Squashed (13 page)

I tried the direct approach: I slapped Max’s vine and told him to push past his fear of success, be a man, and go for gargantuan. I, after all, had lost three pounds already this week and was going for size ten, an equally distant goal.

Wes had been by yesterday and brought pictures of giant pumpkins from his aunt Izzy’s World Pumpkin Federation newsletter. Huge ones—650 to 690 pounds—from England, Australia, and France. He showed them to Max: “This,” Wes directed softly, “is what a pumpkin was meant to do, Max.” Wes and I
stood quietly together until his sneezing jag killed the mood. He blew his nose, and reached out to take my hand when Richard appeared, blabbering about the Chicago Cubs and the strength of the National League. I glared at Richard, Wes glared at Richard. Richard, oblivious, grinned and oiled his glove.

“Well,” said Richard after Wes left, “that was nice.”

“Did it ever occur to you that we wanted to be alone?”

Richard looked around. “We
are
alone.”

I stamped my foot. “I
meant
Wes and me! Could you possibly consider that?”

Richard considered it. “What’s for dinner?” he asked.

“Chicken breast and broccoli.”

“With skin or without?”

“Without. Skin is bad for you.”

“Potatoes?” he asked hopefully. “Rice?”

“Nothing,” I sneered. “Dry, lifeless, lo-cal.”

“You could die from that.”

“I’m going to be gorgeous,” I reminded him, sucking in my stomach.

“It’s no way to live,” he said, and slumped home to have frozen dinners with his mother.

Already Max had beaten every previous record from the Rock River Pumpkin Weigh-In and Harvest Fair. He was bigger than anything, except for Big Daddy, who was still on the vine, still sucking up Cyril’s good soil—and hopefully rotting his brains out. Any caring grower would have cut Big Daddy off the vine and let him cure in the sun to dry the stem and stop bacteria and mold from spreading. But Cyril didn’t care if his squash was sick and needed medical attention. As
long as Big Daddy stayed on the vine, he might suck up a few extra pounds. As long as Big Daddy could hold together and get on the scale in eight days, Cyril would win and he knew it.

Richard was watching Cyril’s moves from behind the barn on the old Winger property. Cyril, he said, was under pressure, and Herman wasn’t spitting with the same spunk.

“He comes out and shakes the vine,” Richard said, “sticks his ear on the skin to listen. Then he looks real worried and goes away.”

“That’s good,” I said. “How’s it look to you?”

“Still too early to call.” Richard blew a giant bubble with his gum and peered at me from behind it.

“You could lie to me. You could tell me to be encouraged, that good will triumph over evil.”

“Good will triumph over evil,” said Richard.

“Liar.”

Justin Julee and I sat in the back of Miss Moritz’s empty classroom that had been decorated with World War II battle maps and posters of popular war sayings like “The slip of a lip can sink a ship.” Gina Carlucci’s grandmother had baked cannolis for the class to remind us that there was more to Italy than Palermo and Sicily. My cannoli was sitting in my stomach like a lead pipe, pushing against my khaki slacks, which I was wearing along with my floppy orange blouse and Mother’s earrings that made me look deeply sophisticated. Justin asked me how I protected Max from pumpkin thieves and I told him about Spider and the bells and my natural ability to sense doom. Justin wrote as I talked about
the extreme pressures of champion squash competition and how you had to be strong to fight off all the terror Mother Nature threw your way.

I told him that some of the bravest people on earth grew giant pumpkins, which he hadn’t realized, and I said most people didn’t. Kids stopped and looked in the room as we talked, which made me toss my head to make Mother’s earrings dance. I decided I could really get used to fame.

Mrs. Lemming’s grandson Ralphie was the school photographer. Photography was the only thing he was any good at; even Mrs. Lemming said so. Ralphie was checking the light and snapping candid shots from my good side and announced that it was time to take a picture of me and Max together.

We piled into Ralphie’s red pickup that had leather seats and a wooden steering wheel. He bought it after selling his prize photograph of baby pigs at sundown to
Life
magazine. Nana said the photograph, which hung for months near the overdue book desk in the Rock River Library, was sensitive, funny, and caring. I mentioned to her that Ralphie was none of those things, and how could he turn out such wonderful work? Nana said life wasn’t fair and just to get used to it.

Spider heard Ralphie’s truck and started shrieking. Ralphie threw him a hunk of beef jerky, which quieted him right down. Justin stood silently before Max like he was at a shrine.

“You did
this
,” whispered Justin, dwarfed by Max’s shadow.

“It was nothing,” I offered humbly.

Ralphie got some good shots of me and Max, including some action sequences where I chased away a
crow, which, Justin said, gave the feeling of the constant battle of the patch. Justin said it was one of the most interesting interviews he’d ever done and that he was going home to write it up tonight, he was so excited. Even Ralphie seemed impressed with Max and gave Spider another piece of beef jerky and scratched his neck in friendship.

“One more thing, Ellie,” said Justin, “for the record. Do you think you’re going to win?”

Now, this was a trick question. If I said yes and lost, I’d look like a jerk and be on the record, and if I said no I’d lose my competitive edge, not to mention my newly found fame, which I was getting real used to. So I said what Mr. Soboleski always said before a big game he wasn’t sure his team could pull off. “We’re going to go out there and do what we have to do,” I said, and looked off into the sunset. Justin nodded solemnly, Ralphie gunned his motor and screeched away in a cloud of dust.

The latest from Spears was that Dennis hotly denied he was the pumpkin thief, despite being caught red-handed. Dennis’s cousin swore this was the first time they’d tried to steal a vegetable and they didn’t want to get blamed for all the others the sheriff was trying to pin on them, going back to World War II, when, Dennis insisted, he wasn’t even alive yet, and even if he was, he couldn’t drive. Spears told Mrs. Lemming that the sheriff slapped ten other indictments on the boys and was whistling around the station doing little jigs with his bad back. Now he could go into town with his head high and not get the Bronx cheer blasted at him from Mannie Plummer’s sister, who sat on the porch
of Kay’s Koffee Kup, his favorite snack shop, when she wasn’t picketing the station. Mannie Plummer said she recognized Dennis’s truck as
the
truck that pulled away from her house under fire on that tragic, fateful morning. Ed Meegan said he’d seen Dennis’s cousin in Circleville trying to sell a huge squash to a funeral director. Mr. Soboleski wondered if Dennis could be paroled by spring in time for the opening game.

Wes met me outside Miss Moritz’s class. He was carrying his clarinet case and bad news. Worse even than the news I was about to give Miss Moritz regarding my midsemester paper, “What I Would Do Differently If I Were General Patton,” due today, which I had not started. Given General Patton’s personality, this could take all year.

Grace McKenna, a pacifist, could not relate to war and had written only two paragraphs. She said Patton did pretty well under the circumstances with all that shooting and Field Marshal Montgomery getting all that press. She said we should all try to get along and then there would be no more wars. The one thing she would have changed was Patton’s famous weather prayer. Grace didn’t feel battle should be easy and that demanding a prayer be written by the chaplain for good weather was unsportsmanlike conduct. God, Grace said, sends the weather
He
wants, and it is our responsibility to accept it.

Wes put his hand on my shoulder glumly and delivered his news. “Freezing rain,” he announced, “turning to hail. Expected this weekend.”

“I’m finished,” I said.

“Not necessarily,” Wes answered. “We can cover him with a hundred blankets and—”

“Cyril’s squash will freeze,” I said, which he knew already, “which will preserve it till the Weigh-In. Max will stop growing. I’m dead.”

Wes looked at me hard: “You have to keep trying, Ellie.”

“I’m too tired.”

I slumped against the wall. The bell had rung and I hadn’t noticed. Miss Moritz asked Wes if he would like to join the class or go to his scheduled period, which made most of the class snicker and me turn red and Wes run off to Spanish with Señor “Ted” Morales. I crawled into my seat as Miss Moritz walked from desk to desk collecting midsemester Patton papers.

“Well?” she said, poised before me.

“It’s almost done,” I lied.

She regarded me coldly. “
Almost
doesn’t count.”

Tell me about it. You could kill yourself for an entire season, grow the greatest pumpkin of your whole life, and get blasted out of the box by hail, freezing rain, and a brain-dead sludge. If I were General Patton I would have had a million weather prayers commissioned by as many chaplains as I could find just in case God was feeling patriotic.

Richard and his mother, my aunt Peg, were staying overnight because their water heater broke and flooded their basement. Richard had cleaned most of it up but Wallace, the repairman, couldn’t make it until Saturday afternoon, and the prospect of a damp house with no hot water did not thrill Aunt Peg. She was getting around pretty well with her crutches now, most of the pain was gone from her face, and she was
laughing and carrying on just like she used to before the accident.

Aunt Peg was a beautiful woman with dark brown hair and aqua eyes, the kind of woman that men always looked at and wanted to be around. Aunt Peg was not good at picking men and had given them up on several occasions, having had a rotten marriage to Richard’s father (my mother’s brother, Ken), who was a handsome gambler and a world-class chump. She had a three-week engagement to Spears, who, she said, was a fine assistant deputy and who should probably just concentrate on that. Aunt Peg believed in being kind and that the words we speak on earth will follow us wherever we go. Everyone knew that Spears was still in love with Aunt Peg. Nana said men named Ken were always trouble.

I made pot roast with tomato ginger gravy, mashed potatoes, tossed salad with mustard vinaigrette, and brown sugar apple cake. Nana came for dinner, too, and said it was the best pot roast she had ever tasted. Richard had thirds and Aunt Peg said I’d make a wonderful wife someday but to watch all men carefully because they could turn on a dime. It was a fine evening surrounded by my family. Everyone clucked over Max except Dad. It was just what Max and I needed, because tomorrow the hail was coming.

A few cowardly growers like Gloria Shack were cutting their pumpkins off the vine tonight, even though it was still reasonably warm, and bringing them inside for safety before the hail hit. Wes had dropped off nine blankets for Max and was coming over tomorrow with more. Nana, Richard, and I played Scrabble against Dad and Aunt Peg as Max braced himself for
the worst. It was Friday night, and nobody wanted to go to sleep. We played until well past midnight and ate the entire brown sugar apple cake and two bags of barbecued potato chips.