on the street where you live

At the top of Oak Street was Mr. Finley’s house. The property had actual rolling, leaf glutted hills. It was at least four times bigger than the average yard in town. At night, it receded into a blackened ravine beyond the fencing. During the day, lured by the mystery, unknown, and enclosure of the sprawl, Mike, Bill, and I scrambled over the fence for exploration. When our feet hit the ground, we seemed a world apart from the neighborhood. The trees seemed taller, the raccoons more ferocious, and the crunching of the leaves illicit and a little disquieting. On one occasion, we’d been chased off his property and over his fence, leaving a smear of blood on the chain links.

 

The house had always been dark on Halloween. As we passed, we'd give it a wary glance, wonder about Mr. Finley's curious disregard for the night, and sometimes, fueled by righteous indignation, throw unwanted apples and popcorn balls on the roof. On a few occasions, we'd venture up the unlit path, until the foreboding mood of the house became too much to bear.

 

One Halloween, we reached the top of Oak Street and saw lights over the doorway. We tried to continue down the sidewalk. My dad, our guide for the night, coaxed us back to the gate, “Mr. Finley’s light is on. Go ahead...What are you waiting for?” Given our declared goal to go to every house in town, refusing would have required an explanation which didn’t want to give.

 

As my dad stood on the sidewalk, untwisting a cellophane candy wrapper, we reluctantly entered the path. Each of us muttering over one another until our voices mixed into a roving well of souls. With the low rasp of the wind, the fading crinkle of cellophane wrapper, and our descent into an eerie maze of bushes and arching trees, we fell into a dread silence. The sight of the doorway sent a chill through us.

 

When Mr. Finley opened the door, we gave a feeble “Trick or Treat.” He looked down, at first without comprehending our greeting. We stood in a silence broken only by the amplified breath in our masks. Then he said, “Oh, that. Huh. What do I got?” He disappeared into the other room. Could he really have forgotten the night? Could we really have been the only ones to have knocked on his door?

 

We looked at each other, but before we could turn and run, his long legs stretched through the doorway. Legs which we could never have outrun. He looked down at us, his backlit head looming almost to the top of door frame. Shadow spilled into the recesses of his face so his eyes and teeth disconnected and hovered over us in a haze of yellow light.

 

“Here, for you.” He dropped an apple in Mike’s bag. Mike turned and hustled down the path.

 

“For you.” He dropped a potato in Bill’s bag. Bill turned and, from the sound of his feet slapping on the stone, quickly went from a walk to a jog to a dead run.

 

I stood alone, feeling a solitary, spooky abandonment. When I glanced back to the sidewalk, the familiar figures had receded into the protective cone of street light. I stood facing the guardian at the threshold. Two had been denied treats and cast away with foodstuffs. “Everything else in the fridge is perishable,” Mr. Finley said. I didn’t know, didn’t want to know, what that meant. He looked to the phone stand, furrowed his prodigious brow and said, “Oh, here,” then dropped a newspaper in my bag. I looked at him, he looked at me, the door closed.

 

The light over the stoop switched off. Now, completely enveloped in the dark, I stood peering down the inner walls of the paper bag at a newspaper. It wasn’t the daily news of my paper route. It was crumpled and folded like it had been read many times, but at the top of the page was the word New. What did this mean? What was I supposed to do with this? With each unanswerable question, my head reeled and my heart pumped chaotically in my chest. Unable to fully understand what had just happened, I turned and ran with my grocery bag full of candy and newly acquired knowledge.

 

The next morning, the sway of Halloween and the haze of high fructose corn syrup had lifted. I brushed a pile of Milky Way, Hershey's, and Starburst wrappers off the paper then laid it on the bed. I paged through the entire paper. After going through the paper once, I carefully, frantically paged through again. And again. No comics. He’d given me a newspaper with no comics! It was all words, not even color pictures. What kind of ghoulish soulless paper was this? I tossed it to the floor where it landed and settled into a bunched up pile.

 

It was then that the opportunity became clear. From this point on, all future explorations on Mr. Finley’s yard were done wearing tri-cornered newspaper hats. Detailed construction tips were innocently provided by our origami-loving librarian. Many Halloweens passed, mostly with an unlit, unoccupied Finley house. The first year of our teens and last year trick or treating, we returned from school to see him opening the door to trick or treaters. After dark, we returned wearing good pants, white shirts with rolled up sleeves, and loosened long ties. Our bags were patched together with old newspapers.

 

When we got to the house, he opened the door and looked over the crowded stoop. Poking above a Frankenstein, ballerina, hobo zombie, samurai, and witch were three tall professional looking figures. He looked at us and asked, “What are you supposed to be?”

 

“Editors of the New York Times.”

 

He paused, furrowed his brow, and said, “Huh. Well. Good for you. Excellent newspaper.” He further considered us for a moment, then dropped apples in everyone’s bags.

 

We turned from the house and walked along the path. This had been a kind of goodbye to a man who didn’t really know who we were. Certainly not without seeing us scramble over a fence. Still, that yard, a wilderness to us, and the ominous house that cast him in monumental proportions had figured prominently in our days and nights.

 

Bill reached into the bag and took a bite out of the apple, not really a treat, not really a trick. He turned and significantly, respectfully lobbed it toward the down slope of our explorations. Unfortunately, on its upward arc, it careened off a branch and thudded against the front door. When Mr. Finley’s mythic, elongated head appeared through the doorway, we ran.

 

Ritual is not easily left behind.

 

Rites of passage often live by their own unpredictable sequences.

 

The meeting of the two may set you on a new path or send you scurring into the night.

Done