Fireflies

By Jonathon York, 4/10/1999

Grandma Timothy always talked about how the little people danced in the woods back behind the house and the blackberry bushes, but Joe never saw them.  No, she’d  go on and on and on, talking about them being thick back there on the north side of Wolf Creek, and all the way back to the Gholson’s place up on Turkey Ford, just blazing their lights, chattering away so much as they danced that your eyes couldn’t take it anymore.  Could burn a house down with their chatter.  They’re always out there, she’d say, and they first come out when the corn was green, and last all the way through summer, till the egrets fly off to Texas and the big ol’ owl comes to chase ‘em all back to their sleepy bed under the creek and around the corn shocks of autumn.  She said too that you could see em out there if you tried, out there playing on the riverbank, their little glowing bodies darting in and out of the passionflowers and the marsh mallows, flirting with each other’s reflection in the water.   

“Aww, Grandma,” said Joe, “Those are just fireflies, you know?  Lightning bugs?  I mean, they’re neat and all, but—“ 

“Oh no, I know about fireflies an all that.  Think I can’tell  the difference?  Wemache’kanish, you can see ‘em among the fireflies, if you let yourself to.  But really, you don’t wanna see ‘em.  They’re trouble.” 

Joe chuckled softly.  He had heard stories like this from Grandma Timothy before, and typically just shrugged them off.  After all, these are just stories from a superstitious old lady who, even though he called her Grandma, wasn’t really his Grandma at all.  He was Chris’s Great-grandma and somehow managed to cheat death for yet another year.  Weird too, how she managed to do that.  I mean, here she was, smoking like his father’s old pickup, drinking coffee at all hours of the day, chowing down on frybread and salt pork just like everybody else here in Cayuga, but while the average life expectancy here was just a shade better than fifty, Grandma Timothy had made it to a hundred-and-two.  Joe remembered when the whole town got together to celebrate her last birthday, and Beth Rengel from Channel 2 came out to ask how she managed to live so long, outlive four husbands and seven grandkids.  “Strawberry soda pop” she’d say.  That and watching out for the little ones. Could play pool to beat all hell, too.  Grandma Timothy was a rocket all right.  Now here she was back and forth in her beat-up rocking chair, muttering some stuff and nonsense about the little people. This evening, lightning could faintly be seen just over the tree line on the horizon. 

“Ax, piht et kata sukelan,” she mused, pointing generally out the window at the thunderclouds rolling in from the west.  “Maybe after it rain you can see what I mean.  You’re a growin’ boy and in your springtime.  You’ll see ‘em soon enough, just about when you start to kwingioxkwe.”  With that she chuckled, relaxed further into her rocking chair and looked over at her great-grandson Chris, who had been busy cleaning up in the kitchen after supper.   

“Hey, Joe,” started Chris, “you wanna give me a hand in here with these dishes?  After all, you helped dirty ‘em.” 

“Oh boy, that’s a whole lot there to do, enit?”  Joe was now standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, looking at three plates, four glasses and an ashtray.  Now he was just within earshot of the eight-dollar radio on the other side of the fridge, blaring out in defiance of its smallness the strains of a familiar tune that everybody knew by heart.  Well, everybody but Joe anyway. 

“Deet Dot Deedee da dee dot dah I’m beginning to see the light.  Come on Joe, join the fun!”  Chris threw a towel into Joe’s face and started dancing the way only a fourteen year old boy could, in front of a soapy sink full of dishes.  Joe took up the towel and already knew the routine.  Pick up a plate, wipe, wipe, wipe, check it for spots, and put it in the cabinet.  He was two inches taller than Chris, and was better able to reach the cabinets without breaking anything.  So with the music going and the television on in the other room, with Grandma Timothy to look out for, two chattering adolescents set about the rest of the house straightening everything up for when Chris’ mother Donita came home from work, around midnight.   

She didn’t make it.  After covering the floor until the graveyard shift could arrive, Donita was stuck passing meds and supervising the eleven o’clock bed-check.  The Nancies, Nancy Jumper and Nancy Elam, were at each other’s throats again, and that would prove to make a long night even longer, with Nancy Jumper caterwauling down the hall about how Nancy Elam put a root on her to make her bed fill up with crickets.  Donita marched down the hall and shook her finger at Nancy Elam to behave herself.  Who the hell had put these two damned skilis in the same room together in the first place? 
Elam just sat there in her bed stewing while Jumper darted about the room waving her chubby peanut arms over her head, presumably to shoo away the crickets. 

“Ah, now look, you’ve got her all worked up.  Would you just stop teasing her and go to sleep? I’ve had a long night and I don’t need any of your crap tonight, okay?” 

Nancy just smiled quietly and nodded her head so slow it was creepy.  “I’ll do what I can, but I can’t sleep right with this witch in here, you know.” 

“Yeah, well it takes one to know one, don’t it
Nancy?” Donita gave an acid chuckle.  Meanwhile Nancy Jumper hopped around back of the nurse’s station up the hall.  As soon as she hear the drawers slamming open and shut, Donita was back up to the station, in a frantic effort to coax the little old peanut woman back into her room. 

“I need a cigrit,”
Nancy chirped as she rummaged through the lab coat on the chair. 

“Oh no, you don’t,
Nancy, you’ve already had your cigarette, and you don’t need any of mine.” 

“Come on, ‘Nita, gimme a smoke.” 

“I said you’ve had enough.” 

“But that old witch in there—“ 

“I’ve already talked to her and she promised she’d leave you alone.”  With that she got Jumper back down the hall, and tucked her into bed.  Just as Donita started back up the hall from their room, a couple crickets leap-frogged their way around her ankles. 

“
Nancy!” She gave Nancy Elam a sharp, scolding glance. 
Elam grinned.  “I’ll get you back!” Donita snapped.  With that
Elam’s eyes got big and her grin disappeared.  Damn Skilis. 

It was late, and the fireflies were out.  Audra Wabaunsee and her friend Dede were out amongst them, and feeling the cool night air as they danced around the front yard.  It was the weekend, and since they didn’t have to go to school the next day, they could stay out a little bit later, they’d decided on a whim to make the most of it.  Besides, during the day it gets awful hot in the house, and by the time it got dark it was still too hot inside.  Across the road over at the Martins they could hear Chris and Joe carrying on in the kitchen, their radio just barely audible on the night air.  The fireflies wouldn’t be really thick till summer, but for now, they were still fun to look at.  Every now and then one would flash right into Dede’s eyes and she couldn’t see for a second.  Suddenly she jumped. 

“What’s the matter?” Said Audra. 

“That wasn’t a firefly.”  

“What the hell you talkin’ about?  That was too a firefly.” 

“No really it wasn’t.  It was, like, a little guy or something.” 

“Sounds like you’re thinkin’ about somebody.” Audra insinuated.  “Did he look like Lee Dollarhide?  I bet he looked just like Lee Dollar—“ 

“I am not, wouldja quit it?” 

“Aww, come on–.” 

“No really, I saw it just plain as day,” she insisted. 

A heavy drop of water fell into Audra’s eye. “Hey, let’s just go on inside.  It’s starting to rain.”  As they headed back up to the porch, you could hear Audra humming that little song she does—“hmm-hm-hm-hm-hmm-hmm”– whenever she’s picking on Dede about Lee Dollarhide. He was the really tall guy on the Cayuga Basketball team, and every girl in town wanted to get a piece of him.  You could even hear the little old frybread ladies at the Stomp Grounds and the Bingo Hall chatter about “Didja see Lee,” and “Isn’t he so fabulous?” and “You know if I were just ten years younger I’d–”   Anyway.  Everybody knew that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of even getting close to Lee, ‘cause after all, he was going places, and nobody wanted to ruin it for him.  Audra and Dede were the best of friends, and both of them were by this point well on their way to growing up to be a couple of gossipy ol’ frybread ladies, just like their moms and their aunts. 

Audra’s folks were settling down in front of the tube, when they   Another ad for Frank Husong’s Used Cars was blaring on the screen.  A  really stupid-looking lightning bolt split the image in half, and there was Frank Husong showing off a bunch of cars he just got in off the truck last month.  Shouting in his most persuasive voice, he jabbered on about how the low, low prices shouldn’t shock you, these deals are for real.  And just to show everybody he wasn’t kidding, he put basketball star Lee Dollarhide in the commercial, driving away in a shiny red convertible with Frank’s beautiful daughter Katrina in the passenger seat.  Dede sneered at the T.V.   

“Bitch,” she spat.  About the same time the thunder in the air told everybody the storm that was on the news at five was fast approaching.  Audra’s father looked up at her daughter from his sofa. 

“Good thing you guys came inside, it’s gonna rain.  Tomorrow morning we gotta go out to the lodge and get ready for Greencorn, ya know?” 

“Aww, do we got to?  I mean, nobody else does it, why do we?” 

Her mother gave her a stern reply. “You know better than that.  Now go clean up and get ready for bed.  We gotta get up early tomorrow.  You can also bring Dede along to help.”  Audra kinda shuffled down the hall to the back bathroom, while Dede looked back at George and Annie Wabaunsee.  “You mean I can come too?”  She seemed almost eager.   

Annie waved her hand.  “Oh yeah, as long as you can get up before six.  We have to sweep it up, get the power connnected, and the fridge stocked.  That and it’s gonna blow tonight, I saw it on the news.  So we’re gonna have to clear branches too.  Anyway  we could use the help.  It’s not like we could get the little people to help.  They’re just trouble.” 

“Gee, thanks, Mrs. Wabaunsee.” All the while Audra brushed her teeth and let out a dissatisfied groan every time her mom mentioned a chore to be done at the lodge. 

The lightning struck the Martin place around one o’clock in the morning.  Donita wasn’t quite home yet, and the fire had spread into the living room before anybody realized it had happened.  Grandma Timothy hobbled into Chris’ bedroom and shook both him and Joe awake. 

“Tukihla, Chris, we’ve got to get out.  Sasapelehla and there’s a fire.” 

Chris rubbed his eyes, and mumbled something utterly unintelligible.  Joe squinted from the top bunk, but his eyes quickly widened and locked onto the orange glow behind Grandma Timothy’s head.  They scrambled together some clothes and their blankets, and crawled out the window into the bushes.   

“I’ll go get help.”  Joe shouted.  He bolted across the muddy road as the heavy rain instantly soaked his clothes.  Soon he was pounding on the  door of the Wabaunsee house.   

No answer.  He considered going on to the next house, but the Gholsons were half-a-mile up the road.  The Records’ Dairy Farm had water, but only the Lone Wolf salvage yard had a truck to carry it.  And he’s have to call from somewhere.  He pounded on the door again. 

Still no answer.  He thought about Grandma Timothy, and only breathed when he saw her and Chris standing on the side of the road.  A big ol’ blanket covered both their heads, and Chris started coughing the soot out of his lungs.  How long had the house been burning?  He reared back his fists once more to pound the door, but hesitated just for a moment when a firefly flashed in front of his face.   

God that’s disorienting.  Quickly he pounded the door again.  This time he shouted, and a light came on in the house.  The door swung open, and Dede stood before him in her bathrobe, pushing her long dark hair out of her eyes.  For the moment, and probably just ‘cause she finally opened the door, Joe thought Dede the most beautiful girl in the world. 

“Jeez, what is it?”  she started to say.  Then she looked beyond Joe’s shoulder to see the front of the Martin house wrapped in a golden black frenzy of flame and smoke.  “Oh my God your house!” 

“It’s not my house.  Your phone work?” 

“Grandma Timothy—“ 

“Is fine.  Chris got her out.  Fact, she woke us up.” 

“Here, come inside, I’ll go call Glen up at Lone Wolf.” 

Chris and his great-grandmother splashed across the road and stomped their muddy feet on the Wabaunsee’s porch.  By this time everybody in the house was up, and Donita’s car had just pulled in.  George emerged from the bedroom, fastening his belt and at the same time looking for his keys.   Never very effective, but this was an emergency, damn it. 

Donita charged up to George.  “How’d it start?  Oh my God, are you all right?” 

Grandma Timothy turned.  “Sasapelehla.  Think it was the Wemache’kanishak did this.   

“That or some damn skili,” chimed Audra.  “Piss anybody off lately?” 

“Now, hush Audra, that wasn’t very nice.”  And they all stood there on the porch watching the house burn up in the rain while Joe and Chris ran around the side of the house to hook up the hose.  Glen came by with the old fire truck just in time to save the well and the foundation. 

Donita may have lost her house , but she still had to go to work the next day. 

“Shame about your house, enit?”  Nancy Elam said, well, chuckled really. 

“What did you do, Nancy?”  Donita was pissed. 

“I dint do nothin, Nita. I swear it.  Somethin’ else I tell ya.”  Nancy Elam pushed a button on the box by the bedrail and raised her head just enough to look Donita square in the eye.   

“Shes right, you know.  She’s just a cricket lady,” squeaked her roommate. 

“Oh, and now you’re taking her side.  What is this?” 

“No, she’s just the cricket lady, really.  Just wantsa bug me to death is all.”  For the first time in her life, Nancy Jumper rises up to defend her mortal enemy. 

“You got the little people out there.  Somebody musta saw.”

Msingw

By Jonathon York, 10/31/1998

It was that time of year again.  Just before the first frost when the air was crisp and cool, and a breeze from the north shuffled through the pecans and walnuts like a restless old man, tugging at the leaves that still clung green to their branches and mocked the dogwoods and the mallow trees who had shed their summer coats only a couple weeks before.  During the day the sky held up its pale blue standard, foreshadowing the ice which would seal off the Neosho
River from the chill of winter’s winds.  Egrets still stalked the riverbanks probing the murky shallows along the bend, here and again lifting their needle-like bills to swallow their quarry.  Badgers would be out soon, yet water snakes still lingered, hoping to snare some foolish unsuspecting victim from the waters edge, maybe a vole or a small hare, but usually settling for less uncooperative prey in the river itself.  An owl cried, just before it took flight as silent as the moonrise. It was indeed that time of year again, when the women of Cayuga would bring in the squash and pumpkin they had so carefully tended in their gardens, when their men got good and drunk and started heading off into the woods with their buddies, their dogs, and their shotguns to go see if they could “bring down a big’un this time.”  Their wives would stand out on their front porches hollering at them to be careful, stay close, and not shoot anybody thinking they were a deer.  The little boys, anxious and excited, would send their fathers off, pestering them all the way to their pickups to take them with them and let them shoot the gun “just once huh pleeease Dad?” 

“No, Chris, you’re not coming with us on this one,”  Dad would slur.  “This is dangerous stuff here and we wouldn’t want you gettin’ underfoot.  You might getcher fool head blowed off, y’hear?” 

“But Dad, you promised, and Joe gets to go out chasin’ rabbits ‘nstuff,”  Chris would lie. 

“Now dammit I toadja once, an’ I’m tellin’ ya’gin.  Now, go on in the house and work on your costume.  Keep it up an you won’t go trick or treatin’ tonight.” 

In short, it was Halloween.  Chris had just turned nine the month before, and his friend Joe Tonemah had gotten him all excited about the idea of hunting while they were at recess at the school down in
Afton.  “See that Chris?”  Joe would point somewhere at the ground.  “Them’s rabbit tracks.”  And Chris would squint close to the spot in the schoolyard mud where Joe had shot his finger.  “Oh yeah? Howzat?  I don’t see nuthin’.”  Whereupon Joe would crouch down low and trace out the outline of each impression, first the front feet,  then the back.  “See?  It makes kind of a ‘Y’ shape right here.  Looks like he went off that way.” 

Truth be told, Joe was right about that, as he was right about a lot of things, in Chris’ estimation.  Whether or not it was true, he really didn’t care.  He just wanted to get a shot at running around in the woods,  and find out just what it was that his Dad and all his buddies were doing out in the woods such that while Joe’s dad, who always took Joe and no one else, always came back with at least a pair of rabbits, or even a deer, his own father, with all the help he could ever need, came up short.  

“Aww, Dad!”  Chris kicked a rock in the driveway with his boot, and sauntered up to the house.  From inside the house a dusty, yet fleshy and certainly unpleasant odor wafted across his nostrils, warning him that Mom was inside making pumpkinseed tea.  Even the dogs, Bear and Lilli, ducked away when she made that gawdawful crap. 

“C’mon Chris, get in here and get your cup of tea before it gets cold.”  It wasn’t Chris’ cup of tea, this shit was nasty.  He started for safety of the hallway and his bedroom.  

“Hold it, young man!”  came the voice of authority from the kitchen.  “You know you gotta have pumpkinseed tea or you’ll get worms like the dog.  You wanna get worms like the dog?  And Take your boots off when you come inside, I don’t want you tracking mud all over my clean house!” 

Grumbling, Chris stamped his feet in the hallway, in defiance to this last remark.  He pulled off his boots—cowboy boots, just like Joe’s and his father’s, not those plastic vinyl basketball shoe things you get at the Wal-Mart over in Miami—and padded into Mom’s kitchen in his socks, which had already begun their drowsy escape from his toes. 

The smell was overpowering.  Every year, when the Martins carved pumpkins for Halloween, they went through this same ritual.  Chris and his older brother Shane, who was in high school, would sit out in the backyard carving up pumpkins, and Mom would tell them to save the seeds and the pulp inside, ‘cause she would need that for the tea.  Fall is typically a wet time of year in their part of the country, and since they were out with the dogs so much, there was always the danger of worms.  But instead of going down to Dr. Cope like normal people (Chris believed)  Mom always boiled down the trash from inside their jack-o-lanterns and make the vile brew she and Grandma Timothy would call “Pumpkinseed Tea.”  Speaking of Grandma Timothy, there she was in the living room, rocking back and forth in her rocking chair watching the local news on Channel 2.  And sipping away happily at a delicious mug of pumpkinseed tea. 

“Get yourself a cup, now,” Mom said, slowly stirring the broth with a soup ladle.   

Limply Chris held out a small coffee cup, you know, the one with the chip in it that everybody hates to drink out of but don’t have the heart to throw away?  Mom carefully ladled out a piping hot serving of the stuff, and bade him go in and keep Grandma company.   

The television had been blaring out an ad for Frank Husong’s Used Cars when Chris stepped in.  Promising a “treat on a trade in without any tricks”, the guy on the TV, presumably Frank Husong himself, told the audience to hurry in before these deals get spooked.  Grandma Timothy nodded in her rocking chair and sipped her tea.   

“He’ Grandma,” Chris almost didn’t say. 

Grandma Timothy, well actually Great-Grandma Timothy, looked away from the television, as if she could really see anymore anyway, and regarded Chris’ general direction.  “O’t He’, did you get your tea from your kuka like she said?  You know you got to have that or the scarecrow getcha.”  Grandma often didn’t make a lot of sense. 

“Yeah I got it here.  D’ja see my Halloween costume, Grandma?  It’s badass!” 

“Christopher!” came the voice from the kitchen.  “How dare you use language like that in this house!  And in front of your Grandma Timothy too!” 

Nothing like a cussword to sweeten pumpkinseed tea. 

But to be quite honest, for a nine-year-old kid living in the sticks it was indeed a badass costume.  Lots of rubber and glue to stick on one side of his face, and that really cool fake blood stuff, with an eye sliding down the cheek, it was soooo gross he just had to have it.  Mom at first wouldn’t let him wear it, but the tube of gunk in the package said non-toxic and Chris made sure to point out this fact to his Mom at least a dozen times. Plus it came with a Flame Retardant Plastic Tuxedo Overlay and it was on sale.  In the end childhood perseverance paid off, and Chris was the proud owner of the RealLife Half-and-Half Toxic Mutant Super Guy, and he’d be America’s Best Dressed Hero since Jim McSherry’s Rook, just like it said on the box.  Cool. 

Mom came into the living room with a stern and determined stride, her hand reaching for Chris’ ear. “Now you apologize to your Grandma, right this minute.  And mean it too.”  But Grandma Timothy was actually very hard of hearing, and only really heard the things she wanted to hear.  Now her attention shifted back to the television. 

“Good evening,  I’m Beth Rengel,” the television squawked melodiously in the corner as the tube flashed images of children all done-up in costumes made to look like witches, skeletons, and zombies, lining up and chattering in an elementary school hallway, then another of parents holding their costumed children by the hand as they paraded down well-lit residential sidewalks, swinging their smiling plastic pumpkin-shaped buckets back and forth.  “A night filled with ghosts and goblins as this years’ Trick Or Treaters take to the streets.  Later we’ll show you how You can keep your little monsters Safe, this Halloween.”  *****Safety, of course, had been the last thing on Bill’s mind, despite what he had told his kid a half an hour before.  He and his drinking buddies Dick Spicer, 32, father of three last any one was willing to admit; after all, Spicer was the town drunk, and Sean Loomis, a hair younger than Bill himself and a ne’er do well with big ideas and no follow-through, met up just in front of Rieder’s right across from Frank Husong’s Used Car Lot, to count up their gear, their shot and their beer, everything they would need for a truly successful hunting weekend. 

Sean had originally planned on setting out at 4:30 that morning, but since he had never gotten around to letting anybody else know about it, Dick Spicer figured they’d all get together for a couple rounds at the Red Port 11, then hoof it up to TomCat Corner to grab a doughnut and a cup o’coffee to give everybody a chance to sober up for a good Sunday morning’s hunt below the Spavinaw Dam.  As it was, none of this had come to pass, and Sean, Dick, and Bill were all sitting on the gate of his pickup working up a steady buzz in front of Rieder’s.  What the fuck happened? 

Just then Sean’s train of thought was derailed.  It was Spicer, more trashed then the rest.  “Hey Loomis! Ya s’pose we oughta start headin’ out there?” 

“Man, I don’t know if we got the time to go all the way down Spavinaw, we might just wanna call it a night.” 

“The hecka you talkin’ about, Loomis?  We just got here, and this is your idea anyhow, don’ back out on us now.” This could’ve been Bill talking, but Sean wasn’t a bit sure, and quite frankly neither was Bill. 

Now here came Spicer again. “I ain’t talkin’ about Spavinaw, Loomis!  What aboutRed
Port?” “Now hold on just a secon’,” Sean tried to remain lucid.  ‘Fwere gonna get anything done this weekend, we oughta just stick to the plan, right Bill?” 

Bill said, “Yeah, whatever, don’t worry ‘bout it,  we gots plenty a time for all that.  “S’Halloween, remember?  They’ll be open all night.” 

“I don’t remember you comin’ up here, when’ djou get here?  Don’t you have a kid or somethin’ to go trickertreatin’ tonight? 

“Ol’ Lady’s makin’ punkinseed tea, man, I hadda get outa there.” 

Spicer nodded in sudden understanding.  Truly this was awful shit. These three grew up here, and every year when they were kids, their own mothers had tried to give them the same yellow-brown concoction  they each had grown to hate.  Dick usually managed to avoid it by surreptitiously pouring it down the sink, and Bill used to dump Grandma Timothy’s brew out his bedroom window when he was a kid, at least until Grandma found out.  Now he found new excuses. 

“Aw man, I hear ya.  Glad you got away in time.” 

Loomis was puzzled.  “What’s punkinseed tea?” 

“Oh you’re lucky you never had it, Sean.  It’s like drinkin’ an armpit.” 

“Supposed to keep the bugs away, though.” 

“And everything else, I hear.” 

“Yeah,” Bill continued, “but Grandma Timothy always said it kept the scarecrow off yer back, ‘n’ I guess if that means it keeps you from catchin’ bugs in the straw, then hey, oh well.” 

“Pffh, Southern Comfort’ll do just as good.”  Loomis chuckled. 

“Oh I don’ know about that,” came Spicer’s reply as he pointed out the ants crawling up the side of the open bottle on the pavement. 

Just then an owl cried in the distance.

******

Joe had just finished his own cup of pumpkinseed tea that his father made for him, and started putting together his costume.  Chris and his mom would be by in just a few minutes, and he wanted to make sure he was all ready for a night of Trick-or-Treating that was sure to get a haul of the good stuff.  The costume he picked out was sure to scare the bejeezus out of anybody whose door he darkened, since it was just so real-looking.  I mean, how do you get your eye to just slide off your face like that without actually tearing it out?  Joe’s dad had to hand it to him, he had sure picked out one freaky unique costume.  This one, the RealLife Half-and-Half Toxic Mutant Super Guy, also came with a Flame Retardant Plastic Tuxedo Overlay and on top of that it was on sale.  Now Joe would be turned loose (under proper adult supervision of course) on the little town of Cayuga as America’s Best Dressed Hero since Jim McSherry’s Rook, just like it said on the box.  Cool. 

Joe had just turned his attention back to Beth Rengel’s news report on Halloween safety when Donita Martin’s car pulled up in the driveway, its poorly aimed headlights swinging around the headstones in the Melton Family cemetery just on the other side of Joe’s house.  A bunch of other kids had gathered around the fence with their Youth Minister, ready to run out into the graveyard to rouse the dead and wish them a peaceful rest.  They were all done up in their own little plastic costumes, with those moulded plastic face-masks done up to look like Bugs Bunny or My Friend Totoro, and their flashlights bounced around their pumpkin-pails, over the headstones and onto the wall of the house.  In the distance, on the other side of Husong’s, one could hear a couple drunk guys start to get rowdy. 

Chris and his mom were now on the porch, judging by the creak in the boards outside.  Grandma Timothy had come along too, but she waited in the car.  Donita needed to get her back to the nursing home for the seven o’clock bed-check, but she knew Grandma wouldn’t mind coming along to pick up Joe.  Old as she was, she still got a kick out of Halloween. 

“Aww, man!  We got the same costume! What’re we gonna do now?  This sucks!” 

“Well,” Donita started, “if you wanted to have different costumes, you could have gotten together and planned on it.” 

“Now, wait a minute,” Mr. Tonemah said as Chris began pulling fitfully at his sagging eye.  “Folks like to know they’re well covered, and if two Half-and-Half Toxic Mutant Super Guys show up on the same doorstep, they’ll feel a whole lot safer knowing there’s more than one of you.”  Poking into his son’s comic books paid off in spades. 

“Did you have your pumpkinseed tea, Chris?” 

“Aww, not you too?”  Chris whined.  

Mr. Tonemah wrinkled his face and made claw motions with his hands. “You know you gotta have it or else the scarecrow’ll getcha, Arrgh!” 

With that Chris let out a mock scream and made a jittery, laughing about-face, right into his mother’s witch costume.  Donita held her son at the door, trying to speak over the clatter of excited children.  “I made sure he got some; hopefully we won’t have any worm problems like last year.  You know, pets and all.” 

“Ah, that’s good.  Now do you guys have another flashlight?  I’ve got an extra if you need one.” 

“That’s okay, we’ve got one.  I’ll try to have them back before nine.” 

“ Just be careful, cause it’s Halloween and the loonies are out.”  He gestured with his head over to the jiffy market on the other side of the car lot.   

As Donita Martin and the kids piled into the car, one could hear the echoes of the Church Youth Group romping about theMelton
Family
Cemetery.  Each of the costumed children made a point to touch every monument, regard the name chiseled on their faces for a moment, and happily shout “Peace Be With You” before moving on to the next one.  Mr. Tonemah leaned against the doorframe sipping his pumpkinseed tea, and waved as the Martins’ old Chevy ground into first gear and disappeared in a cloud of blue smoke lit up by the stray lights from Husong’s.  Just after Donita and the kids rounded the corner, a rustling in the blackberry bushes by the cemetery’s perimeter fence warned that it was time to head inside.  An owl called one more time, and the sun was down.

*****

Spicer, Loomis, and Martin had just polished off their case of Busch, and were too far gone to notice anything at all really, except to laugh at each other’s pitiful condition.  Empty beer cans rolled around on the ground, and it wasn’t too much longer that they started quarelling about nothing in particular.“No shit, Loomis?  He said that in a song?” Dick gargled on his words.“Oh, yeah, man.  Zevon kicks some serious ass.  You oughta hear what he said about Skynard, man.”  “But Skynard’s cool, man.  Hey, Bill, you got another beer over there, buddy?” 

“Hold on jus’ a secon’.  I gotta take a leak.” 

Belching and scratching his ass through his jeans, Bill zigzagged, Torgo-style, round back of the store and found a bush.  The men’s room in Rieder’s hadn’t worked since Tuesday, and besides, Bill didn’t want to let on to the clerk just how plastered he and his friends actually were.  Cute though she was, she knew it too, and was far too much of a bitch to keep from calling Officer Vince in on the scene.  On top of that Dick Spicer already beat him to her a couple years before.  Think that was the fourth kid, but Bill wasn’t sure.  Voices from the parking lot drifted over the top of the building as he felt the fluid rush out of his body.   

Then the voices ceased.  Still shaking from the sheer ecstasy of having just voided his bladder, he zipped himself up and staggered back around front.  “Hey Loomis?  Dick?  Where’dja go, man?” 

The truck was still there, but neither Loomis nor Spicer were to be seen anywhere.  No, wait, there’s a sole of someone’s boot sticking up over the dashboard in the truck.   

What Bill saw next would have made him throw up even if he had been sober.  Sean Loomis’ body lay limp in the passenger’s side of the pickup, drenched in its own blood, the left half of his face sliced away as neatly as if a surgeon had done it with a scalpel.  His hands had not been so lucky. 

Bill wiped his mouth and took one more look at his dead friend.  Not just his hands but his feet, too, were gone.  Sean’s legs had been torn away from the knee down, and the only thing that held his boot up to the dashboard was a bundle of straw, dripping with the poor wretch’s juices.   

“Spicer, you Bastard!” Bill sobbed into the air.  “You fucking killed him!  Where the fuck are you, Goddammit?”  He picked up the half-empty bottle of Southern Comfort and smashed it against the side of the truck.  He brandished the broken bottle-top for a moment, allowing the alcohol to mingle with his own blood, which now oozed generously over his right hand.  Then, bracing his still-inebriated body against the truck’s bed, he glanced inside.   

There was Dick Spicer’s work shirt, a blue grease monkey’s uniform with the name “Dick” embroidered in cursive white letters across the pocket, blackened with gore yet wrapped around a heap of clean straw.  No sign of the rest of Loomis, thank God, but where the hell was Spicer?  Bill lifted his eyes toward the convenience store window, panting to catch his breath. 

Nobody there.  In fact it looked as if no one had been there for quite some time.  The lights were dark, the shelves were empty..  He pushed himself off the truck and dropped the shattered bottle top.  Without thinking, he ran down the street to the short row of houses on the other side of the car lot.*****When Joe and Chris came back with Mrs. Martin, their flashlights had dimmed, and they yawned as they greedily examined their respective hauls for the evening; it was just like Joe’s dad had said.  With two Half-and-Half Toxic Mutant Super Guys prowling the streets together, they were sure to charm all the best goodies out of the neighborhood.  Donita dragged the sleepy children up the short walk to Mr. Tonemah’s porch.   

“Hi! We’re back, finally.  We went all over town and oh man is the dentist gonna be mad.” 

“Hey Mr. Tonemah, can Chris stay over tonight?  I wanna show him the new 410 you got me for my birthday.  Got some new comics; you wanna take a look?”  Joe was almost bouncing. 

“Well, you’ll have to ask your mother about that, won’t you?  I don’t know if she wants you staying over on such short noti—” 

“It’s okay, Josh,” Donita interrupted.  “He already asked me on the way back and I said he’d have to ask you.  Besides, I have to get to work in a few minutes.  Somebody called in sick and I have to cover the late shift.”  Just then Mr. Tonemah noticed she was no longer in costume and wore her nurse’s uniform. 

He looked down at Joe and Chris. “Well as long as he comes back in one piece, I suppose there wouldn’t be any harm in it.  Not like it’s a school night or anything.” 

“I can come by in the morning when I get off work, if that’s all right.”  But the two kids had already disappeared down the hallway to the back bedroom, chattering away about guns, rabbits, and Toxic Mutant Super Guys.  From the direction of the car lot an owl could be heard.*****Late that night, Chris awoke on Joe’s floor with a start.  He dreamt that his father had shown up at the house, covered in blood and feathers.  He rubbed his eyes and peered over Joe’s bed and out the window.  The view from his window faced the edge ofMelton
Cemetery, and he thought he could see movement among the headstones.  Seeing that Joe was still very much asleep, he threw off the covers of his bedroll and tiptoed closer to the window in the pajamas he borrowed from his friend. At first glance he thought he saw the figure of his father, just as he had in his dream, but deathly pale and calling for help.  Chris walked quietly as he could out of the bedroom and down the hall, trying his best not to awaken either Joe or his father with the creaky boards under the carpet. 

Carefully he stepped out onto the front porch, which groaned under his weight.  Waving his hands a bit in an effort to keep quiet, he inched his way into the front yard, then worked his way across the grass to the edge of the graveyard. 

It was an owl.  A Great Horned Owl with dark wings and fiery golden eyes, staring straight into his heart.  He sat on one of the taller monuments and cocked his head as Chris eased closer, never once relaxing his gaze.  Chris stepped over a collapsed section of fence and into the cemetery.  The owl didn’t flinch, but adjusted his massive wings and shifted on his talons, which Chris could now see was clutching what appeared to be a dead field mouse.  Blood tickled down the polished white stone. 

Only a few paces from the monument, the boy swallowed hard.  With that the Great Bird spread his wings out wide, so that Chris could see the fine pale down underneath.  Before he could gasp, the owl clutched the mouse and took to the air, flying low over his head and brushing his hair with his tail.  Chris turned in wonder to follow the owl’s flight. 

What met his gaze next stopped him cold.  The ghostly figure of a man, tall and thin, stood between him and the safety of the house.  At first, he thought that he had awakened Mr. Tonemah, but this man was much thinner, more so even than his father.  Gray as the owl’s outspread wings, the figure stood motionless, until Chris made an effort to run. As he tried to bolt past him, the man reached out and touched his shoulder, which stopped the boy once more. 

Chris looked up.  The figure had an old face, like his Grandma Timothy, but his stared back at him with the same eyes as the owl, and the left half of his face turned red as blood, while the other stayed deathly pale.  Chris shivered in his borrowed pajamas, both from fear and from cold. 

“W-who are you?” the boy’s words shook in the cold, and his breath whispered away in thin trails of steam. 

The strange figure blinked once only, and said nothing. 

“W-wh-whadoyouwant?” This time his words ran together, and his breath puffed out in hard clouds. 

The man’s skin glowed in the moonlight.  He blinked again, more slowly, and his aged lips parted. 

“Xa kulamate’name,”  he said, and was gone. 

And also with you, Chris thought.  Without knowing why, he fell to his knees and cried into the darkness. 

Formica Invictis

by Jonathon York, 10/25/1997

I only have a few minutes left before I must be going, so I suppose I’d better make this good.  Do you remember Emily?  I certainly do, and as always I appreciate the care that you, my trusted friend and confident, had shown that terrible night last year when she struck her head on that–forget it.  I mustn’t go back into such horrifying tales, it’ll upset my stomach, as well you might recall.  After all, now that I am practically eaten out of house and home, the last thing I need is to have a pang in my stomach when there’s nothing left here to settle it. 

When last we met, I was discussing the differences between the Lies to which we desperately cling, and the Truth to which we must all eventually succumb.  How was it that I put it? Ahh, yes; nature always wins.  Well, I can certainly assure you now, in my present state of mind that is the one thing of which I have intimate knowledge, for had I not, I couldn’t sit here and lie before you now, as perhaps is best I should.   

The lie, as I recall, concerned a grand temple to ultimate truth while that truth itself served as the dust on its polished marble steps, crushed under our toes like ants on the sidewalk.  Ants.  Have you ever really taken a good look at ants?  How busy they are moving their little rocks out of their hole, payng no mind to the phantoms that we construct for ourselves.  Questions that we constantly set before us never enter into their tiny heads.   They just scuttle about, doing their particular task, whatever it is they were born to do.  Truth for an ant is simple, direct, and unflinching.  While truth for us may be like the grome on the steps, or the mud on our shoes, it is nothing more than that for an ant, nor can it ever be more. 

The truth–or was it the lie? I don’t remember–for me was Emily’s cold grey eyes staring up at us from the slim barrow we made in the tangle back behind the house we built together.  But was it even real ,I don’t even know anymore, the lights grow dim, and the ants mind their incessant cadence.  Clearing leaf and twig, slowly unearthing whatever cold grey secret you and I might have concealed out here, the ants march onward and downward.   

Have you ever really looked closely at an ant?  I can’t seem to help it as they now wend their way through the night, little black and red automata, caring not that this matter which they now collect was once— but is that truth?  For moe, anyway?  Should I not care what crosses the mind of an ant?  Is this column now crossing my imagination concerned at all with objective reality?  Is there such a beast? Does it matter anymore, now that Emily’s dessicated stare stabs my heart from out of the darkness with the force of the tree roots that now surround her, the ant colony, the earth?  

Lingering thoughts of the way in which she—and you, I might add, my best beloved, steal their way into the light of consciousness, like that trail of ants over there marching slowly in rigid columnar formation, carrying aloft bits of memories long forgotten in the loam.   

I cannot stand this.  Staring out beyond the horizon I see nothing more than what I saw before, and everywhere it is ants  Ants. ANTS!   Where are they coming from? How can there be so many?  There were fewer than these when Emily said goodbye to us in the barrow, and when I turned over the mound which would hold her fast, maintain the dirty little secret which we both, you and I best beloved, share even unto this day.   

We chose the spot so very carefully, so that in a matter of days the mound would be stripped clean of her memory.  It’s easy to find an anthill around here, they’re everywhere, and once you put honey all over the offender, short work is then made of her cold grey stare, rendered clean, gleaming white by the formic disinfection.  Formica invictis Will be done, in earth as it ever was, clease us of the sins we are about to do.  That was our little blasphemous prayer, as Emily’s gentle hand was obscured by our pitches and their rank and file.  They must be fed.  That is all that matters.  Nothing else ever crosses the mind of an ant, if even that.  We are blindly acceptant of our duty as ants in the grand colony that man has prepared for us. Our time is now, as it has always been.  We have been around a long long time, and have let you know in amber traces in the sand.  We are formica invictis.  We cover all.

No no no NO No No.  I mustn’t put myself in that marching devil’s mind it’s so small but so demanding. I can feel it even now taking pieces of my own memory and incorporating it into its own.  Cannot let it happen. I am a man, damn it after all.  That is the truth.  The lie is what those damnable ants are trying to put into my head.  The truth is that I am stronger that the ants are just puny things I can crush under my toes, See that? Just like the truth crumbles on the temple steps so the and cracks and bleeds under my foot.  I can feel it now spreading across my heel, all sticky and cold, cold like Emily’s eyes the last time she glared down at me from out of my.. NO!  That  isn’t how it happened at all! I remember now.  A spade, I got a Spade, I got a spade and I dug a pit.  Nature always wins I said and dug and I dug under the anthill and oh the sweet sticky and I thought this is the place where to put me and no that’s not it either.  What is now and gone and to come and go and Emily I can feel my sticky shake what now is it that…..? 

Got to think. Got to Think. Let’s see, get my mind off all these evil hellbeast ants!  A freshman in culinary school.  Yes that’s it.  With that German cook in California.  What was his name?  He liked to talk about snow, and mountains, wagons, limbs and celery powder.  “Calves’ brains are considered the choicest, but there is very little difference in the flavor of calves’, beef, lamb, or pork brains. Allow about 1/4 pound for each serving.”  I wonder what kind of flavor brains have to an ant?  Maybe I’ll ask them the next time I get the chance.  But they don’t talk, they’re too busy walking or eating.  What does an ant know?  Everything I do now, ‘cause there they go!  Oh, sweet sticky take to the queen she’ll be most happy and fertile.  Oh sweet sticky.  This is the great one.  This is the best part.  The Mother lode, the Emily, just like our history says, better than honey, Formica invictis we are lord over the earth….

 Ach!  This is not real.  No yes, no no.  IT is.  IT is Truth and I am dead.  Where is my heaven? Where is my hell?  There is none but the ants now.  They are the truth and I lay muffled under this unmovable mountain of earth that I myself  have dug.  But how?  How?   Emily you bitch! I curse you and all these ants you have sent me.  You am I are one at last vengeance is mine against me and all is left is the oneness of the soil. 

Formica semper Invictis.