We Ride Upon Sticks

by Quan Barry

  Tonight the Wharf was crawling with revelers, many of them already drunk. At times it felt like you were just a bump away from someone spilling their beer on you. “We should get our sticks,” said Julie Minh.

  “Why?” asked Boy Cory.

  “It could be part of our costume,” she replied, but we could feel what she was really getting at. It wasn’t necessarily a bad idea.

  “The cars are just two streets up,” said Abby. “Let’s go.”

  We trotted over to the lot. Little Smitty went full out, strapping on her shin guards and popping in her mouth guard. Anytime she wanted to say something she had to take it out, but it didn’t matter. The way it disfigured her jaw sent a clear signal not to mess with her.

  As a final touch, we smeared on some blue and white face paint. Writing ’90 would’ve given our ages away, so we just went with assorted war stripes. When we were done, we all felt better. It was a good call. We’d never realized how much the sticks were a part of us, how they made us feel stronger. We had the power to break fingers, split lips. We headed back to the Wharf, ready to rumble should it come to rumbling. As we went, we broke out into one of our cheers:

  We are the Falcons,

  the mighty mighty Falcons.

  Everywhere we go people want to know

  who we are so we tell them—

  WE ARE THE FALCONS!

  “What’s up with the sticks?” someone dressed as Big Bird called out as we passed by.

  “That’s how we get around,” said Sue Yoon, provocatively jamming hers between her legs. “ ‘We ride upon sticks and are there presently,’ ” she added, using her Tituba islandy voice. Heather Houston was impressed. Sue had done her research. It was an actual quote from Tituba’s confession before the court of Samuel Sewall. Tonight, it was pretty much on the mark.

  None of us remembers how we found the shop. In the weeks to come, Heather Houston would come back and try to find it again, but to no avail. Suddenly, there was just a red light glowing over a nondescript door in an unexceptional alleyway. We still had thirty minutes to kill. Usually red means stop, but it was Halloween. Tonight it meant go go go.

  * * *

  —

  Even though we were coming in from the dark, it took our eyes a while to adjust. Once inside, we weren’t sure if it was a store or not. There didn’t seem to be much to buy, just a cabinet with a row of dusty books and a folding table loaded with decks of cards.

  “Merry met,” called a voice.

  “We’re just looking,” said Abby Putnam.

  “No, you’re not,” said the voice, getting right down to business. There was no rudeness in the statement, just observation. “You ladies are on a quest.”

  “Field field field,” yelled the Claw, but we all told It to shut up.

  “Maybe,” said Abby Putnam.

  “I don’t see it ending well,” said the woman. “Not unless you learn to trust each other.”

  Suddenly she was standing before us, though we didn’t know where she’d come from. The place was just a single room with no visible doors except the one we’d just entered through. Later we couldn’t agree on what the woman even looked like. If she was young or old, pretty or a hag, what ethnicity she was. Sue Yoon said she was Chinese, AJ Johnson Jamaican. Boy Cory went so far as to claim she was a man in drag. In our defense it was pretty dark.

  “We trust each other plenty,” protested Jen.

  The woman laughed. “You ladies have a lot to learn about women,” she said. She blew on a steaming mug of whatever it was she was drinking. “We are the secretive sex.” She picked up a piece of rose quartz from a bowl filled with various crystals. “For example, one of you is currently—shall we say involved?—with an older gentleman,” she said, adding, “a rather hirsute older gentleman.” Becca started to form the question, but Heather answered it telepathically before it was even out. Hairy.

  We looked around at one another wide-eyed while also trying not to show it. Coach Mullins had that crazy beard, but did that make him hirsute? Double duh! screamed the Claw. Of course!

  “Tell us what to do,” Jen Fiorenza blurted out. “We gotta make it to States.”

  Julie Minh was standing by the door looking pale, as if she were wearing an actual sheet. “I know what we should do,” she said in her newfound adult voice. “We should hightail it out of here and save ourselves some cash as well as our immortal souls.” Apparently fear made her brave, and also a little bit rude.

  “Be my guest,” said the woman, not uncharitably, motioning toward the door. None of us moved. Tellingly, Julie Minh didn’t either. The woman turned and gestured toward the two chairs facing each other at the folding table.

  Sue Yoon stepped forward. “Pick a deck,” the woman said.

  Sue handed her stick to Abby. She looked over the cards. She was used to this kind of thing. Just this past summer she’d gone back to Korea with her parents for two weeks while her brother was interning at Wang Computers in Cambridge. In Busan there had been much consulting with those who performed such services to find out if Thomas was indeed not on the market for a Mrs. Yoon. The verdict had been yes. “And what about her?” her parents had asked almost as an afterthought. Sue had felt herself suddenly materializing in the eyes of the fortune-tellers as they turned their gaze on her. She could sense her parents hoping for good news, each fortune-teller announcing that this acting bug was just a phase. Just look at TV and the movies, her parents constantly told her. There isn’t anyone who looks like us. Get it out of your head, they said. The only thing you should pretend to be is an American just like everyone else.

  “You want some privacy or will this be a public reading?” asked the woman.

  “Privacy would be good,” said Sue, not sure how much she’d get anyway, what with our blue arms and all.

  “You’re the boss,” said the woman. She drew a black curtain in front of the table. We hadn’t even noticed it. The curtain must have been thick. We were surprised we couldn’t hear a peep, as it wasn’t like they were in a separate room or anything.

  Fifteen minutes later, when the curtain was drawn back, Sue looked as white as Julie Minh cowering by the door. “Anyone else?” asked the woman. None of us came forward. “What about you, birthday girl?” but Julie Minh just gripped her stick tighter.

  “How much do we owe for the reading?” asked Abby.

  “It was my pleasure,” said the woman.

  “What about this book?” asked Heather Houston, holding one up in the air. It was midnight blue with a silver pentagram embossed on the cover.

  “How much is the power to change your life worth?” said the woman. Girl Cory stepped forward and dropped a twenty on the table.

  Sue never told us exactly what the woman had said, but we caught glimpses of it, learned things we’d never known. About the bullying Sue had endured in elementary school. The kids walking by and pulling on the corners of their eyes. Even kids she thought were her friends asking in all earnestness if she ate dogs. Halloween night that woman and her deck of cards saved Sue years and years of therapy. Maybe we all should have had the balls to sit in the chair and hear what she had to say about our lives. The advice she gave Sue was good if not obvious. In a way, it applied to all of us then and forever, and basically boiled down to this:

  Fuck ’em.

  Slowly Sue got up from her chair. One by one we followed her back out into the Salem night, sticks at the ready. We were just a bunch of girls (and one guy) from Oniontown. Why it didn’t occur to any of us to go back to where we belonged was a mystery we never even thought to ask. Or maybe it was that we were where we belonged. Where we belonged was everywhere. As we streamed out, the woman called to us, “Blessed be!”

  “And also with you,” Julie Minh answered automatically.

  None of us had noticed that the woman knew it
was Julie Minh’s birthday though we hadn’t even mentioned it. When Little Smitty spit out her mouth guard and pointed this out, Julie Minh began hyperventilating, her shoulders rising up to her ears with each ragged breath. Sue Yoon handed her a lit cigarette.

  “Calme-toi,” said Mel Boucher.

  “This is not happening,” said Julie Minh. “This is not happening.” This time she took a deep drag on the Parliament and exhaled, an old pro, the smoke billowing out her mouth like breath from a dragon. Happily, the cigarette worked. Yeah, her hand never stopped shaking, but at least she managed to catch her breath.

  * * *

  —

  The “parade” was definitely not what we were expecting. For starters, there was absolutely nothing parade-y about it. No cute little kids dressed up as fat little pumpkins, no hippie couples romping through the streets channeling their inner Sonny and Cher. Where were all the Ewoks we’d just seen down by the wharf? Apparently, the California Raisins knew something we didn’t. Instead, the onlookers gathered on Congress Street looked utterly drab, like a crowd of extras rustled up straight out of a Shirley Jackson story. As if they had come with rocks in their pockets and with every intention of hurling them.

  In another few years, all this dourness would change. The Salem Chamber of Commerce would decide enough was enough. Somebody had to capitalize on Halloween and its nonexistent connection to the 1692 Witch Trials, and if Danvers wasn’t up to the challenge, it might as well be the City of Salem. Starting in the late ’90s the Chamber would organize the first annual Haunted Happenings, a monthlong celebration of what would come to be known as Halloween Season in Salem. There would be haunted houses, haunted tours, haunted hayrides, haunted ghost stories on Salem Common, haunted witch trial reenactments, a haunted Ferris wheel in the Haunted Happenings amusement park; in short, there would be enough metric tonnage of haunted kitsch to sink a hundred haunted battleships. But we were still a decade out from Halloween Season and that family-friendly, all-inclusive moneymaking haunted pablum. Tonight the only offerings on the menu were factionalism and pandemonium.

  We found a spot on a corner by Derby Street. The crowd was thin, the night cold. In a few hours it would be November. There was nothing to do but wait. Becca Bjelica began twirling her stick like a majorette in order to keep moving and stay warm. Finally we saw a cop car inching up the street, its lights washing the darkness with much-needed color. This was it. Halloween was finally here.

  A few hundred people trailed silently in the cop car’s wake. As they passed by, we realized it wasn’t a parade. It was a memorial.

  Most of the people had on long black robes. Some wore witches’ hats, others flower garlands wreathing their heads. One man had an intricate set of horns sprouting from his brow, the things long and twisted like an antelope’s. He was marching behind a banner that said, I WALK THE PATH OF THE ANCIENT ONES. NATURE IS MY CHURCH. Other people were carrying signs that said, NEVER AGAIN under a drawing of a pentacle.

  “I don’t get it,” said Abby Putnam. “What am I missing?”

  “It’s the Wiccans,” said Heather Houston.

  “Who?” said Girl Cory.

  “Wiccans, pagans, witches,” said Heather. “I don’t actually know if it’s all interchangeable. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.” She started flipping through the book she’d just bought. “Actually, it says right here all Wiccans are pagans, but not all pagans are Wiccans.”

  “Speak English, Poindexter,” said AJ Johnson, her long black braids rustling behind her like fringe.

  Heather gave it some more thought. “I guess it’s like the way all Catholics are Christians, but not all Christians are Catholics,” she said. Even though this made sense, without uttering a word Little Smitty reached over with her stick and closed the book.

  Then a group of people across the street from where we were standing began to yell. One of them had a big sloppy sign that read JOHN 3:16 and looked as if he’d scribbled it with his less dominant hand. Two others unfurled a banner that said, SUFFER NOT A WITCH TO LIVE. To our eyes the people yelling weren’t any spring chickens. It was kind of surprising to see a group of middle-aged folks who looked like they should have known better screaming themselves hoarse.

  “I know one of those ladies,” said Julie Minh, pointing at a woman in a gray peacoat. “She’s from my church.”

  “That is definitely uncool,” said Boy Cory.

  “What, being a witch or being anti-witch?” said Julie Minh.

  “Modern-day witches don’t believe in the devil,” said Heather. “Pagans mostly worship Mother Nature. Christmas trees are a pagan ritual the Catholic Church co-opted. Much of the ceremony in the Catholic Mass comes from pagan times.”

  “What. Ever,” said newly adult Julie Minh.

  We watched as the parade slogged by. It was pretty anemic and only took about ten minutes to pass us. For a moment it made you feel like the Witch Trials maybe weren’t all that long ago. Somebody was throwing eggs. One hit a woman in the shoulder. She looked down at her soiled robe and sorta smile-grimaced. “The least you can do is throw some bacon too, you coward!” her friend yelled at the faceless night. “We deserve a good breakfast.” AJ Johnson made a mental note to herself: always be laughing. The woman from the shop who’d read Sue’s tarot just thirty minutes before was already being proven right. Fuck ’em.

  Then we saw someone waving at us. He was wearing a Red Sox cap. It took a moment to realize it was Brunet Mark from Papa Gino’s, he of the anchovy pizza fame. By the time we realized it was him, he had already crossed the street, so escaping out a side exit was out of the question.

  “Well, that was weird,” he said. We couldn’t disagree.

  “Glad you came?” asked Julie Minh.

  “Eh,” he said. It seemed like about the right answer. “We heard there’s a party going down over on Gallows Hill,” he said. “You guys wanna come?”

  Abby Putnam blamed the lameness of the Halloween parade on what happened next. If the parade had been cool and fun and uplifting, if we’d had a chance to see some amazing costumes, maybe someone walking around in an actual frame and dressed up as the Mona Lisa, then maybe we would’ve had enough and called it a day, headed back to our cars with a spring in our step. But watching people get screamed at by their fellow man left a bad taste in your mouth. Who wants to end what’s supposed to be one of the best nights of the year on a note of baconless eggs?

  “We’re in,” said Jen Fiorenza. The Claw pushed up Its sleeves and rubbed Its hands together, raring to go. And we were in, for better and for worse, all eleven of us. Were we glad we were in? Eh.

  * * *

  —

  We walked with Brunet Mark to a parking space on a side street a few blocks away. The other Marks and Guy Whose Name We Didn’t Catch were waiting there, shifting their weight from leg to leg and trying to stay warm. Brunet Mark unlocked the car. It was his baby, a canary-yellow Chrysler Town & Country minivan. The thing had seat belts for seven. “We can all fit,” said Guy Whose Name We Didn’t Catch. He was right. Between the floor space and the bench-style seats, we probably could have crammed in another whole field hockey team.

  Brunet Mark drove as if he were an old woman, actually like Mrs. Kaling, alternately crawling along and then speeding up, scaring himself, then slowing down again. “It’s Halloween night,” he explained. “There are little kids running around in costumes with limited visibility.” We looked high and low, but there were no little kids running around downtown Salem in costumes with limited visibility. Finally we pulled up in our lot by the mall and climbed out. “Why don’t some of you come with us?” he said. We all looked at one another. It was obvious he had eyes for Julie Minh and her crucifix. Internally we drew straws. Heather was an obvious choice to go along for companionship, but Boy Cory drew the long imaginary straw, plus he was a good choice just to make sure nobody got any ideas.

>   The rest of us piled in our cars and followed the Town & Country through the circuitous streets of Salem. There were people out partying and just plain old walking around. We passed one group dressed up as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, another involving a handful of folks in long dark cloaks. At one point it seemed we were going in circles. Slowly we realized we were passing the same cloaked specters again. This time, Brunet Mark slowed the Town & Country down to a crawl. From our spots in the caravan, we watched as an arm poked out the driver’s side window, something white and oblong in hand. We gasped as the hand threw a half dozen in rapid succession, eggs sailing through the night like yolk-filled water balloons. Brunet Mark must’ve been a lefty, as he had pretty good aim and a strong throwing arm. At least three cloaked pedestrians got hit, one of them a woman who took it on the side of the head. Little Smitty started cackling. The Claw raked her over the coals. The Claw did not take kindly to the thought of someone messing with someone else’s coiffure. Little Smitty stopped laughing, chastised. She turned on the radio. Thankfully “Monster Mash” was playing. The Claw lightened up some. It sent out the signal. We turned on the radio in all our cars, even Mark’s, all of us sailing through Halloween Salem to a one-hit wonder that always makes you smile whenever you hear it, whether you’ve just hurled an egg at a total stranger or been hit by one.

  I was working in the lab late one night

  When my eyes beheld an eerie sight

  For my monster from his slab began to rise

  And suddenly to my surprise…

  What had Sue Yoon said earlier that night? We ride upon sticks and are there presently. Well, following a Town & Country, we definitely weren’t anywhere presently. Eventually we turned up a side street and climbed a steep upgrade before parking in a remote spot and getting out to do some reconnaissance. There were no other cars around, no people. It was also pretty obvious there was no party raging, but it was still pretty early, only a little after nine o’clock. We were at the very top of Gallows Hill next to an open field that looked bigger at night. Some of us had been there before. It was a place teens liked to gather to party. There were woods on the other side of the field that led down the hill. It was maybe a ten-minute walk all the way down through the forest to the bottom, where there was a playground and baseball field. If people were partying in the woods, they could be anywhere just off the trail.