The Pumpkin Who Kept the Light.
A story by Avery Lane Maxwell.
For Jeremiah and James, who will grow, and change, and still always
know the way home.
There was once a pumpkin that grew beside a little house at
the bottom of a hill.
He was not the biggest pumpkin in the garden.
He was not the roundest.
One side of him had grown against a stone, so he leaned
slightly to the left, as though someone had just told him an
interesting secret.
But he was orange. Very orange.
The kind of orange that seemed to collect all the warm parts
of the day and keep them after the sun had gone down.
Every morning, two brothers came through the garden.
Jeremiah came first. James came immediately after, unless James had discovered something
important along the way. A beetle.
A stick. A rock shaped like another rock.
Important things took time. The pumpkin knew their footsteps.
Jeremiah walked as though he had somewhere to be.
James walked as though somewhere might come to him.
The pumpkin liked both ways.
"Morning," Jeremiah would say. "Morning, Pumpkin," James would add.
The pumpkin could not answer.
Pumpkins are excellent listeners, but very poor conversationalists.
Still, he heard everything.
He heard about scraped knees.
He heard about a bird that Jeremiah was certain had followed them
home. He heard James explain, at considerable length, why worms probably had
families. He heard arguments. He heard apologies.
He heard the boys laughing so hard that neither of them remembered
what had been funny in the first place.
And every evening, when the light turned gold, the pumpkin sat quietly
beside the house and kept all of it.
That was what he was good at.
Keeping things.
Summer became September. September became October.
The mornings grew colder. The garden changed.
The tomatoes disappeared. The bean vines turned brown.
Leaves began letting go of the trees one at a time.
The pumpkin noticed. Pumpkins notice more than people think.
One morning Jeremiah crouched beside him.
"You're ready." Ready? The pumpkin did not like the sound of that.
James put both hands on his sides.
"He's heavy." This seemed rude, although accurate.
Then the boys lifted him.
For the first time in his entire life, the pumpkin left the
garden. He watched the ground disappear beneath him.
Past the beans. Past the gate.
Up the steps. Through the door.
Inside.
The house was warmer than the garden.
It smelled of toast and cinnamon and something simmering on the stove.
The pumpkin was placed in the middle of the kitchen table.
He had never seen a table before.
He decided immediately that he liked tables.
Tables seemed to be where people put the things they did not
want to lose. Keys. Books.
Half-finished drawings. Cups of cocoa.
And now him.
For several days, the pumpkin lived there.
He listened to breakfast. He watched homework.
He saw James fall asleep in a chair he had insisted he
was not tired enough to fall asleep in.
He watched Jeremiah quietly cover him with a blanket.
The pumpkin began to understand something.
The house had its own kind of garden.
People grew here too. Not upward exactly.
In other directions.
Then came Halloween. The boys carried the pumpkin to the counter.
There was a spoon. There was a bowl.
There was a small knife that an adult held very carefully.
The pumpkin became concerned. James looked concerned too.
"Will it hurt him?" The adult smiled.
"No." Jeremiah looked at the pumpkin.
"Are you sure?" The pumpkin wished someone would answer this question with
considerably more authority.
But then something strange happened.
The top of him came away.
The seeds inside him were scooped carefully into a bowl.
James reached for one. "Don't lose those," Jeremiah said.
"We won't," came the answer.
The pumpkin listened. Don't lose those.
He liked the sound of that.
Then the boys drew a face.
Not a frightening one. Jeremiah gave him a crooked smile.
James insisted on one eyebrow being higher than the other.
The pumpkin thought it looked distinguished.
When evening came, a small light was placed inside him.
And suddenly the pumpkin understood what all that orange had been for.
He glowed. Not brightly. Not enough to light the whole house.
Just enough. His crooked smile shone across the porch.
Children came up the steps carrying bags and wearing wings and capes
and masks. Some were dragons.
Some were ghosts. One was, somewhat confusingly, another pumpkin.
Every person who passed saw his light.
Some smiled. Some pointed. One little girl stopped completely.
"He looks happy," she said.
The pumpkin was. He had spent the whole summer gathering sunlight without
knowing why. Now he was giving it back.
He liked that very much.
For several nights, the pumpkin kept his place by the door.
But November came. The cold sharpened.
His sides softened. His bright orange faded.
The pumpkin became frightened.
He had seen what happened to the garden.
Things finished. He had never considered that he might too.
One evening the boys came outside.
James touched his side gently.
"He's going away." Jeremiah was quiet.
Then he said, "No." The pumpkin listened.
"We kept the seeds."
The next morning, the pumpkin was carried back through the garden.
Past the gate. Past the empty bean vines.
To the soil where he had begun.
The boys dug a small place for him beneath the brown leaves.
It was not sad exactly.
But it was quiet. The kind of quiet that happens when everyone
understands something and nobody has found the words yet.
James put his hand on the pumpkin.
"Goodnight." Jeremiah did too. "See you later."
Later. The pumpkin liked that better.
Winter arrived. Snow covered the garden.
The house windows glowed at night.
Inside, life continued. The boys grew a little taller.
Not much. Enough.
The pumpkin rested beneath the soil.
And in a small envelope above the kitchen sink were his seeds.
Every so often James checked them.
"They're still there." Jeremiah always answered the same way.
"I know."
Spring took a long time.
Spring always does when someone is waiting for it.
Then one morning the snow pulled back from the garden.
Water ran beneath the fence.
Birds returned noisily, as if they owned the place.
The earth softened.
Jeremiah and James came outside carrying the envelope.
They made several little holes in the ground.
One seed went into each.
James covered them gently. Jeremiah brought water.
Then there was nothing to do.
This is the difficult part of growing things.
You cannot hurry them by watching.
The boys watched anyway. One day.
Two. Five.
Then, one morning, James shouted so loudly that Jeremiah came running without
his shoes. There, where the pumpkin had once grown, was a tiny
green leaf. Then another. And another.
Summer returned slowly. Vines traveled along the soil.
Yellow flowers opened. Bees arrived.
And beneath one flower, almost too small to notice, something round began
to grow. Then another. Then another.
One pumpkin leaned slightly to the left.
Jeremiah noticed first. "Look." James crouched beside it.
For a moment neither boy said anything.
The little pumpkin sat in the morning sun.
It did not know about the kitchen table.
It did not know about Halloween.
It did not know about snow.
It did not know that once, before it existed, another pumpkin had
listened to two brothers growing up beside a little house at the
bottom of a hill. It only knew the sunlight was warm.
And that two boys were smiling at it.
"Morning," Jeremiah said. "Morning, Pumpkin," James said.
Then they went inside for breakfast.
The little pumpkin remained in the garden.
Growing. Listening. Keeping the light.
And if it leaned slightly toward the house, as though it already
knew where home was, nobody thought that was strange.
Some things, after all, know the way back.
The end.
That was The Pumpkin Who Kept the Light, from Galena House Audio,
read at the front desk of an inn in Frisco, Colorado.
There will be a book, with pictures, when the pictures are done.