Pieter Kűrbisesser
During
harvest season in the town of Chervale, one can understand the superstitions that
have arisen to explain its agricultural fertility. Fragrant concord grapes weigh on trellises,
engorged gourds swell in the grasses, and McIntosh apples are collected in
bushels. It is a strangely quiet hamlet
and one can almost hear, or at least sense, the fecundity of its soil. Its richness has been known at least since
the Palatines were granted asylum to settle there by the tribal mothers of the Haudenosaunee, who took pity on the
hardships they had faced in Germany and then in the region of the Hudson River. They were permitted to farm and live in that
verdant valley. The soil was known to be
rich when the Palatines arrived, but old stories attribute its potency to a
disaster that came long after that.
Who can say this fertility did not come from
the blood of innocents that was spilled on the soil, that entire community
slaughtered by angry Seneca and Mohawk working with the British? Who can say that this abundant life is not
the result of the death that inspired George Washington to have Sullivan scorch
the earth behind the Iroquois fleeing to Canada, never to return? Death begets life and life begets death. Perhaps that is blood edged on the yellow maple leaves of fall. Perhaps the exceptional darkness of the
beetroot and sumac in this valley is
truly sanguine. The autumnal colors in
the surrounding hills have here a more crimson hue than elsewhere, and at the
right time of sunset, for a brief moment, all is illuminated in a roseate
light. Rational explanations of these
phenomena are absent.
Pieter Van Kahler settled in Chervale with his
wife several years after the massacre. He
and Sophia started a farm and were fairly self-sufficient. The young couple grew mostly corn, potatoes
and rutabaga. They had an old horse and
a young goat for milking. They were
neither prosperous nor poor. He and his
wife worked hard, but lived well. And he
adored her.
They
expected to have children, but after a few years on the farm they did not, and
it wasn’t for lack of trying. Sophia,
though wanting a child, accepted the concept of a childless life
gracefully. Over those few years, she
gradually decided it was God’s plan, becoming somewhat relieved of the
responsibility since work on the farm was exhausting and her poor Pieter would
have had to do even more if she was busy with child. She was too pure a person to think that the
burden of child in addition to farm work would be a strain on herself.
Pieter
himself never belied his disappointment, because his disappointment was not so
much that they didn’t have a child, but that he was worried about his wife’s
happiness. He believed that she must
have felt inadequacy and shame since she was infertile, and he remained
outwardly positive because he didn’t want her to suffer any more than she
had. He was incorrect in this thinking since
they were childless due to his narrow urethra.
So, he stayed the strong and supportive husband and toiled side by side
with her in the fields, and at times took the rifle and the horse for a few
days and returned with venison and turkey.
They had meals of perch and potatoes, rabbit and rutabaga, and watched
the sun set together, marveling quietly in those brief Chervale moments of
roseate illumination that must have been God’s work. Who else’s work could it be?
One
autumn afternoon, Pieter was hunting a few miles from their farm when he spied
a cotton tail a few yards ahead of him on the edge of a field. He raised his rifle quietly and saw the
rabbit down his sights as it raised its head, mouth munching, to look
around. When he shot, the animal somersaulted
from the force of the bullet. As he
picked it up, fresh, warm blood dripped from the hole in the rabbit’s ribcage
and onto Pieter’s boot. He grabbed an
exceptionally large leaf and broke it from its vine to wrap the rabbit before
stuffing it in his game bag. He realized
this leaf had the same tactile, ciliate hairs of a squash plant and he
investigated further. He pushed,
scraping through the immense tangle of vines and discovered a gigantic pumpkin,
one larger than he had ever seen before.
It was sagged to the side like a rotting apple, but firm and fresh, a
yellowish orange with a spattering of wart-like growths across its side. It was the size of a small boulder and too
large for him to carry. He marveled at
its size and shape. Since it was
impossible to transport, he found a sizable rock to break it apart. After much trying, he returned home with a
decent slab and many seeds that he was sure to plant in the spring. That night his wife cooked the gourd’s flesh
with butter and brandy, and the rabbit was delicious.
The
following spring, Pieter planted his pumpkin seeds and watched them
closely. He marked the location of each
cluster of buried seeds with colored sticks in a clearing behind their
barn. Eventually, only one sprout
emerged and he was careful with his cultivation, fertilizing the already rich
soil with the innards of fish and the offal of fowl. To his credit, Pieter was an exceptional
farmer, and he might have been referred to as a horticulturalist if there had
been such a designation in those days.
When the orange flower buds began to yawn widely on their dark green
stems, he was sure to hand pollinate each one.
When infant pumpkins began to swell on the vines, he chose the largest
and healthiest one to save and pruned off the rest. Useless branches of vine were cut away and
soon his lone pumpkin began to grow exponentially through the season. He did not let the growing of this pumpkin
take him away from his regular work on the farm. It was a pet project and he wanted to make it
a gift to his wife, proving his capability as a farmer. By late September it was more than twice the
size of the pumpkin he found while hunting the year before. When it was time to harvest, with the help of
a neighbor and his mules, he hauled it to a strategic point in front of his
house to present to his wife. And she
adored it.
The
night he presented her the pumpkin, she was ecstatic. When she saw it out from the brush and vines
and so immense and prominent in the short grass in front of their home, her
eyes went wide and she laughed with genuine surprise. When she congratulated Pieter with a hug and
a hard kiss to his cheek, she had a youthful blush he hadn’t seen in years. Some of her hair was loose and hung like tendrils
of silvery gold. She even climbed up and
sat on it laughing! That night and
during the following weeks there was so much intensity in passion Pieter was
sure her problem was solved and she would have a child within the year.
The
following winter was a long one. They
didn’t want for food as their stores were sufficient, but they endured a few
blizzards and the snowpack was high.
Another storm at the end of March brought another two feet of snow and
the rains of early April brought flooding to the region. The creek at the back of their main field
dammed with detritus and water inundated the property. Their home was safe, but it took a long time
for the water to recede and a longer time for the land to become farmable again,
causing a late start to their season.
Stress began to show in Pieter’s normally cheerful eyes. The length of the winter, the annoyance of
the flood, the barrenness of his wife: all weighed on him heavily and he
started thinking in that way that people do which is misguided and
unhealthy. He started to think he was
being tested by some greater force and was failing.
Many
believe winter is the toughest season, but really it is spring. Food
stores are lower, yet the land is still barren and lifeless. The trees are gray and empty and even though
the air may be warming slightly, it is as cold as death. That spring was even longer to Pieter than
the previous winter and he spent a lot of time on his own wandering the
countryside. It was still too early to
plant, so he’d wake just before dawn and walk and think. Spring means another year of toil is
coming. Toil and work can be satisfying
in its own right, but he began to ask himself: why? Year after year, the same work, the same
results and what? Another year older,
another year closer to death, another year of bloom and richness so it can just
die and germinate again the next year, until one year he or his wife will simply
be gone forever. He lived the life of
plants, the life of seasons and years and now that he was getting older, he was
beginning to understand its futility. He
realized then that that was why he needed a child. The child is the man regenerated. The child is the reason. He was being tested. He knew suddenly that his purpose was to give
his wife a child, to sow himself from her and he was not going to fail. He was incorrect in this thinking because
life does not have a purpose and he had a narrow urethra.
Eventually,
the temperature became favorable, the cold rains slowed and they were able to
resume the work and life they loved.
Pieter, though, had a plan. He
planted his pumpkin seeds again and would grow the largest pumpkin one had ever
seen, and his wife, subsequently, would be even more fertile that fall than the
previous year. They had come so close
and he had almost fixed her. This
harvest he would succeed.
He
repeated his procedures from the previous year, marking the seed clusters and
hand pollinating the pumpkin flowers. He
enriched the already potent soil with the chopped innards of fish and fowl even
more than the previous year, and when the infant pumpkins finally began to grow
he spared the largest and healthiest and pruned the others. He carefully removed unhealthy leaves and
daily saw to the maximum health of the overall plant. But during this process there was more
urgency than the year before. His
attention to the chosen pumpkin became intense, paranoiac. Woodchucks and rabbits, which previously had
been pests, were now malignant spirits which were shot, trapped and
clubbed. As time wore on, he worried
about opossum, raccoon and deer at night.
He began to neglect his other duties and his wife as well.
By
mid-August, Sophia was beginning to be concerned for her husband. He always seemed distracted and distressed,
so much that they barely spoke. When
they worked together in the field he would look back over his shoulder towards
the patch near the barn, muttering and exhaling dramatically. She was concerned, but not worried. This behavior was no different than her
father’s, who barely spoke to her mother, unless he was enraged about something,
and that wasn’t even speaking. Pieter
was a much better husband to her than her father was to her mother. Pieter was kind and cared for her and if he
was going through a period of difficulty, she would let him work through it as
he always did.
As
the pumpkin grew, so did his mania. He
weeded the patch constantly. He
fertilized the soil with horse manure and goat droppings, but that wasn’t
enough for him. The rich soil of
Chervale and the nutrients from the flood were not enough for him, and neither
were the putrescent innards of small animals.
He wanted that pumpkin to grow.
When his wife was absent he would dig cat holes around the plant and
defecate in them. Daily he hauled
buckets of water from the creek and poured them carefully around and over the
plant. He would dip a broom in a water
bucket and shake it all over the leaves, evenly coating them with droplets. He put a layer of sand underneath the pumpkin
to prevent rot. He washed the pumpkin
daily with a cloth, shining it and checking for insects. There were none.
On
a cool night in September, Sophia lay next to him in bed; her hair tumbled
about her and her mouth slightly open as she slept. He could not sleep, his mind consumed. He saw moonlight on the floor of their room, he
heard his wife’s light breath, he sensed the warmth of their blankets, but he
felt only the xylem and phloem of the plant behind his barn. He quietly got out of bed and went to the
pumpkin. It was immense by now, almost as
tall as him with a uniform girth and it had a bluish hue in the moonlight. He wrapped his arms around it and they barely
encircled halfway. He felt the cool skin
against his cheek and pressed his entire naked body against the pumpkin,
cleansing and cool, and he believed it felt him as well, his passion, ardor and
heat. This was his desire and potency, a
physical manifestation of his virility and capability, and would be planted
within his wife to be born again and anew, a son that was in fact himself to
last beyond the seasons and years, an eternal regeneration. When he presented her with this pumpkin, she
herself would swell with desire and bear him himself. Many nights he repeated this routine, finding
himself fertilizing the soil with a most crucial and seminal substance.
He
was losing weight and was haggard and unkempt.
He was neglecting the rest of the farm because he spent nights with the
pumpkin and slept days. No matter what
Sophia tried, he would not pay attention to her. The corn harvest was destroyed because of
deer and crows, the horse needed shoeing, and the other fields were unkempt and
haggard as he was. She worked and worked,
but could not keep up with the weeds and the growth from that mythical Chervale
soil. She kept the goat milked and did
her best, but Pieter was practically catatonic during the day and essentially
unresponsive at night. But then the
first frost hit right before the end of October and the pumpkin was ready. He came into the bedroom the morning after
that first frost, shivering and dirty, but he looked his wife in the eyes for
the first time in months when he woke her.
She lay back against her pillow, searching his face as he smelled of
vegetation, soil and rot. He was
wild-eyed and grinning broadly, bearing crooked yellow teeth streaked with
brown. He told her that in one more
night all would be ready. He curled up
in bed and slept until that night.
The
pumpkin beckoned. Soil richer than
coagulated blood, feeding and growing, swelling lust and burgeoning potency,
the sky black, the moon white and the pumpkin blue: he crawled to its base. On his knees sinking into the dark earth, he
ran his hands across supple blue skin so cool, so cleansing. Soon he was face down, prostrate, his arms
encircling the base, fecund earth caressing his skin, seeping into self, xylem
and phloem. He felt the sticky scratch
of the vines, hairy like spiders’ legs, twisting around his toes, the balls of
his feet, tickling around his calves and the backs of his knees, tightening
joyously on his throat and down around his armpits, grinding with that rich mud
and squeezing him so tightly, his useless palms could only hold the base of the
pumpkin.
The
sun rose to a crisp fall morning. Some
leaves remained on the scarlet oaks, but by then the maples and elms were
bare. The cornfield was rippled with
erratically broken stalks. Sophia woke
alone and saw no sign of her husband. He
had frightened her the morning before, but he did tell her that it was ready,
whatever it was. She assumed he was
referring to the pumpkin and was glad the growing season was finally done with,
although they would be in a predicament if the coming winter and spring were
like the last. Their farm, and
subsequently, their stores, were in shambles.
The
pumpkin was colossal in the morning sunshine.
It was five feet high and its girth twice that. She marveled at its orange hue. Pieter had sawn off the massive vines and
arranged them in a gigantic wreath around its base, twining them in a complicated
and beautiful braid, with some leaves acting as speckled ornaments. Outside the wreath a saw had been dropped,
its teeth glutted with vegetable matter, but there was no sign of her
husband. It really was a beautiful sight
and she was glad her husband had succeeded so well at something he worked on,
but she was relieved this whole ordeal was over. Maybe now he could rest, or at least direct
his energies in a better way. But where
was he? As the day wore on, she
convinced herself he had gone hunting, that he was to return in the afternoon
with some rabbit and they would again have a wonderful dinner and watch the
sunset together. It had been so long
since they enjoyed their life in that most essential of ways.
As
evening approached he still hadn’t returned and she began to worry. He had seemed so crazed the last time she saw
him and his demeanor had switched so drastically and quickly. She began to think that he wasn’t hunting
rabbit, that something more sinister was afoot.
She fantasized about her old Pieter, the younger one, returning hopeful
and happy with that slab of pumpkin she had cooked with butter and brandy. She would see him enter with his game bag
full and a slab of this new and most beautiful of pumpkins…but he wouldn’t cut
this one up, for sure. Then she
remembered the saw, its teeth clogged with cellulose that was orange and
yellow.
She
burst out the door and ran calling his name.
She ran around the barn as the sun was descending behind the far
hills. She got to the pumpkin, breathing
heavily and still calling for her husband, looking about, hoping he would
emerge from the brush. She saw the top
of the pumpkin had been sawn off and then replaced like a cap fitted perfectly in
place. The stem was too far for her when
she reached up to grab it. She thought
she heard someone behind her and whipped wildly around, but no one was
there. The milking stool! She ran to the barn and grabbed the stool.
She placed it at the base of the pumpkin.
The tip of the sun was just blinking behind the distant hills, and then
began that haunting roseate illumination exclusive to the hamlet of
Chervale. She reached the stem and
pulled with all her might and the top of the pumpkin came free from its
setting. She almost fell backwards as
she let it fall to the ground. The air
was charged with radiant pink as she leaned forward and looked down through the
hole to see her husband, writhing and squirming like a naked fetus in an orange
amniotic fluid, smeared and bearded, bearing discolored teeth, looking at her
with wide and wild eyes, and laughing maniacally.
