To celebrate Halloween, Hallowe’en, All Hallows Eve, All Hallows Even, Samhain, or whatever else you may choose to call it, I thought I’d end this month with a short story of my own. I had published this short story and made it available on Lulu this time last year and later took it down. I’ve never done anything else with it. Although I don’t write much in the horror and supernatural genre (but love reading it), this story remains close to my heart because of how it was inspired.
Last year, I had the chance to sit with a person who was fortunate enough to receive a kidney transplant. She had been waiting four years. During that time, she had done tons of research and joined support groups. One of the things that she told me about was how others always talk about how the body part or organ they receive changes their mood, changes food they like, or makes them have thoughts and memories they never had before. These strange affects are attributed to the characteristics of their donor, as if a part of them (BOTH physically and spiritually) is carried on. Being a writer, this senT my mind whirling with thoughts. I immediately came home and pounded out the story that follows. For your enjoyment…
HARVESTER
I should’ve learned to play guitar.
That was Jack Harvester’s very last thought before his blue eyes closed upon the world forever. He lay slumped against his steering wheel. His rib cage was shattered on impact. His neck snapped like a frail twig. A single trickle of blood fell from a gash in his hairline and traced a red squiggle down his forehead like a river on a map. His car horn echoed a nonstop eerie tone into the cool October air. It resembled a scream, almost like the scream his wife Margie would cry out when she got the news. Jack was dead.
He had been driving to the pumpkin farm after work to meet up with Margie and Jack Junior. It was a holiday tradition they’d had ever since they got married five years ago. They drove out to the farm the day before Halloween to pick a pumpkin to carve. Ever since Jack was born, they’d taken him along in his costume. Jack Senior looked around at the other kids riding ponies and having potato sack races, anxious for the day his son would be old enough to participate in those activities.
For now, Margie propped the toddler up on a bail of hay next to a jack-o-lantern to snap a photo. “Smile for Daddy,” she chimed to get his attention. Jack Junior was dressed in a bright pumpkin costume that Margie had sewn herself. With a wobbly head, he looked up at Mommy and blinked at the bright flashing light. His attention was quickly drawn to the squeal of nearby kids playing on swings.
Margie checked her watch and perused the perimeter of the parking lot, a bit worried because her husband was late. An ambulance roared by on the highway, rustling her nerves. Her purse was ringing. She reached for her cell phone, expecting it to be Jack letting her know he was on his way. It wasn’t.
The coroner was a fat pudgy graying man unhappy to be drawn away from Jeopardy and his TV dinner. He lived close by though, and the policeman on the phone had expressed urgency because of what he found in Jack’s wallet. Jack had signed the organ donation line on his driver’s license.
Jack had hated the sound of the hollow thud of a knife piercing the melon skin of a pumpkin. He usually left the carving to Margie, but would lovingly scoop out the innards for her so she didn’t ruin her manicure.
“Save the insides,” She always told him.
“What are you going to do with this mess?” He asked her that first year they were together.
“I’ll roast the seeds for us for a snack. The rest can go in the compost heap.” Margie liked to recycle. She believed in finding ways to reuse things.
Grant Ravershoe hated the ripping thud-like sound of spreading apart someone’s chest. He’d been an organ harvester for fourteen years, but that sound still bothered him. A broken rib had pierced Jack’s heart but the kidneys, liver, pancreas and lungs were all intact and usable. Grant also checked the femoral veins and some tendons. Jack was a very healthy man who took great care of himself. What a shame, Grant thought to himself.
“Is there consent to keep going?” Grant asked the doctor who had been asked by Margie to act as witness. Grant had already filled two coolers with the majority of Jack’s internal organs.
“Absolutely, but since the heart is not salvageable, Mrs. Harvester has asked that it stay with him,” the doctor said.
“This guy’s last name is Harvester? How odd is that! What about the valves? Two of his valves are okay.”
“Take them.”
Next, Grant took the upper leg bones which were extremely helpful to people in need of hip replacements. He then procured both of Jack’s corneas.
“Such beautiful blue eyes. Do we have a dermatome in here?”
It was an instrument used for skin grafting. Since Jack’s chest was still open, Grant could not turn him over to remove a large section from the back. Grant decided to extract skin from Jack’s hips and thighs instead, and then close him up.
“More than a dozen,” the doctor told Margie when she asked how many lives Jack had helped by donating.
After Jack’s wake, Margie was carrying Jack Junior into the house when she noticed something sitting on the porch that had not been there before. It was a pumpkin. Jack pointed at it and cooed. Margie concentrated hard on thinking back to the farm just four days ago. Had she bought a pumpkin that day? She couldn’t remember. She checked her wallet for a receipt. There was no trace of a purchase at the farm that day.
“Did you buy that pumpkin on the front porch?” Margie asked her mother, who had agreed to stay a week or two to help her with Jack Junior.
“No. I thought you did.”
The next day Margie was up early. Sleeping was impossible these past few days. While Jack Junior and her Mom still slept, she stepped outside on the front porch to enjoy the early morning autumn breeze. The sun was just peeping over the horizon. The rustling of crisp brown leaves across the ground reminded her of her husband raking the leaves. She looked over at the pumpkin still sitting there and wondered.
Margie picked it up and brought it inside. The cool morning dew made it slippery to the touch. She took it into the kitchen and searched the utensil drawer for a large butcher knife. Thump. She forced the knife into the top of the pumpkin to cut a lid. She pulled up on the stem, revealing a gooey spider web of pumpkin pulp and seeds. She pulled at them and placed the seeds on a paper towel. She rested the pumpkin lid in the sink with the knife while she scooped out the rest of the insides.
It had been years since she’d done this, five to be exact. She imagined herself standing across the room and watching her husband performing this task. It made her smile. She separated the seeds from the pumpkin guts, washed and dried them. She laid the seeds on a baking sheet, sprayed them with cooking spray and sprinkled them with salt. While they were in the oven, she turned her attention back to the hollow pumpkin.
She started by carving out two eyes. She made them circular, almost almond shaped. The nose was a simple U shape. The mouth was a plain wide smile, instead of a jagged open mouth with pointed teeth like Jack would have carved. She felt the need for a much simpler and friendlier pumpkin this year. She was almost done, but then decided to turn the pumpkin around and carve something into the back. She carved the initials JH. Placing a red candle inside to light that night and give the pumpkin life, she carried her jack-o-lantern back out to the porch.
A year passed. Jack Junior had grown so much, too much in fact for him to wear his pumpkin costume again when Halloween came. Margie sewed him a spider costume instead. Margie didn’t want to break tradition just because her husband was gone, so she loaded Jack into his car seat and drove out to the farm. It was as if everything from a year ago had frozen in time, the pumpkins on bails of hay and the sounds of children playing. The siren of an ambulance echoed in her ears from far away.
Margie found a pumpkin she liked and juggled it into a little red wagon used for hauling produce to your car. Suddenly, a man approached her and offered to help. Margie said she could manage, but the man insisted. It was not in a threatening way though, so she let him.
“Don’t I know you?” the man asked.
“I don’t think so. Do you work here?”
“No. I just come here every year on this day to choose a pumpkin.”
“We do the same,” Margie said.
“Maybe I’ve just seen you here before then,” the man said, looking at Margie very puzzled.
“Maybe. We haven’t been since last year,” Margie said. She found it odd that the man was so persistent on knowing her, but still, he didn’t seem intimidating. She didn’t say anything, but even she felt an odd attraction to him as if she did know him. Baby Jack even reached for the man with open arms as if he wanted to be held by him.
“I didn’t get to come last year. I was in the hospital having a liver transplant.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Margie said.
“Don’t be sorry. Look at me now. Some nice donor saved my life, gave me a second chance.”
The nice man took Margie’s pumpkin to the check out stand for her and offered to load it into her car. She let him. She offered to pay him for being so nice, but he refused.
“Are you going to carve that pumpkin?” He asked, standing there next to her car as she loaded Jack Junior into his car seat. With the man out of his sight, Jack Junior began to cry. “I’m good at carving pumpkins. Ever roasted the seeds?”
“Why did you say that?” Margie asked. A tear fell down her cheek.
“I’m sorry, lady, I didn’t mean to upset you. What did I say?”
“Is this a cruel joke?” Margie almost screamed.
“Lady, what’s wrong? I don’t even know you. What did I say?”
Margie ran around the car and got inside. She locked the doors and immediately started the car. She backed up and drove off as fast as she could. The man jumped out of the way and stood there watching her leave. Her car disappeared in a gravel dust cloud and she sped up even faster when she reached the highway. The man just stood there and watched until her car was completely out of sight. A farm worker approached him.
“Is there a problem, sir? Quarrel with the wife?”
“No sir, there’s no problem. I’m not married. I just thought I knew that lady and I guess I spooked her.”
“Great time of year for spooking,” the farmer cackled.
“No, I didn’t mean to frighten her at all. Somehow, I felt like I knew her. I felt like I’d known her a long time, but I couldn’t explain myself. I didn’t know how I knew her at all, I just did.”
“What’s your name, sonny?”
“It’s Jack. Well, my middle name is Jack, but about a year ago I changed it. I just felt like being called Jack now.”
The next day when pumpkins grew faces, Margie carved her pumpkin and sat it outside on the porch like she’d always done. She had tried to forget the strange man at the farm. She didn’t know why she had felt a sense of comfort around him in the very beginning, but she’d felt like that before. At the grocery store or at the playground, there were people she’d never known before who made her feel that way. The guitar player at her church brought about that exact same feeling when she shook his hand one day. She’d even seen her husband’s eyes in a little kid who came up to her in the waiting room at the dentist’s office. It made her smile, but she didn’t know why. She never gave much thought to it again.
Margie’s mother took Jack trick-or-treating that night since he was old enough to walk now. Margie passed out candy at her own door and nibbled on pumpkin seeds, taking pleasure in the cool quiet house but still missing her husband. When the seeds were all gone, she took the bowl of stringy pumpkin pulp out back and dumped it into the compost heap behind her gardening shed. She turned the soft rich mash with a trowel and daydreamed of the lush beautiful roses that would benefit from it come spring.
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