The Best Halloween Ever (2 page)

That year she was a hot dog, with the bun and the mustard and all. At the last minute she thought it would be more realistic if she smelled like a hot dog, so she cut one up into little pieces and glued them inside the bun part of her costume.

It was realistic all right. Once the dogs got a whiff of Alice they thought she was lunch, and they all joined in, snuffling and sniffing and licking her.

Somebody called Mrs. Wendleken, but by the time she got there the police had Alice out of her costume, wrapped up in a blanket, and sitting in the police car. Mrs. Wendleken didn’t see that—what she saw was the remains of the costume, mostly the mustard part and pieces of the bun, and a lot of dogs sitting around licking their chops.

Mrs. Wendleken said later that of course she knew the dogs hadn’t eaten Alice up, leaving nothing but pieces of mustard and hot dog bun. “But think how it looked!” she said. “Naturally I got a little excited.”

My mother said hysterical was more like it, “ … wanting all those dogs locked up for observation, in case they were mad instead of just bewildered!”

“Don’t forget the Herdmans,” I said. “She wanted them locked up, too.”

Of course none of that happened, so Mrs. Wendleken was furious. She stayed furious, too, and when she heard about the guppies and the revolving door, she said it was obvious that the Herdmans were out of control and there was no telling what they would do this year on Halloween.

She wasn’t the only one.

The police chief said the Herdmans and Halloween together always gave him nightmares, and this year looked like it could be the worst one yet.

Then the fire chief chimed in. “Do you know what happens to other fire departments on Halloween?” he said. “Other fire departments get false alarms … a lot of false alarms. I’d love to get false alarms on Halloween! What I get is little Herdman fires.” It was true, he said, that the Herdmans never seemed to set fire to anything important, “ … but I can’t count on that. This could be the year they happen to burn down the First National Bank.”

The druggist said he was going to board up his windows, and Mr. Kline at the hardware store said he was going to sleep in the back room, just in case. And the next thing we knew, the mayor said, “This has got to stop!” … and he
did
mean Halloween.

He announced it at the Rotary meeting—”No Halloween”; and he announced it at the town council meeting—”No Halloween”; and then it was in the newspaper, on the front page—
”MAYOR CANCELS HALLOWEEN.”

… out of concern for public safety,
the article said,
and to avoid possible damage to property. Local merchants will neither purchase nor stock the usual supply of Halloween candy.
So that was it... no Halloween, no candy.

Charlie said he was going to have Halloween anyway. He said he was going to put on a costume and go trick-or-treating and everything, but he really wasn’t. Neither was I. Nobody was, because we couldn’t have Halloween all by ourselves.

You have to have kids on one end of Halloween, to look forward to it and get scary books out of the library and cut up pumpkins and get dressed up and then, as soon as it’s dark, go trick-or-treating with your friends.

Then you have to have grown-ups on the other end of Halloween, to give you the old sheets and pad you with pillows and fasten you together with safety pins and hang around the house to hand out candy and, of course, supply the candy.

“It isn’t fair!” Charlie said, and he was right.

“Having no Halloween is the worst thing that could happen!” he said, but he was wrong.

There was one worse thing, and we heard about it in the morning announcements at school.

T
he morning announcements are pretty boring, but you can usually find something else to think about. While Mr. Crabtree drones on about bus schedules and PTA notices, you can think about lunch or your science project or why Boomer Malone’s retainer looks like Dracula fangs.

But that day there was big news.

“I’m sure you’re all aware,” Mr. Crabtree said, “that there will be no Halloween activities in our town this year … specifically, there will be no trick or treat. There will be no candy handouts—in fact, no candy at all.”

There was one loud groan all over the school and a babble of complaints, but Mr. Crabtree ignored it. “This is owing,” he went on, “to widespread misconduct by, I’m sorry to say, some of our Woodrow Wilson students.”

“He means the Herdmans,” Alice Wendleken hissed, as if everybody didn’t already know that. Then Alice turned around and glared at Imogene Herdman, which Alice would never do if she wasn’t four rows and seven seats away.

“No Halloween!” Imogene yelled, so I guess the Herdmans didn’t read the newspaper. “Who says?”

Mr. Crabtree was still talking, so Mrs. Hazelwood said, “Sh-h, Imogene … the mayor says … now sh-h-h.”

“The mayor and who else?” Imogene looked at the PA speaker. “Him?”

“Everybody else,” Alice said, “and it’s your fault. You and Leroy and Gladys and Claude and all of you and your misconduct!”

I thought Alice was being too brave for her own good—now she would have to stay after school and clean the blackboard or dust erasers or mop the floor or write half a book or something till the coast was clear of Herdmans.

But maybe not, because Imogene didn’t lunge across four rows and seven seats and smack Alice flat, right on the spot. She didn’t even look mad. She looked really pleased with herself, as if misconduct was a hobby and the Herdmans were very good at it … which they were.

“ … have never encouraged these activities in the past,” Mr. Crabtree was saying. “However, this year … “ The PA system crackled and hummed and quit and came back on, which is normal for it to do. “ … going to have Halloween right here at Woodrow Wilson School on October twenty-ninth, and … “ There were more crackles, as if somebody turned the microphone upside down, and you could hear voices all over the school … “got it wrong … date … wrong? … that’s the wrong date!”

This was the first clue to what was going to happen to us. Mr. Crabtree didn’t even know when Halloween
was.
It was hard to believe. “How could he not know?” Stewart Walker said. “Unless he’s so old that they didn’t even have Halloween when he was a kid.”

“I don’t think he ever
was
a kid,” Louella McCluskey said, and you could almost believe this. Of course Mr. Crabtree had to start out like everybody else, as a baby, but after that, once he got up on his feet, he was probably just like a small principal right from the beginning.

Nobody could figure out why Mr. Crabtree, of all people, would suddenly think Halloween was great and we should celebrate it.

“Why don’t you just ask him?” Mrs. Hazelwood said, and then, “I’ll make that an assignment—interview Mr. Crabtree for extra credit.”

This is how teachers’ minds work. They see extra credit in everything. Danny Filus once had to eat frogs legs in a restaurant, and Mrs. Hazelwood made him describe that for extra credit. Danny did a good job—only two kids got sick to their stomachs, but they were kids with pet frogs, so you could understand that.

“Volunteers, please, to interview Mr. Crabtree?”

No volunteers … except, of course, Alice Wendleken, who must have “I volunteer” tattooed on her chest.

“Thank you, Alice,” Mrs. Hazelwood said, moving right along, “but I think … Stewart Walker might like the chance to earn some extra credit.”

That was the last thing Stewart wanted to do, so he was practically under his desk, pretending to hunt for something on the floor, but it didn’t do him any good. Mrs. Hazelwood can see around corners and through walls when she’s on the trail of an extra credit.

I guess Stewart
tried
to interview Mr. Crabtree, but he probably didn’t try very hard, and after a couple of days it didn’t matter. After a couple of days everybody knew what Mr. Crabtree suddenly saw in Halloween.

Homework!

In every class, on every blackboard, there were special assignments and papers to write and things to look up:
Discuss Halloween costumes—at least three paragraphs; Owls, bats,toads—choose one and discuss importance to Halloween in three paragraphs; Witch and broomstick. Why?—at least three paragraphs.
“I have to read all about pumpkins,” Charlie grumbled, “and then tell what all we do with them, and why.”

“Pumpkin pie,” I said. “You could write out the recipe for pumpkin pie.” I thought that could be part of Charlie’s paper, but he thought it could be the whole thing, so he was excited.

“You buy a can of pumpkin,” Mother told him, “and you buy a pie shell. Put the pumpkin into the pie shell, put it into the oven, and bake it for forty-five minutes.”

Charlie frowned. “Is that a recipe?”

“It’s my recipe,” Mother said.

Charlie’s teacher said it was her recipe, too, but it better not be Charlie’s paper or he would have to do it over. Kindergarten kids were lucky because they could just draw black cats and spooky houses the way they always did, and everyone in my class was lucky because Mrs. Hazelwood made all the assignments extra credit so you didn’t
have
to do them.

“But of course,” she said, “I hope all of you will take this opportunity to learn a little more about Halloween customs and traditions.”

Right away Alice sharpened up her pencil and copied everything off the board, so you knew where all the extra credit was going to go.

“I don’t care if she has all the extra credit in the world,” Louella McCluskey said, “and I don’t care about all the homework either, if it means we get to have Halloween after all. What are you going to be?” She sighed. “I guess I’ll have to be a Pilgrim again.”

Mrs. McCluskey had won a Pilgrim costume in a Chamber of Commerce Turkey Raffle and she didn’t know what else to do with it, so Louella had already been a Pilgrim twice.

“Unless you want to trade,” she said, “and be the Pilgrim this year. My mother won’t let the costume go to waste.”

“No,” I said. “I’m going to be a belly dancer. I’ve got all the stuff for it—part of a sparkly bathing suit and some curtains and some long beads.”

“Your mother won’t let you be a belly dancer,” Louella said, “with your whole middle showing and a jewel in your belly button!”

She was partly right. Mother said I absolutely could not have any jewel in my belly button. “ … or anything else. And you can’t go barefoot. You’ll have to wear some kind of shoes.”

“And if it’s cold,” I said, “I’ll take that big lacy tablecloth for a shawl.”

She looked surprised. “Well, it won’t be cold in the school.”

“But before that,” I said, “when we go trick-or-treating.”

“Beth,
nobody
is going to go trick-or-treating. You know that. It’s the whole point of having Halloween at school.”

Charlie yelped. “The whole point of Halloween
is
trick-or-treating for candy!”

“No, around here the whole point of Halloween is to beware of the Herdmans. Think about it—the dogs and cats and the Rotary Club cake … and you, Charlie, spray-painted green from head to foot!”

Of course Charlie wasn’t the only spray-painted kid that year, and green wasn’t the only color. There were red kids and blue kids and some gold kids, including Alice. Mrs. Wendleken said it was a miracle that Alice didn’t die of clogged-up skin pores, but you could tell that Alice didn’t really mind because she was still a little sparkly, here and there, two weeks after Halloween.

By now Mother was all warmed up to the subject. “ … and the turkey farm,” she went on, “when they turned on the sprinklers and nearly drowned all the turkeys. Yes, and the candy. Every year we buy all this candy and hand it out, and the Herdmans end up with all of it. I don’t know what they do with all that candy, year after year. They couldn’t possibly eat it.”

I knew Charlie didn’t want to talk about that, because one year Leroy Herdman made a bunch of kids, including Charlie, buy back their own candy.

“So,” Mother said, “this year will be different. This year Halloween will be entirely in Woodrow Wilson School, controlled and safe. Don’t forget—there almost wasn’t any Halloween at all, because of the Herdmans. The mayor wasn’t kidding when he called it off.”

Charlie was still in shock about no trick or treat when Mother answered my main question. “I guess the Herdmans will be there,” she said. “Can’t very well keep them out, but nobody has to worry about them. After all, how much trouble can they cause right there in school, with teachers and parents everywhere? What can they do?” Mother smiled at us, as if that was that. It wasn’t.

N
ormally none of the Herdmans ever looked at the blackboard, or knew what was on it—especially if it was homework, which they never did anyway. So it was possible (this was Charlie’s idea) that they wouldn’t know about Halloween being at school and nowhere else.

“They’ll go out,” he said, “just the way they always do, looking for kids they can shove around and candy they can steal, and there won’t be any! No kids, no candy! They won’t know what happened. They’ll go crazy!”

This made a great picture—all the Herdmans running up and down the empty streets, getting more and more frustrated, bumping into each other, maybe even running into trees or parked cars—but you knew it would never happen.

Besides, the Herdmans didn’t have to read the blackboard to know all about the Woodrow Wilson Halloween. There were signs about it everywhere; all the first-graders had take-home notes pinned to them that said,
There will be no community Halloween. Come with your family to Woodrow Wilson School, 7 o’clock, Halloween night
; and almost every day Alice showed up with a new extra credit report about owls or bats or bonfires till Mrs. Hazelwood took pity on us (“Took pity on
herself
!” my mother said) and shut Alice down. “New school policy,” Mrs. Hazelwood said. “No more extra credit.”

Somebody had straightened Mr. Crabtree out about when Halloween really was, and every morning he got on the PA system to tell us what we had to look forward to on October 31—costume parade and prizes, cookie-decorating contest and prizes, Meet the Monsters …