Tuesday's Child: Trick or Treat

Crit Welcome!  I wrote this piece today just for this Tuesday's Child challenge.  Help me make it better!

Autumn had fully descended upon my little town of Dead Cricket, Missouri.  The sky shown gray, lit by a Hunter's Moon, fat, orange and low on the horizon.  Everything about the night said Halloween.

My quiet little neighborhood in Dead Cricket swarmed with kids seeking treats, laughing like lunatics, occasionally slipping into muted whispers walking past Christ Church's cemetery.  The smell of wood smoke, apple cider and wet fallen leaves tinged the air.

We went trick or treating in small groups in those days -- five or six of us, always the same sex -- keeping our distance from the other groups so we could maintain some semblance of camaraderie.   As always, I was with my best friend Fred, the wiliest, funniest, craziest kid in fifth grade.  Fred was wicked smart, sometimes disrespectful, but always good for a laugh.

On this night, Fred was in his prime.  He had cooked up what he called the "double dip" scheme -- a way, he claimed, to get twice as much candy.  Uncharacteristically, Fred was extremely secretive about his plot, so I didn't learn of the details until he came to pick me up at my house.

"Hello Mrs. Valentine!" Fred said as he barreled through our front door without knocking.  If it had been any other kid, my mom would have had fits, but Fred had that Eddie Haskell knack of staying in good graces with adults.

"Hello Fred," my mother replied from the kitchen, her hands full of charcoal dust as she artistically made me a dirty hobo.  Blowing a strand of hair from her eyes she inspected her work again and smiled.

"All done Mike," she said proudly, wiping her hands absentmindedly on her blue bunny apron.  Those smears of charcoal would infuriate her later.

Fred had bounded into the kitchen, nodding greeting to my dad who was in his easy chair reading the paper and smoking his pipe.  Fred knew better than to shine on my dad, who, while never book smart, had been around the world with the Navy and was seen as a worldly man.

Fred's costume appeared to be a long robe with a shrouded hood.  He carried a wooden scythe, so I guessed he was supposed to be Death.  Not much of a costume.  On the other hand, my mother had carefully stitched some of her quilt remnants to an old pair of overalls, applied just the right amount of charcoal to make them look dirty, and finished it off with an old wooden dowel with a kerchief tied at the end.

I was the essence of hobo.  I was more hobo than a hobo.  Now, with my strategically placed dirt on my face, I was the spitting image of the tramps we often saw jumping on and off the freight trains that ran through the edge of town.

Fred's eyebrow raised as he surveyed my costume.  "Nice work Mrs. Valentine, Mike will be the best minister yet."

My mother's face fell until she caught Fred's wry smile.  "Oh Fred, you're such a tease."

Fred smiled and gestured.  "Come on Mike!  It's pitch black and all the good candy is getting given away!"

I looked at my mom, who smiled and nodded.

We bolted for the front door, hoping to avoid lectures, conjectures and pictures.

Too late.

My dad was already there with his Polaroid camera, waiting for us.

"Just one picture you two, for your moms," he said, a wisp of pipe smoke curling from his mouth.

We moaned and groaned and made to dash around him, but in the end, posed gamely in front of the piano, arms around each other.  I still have that picture in a little frame on my desk, the colors altered from time and sunlight, but I can still remember the flash as the camera froze us in time.

Out the door we went, two grade school kids without the worries of the world on us yet.  I was dying to know Fred's plan.  As soon as we had gotten out from the glow of the street light, I grabbed Fred's arm and said "So?  What's the big plan?"

Fred's smile was big in the dusky night.  "See this costume?" he asked.

"Yeah?  Death I guess, right?"

"Yep.  But watch."

He bent over and pulled up the bottom of the robe, snatching it off in an easy motion.  Underneath, he was wearing a Bat-man costume, the mask hanging loosely from his neck on it's stretchy string.

It took a minute for the idea to sink in.

"You. Are. A. Genius!" I cried, clapping my hands on his shoulders. "So how's this gonna work?"

Fred's smile became conspiratorial.  "You and me go to the house with me dressed like Death.  We get our loot and leave.  Then, you hide, I take off the robe, put on the Bat-man mask and hit the house again!  Double candy."

Fred was brilliant.

We set off into the night, our laughter blending easily with the mock screams, giggles and childish antics of our fellow trick or treaters.

The plan worked perfectly.  At each house, Fred and I would knock, tell our obligatory joke (Why did the chicken cross the road? What has four wheels and flies?) and collect our candy from the smiling resident of the home. We would leave and I would wait out of sight while Fred returned alone to the house in his Bat-man costume.  No one was the wiser.  Several people frowned slightly at the sight of a lone trick or treater, but no one refused him his double dip.

We scrupulously avoided houses with the front porch lights off, but joked about hitting them with rotten eggs next year. "Spoil sports," Fred remarked, as we walked by another darkened home.

We had reached the end of Biscayne Street, one of the few dead end streets in the neighborhood.  In our enthusiasm, we were likely out later than we should have been.  The night had gotten colder, and the wind had picked up, the trees rustling to each other in their secret arboreal language.

I had never been on this street, and I was getting cold.  "Fred, I'm pretty much loaded down here," I said, hefting my orange plastic trick or treat bag.  Fred was busy with bags in both hands, both as full as mine.  He stopped and looked at me with that upturned eyebrow.

"You're kidding, right?  Mike, we've got a great scam going here.  One more street and then we can go, OK?"

I nodded gamely, since I didn't want the abuse of being called a girl.

The house at the end of Biscayne was probably beautiful once.  A style that I've only come to understand as New England salt box, it had a large front yard, and it was well treed and landscaped with hedges throughout.  The porch light was on.  We were welcome.

I knocked since Fred had to hold one bag out in the open and hold the other one under his robe.  It was awkward, and made more difficult with the increasing weight of the goodies we had received, but Fred was well-practiced at this by now.  The man opening the door was short, bald and looked way too serious.

"Yes?" he said, as if he didn't know why two costumed kids were there.

"Trick or Treat!" we cried in unison, holding our bags up.  In the 1960's, it was still traditional to do a little dance or tell a joke before getting a treat, but some people had dispensed with that to hurry the transaction along.  We held out hope that this would be the case.

"Well," the man said, looking us over, "Death and a Tramp.  Something poetic about that."

We both muttered "Yes sir," waiting expectantly for the command to tell a joke, or, if we were lucky, just the sound of candy rustling into our outstretched bags.  He turned away from the door a moment and returned with two apples.

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away, I always say," the man said, with a slight smirk.  My bag dipped perceptibly as the apple smashed a Milky Way and shattered a Mr. Goodbar.

"Thanks Mister," I said looking into my bag to gauge the damage.

"Thanks Sir," Fred said, smiling from under his hood.

We turned and bounded down the steps.  The man continued to watch us from the open door, a pool of light showing us the way down his darkened front path.  As we reached the street, we turned into the hedges there and stopped.

"Fred, maybe we can just go.  This guy is kind of weird."  I said, peering around the hedge at the now closed door.  As I did so, I saw the front porch light go off.

"See?  He's done for the night," I said, ashamed at the pleading sound of my own voice, but feeling my hands growing clammy.

"So what?  He was just there.  We know he was.  He seemed fine with trick or treaters.  Didn't seem like he minded at all." Fred said, pulling the robe over his head.

He pulled the Bat-man mask over his face, picked up one of his two bags and said "So?  I look OK?"

I nodded, feeling unsure if I needed to be firmer with my objection.  At ten, it's hard to assert yourself with your best friend, especially with something as amorphous as a feeling.

Fred headed up the dark path back to the house.  I could hear him whistling, probably "An Old Fashioned Love Song" which had played on the radio constantly that summer. I heard the sound of him knocking on the door.  I peered around the hedge, but without the front porch light on, I could only see the shadows of the porch, not Fred.

I heard Fred knock again.  I may have heard a slight squeak of the door opening, but I couldn't be sure.  I did hear Fred say "Trick or..." and then the sound of a door slamming shut.

"Rats," I thought, "Fred's been caught in his little scheme."

I waited for Fred to return, ready to give him his fair share of abuse.  A long minute went by.  Nothing.

I peered around the hedge again, trying to see Bat-man's tights and cape in the darkness.  Nothing.

Putting my candy bag with Fred's other bag on top of his robe, I quietly strode up the path to the darkened house.  No Fred.

"Did he go in?" I thought, stopping short of the porch.

How long I stood there, I don't know.  I heard an owl hoot, and felt the hairs on my neck go up.  I felt alone, scared and cold.  And, I was getting worried about Fred.

Willing my frozen legs to move, I finally climbed the steps to the front door, stopping and listening with each step.  Nothing.

I softly knocked, my heart racing loudly in my ears.  Nothing.

I knocked harder this time, and called out "Fred?"

To this day, I'm not sure if I imagined it or if I really heard it, but my ten year old brain remembers this: a voice sounding like it was coming out of a well.  I froze, my eyes wide and my hands clenched at my sides.  I swear it said "No trick or treating alone."

I don't remember much of what happened next.  I vaguely remember running home and, in hysterics, telling my parents that Fred had disappeared.

I remember sitting in the car as my dad pounded on the door of the dark house at the end of Biscayne Street.  I also remember the Old Spice smell of the policeman who asked me the same questions over and over again, as I cried blackened charcoal tears onto my overalls.

With fading memory I now know almost as much as I did that day.  The whispers in the school, the questions from other kids.  But the truth became legend and the legend became truth.

No one had lived in that house on Biscayne in over thirty years.  The residents, a nice couple and their son, had disappeared without a trace one dark Halloween night.

Of Fred, I only have my recollection of his single upturned eyebrow and his knowing smirk.  The bags of candy and his robe were taken by the police, but no other trace of Fred was ever found.

Tonight the moon is huge and orange, a Hunter's Moon like it was that night.  I hear the sound of children running to and from doors, shouting trick or treat.  The wind rustles through the somnolent trees and I cock my ear, listening for Fred's voice.