Bill Pronzini: Pumpkin

The first Amanda Sutter knew of the pumpkin, the strange pumpkin, was a day in late September.

She had spent most of that morning and early afternoon shopping in Half Moon Bay, and it was almost two o’clock when she pointed the old Dodge pickup south on Highway One. She watched for the sign at the farm road, as she always did; finally saw it begin to grow in the distance, until she could read, first, the bright orange letters that said SUTTER PUMPKIN FARM, and then the smaller black letters underneath: The Biggest, The Tastiest, The Best – First Prize Winner, Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival, 2006.

Amanda smiled as she turned past the sign, onto the farm’s unpaved access road. The wording had been Harley’s idea, which had surprised some people who didn’t know him very well. Harley was a quiet, reserved man – too reserved, sometimes; she was forever trying to get him to let his hair down a little – and he never bragged. As far as he was concerned, the sign was simply a statement of fact. “Well, our pumpkins are the biggest, the tastiest, the best,” he’d said when one of their neighbors asked him about it. “And we did win first prize in ’06. If the sign said anything else, it’d be a lie.”

That was Harley for you, in a nutshell.

The road climbed up a bare-backed hill, and when she reached the crest Amanda stopped the pickup to admire the view. She never tired of it, especially at this time of year and on this sort of crisp, clear early fall day. The white farm buildings lay in a little pocket directly below, with the fields stretching out on three sides and the ocean vast and empty beyond. The pumpkins were ripe now, the same bright orange as the lettering on the sign – Connecticut Field for the most part, with a single parcel devoted to Small Sugar; hundreds of them dotting the brown and green earth like a bonanza of huge gold nuggets, gleaming in the afternoon sun. The sun-glare was caught on the ruffly blue surface of the Pacific, too, so that it likewise held a sheen of orange-gold.

She sat for a time watching the Mexican laborers Harley had hired to harvest the pumpkins – to first cut their stems and then, once they had their two to three weeks of curing in the fields, load the bulk of the crop onto produce trucks for shipment to San Francisco and San Jose. It wouldn’t be long now until Halloween. And on the weekend preceding it, the annual Pumpkin Festival.

The festival attracted thousands of people from all over the Bay Area and was

the year’s big doings in Half Moon Bay. There was a parade featuring the high school band and kids dressed up in Halloween costumes; there were booths selling crafts, whole pumpkins, and pumpkin delicacies – pies and cookies, soups and breads; and on Sunday the competition between growers in the area for the season’s largest exhibition pumpkin was held. The year Sutter Farm had won the contest, 2006, the fruit Harley had carefully nurtured in a mixture of pure compost and spent-mushroom manure weighed in 336 pounds. There had been no blue ribbons since, but the prospects were good for this season: one of Harley’s new exhibition pumpkins had already grown to better than 320 pounds.

Amanda put the Dodge in gear and drove down the road to the farmyard. When she came in alongside the barn she saw her husband talking to one of the laborers, a middle-aged Latino named Manuel. No, not talking, she realized as she shut off the engine – arguing. She could hear Manuel’s raised voice, see the tight, pinched look Harley always wore when he was annoyed or upset.

She went to where they stood. Manuel was saying, “I will not do it, Mr. Sutter. I am sorry, I will not.”

“Won’t do what?” Amanda asked.

Harley said, “Won’t pick one of the pumpkins.” His voice was pitched low but the strain of exasperation ran through it. “He says it’s haunted.”

“What!”

“Not haunted, Mr. Sutter,” Manuel said. “No, not that.” He turned appealing eyes to Amanda. “This pumpkin must not be picked, senora . No one must cut its

stem or its flesh, no one must eat it.”

“I don’t understand, Manuel. Whyever not?”

“There is something…I cannot explain it. You must see this pumpkin for yourself. You must…feel it.”

“Touch it, you mean?”

“No. Feel it.”

Harley said, “You’ve been out in the sun too long, Manuel.”

“This is not a joke, senor ,” Manuel said in grave tones. “The other men do not feel it as strongly as I, but they also will not pick this pumpkin. We will all leave if it is cut, and we will not come back.”

Amanda felt a vague chill, as if someone had blown a cold breath against the back of her neck. She said, “Where is this pumpkin?”

“The east field. Near the line fence.”

“Have you seen it, Harley?” she asked her husband.

“Not yet. We might as well go out there, I guess.”

“Yes,” Manuel said. “Come with me, see for yourself. Feel for yourself.”

Amanda and Harley got into the pickup; Manuel had drive in from the fields in one of the laborers’ flatbed trucks, and he led the way in that. They clattered across the hilly terrain to the field farthest from the farm buildings, to its farthest section close to the pole-and-barbed wire line fence. From there, Manuel guided them on foot among the rows of big trailing vines with their heart-shaped leaves and their heavy ripe fruit. Eventually he stopped and pointed without speaking. Across a barren patch of soil, a single pumpkin grew by itself, on its own vine, no

others within five yards of it.

At first Amanda noticed nothing out of the ordinary. It seemed to be just another Connecticut Field, larger than most though nowhere near exhibition size, a little darker orange than most. But then she moved closer, and she saw that it was…different. She couldn’t have said quite how it was different, but there was something….

“Well?” Harley said to Manuel. “What about it?”

“You don’t feel it, senor ?”

“No. Feel what?”

But Amanda felt it. She couldn’t have explained that, either; it was just an aura, a sense of something emanating from the pumpkin that made her uneasy, brought primitive little stirrings of fear and disgust into her mind.

“I do, Harley,” she said, and hugged herself. “I know what he means.”

“You too? Well, I still say it’s nonsense. I’m going to cut it and be done with it. Manuel, let me have your knife….”

Manuel backed away, putting his hand over the sharp harvesting knife at his belt. “ Por Dios , no, Mr. Sutter. No. You must not!”

“Harley,” Amanda said sharply, “he’s right. Leave it be.”

“Damn. Why should I?”

“It is evil,” Manuel said, and looked away from the pumpkin and made the sign of the cross. “It is an evil thing.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. How can a pumpkin be evil?”

Amanda remembered something her uncle, who had been a Presbyterian minister, had said to her when she was a child: Evil takes many forms, Mandy. Evil shares our bed and eats at our own table. Evil is everywhere, in every size and shape.

She said, feeling chilled, “Harley, I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but that pumpkin is an an evil thing. Leave it alone. Let it rot where it lies.”

Manuel crossed himself again. “Yes, senora! We will cover it, hide it from the sun, and it will wither and die. It can do no harm if it lies here untouched.”

Harley thought they were crazy, that was plain enough. But he let them have their way. He sat in the truck while Manuel went to get a piece of milky plastic rain sheeting and two other men to help him. Amanda stood near the pickup’s front fender and watched the men cover the pumpkin, anchor the sheeting with wooden stakes and chunks of rock.