The Pumpkin Who Wanted to Be Counted

Humphrey was a pumpkin. He sat on the top step outside Theo’s front door, and he was very proud of his face. It had been drawn on with a black felt-tip: two round eyes, a small triangle nose, and a wide smile that went slightly wonky at one end, because somebody had sneezed halfway through.

On Halloween night, the Parental Revenue Service holds a census. A census is when somebody counts everything very carefully and writes it all down. The person who counts on Humphrey’s street is Officer Barnaby Tally, who has a tall hat, a long clipboard and a brass clicker that goes click.

At six o’clock, Officer Tally came up the street. Click, one witch. Click, one astronaut. Click, one porch light, switched on. Click, one cat on the garden wall, wearing nothing but a bored expression.

Then he walked straight past Humphrey without clicking at all.

It was the same every year. Officer Tally had clicked for witches and wizards, for dragons and dinosaurs, and once for a baby dressed as a pea. He had never once clicked for a pumpkin. Humphrey felt his wonky smile droop a little, at the wonky end.

This year, Humphrey decided, would be different. When nobody was looking, he leaned. Pumpkins can lean a tiny bit, if they really want to. He leaned so far forward that he was nearly on the path, right where Officer Tally would be sure to notice him on the way back.

Officer Tally came back down the street. Click, one knight with a saucepan for a helmet. Click, one robot made of cereal boxes. Then he saw Humphrey on the path, said, “Oops, mind the pumpkin,” stepped neatly round him and kept on walking.

But somebody else had noticed. Theo had come out onto the step in his dragon costume, with his bucket, and he had seen the whole thing. He looked at Humphrey’s drooping smile. Then he ran down the path after the Officer, his dragon tail bumping along behind him.

“Excuse me,” said the dragon. “You didn’t count our pumpkin.”

Officer Tally stopped and looked at his clipboard. “I am very sorry,” he said. “Form C-31 has a box for costumes, a box for porch lights and a box for cats. It has no box for pumpkins. I cannot count what has no box.”

The dragon thought about this. “Then can we make one?”

Officer Tally pushed up his tall hat and scratched his head. Nobody had ever asked him that before. He took his book of regulations out of his inside pocket and found a page near the back. “A new box,” he read, “may be added to Form C-31 at the request of anyone who lives at the house, provided they ask politely and in writing.”

The dragon did not have any paper, but he had a sweet wrapper, and the Officer lent him a pencil. Leaning on the garden wall, Theo wrote: Please can there be a box for pumpkins. Ours is called Humphrey. Thank you.

Officer Tally read it twice. Then he drew a brand-new box at the bottom of Form C-31, and next to it he wrote: Pumpkins, Porch, Friendly. He walked back up the path, stood in front of Humphrey and lifted his clicker. Click.

“One pumpkin,” said Officer Tally, and he wrote a very neat number one in the new box. Humphrey sat up as straight as a pumpkin can sit. His wonky smile went wonky at both ends, which, if you are a pumpkin, is the biggest smile there is.

Much later, when the sweets had been sorted and the dragon costume was folded over a chair, Officer Tally sat at his desk at 31 Pumpkin Patch Plaza and added up his numbers. Four hundred and twelve witches. Eighty-one cats. And in the new box at the bottom, one pumpkin, called Humphrey.

Outside Theo’s door, Humphrey sat on the top step in the cool, quiet dark. The porch light was off, and the stars were coming out over the rooftops. He had been counted. He was on the form, in pencil, for good. And feeling rounder and warmer than he had ever felt before, the pumpkin settled down for a long and peaceful night.