David Ray

“The long year passed slowly. Then one day, as October winds blew golden leaves around the farm, Autumn heard his mother say that even though her son was gone she would bake a pumpkin pie for Halloween. And of course she would need a pumpkin. At last an idea came to Autumn. If he could just get his mother to the barn and up to the loft she would find the magic pumpkin. Autumn began to pull at his mother’s apron.
“What’s wrong with you today?” cried his mother. “I have many things to do and I have no time for playing.”
But Autumn kept pulling on her apron until she was out of the house and in the barnyard. Then he ran into the barn, barking louder than he ever had. His mother followed him into the barn, where it was so dark she could not see the little dog.
“Now where have you gone?” she cried.
Autumn began barking again and it seemed to come from above her. She looked up and dimly saw Autumn at the top of the loft ladder, barking wildly.
“What are you carrying on about up there? There’s nothing up in that old loft.”
But Autumn did not stop barking.
“All right, all right, I’ll come up and take a look,” she said as she began to climb the ladder. When she got to the top, the morning light lit up the corner of the loft where Autumn, smiling as much as a dog can smile, stood next to a very large pumpkin. It was one of the largest pumpkin she had ever seen.
“Now, how did this pumpkin get up here?” Of course there was no one there to answer her question except Autumn and he could not talk. So she decided to use the pumpkin for the pie she planned to bake.
She pulled at it and rolled it, and finally after a great effort she managed to get the magic pumpkin down the ladder and into the kitchen, where Autumn ran barking around the table.
“Calm down, Autumn, and let me get to work on this pie.”
As she was about to cut the stem from the pumpkin, she thought of the days when her husband carved the jack-o’-lantern for Angus.
“Well, maybe I’ll just do the same.”
She went to Angus’s room and found one of his old drawings. She traced a jack-o’-lantern face onto the pumpkin. Then, taking a large kitchen knife, she cut into the pumpkin. When only one eye was carved, there were streams of light. And when she carved the nose, and the smiling mouth, great shafts of light like sunbeams filled the room.
Again Autumn began to bark. But when she turned to quiet him, there, standing in the wonderful light, was her son.”
― David Ray, Pumpkin Light

“The years passed by and Angus grew older, with a family of his own. And while his children sat drawing in the warmth of the kitchen, Angus painted large pumpkin paintings. Many people bought the paintings and enjoyed the warm glow they brought to their homes. Angus never stopped painting. Even when he was an old man, he worked far into the night, forgetting to do all manner of things. And when everyone in the house was asleep, he would take one last look at his favorite painting, a picture of a little dog sleeping in the glow of a pumpkin light.”
― David Ray, Pumpkin Light