>>>>[First Reading for Don Coffin's Halloween Party at Clint Cleveland's home, Seattle, 25 October 1997]<<<<<
Halloween has always been a difficult holiday for me. Try as I might, I can't seem to ever find anything "supernatural" and people who consider me to be a little weird expect me to outdo myself on Halloween.
I usually disappoint them. The performance pressure is something I don't want to deal with. Halloween is really the only day I get to be "normal."
Every other day, people will tell you, I'm a bit of an odd person. My moods are dark, my humor a little twisted. I'm a loner who enjoys wandering in the city's darker, dirtier places, off on the edges of where the people are.
These are the margins where the marginalized ignore each other, or meet in small groups to find some shred of comfort. Most of these are the homeless people that we all see, but never look at.
I began to notice something after all the years I've lived here. The homeless all looked the same. The same faces over and over. Faces of agelessness. Actually, faces that weren't aging.
The homeless people weren't changing. No new faces. No old faces. Just the same. Pretty unusual for a population normally labeled "transient."
## II
At first I decided that I must be smoking crack. I'm just another privileged white male, really. I figured I wasn't paying attention. After a couple more months, though, my theory held up and I got kind of a wild hair up my ass. I decided to ask one of the homeless folks what was up.
I broached the question to one fellow I usually saw near Pioneer Square, under the viaduct, after a couple of weeks of screwing my courage up, and after scoring an appropriate liquid offering at a nearby convenience store.
"You oughta forget the whole thing," my interview subject told me after a long pull on my bottle. "You don' wanna know. Some shit's not for you people."
"But--" I started, only to be interrupted by a handwave and another pull on the wine.
"But--" he replied after wiping his mouth, "But, you already know too fuckin' much. Shit. OK, you know where the busway ends there under Spokane Street, under the bridge there?" I nodded. "OK, you meet me there late Sunday night, like midnight. I gotta show you something. OK, get outta here. Thanks for the juice."
"OK. Hey what's your name?"
"My name? Heh. Heh. Just call me Dave."
## III
Sunday comes and I remember my appointment. I can't decide whether I'm too scared to go, or if Dave was shitting me. It was moot. Both choices meant I wasn't going into the industrial district at midnight.
At the last minute, after a day and half the night of waffling, I get on a bus. I get to the end of the busway at about 12:15. Dave is there. "You're late, dumbfuck."
"The bus, Dave," I lied. "The bus was late."
"Whatever. Come on."
Dave leads me to a hidden spot under a freeway ramp among the pillars that hold the road up. There was little traffic. A group of people, all homeless, were waiting. Many of them I recognized. Someone had lit a fire in a trash barrel and tossed a grate onto the fire. There was a picnic table with a heap of something covered by a wool blanket.
"Who's yer friend, Dave?" one calls out.
"Heh. Heh. Special guest," says Dave.
"Oh yeah, you were sayin'. Didn't think he'd show."
Dave leads me up to the table and the others, thirty or so, fill in behind us and around the table. Dave lifts off the blanket. There's a man lying there, as dirty and unkempt as the others. He's delirious, completely unaware of his surroundings. Maybe he's on drugs, I thought.
"Who's that?" one asks.
"Said his name was Jim," Dave says. "Said he came from Phoenix. Believe that? Fucking Phoenix!" Dave spits on the ground.
"What's wrong with him?" I ask.
"Heh. Magic syrup," says Dave. "Got a little 'horse' innit. Keeps 'em gentle. He'll never know what hit 'im."
"Let's get on with it, Dave," I hear. The voice seems strung out. Desperate. The guy tending the fire hands Dave a large, serrated knife. Dave takes the knife and cuts Jim's leg off at the hip.
I hear a collective sigh from everyone but myself. I feel ill, and I turn away, just want to get the hell out of there. Strong arms grip me and hold me fast. "Quiet!" someone hisses into my ear.
Dave goes to work on the other leg. Jim is still alive. He's not bleeding. I must have said so out loud as Dave says, "Yeah. Magic syrup. Hold on a sec."
Dave continues to butcher the guy, muttering to himself "Phoenix motherfucker" under his breath. As each limb comes off, it gets handed to the man tending the fire who cuts it up and tosses it onto the grill.
I can't believe Jim's still alive. But he is, and if you ignore the fact that he's now a basket case, you'd think he was just caught in a bad dream, nothing worse.
The cook brings over an old piece of scrap plywood with a piece of Jim's leg on it, and hands it to Dave.
"You're our special guest," Dave says to me. "You eat first."
By this time, I'm hardly articulate. It's all I can do to shake my head and whisper, "No. No."
Dave looks disapproving. "We got more magic syrup, dude." The people behind me close in tighter. They're whispering at me, "You gotta eat it, you gotta."
I look at Jim. His eyes open and his head turns toward me. His eyes aren't tracking, he can't really see me. He moans softly.
"Go on," says Dave. "Here. I gotcha a fork."
I eat. It's terrible. I eat my whole piece. No one will let me stop. I finish to a quiet cheer; I see the others take their portions and start eating, shoving the meat into their hungry mouths with their bare hands. I hear a groan from Jim.
I can't take any more. Finally, mercifully, I pass out.
## IV
The sunrise wakes me up. I'm still under the freeway ramp. Someone had covered me with the old blanket that had covered Jim.
I sit up. I'm alone. The fire is gone. The table is gone. There's no sign that anything happened here.
I toss off the blanket and bounce up onto my feet. I've never felt so rested, so energetic, so happy to face the world. It was quite a dream, I think to myself.
I roll up the blanket and throw it over my shoulder. It doesn't even occur to me to go home.
