Of course, I am no fool. There was a certain thrill and mystery to the whole situation that tickled me pink, but in all honesty, it was Mick's handsome smile that did all the convincing. Something about that smug smirk of his always got under my skin, but it was too playful to hold against him. It was all for a bit of fun. It always was. I remember in the lingering light of dusk, Mick came up to me with shovel over shoulder, his overalls covered with fresh Oklahoma soil, and dirt smudges plastered on his face with sweat. He was quite an admirable man and an even more loving brother. But perhaps the trick he pulled on me may lead you to believe otherwise. That smug grin was working overtime the day he had been concocting a plan to scare the living daylights out me. Roy wasn't too far behind him in distance or mischief. I remember Mick's voice clearer than day as it issued forth from his silhouetted body swaggering off the fields, his back to the falling sun.
“Hey Ginny. From what I hear, you're afraid of that ol' swamp down south of the Indian road. I never thought you would be scared of some hole filled with water!”
For a few moments I was utterly mortified that he had found out about my childish fear of the swamp. Then it occurred to me that earlier that day I had been poking fun at Katty about her dung-brown colored hair. Katty and I had always been very tedious with our styles, so I knew that mentioning her naturally dull hair would keep her steaming for the rest of the day. I don't remember exactly why I had done it, but I'm sure there was something to provoke it. The poor thing was so embarrassed by the emphasis of her plain hair that she went and dumped black shoe polish on top of her head because we were too poor to afford anything better. I was a bit envious of her as she marched off to school, head held high, and raven black banana curls bouncing all around her head like springs. Sure enough I got my come-upping for teasing her. Not only did her hair turn out beautifully, but I was late to school and timed the rain perfectly. When I walked into the classroom, I got a couple smacks on the hands with a ruler, but that was far more bearable than the looks I was receiving from my classmates. I touched my hair to adjust my sodden curls only to find that a giant ball of frizz had replaced them. I swiveled secretly in my chair to find Katty, but she was nowhere to be found. I had concluded that she had ditched school to tell Mick that I was afraid of the swamp. Only her and a few of my close girlfriends knew my secret, but only Katty had a vendetta against me.
“I'm not scared of some dinky old swamp. Whoever told you that is an old ninny!”
Mick turned his head to look back at Roy. Roy caught the cue and joined in the fun.
“Well, now Mick, don't be too hard on her. I have heard that there have been strange noises coming from the swamp at night. Some even claim to have seen ghosts or spirits of some kind.”
Roy was always so good at keeping a straight face and a smooth voice. I ate up everything he was saying.
“Is that right? Come to think of it, Mr. Novak was actually telling me the other day that his horse just about bucked him off because some gurgling noise spooked him. I was surprised to hear Mr. Novak say it since he's the least superstitious man I know, but he said he coulda swore he saw some black figure rising out of the muck.”
Roy chimed in with perfect timing, “Naw! You can't be meaning Mr. Novak!”
“Yes, indeed. None other than the man himself. Now before you go jumping to conclusions, he didn't say it was a ghost. Just a figure. For all he knows it could have been a stick or some rodent.”
The two of them had finally caught up to me, but they were too well experienced to quit there. Instead of stopping to explain the swamp ghost to me, they continued right on past me as if I wasn't there. The give-away expressions were all concealed by a mask of pure shock and concern. Their walk, however, was slow enough so that each and every word seeped into my ears. Their conversation was dripping with devilry.
“Say, did Mr. Novak say how big it was?”
Mick scratched his head before answering, “Well, about the size of a little girl. Which of course could have been a deer or animal of the kind.”
“You don't say!”shouted Roy. “A young girl, eh? A deer in the swamp? That seems rather odd if you was to ask me.”
“Bizarre, indeed.” There was no seeing through the deceptive mask of confusion clinging to every feature of Mick's face. His eyebrows were knit together and hanging over his hardened eyes. His mouth was closed and drawn up to the right side oh face as if he was trying to solve a puzzle. Roy had his arms crossed over his chest. He stared at Mick with a titled head. After a few minutes of what seemed like hours of analyzing the situation privately, Roy threw his hands up in the air with frustration.
“Beats me. I say that until he can prove it was a deer, it was a girl.” Roy played a wonderful part. I'll give him that.
“Well, whatever it was, I'd still walk down beside the swamp. It's the quickest way to town and there ain't no ghost of some girl going to stop me.” The two of them had a great laugh. As genuine as their cackling was, I had misinterpreted the actual reason for it. Both of them turned to me with tortuous teasing.
“Hey Roy! Maybe it was Ginny over in that swamp. She can't be but four years old if she's afraid to walk it alone!” Mick slapped his knee and chortled at his own joke.
“Yeah, I'd go hiding in the mud, too, if people knew I was a scurddy cat!” The two boys nearly busted out of their overalls from the amount of laughing they were doing. I felt my face heat up right quick and decided to debunk their accusations.
“I'm not scared of that silly swamp! I already told you.” My words certainly didn't do my anger any justice, but I was trying to hide a lie, and with that fact in the back of my head, there was no focusing on my confident gusto that I usually blew them over with.
“Aw Ginny. It's alright. We are your brothers in the end, and we'll always love you, no matter how many whiskers you grow!”
“Or how long your tail gets!”
“Yeah, we need someone to keep the mice away anyway! Unless you're too scared of mice!”
That did it! I was infuriated with their entertainment which cost me my pride. Just before I turned about face, I gave them both a blazing glare, then marched off towards the dark path that lead to the swamp. I kept up a quick pace until I was just out of their sight. As I moved further and further down the path, I grew more and more cautious. My eyes rolled around my head to keep watch of everything. The path was right smack in the middle of a forest thick with trees, so that a hundred and one sounds were being made by the invisible creatures of the night. A toad hopping in the leaves immediately brought to mind a giant snake waiting to strike. The image forming in my head urged me forward a little faster and soon enough I could see the wooden planks that formed a make-shift bridge over the swamp. I took a very timid step forward onto the first plank, and just as my foot came down softly onto the wood, a hissing noise rose from my right-hand side. I froze with fear. I waited to hear something else like it, but there was nothing to be heard. My whole body shook. My chest began to heave slightly, so I told myself that I was being paranoid. There were no giant snakes waiting to ambush me from beneath the gunk of the swamp. I took another step.
Bloop. Bloop. Pop. Gurgle. Gurgle. Gurgle.
The terror that consumed my body made my chest ache with complete agony. I found that for a few seconds I couldn't breath. All I could do was shriek, tear up, and shake violently. As soon as I pried my glued foot from the planks, I spun around recklessly to find myself face to face with the black stained face of a young girl! I was horrified. I crumbled to the ground, unable to move. The stench of the swamp so close to my face was wretched. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something round forming on the surface of the swamp then disappear. A few more mounds rose to the surface without explanation. I managed to force myself to my knees, but what I saw was inconceivable. Two or three balls of fire were floating near the black ghost of the young girl. Entirely frightened by the apparition, I covered my face with my hands and screamed bloody murder. The foreign high pitched shrieks rang in my ears but my thumping heart beat was overpowering. I cried until I couldn't see anything in front of me. All I remember saying is the word please over and over again. I have no idea how long I had carried on that way, but the touch of a hand on my head was strangely comforting. I stopped whispering the word please, removed my hands from my face, and looked right into the eyes of Katty. Her face held as much fear as mine did.
“Ginny. It's alright. Please stop screaming before someone thinks I'm killing you!” There was a tremble in her voice. All I could manage to spit out was her name. My tone held a mixture of confusion and rage. Katty took the advantage of filling in the awkward silence with an explanation.
“Listen Ginny. I'm really sorry. I didn't think it was going to go this far. I was so mad at you for talking badly about my hair that I ran and told Mick about how you're scared of the swamp so they would stop poking fun at me.” Her eyes were full of sympathy and guilt. “So Mick came up with the grand plan of scaring the wits out of you, which he certainly succeeded in.” I growled menacingly, and Katty decided it was best to continue though her first couple of sentences ran together in a hurry. “I didn't know how much it would scare you! Mick said something to Roy about the swamp gas and how they catch fire from meth-meth- ah well, meth-something.. I don't understand it. I was never good at science, but he told me to light any bubbles that I saw with this box of matches he gave me. I thought for sure you would hear it light, but you kept talking to yourself in a panic.”
Poor Katty was more scared than I was. She felt awful, and I knew it, but I was made to look like an idiot which boiled me up! I looked directly into her face, tongue loaded with a million lashes to be dealt, but as I looked at her, I realized that the black stains were still all over her face, and there hadn't been an explanation for that yet. I could barely see her in the encroaching dark.
“What happened to your face?” There was a sting in the way I said it. Katty fell back on her bottom and threw a twig childishly into the swamp. Her lower lip rolled up in her pouty way, and then she dropped her chin to her chest.
“You weren't the only one who was caught in the rain today!” Her voice had changed from tender to accusing. The meaning of her statement didn't hit me. I continued to look at her as if searching for the answer. Her annoyance with my stupidity caused her to explode.
“It's all your fault anyway! If you hadn't mentioned anything about my hair, I would never have put that nasty shoe polish on my head! How was I suppose to know it was going to rain? We all can't have gorgeous curls like you, Virgie. As if that wasn't bad enough, you go and tell everyone about my ugly hair, and when I finally got it to look nice, it goes and rains. Now my face has shoe polish all over it and Mama's going to have my hide for it. You know...”
Katty went off into one of her many tirades, and by pure, honest to goodness accident, I lost myself in a fit of laughter. The absurdity of our situations was too much to handle, and I laughed until I cried. Katty, taken aback by my sudden outburst, only shouted over my choking laughter, which forced even more suffocating laughs from me. I hurt for days after from all the laughing I did. I quickly forgave Mick and Roy for their cruel joke because it was a genius prank after all. Plus Mick was simply too hard to be mad at. Katty, however, held that grudge against all of us for months, but she, too, came to see the funny side of it in the end. I'll never forget the way Katty looked with all the shoe polish running down her face, or the way Mick and Roy sprinted up the stairs when Katty and I arrived home, or Mama's expression when she saw Katty with her hair malfunction. You gotta give it to that fool Mick...he always had a trick up his sleeve and the face of a fox!
© Mikal Minarich
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