October

One October afternoon, Mom drove me and my sister to a field of pumpkins to choose pumpkins to carve. A man came up to Mom and said, "These aren't for picking," and my sister and I stopped searching the ground, and the man said, "You see, this is private property." Somewhere, a gunshot went off. Some birds flew up from a nearby tree and Mom held our hands as we crossed the field and got into the car. She drove to the grocery store and we picked white pumpkins on a shelf of straw because they were the only ones left. The seeds inside were large and when we baked them, they tasted like nothing. She was emptying , slowly, always crossing, it seemed, into private property.

Today, my sister stopped by while I was at the gas station. There were small, white pumpkins on top of the TV and on the radiator cover by the back door. There were pumpkins on the kitchen table, and two, one on each side of a vanilla scented candle with an image of a snowman in a blizzard on the glass that held it, and there was a pumpkin on my dresser with a note--

Hey Curt,

Stopped by. Hope you're well.
Dad kept talking about soup.
You remember when mom
took us to that pumpkin patch?
Call me sometime.

Love,
Sis