December Park(19)

In the den, while It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown played for perhaps the fiftieth time on TV, my grandfather grumbled about the shaving cream and toilet paper he would undoubtedly have to clean up in the morning.

An old box filled with Halloween costumes was tucked away at the far end of the basement, up against the hot water heater and suitably ghostlike beneath the drape of a paint-splattered white sheet. Inside were a number of masks, including one of Lon Chaney from The Phantom of the Opera that my father had donned a few years back just prior to waking me up for school, intent on—and successful in—scaring the shit out of me.

There were also rubber gloves whose fingers concluded in hooked claws; a set of glow-in-the-dark plastic vampire teeth; a large plastic cauldron; latex bats that tittered when jostled; a variety of wooden pitchforks; capes; furry hoods, some adorned with horns; oversized clown shoes; a Superman T-shirt; my old remote-controlled race car (I had no idea why this had been stored in the Halloween box); a rhinestone-infested bikini top and hula sarong; and various other things.

I spent nearly twenty minutes digging through the box before closing it back up with nothing to show for my efforts. Instead, a tin of shoe polish on a shelf caught my attention, and I absconded with it.

In my room, I dropped a Springsteen cassette into the tape deck and cranked “Born to Run” while I dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt, dark jeans, and my fastest sneakers. Standing before the mirror that hung on the inside door of my closet, I painted my cheeks, my forehead, and underneath my eyes with the black shoe polish.

Downstairs, my grandmother snagged a fistful of my sweatshirt and commented, “Black on black is a particularly bad idea for nighttime, don’t you think? You’ll get hit by a car.”

I groaned. My grandmother was always telling me I’d get hit by a car. “I won’t get hit. I’m always careful.”

“Yes, well, be particularly careful tonight.” She didn’t have to explain what she meant. “And please don’t forget your curfew.”

“I won’t,” I said, though I knew it was a promise I might not be able to keep. My father worked every Mischief Night, and he wouldn’t be home until dawn.

“Stay safe,” she said and kissed me on the cheek.

On a normal night I would have taken my bike, but my friends and I would be weaving stealthily between the shadows on foot tonight, so I walked through the neighborhood, passing hordes of similarly dressed teenagers with backpacks on their shoulders and mischievous glints in their eyes. A few recognized me and raised their hands at me or tossed rocks and, in one case, an egg at my head. I dodged the rocks and the egg and picked up my pace.

When I hit the rear parking lot of the Generous Superstore, there was spooky music crackling from the public address speakers affixed to the brick columns outside the loading docks. A lone security guard wielding a flashlight eyed me with suspicion as I cut around the side of the building and hopped the curb. There was a brick alcove here, outfitted with a bank of pay phones, a wooden bench, and a single floodlight whose bulb had been busted for as long as I could remember. My friends were there in the shadows waiting for me.

“Hey,” I said, joining them.

“Man,” said Michael. “Are you ever on time?”

“I’ll work on being more punctual if you work on being less ugly.”

“Ha. You’re a riot.” He swung an overstuffed knapsack off his shoulder and set it down at his feet. He wore jeans and a dark sweatshirt with a hood, similar to mine, but had an old pith helmet cocked back on his head. “What’d you do to your face?”

“It’s shoe polish,” I said, taking the tin of polish out of the kangaroo pocket of my sweatshirt. I handed it to Scott.

Scott popped the lid off, then examined the contents. He brought it to his nose and sniffed it, pulling a face.

“It washes right off,” I promised him, though I didn’t know this to be true.

Scott shrugged, scooped a bunch of the tarry gunk out of the tin, then smeared it across his face. He wore plastic vampire teeth, which bulged out his lips, and a Dracula cape tied around his neck.

I peered over Michael’s shoulder as he unzipped the knapsack and opened it wide so that we could all see what was inside: rolls of toilet paper, two full cartons of eggs, several cans of shaving cream, a large screwdriver and wrench he’d shoplifted a few days earlier from Second Avenue Hardware, and some other junk that promised to make the evening memorable.

“That toilet paper’s not used, I hope,” Peter commented.

Michael slugged him on the forearm.

“Here,” Scott said, passing the shoe polish to Peter.

It looked like an old Buick had backfired in Scott’s face. I tried to stifle a laugh.

“Hey,” Scott groused, spitting out the plastic vampire teeth into his hand. “This was your idea.”

“No, no, it looks cool. Trust me.” Then I brayed laughter.

“Sweet,” said Peter, streaking his own face in shoe polish. He dragged his fingers down his cheeks, leaving vertical black lines that resembled war paint. He was dressed in a tight-fitting navy-blue sweater that looked black in the dark and bright white sneakers. He had a plastic dime-store Batman mask propped on the top of his head, the elastic band cutting into the flesh under his chin.

“You should do your shoes with that polish, too,” Scott suggested. “They’re so white they’re blinding.”