The Three Little Pumpkins

By Brian Clary

Three pumpkins with physical challenges spend October in a popular pumpkin patch and each compete with the others to be purchased by a family and taken to a home. When Halloween comes and goes they find themselves abandoned and alone until a scarecrow offers to take him to a place that will accept them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781663213730

Brian Clary

Brian Clary earned a BS in political science from Sam Houston State University and a JD from South Texas College of Law. He is a board certified trial lawyer who has been continuously engaged in the practice of law since 1987. Brian is a native Houstonian who is married with two sons. Home Cookin’ is his third book.

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Copyright © 2021 Brian Clary.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-1372-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-1373-0 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 03/12/2021

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1 Slim Pickings

Chapter 2 A Second Chance

Chapter 3 The Road to Paradise

Chapter 4 A New Begining

Chapter 5 A Bad Sign

Chapter 6 Jail Break

Chapter 7 A Reckoning

Postscript

INTRODUCTION

Though Gourdesville is a small rural community it is famous throughout the land for its pumpkin farms and each October pumpkin patches spring up throughout the area. These farms stock a wide selection of perfectly shaped orange pumpkins displayed atop wooden tables for eager customers to purchase and take home. Pumpkins meeting the high Gourdesville standards would be displayed at the front of the tables for all to see. However, those falling short of that excellence, such as the three pumpkins featured in this tale, were placed at the rear of the table and were known in the industry as Flunck’n Pumpkins. In addition to pumpkins most local farmers offered accessories for sale including homemade Halloween masks, wooden scarecrows holding lanterns, and decorative burlap bags to be used as trick-or-treating sacks.

One such farm was located at the crossroads of two highways and though it was the furthest from the town’s center it was the most popular of the area’s pumpkin patches. It was owned by a farmer and his wife and while he worked the land she tended their pumpkin patch. From the beginning of October she set up shop each day under a large evergreen tree and sat at a separate table that was decorated with golden bales of hay, a small metal wagon, and decorative scarecrows. Now, the bales of hay were turning brown and the rolling wheels on the wagon were rusting. Their lone remaining scarecrow had a sewn on button for its right eye, but only broken strings for the left where a button was once attached. From morning until dusk the woman greeted the customers and collected the payments for the pumpkins and accessories sold. On this day, however she focused on packing up and closing down the patch, and selling their last three pumpkins.

The only things these remaining pumpkins shared in common was how small they were, and the fact that they each had thin frail wiry arms. They also had peculiar body shapes and they had given each other nicknames according to those individual physical characteristics. One was called Roland due to his near perfectly round shape and his tendency to roll off of the table, and another