Evening In The Tenth Month
As I write these words, I have a quilt over my legs.
The cool night air is sifting through the screens on the windows and doors, and the crickets are scraping their little fiddles out in the yard, tuning up for their final concert of the season. I don’t yet know when the first frost will fall; it will likely be a bit later than normal, since we had such a lingering season of heat. But who can say? The earth in its tilting and turning trip around the sun may play a trick on us yet and dust us with the tiny crystals in a stroke of whimsy. All I can say is that I am luxuriating in the feeling of chilled feet and nose, and in the clarity of mind that the lower temperatures bring.
One of the interesting things we noted about this area when we moved here was how seriously people take their Halloween. Decorations begin appearing in mid-September, and are often remarkably elaborate. Christmastime is known in many areas of the USA for over-the-top light displays and living Nativities and neighborhood “light wars,” but in Appalachia, the length and expense to which some people will go to turn their houses into horror sites is, well, frightening.
This is not an issue for us, and not because we are anti-Halloween. I had a fair amount of experience with those types in my days in the Protestant church., the ones who railed against the satanic origins of the festival held on the last day of October. And as I’ve told many huffy churchmen, I’d much rather see my grandchildren dressed up like The Mummy or a pirate than to see one of them at some “Reformation Day Festival” in full John Calvin costume, or authentic Martin Luther attire (“Say, where’d you get that nifty tonsure wig? Wait a minute…where’s my razor?”). And then there are the nauseating church signs I see every day while driving to and from work: “Fall for Jesus…He never leaves.” Or “Forbidden fruit makes bad jams.”
Sigh.
No, decorating for All Hallow’s Eve is not an issue for us because we live out in the holler, and the only people who come down our gravel road are generally people who are coming specifically to visit. It’s not a drive-around-the-neighborhood sort of a region. The first Halloween after we bought this place, my wife bought several bags of candy and a big plastic Jack O’Lantern from which to dispense it. A week later, I was still giving that stuff away to coworkers. We’ve never had a single trick-or-treater in all these years.
I have fond memories of childhood Halloweens; perhaps someday I’ll write about some of them. And I continue to have a certain affection for the season, not least of all because of the transitional weather. I even get a craving to watch a few seasonal movies, especially anything starring Peter Cushing.
But I will say this. In the tenth month, on a moonlight night, in the woods behind our home, with massive hoot owls and diminutive screech owls trading sinister bass and ghostly soprano calls, with wolves and coyotes up on the ridge lifting their raise-the-atavistic-hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck voices into the chilled air, with unseen things moving through the dry leaves and snapping branches behind you….it’s easy to believe that something pale and luminous and malevolent might be moving across the foggy ground in your direction.
Tonight I have a quilt across my legs, and I wouldn’t trade it for a cruise to the Bahamas.
~ S.K. Orr