If you haven’t been tagged, please feel free to keep it going! I love pumpkin carving.
So…. Ari is not good at this…
I think they’d have wanted to do something more elaborate, stopped to think about the plan and their carving skills, pouted at the disparity, and then went for something a lot simpler
Arson would have the idea come to him almost immediately. He doesn’t want to scare anyone, but instead wants to show how beautiful life can me. He picked up his carving tools and gets to work, carving little twists and turns, the delicate petals…
Drexxel on the other hand…. he loves making people laugh. He spends a lot of time watching everyone else carve theirs, waiting to see what they come up with. Everyone is going to elegant or scary. Then it hits him. The perfect idea to elicit as much laughter as possible. It only takes him a matter of a minute or two.
Putting aside for a second that Aurora isn’t the best at visual art - she would love a star design with constellations and what not. It would project them on the walls of the Shop and she would love that.
Also as a shameless self-promotion - I recently painted my own pumpkin and I think it would look great outside the shop. Maybe it was a group effort from Aurora and Asra!
I hate volunteering, but I’m such a sucker for it. I operate a good portion of my life out of guilt, so when my daughter’s school asked me to help with their Fall Festival Fundraiser, I caved and said okay.
My first idea was making balloon animals. I got a how-to book from the library and tried to make cheerful puppies, rhinos, and giraffes, but I ended up with latex arrangements that looked like something between livestock genitalia and objects suitable for organ transplant.
Then I thought I’d work up an act with a trained monkey, but the simian I’d borrowed from a friend took off down the street with a fistful of my obscene balloons and ended up frightening some old people in a barbershop. Animal Control now has me on their super secret pet-owners-to-watch list.
Finally, I decided to do a psychic act. That was all it was supposed to be, an act to raise money for the school. I didn’t think anyone would be fooled by it. I assumed most of my customers would be children, and I planned to tell each one that I saw a new pony in his or her future, and that their parents secretly planned to buy him or her a four wheeler and to expect it parked next to the tree on Christmas morning. For the adults I’d planned to tell folks they would soon meet someone special, travel to an exotic place, and maybe their in-laws would die soon.
I covered myself in purple and black scarves which made me look like Stevie Nicks on a thin day. I couldn’t find a crystal ball, so I had to settle for a holiday snow globe with smiling reindeer inside. I set up my snow globe on a rickety card table inside a camping tent, and I waited.
My first customer was a large woman in a jogging suit who demanded that I contact her cousin Kitty and ask her where she hid their grandmother’s recipe for hazelnut lemon logs.
I stammered with uncertainty for a moment. “My powers don’t extend that far,” I said. The woman had a look on her face that told me she was expecting the real deal for the three dollars she was paying. “Just tell her it’s for her cousin, Millie,” she said, leaning into my card table.
“Actually, I just tell fortunes,” I said. “And I have a strong feeling you have doughnuts in yours.” I don’t know why I said that. It was just one of those impromptu things that come into my mind sometimes when I’m trying to break the tension of a situation with levity.
Millie put a hand on my snow globe. “You have to tell her I need that recipe. It’s the only copy left, and I can’t remember where it got put. If she could just tell me how much nutmeg and lemon juice to put in.”
Now, anybody coming to this fall festival could see that my claim to the psychic realm was dubious at best. How I got the only nut job in town for my first customer just proves my personal theory that I am a magnet for people who need therapy.
“I need that recipe,” she said. “I’m hosting the Garden Club meeting next week and I need those logs.” She was pushing the table into my stomach and she was beginning to sweat on my snow globe.
“Why don’t you bake some oatmeal chocolate chips instead?” I suggested. “Everyone likes those.” She looked at me as if I’d suggested she served up some mashed potatoes mixed with dog hair.
“Kitty always made them for the fall Garden Club meeting, and if I don’t make them it’ll be our first fall meeting without those hazel-nut lemon bars.” Millie looked as if she were going to cry, and I was starting to panic. I pulled off my head scarf and folded my hands in a serious steeple. “I’m sorry. This is just a fundraiser. I don’t really have the power to speak to the dead.”
“Dead?” Millie snapped. “Kitty isn’t dead. She’s in a coma.”
“How long has she been in a coma?” I ask, because no other response that comes to mind seems right.
Millie relaxed her hands a little. “It happened July fifteenth at our family reunion. She was riding in one of those little paddle boats at Callaway Gardens out on the lake and somehow she fell out and hit her head. I kept yelling at her to stop trying to stand up and wave at everybody like that but she wouldn’t listen. Now she’s laying up at Grace Rehab just like a fish on a dinner plate.”
Somehow the picture of Kitty at the rehab center lying there with her comatose hazelnut secret was too much to bear. I grasped my snow globe, closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. The sun light outside my tent dimmed just at that moment, and I could hear Millie sucking her in breath. I wanted to peek one eye open, just to see if she was buying it. I didn’t.
“Kitty is far, far away. She’s waiting to cross into the light, but she can’t go yet.”
“She’s still alive,” whispered Millie.
I opened my eyes, then shut them once more. “Yes, yes, and she says…she says a half a teaspoon and an eighth of a cup…respectively.” “An eighth of a cup,” Millie snapped. “I should have known.” She muttered to herself as she fished $3 from her purse, shoved the bills at me, and made her way out. Watching her from my tent entrance I saw her get into a long yellow Caprice and say something to a man sitting behind the wheel. I could almost make out her words as her lips moved, “An eighth of a cup.” The man nodded as if he’d known all along, but he kept his mouth shut as he backed out of the parking space and they were gone. At first I felt a little guilty for taking her three dollars under what felt like false pretenses. But I guess sometimes we need to hear what we already know to make it feel more real.
Just then a little kid came running at me waving three dollars up in the air. His father, a tall good-looking man with black hair trailed behind. I made my mind up then and there that this kid had twin puppies and a trip to Dollywood in his future.
When I lived in America I was a regular on Spindale public radio in North Carolina. These essays are from my collection that aired on WNCW.
Cathy Adams was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her first novel, This Is What It Smells Like, was published by New Libri Press, Washington. Her short stories have been published in Utne, A River and Sound Review, Upstreet, Portland Review, Steel Toe Review, and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, among others. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writing Workshop and now lives and writes in Xinzheng, China, with her husband, photographer, JJ Jackson.
