HALLOWEEN

THE NEXT NIGHT WAS HALLOWEEN. WE ALL DECIDED IT WOULD be the last year we got dressed up. We spent the day making phone calls: “What’re you gonna wear?” “What’re you gonna wear?”

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but for me there still was something a little bit funny, or strange, or, I don’t know, about Calvin Lemaine and Peter Kim talking about what they were going to dress up as. I mean, I remember one Halloween when I found this coolie hat and a pair of those fake buckteeth up in the attic, and I thought maybe I would go around as a Chinese. (So happens my mother didn’t let me.) But what I mean is, until I got to know Peter pretty well, I always thought of Chinese (which is like Korean, which is what Peter Kim is) as something to be dressed up as.

Sort of the same thing with Calvin, him being black. Like, why did they ask me what they ought to be? They already were something.

Anyway, it was just at first that it seemed kind of funny.

Everybody met at my house. Calvin came as a bone. He wore this white suit, like a chef or a hospital person wears. He didn’t look any more like a bone than me.

I asked him what kind of bone he was supposed to be.

“Femur,” he sniffs, like it was supposed to be obvious. “Thigh bone to you. Biggest bone of all.”

Then he puts this sort of round knobby thing on his head, stands real straight, and puts his hands in his pockets.

“See?” he says.

He still didn’t look like a bone.

The reason Calvin came as a bone is because he wants to become a doctor. He can tell you the names of every bone in your body. And just about everything else too.

Last year he was a ligament.

Peter Kim came as a football player. Really original, huh?

But the bad thing was, he had to bring his little brother along, Kippy Kim. Kippy’s only four. That was bad for all of us, because the kid would slow us down and would want to go places we didn’t and just be an all-around pain in the butt. None of us really liked him, because he was always insisting on going places with Peter, and his mother almost always made Peter take him along. We tried to dump him onto Cootyhead, who was going to take Timmy around, but Kippy screamed and said he would tell his mother if Peter dumped him.

But that was only half of it. The crazy, absolutely insane part was what he was dressed up as: Fu Manchu! He had the whole getup, including this evil-looking mask with the long droopy mustache. And the insanest thing of all was, sitting on top of the Fu Manchu mask was his Phillies baseball cap. Peter used to tell me he wore it all the time, even to bed sometimes, but until now I didn’t believe him.

I didn’t want to hurt Peter’s feelings, so I dragged Dugan into the kitchen to laugh about it. We kept saying imagine what was going to happen when he goes up to some house, and they can’t guess him, and so he takes off his Asian mask and what’s left? A little Asian face! They’d have to laugh at him, but for all I cared it would serve him right for making such an ass out of himself. But what really surprised me was his family letting him get away with it.

Then Peter came in. “What’s so funny?” he goes, as if he didn’t know.

So we told him. He looked all bewildered.

“C’mon, Peter,” I said. “Stop acting dumb.”

“Who’s acting? I still don’t get it.”

I took a deep breath. “Okay, look. I’ll explain it, okay?” I went through it real slow, how ludicrous it was to wear this Asian mask over an Asian face.

“So?” he goes, still acting dumb.

I was losing my patience. “So? So? Look, Peter, this is Halloween, y’know? Halloween? Ever hear of it? United States of America? The whole idea is, you wear a mask to look like something else, something different.”

“Fu Manchu is different.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t know what you mean.” Peter’s voice was squeaking now. “Fu Manchu is Chinese.”

“Well?”

“Well, Kippy is American. Isn’t that different enough?”

“Peter, look, that’s not the point.” And then all of a sudden I saw it was me who was missing the point. Peter probably did see how funny it was, but he figured it was more important to stick up for his kid brother. I could understand that. Korean families are very close. “Okay, okay, I see,” I told him, and I passed around a bag of pretzels to get us off the subject.

Dugan came as himself, except for this dopey mask that he must have picked out of a garbage can on the way over. It didn’t even have a rubber band on it; he just held it up to his face. Naturally he had his green-and-gold St. Stevie’s jacket on. And his tie. His tie is like Kippy’s cap: he wears it everywhere, not just to school. Wore it on the hayride. He’s had this same tie since fourth grade. Only time he takes it off is when school lets out for the summer. Funny thing, though: it never makes him look dressed up.

But that’s Dugan. He’s always, well… Dugan. He just fits in everywhere. He just shows up. Wherever you are (if there’s at least two of you), just turn around—there’s Dugan. I think his tombstone will say:

Here lies Dugan

He showed up

Richie was a bum. Every year he’s a bum. He always talks about these fantastic things he’s going to be. But he can never find costumes for them in a store. And his mother never feels like taking half a year to make them. So all Richie ever actually does is make all these drawings and talk about it all year, and in the end he goes back to being a bum. He wears this ratty old black mothholey suit his father gave him, and this old pair of pointry roach-killer shoes with the little holes in them. And this cigar he has to promise not to light up.

Me, I was Luke Skywalker, from Star Wars. I knew all along I wanted to be something from space. I thought about being The Alien for a while, but that would be too hard. Then I had a brilliant idea: a black hole! But I couldn’t figure out how to do it. I’m not like Calvin—I want to look real. (Plus if I was a black hole I didn’t know what I would say to Calvin when he would ask me what I was.)

That brought me to Star Wars. I knew right away I didn’t want to be cute, like the robots. Or weird or funny. That left out Chewbacca and the freaks in the bar. So it kind of came down to either Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker. I didn’t know which one it would be until the night before, at the hayride, when Debbie Breen said she was going to go around as Princes Leia. I didn’t tell her, but I knew right then it was going to be Skywalker.

I was cool. Pants tucked into a pair of my mother’s boots. Blousy sleeves. Timmy’s toy sword (he steals my dinosaurs) that I painted green, the blade of. Lone Ranger mask. I was cool.

So out we go, Kippy and all. Of course, everybody else was only worried about getting their bags filled and where to get the best stuff. But my mind wasn’t on candy. My mind was on steering everybody over to Debbie Breen’s neighborhood, which was about ten blocks away. So I kind of got us started in that direction, and then when somebody wanted to hang a right or left I would jump in real quick and say, “Hey, look, right ahead, I got two peanut butter cups there last year!” Or, “Why you want the same old places? All we ever get’s apples and crackers every year.”

When I ran out of those reasons I pulled out the big gun: “Okay, you guys wanna go back, go ahead. I’m goin’ this way.” Which worked, because on Halloween almost anybody will give in to somebody who knows where you can get good stuff. Or says he knows.

Lucky for me, we kept getting just enough good stuff so there wasn’t a mutiny. The closer we got to Debbie’s neighborhood, the more Richie kept giving me this grin in back of his cigar.

Naturally nobody guessed us after a while, because we weren’t in any of our neighborhoods. Actually, Kippy came in kind of handy. Some of us, especially me and Calvin, were a little shy about going up to all these strange houses. But Kippy didn’t care. Uh-uh. He just tore from one house to the next. He learned houses with lights on meant people with treats, so he was always yelling, “Yight! Yight!” (He talks funny because he can’t say some letters.)

So we would let him knock on the doors and sort of soften the people up. The usual scene went something like this: Kippy bangs on door. Lady opens. Kippy says, “Fwick or fweet, mell my feet.” Lady says, “Oh look, Lester. I believe we have Fu Manchu here. Apparently he’s been signed up by the Phillies. Come on in, Mister Manchu.” Lady looks up and sees us. Half the smile goes away, but she says, “Come on, boys.” They try and try and try to guess Kippy Kim, who’s so dumb he thinks they ought to know him, so he keeps shaking his head and saying, “Nope. Geh again.” At long last (there’s other Halloweeners bunching up at the door by now), he takes the mask off, and the lady gets this funny look and says, “Well, well. And what is your name?” (Me and Dugan keep waiting for one of the ladies to go, “Well, glory be, Lester! Look here: a Chinababy!” But they never do.)

Meanwhile, almost as funny as that, The Bone is standing there at attention the whole time. And Dugan is getting tireder and tireder of holding his mask up; his hand slips until all it’s covering is about one eyeball. If I wasn’t so anxious to get to Debbie Breen’s neighborhood, I would have thought the whole thing was hilarious. But I could have killed Kippy Kim for making the people guess so long.

When we got five blocks from her house I started looking for Princess Leia. The fifth block went. The fourth block. The place was crawling with Darth Vaders and Artoo Detoos. Even a Chewbacca. But no Princess Leia.

The third block. The closer we got the scareder I got. I was afraid we’d miss her—and afraid we wouldn’t miss her. I wondered how it would be. Would she go around with all of us? Or would just us two go off together? I could picture the guys hooting at us. Dugan’s whistle. We wouldn’t care. We’d just laugh and go from house to house… “Oh look, Lester—Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker!”… candy flowing into our open bags… trading favorites… the best part between houses, because we’re holding our bags on the outside because on the inside we’re holding hands.…

Then I saw her, the Princess, coming down from a lighted porch and ready to turn up the sidewalk toward us.

I grabbed Kippy and half shoved him across the street. “Hey, c’mon, you guys,” I called. “Over here. This looks like a great one.” They grumbled but they came.

When we walked up to the house on the other side of the street I was shaking like a leaf. There was an empty space where my stomach used to be. I didn’t dare look back. I was only glad I hadn’t told her who I was going to be. And I was glad I hadn’t told the guys who she was going to be. So I was the only one who knew Debbie Breen was out Halloweening with another Luke Skywalker.