgown and sat down next to me.

“Mom,” she said. “Can we still save some?”

I looked at her. “Some of the pumpkins?”

“The ones he missed. There’s got to be some he missed.”