Friday, I tried to leave early. I guess I did, since I left a quitting time instead of an hour later. As I rode my bike through the city, I saw that the trick-or-treating had already begun, even though the sun wouldn’t set for another hour or so.
When I got home, I saw that my neighbor was already sitting on the porch, dealing the candy. Our house is a twin, and we share a porch. There’s some kind of imaginary line, like the international date line, running down the concrete steps between us. They sit on that side, and we sit on this side.
My son’s Jack ‘o lantern had already been put out. He reserved the most prestigious spot for his pumpkin, by putting it on a bit of stump I had saved for outdoor stools.
Walking up the steps, I noticed a sign on our door. My wife had written a note telling the trick-or-treaters that we weren’t ready yet. She had turned out all the lights, to make us look like we weren’t home, so I didn’t notice that she had put the bag over the entry-way sconce. The bag is cut like a jack ‘o lantern and is something that has been saved for a number of years now, in the attic collection of Halloweenalia.
I went inside and found everyone in the kitchen. I went to my pumpkin, and started digging out the cut pieces, trying to keep them in one piece. I don’t know why. Maybe I had an idea of preserving the pumpkin for another day, but that’s just plain silly.
I found a candle, and set it up, and then I took it out to the front porch to put it on the top step, below my son’s pumpkin. It was such an innocent move, performed so confidently. I am proud of my pumpkins, and often with there could be a pumpkin carving contest for our block, or maybe neighborhood.
I lit the candle, put the top back on, and stepped back to consider it. I decided that one candle wasn’t enough, so I went in to get another. During this time, my daughter placed her pumpkin on the step below mine. I stepped back again, and deciding I was happy with the effect, I went in to get the camera. Little did I know that I was about to document one of the scariest events of my life.
It was getting dark now. Our neighbors across the street had lit the tiki lights. The flow of children was no longer a trickle, but also not yet a flood.
In a lull between trick-or-treaters, I asked my neighbor, Ben, to come appraise our efforts and tell me what he thought they looked like. This is generally a tricky dance in politeness, as he is supposed to figure out what is going on in the pumpkins, thus confirming our skill.
“So what do you think it looks like, Ben?” I asked.
“Which one is yours,” came his riposte.
“The one in the middle.”
He considered a moment. I stood there, oblivious to the giant trap door that somehow magically appeared in the sidewalk. This is a metaphorical trap door, not a literal one. We’re not talking about the supernatural.
And then, the trap sprung.
“Is it George Bush?” Ben asked.
‘George Bush! George Bush!’ I thought. ‘How the hell could he see George Bush there?’
“What?” I asked, in my suitably brilliant conversationalist way. “What do you mean? It’s a living Buddha a good thing, not the most wicked and evil person this earth has seen in a long time!”
What had I done? There is no way in hell I wanted to memorialize Bush II on my pumpkin! I wanted happy! I wanted serene! Not the person I blamed for much of the world’s ills.
I was scared. What if other people thought this? What if my message, – insofar as a jack-o-lantern can be said to be as message – had, through some supernatural agency, taken over my mind, or my hand, and caused me to perpetrate this evil deed.
In a state of some shock, I went through the rest of the evening. At times, there were ten or twenty children on the sidewalk in front of us, waiting, patiently or impatiently as was their wont, for us to throw a bit of candy in their plastic pumpkins.
I must have really been thrown, because I don’t think I actually took in more than five of the costumes the kids were wearing. It was a blur, punctuated, now and then, by further confirmation.
“Oh look at the pumpkins!” Pause. “Is that George Bush?” I would cringe inside every time I heard those words, and if I heard them once, I probably heard them a dozen times that night.
To one person I asked, “Why do you think it’s George Bush?”
“It’s the ears, I think.”
The ears were bigger and seemed to stick out a bit from the rest of the pumpkin. A neat effect, I guess, had I been trying for it. I decided to go in and get the photo and the study my pumpkin was based on. I taped them to the railing, in case anyone got close enough to inspect the history of the carving.
Over and over, I was left explaining what it was supposed to be. But then, it got even weirder. Maybe even more scary, depending on how you look at things. I shall leave you with this quote from yet another of the parents of the trick-or-treaters.
“Oh look at that pumpkin! Is that Obama?”
Composing members:
0
Composing members:
0
