Pumpkin Read Free Page B

dead house and the ruined remains of the dead garden.
    But the garden wasn’t entirely dead. A flash of vivid color caught his eye in the rays of the setting sun and then he saw it clearly—the orange outline, rounded and resting amidst the weeds. Vera saw it too.
    “Look, a pumpkin!” Her smile broadened. “Just what we needed.”
    “Needed?” David frowned.
    “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. Tonight’s Halloween.” She stooped, reaching toward the pumpkin, but David yanked her away.
    “Leave it alone.”
    “But David—”
    “Leave it alone, I said!”
    A sudden blast of sound interrupted Vera’s reply. The two of them turned, glancing toward the road at another orange object—the school bus, halting before their yard.
    They crossed over to it just as Billy got out. The bus moved off, trailing a cloud of exhaust, and he turned to them, his face flushed with excitement.
    “Guess what?” he cried. “We had a Halloween party at school. Miss Zelisko gave us a whole bunch of colored paper to make masks and black cats and witches and ghosts and we had a cake and orange soda and boy was it ever neat—”
    “Take it easy, young man,” Vera said. “If you don’t slow down you’ll trip over your tongue.”
    They moved across the yard to the back door. “You should of been there,” Billy said. “All the kids, they’re getting ready to go in town tonight for trick or treat. Can you drive me, Dad?”
    “Sorry, son, I’ve got work to do.” Anticipating the next question, David continued quickly. “And don’t ask your mother. I’m going to need her help.”
    Vera glanced at him. “Maybe for just an hour, if we went early—?”
    David shook his head. “I really do need you. I’m stuck in the middle of that damned résumé.”
    The boy’s smile withered, then suddenly blossomed anew. “Okay. But I can have a jack-o’-lantern, can’t I?”
    “A what?”
    “Don’t you know about jack-o’-lanterns? Miss Zelisko made one and brought it to class for the party. It’s a big pumpkin, only you carve a face on it. Then you squish out the insides and put in a candle to light up the face.”
    “Now I remember,” David nodded. “We used to put one in the window on Halloween night when I was a kid.”
    “Can I do it tonight, Dad? If we put it in the front window it would look—”
    “Real neat,” David said. “Trouble is, we don’t have a pumpkin.”
    “Yes we do.” Billy beamed happily. “I saw one yesterday—a great big one, too. It’s across the way in that old garden. We can get it right now—”
    “No.”
    “But it’s just an old pumpkin.” Billy’s voice took on a shrill edge. “Nobody even lives there, so it’s not like stealing. Why can’t I have it?”
    “Because I say so, that’s why.” Ignoring Vera’s look, David took his son’s arm. “It’s getting dark. Time to go inside.”
    Billy gazed up at him in mingled disappointment and defiance. “What’s the matter, Dad—you afraid of ghosts or something?”
    “There are no ghosts,” Vera said.
    But she wasn’t talking to Billy.
    obody was talking to Billy now. He could hear Mom and Dad in the front parlor, arguing about the resumay, whatever that was. Something you showed people when you wanted to get a job, like. Anyhow he hoped it wouldn’t work because then they’d have to move back into town and he liked it here. This place was neat and even school was better than that old dump in the city. The only thing wrong was Dad, the funny way he acted lately. Like yesterday when he caught him sneaking across the road, and tonight, not letting him have the pumpkin.
    No fair, that’s what it was. Other kids were going trick or treating, getting money and candy and good stuff like that. But he couldn’t even have a plain old pumpkin lying right there on the ground across the way. What good did it do to leave it? When the frost came it would only spoil. And it would make a real neat jack-o’-lantern, too, sitting