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"Pumpkins for breakfast, pumpkins at noon.
Without pumpkins we'd all be undoon."
Anonymous Pilgrim
***
"DEAR GOD, CATHY, PUT on a bra!" Anne shouted.
"What? No. I've got a shirt on."
"You're flopping all over the house. The children are frightened."
"They're not."
"I think you ruined Justis and Ned, too."
Cathy laughed. "They're big boys, they've seen it all by now."
"They're signing up for the priesthood even as we speak."
"You're funny, Anne. And I'm on vacation."
"PUT ON A BRA, Y'BIG SLOB!" Mae shouted at her daughter.
"OKAY!"
Hollin could hear Justis and Ned laughing in the garage. She waited until her own face stopped burning (God, Mama!) and then she took a large plaid jacket, the jacket everyone used to haul wood inside, off its hook next to the door and stepped outside into the dim and cold of her grandmother's garage.
"My eyes, I've seen too much," Justis groaned. "Acres of too much!"
"Kill me," Ned agreed. "Kill me now."
Well, it was pretty funny. "It's safe to come back in, now," Hollin said. "Helga of the Hill People has been subdued."
"Too late. I'm a priest." Justis made the sign of the cross at her. "Es nomine deus carpe diem, my child."
"Oh, I've lost him," she said and he grinned at her.
"Yo Mama so fat..." Ned started.
"Ned," Hollin warned him.
"Yo..."
Justis backed her up. "Ned!"
"Yo Mama so fat she caused an eclipse," Ned just had to finish. He guffawed and actually slapped his knee. He looked from Hollin to Justis expectantly. Hollin didn't smile and Justis didn't either.
Ned's good time ended. "Ya'll get a sense of humor!"
Hollin released the Voice of Death that she used on Roy and Hill. "Shut up, Ned!"
Ned shut up. He stayed silent as he appealed to Justis.
What did he want? Protection? He wasn't going to get it.
"Do I smell bacon?" Justis asked.
Hollin caught on. "Yes, a full baking sheet's worth. Grandma just pulled it out of the oven."
Ned seemed relieved by the change of subject. "Bacon? Come on, Justis!" He galloped into the house and Hollin shut the connecting door after him.
When he learned the bitter truth he was going to come moping back out. Hollin had to work fast if she wanted to keep Justis to herself for a while.
Alone with Justis at last, despite her mother's best efforts.
("Hollin, listen, Ned doesn't have a clue. We don't know a thing about Justis or his family or what he's really like.")
Well, Hollin was going to find out. And not inside a gloomy and unheated garage that smelled of dust and motor oil.
She hit the switch to the wide door and it cranked open with the groan of a mechanical dinosaur. Bright morning sunlight and whirls of fresh cold flooded the garage. Justis's thick hair blew off his face and out of his eyes, his grey eyes.
"Let's go get some firewood," Hollin said. "The house is freezing."
*
SHE WAS STANDING SO close he could smell the gentle pine sap odor rising from her over-large jacket.
"So, Justis?" she said and her voice was quiet and soft.
"Yes?" he said, his pulse beating in his neck.
"Besides being a ninja chicken sexer, what else are you? And be serious this time."
"Art major." He slowly reached up and pulled one of her curls straight. He let it go and it sprang back into shape. She allowed it and he moved closer.
She was cocking her head up at him. "You've been taking so many pictures of us. Playing the great explorer here," she pointed down at the brown grass surrounding the woodpile behind her grandmother's storage shed. "But you won't tell me anything about yourself?"
"There's nothing to tell." Justis put his hands on her shoulders. "Nothing. And I don't want to bore you, of all people." He bent his head.
The wind was icy cold and her lips were cool against his for the brief moment they touched. He waited, the steam of their breath mingled. She didn't step back. He pressed forward again and the cold disappeared, the woodpile disappeared, and he savored the taste of her warm on his mouth. Her hands came up and he felt them fall lightly on his arms.
He touched the soft skin of her face.
*
JUSTIS'S FINGERS SLID down her cheek and Hollin smiled. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him down again, the heat of him keeping her warm against the brisk November air.
She could get used to this. She could get used to him.
But he didn't answer her ques...
"Yooooou! Youdiditonpurpose!"
A woman's gabbling shriek rang out from the house and they leapt apart.
Surprise, diappointment, and anger shot through Hollin as the wind blew cold between them.
Her first startled thought was her mother was spying on her. Was angry. Was charging out to separate her daughter from her big mistake.
"IIIIIIIHAAAAAAATEYOOOOOOOOU!"
That wasn't her mother. Cathy Clocke had never howled like that in her life.
Hollin pulled Justin along with her, either as moral support or a human shield, she wasn't certain which, as she crept out from behind the woodpile. She could hear excited shouts and murmurs and laughter.
Hollin pelted across the wide yard with Justis right behind her. Just as they reached the house Aunt Marty came stumbling out of the garage, wailing.
"BIIIIITCH!"
Her face was covered with some sort of white and yellow goo.
"Aw, Sarah! You wasted one! My favorite, too," Uncle Newt was groaning.
Hollin smelled lemon and sugar as Marty pushed past her into the house, meringue shooting out of her nose and globs of lemon curd dripping from her hair.
She was squalling, "That was assault! I'm going to sue! I'm going to kill her!"
Marty was slowly followed in by assorted aunts, uncles, friends, Romans, Countrymen, and cousins. Some were carefully carrying pastry boxes.
"Why didn't you throw the coconut cream? I hate coconut cream," Newt groused again. Her mother and Aunt Anne were laughing so hard they were practically keeping one another upright.
"I want her arrested!" echoed across the entire property. "I'm calling the cops!"
"Ah, Justis," Hollin said, trying to fight back her own laughter. "Look. Aunt Sarah finally made it. And she brought the pies!"
*
JUSTIS WAITED FOR THE wail of sirens all through breakfast but none came. Marty had locked herself in an upstairs bathroom. No one knocked on the door or spoke to her through the keyhole.
So she was gone and baby Dale was present, eating scrambled eggs with his fingers off Aunt Sarah's plate, so everyone was happy.
Justis was puzzled. Marty didn't seem the type to let an insult go. Justis knew that type well.
A hand stealthily reached for his plate and Justis jabbed it with his fork.
"Ow!" Ned snatched his hand back. "C'mon, man, there's plenty of bacon over there in the pan."
"Then go over there and get it," Justis said. Ned huffed. Then he made a grab for his sister's. Too slow again.
"When do you go back to school, Ned?" Ellery asked, holding three strips of bacon to her shoulder like a delicious corsage.
Ned muttered something and got up. Justis looked at Hollin, easy to do, and cast around for something to talk about. He remembered the drama of last night.
"When's the kids' table?" he asked.
Hollin came back from far away. "Lunchtime," she said. "We've got four more people coming."
Justis almost choked. "This house can't hold four more people."
"Wait until dinner. We'll have even more."
"How are they all going to fit?"
"Love will find a way," Hollin said.
Justis smiled and offered her a strip of his bacon. She took it. She didn't have any dimples but she dimpled at him anyway.
"Oh, puke," Ellery said and grabbed up her plate to sit somewhere else.
Carl Yoho took her place, plopping down a large soup bowl of fried eggs, grits, and Jimmy Dean sausage stirred into a hot mass. He sprinkled it with white vinegar, a ton of salt, and enough pepper to turn it grey. It made Justis ill just looking at it.
"Lunchtime," Carl said, looking at Hollin with a jack 'o lantern grin. "D-Day, huh? What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to take my place," Hollin said.
"Are you going to sit next to me?" Carl asked, simpering, and Justis was sick all over again.
So was Hollin. "No!"
Carl sniggered. "You don't have a prayer anyway. Neither does Alex. Ooh, that reminds me."
Carl left the breakfast nook and went over to the hooks on the wall where Mae kept her aprons. He pulled out a pink one that had BIG MAMA embroidered across the chest.
"Hey!" Carl yelled as he strode over to his son who was leaning against the kitchen counter watching Hal scramble eggs. "Hey, Alexandra. This is for you when you take over the kids." He presented the apron and Alex took it, his ears red. "Wear it when you make them little snacky-boos."
He laughed but no one else did, not even Ned.
Hal certainly wasn't laughing. He slowly turned around. "You think a man can't take care of kids?" Carl's hilarity faded away. "You think a man can't cook?" Hal went on, tapping his spatula against the rim of the cast iron frying pan.
"It's a joke, Hal," Carl said, faster than he'd ever said anything. "Alex isn't going to watch anybody. He can't handle it."
"That's called 'deflection,'" Justis whispered to Hollin and she nodded.
"I can handle it," Alex muttered.
Hill popped in. "Uncle Kirk's here!" he shouted and raced away again.
"Kirk. Good." Carl said and left, too. His abandoned breakfast began to congeal on the table. "Hey, Captain! Beam me up!"
A man's mild voice answered, "Carl, you start that Trek garbage and I'll flush you down the toilet."
Hollin was wearing a thousand-yard-stare.
"Everything's going to be fine," Justis whispered and felt at a loss again. There were so many people in this house. Ned hadn't told him how big his family was.
"Hollin? Let's go build a moat."
