CHAPTER 45

Laura’s Moving Day

TWO DAYS BEFORE THE FAIR, TERPSICHORE BORROWED her mother’s tape measure. She and Gloria tiptoed into the field, as if afraid to wake Laura from her beauty sleep.

Gloria’s arm looked spindly compared to Laura’s stem. “That stem must be as thick as a lumberjack’s arm,” Gloria said.

“Let’s see just how big she is today.” Terpsichore took a carpenter’s pencil from the side pocket of her overalls and made a light line on the skin of her pumpkin at the widest point, careful not to press too hard and make a dent in Laura’s hide.

“Here,” she said. “Hold the end of the tape here while I walk around with the rest of it.”

Gloria held the tape while Terpsichore walked around Laura, careful to keep the tape level all the way. “There’s two hundred . . .” Terpsichore said, “two hundred and seven! And she’ll probably grow another four inches tonight.”

“Mr. Hopstadt next to our place claims he’s going to win for his cabbage,” Gloria said. “I think he’s been training the outer leaves to stretch out sideways as far as they’ll go without cracking.”

“But that’s just stretching across empty air; that doesn’t count.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Gloria said. “Did the contest rules say they’d judge size by leaf-span or weight?”

Sweat broke out on Terpsichore’s forehead and trickled down under her bangs. “The rule book didn’t say,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” Gloria said.

Gloria wanted to be an actress, but she wasn’t convincing Terpsichore not to worry.

“How are you going to get it to the fairgrounds?” Both girls turned to see Mendel stepping over withering pumpkin vines.

“Pop said he’d help,” Terpsichore said. “And he’s going to borrow a truck and get some of his friends to help too.”

Mendel laid both hands against the pumpkin, braced his feet in a giant step, and threw his whole weight into a push. The pumpkin did not budge. “Just as I thought,” he said. “This pumpkin is going to take more than brute strength. It’s going to take mechanical assistance. I’ll rig something up tonight and meet you tomorrow morning. What time should I be here?”

“Thanks, Mendel! If you can make a house fly across the stage, you can figure out a way to move a pumpkin. I know you can! Seven tomorrow?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Mendel said.

• • •

The next morning, Terpsichore walked out to Laura with an old towel draped around her shoulders. One hand clutched a bucket of water. The other hand held a hacksaw behind her back. After hiding the hacksaw under a shriveled pumpkin leaf, she swabbed Laura with a sponge and rubbed her down with the towel. Terpsichore stood back to admire the result.

“You’re a beaut!” she said. How could anyone disagree? Laura had turned a classic yellow-orange, a little lopsided, but just enough to give her character. Terpsichore squinted, imagining wheels, a door, and Cinderella peeping out the window on the way to the ball. With a sigh, Terpsichore stepped forward to lean her cheek against Laura’s burnished side and stretch her arms out to hold as much pumpkin as she could in a hug.

“This had to come eventually,” she whispered. “I’ll make the cut as quickly and painlessly as I can.”

Hands shaking, she picked up the hacksaw from where she’d hidden it. “Don’t be afraid, Laura. It’ll be kind of like a baby getting its umbilical cord cut so it can go out into the world. You’re going to get a ride in the truck to the fairgrounds so everyone can see you. Everyone will admire you, and say what a beautiful pumpkin you are. And best of all, you’ll win the money that will buy the piano that will make Mom want to stay. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

Terpsichore hadn’t thought this step out well. Even with her belly snugged up against Laura’s side, the stem was an arm’s length away, and at shoulder height, she couldn’t get full strength on the blade. The first timid pass with the end of the saw barely dented the surface of the prickly stem.

She lowered the saw in defeat.

“Let me,” Pop said.

Terpsichore turned, and surrendered the hacksaw to her father, who had followed her out to the field. “Thanks,” she said.

With her father’s height and longer, stronger arms, he severed the stem in a few decisive passes with the saw. He pulled the loose vine away from the pumpkin’s side.

Terpsichore felt the comforting weight of her father’s hand on her shoulder. “You did a mighty fine job with this pumpkin,” he said. “I’m proud of you, Terpsichore.”

“Do you think she’ll win?” Terpsichore asked. She looked up at his face to see if he was telling her what he believed or what she wanted to hear.

“I can’t imagine anyone’s growing anything bigger,” he said. He looked like he meant it. “Mr. Crawford has a pickup and we can get a couple guys to help load her in.” He lifted his hand from Terpsichore’s shoulder to point to the edge of the vegetable garden. “Not sure how I’m going to get the truck here without running over some of the vegetable patch, though. We could run it through the chard or the spinach or the kale . . .”

Terpsichore’s mouth convulsed at the thought of kale. “I vote for kale,” she said.

Pop laughed. “Me too.”

Both turned at the sound of Mr. Crawford’s truck. And just behind Mr. Crawford was Mendel with a tractor with a forklift. Terpsichore waved. “Hooray!”

“The whole crew’s here,” Pop said. “I think we’re ready.”

Mendel pulled out an armload of supplies from the floor of the forklift. The tractor driver and Mr. Crawford slid a heavy beam out of the back of the pickup, carried it up next to Laura, and went back for another.

Mendel set down a heap of four-inch webbing, block and tackle, and a heavy iron hook. “I’ve worked it all out with Mr. Crawford,” he said. “We’ll lift the pumpkin with a net of webbing and set her down in the back of the pickup. It’s sort of like the way they hoisted livestock on and off the St. Mihiel.”

Terpsichore watched her father and Mr. Crawford erect a tripod over Laura, wrap her in a harness of heavy webbing, and hook the top of the webbing to the iron hook at the end of a length of chain.

Terpsichore wrung her hands as, with a rattle and a clank, Laura began to rise.

She gasped in relief when gently, as gently as putting a baby in its crib, the hoist swung over the back of the pickup and Laura was laid on its nest of straw and quilts.

Terpsichore clambered up on the back to ride with Laura to the fairgrounds.