Soli Deo gloria
DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Gilmore Girls.
Lorelai stumbled over to Luke's diner counter, crying out, "Coffee! Coffee! I need coffee! My oasis in this cruel, cruel desert, coffee!" just as Rory looked out the window and said, "There's a huge crowd of people heading down to Miss Patty's right now."
"Right now?" Luke said, looking out the window.
Lorelai waved her hand. "Don't pay attention to that Gilmore, pay attention to this Gilmore, the one who's about to succumb to exhaustion and a caffeine headache if I don't get coffee now!"
"Now?" Luke said, looking at Lorelai.
"Now!" Lorelai declared.
"Like, right now," Rory said, throwing upon the front door and peeking her head outside. She caught sight of Lane and Zack hurrying along and called their names. The October wind blew them closer and Rory back inside the diner.
"Morning, Rory," Lane said, rubbing her hands together. "How's fall break?"
"Treating me okay. Hi, guys." Rory nodded at Zack, who waved a hand at her. "So, I thought today was the Autumn Festival."
"It is," Lane affirmed.
"So it is the last Saturday of October, right?"
"Correct. So?" Zack wondered.
"If the Festival's starting in like," Rory glanced at her watch, "an hour and a half, why is half of Stars Hollow rushing to Miss Patty's? I thought the Festival was in the square."
"Oh, it is. Taylor's just called an emergency town meeting."
Rory's "What?" was overshadowed by Luke's annoyed "What?" and Lorelai's slightly confused, "What?"
"Wait, an emergency town meeting? What for?" Rory wanted to know.
Lane shrugged. "No idea. We just followed the general outcry and are eager to find out what's the cause."
"Wait, you're saying Taylor's the cause of all this?" Luke said, coming around the counter.
Lorelai followed him, still on the coffee prowl. "Why do you even sound surprised? It's the Autumn Festival and he's Taylor, for Pete's sake. Makes perfect sense." She innocently eyed the coffeemaker as Luke gave her a look. "Don't you make coffee at home?"
"Well, yeah, but we're out. Rory kept stealing bags to make coffee in her dorm room."
"Hey, you said I could!"
"Well, I did, and that's all well and fine, but let your poor mother know when all the coffee left in the house was what we left in the coffee filter from yesterday morning's coffee." Lorelai smiled at Luke. "Besides, I like your coffee best."
"Comforting thought." Luke sighed as he flung his apron onto the counter and said, "Caesar, I'm going to the town meeting."
"It's not even nine in the morning," Caesar said.
Luke sighed again as he hustled on his thick jacket. "I know. Don't remind me."
"But wait! The coffee! The coffee is super-important, for my health and for the overall happiness of the entire town. 'Cause if I don't have caffeine in my system before nine AM, everyone in Stars Hollow will have haunting stories about me for years to come, that over the course of decades will become urban legends, haunted tales that couldn't really be true, but really were."
Luke sighed. Lorelai had a compelling case; he also had a small supply of patience that was dwindling too much right before a stupid emergency town meeting. "Caesar, get her a cup of coffee before she makes everyone at this meeting go crazy." Then Luke realized his words and shrugged as Lorelai accepted the generous cup of coffee as the elixir of life. "Oh, too late. Anyone who goes to an emergency town meeting is already crazy."
"That includes you, you know, Luke," Rory pointed out.
Luke sighed. "Don't remind me." He led the group departing the diner; they joined the homogenous accumulation of citizens as they funneled through Miss Patty's wide doors and found seats. Front rows were snatched up quickly. Those who had to stand at the back due to the lack of chairs didn't care. They blew on their hands and everyone tittered nervously, wondering and speculating and theorizing, until Taylor Doose and Miss Patty took the stage. The whispers almost disappeared as everyone stood at attention, ready for the mystery to be resolved.
"All right, Taylor, what is all of this about?" Luke was the first to stand up and speak. Lorelai, eagerly draining her coffee, grabbed his elbow and pulled him down. He still looked at Taylor with an especial impatience saved for only him.
"Yeah, what the big bruhaha? I heard it had something to do with the Autumn Festival. Is that true?" Babette demanded to know.
"Wait, is that true? Is the Autumn Festival in danger?" Andrew wanted to know.
"Is it a damsel in distress? Is it stuck in a tower? Do we need to mount a mighty steed and save it?" Lorelai took a break from her coffee to say.
Taylor buried his face in his hand; that either meant that his announcement was either really embarrassing, or he was dejected. Miss Patty quickly came to his rescue, to his silent relief; she stood up, saying, "Come now, everyone calm down. There's merely been a minor hiccup."
"A hiccup? What kind of a hiccup? A little bump in the road or the kind that doesn't go away for hours and hours on end?" Sookie wanted to know.
"Can someone just spit it out? What's happened with the Autumn Festival?" Jackson demanded to know.
Clamors and demands for someone to clear the air of torturous mystery mounted on Taylor Doose until he exploded, "Be quiet! Be quiet! BE QUIET!"
Somehow "Be quiet" was far more persuasive than "SHUT UP!" Everybody and their mom shut their traps and settled in to listen real good. Lorelai leaned forward on her seat, sipping her coffee while her leg tapped against the floor like a dog's tail.
Taylor waved away Miss Patty from the stand, and sighed heavily as he looked out at the winter-dressed crowd full of neighbors and citizens, all dependent on him, who all counted on him! And here, he failed! He utterly failed! The Autumn Festival would be ruined! It was a time-honored, Stars Hollow traditional event, and now the annual Festival of '05 would forever be a bitter memory that'd make every person there cringe in the years to come. Oh, the shame on the Doose name—!
"What's Taylor doing?" Rory wondered, concerned. He just stood there, the quietest he'd ever been in the public eye.
"I don't know," Lorelai whispered softly.
"This isn't the new normal? He hasn't picked this up as a weird habit ever since I started going to college?"
"Oh, I wish it was just that, kid. But no. This is Taylor Doose, silent."
It was silent. Then Rory said, "This is weird. This isn't good."
"No, this definitely isn't good," Lorelai said. She turned to Luke. "Luke, something happened. Like, something happened. As in, Taylor's not just freaking out about something that makes everyone else roll their eyes. Something happened."
Luke looked up at Taylor with confused eyes. A murmur of nervousness and an ominous cloud passed over the heads of every person sitting in a folding chair or standing in the nosebleed seats in Miss Patty's studio. Now there was real concern.
"Patty, what kind of a hiccup? Sugar, you're gonna have to take the stand if Taylor can't tell us. We gotta know what happened!" Babette begged.
"We do," echoed Morey.
Heads turned to agree with their neighbor and Miss Patty gained courage from many assenting nods. She gulped and stood up and put a hand on Taylor's shoulder. "Taylor, we need to tell them. It's an emergency."
He didn't respond.
She shook him harder, like knocking him from a deep sleep. "Taylor!"
"Fine, fine!" he said, waving her away. She took only a couple steps back, ready to take the mic for him if he couldn't handle spitting out the announcement.
He sighed and looked up. With a heavy quavering voice, he said, "We may have to cancel the Autumn Festival."
Cue immediate uproar from the audience. Voices rose and grew over each other, trying to be the loudest, the one heard. Finally, Luke shouted, "Let the man speak!"
Everyone shut up and stared at Luke. Lorelai gasped. Was that a spotlight from heaven shining on Luke Danes?
Luke scowled. Threw a hand at Taylor. "Shut up so he can tell us what happened and let us go on about our lives just like before. I gotta get back to my diner. So shut up and let him speak."
"Historically speaking, shutting up and giving him the room hasn't loosened his tongue," Lorelai said. "The history being of the last five minutes. Normally we can't get him to shut up."
"Yeah, I know. I'm here at every meeting, same as you. Regrettably." Luke sighed.
"Hey, Taylor, I have a pumpkin pie in the oven," Sookie called over, pointing at Jackson's watch, "can we, you know, move it along?"
"Yeah. I've got an inn full of guests eager for this 'rural' and 'rustic' loyal festival I gotta get back to," Lorelai said. When she caught Luke staring at her with disgust, she said, "The quotes are courtesy of Michel."
"I can corroborate that story," Rory said, nodding firmly.
"Yeah, and they came for that Festival. So there will be a festival; doesn't matter if a meteoroid hit the earth. Come on; it can't be that bad," Lorelai said.
"Yeah, it can't be that bad!" Babette shouted.
"Taylor, please, this suspense is killing me. Literally. My doctor says undue stress can cause heart problems," Kirk informed everyone.
"Taylor, my guests!"
"Taylor, my pumpkin pie!"
Taylor exploded again. "Nobody cares about your pumpkin pie, Sookie! As a matter of fact, stop bragging about it! Having pumpkin! Stop bragging!"
"Stop bragging . . . about having pumpkin?" Lorelai looked at Sookie. "He finally cracked, right? I mean, he's been on the verge for as long as we can remember, but the day has finally come."
Lorelai's comment cleared Taylor's foggy and ashamed mind. He launched into the announcement that had so long held the attention of so many people's minds (for the past fifteen minutes, at least): "Ladies and gentleman, outside, in less than an hour, we are supposed to have an Autumn Festival, a fall Festival. Emphasis on the word fall. Now, when I say the word 'fall', what other words does it bring to mind?"
"—ing in love," Sookie said.
"The opposite of 'rising'," said Rory promptly.
"Autumn," said Luke the Literalist.
"Broken hips," Lorelai supplied.
Taylor fumed. "No! I meant words like 'leaves' and 'cool weather' and 'jackets' and 'Halloween'. Many of those answers would've made more sense, but would not be acceptable as the word I was looking for, which is: 'pumpkin'."
Again, general dissension in the ranks.
"'Pumpkin?' Why does everyone care about pumpkin all the time? There are lots of other great winter squashes," Sookie said to Jackson, who nodded in total agreement. She listed on her hand, "Acorn squash, butternut squash, tiny little gourds to use for decoration rather than soups and roasts—"
"Yeah, who cares about pumpkin? You know what's become completely overlooked come fall? Apples." Lorelai nodded affirmatively. "Apples are just completely ignored nowadays. Nobody cares about them. They're no longer the greatest thing to eat on an autumn afternoon. Their golden fall image is tarnished."
Rory looked at her with a wrinkled nose. "That sounds sad."
"Probably 'cause it is," Lorelai agreed.
"Scientists have genetically modified so many apples to create so many different kinds of apples that the flavor of a real apple is lost. The American spirit of an apple is gone through the fact that they're now all tasteless, and available all year. They're no longer an autumn thing because Americans decided to make them not an autumn thing." Luke was ever a shining ray of sunlight.
"But apples hold such fond memories for me. I mean, I remember climbing trees and picking them on these big estate farms Mom and Dad's friends owned that we'd go visit. Mom would yell at me to not climb the trees but Dad just told me to not break a bone." Lorelai smiled a little at the memory.
Rory frowned. "How come I don't have any shiny childhood memories of climbing apple trees?"
"Because climbing trees is exercise and you balk at exercise," Lorelai said.
"No, I don't!"
Lorelai leaned close. "Jogging."
Rory shrunk back and whimpered.
"My point: made," Lorelai said.
"Please, people! This is serious business! Now is not the time of levity and jokes!" Taylor just wanted everyone's complete and undivided attention; that was all that he was asking for.
"Okay, fine, Taylor. What is so important about pumpkins for the Autumn Festival?" Luke said in a voice you use in talking to a stupid child, like he was waiting for the punchline of this really long joke of Taylor's.
"Hmm, how about the fact that there aren't any?!" Taylor exploded.
Everyone stared at him.
"Who do you mean? I can't go outside my diner without tripping over a pumpkin. You can't say that there aren't any pumpkins when they're bred like rabbits around here," Luke said caustically.
Taylor rolled his eyes. Of course Luke wouldn't understand. "Those are decoration pumpkins. They've been sitting on those hay bales for the past month. We can't have those at the festival!"
"It's not like we're going to be selling the pumpkins at the Festival, Taylor. Let's just use the decoration pumpkins," Lorelai argued.
"We do sell the pumpkins! So we can't use the town square ones! They're molding at the bottom! Besides, it'd ruin the look of the town square."
Lorelai rolled her eyes. "Heaven forbid the town square look naked without its pumpkins."
"How did you just discover that we have no pumpkins? If we are all supposed to instantly think 'pumpkins' when we think of autumn and in turn the Autumn Festival, why didn't you make them top-priority?" Rory wanted to know.
"Yeah, Taylor, what happened to the pumpkins? Did they fall to the bottom of your list or did something happen to them?" Gypsy wanted to know.
Shouts of the same demand echoed in Miss Patty's dance studio. Taylor slammed the gavel and said, "Fine, I will tell you what happened to them! They were ordered and on a truck from Mayberry when the truck made a violent right turn and almost tipped over. It still managed to dump all of our pumpkins into the Slater Road ditch. I just got the call. I think that Mayberry sabotaged us."
"Why would they sabotage us? You think Mayberry gets their kicks from dumpin' pumpkins?" Luke wondered. He regretted saying it immediately 'cause then Lorelai and Rory kept saying in unison, "Dumpin' pumpkins! Dumpin' pumpkins!"
"How should I know? But they did, that's what!" was Taylor's perfect argument.
"What's the big deal? We need some pumpkins for the kids to decorate and to sell to the tourists. Don't you sell pumpkins in your store, Taylor? Don't ya got any left?" Babette wanted to know.
Taylor shook his head. "I had a record high pumpkin sales-week. I'm sold out! So, I'm here to ask you good citizens to donate your purchased pumpkins to the Autumn Festival, to save the town!"
Thus began the great mutterings once more. It was collectively gathered that no one had any available pumpkins: they'd cooked them, butchered them, Jack-o'-lanterned them, painted them, or arranged them in some kind of Thanksgiving decoration a month beforehand. Simply, none were available.
"Does anyone have any growing?" Taylor demanded to know.
Again, no such luck. All pumpkins were either murdered by the first killer frost or specially reserved for the pumpkin contests. No one wanted to donate their fifty-pounder just because Taylor didn't have pumpkins, no sir; no one was sacrificing Pumpkin Priscilla at the cost of a blue ribbon and glory!
The color in Taylor's face rushed from pink to white to pale to red as he smashed the gavel on the podium like he was trying to break the head from the handle. "Please! The only pumpkin left in town can't be pumpkin pie and canned pumpkin! I will cancel the entire Autumn Festival unless we find pumpkins in . . . forty-three minutes!"
"Why can't we just drive to the next town over for pumpkins?" Gypsy wanted to know.
"It'd take too long; also, Taylor spent all of the pumpkin budget on the Mayberry supply," Miss Patty said, giving Taylor an eye for trusting them with stuff pertaining to Stars Hollow.
"There's must be some pumpkin!" Taylor cried out, like his pleading and distress would suddenly bring some pumpkin hoarder out of the woodwork to profess his store in shame and humility.
Sookie sometimes couldn't control what she said. She—she just burst sometimes. She said, "Jackson has pumpkins."
"Sookie!" Jackson cried, as everyone turned on him.
"Sorry. Pregnancy brain," Sookie apologized.
"How could you say that out loud to everyone that I have pumpkins? We could've let them assume you used canned pumpkin!"
"You'd have all Stars Hollow assume I make my sweet cream pumpkin pie with cinnamon crust and candied pecans with canned pumpkin?!"
Taylor's eyes light up. He immediately inserted himself into this private married-couple fight and said, "Jackson, you're a town hero! You saved the day! You're saving the Autumn Festival! Let everyone look back at the Autumn Festival of two-thousand-five as the festival brought to us by the heroism of Jackson Belleville!"
"Wait, now, Taylor, I did not agree to donate all my pumpkins to Stars Hollow. Those are my pumpkins that I raised from seed, that I nourished through the months and fed milk to, the pumpkins I covered with blankets at night and weeded and fertilized and cared for! Those are my pumpkins that I built a greenhouse for with my own two hands!"
"That's a lot of I's," Lorelai commented.
"He's awfully proud of his pumpkins," Sookie said.
"I can tell."
"Jackson, if you don't do this, you're a traitor to this town. All those people out there, people you've known your whole life, tourists who've come to experience our town: all those lives will be shattered because of you and your selfishness!" Taylor accused.
Lorelai gasped. Luke said, "Them's fighting words."
"Did he really use the word 'shattered'?" Lorelai wondered.
Rory nodded. "Pumpkins really are important in people's lives."
"Well, if you hadn't botched the responsibility of getting the pumpkins to the Autumn Festival, I wouldn't be boxed into a position where I have to bail you out!" Jackson yelled. "Now if I don't do it, somehow everyone forgets your mistake and now I'm the bad guy!"
"Jackson, honey, sit down," Sookie begged.
"No, I won't sit down! This is outrageous!" Jackson pointed a finger at Taylor's retreating back as Taylor stalked back up to the podium. "I shouldn't have to choose whether I'll be treated like a hero or a murderer in my own town—!"
"Let's take it to a vote," Taylor said in a cold, cold voice.
"No!" Jackson cried. "You don't get to make my personal decision a thing that has to be voted on as in a democracy! It's not their choice, it's my choice."
This speech fell on Taylor's deaf ears. "All those for Jackson generously and cheerfully supporting his hometown by donating his pumpkins to the Autumn Festival, raise your hand."
Some hands raised. Jackson slumped in his chair with his arms folded and stared murderously at Taylor.
"All those opposed agree with Jackson to let him sit in his empty house with nothing but his precious pumpkins for company while the rest of town has to host an event that will be a blot on our town's lustrous history. It's either that or all the little children will be disappointed," Taylor said.
"Hey!" Jackson said, taking offense to his words.
Taylor didn't retract and Jackson would've likely laid out a duel of honor on the table if Sookie didn't put a hand on his shoulder. He looked at her and her pleading eyes as she said, "I'm sorry, baby." She rubbed his shoulder and he felt as if she was rubbing guilt into him. She'd slaved away in the kitchen from late at night through the early morning, letting her sous chef run the Dragonfly Inn, while she made caramel apples and toffee apples and candy apples and little hand pies and cinnamon candy and popcorn balls, delighting her soul in her favorite pastime all day to make treats for the Festival. She hadn't put up her swollen ankles in seventeen hours.
Jackson realized that his wife worked really hard to make this Autumn Festival a wonderful one, and darn it, he'd make sure there was an Autumn Festival for her.
He rolled his eyes and threw up his hands. "Fine! Fine! I'll donate pumpkins to the Autumn Festival!"
Everyone rolled their eyes and muttered in relief. It was no standing room applause, but it was something.
Taylor smiled from the stage. "It's good to see that you finally came to your senses, Jackson!"
Sookie's reaction was the only one that mattered. She beamed at him. "Thanks, honey."
"Anything for you, you know," Jackson said, his hand on her knee, meaning every word.
Miss Patty kept things moving as she grabbed the gavel from Taylor and smashed it against the podium. "It's thirty-eight minutes until the Autumn Festival. Matter settled, meeting adjourned, everyone to their places!"
The citizens of Stars Hollow scattered like cockroaches under a light. Zack and Luke walked with Jackson to get his produce truck and load it up with the chosen few. Lorelai walked with Rory, Sookie, and Lane toward the town square.
"That was a roller coaster of a meeting. With a decidedly happy ending," Lorelai said happily to a proud Sookie.
"I am awful proud and happy. Shoot me in my big mouth, though."
"That was a lot of town debating, and it's not even ten in the morning," Rory said.
"Makes you question why you ever leave us for the boring world of Yale," Lane said.
"Yes, yes it does," Rory said in agreement. Nothing in all the world could ever quite match the tone and character of a Stars Hollow town meeting.
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