Page 5 of Autumn With The Grumpy Mountain Man

“Is that okay?” she asked.

“It’s fine.”

She smiled at me like I’d said something nice. I hadn’t.

The day after that, I showed her how to mix paste. Flour, water, a little glue, stirred until the lumps were gone. I showed her once. She did it twice before she had it right, and by then she had paste on both elbows and some in her braid.

That afternoon she mixed a fresh batch at the table right under my ladder. I could have told her to move. I didn’t.

“Do you ever turn that on?” She pointed her spoon at the old radio on the shelf.

“No.”

“Does it work?”

“Probably.”

She stirred for a while. “Where do you get all the newspaper? For the strips.”

“Harper saves it for me.”

“So you do talk to Harper.”

“Every Tuesday.”

“She says you’ve said maybe twenty words to her in four years.”

“Sounds about right.”

She laughed. I stapled a strip of lath into place and kept my eyes on it.

“Do you name them?” she asked.

“Name what?”

“The pumpkins.”

“No.”

“I would.”

“Figures.”

The paste had started to go lumpy on her. She frowned down into the bucket and stirred harder.

“Come on,” she told it. “You were doing so well.”

I looked down. She was coaxing a bucket of flour and water out loud, like it might listen if she was nice enough to it. I almost smiled. I turned back to the armature before I could.

She went quiet for a while after that. I thought she was done. Then she said, “Why pumpkins?”

I opened my mouth to give her an answer that would end the conversation.

“Nobody expects a pumpkin to last,” I said instead.

The spoon stopped.

“Everything I build comes down after the festival,” I said. “It sits on that lawn a few weeks, and then it goes on a burn pile. Nobody’s disappointed. That’s what they’re for.”