The Night Our Whole Road Carved Pumpkins

We lit the pumpkins as the dark came down. Warner went bale to bale with the bag and a lighter, handing out tea lights, and he lit every single one himself. Mrs. Hensley’s. Mr. Ankrom’s with the scar for a mouth. All three of the Foster kids’.

When he got to mine, he stopped. He held out a candle and I took it.

“Patrice,” he said.

“Warner.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you are,” I said. “But you’re not sorry to me. You’re sorry to her.”

“I know.” He looked at the field. “Dad already told me I’m not cutting hay off this place next year.”

“Good,” I said.

He almost smiled. “That’s what I figured you’d say.”

Then he lit my candle and moved on to the next one.

By eight there were more than a hundred pumpkins glowing in rows along the edge of that field. Behind them, the ruts were just dark lines now. You could not see the broken pumpkins anymore. You could only see the lights.

People stayed until almost ten. They drank Mrs. Hensley’s cider and the Fosters’ little ones fell asleep on the hay. Mr. Ankrom told stories about carving pumpkins in Vietnam with a bayonet, which I am almost sure were not true, and the boy from number twenty-eight laughed so hard he fell off his bale.

Warner stayed till the end. When people started packing up, he carried their pumpkins to their cars for them. Every one. He did not ask, he just did it.

When everyone was gone, he helped Dad and me drag the hay bales back toward the barn with the tractor. Sylvia and Jacob and Corbin went down the row blowing out the candles one by one.

I heard Corbin ask Sylvia if they could do this again next year.

“If we have pumpkins,” Sylvia said.

“Dad could help plant them,” Jacob said.

Warner heard that. He stopped with a hay bale half lifted and did not move for a second. Then he set it down on the wagon.

“I’d like that,” he said, to nobody in particular. “If she’ll have me.”

Sylvia did not answer right away. She blew out the last candle and stood there in the dark with the smoke going up.

“You’d have to get on your knees,” she said. “That’s how you plant them. Three seeds to a hill.”

“I can do that,” Warner said.

“It takes all weekend.”

“I’ve got time,” he said. “I’ve got nothing but time right now.”

It was the first time I had ever heard him say anything about being out of work in front of anybody. He said it plainly, without any of the hardness it would have had a month before.

Buck came home from Florida the following Thursday. I told him the whole thing in the truck on the drive back from the airport in Columbus. He listened all the way to the Lancaster bypass without saying a word.

When I finished, he said, “And Warner just walked up?”

“Walked up,” I said. “Two miles in the dark.”

“With candles.”

“With Mom’s candles.”

Buck shook his head slowly. “I was going to go over there when I got home,” he said. “I had a whole thing worked out I was going to say.”

“I know you did.”

“Guess I don’t need it.”

“No,” I said. “I think he’s said most of it to himself already.”

The rest of what happened came out over the winter, the way things do in a family.