The Coup of the King of Candy
The Coup of the King of Candy
"You boys stay out of trouble," my dad said as he pulled to the curb in front of Will's house. "Don't let Sherman talk you into doing anything stupid."
"Ok, Dad. I won't," I said.
"Don't stay out too late and DON'T THROW EGGS!" he said sternly.
"We won't," I said as I lept out of the car.
Will and Sherman were already sitting on the porch in their costumes; Sherman was Darth Vader and Will was Dracula. They each had vinyl suits with the name and picture of their character emblazoned across the chest. For some reason the good folks at Ben Cooper Costumes felt that the body of the costume was there to explain who the hell the cheap ass mask was supposed to be. Unfortunately, even this was not always enough. One year I went as Yoda. I had a green mask with GIANT ears and a very large �Y-O-D-A� across my chest. I was called "E.T." by every adult I came in contact with that night. After a while I decided it was a conspiracy by adults to make kids hate trick-or-treating.
This year, however, I was the devil, mainly because the costume came with a pitchfork! Nowadays there�s no way a company could release a costume for kids and include a two and half foot wooden fork, but these were different times. That was an awesome costume. My mom had seen on Donahue or somewhere that the thin plastic masks were dangerous because kids couldn�t see well out of the tiny eyeholes (which was true�and they would also scratch your face), but somehow she thought a pitchfork was ok. Anyway, she decided that in the name of safety she would paint my face to look like the Prince of Darkness...and she did a fantastic job! I creeped myself out in the mirror! It was all red, black and yellow...awesome.
Will and Sherman both congratulated me on my costume when I walked up.
"Man, you look scary as hell!" Sherman said.
"Let me see your pitchfork!" Will said as he snatched it from me. "Dude, let's fight! Where's your light saber?"
"Doc, took it away," Sherman said. Sherman always called his mom "Doc" when she wasn't around. She was a PhD. "I hit Alex in the neck with it and he started spitting blood. He is such a baby."
They each took turns trying to impale each other with the pitchfork until I took it back, afraid Sherman�s violent antics would get it taken away. That was when Jody showed up.
Jody walked up carrying a brown paper sack from the Piggly-Wiggly. Now, Jody was a big boy and he liked his candy, so I thought he had decided to forget trick-or-treating and had simply bought his own candy. I was wrong.
�What�s in the bag, Jody?� I asked. �You got a sack full of Snickers?�
�My costumes,� he replied flatly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. As he got closer I could see that in the bag were indeed brightly colored vinyl costumes and masks.
�Are you having trouble deciding who to be this year?� Sherman asked him.
�No, I�m gonna be all of �em,� Jody said as he turned toward the backyard. We all dutifully followed him to see what it was our young pal was up to.
Jody walked to the bottom of the tree that was home to Will�s tree-fort. I say "Will�s tree-fort," but really it was ours. We all built it together (with some help from Will�s step-dad) and the fact that it was in Will�s yard was just incidental. When I thought about that fort I felt like I owned it as much as I thought I owned the toys in my own room.
At the ladder Jody set down his bag and pulled out the first costume, Spider-Man. He put on the vinyl suit with �Spider-Man� written across the chest. The costume was red and yellow, but it clearly showed a picture of Spider-Man on the chest, wearing red and blue. I swear to God, it's like they weren't even trying.
�Cool, Spider-Man!� I said.
Jody barely nodded and began digging in the bag again. He pulled out a Frankenstein costume and laid it neatly on the ground.
�Weren�t you Frankenstein last year?� Will asked.
�Yeah,� Jody replied. Then he went into the bag a third time and pulled out a Scooby-Doo costume and laid it next to Frankenstein. We all started laughing and howling.
�Scooby-Doo?! Hahahaha!! That�s for girls!�
�No, it isn�t! It was my sister�s, but my mom said it�s for boys, too! My mom said so!� he defended.
�Jody, what are you gonna do with all these costumes?� I asked.
�Well, I�m gonna go around the whole neighborhood as Spider-Man and when I�ve gone to all the houses I�m gonna come back and change into Frankenstein,� Jody explained, getting more excited as he went. �Then I�ll come back and change to Scooby-Doo! I�m gonna get a ton of candy!�
�That�s so stupid,� Sherman declared, but secretly we all knew that it might work and we were all jealous that we hadn�t come up with it ourselves.
We all set off into the neighborhood to get our candy. Will, Sherman and I stuck together like always, going from house to house in a group, but about halfway through the first lap Jody figured out that he was going to have to actually run the whole time to be able to make three full laps. Jody ran from house to house trick-or-treating, then he would dump all his candy in the paper sack, switch costumes and do another lap.
After the first lap he was so out of breath he couldn�t even say �trick-or-treat.� He would just hold out his bag and they would drop the candy in. He also learned on his first lap which houses were giving out apples or popcorn and he skipped those on the later laps. I think that the masks didn�t really fool anybody. I am pretty sure that those old ladies knew that the fat little Scooby-Doo was the same little fat boy as the fat little Spider-Man...especially when he was heaving and out of breath as the fat little Frankenstein only moments before.
Will and Sherman were filling up their little bags respectably, but mine was noticeably lighter. Seems that all the old white-haired Christian ladies didn�t like giving out treats to a miniature Satan. Some of them would even gasp when they saw me and then tell me that I shouldn�t dress up like the devil �especially on Halloween.� Then they would give Sherman and Will extra candy for their morally decent costumes of a guy who blew up planets and a bloodsucking vampire.
"OK, I'm tired. Let's go back to the tree-fort," Will said.
"Come on, let's hit a couple more houses. You guys have way more than me," I begged.
"Maybe you should have been Jesus," Sherman offered.
Just then we were passed by a chubby and wheezing Scooby-Doo. Jody was trying to squeeze in a final lap before it got too late. He was really going all out. I had to admit I was impressed. I thought he would pass out midway through the second lap, but apparently will-power and/or sugar lust were able to overcome any physical limitations young Jody may have had.
When his bag was finally full Jody limped back to Will�s house and climbed into the tree-fort with us. Our ritual on Halloween was always to stay over at Will�s and sleep in the tree-fort (if the weather was nice, which it usually was). We would stay up telling ghost stories till the last of us passed out.
Jody almost couldn�t make it up the ladder with his giant bag full of candy. He was balancing it on his head or chest or something AND somehow climbing the 12-foot ladder. When he finally spilled into the fort we were all stunned at the sugar loot that he had been able to horde.
"Holy shit! Look at all that candy!" Sherman shouted.
"Get back! It's all mine! You guys can't have any!" yelled Jody as he did his best to shield his treasure from our thieving hands.
Then Jody quickly hunkered down in a corner of the fort with his 10 or 15 pounds of candy and began eating his way to the bottom.
After a little while Will pulled out the flashlight and we started telling stories. We told the same stories every year and always saved the best for last. After we told all the other stories we could think of, it was time to tell our favorites: �Hookhand,� �Slopfoot,� and the one about fingernails on the car hood. Nobody was really scared of those anymore; we all knew how they went and when the scary parts would come. But we loved them.
�I�m gonna tell �Hookhand,� Will said quickly, almost as if he were calling shotgun.
�Aw, man,� cried Sherman. �If you tell that then I get to tell �Slopfoot!��
��Fingernails� is mine!� I declared hurriedly before I was shut out completely.
Will started �Hookhand� same as always with the young girls getting lost in the woods and deciding to sleep in the creepy old mill. About halfway through, when the girls were trying to unlock the basement door, Sherman leapt up.
�Oh my God, you forgot the dead rat! You�re not telling it right! How the Hell could you forget that?!� Sherman yelled. �Give me the damn flashlight! I�m telling it now!�
Sherman was right, of course; Will had forgotten the dead rat. That could really ruin the story. If you don�t know about the dead rat before they go into the basement then you wouldn�t know where the girls got the needle and then nothing would make sense.
After a couple of weak protests from Will, Sherman took the flashlight and continued the story. This was common practice...if you screw it up, you don�t get to finish it. Most of the time whoever started the story didn�t get to finish because someone else would declare they weren�t telling it right or they were leaving part of it out. So the flashlight changed hands...sometimes peacefully...sometimes not...especially when Sherman was telling the story. He once knocked a kid in the head with the flashlight just so he could finish �Hookhand.�
Poor Jody had almost finished his entire sack of candy by the time Sherman was all done. By the time I told about the girl getting out of the car and finding her dead boyfriend, Jody was lying among candy bar wrappers and empty pixie stick straws and just holding his belly. He just lay there and moaned after the story was over. He was rubbing his now noticeably expanded tummy when I thought I heard him whimper.
�Jody, are you ok?� I asked.
I think he tried to answer me but I'll never know. He raised his head like he was going to speak, but his eyes got really big and a bit of chocolate drool ran down his cheek. After a second he scrambled to the side of the fort and hung his head over the plywood edge. The still Scooby-Doo clad Jody threw up every bit of that candy...another Halloween ritual. His entire body would seize up and relax as Jody made the most awful grunting and crying sounds I�ve ever heard. He leaned over that ledge for almost half an hour. Finally he rolled over and fell asleep on the giant pile of wrappers...making crinkling noises all night long when he breathed. The king of candy had been laid low by his favorite concubine.
In the morning we climbed down from the fort to go inside and watch cartoons, but not without first examining the pile of candy ruins that Jody had made at the base of the tree. Sherman grabbed a stick and started prodding and poking like a surgeon doing an autopsy.
�Look, I see a Tootsie Roll...there�s some M & M�s...what the heck is that? Jody, what...the Hell...is that?�
�Um...brownie,� Jody said.
�Was it good?�
�No, it had nuts.�