Eyes on the Prize Read online

  “He’s fortunate to begin a career at such a young age,” Alice said.

  Jane was a little disappointed. Cynthia was such an attractive young woman; Jane didn’t understand what was wrong with young men these days. Her niece’s boyfriends became her best friends, more like brothers. But Cynthia seemed content.

  “Enough about me. What about you? What’s been happening around here?”

  “Your mother’s been busy,” Alice said. “She’s also been very secretive.

  Cynthia looked at her mother. “Are you working on a new concerto?”

  “We’d know if that were the case,” Jane said. “We could hear her playing.”

  “True. So what is it that you’re being secretive about?” she asked, giving her mother an inquisitive look.

  “It’s quite a phenomenon,” Alice said. “Strangest thing I’ve ever seen your mother do. She’ll have to show you.”

  “It’s outside,” Louise said.

  “Now I am curious. May I see it now?”

  “If you’d like.” Louise rose ceremoniously and carried her dishes to the sink.

  “The dishes can wait. I’m coming too,” Jane said. “It’s not a secret anymore,” she told Cynthia. “It’s not the kind of thing you can hide for long. But your mother managed to keep it a secret for almost two months.”

  The four of them trouped out the back door, and Louise led them across the lawn to the fenced-in vegetable garden. Even from the gate, Jane could see the huge, rounded leaves of the vine that dominated the far side of the garden. In the center of it, a large sheet was spread out, shading the vine. Normally, Louise and Alice spent very little time in the garden, other than to help pick the bountiful fruits of Jane’s labors. It seemed Jane had inherited their mother’s green thumb and her love of gardening. Neither Alice nor Louise had that interest, so they left the gardening to Jane, which suited her fine. She loved working outside, and the rewards brought her great joy.

  The rest of the garden was a riot of color, with marigolds in dazzling red, orange and yellow; there were also nasturtiums in various pastel shades, surrounding full-headed broccoli, cauliflower, beet greens, carrot tops and cabbage as large as soccer balls. Jane watched Alice snap a bright red sweet pickle pepper off a loaded bush and rub it on her shirtsleeve. The pepper was clean. Jane didn’t use chemical pesticides around her vegetables. Alice popped the pepper in her mouth. Jane wasn’t surprised when her sister picked several more of the miniature specialty peppers that Jane grew. The crisp sweetness demanded another taste. She said a silent prayer, thanking the Lord for their bounty. She often talked to her plants and to the Lord while she worked. The verse about the plants and rocks praising the Lord was one of her favorites. Reciting it was like having a three-way conversation among her, the plants and God. And she believed the Lord heard, because she and her sisters had been feasting on the beans, carrots, assorted salad greens, radishes, cucumbers and tomatoes most of the summer.

  They made their way through the rows of vegetables when suddenly, Louise stopped, held out her arms, hands extended, palms up, encompassing the back of the garden.

  “Ta-dum!”

  Cynthia looked dumbfounded. Jane could imagine what was going through her mind. Long, thick twisted vines with huge, wilting, splotchy leaves ran all over across the back half of the garden like some kind of dying serpent. Jane laughed.

  “You’re reacting the same way we did, back when we first discovered your mother had invaded the garden with some sort of creatures that were attempting to take over the town,” Alice said. “As you can see, they’ve nearly succeeded.”

  “It’s time to get out the weed whacker—or a cannon—and drive this thing back again,” Jane said, pointing to the pole beans. “Your monster has wrapped its tentacles around my beans.” She’d already harvested the summer bean crop, but the vines remained.

  Cynthia looked where Jane was pointing. “Unbelievable. It looks like a giant stalk climbing the beanpole. Are you going to climb it and look for a treasure of gold?”

  Louise gave her daughter a look somewhere between insult and injury. “Don’t talk that way in front of the plants. You’re supposed to talk nicely to them, aren’t you, Jane? You always talk to your plants and so did Mother.”

  “You’re serious?” The incredulous look on Cynthia’s face made Jane laugh out loud. “This looks like something out of a Grimm’s fairy tale, Mother. It could be an illustration in one of my books. Only I thought it was supposed to be a beanstalk. Not a …” Cynthia looked back at the monster plant and the sheet that covered three big bumps in the middle of the vines. One of the bumps was peeking out from under a corner. It was large and yellow. “What are they? Squash? And how did they get so big?”

  “They’re pumpkins. They’ve just started turning color. And they’ll grow much larger. These are Atlantic Giant Pumpkins. Let me show you.” Louise carefully pulled back the sheeting over one of them that protected them from pests and harsh weather.

  “Me-ooow.” The inn’s black-and-gray striped tabby stole out from under the material, stretched and rolled over onto his back.

  “Wendell, this is not here for your benefit,” Louise said, lifting the cat and setting him on the pathway.

  Wendell gave a little flip of the black tip of his tail and sauntered off.

  Several large rounded leaves shaded the pumpkin. The gigantic yellow vegetable was the shape of a somewhat flattened and rather irregular beach ball.

  “Wow! It’s bigger than I thought. That’s a pumpkin?” Cynthia exclaimed. “It must weigh a ton.”

  “Craig Tracy measured it not long ago. He estimated then that it weighed over seven hundred pounds. The others are smaller.” She looked at her plants and beamed. “Aren’t they amazing?”

  “Amazing is certainly a fitting word,” Cynthia agreed. “What are you going to do with them? Have a pie festival? That’s enough pumpkin to make pies for the entire town. I’ll definitely expect pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, Aunt Jane.”

  “Pie, cake, bread, cookies, soup, soufflé—I’ll be searching my cookbooks and the Internet for new creative ways to cook pumpkin,” Jane said. “At least there are only three pumpkins. We harvested a few smaller ones, and there were a lot of flowers. Your mother let me make fried squash blossoms out of them.”

  “They were good,” Alice said. “I’d never had them before.”

  “So my pumpkins are good for something,” Louise said, arching her eyebrows at her siblings. “You have to acknowledge, in front of my daughter, that I grew these by myself and that they’ve thrived under my care.”

  “Thrived is hardly the word I’d use. They’re taking over the garden. We’re out here every day, cutting back these vines,” Jane explained to Cynthia. “If they weren’t finally starting to die off, they might have taken over Acorn Hill,” she teased.

  Louise put her hands on her hips. “And you’re the master of exaggeration, Jane Howard. You both said I couldn’t grow anything. I’ve proved you wrong.”

  Cynthia began to laugh. “Remember when I was little and we grew an avocado from a seed? We had this tall, spindly stick coming out of the seed with two leaves on it. It lived a long time, but it never grew beyond those leaves.”

  “What about the sweet potato vine that grew up the sides of the kitchen window?” Alice said. “That was one of your science projects. It was very healthy, as I recall.”

  “Father called it the sweet potato monster. I was so sad when it died.” Cynthia affected a downcast pout, her chin trembling as if she were about to cry.

  “All right. Make fun of my gardening and my pumpkins if you must, but mark my words: I’m going to grow the largest pumpkin Acorn Hill has ever seen.”

  “You mean you’re going to keep on nurturing it? When will it be ripe? I may have to make a special trip to see that.” Cynthia linked her arm through her mother’s arm. “You are extraordinary, Mother. In every way.”

  Louise patted her daughter’s arm. “Thank you, sweet
heart. It’s nice to be appreciated,” she said, giving her sisters a condescending look that only brought giggles from Jane and a chuckle from Alice. Louise sighed. “You see what I have to put up with?”

  “How about if we help you trim back this monster?” Jane offered. “Will that make up for our teasing?”

  “It might save the rest of the garden,” Alice said.

  “True. I do have an ulterior motive,” Jane admitted. “Anyone want a pair of shears?”

  Cynthia pushed up her sleeves. “I’ll help.”

  “I’ll get them,” Alice offered, heading for the shed. She returned a moment later with three pairs of shears, four pairs of gardening gloves and two baskets. “I figure we should pick some vegetables while we’re out here.”

  “The competition’s been good for Jane’s vegetables,” Louise said. “They’re not as large, but they’re certainly plentiful.”

  “There’s nothing like fresh garden produce,” Cynthia said, slipping on a glove.

  “We’ll send some home with you,” Jane said.

  “Good. I was hoping you’d take the hint. I hate begging.” Cynthia grabbed a long runner from the pumpkin vine and snipped it off. Lifting it gingerly, she followed it to a head of cabbage and carefully untangled it.

  “I’ll have to admit, I never really expected this much success,” Louise said. “Next year, I’ll need half of the garden, instead of just a corner.”

  “Half? Not likely. Those vines are running over half the garden now,” Jane said, straightening up with a large stalk of broccoli in her hand. She wiggled it at Louise, then set it in a basket. “You’d get mighty sick of pumpkin, and our guests might never come back.”

  “Hmm. That could be a problem.” She gave Jane a thoughtful frown, but the twinkle in her eyes gave away her mirth. The garden would be safe.

  Chapter Three

  Yoo-hoo,” a cheery voice called out. The garden gate squeaked and groaned as it opened. Alice glanced up. She knew it was her Aunt Ethel, who lived in the carriage house behind them. There was no mistaking that greeting, but she had been expecting her friend Vera. During the school year, when Vera Humbert taught and the days were shorter, Saturday was their only regular walking date and was a highlight of Alice’s week. Alice snipped a thick runner off the vine and tossed it into the pile growing next to Jane. Cynthia straightened up and removed her gardening gloves.

  “I thought that looked like Cynthia’s car.” Ethel stepped gingerly along the hard-packed path between the rows of vegetables, taking care not to soil her pink paisley shoes. With her matching blouse and shiny, carefully coiffed Titian-red hair, she could have been a flower in Jane’s garden. “Darling, it’s so good to see you,” she said, throwing her arms open dramatically. “Are you staying long? No one tells me anything around here,” she complained, sending her nieces a chiding look as she hugged her grandniece and kissed her cheek.

  “Hello, Aunt Ethel.” Cynthia gave her a squeeze. “It’s good to see you too. You look beautiful this morning. I came on the spur of the moment. I have an appointment with a new author in Philadelphia on Monday, so I took a long weekend to visit Mother. And all of you, of course,” she added.

  Ethel seemed mollified by the explanation. She made a point of knowing everything that happened in Acorn Hill, so not knowing about a visit from Cynthia could be an affront to her pride. She did look especially fine this morning. She always took special care with her appearance, but it was unusually early for her to be dressed to go out.

  Ethel took a step forward and peered at the gigantic pumpkin leaves. The large yellow orb stuck out like a golden boulder through the leaves. “Those plants of yours have grown huge, Louise. I just saw them two days ago. I believe they’re twice the size today. Whatever are you feeding them? With all those curly tentacles and runners, they remind me of a science-fiction movie. The Invasion of the Whatevers.”

  “They have rather taken over, haven’t they?” Louise gave her aunt a satisfied look. “Craig said I should shade the pumpkins, so they don’t crack in the sun. They were growing twenty-five to thirty-five pounds a day, but they should be slowing down soon.”

  Astonished, Cynthia gaped at her mother. “How can they grow that fast? What are you feeding them?”

  Louise raised one eyebrow but did not reply.

  “You must have gotten a prescription for growth medicine,” Alice said. Although she doubted that was the case, the pumpkin patch did look like a lab experiment in growth research. “I’ll never forget the day I came home from work and found your mother kneeling in the garden.”

  “Mother never spent much time in the garden,” Cynthia acknowledged, “but why did that surprise you so much?”

  “She was so secretive. When I called out to her, she nearly fell over. Then she hurried out of the garden and came to meet me. I thought at the time she was hiding something. There was a row of plastic milk jugs with the bottoms cut out covering something in the garden. I didn’t think too much about it. Jane often starts her plants that way. I might have forgotten the whole incident, but your mother specifically asked us at dinner to leave her corner of the garden alone. We asked her why and she wouldn’t give an answer.”

  “Really? Mother?”

  Louise just shrugged.

  Jane shook her head. “She’s found some magic pills or miracle plant food, but she won’t tell us about it,” she said. “Maybe she’ll tell us later. I could use some help improving the size of my vegetables. Just think how much I could can for winter. We could give jars to shut-ins. Our mother used to do that.”

  “We’ll see,” Louise demurred. “These pumpkins might crack or rot before they’re done. And I need to cover them with something better than a sheet.”

  “We could make shade with black plastic trash bags,” Alice suggested.

  “Good idea. We could put the patio umbrella over the big one,” Jane said. “I just put it in storage.” She headed for the shed, where they kept gardening supplies and tools, and stored extra patio chairs out of season.

  Louise stepped carefully over to the one of the plants; she leaned down and uncovered a pumpkin.

  Cynthia and Ethel followed her. They peered down at the large vegetable.

  “It looks puny next to the other one,” Ethel said.

  “You call that puny?” Cynthia said, laughing. “It’s not nearly as large as Attila the Pumpkin over there, but it’s still big.”

  “Attila the Pumpkin? Is that one of your children’s books?”

  They all turned at the sound of a new voice. Vera Humbert walked into the backyard as Jane came back carrying a large umbrella and a handful of black bags.

  “That’s a great idea. I’ll take pictures and we’ll get someone to write a children’s book about the giant pumpkins. Thanks, Vera,” Cynthia said, smiling at her mother’s friend.

  “Help me with this,” Jane said, twisting the umbrella pole into the ground beside the plant.

  “Be careful! Don’t step on the plant or break the roots,” Louise said. She grabbed the upper part of the umbrella. “Will it stay standing?”

  “It will if we get it deep enough. We’ll prop it up with cement blocks.”

  Louise frowned. “I don’t want to do anything that might hurt my plants.”

  “We’ll be careful.”

  “Jane knows what she’s doing in the garden, Mother. Where are the blocks? I’ll go get one.” Cynthia stepped across the plant, being careful to miss the leaves and stems. The leaves stood up off the vine, some reaching a foot or more above the ground, forming a canopy and partially shading the large pumpkins, but the leaves were turning dry and curling with age, and the pumpkins had grown too big for the leaves to cover the fruit.

  “I want to bring Fred by later, if that’s all right. He tried growing a giant pumpkin a few years ago, but he lost the whole patch to some kind of bug,” Vera said. “He’ll want to bring his camera. He likes to put up pictures on the bulletin board at the store, you know.”

&n
bsp; “I’m afraid I didn’t buy my seeds or supplies at the hardware store,” Louise said, giving Vera an apologetic look.

  Vera waved her hand dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. You’ve supported us for years. Besides, this is an Acorn Hill phenomenon. I doubt many people around here have grown a pumpkin nearly that large, Louise.”

  Lloyd Tynan’s SUV pulled into the driveway and stopped. Lloyd stepped out of his car and turned toward the carriage house, then stopped and looked in the direction of the garden. He was dressed in smart gray slacks and a dark blue sport jacket, and his fringe of gray hair had been cut very short, giving him a clean-cut, rather dashing appearance. He strode into the garden.

  “Good morning, ladies.” He smiled at each of them, but saved his special smile for Ethel. They’d become close friends when Ethel moved into the carriage house to be near her brother, Rev. Daniel Howard, after her husband died.

  “Heavens, is it time to go? I’m ready,” Ethel said. “Lloyd is taking me to a political luncheon in Harrisburg, so we must be on our way.”

  Lloyd was Acorn Hill’s mayor and liked to keep up on matters relating to regional government. Ethel loved attending functions with him. “We have a few minutes, Ethel,” he said. “It’s nice to see you, Cynthia. Jane, your garden looks wonderful. Your tomato plants are so loaded with fruit, it looks like they might break under the weight.”

  “I’ve had to prop them up. Would you like some tomatoes and broccoli?”

  “I’d like some tomatoes. I’ll pass on the broccoli, though.”

  “Have you seen Louise’s pumpkins?” Ethel asked. “They’re quite remarkable. Especially since Louise is raising them, not Jane. Show him, Louise.”

  “Is that your pumpkin beneath the umbrella?” Lloyd asked, stepping carefully over rows of carrots and beets.

  “Yes. It’s a giant pumpkin variety. Jane isn’t the only one who can grow something around here,” Louise said, sounding just a bit defensive. “Although,” she added, “she’s the one with the green thumb. I hadn’t realized how much work is required to raise a garden.”