Page 34 of Autumn With The Grumpy Mountain Man

Shepherd

“Took you long enough.”

Walt Pruett stopped beside me on the courthouse lawn with his hands in his jacket pockets. He looked at the tall shape under the tarp. Then he looked at me.

I didn’t ask him what he meant. I had a feeling he’d tell me it was obvious.

He nodded once and walked off toward the cider table.

It was almost dusk. The string lights along the courthouse lawn had just come on, and the bluegrass band was tuning up on the steps. Half of Ridgewood Falls was already on Main Street, and the other half was on its way, kids in costumes, couples with paper cups of cider, somebody’s dog in a pumpkin sweater.

The big pumpkin stood in the middle of the lawn where it belonged. Beside it, under the tarp, stood the second one.

I’d finished it at four in the morning.

Somewhere around two, I’d been on my knees on the barn floor wiring the last row of lights, and I’d stopped. I’d looked at what I was building, and at the dark stairs going up to her door, and I’d finally seen what I was doing.

I was doing the same thing I’d done for six years. I’d decided she was going to leave, so I was pushing her out the door first, before she could do it to me. I’d been calling it noble. It was just the oldest kind of scared.

So I’d finished wiring the lights.

I hadn’t slept. I’d loaded it into the truck at dawn and set it up on the lawn that afternoon under its tarp while she helped at Harper’s booth across the street, and she hadn’t looked my way once all day. I didn’t blame her.

The sun dropped behind the ridge. The sky went from gold to blue.

I walked across Main Street to Harper’s booth.

Hazel was behind the table wrapping cinnamon rolls in wax paper. She had her braid over one shoulder and a knit hat pulled low, and her eyes were red around the edges like she hadn’t slept either. She saw me coming. Her hands went still on the paper.

“Can I show you something?” I asked.

She looked at me for a long moment. She didn’t move.

“Please.” I held out my hand.

Harper took the roll out of Hazel’s hands. “Go,” she said quietly. “I’ve got the booth.”

Hazel came around the table. She didn’t take my hand. We walked back across the street and through the crowd without saying anything, and I could feel her beside me the whole way, careful to keep a foot of space between us.

I stopped in front of the tarp. People were starting to gather. They’d noticed the second shape all afternoon, and word had gotten around.

“Shepherd,” Hazel said, low. “What is this?”

I took hold of the corner of the tarp and pulled. The canvas slid off and fell into the grass.

It was a pumpkin, nearly as tall as the big one. In the blue dusk it was only a dark shape, its surface covered in hundreds and hundreds of small holes. Some were round. Some were shaped like leaves. A murmur went through the crowd. Somebody said, “Is it finished?”

Hazel had gone completely still.

I knew the moment she recognized it. Her hand came up to her mouth.

“That’s my sketch,” she whispered.

“It is.”

“You looked at it and handed it back. You didn’t say a word. I thought⁠—”

“I know what you thought.” I swallowed. “I started building it that night.”