The Halloween Tree

The boys tumbled into the boat.

"Sh!" whispered a voice from the empty hood.

The figure gestured again and, touched by wind, they blew across the dark waters under a night sky filled with the billion never-before-seen fires of the stars.

Far off on that dark island, there was a prickle of guitar sound.

A single candle was lit in the graveyard.

Somewhere someone blew a musical sound on a flute.

Another candle was lit among the tombstones.

Someone sang a single word of a song.

A third candle was touched to life by a flaming match.

And the faster the boat moved, the more guitar notes sounded and the more candles were lit high among the mounds on the stony hills. A dozen, a hundred, a thousand candles flared until it looked as if the great Andromeda star cluster had fallen out of the sky and tilted itself to rest here in the middle of almost-midnight Mexico.

The boat struck the shore. The boys, surprised, fell out. They spun about, but Moundshroud was gone. Only his winding sheet lay empty in the boat.

A guitar called to them. A voice sang to them.

A road like a river of white stones and white rocks led up through the town that was like a graveyard, to the graveyard that was like--a town!

For there were no people in the town.

The boys reached the low wall of the graveyard and then the huge lacework iron gates. They took hold of the iron rungs and stared in.

"Why," gasped Tom. "I never ever seen the like!"

For now they knew why the town was empty.

Because the graveyard was full.

By every grave was a woman kneeling to place gardenias or azaleas or marigolds in a frame upon the stone.

By every grave knelt a daughter who was lighting a new candle or lighting a candle that had just blown out.

By every grave was a quiet boy with bright brown eyes, and in one hand a small papier-mache funeral parade glued to a shingle, and in the other hand a papier-mache skeleton head which rattled with rice or nuts inside.

"Look," whispered Tom.

There were hundreds of graves. There were hundreds of women. There were hundreds of daughters. There were hundreds of sons. And hundreds upon hundreds upon thousands of candles. The whole graveyard was one swarm of candleshine as if a population of fireflies had heard of a Grand Conglomeration and had flown here to settle in and flame upon the stones and light the brown faces and the dark eyes and the black hair.

"Boy," said Tom, half to himself, "at home we never go to the graveyard, except maybe Memorial Day, once a year, and then at high noon, full sun, no fun. This now, this is--fun!"

"Sure!" whisper-yelled everyone.

"Mexican Halloweens are better than ours!"

For on every grave were plates of cookies shaped like funeral priests or skeletons or ghosts, waiting to be nibbled by--living people? or by ghosts that might come along toward dawn, hungry and forlorn? No one knew. No one said.

And each boy inside the graveyard, next to his sister and mother, put down the miniature funeral on the grave. And they could see the tiny candy person inside the tiny wooden coffin placed before a tiny altar with tiny candles. And around the tiny coffin stood tiny altar boys with peanuts for heads and eyes painted on the peanut shells. And before the altar stood a priest with a cornnut for a head and a walnut for a stomach. And on the altar was a photograph of the person in the coffin, a real person once; remembered now.

"Better, and still better," whispered Ralph.

"Cuevos!" sang a far voice up the hill.