Halloween Block Party
By William Nixon
Dad picks me a Popsicle from the ice chest, digging his hand deep in the ice because he’s mad I didn’t want to come here to the Renehan’s, not after last week, so he wants to find me a lime as a treat, even though I don’t like lime and don’t like Popsicles because they make my teeth freeze.
“You’re still a little young for the fun stuff,” he says because what he really wants is to go into the shed made up with straw to look like Kon-Tiki hut to get himself a pina colada from Mrs. Renehan in her coconut bra bikini top. A real coconut cut in halves. He gives me his big stupid eye wink, a wink like a slow pitch a father will offer up when he wants his son to hit a homer.
Mom won’t come to the Renehan’s any more. Not after last week.
Did I say what Mr. Renehan did with the squirrel? It ran around around the shed so much making a nuisance that he put out his cage. Then, trapped all night, the squirrel chewed off its tail, so Mr. Renehan drowned the whole cage in a bucket of kerosene. Mom wouldn't say, but Bobby Purcell swore it was true: he saw the Corvette—Mr. Renehan drives a Corvette—with a squirrel tail on the aerial and Mom in the front seat and the radio playing. Mom would only say no one is crueler than a man with a plastic smile.
Once Dad leaves to go find Mrs. Renehan in her grass skirt, I donate this Popsicle to the dirt to feed fifty-three ants. Let them freeze their faces off.
Mr. Renehan finds me by the Halloween make-up table. Nobody’s using it, but they’re supposed to.
"You found it," he says. "The official zombie make-up station. Amazing what you can get off the internet these days. What kind of zombie would you like to be?"
"I don't want to be a zombie," I say.
"You don't?" He pretends to be surprised. Mr Renehan always likes to pretend. “Maybe you’re a little young to crave human flesh. How about a pirate? Or a black eye?” There are jars like for cold cream, one white, one black. “Ever had a black eye?”
“No,” I say.
“Now’s your chance. Your mother will love it. Say, is she in the house?”
“My mother doesn’t like you any more. Not after what you did to the squirrel.”
“The squirrel?”
“Lost your Popsicle, did you?” Dad's already back.
"We've got a tough customer here," Mr. Renehan tells Dad. "No zombie, no pirate, no black eye."
"He thinks he's a frog," Dad says.
"A frog? He's not wearing anything green."
"Not just Halloween," Dad says. "Pretty much every day of the year."
I let my tongue drop out all the way. It's my specialty. It hangs down past my chin and then some more. Nobody has seen anything like it, not the first time I drop it, though at school the kids have gotten used to it. At lunchtime they give me colored Kool-Aid drinks to see it hang purple or green. My teacher says he's waiting to see me in a Batman movie, the villain called the Frog.
Mr. Renehan doesn't like it. He stands back up straight as if afraid I might lick him.
"That's not normal," he says. "Isn't there some kind of surgery?"
"Doesn't want it," Dad says. "He's hoping to get the girls in a few years."
Then my real trick. I unfurl my tongue again, this time with a fly down near the tip. It's too wet to fly, but it's still alive. I keep a whole terrarium of flies at home. They live on banana peels.
"He's giving you a gift," Dad says. "Please feel free to take it."
"No thanks," Mr. Renehan says. "I'd call this pretty sick."
I swallow the fly for myself. "Rivet," I say.
"What do you call screwing my wife?"
"Not what it's cranked up to be."
I'm expecting a punch, but there's none, which is better all around. Neither Dad nor Mr. Renehan have the mettle for it, two soft men who's only sport is mowing the lawn.
Mr. Renehan turns away to slap his hand on the shoulder of Mr. Carlucci, who wears a full Yankees uniform despite having a paunch you'd never see on a real Yankee.
Dad whispers it's time for me to go inside to use the bathroom and then look for money. A man with a Corvette never notices how much he's missing.
I agree, but it's not the money I want. It's the keys.
Did I say, Mom's waiting at home dressed up like an airline stewardess ready to leave.
There are places we can go, she says, where I won't feel the need to eat flies.
Places we can call home.
The zoo, I hope she means. Where no one dresses up for Halloween. Where we're just who we are.
Frog. And a million flies.
THE END
Author Bio: Will Nixon's poetry books include "My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse" and "Love in the City of Grudges." He's the author of "The Pocket Guide to Woodstock" and the co-author of "Walking Woodstock: Journeys into the Wild Heart of America's Most Famous Small Town." He now lives in Kingston, New York. willnixon.com.