I am Honest Abe in my
school’s fall performance titled
Lincoln: The Head Beneath the
Hat. My family is thrifty so I wear the same costume for Halloween.
Dressed as a ghost in a
fitted sheet, my brother is my escort.
As long as we stay in the
horseshoe-shaped housing tract with its cul-de-sac teats, we are safe.
After the first few candy bars
drop into my pillowcase, I run past the next house because it’s Trevor’s house,
and he and his dad scare me. Before I reach the next door I hear a rustle,
like the sound of Sheila Stipes’ prematurely developed body as it whisks against her sweat suit in gym
class.
Unfortunately it’s not Sheila,
and I discover the sound is a large rock slingshotted at my jaw.
I deflate with a head full of
hurt and hollow. Voices warped by warm wires arc in my mind and mock my name. I
grasp the rock.
My ear bleeds down my cheek
and I’m lifted into a wood- paneled hearse that doubles as our Plymouth station
wagon.
To this day, when I come
across that rock in my old stuff,
I remember there is a John
Wilkes Booth Jr. still running amok.
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