The Saints of October – Part One By Nick Manzolillo
II.
Sprawled along the entirety of Jack’s backyard is a garden that extends from the mossy remnants of Jack’s back porch where there sits only a rusted grill. A square strip of land framed by the vine-consumed fences of his neighbors. A tall yet thin crop of corn stalks mixed with surrounding trees offers plenty of concealment. A pocket of suburbia more exclusive than the Amazon. Jack grows his own pumpkins, from peculiar little gourds to albino pumpkins and mutant behemoths that take two men to properly lift. His garden usually yields enough pumpkins for every day of the month.
In the garden, there is a scarecrow named Ernest. He’s stuffed with more tobacco leaves than straw and his face is always formed by the first ripe human head-shaped pumpkin of the season that Jack plucks and delicately carves. He gives the head a simple face, leaving the guts intact. He then places a tattered cloth sack with eye and mouth holes over the scarecrow’s head, and waits. Jack’s never had a problem with crows; they respect him.
“It’s gonna be an odd one this year,” Jack tells Ernest, taking a seat on the bench in the center of the garden. Insects buzz and crawl around him as he makes himself comfortable in his own private pocket of green. Wildflowers are scattered around the backyard, their petals wilting. Some of the pumpkins are still fed by their roots. Beneath the roots are the remnants of a little girl’s bicycle; an object of the past Jack both learned to bury and make useful. You grow a pumpkin with seeds, a bit of water and all the love you have left.
“The kingdom, the kingdom, finally requested one from me. They sent a…little girl, this time. Those monsters. Guess it makes sense they’d be heartless, though. Dancing skeletons they probably are.” Jack stares the scarecrow in its triangle eyes, the wind making the cloth sack ripple ever so slightly. “They sent me a warning, that one time. The pale man with them big eyes, nasty crooked teeth. Telling me my work can attract all the spirits in the country but I best not interfere with them in the slightest. Like they think I got a reason to collect ghosts and go messing with how life and death ought to be. I do my work, it draws all sorts of admirers, and then it’s November and I’m alone. Now they think I’m cool, they want me to work for them, can you believe that Ernest?” Jack arches his eyebrows at the scarecrow and then shrugs.
The Halloween kingdom likes to treat the undead like a flock of sheep and Jack, the wolf. A master pumpkin carver could conceivably use his skills for no good, if he were an evil necromancer looking to, what? Bring a dead loved one back to life? Control the dead? Eat their souls? Nonsense, even in a world of Halloween kingdoms, October people and weighted hearts. Jack’s just a man who aims to hone his skills, season by season, until winter finally claims him.
The Halloween kingdom has changed over the millennia, as the world has shrunken from the pursuits of every explorer and purveyor of the dark. The embassies of the underworld that Jack is familiar with are so secular and contained that they very well could inhabit all the old, dark quiet houses at the end of every cul-de-sac. The underworld travels. That’s the extent of it all. Far as Jack knows, there exists certain breaches of reality that do their best to go unnoticed as they slip from the consciousness of the waking, everyday world. Pumpkins bring admirers of all types, some living and some dead, some wicked and some humble. Fools lose themselves in ever-pursuant quests for answers about what some call magic that is really just the edge of reality, and they suffer for it. Every one of them. Unreal things are better left accepted or treated as a joke. Jack does what he does best, and keeps his questions to himself. He’d rather live in a world where he can occasionally receive a visit from a dead person with a familiar face than not.
Jack’s October work is never finished, as he stomps up the porch, inhaling deeply. From behind Jack, a voice says, “My friend, where are you going without a proper toke?” Jack stops in his tracks, and grins, for the first October friend has arrived. Ernest the scarecrow wiggles on his perch, raising his oddly nimble twig fingers in the air. “Help me down from here, always nervous something’s gone wrong and my head’s about to pop off.” Ernest is a wandering spirit that’s discovered a knack for possessing scarecrows. He’s also the best, and only, assistant pumpkin carver Jack has. A true master always has an apprentice, even if he’s not among the living. There once was a time when the pumpkin carver was impressed by impossible things. But no longer.
The world’s greatest pumpkin carver and the world’s greatest mortician share a lot in common. The opportunity to marvel at their work is fleeting, as their canvases soon begin to rot. Also, their work is best admired by the dead. Ernest never shows up on time for the First of October but given his state, that can be forgiven.
They share the bench as dusk approaches. Ernest the scarecrow is more like a skeleton of hay, loose clothing and most importantly, tobacco. More than an inanimate object with a voice, he can move, and dance with more precision than you can expect. He even packs Jack’s pipe for him, ripping off a small clump of tobacco from his shoulder. He can’t smoke or eat, and his eyes are black, sunken and empty, but Ernest the scarecrow claims to be able to smell the freshly roasting tobacco. It was his idea that Jack build half his body out of the stuff.
Ernest’s the odd sort of spirit that’s independent of the kingdom. Apparently, he’d died on Halloween, and that means he has unique freedoms as far as the laws of the afterlife go. He says he was a rule breaker in life and that he won’t change his ways just because he doesn’t have a beating heart or a fresh suit of skin. Ernest first possessed Jack’s scarecrow during a time of great grief for Jack and the surreal-ness of his presence had helped him cope with reality, or rather, the lack of it. Ernest soon become a fine pal. Plus, those thin, twig fingers of his do an excellent job scraping out the guts of Jack’s pumpkins.
“I was starting to get worried you weren’t coming,” Jack says in between puffs. Truthfully, he wasn’t, but Ernest’s the type to enjoy a good deal of banter.
“Imagine if that was so? You’ve been commissioned by the royal bloody kingdom, how you gonna meet those standards without me? You gotta start giving me some credit on these things, bud, you may wield that knife but I’m the one that takes guts.” Ernest’s raspy voice is that of a smoker, which is odd, because most of the ghosts Jack has encountered are children. He likes to think that you get a choice, after you die, about how you’ll come back and present yourself for eternity. Ernest must’ve been one of those people who hated kids, hated himself as a weak little person despite retaining their childlike optimism.
“I don’t know if I should. Least we have to do with them, the better.” Jack’s fine leaving the kingdom as a vague title and a shadow of a place. If such a kingdom really is a place of death, in tune with the underworld, then he’ll spend more time there than he can comprehend, eventually, when winter finally wins.
“For the world’s greatest pumpkin carver, I’d say it’s time you get some recognition. Look at the fine class of spirits you attract, like me, of course, but Hallows night, man?”
“What do you think lives in that kingdom? Like that crooked tooth messenger of theirs last year….my work deserves to be admired by my real audience, not some skeleton king and queen,” Jack says.
“For all you know, anybody could rule the kingdom. Maybe there are a bunch of undead types who can’t stroll down the street, admire a few pumpkins like hobos hovering over a trashcan fire and whoosh off into All Hallows Eve like a flick–a memory. Could be, your pumpkin would be admired by all the children who don’t get to go out for Halloween, you get what I’m saying?” His brain buzz from the tobacco’s nearly snatched away. Ernest just wants to boast and brag and be the sensation of the underworld, if that’s even possible, but he’s right. Jack’s seen how much a well-carved pumpkin with a flickering candle can mean to a lonesome spirit that winds up on his porch. It’s all they have to look forward to, all year long. Jack at least gets a month, whereas they only get a single night…
He can’t carve just any pumpkin for the kingdom, and so Jack sets to work, with the idea that he’ll know a design befitting of the kingdom when it comes to him. Jack used to demand silence while he concentrated and carved, but a spirit like Ernest doesn’t know the meaning of quiet, and so Jack has adapted. Ernest likes to speak fondly of the life and world he used to know, so together the pumpkin carver and his scarecrow apprentice pass the time in cheerful reminiscence. Ernest was born in the late eighteen hundreds, and he never ceases to marvel at the world that Jack has all but ignored over the past decade. In discussing everything from politics to craft beer and the varieties of candies they make nowadays, Ernest offers him an idea of curious, childlike optimism that Jack tries his best to remember in the dark months that always follow.
He never outlines his designs before he sets his knife to the pumpkin. Often, Jack isn’t entirely sure where his first incision will take him after he makes it, but then something ignites in his chest as a warm, glowing vision imprints itself upon the blank face of the pumpkin and he sets to work. His smile breaks across his face and grows with every slice and pop from the gourd until he finds himself grinning at his completed carving.
It doesn’t take Ernest long to scoop clean a pumpkin’s insides. With his precisely pointed vine fingers, he then plucks out each individual seed from the mess of orange gunk and gathers them in an old jewelry box Jack keeps at the center of the kitchen table. He claims to be able to see the “life” hiding in each seed, and he tosses the empty shells into the compost pile outside. Oddly enough, Ernest, who the wizard of Oz would have you believe is spontaneously combustible, sets to the task of lighting and maintaining the dime store candle within each pumpkin. Of course, for the several hours it takes it takes Jack to carve one of his designs, Ernest works for an hour at most before providing Jack with a source of amusement, talking endlessly with lungs that never run out of air.
“This one, this should be theirs, oh I could pet them,” Ernest gushes as Jack puts the finishing slashes on the image of a family of wolves gathering beside a cluster of snow-covered trees. He’s inserted so much detail across the animals’ fur coats that they appear to be rippling in the wind.
“No,” Jack says with a smirk, if only because it’s fun to mess with Ernest. He remembers a little girl who once claimed the wolf was her favorite animal. It will go good next to the carousel. This October is a time for wolves, for above his own curiosity he feels a revulsion toward the kingdom. Like any other batch of politicians and leaders, what wouldn’t they do for power, for control? What if they don’t like the pumpkin he carves them?
The second week of October brings with it the snug feeling that Jack has all the time in the world. Winter’s wounds fade to scars and Jack finds himself admiring the leaves as they pile up on his lawn. He doesn’t understand the effort his neighbors down the street put into raking the harmless, crumply things into line. Ernest can’t leave the house, but he never completely intrudes upon Jack’s solitary lifestyle.
Instead of sleeping, Ernest spends his nights in the garden, staring into the night sky. Amid his own sweet October dreams, Jack occasionally hears Ernest talking to himself. Far as housemates go, it’s a mercy Ernest doesn’t need to eat and dwindle away the contents of Jack’s fridge.
He remembers what it was like to entertain the living kind of company, just as he remembers the joy of sharing his space with a lover, with family. October and Jack’s work suppress the memories into brief, yet always painful, flashes. Lucky for him, his October friends only know him as he is in their great and fleeting month. Jack, the master pumpkin carver.
Ernest tirelessly hounds Jack over the great pumpkin he’ll forge for the kingdom, so of course Jack carves while the old man of tobacco and straw is in the garden, lost in the stars and admiring the distant hoot of wary owls. The idea swoops in and his hand raises to a blank canvas of orange skin. He begins carving before he even comprehends what he’s doing. He’s finished in less than three minutes as he taps his knife on the table and cackles, like a ripe old Halloween witch. A classic Jack O’ Lantern stares back at him.
“You looking to spit in their eye?” Ernest says, triangular nose to triangular nose with the pumpkin. “Why it’s a better lookin’ version of myself, ain’t it?”
“It fits,” Jack says, without a dab of venom. Sure, a place called the kingdom commissions you to carve a pumpkin for them, you’d think you’d make it the next Creation of Adam but he’s not trying to spite them. If the Halloween kingdom wants a pumpkin, what better suits them than Jack’s honorary namesake?
“Kind of a gamble they won’t lock you into their crypts, pull out your innards and bathe you in hot tar, King Tut style. Gotta say I like it though, if you’re sure you wouldn’t rather serve ‘em my head on a plate,” Ernest says, with maybe a touch of sass.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself; isn’t dying once good enough for ya?” Jack says, even though technically Ernest dies at midnight on Halloween—he’ll be standing one minute and a heap of scarecrow parts the next. Jack always honors his friend by reassembling the scarecrow in its proper place back in the garden.
Ernest laughs, setting about securing and lighting a candle. “You know, I envy you, my amigo. You’re a few good tosses away from middle-aged, and you’re kicking. You could go anywhere, do anything. Somewhere warm, huh?”
Jack doesn’t like where he’s going with this. He doesn’t have to stay here in the winter any more than he has to grow pumpkins and avoid all the places he could meet new lovers, new friends, start a different life. It would be the easiest thing, to book a flight elsewhere on November first, but to head elsewhere would cripple him. As much as it threatens to be the end of him, the same pain that winter inflicts fuels the magic that he pours into his pumpkins. He is sure of this, even though it’s never been exactly spelled out for him. He will never stop being a pumpkin carver. He will never flee from the jaws of winter.
“I ever go to California, I’ll be sure to make you a nice body the instant I set up shop,” Jack says. Ernest gently places the lid over the pumpkin as a face of fire and shadows sends a chill down Jack’s spine. Call it a dime a dozen, but the alignments of the triangle and jagged maw are perfectly in tune.
“I’m saying, I envy the option is all.”
“Well, not like you can feel that sunshine anyway, right? Little girl said I was to deliver this, got no idea where, but how about you come with me?”
“You haven’t been told where to bring it?” Ernest doesn’t hide his disappointment, as if he were expecting Jack to deliver it tonight.
“No, but they’ll reach us. Hell, maybe they’re spying.”
“I don’t trust the crows.” Ernest laughs and leans in close to feel the pumpkin’s dim warmth. He’s not kidding. Told Jack the first time they met that crows and other beasts that do the work of carrion serve the underworld and death itself, like little messengers.
“I got that big coat and cowboy hat you can have, assuming it’s a place we can get to by foot or car.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t pass it up.” Bringing Ernest out in public’s a risk, and Jack’s not familiar with the consequences. According to Ernest, such a thing would be chaos if the public found out. The emissaries of the underworld would also probably have punishments in store for creating such a scandal.
“We await their word and hope they don’t get cold feet. I feel like there’s a joke to be made there…” Jack’s fine with waiting as Ernest sets to gutting another pumpkin. The Halloween kingdom’s lantern, a fat, heavy pumpkin in its own right, is moved onto the coffee table in Jack’s living room, a Spartan den made his own solely by a series of framed pictures on the walls. He tries not to gaze into them with too much longing. There is always work to be done. Three hours till bed means plenty of time for another pumpkin.
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