They Laughed When I Left, So I Came Home the Town's Doctor novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Pumpkins

Hillcrest Elementary held its harvest night in the gym.

There were forty pumpkins on folding tables and a teacher with a whistle.

The rules were on a poster: one child, one grown-up, one pumpkin, and the children judge.

"Mama," said Helmi, "I'm picking Boat Man."

"Okay."

"Onni's picking Rake Man."

"I didn't say that," said Onni.

"You were going to."

Onni thought about it with his head tilted.

"I was," he said.

Paavo had come in with his nephew and a toolbox, which he set on the table with a clank.

Tuomas stood on the far side of the gym, with his stitched hand in a clean bandage and a carving knife he was holding too carefully.

I hadn't told either of them the other would be here.

I hadn't needed to.

"You should sit," said the teacher with the whistle, and pointed me to a bleacher.

I sat.

For forty minutes I watched two grown men lose their composure over a gourd.

Paavo worked the way he talked, loudly and with great enjoyment.

He and Helmi made an ore boat with a smokestack and a face on the bow.

Helmi supervised from a stool and said "More teeth" every thirty seconds.

On the other side, Tuomas and Onni leaned over a pumpkin without speaking.

Onni drew on it with a marker in careful lines, and Tuomas cut where he pointed, and never once hurried him.

By the end, there was a drawbridge, with the span lifted, carved in two inches of orange rind.

The light from the candle came through the bridge deck in small gold rectangles.

It was good.

It was honestly good.

The children went down the line with a clipboard and a sticker sheet.

Helmi inspected the ore boat and nodded.

She inspected the bridge and nodded.

She inspected the third pumpkin, which a man in a quarter-zip had brought from home and set on the table with a card saying Compliments of the Chief of Surgery.

← Chapter 6 · All chapters · Chapter 8 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend