Part 5
Something is happening. Big boys are rounding up little boys. Big girls are rounding up little girls. And some big girls are going into houses and coming out with tots. Some of them are little more than babies. The tots look big-eyed or sleepy or fussy. We’re all kind of marched up the sidewalk. Then big boys start marching down the path between the walls of leaves.
Big ones wave their arms and shout.
“Walk the maze! Walk the full moon maze!”
We’re all in a row, walking the maze. A little girl, hardly bigger than a tot stumbles and falls. She’s picked up quickly by her big brother.
She looks around to see if anyone saw her. She sees me looking and puts her hands over face and puts her head on her brother’s shoulder.
We all keep kind of shuffling along on this leaf edged path. The leaves are loud and crinkly underfoot.
“SHUFFLE – SCRUNCH, SHUFFLE – SCRINCH, SHUFFLE – SCRATCH”
The bigger ones start singing:
A WITCHING we will go, a WITCHING we will go,
HI HO the SCAREY-O a WITCHING we will go.
A GHOSTING we will go, a GHOSTING we will go,
HI HO the SPOOKY-O a GHOSTING we will go.
The song goes on. The shuffling feet through crumbling crackling leaves goes on. One of the small ones starts fussing and calling for its mother.
The big girls take tots and fussy ones home.
Other big girls clap their hands and march us back to the two yards at the end of the court again.
“Have a seat little goblins,” they say. “Keep still and keep well back now. We mean it. KEEP BACK!”
The big boys are back to work. They push the leaves from the walls into the BIG, BIG pile. Some are using rakes. Some pick up bunches and throw them onto the top, only to have them cascade down the sides on top of their sneakers. Others push the leaves towards the pile with their feet with a shoosh-shoosh-shoooshing sound.
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