Chris Stangl

LIGHTS DOWN

LIGHTS UP

The moon starts low and red tonight. I am drinking soda water, Josephine is drinking wine, and Harrow Field black and crepuscular, stretches around us, an ossuary of cornstalk bones. Tomorrow are the Harrow Hell Fires, tonight is the night before the Harrow Hell Fires. Let’s be blunt: every autumn one field-- Harrow Field, on the peak of the only hill in the area-- is not harvested. Instead it is decorated and burned, protects next year’s crop, helps babies get born with only one face and chickens lay eggs not filled with blood. You call this an offering or a sacrifice or an object lesson.

Let’s be blunt: we’re not in the Field for constructive reasons, as young adults with bottles of wine never are. We are up to mischiefs. Our mischiefs need the cover of night, so lie on our backs, blue wine drying on our chins ‘cause we feel too mischievous to wipe them, watching the swollen red moon float up, turning pink then bone white.

Our motives are the motives of every mischiever who smashed a child’s Jack-of-the-Lantern with a shovel, slid a nail into a Hallowed E’en candy, or gave a tot an Eastern-painted egg which she had put "up herself" (was Josephine’s story). Motive being: it is fun to wreck other people’s fun. Hangman had an idea to throw a brick through a church window on Christ’s-Mass Day, said it crossed a line between "Prank" and "Satire." We turned his proposal down, as it crossed a line between "Hate Crime."

The climax of Harvest is the burning of Harrow Field. It is filled with 100 scarecrows. In the center: a 40-foot mound of unhusked corn; atop it: a single scarecrow doused in lamp oil like he’d been swimming in it. How you light such a display is: 100 ropes, all soaked in oil, all running from Burn Pile Scarecrow to every edge of Harrow Field, like greasy snakes holding him down, like all roads leading to Rome, like a cobweb through the cobs, Rome snared in the center. The gargantuan rope fuses are lit, race through the brittle stalks towards you can likely finish this thought yourself. This was, obviously, both a lot of work, and very very stupidly dangerous. Everyone would be sad if three mischievous persons you can likely finish this thought yourself.

I am drinking soda water. Josephine is passing a bottle of wine between myself and herself and herself, and really hogging most of the wine like she was swimming in it, but I can’t complain: it’s hers. Hangman refused the wine, eyes set ahead, muttering about alcohol and the Devil pissing in the mouths of fools and melancholics, and Josephine raised her thin black eyebrows in this fashion (--) which meant we could now drink even more yum.

Josephine is beautiful. And in the Woman Beautiful way, not the Teenage Girl Beautiful way.

Josephine’s bottle: Of the three primary-colored wines in the world, reds, whites-- which are actually yellow, dumbshit-- the thin pale blue wines are the sweetest and, most important for young adults on shenanigan, the drunkiest. Josephine stole this wine from her father, who was sotted with drink. Josephine-the-Dad said "I have feelings too!" She shouted back "‘Drunk’ isn’t a feeling, Dad! DRUNK ISN’T A FEELING!" and the Dad said now his daughter understood the idea behind Drunk and passed out to punctuate the lesson.

My bottle is soda water. I bought at a store with regular money, as Josephine egged me to five-finger it by poking my scrotum sharp with her fingernail and raising her thin black eyebrows in this fashion (--). Hangman egged me to pay for it by yelling so the shopkeep could hear about if I was "going to five-finger or pay for that soda water?"

The moon starts low and red tonight, like a fresh-born babe. The wind is howling to match, I express a theory why babies holler so during birth: they know it’s the last time for years they are allowed to touch a vagina with their face. Which is what a life is for.

If you are concerned for our safety walking the cornrows with Hangman thank you for your concern, he is not actual village hangman. Nothing to do with executing; every to-do with what modern medical science calls "autoerotic asphyxiation," a trait of Hangman we found out at a surprise party which went horribly awry for Hangman and better-than-dreamed-of for everyone in attendance.

Lying on our backs, dead center in Harrow Field, cornstalks filtering the red moonlight into streaks and bars. On our backs, playing Would You Rather. For the record, Josephine would rather slide down a sixty foot razor blade into a lake of rubbing alcohol than jump from the belltower onto an upright broomstick while spreading her buttocks. And I have to say "WHAT? What? The belltower is instantaneous death! The razor would hurt and cripple you, and and and" and Josephine, red moon in each eye, raises her thin black eyebrows: "Don’t you understand the question? It’s a question of public humiliation. The belltower is in the village square. There is not a sixty foot razor in the village square." For the record you can’t correct someone’s answers in Would You Rather. You’ll get your turn.

When the moon gets high enough and the village gets asleep enough, we have been hours in Harrow Field intaking the wine and fumes of 100 combustible scarecrows. I can not stand properly, so Josephine and Hangman walk me to the top of the Burn Pile, which is not part of the plan of any plan I was part of and in redlight of certain speech and motor functions so.

Josephine takes my bottle so Hangman can get the oily rope and rusted nails afixatived to the right fixes, and mutter "sorry, but sometimes... this is all a life is for." My head’s swimming with blue and lampoil vapor like my head was swimming in it, but on top of Harrow Field from the Burn Pile Scarecrow’s nest I believe you can see the house of that chicken laid the blood egg.

Hangman runs, heels kicking up husks, splashing opalescent puddles.

Josephine stays, black page-boy shimmering with iridescent oil, burying the circumstantial evidential wine bottle. Deep in the dirt on the top of the only hill in town, so it couldn’t be found in 150, 200 years, not if you built a road right past it and lit it with a candle. I say:

"Josephine Josephine with a white moon in each eye and blue wine on her lips, I was going to kiss you for the first time! When the Burn Pile exploded! I had this planned out as a First Kiss story!" And Josephine just goes:

BLACKOUT

"Blue Wine, and 100 Scarecrows" debuted November 2, 2001, performed by Chris Stangl.

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