CHAPTER 46

The Great Weigh-In

TERPSICHORE AND GLORIA STOOD IN THE BACK OF THE pickup as it approached the weighing station by the train depot. Mr. Crawford couldn’t get through the mass of people to get the pickup in line, so he pulled over at the edge of the crowd. Wheelbarrows were lined up with Laura’s competition. Pumpkins weren’t the only things that grew big in Alaska.

They listened to all the weigh-in results. “Seventy-five pounds!” Gloria said. “That rutabaga weighs almost as much as I do!”

“That may be big for a rutabaga, but it’s no match for a giant pumpkin,” Terpsichore said.

“You said it! But vegetables sure grow big in Alaska! That zucchini is as big as your brother! And it’s taking two people to lift that cantaloupe!”

Gloria’s voice dropped to a whisper as she grabbed Terpsichore’s arm and pointed to an approaching pickup truck. “Uh-oh! That’s the man I was talking about.”

Terpsichore watched as two men crawled out of the truck and lifted the cabbage out of the back. It had a leaf-spread wider than a tall man’s arm span.

Terpsichore held her breath as the cabbage was weighed. “Only forty-five pounds,” she said. “It is wide, but only the center weighs anything. The rest is just leaves stretched out to look big.” She could breathe again.

The one other pumpkin was big, but no match for Laura. It was only ninety-eight pounds.

The judges were almost ready to call an end to the weigh-in when Terpsichore yelled out from the back of the pickup. “Hey, I’ve got a pumpkin too, but I need to clear a path to the scale because it’s too heavy to lift.”

Pop and Mendel held back the crowd as Mr. Crawford edged the pickup toward the loading dock. Terpsichore fought back the urge to cover her eyes as Pop and Mendel and one of the judges positioned the padded forklift under the edge of Laura to move her from the back of the pickup to the scale on the loading platform.

“Hello, old-timer. Is this your pumpkin?” a judge asked.

“I’m just the delivery boy,” Mr. Crawford said. “Here’s the grower.”

“You? And your name, young lady?” the judge asked.

Terpsichore climbed up to the loading platform with Laura. “Miss Terpsichore Johnson,” she said. “Lot number seventy-seven.”

“Terp what?”

“Terp-sick-oh-ree,” she said, speaking directly into the judge’s microphone. “And my pumpkin’s name is Laura.”

The crowd laughed, then went silent as everyone watched the red arrow on the scale zip past fifty pounds, eighty pounds, one hundred pounds, two hundred pounds, and came to a quavering rest at two hundred and ninety-three pounds.

Terpsichore flushed as admiring oohs and aahs echoed through the crowd. Laura had surely won.

The judges conferred for a moment and one of them shouted out, “We have a winner! A two-hundred-ninety-three-pound pumpkin!”

The man with the cabbage stormed up to the platform. “Just a minute here! This contest was for the biggest vegetable grown in Palmer, and pumpkin is not a vegetable, it’s a fruit. And why are we bothering with a weigh-in anyway? Big means measuring tape big, not how much something weighs.”

Terpsichore scrambled off the loading platform to confront Mr. Cabbage Man. She barely reached the snaps on his overall straps, but her voice was just as loud. “If it’s not animal or mineral, it’s vegetable! And my pumpkin weighs more than your cabbage. It’s bigger!” She put her hands on her hips in a so-there attitude.

Mr. Cabbage Man leaned over so he was eye to eye with Terpsichore. “The rules said the prize goes to the biggest.” He stood and stretched his arms out like an eagle in flight. “My cabbage’s leaf spread is pert-near six feet.”

“But my pumpkin weighs over two hundred pounds.”

Mr. Cabbage Man didn’t back down. “Rules say ve-ge-ta-ble and rules say biggest, not heaviest,” he said. He looked over his shoulder to make sure the judges were listening to his defense of his cabbage.

Terpsichore looked toward her cheering section. Mom, Matthew, and the twins were all at the apple pie booth that was earning money for new textbooks for the school, so it was just Pop, Mr. Crawford, Gloria, and Mendel. Pop raised his eyebrows and pointed to his chest, silently asking her if she wanted him to take over her defense, but Terpsichore shook her head. This was her pumpkin and her fight. Mendel was riffling through the rule book, probably trying to find another argument for her.

Mr. Cabbage Man trotted out his final argument. “Besides,” he said, pointing to his cheering section, which consisted of eight stairstep children who all had his pointed nose and lank, sawdust-colored hair, “my wife died of pneumonia last winter and I have eight children to feed. What would you do with the money, buy a Shirley Temple doll?”

Terpsichore shook her head, but she was biting her lips shut against bawling and could not answer.

At first the crowd had been sympathetic toward Terpsichore, harassed and out-talked by a grown-up. But when the crowd turned toward the man’s children, they chorused “Awww,” and Terpsichore knew there was no point in pursuing her fight.

The judges huddled over the rule book.

Then the head judge stepped toward the microphone. “After serious deliberation and careful reading of the rules, we have decided the prize goes to the biggest—not heaviest—true vegetable, the cabbage, with a circumference of two hundred and twenty-six inches!”

Mr. Cabbage Man’s supporters applauded. But many in the audience muttered in disapproval. The judge wiped his brow and held up his hand. “But we decided that this young lady’s pumpkin deserves recognition too, so she will be awarded a blue ribbon for best in category and a five-dollar prize.” He smiled anxiously, hoping this acknowledgment would placate everyone. It did not. Several clusters of folks trickled away, muttering their disagreement. “The little girl should have won . . . just a technicality.”

Terpsichore forced a smile, held her head high, and strode to the podium to collect her ribbon and five dollars.