Free Squashed by Joan Bauer Page B

crowd that had gathered. Mannie was crying bad, the first casualty of the season. Roxye went to call the police, but it wouldn’t do any good.
    “I’m too old to have another one,” Mannie groaned, cradling her rifle, which Phil took gently from her. She was sixty-five, her back was giving out, and we all knew she was right.
    Mrs. Lemming said it was such a shame, such a waste; Roxye said the sheriff was on his way and they’d had one taken earlier this morning at Gloria Shack’s farm—a three-hundred-pounder.
    “Mine weighed two hundred and some,” Mannie sobbed. “My biggest yet.”
    This was a rough break for Mannie. Her parakeet had croaked three months earlier and she was just getting back to enjoying life. We were quiet out of respect for her loss, but fear gripped my heart at the thought that terrorized every giant-pumpkin grower in the area. The pumpkin thieves had begun their murderous ride! They could strike anywhere, anytime, slashing vines, lifting helpless giants from their homes. Out-of-town department stores bought, schools bought, lesser harvest festivals bought, and selfish millionaires on country estates that just wanted the pumpkins for themselves. The going rate was $1.10 a pound. Nobody, it seemed, could stop the thieves. I wondered if they had Cyril’s address.
    But Max! I hugged Mannie hard and ran backhome, leaving Dad with the thing he loved most: a group that needed motivating.
    Max sat safe and untouched in the garden, soaking up the morning sun. We’d been spared for now. I watered him well and checked for kidnappers. Two pumpkins snatched in one morning. This was bad, very bad.
    “Did you see them, Max?” I whispered. “Did you see the bad men?”
    Max couldn’t give a description, but I had my suspicions, and they were all named Dennis. Dennis Hickey. A mean, hulky nineteen-year-old junior who flunked eighth grade three times and was passed on to Rock River High like the Asian flu when his five-o’clock shadow made his thirteen-year-old classmates so nervous they started calling him “sir.” In high school, Dennis could not pass remedial freshman English, but managed to get his driver’s license and a smelly old pickup that was just the right size for squash snatching. Last October Dennis had shown up at school waving a wad of money and cracking jokes about pumpkin pie.
    Richard defended Dennis because they played on the same baseball team, and where baseball was concerned, Dennis was a good sport. He was also a good first baseman who growled at every runner he tagged, scaring some to their knees because he had three front teeth missing. I pointed out to Richard that Dennis also kicked bunnies and threw rocks at squirrels. He ate a caterpillar once on a bet, and spray-painted First Presbyterian Church’s Christmas manger iridescent purple when the minister told him he was “not the right type” to play Joseph in the holiday pageant.
    “He has a great arm,” Richard said.
    “Is that all that’s important to you?” I shrieked. “He could be the pumpkin vandal, a serial killer! He’sdisgusting and grotesque. He burps and hates animals. He—”
    “Bats .340,” Richard said.
    “How could someone so rotten at life in general be so good on a baseball field?” I hollered. Richard, the son of a praying Catholic woman, said, “It’s a mystery,” which for Catholics neatly covered life’s unexplained mess. I was Presbyterian and hadn’t been given as many answers. Richard said Dennis could not be the pumpkin vandal because Dennis wasn’t smart enough.
    “We’ll see,” I said.
    “There’s no way, Ellie.”
    “You don’t have to be a genius to steal pumpkins.”
    “But,” Richard said, “you have to have a plan. You have to
think
about it. You have to be motivated.”
    “I get your point.”
    Nobody gave pumpkin growers an inch. You could slave all season like poor Mannie Plummer and have your prize vegetable end up in some window next to a mannequin decked