Trick or Treat

     The lightest bit of snow starts to waft from a night without stars. I’m young, eleven or twelve years old. The few flakes on my glasses kaleidoscope the beams from oncoming headlights. I’m wearing a coat but underneath, I’m dressed as my favorite cartoon character in a homemade costume. My sister, age seven, is a fairy princess. It’s late and she’s tired. She leaves her wand in the car with Dad when we go up to the house.  
     “Trick or Treat!” 

     We’re at a house down the street from where we live. It’s tradition to start out at the farthest end of town and work the way back home. I’m fourteen when I go out with my friends David and Daniel. We skip tradition, starting with my immediate neighbors to circumnavigate the town until we bypass my house, hit up the Retirement home at the shaded end of the street and make it back to my porch. In our hands, heavy pillowcases full of candy. A few treasures that year are a pair of sodas and full-sized Hershey bars. After the inspection under the pretense of ‘safety,’ the haul is dumped into a large metal bowl to be kept until a time past Thanksgiving. When inevitably trashed in anticipation of the arrival of Christmas candy, there will only be a handful of Dum Dum lollipops, dried bubble gum and one or two of the orange/black taffies that never tasted good when they were fresh.   
     There are always leftovers. The bite-sized candy bars never make it past November 10th. My sister and I always take pieces when Mom and Dad aren’t looking but they raid the bowls while we’re away. Mom swipes a loose piece of gum for work. My father always has first rights to the Tootsie rolls and by the end of the month, only the fruit flavored ones remain – blue raspberry or banana. When I am twelve, the pile lasts until mid December. Fourteen and it’s gone down pretty much at the end of November.
     I’m sixteen. The candy won’t last past the first week this year. My costume consists of half a make-up’s crayon of black painted across my face if I was trying out for a garage black-metal band. A home-sewn cloak, made a year earlier, dug out of the closet, adds to the look that says I’m less dressed for Halloween and more for a Church of Satan potluck. My friends, adorning greasepaint to look like clowns, just as well straddle the line between ‘doing enough’ and ‘not doing anything at all.’   
     Going out trick or treating is a last minute decision this year. Daniel and David have each moved away to different parts of the country. It’s Mark, Will and Brian, regular visitors who will crash the night out in the living room. New additions this year are Gina, Mark’s girlfriend, and Mary, the girl with the shaved hair, dyed kool-aid red, a recent move from Ohio, ended up with us because she had nowhere else to go. None of us have anywhere to go, which is why we go out. Mary is a punk rock ballerina. Gina abstains from costuming. The other three clown up to clown around before we make a quick loop around the neighborhood. We take only plastic grocery bags and end up with nothing more than a few handfuls worth. It’s not about the treat. It’s about the time and how wild we can be using it up. Leaps over curbs. Windmill arms spinning. Shouting ‘Happy Halloweeen!” to passing cars. We spend the rest of the night playing cards, watching movies and exhausting our energy till there is nothing to do but sleep. 
     At fifteen, I’m a poorly cobbled costume out of a hooded sweater and sunglasses.
     “I’m the Unabomber. Trick or treat.”
     Seventeen, I put even less effort into it.
     “I don’t know. I’m a starving artist. Trick or treat.”
     I’m not clever to say that I’m doing this for a sick little brother, getting that extra ‘sympathy candy.’ More times than not, when they as “What are you supposed to be?” it is unmasked and honest, without a smile or saccharine tone in their voice.
     I didn’t dig out the rubber mask in the basement and go as a ‘werewolf postal worker.’ I’m seventeen and there’s no excitement in dressing up, in making construction paper Jack-o-Lanterns for the wall or carving a real one for the porch. At fifteen, I listen to too much Led Zeppelin and carve Robert Plant out of a pumpkin. Robert Plant, and not a vampire? Not even a scary face? At seventeen, only my father and sister pick out pumpkins.
     The man behind his screen door with arm wrapped around the plastic container of bite-sized Baby Ruths wants to know who this is teenager, wearing a beat-up long wool coat—a brown coat, not even black as the holiday merits—and why is he begging on the doorstep. I have no excuses. I’m trying to get some kind of haul that year so I can squeeze some meaning out of this holiday.
     Seventeen and my last thrill out of Halloween is some junk food to scarf down for a few weeks is the only appeal of October 31st. It used to be something bigger. It used to take weeks to prepare the costume and the coat I wear is something I found in five minutes. At twelve, at fourteen, my participation was sincere, and my participation was rewarded. At seventeen, I was cheating. I had ignored the calendar as the time dwindled away and when it was too late, I end up lying to myself and the world that I was really into it, that Yeah. I’m a part of it. I’m into Halloween. But look at me. No trick, no treat. No costume, no candy.
     The man behind the screen door is too polite to turn me down.  He drops a piece of candy into my pillow case. It hits the side and lands on the small pile at the bottom. The sound is small, just the weighted krissh of plastic on plastic.
     I say “Thank you,” and head to the next house.

Happy Halloween