The Great Pumpkin Patch Adventure
six pigs, six pumpkins, and one orange-glow porch
In October, the back field becomes the Pumpkin Patch, and the Pumpkin Patch is something else entirely.
The vines crisscross. The leaves are as big as dinner plates. The pumpkins are everywhere — some round as moons, some lumpy as sleeping cats, some so tiny they fit in a pocket.
On the first Saturday of October, every Lynch Pig was given one job: Find your pumpkin.
Papa wanted a sturdy one for the porch.
Mama wanted three small ones for pies.
Big Sister wanted one with a stem long enough to look distinguished.
Big Brother wanted the biggest one in the field, because of course he did.
Middle Brother wanted one shaped like his guitar.
Little Sister wanted, in her own words, "one that smiles at me first."
It took them all morning.
Big Brother dragged out an enormous pumpkin shaped like a planet. He could barely roll it. "I am a champion," he announced, breathing heavily.
Big Sister found one with a long, curling stem and wrote a tiny yes on it with her finger in the dust.
Middle Brother found a pumpkin that, if you squinted, did look a little like a guitar, mostly because he wanted it to.
Mama gathered three small ones in her apron and hummed.
Papa selected a sensible one and approved of it.
But Little Sister was still wandering. She crouched. She stood up. She tilted her head. She said hello to several pumpkins very politely. None of them, she explained, had smiled.
She was almost ready to give up when she saw it — a small, round pumpkin tucked under a leaf, with two natural dents that looked just like crinkly eyes, and a curved line at the bottom that looked just like a grin.
"There you are," she said.
And the pumpkin, you have to understand, did not say anything back. But it did, in its pumpkin way, smile.
That night the porch was full of pumpkins of all kinds. The big one. The graceful one. The guitar-shaped one. The three pie ones. The sensible one. And the smallest, smiling one, set right in front, with a little jar of mint leaves beside it for company.
Mama lit a candle in each. The whole front of the house glowed orange.
Little Sister whispered goodnight to her pumpkin.
The pumpkin glowed back.