| The Last Halloween At The Littlest Angel |
| by Jim Wood |
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*** Punta de Lanza is a smallish city, maybe 90,000 folks, give or take a gaggle of students. It sports a small but well known computer college, lots of small businesses and many small farms where the world's best chile is grown. It is the county seat and moderately busy at the slowest of times. There are burgeoning suburbs of medium priced homes encroaching on the desert in three directions. The fourth is too close to the river and the border with Mexico. That is the shanty area, the barrios that are ragged splashes of small dirt colored shacks housing the nameless, placeless poor, the hardened hands that put the food on a thousand tables. They are full of mothers tired of being subject to a mind set that relegates them to the status of baby factories, and children whose noses were last seen pressed against bakery windows, whose hands only that afternoon lovingly caressed the sleek lines of the latest toys on shelves at Save-Mart or Fun-Or-Else. These kids are seldom in school because they are needed to add extra hands in the fields. They are too tired to be restless.These boys and girls will have no parts in the little plays that the uptown young will enact that night. They know the names of the ghosts and demons that inhabit the dark places along the river. They have seen them rise from their prisons where the avenging angels had thrown them. All their short lives they have been smothered with tales of The Weeping Woman, La Llorona, and the dire pipes of Kokoman whose music can enchant you and draw you away from the safety of your numbers into the deeps of the hills. God knows what happens to them there. Descriptions of all the witches dancing their hideous nakedness about their hellish fires and the groans and wailing shades of suicides and murderers have long been imprinted on their minds and hearts by priests who, themselves, had been soaked in their youth in the superstitious juices of All-Hallows Eve. They have seen the mysteries of this night and would not dream of aggravating the situation by wandering about in imitation of the dead. For Harold Suttles it will be a long night, one for which he has to prepare himself for every year. For him it is not a matter of believing or play or the tiresome ringing of doorbells and squeaky shouts of ‘trick or treat'.Harold has been caretaking this cemetery for more than fifty years. He and his father and his father's father have cut the weeds, mended the picket fence now reinforced with hogwire and raked the leaves of Fall dropped by the centuries old cottonwood trees that form the borders of this camposanto. He has thought year after year that someone ought to do something about that entrance, spruce the place up a bit with another angel to replace the one destroyed by the storm of ‘25. Only the one left now, discolored and pitted, the torch cracked down the middle threatening to drop the softly curling plaster flame on the head of the next person to pass. It does not bother Harold much anymore. It has been years since anyone came up this way. *** The Littlest Angel cemetery had been, for a long time, the only camposanto for the entirety of Punta de Lanza. All the original families were there; the Ruggles, the De la Vacas, Guzmans, and even Harold's old dad and granddad, they being the last remnants of the De la Vaca clan on the female side. Bastard sons of bastard sons.It was De la Vaca money that provided Harold with the stipend that allowed him to carry on with his sacred chores. It was a tiny trust set up at the original bank and now worth more than the old man could imagine. It also built a small potter's field attached to the main grounds on the west. Slowly the holy ground filled with the cadavers of prestige. The town grew. A mall here, truck terminal there, Menudo parlors and convenience stores. A college was granted by the State and the town became a city. Now Punta de Lanza boasted five cemeteries. Six with the Littlest Angel but few people remembered it now. Only Harold Suttles. But there was a time when it was not only well known but moderately, if briefly, famous. It began with the death of little Billy Guzman. Harold had been Billy's playmate. He was the leader of the gang of two, being three years the senior. It was his job to see that little Billy was first over the fence when there was danger of discovery while swiping apples from the Ruggles orchard. He saw that Billy did not drown while they swam in the forbidden canal that ran off the river. Harold was Billy's defender against the tough kids that came against them whenever they wandered too close to the shanties. They were friends of the kind that would while away hours beneath the ancient trees while Harold told Billy stories. They were always about Halloween. For Billy Halloween was the greatest time. He was obsessed with the spooky night. It was not candy and costumes that interested him. It was the night itself. The two had questioned older, wiser people and had pieced together a ragged history of the celebration. They had cut up magazines and books for photos and drawings that had anything at all to do with the subject. The boys were the resident scholars of Halloween. When they went door to door in costumes carrying their plastic bags, Harold thought Billy took it too seriously. The younger boy never smiled. He would look into each shadow and darkness cast by a hedge or a shed. His ‘trick or treat' was a bit too imperative, the tone of his voice promising dire retribution if enough sweet stuff did not hit that bag. Once when Mrs. Gomez made some inane remark about how lovely it was that youngsters had this night to themselves and they should enjoy it while they could because one day they would be too old for it, Billy got real close to her and said in his high serious way, "I'll never be too old for Halloween, Mrs. Gomez. I'll always be here for trick-or-treat. Always." He said it without that sweetness one expects from the very young, without a hint of naivete. The woman's eyes widened and she quickly retreated behind the screen door. The porch light went out before they were all the way to the sidewalk. It stayed off the rest of the night. It was obvious that Billy was a believer. In the summer of ‘27 Billy contracted the river fever and died. Harold was there to help his dad dig the grave in The Littlest Angel. Not that he had to, just that he wanted to do one last thing for his friend. He wanted to help him over one last fence. It was a large funeral, everyone being acquainted with the little boy and his family. All the usual things were said about the young dying too soon, but Harold was not convinced. He remembered Billy's words to Mrs. Gomez. That year Halloween came without much joy for Harold Suttles. He was alone on his trek from house to house. Mrs. Gomez did not seem to remember him and said her usual cant about time and growth and dropped the usual candied apple into his bag gumming up all the other items lying at the bottom. He and Billy used to hate that. He thanked her and turned to go---and dropped his bag. Harold's jaw sagged and he began to sweat. Down the street, dragging a rotten gunnysack he had found by the road, came little Billy Guzman. He looked gooey, Harold said later. The dead boy passed him without a word, mounted the steps and knocked on Mrs. Gomez's door. She answered with her usual slightly preoccupied smile, took one look at the ghoul and clutched her chest. That was the last thing Harold saw as he dropped everything and made for home. His dad said he thought there was something funny going on from the way the dogs were acting up. And there was a funny smell in the air. Something familiar. The two began searching the town but no Billy. They finally found him crumpled against the plaster angel at the cemetery entrance, a fist full of gum and squished Hershey bar pressed tightly to his chest. Someone had given him something. They reburied the body as the dawn expressed itself, and went home without a word. Neither of them told the story to anyone. After all, what was there to say? The next year here came little Billy, only a bit slower because the soft tissue was gone and he was having trouble keeping things together. Harold and his dad again searched the town and found the body propped against the plaster angel, a tootsiepop clenched between yellowing teeth. They reburied the body and went silently home. The third year father and son were ready for the unusual. That year, while Billy creaked and stumbled along the road, another cadaver dragged itself up out of the grave and came after him. It was his older cousin, Ruiz, who had died that fall when he had shown up drunk for work and had run a big truck off the road smothering himself under a ton and a half of fresh chile pods. Harold's dad speculated that maybe Ruiz had gotten up to get Billy back to the cemetery. Maybe the cousin got up because Billy had, just because he could. Maybe Billy's faith was catchy. In the years thereafter more and more of the dead arose and wandered the streets of the town. Halloween became the festival of corpses and the towns folk got used to it. If one came to the door the resident simply smiled, looked at the sky or to the side, anywhere but at the rotting mess dropping liquefied parts on the welcome mat, and dropped candy or a donut, maybe some fruit, into their bag and shut the door without speaking. What was there to say? And every year Harold and his dad spent the better part of All-Saints morning gathering bodies, sorting them out, and putting them back. Happenings like these are not ordinary, no matter that they become custom. At first they were one of the components of every conversation. Folks wrote friends about it, phoned relatives in faraway places and, of course, spoke of it to travelers. The press developed an immunity to cadaver stories. Sources outside Punta de Lanza paid scornful attention. "Can anything truthful come out of that city? First miraculous hot chile, now bogus Halloween tales. What next? Santa Claus arrested for shoplifting?" "Good grief! What kind of horse droppings is that? The dead are getting up in Punta de Lanza! If that were possible it wouldn't be there. It would be Jerusalem or Rome, some holy place. Just the sort of superstition one can expect from those people!" The town enjoyed an interesting reputation. One man did take notice. Mr. Greenbaum had come to town from the East hoping to cure his wife's asthma. He had a good eye for a buck and when he heard the story he immediately went to interview Harold's dad. The man was old by then and had an elder's way of stretching a tale to its fullest length. Mr. Greenbaum was patient and went away with the seed of a money-maker in his mind. He founded the town's first radio station, KWRD-1166 on the dial. He made Halloween the pivot around which revolved the rest of the year. There were transcriptions of spooky dramas from the big stations in Los Angeles. Night On Bald Mountain and other minor key classics were interspersed with news of who had risen and had not. That did not last long. People were not particularly interested because it was no longer unusual. ‘That's what the dead are supposed to do, ain't it? Halloween is the night they get up and move around.' Disgusting, yes, and very probably dangerous from a health standpoint, but it was no longer frightening. The Greenbaums moved on to other ventures and distant shores. The station was sold to a pair of delicate young men from the capitol who renamed it KPNK and played show tunes twelve hours a day. That is when it began to make money. Harold's dad died the winter of ‘54. The duties of the cemetery devolved upon the son and so did the trust fund. The old man said in his Will that he thought he had taught Harold everything he knew about cemetery work and said his son knew better than anyone what to do about you-know-what you-know-when. It was tough though. Harold had to do the yearly morning pickup all by himself. He never married and had no children on the side as was the unspoken custom of the Suttles clan. He was alone in his work, the last of his line. After a few years it became too much and he began fishing about for a plan, some way to keep the dead, if not in their places, at least near it. He first tried force. They just rolled over him leaving liquids of various viscosity and odor on his pants and jacket. He tried having a party but there were always few who grew restless and bored and wandered off into town. They proved difficult to locate. He tried setting up card tables and chairs and established the Dead Poker Club, but gambling was not fun unless there was money involved. They quickly ran out of the quarters and half dollars placed on their eyes to keep them shut and stumped off into town again. Harold went from poker to Bridge but none of the walking dead could get the hang of it. Finally it came down to Ginrummy, so elegant in its simplicity, so final in its cutthroat capacity. And it caught. As the years rolled on he noticed there were fewer players, more and more empty seats. At the beginning Harold had set up sixty tables borrowed from the Foot Soldiers Of The Cross bingo room which was empty every October 31st. The pastor thought there was something intrinsically unholy about gambling while the dead sloshed their thick fluid path along the shady streets of Punta de Lanza. The number of tables began to shrink. There were fifty six in ‘62, forty in ‘65 and then twenty in ‘70. Every year some of the players had come apart to such a degree that they could not get up again. Maybe, Harold thought, they just wearied of the ritual. He had noticed that there were no new ones rising anymore. He and his dad had spoken many times about what went on up there every Halloween. The son was always coming up with another fantastical reason for the phenomenon but his dad just shook his head and always gave the same reply. "Nope. It was belief that got ‘em. Little Billy believed so hard that the others just caught it like the flu. Doesn't seem to be much point in it. One day they'll get tired of it. You'll see. One day they'll tell you. You'll know when. Some kind of sign." Now there were only three. Charlie One-Hand, the only resident of the potter's field to arise, the elder Mrs. Ruggles, and Mrs. Gomez who had survived that first heart attack and three more besides to live to the age of one hundred and three. Just enough for a good table of Gin and some mumbling talk, though the latter was not so important. The dead did little but complain, especially Mrs. Ruggles. All about cheap coffins and vermin and how her ungrateful family never came to visit or bring her flowers. Very dull stuff. Charlie One-Hand would only say he was not going to rest until the Second Coming. Each year the words were less coherent. Finally there was only the clacking of mandibles and the clicking of finger bones as they tried to keep their cards close to what passed for chests. *** This evening Harold sits smoking, waiting for the dark and wondering if they will all make it. Mrs. Ruggles had been the last up the year before and then she complained about it the whole night. Life was one long complaint for the poor woman, always had been. She was always a fragile soul. Maybe she had finally gone to pieces. Harold waits and smokes his pipe, tipping slightly back on the chairs hindlegs. Waiting. Waiting. Nobody. Nothing. It seems that it is over at last. Sometime around eleven he hears a noise and when he investigates he finds a finger sticking up from the earth of the Ruggles plot. He sighs and sits again to wait another couple of hours. When the waxing moon is well set he folds and packs the tables and chairs into the truck and drives home. He never says a word to anyone about it. What is there to say?The following day Harold goes back to the Littlest Angel with his tools and starts raking the leaves. He works them into several piles and sets a match to them. He leans on his rake smelling the sweet smoke and looking across the mesa to the river valley. It is a wonderful sight. A dry brown stretches out for miles, sinking down to the river bottom where the land is lush and urgent, a vibrant ribbon of life running from the northwest to the southeast. The cottonwoods and scrub oaks have changed to their brief coats of brilliant gold and deep reds and an orange that any painter would die for. It is a lovely day, mild, in the mid 70s. He shakes his head just a little and walks to Mrs. Ruggles final resting place. He stares a long time at the skeletal middle finger pointing straight up from the sod. Finally he bends and gently pushes it back down. "Same to you, Mrs. Ruggles," he sighs. |
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