Squashed

by Joan Bauer

  I looked.

  Not at Cyril. At Big Daddy. I looked at Big Daddy in his extreme hugeness, and all that agricultural heritage that was holding me together went splat. I tried to recover, but Big Daddy’s leer was carved in my memory, and it was no use.

  He was bigger.

  I slumped over Max like a runner who’d looked over her shoulder and lost the race.

  Max couldn’t win.

  Big Daddy was the biggest pumpkin I’d ever seen and it was no use kidding myself anymore. I buried Nana’s Ziploc bag under Max’s blanket and sat in second-place straw.

  Mannie approached Cyril’s trailer.

  “Okay, Mr. Pool,” Mannie began, reaching for the blanket that covered Big Daddy. “No more excuses. Uncover your squash, please.”

  Cyril snorted and Herman blew a wad out his mouth. “Well now, Missy,” he said. “What’n if I ain’t ready?”

  “Then, Mr. Pool,” said Mannie, eyeing Cyril like an Orkin man looks at a rat, “you will be disqualified.”

  “Says who?”

  Mannie pointed to her extremely official name tag with the gold lettering that said OFFICIAL PUMPKIN WEIGH-IN COORDINATOR. She leaned toward Cyril, her eyes on fire: “In this line I’m the law, mister!”

  The smaller pumpkins under a hundred pounds were being weighed—the Small Sugars, Sweet Spookies, and Lady Godivas. The crowd applauded politely as each entry slid onto the scale. Hugh Ferguson backed his truck up to the starting gate. I was number 96.

  Mannie was steaming. “The blanket comes off now,” she spat, “or you’re out!”

  A small crowd was gathering around Cyril’s trailer. The sheriff moved to Mannie’s side and put his hand on his gun. “Well,” Cyril complained, “ain’t you all makin’ a big fuss over a little question?”

  “Got to obey the rules, Cyril,” said the sheriff, “if you’re going to play in the game.”

  Mannie nodded. Richard thumped his mitt. “I’m gonna play,” Cyril said, lifting the blanket slowly to reveal a perfectly shaped pumpkin with a three-foot dark area along its side and top. “I’m gonna win!”

  Big Daddy glared at the crowd, which was hushed by his greatness. Max seemed to wither beside me. Mannie took off her glasses and pointed to the dark area.

  “Bruise,” explained Cyril.

  “That’s a mighty big bruise,” Mannie observed, reaching to touch it. “Looks more like—”

  Cyril pushed her hand away. “No touchin’,” he said.

  Suddenly a hacking voice rang out: “That pumpkin’s not in any shape to compete, ma’am!”

  Heads turned toward the voice who stepped from behind the giant scale. Mannie lowered her clipboard. The sheriff pushed back his hat. Cyril’s face froze as Wes walked forward, red-nosed, a wad of tissues in his hand. He glanced at me quickly and let Cyril have it.

  “You’ve got a squash full of rot there, Mr. Pool! In Gaithersville they’d never let you put that thing on the scale. No, sir!”

  Mannie dropped the number 94 she was going to slap on Cyril’s trailer. Wes blew his nose. Nothing like this had ever happened in Rock River. Not ever. It was wonderful. Wes was wonderful.

  Cyril rose, his nostrils spitting fire. “Jus’ who you think you are?”

  “President of the Gaithersville Agricultural Club, remember, Mr. Pool? I know pumpkins, and I say yours is a goner. Nothing personal.”

  “You’re a dirty liar, boy!” But Cyril was sweating good. Mannie and Mrs. McKenna started whispering. Four burly men slid Hugh Ferguson’s lopsided pumpkin onto a blanket and onto the great scale: 288 pounds. Hugh grinned. The crowd applauded. The giant Weigh-In had begun.

  Mayor Clint joined the people gathered around Mannie. Wes stood his ground, looking gorgeous, coughing with style. Cyril snarled at Wes and covered Big Daddy with a blanket. Helen Bjork’s squash hit 222, a disappointing showing. Nine heads were in a huddle. Justin Julee appeared. “Ellie,” he whispered, “do you have a comment on all this?”

  I glanced at Wes, who was wonderful and brave and exciting even when he sneezed, which was a real test of a person’s charisma. “No comment,” I said.

  Justin climbed over Max into the truck. “Come on, Ellie. Do you think Cyril Pool should be disqualified?”

  This was an excellent question, one I’d been considering for years. Justin was champing at the bit, so I said, “I think any grower should be disqualified who tries to compete with a squash filled with rot and disease.”

  Justin wrote this furiously. “Do you think,” he began, but was silenced as Mrs. McKenna and Mannie stepped forward. “We feel the young man has a point, Mr. Pool,” Mannie began.

  “He’s got nuthin’!” Cyril snarled.

  “This,” continued Mannie, “is a fair assembly, sir, and you’d better listen up.” Cyril sniffed hard and kicked the trailer. “We want to be fair, since you have been this festival’s winner four years running, but we must also consider the other contestants.”

  Wes moved closer to Max, grinning like a man with a wonderful secret: “Max, you’re the greatest pumpkin in the world and I want you to start acting like it. Don’t you look at Big Daddy and get one bit nervous. Don’t look at him at all, Max. You just concentrate on that scale and breaking it when they roll you on. You’re two hundred pounds bigger than a tiger, Max, and there’s no vegetable in the entire vegetable kingdom that can make that claim because a pumpkin is king and always was. The biggest cabbage was only a hundred twenty-one pounds; the biggest gourd was only a hundred ninety-six. I saw a two-hundred-sixty-pound watermelon once, and it wasn’t much. A seven-pound tomato, a thirty-six-pound zucchini, these vegetables don’t get me excited. Ellie gave you everything she’s got—that’s why you’re here. She’s why I’m here, too. You’re a scale-buster, Max. I’m proud to know you.”

  Wes nodded his head because he was through, and if I hadn’t been a girl with deep guts and extreme courage I would have fainted right there. I grabbed hold of Max’s stem as Wes sneezed like a world-class champion.

  “Holding up okay?” he asked.

  I nodded because I figured a nod was less of a lie.

  “The committee,” Mannie announced, “will examine your squash, Mr. Pool, and decide if it is fit for competition.”

  Cyril narrowed his beady eyes: “You ain’t got no right—”

  Mrs. McKenna was on him like an angry bee. “One more outburst, Pool, and you’re out. For good! Take it or leave it!”

  Gloria Shack’s pumpkin slid onto the scale and hit 428 even. The crowd cheered. Cyril fingered each blue ribbon on his shirt. “I’ll take it,” he snarled. “But you ain’t gonna find nuthin’.”

  “We’ll see,” said Mannie. She rolled up her sleeves and led the committee of nine to the trailer and Big Daddy.

  A cloud had fallen on Rock River and divided the town. The nice folks were on my side, the cranky ones went with Cyril. Founders’ Square was thick with grumbling people, and the committee was making things worse. There were no bylaws about rotting entries, no rules on deep treachery and deceit. Grown-ups sure could muck things up. Mannie was hollering at the mayor, who was hollering at the sheriff, who hollered that Spears could just shoot Big Daddy and that would be the end of it. Grace shouted that teenagers everywhere should unite against the tyranny of adult oppression. Dad cornered the entire committee and loudly objected to everything. Mrs. McKenna’s voice rose above the giant scale: “We will not make any decisions like this, people!”

  Wes spoke right back to her in extreme wonderfulness: “Seems to me, Aunt Adelaide, there’s only one decision to make. No disrespect intended.” We waited, hushed by his courage. Mrs. McKenna let him live.

  The Weigh-In continued as the giant pumpkins rolled on the scale. Number 22. Number 23. Flat, skinny, some downright ugly, but you’d never know it by watching the growers’ faces.

  Wes held my hand in front of Dad, who played it real easy, like I had boys around all the time. JoAnn said I was lucky, and she should know. Her father spe
cialized in fear, being a life insurance salesman, and could bring a boy to his knees.

  “May I have your attention, please?”

  It was Oral Perkins, of Oral Perkins Chevrolet, a big-time festival supporter who donated three Chevy Cavaliers to be raffled off every year and who had an extremely big “in” with Mrs. McKenna. He stood on the oratory contest podium—a mean man with a mission.

  “I think,” his voice declared, “we’re wasting time. This is an adult Weigh-In!” He glared at me because he only connected with car buyers. “Pool’s got a pumpkin. We’ve got the scale. Let’s get on with it!”

  He backed away to tense applause as Wes tore up the podium steps and stood tall and proud like a true candidate of the little people: “Ellie Morgan,” he shouted, “has been accepted into this adult division fair and square! Ellie Morgan kept control of her pumpkin and fought off rot to bring him to this Weigh-In as a clean competitor. She’s grown a pumpkin bigger than most of us will ever see, and to let a rotting pumpkin beat her, even one grown by a four-time blue-ribbon winner—well, sir, that’s just not fair!”

  My heart thunked in deep, cosmic love as Rock River High rose cheering, stomping, and belching in a great show of unity and disgust for authority. I thought I heard a familiar voice, and I looked. There stood Miss Moritz on the podium! No! About to tell the entire town that I hadn’t turned in my midterm paper. I grabbed my throat, hoping my scream for mercy would carry in time. Miss Moritz aimed. I couldn’t watch.

  “History,” she cried, “teaches us many lessons.” Miss Moritz paused here for total effect, like she did in class. “What lessons, you might ask?”

  I wasn’t going to ask. I didn’t want to know, although I had a pretty good idea.

  “History is our friend. We can trust its message. We must,” she was shouting now, “listen to its message!” The crowd was listening but not getting it, which also happened to Miss Moritz’s students when she spoke. “The history of this Weigh-In is its commitment to excellence, is it not?” No one answered her. “You can’t all be sleeping!”

  Hugh Ferguson raised his hand and said, yes, the history of the Weigh-In was its commitment to excellence.

  She pointed to the great sign: HERE LIE THE GREATEST PUMPKINS IN THE WORLD. “Does Mr. Pool’s squash belong under that sign?” The crowd turned to the sign and shivered. “Does a partially rotting pumpkin winner continue this Weigh-In’s great tradition of excellence?”

  “No!” shouted a woman.

  “Not at this festival!” cried another.

  “I rest my case,” said Miss Moritz. She walked off the stage and into the waiting arms of the winner of the General Patton look-alike contest. I searched for a pad and paper to start work on my midterm but came up dry.

  “You know that woman?” It was the Tribune reporter.

  “She’s one of my teachers.”

  “You like her?”

  Wes was at my side: “She does now.”

  Oral Perkins was frowning and whispered something to Mrs. McKenna, who nodded and stormed the podium.

  “I have an announcement from the committee!”

  A crying baby was rushed away by its parents. A good thing, since Mrs. McKenna would have probably had it shot. Rock River held its breath.

  “It is,” she declared, “the decision of the committee that Cyril Pool’s pumpkin is perfectly fit for competition.”

  I slumped against Max, who lost five pounds right there. Anger and applause ripped through the crowd. Dad threw down his hat and demanded a retrial. Gordon Mott threw down his Hunan pumpkin with minced pork. Wes grabbed my hand. Cyril whooped and tossed hay in the air.

  “That,” Mrs. McKenna directed, “is final. We will continue the weighing.”

  With that, Adelaide McKenna, the Meanest Woman in America, walked off the podium and through the crowd, who parted for her in silence—except for Mannie Plummer, who stood her ground. Mannie said this never would have happened if Bud DeWitt was still alive. It was a dark, dark day in Rock River, Iowa.

  It was night. The spotlights made a yellow blur as Louise Carothers stood by her pumpkin screaming that if anyone dropped it there’d be trouble. The scale read 471 pounds, and the weigher cried out the number like he was sick of the whole thing. A mime juggled oranges and dropped two on a little girl’s foot. Mayor Clint gave a short speech about Bud DeWitt, which was usually good for a standing ovation, but only a few people clapped, and those who did didn’t mean it.

  The magic was gone.

  “I’m Number One! I’m Number One!”

  Cyril was strutting around his trailer as Herman backed it into position. I huddled around Max with family and friends and wondered why bad things happened to good pumpkins.

  People gathered at the side of Phil Urice’s truck like a funeral line about to view a body, stretching halfway down the block. Nana watched me, and I couldn’t meet her gaze.

  “Cyril Pool!” cried the weigher. “Number Ninety-four!”

  It had to happen. I tried not to look as Cyril paraded from his trailer patting all his ribbons, but I did look, and tears stung my eyes. I shook my head to stop them, telling myself it didn’t matter. There was always next year.

  Cyril grabbed an end of the blanket as Phil and Bomber Urice pushed the huge pumpkin from the hay.

  “Easy, boys!” Cyril shouted. “I said easy now!”

  I shut my eyes, but the tears wouldn’t give up. I had to pull myself together, not cry in the straw like a second-place jerk. I looked at Nana for one shaky second and she looked back with all the strength in heaven and zapped it into me.

  My hands shot under Max’s blanket and grabbed the Ziploc bag with that clump of black, moist earth. My great-grandfather tilled it and my father worked it and my grandmother used it to grow magic. My cousins hoed it and my uncle stomped it down and my mother planted a rose bush in it that shot to the sky like a bright yellow miracle. There wasn’t any soil energized with more love and perspiration that God had ever created.

  The four men around Big Daddy were joined by a fifth, then another. “Hoist him, boys,” said Phil Urice, “on three. One.” The men moved Big Daddy higher. “Two.” Cyril was screaming they’d better be careful or he’d have their hides.

  I ripped open the bag and shoved my hands inside, squeezing the soil through my fingers. I remembered Mother’s hands, which were always dark from the earth, and how she loved that garden, whether it was a good year or an average one.

  Phil Urice hollered “Three!”

  Big Daddy slid onto the great scale with a grunt.

  The Cyril people were applauding, the Ellie people were booing. I closed my eyes and listened to my heart.

  I remembered who I was.

  “Six hundred sixty-eight point two pounds!” cried the weigher. “A new Harvest Fair record!”

  Mrs. McKenna congratulated Cyril, who was bowing like a big creep, but somehow it didn’t matter near as much as I would have figured.

  That’s when Nana elbowed me.

  “Get ready, honey,” she laughed. “Something’s moving in the air.”

  I looked, and something was happening because the weigher said, “Hold on now!” I wasn’t close enough to see, but Richard was. He stepped to the scale, shouted, “Yee-ha!” and threw his mitt in the air. Dad ran over and stared at Big Daddy, who sat huge and mean—so much of him that a few inches hung over the scale.

  “What’s that?” asked several in the crowd, pointing to Big Daddy’s bottom. Mrs. McKenna’s hand froze in midair. Oral Perkins’s mouth was open like a dead fish’s.

  There was a gurgle. Then a shake. And like a bolt from heaven, like all the badness and rottenness that was inside Cyril and the way he’d treated every grower within two hundred miles just couldn’t be contained. It was like a hundred Fourth of Julys all rolled into one, better than the best fireworks that had ever shot into the sky, better than sitting with a champion squash in the moonlight holding the hand of the one you love.

  Th
ere was so much of it, it just couldn’t stop. All that bad that was in Cyril had gotten into Big Daddy—formed right there good and heavy at his base—and like all badness, it couldn’t stay hidden forever. Sooner or later it had to come out, and it was coming out now. Starting to seep—thick, orange, smelly muck—dribbling out of Big Daddy’s dark spot for all the world to see.

  “Step back!” the weigher cried.

  “Thank you, Lord,” said Nana.

  And that ooze was gaining strength, like the Rock River when it was really something to see, when the water just kept flowing downhill, past rocks and turns, moving faster and faster. Out the orange glop came, moving like white water. Someone had turned on a waterspout. There was so much of it, it started running down the scale, dropping to the street below, falling thick and rotten in a big puddle right there on Marion Avenue and stunk like old meat. Cyril ran to his pumpkin and tried to patch him up, like the little boy who put his finger in the dam, but it was too late. That pumpkin started shrinking, the rot had pushed down to the base and Big Daddy’s sides were hanging over the scale. It was a great moment in pumpkin history.

  “She’s going to blow!” called the weigher.

  “Yes!” shouted Wes.

  Yes! I shouted inside, but couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. But I didn’t have to do anything.

  There was a rumble and a heave. The shell that was Big Daddy cracked from the bottom to the top and rivers of rotten orange liquid sprayed down the scale and across the heads of the people closest up. They backed off disgusted, wiping the gunk from their clothes. Then the top that was Big Daddy heaved once, twice, and collapsed like my first chocolate soufflé, pushing more glop down the great scale Mrs. McKenna’s grandfather donated to the festival in 1953.

  Dad started laughing, the way he used to let loose before Mother died—big and full, starting from his stomach and working its way up. It was just like Wes laughed, I hadn’t noticed that before, and now the two of them were laughing great and deep. The Ellie people were stomping and applauding. Cyril’s face was curled up in pain. He fell to his knees: “No!”