Pumpkins and Ghosts

Pumpkins and Ghosts 2742 words


The farmer crossed his arms and leaned against the wooden fence post. He seemed a little irritated, his body language giving off that “put out” vibe that people often send when they think that something should be obvious to everyone. Jim could tell that a resolution was expected quickly. What the farmer wanted didn’t bother Jim in the least. He continued to crouch down, slowly surveying the entire area.
“It was taken all right,” Jim finally said. This brought a look of pure frustration to the face of the farmer, but he held back whatever he was going to say. Jim figured that it must have taken a great deal of self-control for the farmer not to shout at him.
Jim sighed and decided to go easy on the farmer. “There were three of them. One was an adult for sure, the other two children. You can see where they pulled a wagon right over to where the pumpkin was growing and just picked it. These small tracks only appear for a short time; obviously a very young child was riding in the wagon. The tracks then lead off the way they came, just two sets though, one not walking normal, maybe holding the second child’s hand, causing the adult to walk slow.”
This information seemed to upset the farmer even more. He moved from the fence and came to stand directly in front of Jim. “Adults and kids,” the farmer spat. “What kind of adult uses kids like this? Is there no humanity left in this world?” He stared at Jim waiting for a reply.
“Yes, it seems that pumpkin thievery has reached a new low,” Jim answered calmly, as he slowly started to follow the wagon tracks across the field.
“Can you find them?” the farmer said.
Jim crouched low, staring intently at the tracks. A child’s wagon, possibly an old Radio Flyer, weighed down by a child and pumpkin. The tracks ran straight, every few yards interrupted on the left side by a quarter inch arrow in the track. They hit the road about twenty yards up. He would lose the tracks then, but he didn’t think it would matter. He had the thieves; they just didn’t know it yet.
“I can find your pumpkin,” he said with complete confidence as he started to walk toward town. He walked to edge of the field. A dark feeling came upon Jim as he looked past the boundary of the field. He shook his head and stepped onto the road. Jim and farmer moved steadily down the old farm road, past the sign that said “Smithwick Orchard and Pumpkin Farm.”
* * * * * * *

The town was small. It was one of those forgotten rural towns where the Main Street used to be the social center. Now, over half the buildings on the main strip were empty; there was still a hardware store and a small shop that stocked auto parts. All the remaining stores were vacant and they had that look that said they had been empty for a long time. Their storefronts yawned bare and bleak. The dark entranceways, unused windows seemed a sad reminder that many of the stores would remain the same when the sun rose.
Jim and the farmer made their way down the street. Night had fallen, the stars were out, and the few weak streetlights did nothing to lessen the clear night that lay ahead. A car turned a corner two blocks down and lazily cruised down the main street. Jim and the farmer moved purposely down the street, the residential houses were all located on the far north side of town. The car angled passed, the driver an older bearded man who stared grossly at the two men as they turned down a side street.
Jim stared down the street, each side contained old one and two story houses that faced each other. Old oak and maple trees lined the streets, barren in the moonlight, as autumn had arrived to strip them clean. The trees stirred something in Jim’s mind, but he couldn’t quite grasp it. It occurred to him that it was autumn, maybe he was cold.
A sharp crack echoed down the street as a front door was shut. The noise brought Jim back to the task at hand. Find a wagon, find a pumpkin, and find a thief, that simple. Already it seemed that this was going to be harder than he originally thought, pumpkins lined nearly every stoop that was passed. Most of the pumpkins had been carved into gross caricatures of faces. Gapped toothed grin with pointed eyebrows that rose above cat’s eyes sat next to a one-eyed Cyclops with a mustache. Jim knew that he could narrow the pumpkin down by size, eliminating the smallest of the pumpkins, but he thought maybe it better to look for the wagon.
The farmer stood behind him, his gaze locked onto the surrounding faces of the pumpkins. A look of incomprehension was etched across his face.
“What is this?” he asked quietly, as he moved to stand next Jim.
Jim turned to answer, but laughter brought him around quickly. The sound of two small feet could be heard on the pavement as a child of no more than three turned the corner of the nearest house. He ran giggling to within four feet of Jim, stopped and turned his head sideways. As if looking at something familiar, but that did not fit into a preconceived notion of what he should know.
“Caleb,” a disembodied voice shouted from around the corner. The boy, Caleb, turned at the voice and made his way back from where he came. As he neared the corner of the house he stopped and looked back at Jim, again the slight turn of the head. He raised a hand, waved, and then disappeared around the corner.
The farmer had followed this exchange with little interest. “Could that be one of the thieves?”
Jim stared at where the boy had gone. Something again nagged at him, almost like a feather touching the back if his neck, but it is wrong, the feeling was wrong.
“No, I don’t think so,” Jim answered, “I need to find that wagon.”
Jim turned and led the farmer further into neatly rowed homes and piles of raked leaves. The moon was at a quarter full, enough to cast weird shadows from the surrounding trees. The only sound the small scratching of autumn leaves as they were blown slowly across the street. Jim felt the eeriness of the night, the out of place feeling that had been haunting him all evening, but no matter where he looked he couldn’t find the source of the wrongness.
A dog growled low and menacing. It stood not more than six feet from Jim, behind an old wooden fence. The hair on its neck stood straight up, and the whites of its eyes shown clearly in the night. Jim turned and took a step towards the dog. A big old German Shepard, it backed up as Jim moved forward. A growl sounded again, louder, more frantic, and something else. Jim froze and stared at the dog. Terror, the dog was terrified.
“Roxy, come here, what is it girl”, said an old man standing on a dimly lit porch. The dog turned and scampered up the stairs to the porch. The man moved down the steps slowly, peering into the darkened street, the small overhead porch light barely reaching past the porch steps. “Who’s there?”
“ I didn’t mean to startle your dog,” Jim answered. The man gave a start, jumped back a step. He looked toward where Jim was standing, a mere foot from the fence and just three feet from where Jim was standing. “I didn’t see you there” the man said, squinting at the Jim. He moved towards the fence cautiously. He stopped short of the fence and stared openly at Jim.
“ I was looking for…” Jim began,
“Jim,” the man said.
Everything that Jim had been feeling since he left the orchard hit him like a punch in the stomach. The sense of wrong, assailed him, the out of place feeling pounded him from all directions. He almost turned and ran. The wrongness passed.
“My name is Jim,” he whispered. “How do you know my name?”
“ We used to work together, at the train yard, by the bank.” The man stared at Jim, his face caught between an expression of disbelief and fear. Every instinct seemed to be urging the man to run, to find some light, to not see. Jim could see conflict within the man as if he were explaining it to him.
Jim couldn’t place “work”; it was as if everything he was supposed to know was a blank fog, an empty bin. Nothing seemed to make sense.
“I’m doing some work with this farmer,” Jim explained in answer to the man. He turned and pointed behind, but nothing but darkness greeted him. The farmer was nowhere to be seen.
“He was here,” Jim said, confusion seemed to cloud his every thought,
“What sort of work Jim,” the man asked, as he gazed behind where Jim stood.
“Work?”
“For the farmer.”
“ Pumpkin thievery,” he answered.
“You know you used to work at the train yard. It was a long time ago”, the man said as he stared at Jim.
The train yard. That meant something to Jim. It was there on the edge of his mind. The wrongness assailed him again, a rushing tidal wave of the unknown, throwing him back. The train yard. Jim. I am Jim and I work at the train yard. His head felt like exploding, the trees seemed to loom larger, the man became familiar, but the thought slowly faded.
“I don’t recall that…I think I need to see my wife.” That thought stuck in his head, every word the old man spoke to him, seemed to bring memories to the edge of his mind. Most faded quickly into ongoing confusion, but not the thought that he had wife.
Jim stared down the street, while the man seemed to shrink. “That won’t be possible, she has been gone for a number of years”.
A face flashed before Jim, smiling, blond, but gone in an instant. His wife. Gone for a number of years. “ I just saw her, waving good bye, as I went…” Jim faltered.
“To work,” supplied the man. He leaned in closer towards Jim. “Do you remember the last time you went to work?”
“Yes, to work, to work at the train yard.” The vision rose up before Jim. A slim, blond girl, standing on a porch, laughing, the sun just coming up from behind the house next door. She was holding something. Her arms wrapped protectively around….
Jim staggered away from the fence. That great roaring filled his ears again, the trees bent under a massive wind. The leaves grew in swirls and enclosed Jim, he stumbled, fell, the moon turned red, the trees reached grasped his legs. Jim screamed and screamed. Her arms wrapped protectively around her stomach. Wrapped protectively around, his unborn baby.

* * * * * * *

Jim watched the old man from outside. The man spoke loudly and gestured toward the yard. His wife sat in chair staring openly at him. She did not seem to think that whatever he was saying was important.
“Did you find anything?” the farmer asked.
“What?”
“Did you find anything?”
“No…maybe, I can’t…. Let’s keep looking”. Jim continued on down the street, the farmer a step ahead. Again, a fog settled onto Jim, the sense of lost time, the man had meant something.
Two houses down Jim found what he was looking for. A red wagon lay turned on its side, surrounded by a Hula-hoop and sitting next to large yellow Tonka truck. Jim leaned over the wagon staring at the back left tire. Sure enough a small section of the rubber was missing forming an arrow shaped divot.
“ Is this it?”
“ Yes, this is the place.” A carved pumpkin sat on the stoop. A leering half smile and eye patch stared at the farmer.
Through the front window a woman and man could be seen sitting in the house. A low fire burned in a red brick fireplace. The low mumble of conversation could be heard, but words could not be made out. Something was said by the man, she laughed, a golden laugh.
“We should confront them,” the farmer urged.
But it didn’t matter.
‘It is not important.” Jim said. A blond girl smiling and waving….
“But my pumpkins…”
“It is not important. We don’t belong here.”
Jim turned to go and found the farmer already gone. Jim turned and walked back towards the main street. All thoughts of pumpkin thievery had disappeared from his mind. Anyone looking down the street might see a shadow from the corner of his or her eye, but they wouldn’t see Jim. He too was gone.
* * * * * * *

November 2nd dawned bright and cool. One of those brisk late fall days, before the snow falls. An old man stood overlooking a grave that faced west towards town. The cemetery was built right along the Old Smithwick Place. It was an apple orchard and pumpkin farm offering hay rides. Where kids could always find a caramel apple. It had been converted to a family fun farm over 50 years ago; nearly 30 after the last Smithwick had gone. The farm had just passed its peak season with Halloween having come and gone, but it maintained a gift shop and café so it always had business.
Legend was that Sirus Smithwick could still be seen wandering the orchards and pumpkin patches. If you took the dusk hayride you could still hear tale of Sirus and his never-ending vigil to keep the apples and pumpkins on the farm. It helped that the town cemetery had been placed next to the farm. The cemetery added a little to the legend of Sirus and gave the farm more material for those evening hayrides.
The old man looked hard at the grave and shook his head. He was still having a hard time with what had taken place the previous evening. He had tried to explain to his wife the meeting by the fence. He had told his wife that he had seen his old friend wandering at night, working with a farmer on “pumpkin thievery”. I wonder if that farmer was old Sirus, he thought. That thought quickly faded from his mind, his wife was already questioning his current mental state. It was best not start telling tales of the local ghost legend. But he had spoken to his friend. He had tried to explain this to his wife. She had known Jim. She had been there when he died. She had held Jim’s wife while she cried. Yet, she wouldn’t believe that Jim had come back 20 years after his death. All that led to was another reason to sell the house and move to the West End Gardens. The hell with the West End Gardens, the man thought.
He had been there. Jim, his old friend, confused and lost. Looking no more than the 25 years he had been when he died. Looking for his wife, who had left years ago after the death of her husband. When Jim had asked after his wife a piece of the old man had withered, she was no longer in this town, she had taken their baby and left. Who could blame her, everything here had to be a reminder of the man she loved. But how would you explain that to a man who had been dead for 20 years? And then like a snap of the fingers, he was gone.
The old man remembered the fire. It was never really determined how it had started, just that it trapped two families on the upstairs of the duplex. The thought was that a Halloween pumpkin with a candle in it had been brought inside. No matter the cause, Jim saw the smoke on his way to work. He managed to get four kids out by himself, when the upper floors came down Jim was still inside.
One more look at the grave…
James L. McKeon
June 6th, 1965- November 1st, 1990

Beloved Husband and Father

HERO