All Hallow’s Eve

Jinx and I went for our morning stroll while it was still full dark, the coin of the full moon shining down on the grass, the blades silvered by the breath of some Frost Giant who slumbered among these mountains during the night. I watched my dog sprint and prance among the tombstones in the graveyard, his shadow flitting along with him while the large owl in the adjacent trees asked his eternal question and the coyotes on the ridge sang their eerie songs across the lit valley and a rooster crowed in a nearby farmyard.

Halloween already, and tonight we turn the clocks back to what my grandmother used to call “God’s time,” and we regain the hour of sleep we lost back in April. In the years we’ve lived here, we’ve never had a single trick-or-treater; we’re too remote. The only people who venture down our gravel lane are people who are coming here with intent, not the sort of wandering-and-looking-for-an-invitingly-lit-front-porch-in-hopes-of-much-candy sort of individual. And besides, the Cor-ohgodwe’reallgonnadie-na virus scare has done a nifty job of pouring ice water on the enthusiasm for people to trundle their children around to strangers’ homes where Rona Roger just may have coughed on the Tootsie Pops.

Mrs. Orr and I went over to a town today where antique stores, secondhand shops, and used bookstores abound. We got a nice lunch in a coffee shop and chatted with our waiter about the lack of people dressed up in Halloween costumes this year. One usually sees employees in shops and even banks wearing some sort of costume, but not this year. This year it’s all deadly grim and un-festive. Perhaps it’s the masks. My grandmother used to call Halloween masks “false faces,” just as she called the newspaper comics “the funny papers.” She’d say, “What kinda false face you gonna wear this year, youngun?” And this year, if she were alive, she’d see that everyone is wearing the false face of phony concern and ovine compliance.

At an antique shop, we scored heavily. My wife got a heavy serving platter for just over two dollars, and I got a set of books for the same price. The books are in pristine condition…I don’t think they’ve ever been opened, much less read. They came in the original slipcover, and include works by Chekov, Sophocles, Scott, Plato, Galsworthy, Stevenson, Epictetus, Shaw, Pascal, Turgenev, Reade, and Crane. What’s funny and sad is that the slipcover informs me that these editions were published for “young readers.” I do not want to know what the publishing houses are offering for “young readers” these days.

***

Ah, Halloween. I remember it, Horatio. Mother used to take Sissy and me up and down the streets of our then-safe hamlet, smiling at our costumes and paper shopping bags, the kind with the twisted twine handles they used to sack up purchases in at department stores. We would only be out for an hour or two before our bags were too heavy for us to carry. I remember one year when my sister was forced to drag hers in the dewy grass, causing it to weaken and the bottom to fall out on Sixth Avenue, somewhere between Poplar and Oak streets. I can still see Mother down on her knees, helping Sissy scoop the candy into Mother’s overcoat, which she held out like an apron. She walked the rest of the way home holding it out before her like that, while Sissy skipped and ran before us. I trudged along beside Mother, determined not to let my sister have any of my treasure because I had noticed that at least a hat-full of candy had been left in the grass back there.

If you’ve ever seen the Kevin Costner/Clint Eastwood movie A Perfect World, you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say that one year, I had the coolest Casper the Friendly Ghost costume of all time. My boyhood was mercifully free of the gory parade of dismembered corpses and razor-fingered ghouls and hockey mask-wearing psychopaths that later became popular with children…or their parents, who bought the blasted things. We were ghosts, pirates, burglars, vampires, soldiers, princesses, or some variety of animal.

The things people handed out were mostly store-bought, but we occasionally received popcorn balls (stuck together with Karo syrup), Rice Krispies treats, homemade fudge, or even caramel apples. Mother never allowed us to eat anything not store-bought. Even then, lurid rumors of needles or razor blades hidden in Halloween candies were making parents nervous, but a Saran Wrapped homemade treat was in the minds of most adults almost certainly carrying a lethal dose of LSD, heroin, or Mary Wanna. Those things got trashed within ten seconds of us dumping our haul on the living room rug. Then we spent a good half-hour sorting our stuff into our own respective piles. Favorites here, acceptable there, and I-guess-I’ll-eat-those over there. Neither Sissy nor I ever over-indulged, even without the restraining influence of Mother’s peregrine stare. I can’t remember ever going to bed with a tummy ache because of too many Hershey Bars. We knew the value of hoarding, of savoring, of delayed gratification, because we knew what absolutely no candy or treats felt like, too.

Then came that magical year when we knew we were too old to trick or treat. No pre-teen, much less an authentic gangly actual teenager, would have been caught dead shambling from house to house, muttering “Trick or treat” to incredulous adults who were staring with open hostility at a costumeless, pimple-faced punk. But then again, those were in the days before rolling a fuddyduddy adult’s lawn with toilet paper was replaced with the charming custom of home invasions and retributive homicides for not coughing up the Mister Goodbars.

One year in high school, Halloween fell on a Friday night, which meant a football game (I was in the marching band). Our usual post-game custom was to convoy over to Burger Chef for a burger, or in my case, fries and a large hot chocolate, into which I dipped the fries, for the exquisite sweet/salty combination. But on that Halloween Friday, we all convoyed to my girlfriend’s house, which was closest to the high school, in order that we could see the up and coming rock group Kiss in their first big television appearance. The perennial tv comedian Paul Lynde was hosting a Halloween special that year, and we were all excited to see Kiss actually play in front of an audience. In those halcyon days of three channels which went off the air at midnight, this was A Big Deal. Kiss was ascendant as a cultural phenomenon, having released their breakout Destroyer album back in the summer. It’s all very quaint now, but back then, back when my hair was draped over my shoulders and my waist size was approximately my current thigh size, the tv appearance of Kiss was big. It was Woodstock. It was the Super Bowl with greasepaint and flashpots.

 

And now, Halloween is…a season in which I enjoy the weather and the vibe of the atmosphere in these witchy mountains that almost certainly have goblins and spectres moving in and out of the shadows of the trees and barns. It is a time when I think back with fondness, and when I look forward with dread. I see my country on a precipice, and I see madmen and anarchists wandering the corridors of power and the streets of cities, and there is more fear in the air than with a thousand mummies or Frankenstein’s monsters.

I look outside and I see that the sun has dipped down. The hour of the vampire has arrived, again.

***

I wrote the following story more than 15 years ago. It’s as creaky and clumsy as the Funhouse ride at the carnival used to be, but it holds a special place inside me. The season is appropriate for it, so here it is, for you, dear readers. Happy Halloween.

~ S.K. Orr

ALL HALLOWED YEARS

Truth be told, I’ve done very few good things in my life. I like to think that the effects of some of those few good acts may extend beyond my time on this earth, and that people yet unborn may somehow benefit from them. And in those moments when I worry over the bad things I’ve done or the good things I’ve neglected to do, I am tempted to believe that the bad deeds I’ve committed are still whirling in the air somewhere out there, eager to alight on someone fashioned in the same flesh as mine.

The first time I saw Old Joe, he was walking down my street, headed for home. The kids in town always called him Old Joe, though none of us knew why, or if “Joe” was even his name. We knew him more by his habits than his Christian name. His habits made him an attractive target; that’s what we knew of him.

He carried a paper sack under one arm, and we knew that a bottle of sour mash was hiding inside. The adults in our families had told us of how Old Joe was a drunkard, ever alone, an odd man who had no friends. Some thought he might have been married at one time, and others suspected that he had spent some time in prison. My family had talked of his ancient mother, long since dead, who “wasn’t quite right in the head” and who had beaten her son without human mercy. Whatever the facts, Old Joe liked his whiskey and went at least once weekly to buy a bottle. He was halfway down our block when my friends and I set upon him.

The first rock caught him between the shoulder blades, and he cried out as he spun to see his attackers. The sound struck us as funny, and we laughed as we moved closer. This was my first good look at Old Joe, and it hangs in my memory to this day. His face was red, well-scrubbed and gleaming, and his graying hair was Brilliantined and parted with what must have been pride. His eyes were half hurt, half angry. For the moment, the anger took over.

“Why don’t you young’uns git on away from me?” He pointed a crooked stick of a finger at us.

“Stop tormentin’ me!”

We laughed again, but with less gusto. My friend Dean threw another rock. It hit the sack, and the clink confirmed the contents. Old Joe’s anger withdrew, and only the hurt faced us now.

“I’m tired. I worked all day. Don’t chunk them rocks at me.” He paused, watching. “Go on, now. I ain’t botherin’ y’all.”

I raised my young fist, clutching my rock, and Old Joe looked square at me. Disappointment glittered in his eyes. I lowered my hand. He raked us all with one more look, then turned and continued walking. He glanced back at us twice, but the meanness had subsided in us for the time being.

Later that evening, I asked my mother why Old Joe drank liquor.

“Who can say?” she said, and ladled lima beans onto my plate. “You’d better eat. You need to put your costume on if I’m going to take you and your sister trick or treating.”

“Well, where does he work?”

She sighed. “He doesn’t.”

“Doesn’t work?”

Another sigh. “No, darlin’. He got in trouble because he called a colored man a bad name.”

“What name?”

“Eat.”

“What name?”

She turned to the sink, her way of ending the conversation. “Never mind.”

I waited a minute to see if she would give me some leeway. “Why’d he call the colored man a bad name?”

“I don’t know. Well. I heard that the colored man made fun of the way he talks.”

“So how does he live if he don’t work?”

“Social Security.”

Social Security. I didn’t understand that either, so I ate my beans. I didn’t want to aggravate her and make her back out on taking us trick-or-treating.

As best I can remember, I didn’t see Joe again until exactly three years later. A cool Halloween, near the end of our sugar-fueled outing, and Mother was impatient to finish up and get us home. We pleaded with her to reconsider.

“Can we go to one more block?”

She sighed and shrugged, eying our bulging bags. “One more block. Near our house.”

We were about to walk away from the last house on that last block when my sister noticed something.

“Hey, is that somebody’s house?” She was pointing past the house, into the back yard. There was a garage behind the house. And a garage apartment at the top of a steep flight of unpainted stairs. The light was on: the universal Halloween signal. We turned to Mother, and she nodded.

“Come on.”

We knocked three times and yelled “Trick or treat!” before deciding that the garage apartment dweller was either not home or not dispensing treats. We turned to go and then heard the lock being turned and the door being tugged open. When we spun back to the door, Old Joe was looking down at us. He peered at me for a moment, but didn’t seem to recognize me as a pestilence from his past. He nodded at my mother, and opened the door wider, stepping back.

“Y’all come on in.”

Mother stepped up onto the landing and looked inside, then nodded permission for us to enter. She stood against the door so that Old Joe wouldn’t be tempted to close it behind us.

The room was as dim and dingy as any I’ve seen since. It was as bare as a board, containing a small oilcloth-draped table, a single frail chair, and a thin cot. A grease-spattered stove leaned against the far wall, and a skillet of bacon was adding to the spatters as it cooked. One unshaded bulb hung on a cobwebby cord from the ceiling.

“Fixin’ my supper,” said Old Joe. “Let me find my candy.”

Mother managed a smile. “If you don’t have any, that’s okay. They’ve got more than enough, anyhow.”

Old Joe turned his eyes to her. “No, ma’am. I bought candy last week. It’s just that y’all are the only ones to come trick-or-treatin’ tonight, and I’d plumb forgot about it.” He continued looking in a cabinet covered with a small curtain. I heard cellophane crinkle. “Here it is.”

I looked at his thick fingernails and his thin wrists as he dumped candy in shocking amounts into our bags. I could smell the Brilliantine in his hair. His hands shook just a little, and he smiled just a little as we turned to go. Mother reminded us of our manners.

“Thank you…Happy Halloween!” my sister called as we slipped out past Mother. I echoed her.

He answered, “Y’all are welcome.”

Mother smiled at Old Joe and followed us down the stairs. We heard the door close, and then open again.

“Happy Halloween!” his tenor voice called.

The last time I saw Old Joe was exactly nine years later. It was again Halloween, and I was now a senior in high school, twelve months away from standing on a set of yellow footprints at a Marine Corps recruit depot. I was in line at the grocery store, buying some snacks to take to a Halloween party at a friend’s house. There was a thin man in the line ahead of me. As we moved closer to the cashier, I saw that the man was Old Joe.

He had two cans of tomato soup and a single tube of saltines on the conveyor belt. I noticed the creases in the back of his neck, like fossilized prints of ropes in the sunburned skin. Old Joe had the same fingernails and the same hands. His face wasn’t as red as I remembered, but his hair was much grayer. He watched the teenaged cashier with interest and something like affection. He almost caught me looking at him.

When the girl had finished ringing up his meager groceries and announcing his total, Old Joe fished a change-purse from his trousers. An old-fashioned snap-to-close type, crinkled and worn. He opened it and withdrew two dollar bills, and then dumped the few coins into his hand. There wasn’t enough there to pay for what he’d purchased. The cashier watched him with flat eyes, offering no word, no help.

I bent over, touched the floor, and then straightened up, brandishing the twenty-dollar bill I’d been holding in my hand.

“Sir, I think you dropped this.”

Old Joe looked at me. The expression was familiar, unsettling.

“That ain’t mine.”

I cleared my throat. “I think you dropped it. When you opened your change-purse.” The cashier rolled her eyes and popped her gum.

Old Joe looked down at his soup and his crackers, then back at me. He looked at his hands and back at me. But he never reached for the money. I handed it past him to the girl, who completed the transaction and held out the change. I tried to nod at Old Joe and get him to take the change, but he was looking down.

I collected the money and offered it. “There’s your change, sir.”

He shook his head. “I thank ya. But I can’t keep that. I do thank ya.”

I nodded at him and watched him take his small sack and walk out of the store. The cashier smiled at me and lifted her eyebrows. I ignored her, watching Old Joe’s back.

When I got outside, I trotted across the parking lot to the old man. “Sir?”

He turned to look at me. “Help you?”

I looked down at his bag, at his hands, at his work shoes. “Do you need a ride?”

He frowned and swung his head side to side, declining. The gesture irritated me, and I brushed my hands at him as if I were shooing a chicken away. I had tried and wasn’t going to try again, so I said my teenaged goodbye.

“Fine. Catch you later.”

I was almost to my car when I heard him say, “Happy Halloween.” When I turned back, he was crossing the street, not looking at the approaching traffic.

I heard a horn, turned to see who it was. A carload of my friends pulled up next to me. Dean leaned out, grinning. He had plastic devil horns on his forehead.

“What’re you doing? Lose your car?”

I called him a bad name and he laughed. Then I got into my car and followed my friends to the party, where we stuffed ourselves with food and drank purloined liquor until the cool dawn of All Saint’s Day pushed us finally home, home to our full houses and patient families.

(2005 by S.K. Orr)