There’s just one thing standing between me and the perfect Saturday: a mountain of pumpkins.
“You want me to do what?” I’m standing by the truck, keys in hand, ready for my day of doing everything and nothing. I’m going to pick up Traven and Paul, and we’re going to the movies over in Warner Robins or to Sonic to get burgers or just drive around until I run out of gas. I don’t even know.
Pam stands on the front porch, doling out bad news like second helpings of mashed potatoes. “I want you to drive over to the Akin Farm and pick up the pumpkins for the church pumpkin patch. It’ll just be a few truckloads.”
“A few?!”
“If you and Dean go together, it’ll take no time at all.”
“Dean already left to ride four-wheelers with Ethan.” Like he would do manual labor during his weekend home anyway. I cross my arms over my chest. I’m fully aware I’m being an insufferable brat right now, but I can see my golden Saturday slipping through my fingers while Dean and Ethan ride four-wheelers into the sunset.
Pam sighs, and it’s like her whole body sinks a couple inches into the porch. “I’m sorry. I hate that you have to do it by yourself, but they’re counting on me. And they need the pumpkins there by three because the fall festival starts tonight.”
My shoulders hunch. I’m going to say yes, but I’m not going to be happy about it. Before I can find the words, a voice pipes up behind me.
“I can do it.”
Hope? I turn. Yep, it is definitely Hope, and she is definitely volunteering as tribute.
“Oh, honey, you don’t have to do that,” says Pam.
“You don’t. You really don’t,” I add.
She shrugs. “I don’t mind. Seriously. It’ll be fun.”
Well, I wouldn’t go that far. But I don’t want to look like an unhelpful douche, so I throw on a smile. “Yeah. Hope and I will do it.” Hauling pumpkins really isn’t that bad, anyway.
Pam smirks at me. “Are you sure? I don’t want to ruin your big plans.”
Okay, I deserved that. “It’s fine. We got this.”
“Okay. Well, you two have fun.” Pam is still grinning like a fiend as she heads back into the house.
Hope and I hop in the truck, and I crank her up. I drive us through town, and then down winding country roads that are so narrow you have to slow down and really squeeze when it’s time to pass another car. Hope stares out the window at the cotton fields that spread in every direction.
“Thank you,” I say. “You really didn’t have to do this.”
“It’s fine.” She side-eyes me. “It’s been months since I’ve gotten roped into one of Pam’s projects.”
“Someday you’ll have to train me in your project-avoiding ways.”
When we get to the Akin Farm, the pumpkins are already organized on the front lawn. The Akin boys help us load the truck, so it really doesn’t take that long. We make the first and second trips, and before I know it, we’re on the third, and we’re loading the last of the pumpkins.
I tic-shrug as Mrs. Akin presses a couple mason jars into my hands. “Thanks for your help. And please tell your mother thank you, too. She’s done such a nice thing, organizing all this.” She nods to the jars. “Can you give those to her? They’re my Brunswick stew.”
“Sure.”
I tic-shrug a couple more times, but she doesn’t even bat an eyelash. All the ladies in Pam’s Sunday school think I’m “just so adorable,” and they like to embarrass me by trying to fix me up with their daughters and granddaughters. Then, we do the super polite southern dance of “You’re so welcome,” and “Oh, no, thank you.” And then we’re off to the church.
We pass the billboard for my dad’s store out on 75. You can tell a lot about a place from their billboards. For example, here is a taxonomy of the ones that dot 75 as it winds down through the southern half of Georgia:
It kind of makes you wonder what the rest of the world thinks about us as they grab their French fries and gasoline on the way to Florida. Sometimes it’s weird how it’s possible to be simultaneously so proud and embarrassed to be from a place.
Pam is already at the church by the time we get there with the last of our pumpkins. She stands with her megaphone, a petite, motherly dictator, directing people on where to take cans for the food drive, and how to make a festive fall wreath, and where to put the ungodly amount of candy apples she spent all last night making. My mouth waters. Pam’s candy apples are basically the best-tasting thing on the planet.
“Your stepmom is kind of a big deal,” says Hope.
“Yeah. She’s a legend around here because she prayed Jane Fonda into the kingdom.”
Hope giggles. “Do I want to know what that means?”
“Jane Fonda is this old, famous lady—”
“I know who Jane Fonda is.”
“Well, she used to not be a Christian, and like, everybody hated that about her or something. And Pam’s Sunday school teacher said, ‘Wouldn’t it be so great if she was a Christian? Think of all the good she could do with her influence.’ And Pam was all, ‘I’m going to pray for that Jane Fonda. I’m going to do it every morning.’ And now Jane Fonda is totally a Christian and uses her powers for good instead of evil, and Pam is famous.”
Hope is full-on belly laughing now. “That. Was everything I thought it could be.”
She checks the pumpkins on her side of the truck. It’s almost time for the festival. If I’m lucky I’ll have a few hours to do stuff with the guys before I have to get ready for Ashley’s Halloween/birthday party. I don’t have to pick Jayla up until right before—she said something about relaxer and an inch and a half of new growth and desperate times. Hope and I unload most of the last batch by ourselves, but it really isn’t bad. A few families are already picking through the pumpkin patch, and a couple kids are watching us.
A little boy jumps up and down. “I think the best ones are still in the truck! Look at that one! I want that one! No, wait, I want that one! It’s big as an elephant!”
I grin at him. “It sure is.”
He laughs.
Half a second later, I tic. “Sure is.”
He laughs again.
“Sure is.”
He stops laughing and looks uncertain.
Damn it. I hate it when I scare little kids. “Sure is!”
The boy looks worried, and so does his mom. I don’t think I’ve seen them at church stuff before. It occurs to me that I forgot to take my afternoon dose of meds. He hops over to where his sister is sitting on a giant lopsided pumpkin.
I touch his mom’s shoulder. “It’s okay. I have Tourette’s syndrome.”
She nods, but her eyes have shut down. As she goes to join her kids, I tic one more time, the loudest of all: “SURE IS.”
The boy startles and peeks over his shoulder in fear.
His mom puts herself in between us like a shield. “Don’t worry. He’s just retarded,” she says.
If she had said it two years ago, I would have wanted to disappear. Now I catch myself. There’s nothing wrong with being intellectually disabled, though there is something wrong with A) completely not hearing me about the Tourette’s syndrome, and B) using disgusting slurs. Some people don’t know how to react to people who are different, I tell myself. And most days I’d probably take it upon myself to go over and educate her, but today I am just bone tired. So, I am going to unload a pumpkin, and then I’m going to unload another pumpkin, and before I know it, a string of moments will carry me away from this one, and it won’t seem so fresh once it’s a memory.
Hope seems to be following my lead, but then she’s standing there, holding her pumpkin to her chest like she’s frozen, and I know what she’s going to do even before she does it. She sets the pumpkin down and traces her way over to the woman. I think she’s going to give her a piece of her mind, but then she kneels by the little boy.
“He’s not retarded.” She cups her hand to his ear like she’s telling him state secrets, but I can hear her stage-whisper from clear across the pumpkin patch. “Also, that's not a nice word, and you really shouldn’t say it. He has Tourette’s syndrome, and that just means he sometimes says stuff or moves a certain way, and he can’t help it. He’s also the nicest boy I know and one of the best wrestlers in the whole school.”
The boy’s eyes go as big as the pumpkins he’s sitting on. “Sometimes my dad lets me watch wrestling with him,” he says in this awestruck voice.
Hope nods seriously. “He’s probably even going to go to state this year.”
“Whoa.”
“Right?” Her voice goes soft. “He’s basically one of the best humans there is.”
Her eyes catch mine, and the way she’s looking at me, it’s like there are little hooks pulling us together or like she’s about to cry or like the me she sees is different from the me everyone else sees or like I’m imagining things because in the next second, she looks exactly like how she always looks.
Then she stands and narrows her eyes at his mother just slightly before she walks back to the truck. The boy can’t seem to pull his eyes away from me for the rest of the time we’re there. I have gone from boogeyman to hero in a matter of seconds.
I’m pulling another pumpkin out of the truck when Hope sidles up next to me. Puts her hand on my arm.
“You okay, Spence?”
“Oh, yeah, sure. I’m fine.” I can’t remember the last time she called me Spence.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I couldn’t help myself.”
I grin. “Can you ever?”