The Harvest's Bounty

 

As the landlord, Mr. Jonathan T. Rapacious had arrived in the community to collect the rent, Mrs. Rand the unofficial representative approached him with arms folded.

“Well my good lady, do you have the rent money?” asked Mr. Rapacious.

“You know that all we have is our crop,” exclaimed the angry Mrs. Rand.

“Well then as stated in your contract, load seventy percent of your crop into my wagon.”

“But the children will starve in the long winter ahead, there will not be enough food left,” the woman screamed!

“Well then you should have planted more! Now get on with it,” said Rapacious.

The gourds were carefully loaded into the wagon while Jonathan T. Rapacious made sure only the best pumpkins were selected for his massive old wagon. As the impertinent, impenetrable, contemptible, greedy Jonathan T. Rapacious pushed his work horses up the precipitous, rocky road, that he had refused to repair these many years due to cost, the horses strained and occasionally stopped from exhaustion, overworked by the huge overloaded wagon. Mr. Rapacious became increasingly frustrated by the delay and pulled out his whip to motivate the animals. The beasts heard the first crack of the whip; wild and wide eyed with panic they furiously tried to increase their momentum, gaining speed again slowly as their nostrils flared gulping in oxygen. Pushing faster and faster the horses struggled as the driver smiled at their discomfort and pain. Out of step and struggling to avoid the whip, each horse struggled and stumbled tripping each other. The rocks of the gravely road were frantically torn up and shot in all directions. On they pushed as fast as they could, twisting and turning, unresponsive to the directions and nudges of the reins. Up the gradient, the left rear wheel hit a small boulder with considerable force shattering the spokes, the wheel collapsing while shifting under the heavy weight and the wagon tumbled over throwing Mr. Jonathan T. Rapacious to the ground unconscious. The horses trailing the front of the wagon, rode over the hill and back to their barn as the weathered old grey cart fell apart collapsing into pieces.

Enormous spherical, orange pumpkins bright in the sun slid and slithered onto the thick green grass covering the hill, cushioned by its volume they made their way down the hill. Rotund overweight bloated, swollen bowling balls with their sweet pumpkin smell bowled over white and yellow wild flowers as if pins in a lane on their reckless journey home.

It was a sight to behold from the village with the disappearing horses, the rolling pumpkins and collapsing grey weathered wagon and the sprawling unconscious driver.

Huge round orange bowling balls rolled into front yards and backyards in the joyous unlikely homecoming. Bouncing and bounding, twisting and turning, spinning, swirling and sliding as they entered kitchen doors and flew through kitchen windows piling up in mud rooms, pantries and porches, with hardly any damage to themselves or their smiling faces, like a child coming home from school.

The landlord was collected and revived while the doctor was called. Mr. Rapacious had a lump on his forehead and a curious smile on his face which had never been seen before by any of the villagers not even in in five blue moons!

Many pumpkin recipes were resurrected from many tin recipe boxes as Pumpkin cakes breads, pies, cookies and soups were produced from any damaged gourds. From that day forward the landlord was appreciative that the villagers had summoned the doctor instead of leaving him to die considering how nasty, mean  and covetous he had been to them. He was welcomed by the community and received a bounty of baked goods for his larder. His somewhat silly and at times inappropriate smile never disappeared thereafter causing some consternation at village funerals. Whatever had been tweaked or jarred by the blow to the head had turned out for the best; the whole town as well as Mr. Jonathan T. Rapacious benefited from the incident. The children did not starve that Winter and in time Mr. Jonathan T. Rapacious become known as Smiling Grandpa Jonathan.

 

Jim

Oct. 2020