Watermelon Days and Firefly Nights: Heartwarming Scenes from Small Town Life (5 page)

A
S
H
ALLOWEEN APPROACHED
,
Daphne got as excited as a kid about her costume, the treats she would hand out, and how she planned to decorate the porch and the yard.

All well and good, up to a point. Windell and Lindell, despite their agreement to look the other way for the sake of their sister’s sobriety, felt forced to put their feet down when Daphne proposed putting in a fake cemetery, complete with cardboard coffins, next to the fall garden.

“Okay,” Daphne threw up her hands. “No cemetery. How about some artificial cobwebs hanging from the trees?”

Windell and Lindell both sighed.

On Halloween night, after Lindell and Windell left to go to the church festival, Daphne put on her costume. She’d worked on it for the past two days and thought it looked pretty good. She had a long black dress—made from Lindell’s old college graduation gown—a black pointed hat, black stockings and shoes, and even fake black teeth. Only her face didn’t look the part.
Not scary enough,
thought Daphne. What to do?

She didn’t wear makeup. There was none in the house. Maybe some flour from the kitchen would give her the pale glow she was looking for. She tried patting some on, but within minutes, it had all worn off. Shoe polish maybe? All she found on the shelf was a color called “Burnished Brown.”

Maybe not.

When Daphne stepped outside to check on her pumpkins, the flickering green-white glow of late-season fireflies flitting just above the grass caught her eyes. That was just the color she wanted for her face. What would happen if a person rubbed firefly juice on something? Would it glow? Made sense that it would. And wouldn’t it look cool!

Daphne hunted in the kitchen cabinet above the sink until she found an empty mayonnaise jar. That would work.

Chasing fireflies made Daphne sweat. She’d aimed for ten, but gave up, out of breath, when she had six. Fireflies were harder to catch than one might think. The little critters were only visible when lit, and they flew up, down, and from side to side quickly, making no sound.

Once back inside the house, Daphne held the jar up and studied the bugs. This was the hard part. They looked awfully pretty, their little lights flickering off and on. Seemed kind of sad. Maybe she should forget about this, take them outside, and let them go. There was time to run down to the drugstore for makeup.
But no,
she thought,
a bug is a bug. No difference between a firefly and a housefly.

Where did her brothers keep the flyswatter, anyway?

W
HEN THE FIRST TRICK-OR-TREATERS CAME
to the Minter door, they were greeted by a very scary, glowing, if somewhat streaky, Witch Daphne.

“Wow! How did you get your face to look like that?” asked a costumed beggar.

“Is that makeup?” asked another.

“What makes it light up?”

“Ha, ha, ha! I’ll never tell!” cackled Daphne. The effect was even better than she’d hoped for. She plucked bags of treats from a smoking black caldron she had rigged with dry ice. “What do you say?”

“Trick or treat!” they chorused.

“What else?”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Be careful. Don’t knock over my pumpkins.”

A
CROSS TOWN AT THE
H
ARVEST
F
ESTIVAL
,
Joseph Tedford’s son won a chocolate pecan layer cake at the cakewalk. “Say ‘thank you,’ Isaac,” Joseph prompted. Isaac complied even though, because he was allergic to chocolate, he wouldn’t be able to eat a bite.

“Mr. Minter,” Joseph said (for the life of him, he never could remember which brother was which). “Good to see you. How’s your sister doing? She here tonight?”

“Fine,” answered Lindell once he’d restarted the tape that set the cake-craving walkers in motion. “She’s doing fine so far. Thank you for asking. I wish I could say that she was here, but she stayed home to do Halloween.”

“That’s too bad. I was hoping to meet her. I’d like to come and visit, invite her to my church—that is, if you don’t mind,” Joseph said. Then he added quickly, “She’s not already a church member, is she?” (Stealing a member from another church in town was greatly frowned upon by members of the Ministerial Alliance. It had even been discussed at last month’s meeting. “Gentlemen,” Brother Fred from First Baptist had exhorted, “there are enough sinning sheep in this town to go around. No need in any of us carrying off members of each other’s flocks.”)

“No, Daphne’s not been a churchgoer since we were
kids. You feel free to come on over anytime—but be
warned. Talk
about church sometimes gets my sister riled up. And when Daphne gets riled up, she isn’t always nice!”

On the way home, sleepy son in tow, Joseph thought of taking the chocolate cake to Daphne. Why not? It was a perfect excuse. Everyone likes cake, even folks who think that they don’t like church. He’d give it to her, invite her to services, and be on his way. Perfect.

W
ITHIN AN HOUR
of smearing the remains of the dead
fireflies’ bottoms on her face, Daphne Minter was in a
mess. She had not known that this would happen. Her whole face was swollen, and even though she’d scrubbed and scrubbed to get the dried goo off, her skin burned like fire. Too miserable to hand out candy, she lay down on the couch with a wet cloth over her eyes.

She’d only just hit the cushions when someone rang the doorbell. She ignored it, but they rang again and again. She’d turned off the porch light. Couldn’t they take a hint? She groaned as she dragged herself up from the couch.

“Excuse me,” said Joseph when Daphne finally cracked the door open. “Daphne Minter?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Pastor Joseph. From Chosen Vessel Church. Little white building on Magnolia Street?”

“What do you want?”

“I brought you a cake. My son won it at the cakewalk but he can’t eat it, and I thought you might like it.”

“A cake?” She’d had no dinner. “Just a minute. Let me turn on the light.”

“Long as I’m here, I’d also like to invite you to . . . oh my goodness! What’s wrong with your face?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing.” Daphne looked down and tried to shield her eyes with her hand.

“Do you need some help? Should I go get one of your brothers?”

No, she did not want her brothers. She didn’t want the religious tract that Joseph tried to hand her, either. And she especially didn’t want Joseph’s special invitation to attend his church. As for the cake? It looked good. She would take the cake. “Good-bye.” Daphne closed the door on Joseph’s face.

W
HEN
D
R
. S
ARAH
S
TRICKLAND PRESCRIBED
soothing salve and prescription pain pills for Daphne Minter, she thought she was doing the right thing. “You mean you actually crushed fireflies and rubbed them on your face? Whatever for?”

“To look scary. For Halloween. I was a witch.”

“Did it work?” asked Dr. Strickland.

“It did. My face glowed like a firefly. But only for a little while. Then it wore off.”

In all her years of practice, Sarah had not seen anything quite like the awful blisters on Daphne’s face. She was obviously in terrible pain.

“Take one every six hours. I want to see you back in my office three days from now.”

The pain pills helped, but they weren’t quite strong enough. Daphne hurt something awful. Neither Lindell nor Windell was keeping count of the pills, so she was able to swallow two at a time, and every four hours instead of six. Unfortunately, this made the pills run out too fast, and she was forced to drive Lindell’s mustard-colored El Camino to the next town in order to purchase a bottle of wine. She needed something to tide her over until she could get more pills from Dr. Strickland. She only bought one bottle of wine, and it was only to ease the pain, not much different from an aspirin, she told herself. Everything would be okay once Dr. Strickland gave her a refill.

Except she didn’t.

“Looking good,” said Dr. Strickland. “I don’t believe you’ll have any scarring, which surprises me. You’re healing quite nicely.
More pills? No. I don’t think so. You can take some Tylenol if you feel like you need it, but I don’t think you will.”

Daphne drove directly from Dr. Strickland’s office to the closest across-the-county-line liquor store and stocked up.

W
INDELL AND
L
INDELL
were beside themselves when they got home and found out what she’d done. Not even dry a week. Should they take her back to the hospital? Try to reason with her?