Town in a Pumpkin Bash Read Online Free Page A

prove her point, she turned and waved toward the folks gathered around the hay
     wagon. “Sorry for the holdup!” she called out to them. “We’ll be right there!”
    Looking back at Candy, she added, “You ready?”
    “Let’s do it.”
    “Good,” Maggie said as she started off, and to the crowd she called, “It’s time for
     the Pumpkin Hollow Haunted Hayride’s first trip of the day!”

TWO

    They’d pulled the hayride operation together in record time, though they’d been working
     in the pumpkin patch since late August. That’s when Maggie had approached elderly
     Mr. Gumm, who ran the local hardware store, about managing the field for him that
     fall.
    It had been a fairly simple idea, the result of a conversation over salads and glasses
     of iced tea at Melody’s Café one warm afternoon, when Maggie was feeling down in the
     dumps. She was still working at the dry cleaner’s in town, but her hours were limited
     and the pay was low. She’d been looking around for a scheme to make a little money
     on the side, but she hadn’t had much luck.
    “I’m not a baker or a writer like you, so I can’t make pies to sell or write stories
     for the local newspaper,” she told Candy without a hint of jealousy, “and I’ve tried
     creating little thingamabobs to sell at the craft fairs but, to be honest, I’m not
     much of a quilter or a knitter. I’m too old to try landscaping or lumberjacking. I
     suppose I could waitress,but I don’t think anyone is hiring around town this time of year.”
    She was right about that. Though the tourist season had been relatively strong this
     year, few businesses hired in the late summer, when they were usually starting to
     let people go. There might be a few end-of-season jobs around, vacated by college
     and high school students heading back to their classes, but most local businesses
     ran lean into the fall, and were looking to wind down in the weeks after Labor Day,
     rather than staff up. They’d all stay open through October, of course, in anticipation
     of the annual busloads of leaf peepers who swarmed over New England during the month,
     following peak foliage from north to south. As soon as Halloween passed, though, and
     the trees turned dull, the leaf peepers would head home, taking their tourist dollars
     with them, and businesses up and down Main Street and Ocean Avenue would begin to
     cut hours drastically or shutter for the season. After that, it was just a matter
     of finishing up the remnants of the harvest, bringing in the lawn furniture and garden
     tools, preparing the flower beds and fields for cold weather, winterizing the cars
     and boats, and getting the snow shovels and bags of rock salt out of the back corner
     of the garage.
    “There just isn’t much to do around here for a woman of my skills,” Maggie had lamented
     that day in August, when the arrival of winter was still months away. “What am I going
     to do?” She had tried to keep the conversation light, but her typical good humor was
     failing her as the prospect of a long, lean season loomed.
    “Well, we’ll just have to figure something out,” Candy had told her with all the optimism
     she could muster. She’d been reading a book about the power of positive thinking and
     she was determined to give it a try. “You know what? If we can’t find another job
     for you, we’ll just have to create one.”
    That made Maggie perk right up. “Hey, that’s not a bad idea. What do you have in mind?”
    Candy thought about it a moment. “We’ll just have to figure out what your strengths
     are and then build around that.”
    “What an intriguing concept.” Maggie straightened in her chair, liking this idea more
     all the time. “Which strengths do you think we should start with?”
    “Let’s see.” Candy assessed her friend with a scrutinizing eye. “You’re good with
     numbers, right? And you’re an excellent manager.”
    “I like working outside,” Maggie put in,