A Halloween Carol, Part 2

[Read Part 1 here...]

Middy likes to bake cupcakes, she tells me through her now more subdued mouth-breathing. I yawn then begin to doze off (“That’s okay, you can sleep, sure, but I’m still gonna tell my story anyhow,” she says cheerfully). But not before catching the first part of her story…

I’m real good at tellin stories, my kids tell me. I got one granddaughter now too but she’s too young to understand my stories and that, she’s only one and a half. But this one’s gonna be kinda scary, anyhow, so it’s a good thing you’re fallin asleep haw haw haw. And I would never tell this one to my granddaughter, she’d get too scared and her mom would yell at me (that’s my daughter [MIDDY POINTS AT FRAMED PHOTO ON COUNTER] Cheryl, that’s her mom).

So anyways, I should start off the story by telling you that this casino is haunted. Yep. It’s owned and run by Indians, you know, but the strange part is I guess it’s built on one-a their, like, sacred spots, a graveyard from way back when there was Indians all over the place and they could just go around you know doin whatever they wanted. So now they get to have these casinos, to kinda like get revenge on the … well, anyhow… it was a garbage dump, or landfill, I guess, between when it was a burial ground and now…

*****

I wake to a woman’s scream. I hear a muffled sizzling sound and smell rotting cucurbitus. “What is that?” I cry out through my jack-o’-lantern mouth hole.

“Oh, that lady in the other room is getting a Pumpkin Peel. Did you want one of those, too? They’re more money, but they get your skin SO smooth it’s unbelievable.”

“No, thank you.”

Neither of us says anything for a while, about four minutes. Middy straddles me on the chair and then places her foot on my shoulder to brace herself as she saws the jack-o’-lantern lengthwise on the side, and pulls it off my head with a thwup. She then starts to scrape the orange goo off my face and place it into a plastic tupper-like container using a spatula. I expect her to put it in the garbage but instead she pulls a storebought pie crust out of the cupboard. I ask what she’s doing.

“Well, you get to take your extra pumpkin facial with you, of course! Most of the gals take em home and make muffins or bread out of em, and that. But I figured since you are traveling and from not around here and that, I would just make you a pumpkin facial pie right here at Soaring Eagle’s! It’s like a special favor I’m doin for you.” “That’s the only nice thing anyone’s ever done for me!” I say, genuinely touched.

“Yeah… I know. That’s kinda related to what I was tryin to tell you when you was sleepin.”

Again preternaturally quiet, Middy wipes the last betacarotene stains off my face using a handtowel with ghosts on it and some nail polish remover.

*****

I look to the right and spy someone standing in the facialry with us, dressed in a really piss-poor “Native American” costume. Straight from Hollywood Central Casting circa 1971: Obvious wig, black wig, pulled into pigtails on the sides with feathers stuck in. Lame “war paint” on his cheeks, strangely business-suit-like soft doeskin separates with precious little bead embroidery. Cheap-looking moccasins.

“How,” he says as a greeting, raising his hand the way people from Michigan do when they want to point to the part of the state that they’re from, for instance the Thumb Area.

“How,” I say back. As he steps closer he seems to be covered in a thin layer of gray powder. Maybe he’s a construction worker at the casino. I didn’t see any construction on the way in, though.

“I am the Ghost of Halloween Past.”

“I told you!” Middy says, in a shuddering voice without using her nose, and she disappears into the next room with the facial pie fixin’s.

*****

“Let’s go, little white man,” says the Ghost, pulling me by the arm and leading me into the bright lights of the area with the 5¢ slot machines. “You’re white, too, I can tell under the dust.” “Yeah, don’t you recognize me?” “Hey! You’re the Indian from the commercial that was on TV during my childhood, with all the garbage. The one that cries,” I say, unconsciously patting my bright orange hair. “Yes, I’m Iron Eyes Cody, born Espera de Corti. Let’s not get talking about me, though. I’m here to show you some scenes from your childhood. Things that will provide a background on why you spread garbage everywhere. And by garbage I mean your bad vibes.”

A tear rolls down my cheek.

You can still smoke everywhere in Michigan, and the air is thick with the funky smell of peace pipes being smoked, mixed with the yucky ammonia-suffused stench of Marlboro Ultra-Lights, and Basics, then some Swisher Sweet tiparillos, and that.

I walk hand in hand with the Ghost of Halloween Past, and we sit down at one of the slots. You get 10 free gambling chips with every Pumpkin Facial, and I take them out of my pocket. “No gambling today,” says Iron Eyes. Before my eyes, the face of the Double Black Cherry slot machine transforms into a dusty miasmatic cloud of blacks, grays and purples. Soon all is smoke, and I am walking up the steps of the Royal Oak Public Library, alone, aged 6. My mom is there, but she’s putting money in the meter. I cannot wait to get inside and check out my favorite — not just Halloween book, but book period: The Littlest Witch.

*****

Right before I turned 30, in mid-October, everything in my life was falling down around me through some fault of my own. I wanted to just push my way back to normality as hard as I could, push through the mess and nothing would be wrong and I would wake up from the unending, sleepless dream that was snuffing out the last of my energies. Whistling past the graveyard, walking past the library, doing unhinged, desperate things like asking the librarian whether they had The Littlest Witch. They said they had it at another branch, so I went and picked it up because this year, with a big dose of magical thinking, I was going to dress as the littlest witch from the book.

But my addled memory had played a trick on me, and it wasn’t possible to dress like the littlest witch, because she was drawn in this expressionistic, ultrasimple way, like, just a pointy little inkblot. She barely even had a witch hat, she was so abstract.

But when I was still a child of 6, things could sometimes work out. My mom had sewn me a witch costume that year, just a plain witch costume that required no explaining.

*****

“What would you say to your 6-year-old self there, Evan?” asks the kindly Italian Indian.

“I would say, ‘Why do you want to be a witch?’ because I honestly don’t remember how that started. Also, I would probably call myself names, like fa…”

“Let’s move on to the next vision,” says Espera.

*****

[Part 3 Coming Soon...]

TAGS: 1970s • Casinos • ghosts • Iron Eyes Cody • Michigan • Pumpkin Facials • Pumpkin Pie • slots • Witch Costumes