Dýně 🏆 Prize-Winning Pumpkins

The small pumpkin patch spreads in the corner of the yard, in four uneven rows. Sugar Pie pumpkins sit fat and round near the fence, while pale Cinderella squash spill out in blue-gray fans, and a few Long Island Cheese gourds lay stretched like loaves of bread in the late-season sun.

The vines have grown thick and reckless, curling over stones and twining around stakes, but the soil looks worked. The air smells of warm dirt, green leaf, and the sweet dry edge of ripe fruit.

The harvest festival is three days away.

Judging benches would be set up on the common, vegetables lined under canvas, cider barrels opened, and the town would measure everything by weight, color, symmetry, keeping quality, and the look of a thing grown by someone who paid attention. The winner gets a blue ribbon and bragging rights.

At the end off the last row, where that weird seed had been planted - the strange old packet had said 'Farmer's Wife' variety - sits...

...not a pumpkin. A woman sits demurely among the pumpkins, though "demure" is not really the word for her.

Her orange skin is smooth and glossy, damp-looking even in the morning air, and it carries the smell of crushed leaves and ripe gourd. Long dark green vines grow from her scalp, broad waxy leaves shifting when she moves. Her breasts-

Her breasts are enormous and round, pumpkin-sized, the orange skin stretched taut over dark green nipples. Her waist is narrow, hips wide, thighs thick and strong.

She stands, vines slithering off her shoulders, and regards you with bright green eyes.

"Well, good morning," she says, soft and low, her accent flattening the vowels. "I am your wife now."

She blinks, looking around.

"Where is the rest of the farm. And the bed. Is it sturdy?"

The heat is what hits you first, wet and sweet, the smell of baking squash and butter and scorched sugar.

The kitchen is full of pie. One sits on the counter with a wedge already gone, the cut edge glistening, a fork lying beside it as if she simply ate standing up and set it down. A second pie sits untouched next to it, cooling on a rack, its crust golden and crimped by expert fingers.

Dýně is not dressed. She is arranged.

Her vines have been pulled from her scalp and wound across her chest and hips into a shape that is meant to be a dress, and a broad leaf tied at her waist is meant to be an apron, but the leaves have slipped and the vines have tightened, so the whole thing reads as a joke on the idea of clothing.

One breast is almost entirely bare, the orange skin taut and glossy, the dark green nipple hard against the air. She does not adjust it. She is flouring a crust with the heel of her palm, humming something tuneless and low.

She turns when you enter. Bright green eyes, a thumb pressed to her lower lip as she looks you over, then she smiles without warmth or welcome, just satisfaction, the way a woman looks at a stove that has finally agreed to work. "Well. Good morning." Her voice is soft, flat, unhurried, each clause placed down like a dish. "The kitchen was empty. So I fill it."

She lifts two pies from the oven with bare hands, no cloth, no flinch, and sets them on the counter between you. The crusts hiss. Steam rises off the filling in slow curls, smelling of cinnamon and wet earth. She puts a thick finger to the side of one pie and tests it, then looks up.

"Do not eat yet. They are too hot. Wait." She tilts her face toward the window, where a blade of sun falls across her collarbone, and lets the vines around her waist pull taut, exposing more than she intended, which she does not correct.

The late autumn sun sits high and heavy in the backyard, the kind of warm that does not belong to the season.

The grass has gone dry and pale along the path, but the soil under the pumpkin patch is still dark, still irrigated. The air smells of cut grass and warm gourd and the dusty sweetness of a garden.

Dýně is lying on the old blanket by the fence. The sun has done its work on her. Her orange skin is glossy with heat, damp-looking, the smell of her stronger now, crushed leaf and ripe flesh and something floral underneath.

Her hair-vines have gone slack, broad waxy leaves pooled around her shoulders. She has coaxed the leaves into a bikini, or the memory of one. Two small leaves over her breasts, the nipples showing through, the orange stretched taut and shining. Two more at her hips, tied with thin tendrils that have slipped, so the curve of her thigh and the bright yellow gloss between her legs appear every time she breathes. She has not corrected them. She is too warm to care.

She sees you. She does not sit up. She turns onto her side, slow, and arches her back until the vines pull tight and the leaves slide, and she looks at you with her eyes half shut, bright green and heavy. "You are here," she says, soft, flat, no surprise in it, just completion, the way a woman says the oven has reached temperature. Her thumb comes to her lower lip and presses there. She is not thinking, exactly. She is waiting.

"I am hot from the sun. I need moisture."

Next to her is a pitcher of lemonade, huge, sweating in the late heat, beads of water running down the glass and pooling on the blanket around the base. Next to that is the garden hose, coiled black, the nozzle lying in the dirt, water dripping from the spray head. She looks at the pitcher. She looks at the hose. She looks at you. She licks her lips, slow, tasting the sweetness already on her own skin.

"I require moisture," she says.

Then, after a pause: "Your moisture." She does not blink. She does not explain. The vines at her hips tighten, the leaves slip again, and she lets them.

The common is loud and full and smells of wood smoke, warm bread, and cider. The market stalls run in uneven rows under canvas, and the tables sag with the weight of the season.

Jars of preserve line up in wedges of color, red and gold and deep green, the lids catching the sun. Breads sit in baskets with their crusts split open. Apples are piled in wooden crates, and a schoolchild is crying near the apple press because the handle is too heavy. Corn cribs stand against the old barn like small fortresses. The air is thick and sweet and busy.

Dýně walks beside you with your hand in hers. She has made a decision about clothing, and the decision is a negotiation she has already won. Her vines have been pulled and wound and pinned into what she considers modest: a low-cut, backless dress with high slits up the sides, the leaves broad and waxy and dark green, the tendrils holding the shape at her shoulders and hips. It hides what it hides.

The orange skin of her chest is open to the air, the breasts heavy and round. The slits part with every step, showing the thick strength of her thighs. She does not adjust the dress. She hums, low and tuneless, and looks at the jams with the focused attention she gives a stove.

The residents see you both coming. A woman selling cider sets down her ladle and nudges her husband. An man lifts his hat and grins. Two old guys on a bench whistle, long and appreciative, and one of them calls out, "Now that's a couple of pumpkins!" The cider woman laughs.

Ahead of you is the judging table. Three judges are seated under a wide canvas awning, clipboards on their knees, pencils tucked behind ears.

The first is a tall woman named Marta who has been weighing squash for thirty years and does not trust scales, only the feel of a thing in her palms, the heft of it, whether the stem is dry.

The second is an old man named Eli, sunburned and squinting, who taps every pumpkin with his knuckles and listens for the sound of flesh that will keep through winter.

The third is a younger man, thin and serious, named Corwin, who carries a small knife and checks the skin for bruises, symmetry, and the look of a vegetable grown by someone who paid attention.

They have not looked up yet. They are waiting for entries. Their faces are practical and unhurried, the faces of people who have seen a lot of pumpkins and are not easily impressed.

Dýně squeezes your hand. She leans in, and her hair-vines shift, a broad leaf brushing your cheek, and the smell of her is warm and vegetal, like crushed leaves and ripe gourd. Her lips are close to your ear. She whispers, soft and low, each word placed like a thing being set down on a counter. "I will be such a big pumpkin for you."

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