The Stranded Honker

I was a fool among fools in my later teenage years. Maybe everyone can look back and relate, or maybe I only hope that's the case. Regardless, I feel the need to wonder: Is the most foolish in a gander of fools the one who leads or follows?

Halloween wasn't a special occasion in my family. Sure, we'd trick-or-treat, but it was out and home again before ten. When I became what I called "independent," freedom allowed for excess tricks, and my gander supplied the wild things that my fancies yearned for.

"We have all these forks," one honker said. "Let's make our way down the street and plant them in the neighbor's yard."

I didn't ask who the neighbor was, and I had no desire to find out why their yard was so barren that forks needed to be planted. There I was, a middling honker, and I said, "When should we go? It's dark, now."

Those particular honkers had grown away from me over the years, and I had grown away, too, but we'd tried to become friendly again, which led us to the Halloween forking.

"We'll go in a little while. My sisters are still awake."

The sisters couldn't be trusted. They--watchful little owls--would have told on us, for sure. I was friendly with the eldest, and she was eager to keep me reined in, in those days. I differed to the leader, in this case, because he knew the young ladies best.

The goal, to be as amiable as possible, was accomplished with a nod, and I waited with my gander for the time to be right. Hours later, it seemed, we set out under the guise of football in the dark--or something similar, I'm sure--and when we were sure there were no young parliamentarians to report on us, we left the dirt driveway and walked a white line down hill.

Fluorescent bulbs lined our path, though in that rural area we only expected one or two on our walk. The white line was our guide in the night, and our eyes adjusted, which made it glow. Too soon we found the proper yard, which begged to be forked.

We took to our task. I had participated in gardening with my family, but there was never thrill or nighttime planting in the family garden. Where I had had sweat and sunburn weeding and picking, I had a vigor and fresh soil to plant a plastic crop. I envisioned the finished work under a sunrise: sparkling heads of plasticware weaving skyward; a majestic and uniform lawn. The homeowner should be impressed, if not pleased to see our work in the daylight. We could only imagine the final product.

There was a honk from across the yard!

"Someone's awake!"

"Hide!"

I was near enough to the tree-line that it seemed too much fuss. Once I hid behind a decent cedar, I watched with plenty of time lights beam through one window at a time, and I could sense their order. The bedroom was first, the warning flash that scattered the gander, next the living room, and finally the porchlight. I saw, at that moment that one of the gander was under the deck. He was moving under white light, which rippled through the slats of the porch. Poor, lost honker, he laid flat when the first door opened.

Yellow light bled into the yard, cut by a shadow, then the screen creaked, and a woman stepped out of her silhouette and into the white porchlight and cried, "Who's there?" She held a gun--no, a broom, to fight us off. I felt in that moment that she could see us all. But she looked through us.

I bit my fist to hold in my laughter. Nothing was funny, but my nerves needed release. To her, we might have been burglars or guardian angels--the result was the same to her. She was surrounded, innocent, and scared, my gander encircled her house.

"Who are you?" she cried out to the darkness, again. Moments later, she stepped back into the yellow light, resigned to the place she considered safest. The porchlight stayed on, but our stray darted out and made the tree-line, and he became our united brother.

We whispered in the dark, and weighed in on the possibility of continued planting. The honker who had been stranded, though, wasn't the least bit interested.

"I'm not going back."

So, we left the yard partially planted, not the spectacle I had imagined and with the feeling that I had planted too much. Of course, by the time the white line led us back to the dirt driveway, we were laughing amongst one another, and we called, "Who are you?" At school, it became an even bigger joke, something we brave few shared.

Today, my gander is all but dissipated. They are, to me, dear friends, but I don't hear from them with any regularity. At one time, we were all child strangers, especially me, a late arrival to their school, and I remember some of them asking, "What's your name?"

Those boys, now men, know my name, and they remember me with some bristles, I suspect, though those stories are mine for another time. I know for certain that they don't know me anymore, but they remember me as I once was, a middling honker.

The old woman, whoever she was, never found my name out, so I suppose our secret remains secret. She was probably not pleased with our efforts, and she never found out if we were burglars or angels, but she helped me through these hard, quiet years. Always sitting, stewing, I still hear her call, it's shrill and worried, and it asks who I am without asking for my name. Am I a burglar? Am I an angel? The name doesn't matter because my fruit speaks for itself.

After that Halloween, I haven't bothered to ask for anyone's name. A name will bubble up in due time. What I want to know, and what you should ask of me, is just as the old woman wondered:

"Who are you?"