Craig’s here,” Jane said, poking her head through the dining room doorway, where her sisters were clearing the table. One couple was still eating breakfast. “Excuse me,” Jane said to their guests. “It’s likely to get noisy around here. We’re about to load my sister’s thousand-pound pumpkin onto a trailer, and a busload of schoolchildren will be arriving any minute to watch.”
“My goodness. We don’t want to miss that. Is there a good viewing spot?” the young man asked.
His wife set down her napkin. “I’m just finished. Let me get the camera.”
“I’ll get it,” the man said, dashing from the room. They heard him racing up the stairs two steps at a time.
“There’s no hurry. I’m sure it will take a while. You can go through the sunroom. The garden is off to the right at the back of the house. The children will be on the lawn,” Jane told the wife. “Is there anything else I can get you? More coffee?”
“Oh no, thank you. Our breakfast was delicious.” She stood, then headed for the doorway.
Jane hurried to the kitchen with her sisters. “I have cookies and apple cider here for Vera’s class when the time comes. Let’s go watch.” Jane removed her apron and hung it by the door as she grabbed her windbreaker. The nights had turned cold. There’d been a suspicious sheen of white on the grass when she first got up.
Craig turned the rig around and backed up to the fence. Jane wondered how he planned to move the pumpkin. Louise had been adamant about not moving the fence.
Craig entered the garden and began removing the blankets covering the pumpkin cage. Fred and Sam showed up and went to help him.
Jane heard the deep rumble of a large engine. She looked around in time to see Caleb Bellwood coming along Chapel Road, driving a large flatbed truck with an excavator secured in back. Caleb carefully maneuvered the truck into position near the garden as a school bus drew to a stop at the end of the driveway. Jane saw Vera and a crowd of young students ready to descend from the bus. The children ran across the yard. Jane stepped out on the lawn to stop them. She didn’t want them near the heavy equipment.
Vera came over to the sisters, who were standing in the middle of the lawn between the children and the garden.
“Wow! You really know how to put on a show,” Vera told Louise. She laughed at Louise’s stunned expression.
“This is really something, isn’t it?” Jane said, joining her own laughter with Vera’s.
Carlene Moss came striding across the lawn, followed by Lloyd, Ethel and Craig. Caleb climbed out of his truck and made ready to off-load the excavator.
Movement at the side of the house caught Jane’s eye. She glanced over. The inn guests stood watching from the corner of the house. It looked as if half the town had joined them. Rev. Thompson and Henry and Patsy Ley were walking from the direction of the church. Carlene’s camera clicked several times in succession. Louise’s pumpkin was a celebrity.
“Louise may shoot me later, but we brought streamers and signs to decorate the trailer,” Vera told Alice.
Alice chuckled at the image that popped into her mind of Louise and Craig driving down the road with streamers flying and cans rattling like a car with “Just Married” written across the back. “Louise doesn’t have a violent bone in her body, but she may wish she did,” she said.
Alice looked at the crowd of school kids. Two chaperones were talking with them, keeping them contained. So much energy.
Louise went over to the huddle of men to learn what they planned to do. She found them in a huddle. They talked, then pointed to the garden, then talked some more.
Jane joined Alice and Vera. “This could take a while. Let’s break out the cookies and cider now.”
“All right. I hope we have enough.”
“I have plenty for the kids, but I’m not sure about the rest of the town. I made extra though. Let’s go see what we have.”
Louise stayed outside “to keep an eye on the fence,” she’d told Alice and Jane.
“We can pour the drinks outside,” Jane said, taking a stack of paper cups out of the pantry.
Alice arranged frosted pumpkin cookies on a tray. Jane pulled a square plastic container out of the refrigerator.
“I made these apple-cranberry bars last night for us and our guests. Let’s pass these out now and I’ll make more this afternoon.”
Alice glanced out the window. “Caleb is going back to the excavator. We’d better get outside.” She picked up the two trays of goodies. Jane opened the door and followed her with two jugs of cider.
Grabbing handholds, Caleb hoisted himself up into the cab of the big machine. It rocked side to side when it rumbled to life. The sound of the engine drowned out their voices. Alice beckoned to several of the students to help pass out cider and cookies. Then she did the same. Caleb was missing out on the treats, but Alice suspected he was enjoying himself, commanding that big machine as he moved it into position.
The machine’s long arm slowly unfurled and stretched out and up, then pivoted and swung over the fence until the bucket hovered a few feet above the pumpkin, its stem now neatly removed. When it stopped, the crowd let out a collective sigh.
Craig, Fred and Sam entered the garden. Louise started to follow them, then changed her mind and went back to the yard. The men rocked and moved the pumpkin to the center of the blue tarp beneath it, then wrapped the tarp over the pumpkin and raised the hoist straps. It took a bit of maneuvering, but they finally attached all the chains and hooks over the teeth of the excavator’s bucket.
“Stand back,” Sam yelled.
The men stepped back away from the pumpkin, but stayed in the garden, ready to move in if needed. Caleb raised the bucket a few inches. The chains grew taut. The pumpkin moved. The crowd gasped. Alice looked around. Louise was watching with pursed lips. Everyone stared at the pumpkin and the giant arm above it.
Inch by inch, the big arm rose, then stopped. Fred and Sam went over to check the pumpkin. Craig stood far enough away to watch and tell them if anything was amiss. They tested the straps. When they were satisfied, they stepped out of the way. Sam gave Caleb a thumb’s up signal.
Alice could see Caleb shift a gear. The wrapped pumpkin package began to rise. It dangled and swayed like a giant blue wrecking ball.
“Oh, I can’t look,” Louise said, turning away from the sight, but she turned back a second later.
When the pumpkin dangled ten feet off the ground, the arm slowly extended, stretching out toward the far fence and the trailer parked on the other side. Sam stood to one side, giving Caleb hand signals. The pumpkin rocked and bobbed on the end of its tether. Craig and Fred went out to stand on either side of the trailer. The other men surged forward, ready to help do whatever was required. Cameras flashed and clicked.
“Move-it, move-it, move-that-pumpkin,” the children began chanting in unison. The guests and townspeople took up the cry.
“Move-that-pumpkin. Move-that-pumpkin. Move-that-pumpkin,” reverberated in the air.
Cars pulled to a stop on both sides of the street and people got out to watch. Alice looked overhead, almost expecting to see a news helicopter, but the sky was clear.
The pumpkin cleared the fence and the arm began to lower. It swung out, then back, nearly snagging on the top of a fence post.
“Stop!” Everyone screamed. Sam made a chopping motion with his hands and the arm stopped. Alice released her breath. Another inch and the pumpkin would have been impaled on the top of a pointed fence post.
The men gathered around the base of the dangling pumpkin. Caleb climbed down out of his machine and went to investigate.
Alice and Louise went to see what was wrong. Jane stayed with Vera to keep the children from surging forward to see better.
“I need another foot of stretch space, but the arm is extended to full length,” Caleb said.
“If I can move my truck, I can get the trailer closer,” said Craig.
“Give it a try.” Sam clapped his hands together as encouragement.
Craig got in his truck to reposition the trailer. Half of the men stood on each side of the truck, hollering directions as he backed it up closer to the pumpkin. Alice wondered how he would manage with all the help, but he did.
Craig jumped out of the truck and ran back to help Fred position a large pallet under the pumpkin, making sure it was square to the sides.
Sam watched, his hand in the air, holding Caleb off as six men got behind the pumpkin to push it away from the fence. When he got a nod from Craig, Sam yelled, “Lower away!” as he motioned downward with his hands.
“Here we go,” Alice said. She held her breath as the pumpkin lowered in slow, jerky motions and the men pushed against the dangling pumpkin to position it.
“Touchdown!” someone yelled.
The blue tarp made contact with the pallet. The trailer moved beneath the weight of the pumpkin as the arm lowered it, until the cables were slack.
Craig and Fred scrambled up onto the trailer and removed the cables from the bucket’s teeth. They spread open the tarp and checked the pumpkin for damage. Louise stood next to the trailer, clasping her hands together while the men ran their hands all over the pumpkin. Finally Craig turned toward Louise and the waiting audience. He raised his hands in victory and gave them a huge grin.
“Perfect landing,” he yelled. “Not a scratch on ’er.”
Cheers, whistles and applause erupted from the backyard, side yard and street.
Louise’s shoulders dropped and her hands unclasped. She smiled and thanked the men, then turned to find her sisters.
Looking relieved, she went over to Jane, Alice and Vera. “I’m never growing anything again,” she said. “The stress is just too much.”
Alice and Vera laughed. Jane gave Louise a hug. Then everyone crowded around to congratulate her, while the spectators cheered and cameras continued to click.
Slowly, but with a great deal of noise, the crowd dispersed. The schoolchildren descended upon the trailer like a swarm of bees. Vera and her helpers went to supervise. When they stepped away, several minutes later, bright orange and red and purple streamers were attached to the truck and trailer and crisscrossed over the pumpkin, which Craig had secured with straps. A big sign was propped against the back of the pumpkin. The Monster Pumpkin of Acorn Hill, it announced.
Alice read the sign and smiled. Louise and Craig would make quite a sight, rolling down the highway with the pumpkin in tow. She wished she could follow along behind to watch the spectacle.