IF YOU’D BEEN LINGERING around outside Old Man Leverette’s house in Bluff City on the night of October 30, 1914, you could have seen it all for yourself. Delayed by Mama somewhat, I wasn’t there a moment too soon, but a slicker operation was never pulled off.
Though I’m not used to approaching that particular house from the front, I slipped like a shadow across the Leverette yard, swerved around a sugar maple tree that shades his porch, and nipped up to his parlor door. I rapped but once before the door opened, and Old Man Leverette let me in. I’ve rarely, if ever, seen him in a better mood.
Minutes later both me and him reappeared on the porch. My form was draped in various white bed sheets. My head was bound up in a pillow slip that fitted tight across my forehead and flapped behind.
My face was a work of art. Old Man Leverette had smeared my cheeks and chin with lampblack and a coating of goose grease to make my entire face shine like a raw wound. Under my eyes he’d painted ghastly circles and bags with a red vegetable dye he’d prepared especially. I was Barf City.
In my hand I carried a red railroad lantern with the wick turned low. Under his arm Old Man Leverette carried a stepladder. He was chuckling and snorting in advance, worse than a kid himself.
“If we don’t show them boys a thing or two,” he wheezed, “you can call me a—”
“Never mind about that, Old—Mr. Leverette,” I replied, all business. “Just steady that ladder and help me up that maple tree.” Which he did.
I heard the ladder close below me and Old Man Leverette’s heavy footsteps as he tramped back up on the porch and into the house.
The last leaf had fallen from the sugar maple, and its branches were slick with the evening damp. I needed to find just the right limb.
Flailing around in the tree like a big bird, I was hampered by my sheets. A limb overhung the front steps, but it was puny. I’d fallen out of one tree lately and didn’t wish to make a habit of it. I eased into the gutter and rested from my climb. It was dark that night and chilly up there on the porch roof.
Turning up my lantern, I spied a stouter limb. It too branched out over the front steps. Throwing caution to the winds, I stood up in the gutter. Without looking down at certain doom or a broken leg at least, I flexed my knees and took the leap.
The lantern swinging from my elbow threw weird shadows across the yard. I hooked the stout limb with an arm and a leg and hung there swaying. Then I pulled myself up to a sitting position. I might have been a large white owl gone to roost up among the bare branches.
I practiced my gymnastics then, arranging the folds in my sheets so they wouldn’t trip me up. I meant to put on a ghastly show, but I didn’t plan to hang myself into the bargain. As it happened, I had little time to practice. From down the unpaved street I heard the unstealthy footsteps of boys. Three boys.
From my high perch I saw these shadowy three scramble off the crown of the road and skulk along in the weedy ditch. Though I couldn’t make them out, I figured Champ and Bub were the front ones and Alexander was bringing up the rear. My lantern burned low.
When they came even with the fence by the Leverette property, they bent double and skulked for the house. Through the pickets I watched these three toad forms moving up toward the porch.
They cut around then for the steps and were soon in a bunch right beneath my dangling feet. They were punching each other and snorting with laughter, which they muffled with their sleeves. I got a strong whiff of horse manure.
They eased onto the porch, crab-fashion. “Who brought the matches?” I heard Alexander ask. He can’t ever plan anything since he never thinks a minute ahead.
I couldn’t see them then because they were working up by the front door. Bub doubtless planted the paper sack of manure on the porch floor. Champ doubtless brought the match I heard struck. Alexander doubtless rang Old Man Leverette’s doorbell.
“Trick or treat!” Alexander cried out in a breaking voice.
“Oh, shut up,” Bub said. Then they must have set the sack afire, for the porch glowed.
Now was the moment when Old Man Leverette was supposed to jerk open the door, see a small fire on his porch, and jump on it to stamp it out. The boys were poised for flight the second they saw that front door begin to move.
They never saw it. While up above I hooked my legs around the branch, Old Man Leverette wrenched his front door open with lightning speed. Never setting a foot outside, he swung his shotgun just over the three boys’ heads and let fly with both barrels.
Rock salt raked the porch ceiling and pounded in a hailstorm on the porch floor. The explosion was heard downtown. It was like the Day of Judgment, only louder.
This was followed by a piercing shriek which could only be Alexander. When they could move, Bub dived one way over the side of the porch, and Champ dived the other. They both vaulted over a matching pair of lilac bushes and lit, running.
There was a scuffling sound as Alexander’s boots seemed to run into each other. Then he turned and plunged down the front steps, just as he was meant to do.
At the last possible moment, I popped Mama’s false teeth into my mouth. Being too big for my head, they made a wonderful show. With all my might I swung forward on my branch.
Just as Alexander hit the porch steps in wild retreat, my deathly face, upside down, swung level with his. I held the lantern, turned up full blast. It lit my awful black and red features. Mama’s terrible teeth grinned at him, and that is some sight. The night breeze caught my drapings. I was a floating head, and my sheets were the shroud from some troubled tomb.
It stopped Alexander cold. He couldn’t see my knees hooked over the branch above him. He could see only a face with the features upside down in red shadow, hanging inches before him.
A pitiful gurgling sound formed in his throat. His elbows were tucked up at his sides for running, but he was paralyzed. His face seemed to dissolve. He spun around in panic and pounded back up on the porch. Which was another mistake.
Old Man Leverette had doused the small fire with a bucket of water he had ready. Now he’d picked up the paper sack which had burned down to the manure. In both hands the old gentleman hefted up the soggy sack.
Alexander ran straight into it, face first.