Maybe he didn’t know that the outdoor harvest had failed last year, that I hadn’t even attempted one on my own. Maybe he didn’t know that I was late with the new crop. It seemed not to matter urgently anymore. A lot seemed not to matter.

“Well, of course,” the Pumpkin King said. “Come back here. Get it and come find me tonight. My trailer’s just over that’a ridge.” He waved vaguely at the woods behind him.

I hadn’t known anyone lived in those trees. No trailer was in sight. He wrote something on a torn piece of brown paper, folded it, and passed it to me.

I shoved it in my pocket without reading it.

“That’s the IOU,” he said.

“And the seeds?”

He removed from underneath his coat a small leather bag on a string. He opened the leather pouch, and put the seeds from his pocket inside. One, two, three, four. He pulled the cords of the bag shut.

“There were six seeds,” I said.

“I gotta keep something for myself.” The Pumpkin King handed me the pouch. The leather was soft. “Put it on. For safety, under your clothes.”

I must not have moved swiftly enough because he took the pouch out of my hand. Then, before I could yank away, he touched my collarbone, pulling at the collar of my coat and flannel shirt, and dropped the leather bag over my neck. The pouch disappeared down my shirt. The leather felt cold and greasy, dirty as hands.

The Pumpkin King zipped my coat up tight. “There,” he said. He patted my chest, the space of bone where my heart was beating desperately. “Can’t see a thing. Keep it that’a way.”

The leather smelled like the animal it had been. I couldn’t forget it was there, even if nobody could see it. His fingers had been cold. “My friend is waiting for me,” I said.

“One last bit of advice, little girl.”

I looked back at him. His eyes had an emptiness, dull as dirty silver. And he had wildness about him that I knew well. Meth, maybe. Or opioids. He moved as if he was jerking his limbs awake, dragging his body through a haze thicker than blood, forcing himself to move. I figured he had been napping when I showed up in the trees. He might fall asleep the moment I left, maybe in the middle of talking to me.

Or maybe he was in pain. Maybe he walked haltingly because his joints hurt him; his bones stiff, or injured years ago. Maybe he was only hurting, with his rolling eyes, heavy limbs. His finger, knobby as a wand, was meant to point at me—little girl—but really, it was trembling at the trees.

“Don’t plant all the seeds now,” the Pumpkin King said. “Plant a couple. They’ll take. Plant two seeds, maybe. Save the others as currency.”