Photo A.M. Moscoso

When the air is icy cold, when it is so dark the field looks like a smooth black lake, and fog crawls against the ground like a snake out looking for a meal, I  dare you to take a late-night trip to the Feldvogel farm and steal a pumpkin by moonlight.

I can tell you with certainty that the Feldvogel fieldworkers harvest the pumpkins by moonlight; they work without talking, lanterns, or flashlights.

The blood-orange pumpkins are speckled with mud, dirt, and bits and pieces of autumn leaves. Some have warts, and others have been crushed and molded into shapes that don’t say pumpkin; they say, ‘someone looks like they took a fall off of a bridge and hit the ground below with bone-crunching force.’

Just looking at those gourds—which look like severed human heads in various stages of decay, discarded in a field and waiting for rot to take them away—may give you pause.

Do you really want to touch them? You might ask yourself. How bad do you want a pumpkin for Halloween? Why did I take Anita Marie’s dare?

You might hesitate, you might turn around, and you might look over Feldvogel’s field and see the fieldworkers working under the moonlight.

You might think you hear something that sounds like the raspy rustle of stiff straw and burlap as the fieldworkers turn, their joints creaking with a hollow, stuffed rigidity, bending over slowly as they reach down to harvest the pumpkins.

You might wonder why the poles that should be holding up scarecrows are all empty.

You will wonder if one of the fieldworkers looks up at you from across the field and you see their smooth, noseless faces, their button-dark eyes,  how long it will take you to run back to your car with a Feldvogel pumpkin in your arms.