The Pumpkin Festival




“I dare you to go pull that cow’s tail,” Richie said to Melissa, gesturing toward the side pasture, where a group of cows stood, heads toward each other as if in a football huddle. The closest cow’s haunches were pointed out toward them, and at that moment, it switched its tail and stomped one hind leg threateningly.
“If I do…What will you give me?”
“I’ll give you…one of my baby rabbits.” Richie was raising rabbits for a science project at their boarding school and had way more than he could handle.
“No. I don’t have time to take care of a rabbit.”
“I’ll do your math homework.”
“You’re worse at it than I am.”
“I’ll give you…two of my lucky buckeyes.”
“Okay,” she said, and extended her hand.
“No. After you do it.”

Melissa took a look at the group of cows again and, with a burst of daring, vaulted over the fence and ran up to them, reaching out one hand for a tail. The cow shifted position, and she slipped and fell to the ground. Her nose was a few inches away from the cow’s hoof.

Scrambling up, she ran and vaulted back over the fence, and tackled Richie in the middle of the road. “You son of a …” She pinned him and took the buckeyes out of his pocket before she let him up again.

They walked barefoot down the muddy road. It was a Saturday afternoon, and the autumn air smelled like rain and ripening. An unexpected shower was just ending, and they were wet and warm, carrying their sneakers in their hands, listening to the sounds their feet made in the mud. Beside them, the cows moved slowly through the drenched pastures, switching their tails, chewing, and raising their big brown eyes to the sky.

Richie, just touch my hand, and I will be so happy, Melissa thought. She loved the way his brown hair was plastered against his ears, and the roundness of his baby face. She loved the way he moved, springing like a big jackrabbit. She loved his playfulness, and the wrestling matches they had on the front lawn of the school. He wrestled with her the same way he wrestled his best friend Carlos; it was straightforward, not flirtatious, and she won as often as he did.

They came up to the entrance of the school. The sign on the road said “Friends Boarding School”. They walked past the white-boarded meeting house where silent meetings on Sundays were held, which was right in front of the school gate. Walking through the gates, you could see a winding stretch of new blacktop with lawns and tennis courts on either side.

The blacktop ended in a circle, and around the circle were three red brick buildings: on the left side, the boys’ dormitory, at the far end, the girls’ dormitory, and on the right, the main building, which held the cafeteria as well as the classrooms and offices. The group of buildings was on a flat hill. On the right side, at the bottom of the hill, was an exercise field where the boys played soccer and the girls played field hockey. By the main circle, Richie and Melissa parted company.

She watched him walk toward the boys’ dormitory. Past that building, the hill sloped down to a pond with an island in the middle and a wooden bridge leading to the island. Near the shore of the pond was the farm building, which held various animals, including Richie’s family of rabbits.

She walked over to the main building to check in before she got washed up and changed before dinner. “Melissa!” said one of the counselors, who spotted her when she came through the door, “You’re covered in mud!”
“It was Free Time.” She looked her straight in the eye. “We can do what we want on Free Time, right?”
“Did you have a pass to go off grounds?”
“Yes,” said Melissa, and handed her a slip of paper. The counselor frowned and shook her head but let her go out again and over to the girls’ dorm.

When she walked into her room, her roommate Brandy was there, playing the soundtrack from Godspell again. They only had three albums, so they played them over and over and over again. Brandy was lying on her back on the top bunk bed, eating from a tin of chocolate chip cookies. Although she was wearing her usual outfit, a plaid shirt and a pair of blue denim overalls, she managed to look completely beautiful and voluptuous. With her pouty lips and cloud of curly auburn hair, long eyelashes and lush body, she was the girl most talked about in the boys’ dorm.

“Hi,” she said, lazily raising her head as Melissa walked in, and offering her a cookie from the tin her mother sent her. “Did you ask Richie if Carlos likes me?”
“Yes. You know he does. All the boys talk about you. All the boys dream about you…and your beautiful hair.”
“Stop it! What did Carlos say?”
“He said…that he wants to meet you alone tonight in the middle of the hockey field…”
“He did not say that!”
“No. You’re right. He didn’t say it.”
“What did he say?”
“I don’t know.” Melissa looked at the floor as if in shame. “Richie wouldn’t tell me.”
“Melissa! Why didn’t you make him?”
”You know Richie doesn’t like to talk about all that lovey-dovey stuff.”

It was a mystery to Melissa why Brandy had a thing about Carlos, except maybe because he was the only student in the school from outside the US or because he was so quiet and shy that she considered him more of a challenge. Richie, his best friend and roommate, was about the only one Carlos ever talked to.

Brandy sighed and slid another cookie into her mouth, chewing it slowly. She looked down at her body. “I really need to lose some weight,” she said, with no conviction at all, and a gleam of pride in her eyes as she surveyed the fullness of her chest and hips.

“Oh, shut up, Brandy.” Melissa pulled off her muddy blue jeans, took the rubber band out of her braid of straight hair, and went off down the hall to the shower.

Later, the girls walked over to the main building and through the doors to the cafeteria on the first floor. They sat at their assigned places—each table had a certain number of students, and then one or two counselors or teachers to oversee—and bowed their heads during the silent grace. After the grace, Mr. Lyle, the principal, stood up and said he had an announcement to make.

Brandy and Melissa looked at each other and laughed, a little too obviously, because they received glares from teachers at our table and other tables as well. But they couldn’t help laughing every time they looked at Mr. Lyle. Behind his back, they called him “Lyle the Lizard” and “Lizard Lips.” The nicknames stemmed from his appearance—he was in his sixties, with a completely bald, pale head, thin, colorless lips, and cold silver rimmed glasses. Actually, there were teachers at the school who were stranger looking than Mr. Lyle. But it was Mr. Lyle who always seemed to spoil their fun.

Brandy looked at Melissa and whispered, “Lizard Lips” and Melissa had to choke back her laughter, because the whole room was silent now and waiting for what Mr. Lyle had to say.

He cleared his throat. “I have something to say regarding the festival being held in town tonight. I’ve talked this over with all of the teachers and counselors, and we have decided that it is best that we not allow any of you to attend.”

There was a soft sigh throughout the room, and Melissa looked over to the other side of the room at Richie’s table. She could see him and Carlos grimacing. They had been talking about the festival for a few weeks now; Richie kept saying that it was the only good thing that ever happened in the nearby town of Barnesville, Ohio, relating stories from last year when he was a freshman. It was a combination of a carnival that came to town and a harvest celebration for all the farmers in the area, who brought produce into town to win red and white and blue ribbons.

”Last year, after the festival, we had some complaints from parents,” continued Mr. Lyle. “As you know, a few students, who did not return this year, were caught in town with alcohol. I had put my trust in these students, thinking that they were mature enough to handle being in town on festival night. It was misplaced trust. Therefore, this year we are not taking any chances. You will all be in the dormitories tonight, and as usual, lights out will be at 10:30.” He cleared his throat again and sat down.

Brandy and Melissa looked at each other and frowned, and Melissa looked across the room at Richie; he mouthed something. “What?” She looked back at him.
“Later,” he was saying, “Later.”
“What’s Richie saying?” asked Brandy.
“He wants to talk to me after dinner.”
“Oh,” said Brandy, sinking her teeth into an ear of corn on the cob. Butter glistened on her lower lip. Melissa turned her attention to her own plate of food.


After the meal, they had to carry the plates and dishes into the kitchen, but luckily it was not their turn to help with dish duty tonight. They walked outside. The sun was setting and Richie and Carlos were slouched against the brick wall of the building, waiting for them. Brandy’s eyes lit up when she saw Carlos. They walked up to the boys, nonchalantly.
“Hey.”
“We have to talk to you,” Richie whispered, and grabbed Melissa’s arm and pulled her around the corner of the building. Carlos and Brandy drifted after them, speechless in each other’s proximity.
“What, what? And let go of my arm.” She hit Richie and he let go.
“Come closer.” He motioned all of them together and began to whisper his plan. It didn’t take the girls long to agree—Melissa, because she wanted to see the festival, and have the additional pleasure of disobeying Mr. Lyle, and Brandy, because the prospect of going off grounds after dark with Carlos was unbearably exciting—and they decided to meet at the gates at 11:00 PM. Since the festival went on until 3:00 AM, they would have plenty of time to enjoy themselves and still be able to come home and sleep for a few hours before Sunday meeting.

Brandy and Melissa lay in their bunk beds later and kept looking at their watches. They tried to breathe slowly. They didn’t talk but once in a while Melissa would kick the mattress of the top bunk bed and then they would both laugh and bury their faces in their pillows.

Just after lights out, they got up and began dressing slowly. They fumbled around for socks and shoes and light jackets. Melissa got her lucky buckeyes out of her top dresser drawer to put in her jacket pocket. She kept her hand in her pocket so she could feel their smooth polish.

At ten to eleven, they opened the door of their room, and tiptoed through the hall and out the door of the building. They skirted around the back of the main building and around the back of the tennis courts and behind hedges in the driveway, until they reached the main gate. Two figures materialized from the other side of the gate. Without speaking, they began walking the two miles into town, Richie and Melissa in the lead, Carlos and Brandy drifting behind. Whenever a car drove by, they would jump to the side and try to look inconspicuous. Melissa looked back every once in a while to see how Brandy was doing. About the fourth time she looked back, she noticed that Carlos had taken Brandy’s hand. If it hadn’t been so dark by then she would have winked at her and embarrassed her.

When the two-lane road started dipping down, they knew that they were on the incline right before town. They stopped worrying about being seen and Richie and Melissa even skipped down the center line singing “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.” Brandy and Carlos didn’t seem to be paying attention, because ordinarily Brandy would have told Melissa not to make a scene. They were at the beginning of the main street now, which was magically full of people. The air was full with a light misty warm rain that covered their faces. They looked at the people and the tables stretched out on either side of the street.

There were all kinds of fruits and vegetables, green, red, and golden, gleaming, ripe, but their eyes were drawn most of all to the middle table, with the pumpkins. The largest, the contest winner, was in the middle, with the runner-ups around it.

“I didn’t know a pumpkin could get that big. “ Melissa said to Richie. They stared at it. It wasn’t merely big. It was an orange mountain. It skin shone as if lit from inside. An orange glow seemed to radiate outward through the mist.

When they looked up and around again, Carlos and Brandy had disappeared. But up near the top of the hill, heading down through the crowd and toward them, they saw a face that could have been Mr. Lyle: the pale skull, skeleton cheekbones, and blank eyes were coming closer.

“Run!” gasped Richie and they took off, running down hill, toward the lights of the carnival and the bigger crowds that had gathered around the rides and the booths. Richie ran ahead of Melissa and his big white sneakers thumped in time with her heart. He reminded her more than ever of a jackrabbit, running with those shoes. She was trying to keep up with him and still hold on to her lucky buckeyes, which she hoped would help them escape.

They finally stopped, after running and twisting and turning in evasive action, in front of a game at the far end of the carnival. They tried to catch their breath.

“I think we’re safe for now,” said Richie, and they smiled at each other, and then he shocked her completely, by pulling her to him and kissing her mouth. When he let go, they noticed the carnie running the game in front of them was watching them. He was a big guy with a thick mustache, wearing a muscle shirt that exposed extensive tattoos on both arms.

“Care to try your luck?” he asked Richie, and handed him a big hammer. Richie took the hammer and held it above him and spun around in place. “I’m the strongest man in the world!” he said. He swung the hammer down and the disc bounced up to the highest number at the top of the pole.

They jumped around in delight. Melissa felt a happy, glowing orange light filling her body. It crossed her mind that if Richie, who didn’t like kissing, kissed her tonight, God only knew what Carlos and Brandy were doing at this moment. But she didn’t dwell on the thought. Richie took her hand and they wandered together through the carnival crowd.