Of Graves and Geese

“Rich graves are out of bounds. They’re all the way up the hill and there aren’t even any trees to hide behind.” I spat on the ground, unconscious of the fact that a scant six feet below me were thousands of rotting corpses. Since it was one of the nine months of the year that served as my personal allergy season, I added a snot rocket a few seconds later. The gaps between my teeth whistled as I panted through my mouth.

“Well, if we can’t hide behind the rich graves then you can’t hide by the old graves.” Stevie added.

I put one of my arms against an old tree and bit my lower lip as I licked away any dangling snot that had escaped my sleeve. The reason I didn’t want to use the rich graves was because if Steve hid behind them, when it came time to tag him I’d never be able to catch up. He was faster and had more stamina than me, and it wouldn’t take much effort on his part to turn our game of hide-and-seek into one of endurance.

Conversely, he didn’t want me down in the old graves because there were too many spots to hide and it was nearly flat, reducing his advantage. Plus, I had always been better at finding overlooked nooks and crannies. Mostly because, for some reason, I had absolutely no fear of death and Stevie got creeped out in the parts of the cemetery that were obviously haunted.

Without the older sections of the cemetery or the heights at which the rich were interred, that left only the sprawling middle section where the tombstones were all too small to hide behind and the trees too sparse to provide cover. We had, in other words, reached an impasse.

“You’re so gay, Steve.” I concluded. “We might as well just play over by the duck pond with all the gay ducks.”

“Well you’re gayer! I don’t see what’s wrong with playing over by the duck pond. I like the duck pond! You’re the one who is always trying to set up rules!”

After having seen a goose bite my brother Bryan’s finger till it bled, I had decided that I was rather afraid of the duck pond. This was, of course, irrelevant given that I had been challenged. “Oh yeah, well why don’t we just do it then. We’ll just go play hide-and-seek by the crappy gay duck pond!”

I emptied my other nasal cavity for emphasis. I was well used to this action, as given the length of my personal allergy season it would have been highly impractical and prohibitively expensive to carry kleenex everywhere. I used the other sleeve of my flannel shirt to clear away the excess. I made sure that I always used each sleeve an equal number of times, as I was not a barbarian and had a healthy respect for symmetry.

Stevie frowned at me and shook his head when I licked my lips, which made me angry but not angry enough to brave the boredom of going home and not having anyone with whom to play. In any case, my emotions were still in a jumble over the idea of going by the duck pond.

We passed between the two brick gate posts that led into Fern Hill cemetery, walked by the main building, and proceeded to the pond. “Least I don’t live next to a bunch of dead people,” I muttered at Stevie when I knew he couldn’t hear. I don’t know why I suddenly thought of this as an insult when I had considered Stevie’s proximity to the cemetery to be “cool” in all other circumstances.

I put childish thoughts aside and contemplated the legitimate adult dangers that lay ahead of me. A goose is a terrifying creature. Possessing more neck than body, more beak than head, and more wings than inhibitions they are a nightmare out of the mind of Lovecraft. I was just tall enough that when the goose spread itself out to its full height I could stare straight into its hell-black eyes when it opened its mouth and… made its weird goose sound. Worse, it was all too easy to imagine the goose throwing its head through the corrugated metal fence like a spear and plucking out an eyeball before anything could be done to the contrary.

I made sure not to step too close to the fence as we passed the duck pond. Thankfully, all the ducks were shut in today and as it was winter the rabbits were still tucked safely in their warrens. “Fine, we can play here but we’re not going to cross the gully.” The gully in question was a stream some four feet across at its widest sections with a silt bed that looked like, and had the consistency of, cat shit. To me, it might as well have been the Mississippi.

“Why do you have to put boundaries on everything!” Stevie exclaimed.

“I’ll never be able to catch you if you jump over the gully!”

“Yes you will! You’re just being lazy!”

“Stevie, I’m telling you! Sometimes when I have to run after you it feels like I can’t even breathe and then it really hurts and-” I had a long litany of complaints, as bad as any old hypochondriac.

Stevie ran up and slapped me on the shoulder before I had time to process what had happened. I stumbled back, my fingers grabbing hold of the pond fence for support. My fingers felt suddenly vulnerable.

“Tag!” Stevie shouted.

You son of a bitch, I thought, that’s not even the same game!

Turning to run, he looked over his shoulder and shouted “You’re it!”

“You… you… crappy cheating gay! I’m going to get you for that!”

With the natural fluidity known only to six year old boys, Stevie bounded off across the small clearing and bounded the stream in a single, graceful, fawn-like leap. I managed to stumble to my feet only when I could hear the goose approaching behind me with the thunderous footsteps of a tyrannosaurus rex. I got away moments before the goose snapped its beak shut at the place where my fingers had been.

I matched Stevie’s previous pace for the first ten or so seconds, began to unmistakably flag at thirty seconds, and when I went to jump over the gully I came a full foot short. My legs graciously made up the missing foot by sinking into the silty bed of the gully. Water gushed around my upper legs, dangerously close to my balls. The clear stream turned cloudy downstream of where I had disturbed the bed.

“Stuh-stuh-stevie!” I wailed, heroically. “Guh-guh-get help!”

I attempted to pull my leg against the weight of the vacuum to no avail. I was stuck as well as if I had been encased in cement. Stevie peered over the side of the gully, down to where I was, suddenly in the position of being taller than me. I looked up at Stevie, terrified of being short, and worried hysterically that he might pee on me while I was unable to run away.

Then, through the sympathetic magic of childhood, Stevie’s eyes went wide with terror. As teenage girls can transfer their hysteria over musicians to one another merely by line of sight, I poured into Stevie’s soul all the primordial terror of being a monkey born to swing from branch to branch suddenly thrown into a pool of dreaded water, unable to move or breathe.

Still sobbing, I unselfconsciously snot rocketed both nostrils into the stream and licked my lips dry. I clawed at the sides of the bank to no avail. Until help came I was like an undead thing, half-buried in the earth. I saw Stevie round the corner, running up the hill to my house. It would take him ten minutes if he didn’t lose wind.

My mind began to run wild. Wild in ways it had run all my life, but untempered by the knowledge of safety. I did not imagine dead bodies digging themselves out of shallow graves. I did not think of spirits, or witches, or ghouls. I had, in fact, always WANTED to see something supernaturally evil. Unable to turn my head, every sound behind me became the goose. The goose slapping its flat wet feet on the ground. Dragging its weird goose foot hooks across the occasional stone. It’s beak like hollow porcelain yet so hard it could have been diamond. Those weird fucking goose beak nostrils. What the fuck were those?

I began to cry so hard I was making a sound like a perpetual dog whistle. Thickets of grass came off the side of the gully unable to support my weight. My fingers became coated with mud, and as I snot rocketed away the snot pouring down my face, I became further soiled. I could feel the weird goose nostril breath on the back of my neck.

When the long white car came down the hill, I was shouting. Pulling at my hair in despair. “Grandma! Grandma come help me!” She was watching me for the day. My good grandma. The one who made cookies. She could never kill the goose. Not like my grandpa could. But she could help me run. Yes, we could escape. Before the goose remembered how to fly and breathe fire.

She walked to me. Walked! Even when I was screaming for her.

“Grandma…” I wailed “I”m stuck! I”m stuck in the mud! And there’s a… guh-guh-goose! And it’s eee-bil!” A snot bubble popped on my face.

“BC, you’re too big for me to pick you up. You need to rock back and forth.”

I tried to grab the front of her sweater to pull her in with me. “Grandma, I can’t!”

She pushed me back. I came back forward. She got down on her knees and repeated the action, grabbing me by the shoulder. “Come on. Wiggle.”

I imagined I was in a cave, the walls pressing in on me. Inch-worming my way forward. So close, death. So close. I couldn’t let the goose kill my grandma while she was trying to save me.

I came loose like the fart sound a can of play doh makes when you push it back in with your entire fist. “Come on BC, you can do it!” Feeling not unlike Han Solo fresh out of his carbonate prison, I laid on the side of the gully gasping. By some miracle I still had both my shoes, most likely because they were two sizes too small.

It seemed somewhat awkward when we walked back to the car, when my grandmother made me take off my mud covered pants out in public and I had to crawl in the back of the car covered in snot, dirt, and tears wearing nothing but a pair of Ninja Turtles underoos.

I looked at Stevie from out of the car window.

“This is so crappy and gay,” I muttered.