Jeff Baker: Billy Gonzalez and the Day of the Dead

Real life got in the way yesterday so I’m a day late posting the next offering in our Halloween celebration – a spooky little number that’s actually about the Mexican festival of The Day of the Dead, but works equally well for Halloween! As Jeff himself says, “I started writing about Billy Gonzalez and his knack for stumbling into the weird about twenty years ago. I pulled him out of the closet a few years ago. I am a lot more white-bread than he is but we are both Bi. Hope you enjoyed his latest adventure!“

***

Pic credit: Kenny Eliason on Unsplash.com

 “C’mon, Billy! Whaddya got to lose?” Schuyler said with a grin. “It’s your heritage!”

 My great-grandparents emigrated from Mexico a century ago. But my Dad grew up in New York City and my Mom was from some weird little town in Indiana. They met in college in the Midwest. Me, I grew up where I’d gone to college in Wichita, Kansas. I wouldn’t be back at the college  that last week of October if it hadn’t been for Schuyler.

 Schuyler Rowley was with the school’s Alumni Association and I’d kind of crushed on him during our largely-closeted school days and we’d gone out a couple of times in the five years since. But now he was standing in front of me in a skeleton costume. And he had another costume for me. Complete with full-head skull mask.

“It’ll be fun!” Schuyler said. “We dance around in the Quad during the party and we can do some partying afterwards. It’s for the Scholarship fund, remember? And we can go out later…”

“Yeah, yeah. Hand me the skull,” I said, feeling like Don Juan in that play about Hell.

The Quad, the big patio between the Library and the Gym was lit by electric lights and flickering torches, but I guessed those were just to keep the bugs away. Grinning alumni were seated at tables with skull centerpieces. The menu included candy skulls and a lot of Tex-Mex. There was a band playing on a makeshift stage. Skull decorations everywhere.

Schuyler gave me a thumbs up and we walked around the edges of the Quad; dark costumes with a white skeleton printed on the front. I’d never done anything for The Day of the Dead before, but my cousin’s family had. Sort of a cross between Memorial Day and Halloween. I looked around and waved at a little kid seated at one of the tables who was staring at me with wide eyes. I grinned, forgetting that I was wearing a skull mask with a built-in grin. I looked over and saw Schuyler by the snack table goofing with a couple of guys I remembered from school.

I looked over towards where Father Bernau was sitting with some big-pocket alumni and saw a third figure in a skeleton costume standing behind them, partly in shadow. I didn’t recognize him; I thought there were just the two of us. The third skeleton backed into the shadows of the tree and building.

The evening went on. The crowd seemed to be enjoying themselves and the late October evening was warm and pleasant. I’d helped myself to a candy skull and then I saw that third skeleton peeking behind the big tree by the shadowy corner of the new library. I glanced around and saw Schuyler kidding around at a table on the other side of the quad. Yup. Whoever that was, it wasn’t Schuyler. Munching the candy skull I walked over and found the third skeleton in the shadows of the building.

“Hey,” I said. “I’m Billy Gonzalez. Class of…”

Then I stopped. The figure had moved far enough out of the shadow so I could see what I thought was a black costume with a skeleton design on it, well, it wasn’t. It was a skeletal figure standing there. I glanced up, no wires, no nothing. I made a gurgling noise. If this was a trick, it was a very good one.

The skeleton turned and walked into the deep shadow of the wall. It turned its, well, skull to look at me and I would have sworn it’s grin broadened. I could just make out the brick wall which the skeleton passed through. I backed away from there fast, tripping over one of the big tree roots and then scrambling to my feet.

I remembered stories I’d heard about the Old Library being haunted. Somebody joked that had been the real reason they tore it down and put up the new one, not the structural problems with a 100 year old building. I realized I had probably been standing where the Old Library had been. I staggered over to where the snack table was and grabbed a can of beer. I didn’t care if I was supposed to wait.

Then I heard something behind me.

“Hey, Billy!”

I jumped. I spun around, glimpsed a skeleton standing there. I screamed and tossed my beer into the air. It landed with a splat on a nearby table.

“Hey, what the hell’s with you, man?” That was Schuyler in his skeleton outfit. At least he didn’t say I looked like I’d seen a ghost.

Well, it could have been a lot worse. I stuck close to Schuyler for the rest of the evening and afterwards we went out for coffee. The college had rooms in the dorm for alumni from out of town and I’m sure Schuyler and I could have grabbed one, but that night I did not want to stay on the same campus as that skeletal figure I’d seen by the Library.