Pumpkie

"Check this out," I told my friend Barry.
      Barry adjusted his thick-lensed, black-framed glasses and peered closely. "Cool," he said. He paused for a moment before asking, "What is it?"
      I grinned. "It's a pumpkin, you goofball." I punched him lightly on the muscle of his arm.
      He rubbed where I hit him, pretending it hurt. "No way!"
      "Way," I said.
      We were giving each other a hard time. You know, like best friends do.
      "It's too small," Barry argued. He made a move to pick it up. My newly emerged pumpkin was the size of a tennis ball.
      I put out a hand to stop him. "Just wait," I said. "It'll get bigger.
      "Bet you a nickel it doesn't," Barry said reaching into his pocket to see if he had any change.
      "You're on!"
      I won the bet but let my buddy keep his nickel.
      Throughout that long hot summer, I watered my pumpkin, weeded around it, and took care of what to other people was a vegetable but to me was much more. You see, as the summer went on, something incredible happened. Not only did my pumpkin, which I started calling Pumpkie, start getting bigger, but he also started talking to me. And that was only the beginning. Pumpkie was a magic pumpkin. Just ask that idiot Zak Barrow.
      But wait. I'm getting ahead of myself.
      It all started that spring when I took over Mom's garden three years after she passed away. I was seven when she died and in the years after to say that I missed her terribly would be putting it mildly. She was my security. She was there when I came home from school with fresh cookies. She was there to comfort me whenever I injured myself riding my bike or playing in the woods nearby. She was tall and thin and in the evening she played the piano in the front room of our home and sang old Irish folk tunes. It's not an understatement to say that when she died a lot of the joy went of both my life and my dad's. Especially for my dad. These days you could say he withdrew, but back then I didn't about stuff like that.. All I knew was that he didn't say much. Not for the rest of the year after Mom died, nor for the next year or the year after that.
      Finally, when I was ten years old he came to me in the spring and said, "Okay, Paul, I want you to do something for me. I want you to go out to your mom's garden, clean it up, and get rid of the weeds and debris. When you're done, we'll plant vegetables."
      Well, I have to say that I never expected that! I think it might have had something to do with Dad starting to see Mrs. Farnsworth a widow from town who ran the Dry Good's store on Main Street. I think he wanted to make a good impression on her. But, heck, I didn't care what the reason was. He seemed happier for the first time in the three years since Mom had passed away so I was all for it.
      "Sure, Dad," I told him.
      "We can use the extra food," he added.
      "Sounds good to me."
      Dad had a way about him. He was quiet most of the time when he was home. His job was driving a milk truck for Arrow Creamery. He was up at 3:00 am and home by 2:00 pm in the afternoon. We'd cook a simple dinner together like spaghetti, hot dogs, or Mac and Cheese. We'd always have a salad and some kind of vegetable. I liked corn the best. At night he'd read the newspaper and sometimes work around the house. He was a fanatic duster. Just so you don't think I was lazy, I helped too, vacuuming, doing dishes, and cutting the grass.
      That's where the garden came in. That spring Dad showed me the garden shed and what tools I should use. I got good with a shovel and a hoe. When the fifteen feet by twenty feet area was clean of weeds and raked smooth, Dad and I planted vegetables with seed packets we bought at Quimby's Farm and Garden Store. Except for the packet of pumpkin seeds I found in the shed.
      "What are these?" I asked Dad the day I found them. They were in the back of the drawer that held clippers, hand trowels, dandelion diggers, and stuff like that.
      He looked at the packet. It had a picture of a pumpkin on it and that was all.
      Dad shrugged his broad shoulders. "I don't know. Must have been something your mom picked up somewhere."
      "Cool," I said. My favorite color was orange which was the color of the single pumpkin on the packet. "Can I plant them?"
      "Sure," he said and tossed the packet to me. "Plant the seeds and see what happens."
      I did. I planted the nine seeds in the packet. It was in early May. Only one germinated and grew. The one I showed Barry. The one I named Pumpkie.
      Earlier I said that Pumpkie 'talked' to me. Let me explain.
      It all started early in the summer when I was in the garden giving our one lone pumpkin a good drink of water. That year the spring was hot and dry. Then came summer and it was no exception.
      It was early June. I had lain the nozzle of the hose at the pumpkin's base and was letting the water soak nice and deep into the soil. The sun was blazing hot and there wasn't a breath of air.
      I was just taking off my baseball cap to wipe my forehead when all of a sudden the words, "Thank you," came to my ears. What? I looked around thinking it might be Barry sneaking up and playing a trick on me, but there was no one there. What was going on? I looked around again but didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Must be just my imagination is what I figured.
      I was about to pick up the hose and move on when I heard, "That tastes good. I really appreciate it."
      I followed the voice and looked again. It couldn't be. But it was. The voice came from the little pumpkin. He waved a stem at me. "Hi," he said. "Thank you for the drink. I was very thirsty."
      Wow!
      After getting over my initial amazement, I told him, "You're welcome," just like it was the most natural thing in the world to do. And it was, to me anyway. That's how we became friends.
      I started calling him Pumpkie which was a name he told me he really liked. Right off the bat, I enjoyed talking to my bright orange friend. It was different than with Barry. He and I talked about boy's stuff: baseball, football, fishing, bike riding, flying kites. Things like that. With Pumpkie, I could talk about other kinds of things. Important things. I told him about my dad and how it was hard for me to talk to him. I told him about my mom and how much I missed not having her around.
      Pumpkie was a good listener and often gave me great advice. For example, he told me I should be patient with my dad. That he was sure my dad loved me but that he probably had a lot on his mind, and that I should cut him some slack. Pumpkie actually said that, 'cut him some slack.' He used slang occasionally. It was one of the many things I liked about him. He said that if I missed my mom as much as I did, I should imagine how much my dad missed her since they had been married for ten years. How he knew that I don't know, but he was right, they had been married for ten years before she died. 'They were in love,' he told me, 'And that counted for a lot.' Which made a lot of sense when I thought about it.
      Mostly he made me realize I should think about others and how they were feeling and not just myself so much. It was really good advice.
      After I introduced Barry to Pumpkie, he came over even more often and helped in the garden. He liked being around him as much as I did, but Pumpkie only talked to me. With Barry he was quiet, but my best buddy didn't mind. "He makes me feel good," Barry told me more than once. "I just like being around him."
      I totally understood where he was coming from. I liked being around him, too.
      But I was still a ten-year-old kid, and it was summer, so Barry and I took breaks from the garden and went to the park to play baseball with the other guys and go swimming at the swimming hole in the Cottonwood River about two miles and a good bike ride outside of town. Stuff like that.
      I got into reading that summer, too. My favorite book was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Boy did I ever like that one! Tom did so many cool things, like fishing, exploring caves, sneaking out at night to a graveyard, and running away from home. I'll tell you, as far as I was concerned, Tom Sawyer was my hero even though, honestly, I've never had the desire to run away from home.
      As the summer progressed, Pumpkie didn't get any bigger than about the size of a basketball, but he had become more and more talkative as the months went by. The two of us could chat about anything. It was nice. He was a good friend but in a different way from Barry. With Barry, it was mostly kid's stuff. With Pumpkie it has more to do with life stuff like I said earlier about my dad and mom.
      Anyway, summer ended the first week in September. I told Pumpkie I'd be gone for most of the day at school, and he seemed to understand. "Good luck," he told me. "Have fun. Study hard." He was good that way and had a very positive attitude. It was another thing I liked about him.
      On the first day of class, Barry and I were assigned to Mrs. Schlage's fourth-grade room. I've always liked school and this year was no exception. My favorite subjects were art and reading. Barry liked arithmetic. These days we'd be called Geeks. Back then, though, kids pretty much left us alone. Except for Zak Barrow (remember him?) and his gang. They were in sixth grade and hassled us all the time, mainly, I think, because Barry and I both wore glasses and were kind of skinny. They called us "Four-eyes" and "Bean Pole." Harmless, I know, but still…We were on their radar and not in a good way.
      It all came to a head on All Hallow's Eve which is what Barry and I sometimes called Halloween.
      It was a pretty big deal in our town. We grade school kids could dress up in our costumes for school that day. It was great. The teachers handed out candy when classes were let out and sent us on our way to get ready for the night on the town. At 5:20 pm just as the sun had set and the sky was getting dark, all the kids set off for an evening of trick or treating. By the time it was completely dark, the streets were full of ghosts, goblins, supermen, and princesses, all running madly around stoked up on adrenaline and sugar. It was loads of fun!
      I dressed up in an old pair of jeans, a flannel shirt, and a straw gardening hat. I was Tom Sawyer. Barry joined me as Huck Finn. I have to admit we looked pretty good.
      I also brought Pumpkie with me. He was adamant about coming. "It's kind of my night," he said when we talked about it. When he put that way it made perfect sense, and I couldn't argue with him. I asked if he wanted to get dressed up and he looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "Um, Paul," he said, snickering and poking me with a vine, "I kind of already am."
      He had a point.
      "Okay," I said. "Let's do it!"
      I carried him in the crook of my left arm. With my right hand, I carried my treat or treating bag.
      All was going well, We'd made out like bandits as we liked to say, having gotten tons of candy: Snickers, Butterfingers, Milky Ways, and penny candy galore like gumballs and bubblegum.
      After a couple of hours of running door-to-door trick or treating we were happy but tired. Most of the houses were turning their lights out and blowing out the candles in the pumpkins set on the porches and steps so we decided to head home. We were walking down a side street that had a burned-out light, so it was pretty dark. We were in good moods, though, happy with all the candy we'd received, and didn't have a care in the world.
      But then we ran into Zak and his gang of Lester Banks and Abel Swift, and our fun night took a turn for the worse.
      Zak stepped out from behind a tree in the middle of the dark, empty street. "Well, well, well," he sneered. "What do we have here?" He wasn't wearing a costume but instead was dressed in a black sweatshirt and black jeans. He looked ominous. I swallowed but I didn't have much saliva. My throat was suddenly as dry as a desert. He stepped close. I flinched as he flipped my straw hat off and kicked it down the street. Then he turned to his buddies. "Looks like a couple of geeks to me, right boys?"
      Lester and Abel nodded and smirked.
      Lester spoke up. "Yeah, right Zak, a couple of retards." He was a skinny kid like us but about a foot taller. His breath was so bad I could smell it from ten feet away. He was wearing all black, too.
      Abel was short and pudgy and had acne pretty bad for a sixth grader. "A couple of geeks," he echoed. Like the others, he was dressed all in black.
      I had a bad feeling wash over me. Black night and three jerks dressed all in black. This could not be good.
      Lester and Abel both made a move to step closer, but Zak put up a hand to stop them. "Hold it, boys," he said. He was looking at Pumpkie with a questioning expression. "Hey, Jerk Face," he said to me. "What's that you're carrying? A pet pumpkin?" He laughed and turned to his buddies. They wasted no time in following his lead. They laughed too.
      "Leave me alone, Zak," I told him. "We aren't bothering you."
      Zak hawked up some phlegm and spit at my feet. "Wrong weirdo. You just being alive bothers me." He pointed to Barry. "You, too, Freak Show."
      This was not going well. I was making a move to get past Zak, pick up my hat, and get away from the three of them when Zak slammed his hand into my chest.
      "Hold right there retard."
      "Watch it," I coughed. I'd kind of lost my breath.
      "You watch it," he mocked me. Then he focused on Pumpkie. "Give me that pumpkin, you creep." He made a move to grab my orange friend. I could picture Zak slamming Pumpkie to the ground and kicking the pieces down the street.
      "NO!" I yelled. I dropped my bag of candy and frantically turned away from him. I held on tight to Pumpkie. I was not going to let anything happen to him.
      "Yes!" Zak yelled back. He punched me hard between my shoulder blades. I lost my balance, and when I did, he grabbed Pumpkie. I made a move to grab him back, but Zak pushed me away. I stumbled over my bag of candy. He grinned at me, his yellow teeth were as ugly as he was.
      "Watch this you friggin geek."
      Then he did what I hoped wouldn't happen. In one swift motion, he lifted Pumpkie high above his head and before I could make a move to stop him, he smashed my friend to the ground. Pumpkie broke apart into a hundred pieces.
      "NO!" I yelled.
      Zak just laughed. "What a moron you are." Lester and Abel laughed along with him like it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen.
      I felt sick to my stomach. I thought I might throw up, but I didn't.
      Next to me, Barry said, "Geez! You killed him!"
      I tried not to cry as I dropped to my knees next to Pumpkie. I was not sure what I was going to do. Try and put the pieces together? I don't know.
      But I never got a chance to do anything because it was then that my orange friend took over.
      In the blink of an eye, Pumpkie turned from a busted mass of pumpkin pieces into a huge ragging orange creature. A monster of a pumpkin if there ever was one, at least ten feet tall, complete with two legs, two arms with claws as hands, and a gaping mouth with razor-sharp teeth.
      He also had a very bad attitude.
      He raised his arms and dangerous claw hands and waved them. "LEAVE NOW!" he roared. "Leave us alone now, and I'll let you live!" CLACK, CLACK, CLACK. He clacked his claws in the faces of all three of the bullies.
      Zak, Lester, and Abel didn't hesitate. After all, they were bullies and all bullies are cowards. They took off running too frightened to even scream. In less than a minute, they were down the street, around the corner and out of sight.
      They never bothered us after that. Little did I know that my orange buddy could shape change. Those really were magic pumpkin seeds mom had hidden in the shed.

***

I'm grown now. I live in the same house I grew up in. Dad lives with us. He's retired from his milkman's job and is doing well. I work in the local hardware store, and I'm married to Ruby, a wonderful woman who teaches at the grade school Barry and I went to. Barry's a teacher there, too. Math. He and his family live a few blocks away. I think it's safe to say that we both like living in our little town.
      This past Halloween Barry and took our kids trick or treating. I had my daughters Jenny and Ruthie. Barry had his two boys Ben and Ron. Pumpkie came with us too. I carried him, but next year Jenny will be old enough to take over the honors and that will be great. The year after that it'll be Ruthie's turn to carry him. Pumpkie likes the girls a lot and they like him. It's good to have him in our family.
      Pumpkie lives in the same garden where he was originally planted and grew up. He stays there over the winter and, as he calls it, "Takes a little rest," until the spring when he wakes up again and starts growing. He never gets any bigger than that first Halloween. "Why should I?" he said when I asked him about it once. "I like how I am."
      I can't argue with that.
      It was fun to take him trick-or-treating last Halloween. We had a blast. As Pumpkie has said to me every Halloween since that first one when he saved us from Zak and his gang. "I love All Hallow's Eve. It's what I'm all about."
      I couldn't agree more.