My Dog Skip by Willie Morris

Author:Willie Morris [Morris, Willie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-55816-9
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 1995-09-20T04:00:00+00:00

About the spookiest moment Skip and I ever lived through took place one appalling June night in the cemetery, scene of our previous pranks and hoaxes. Our cemetery, as I have earlier suggested, was one of the scariest in the South. Henjie, Peewee, and Muttonhead had gathered together all their financial capital and wagered me $8.50 that Skip and I would not spend an entire night in my army-surplus pup tent in the darkest and most fearsome section of the cemetery. I took that bet, because there were some items of furniture I wanted to buy for Skip's and my tree house, but only after my sadistic colleagues put me on the honor system, having me swear an oath on a Bible that I would not lie to them that Skip and I had fulfilled the obligation even if we had not, the reason for this chaste and upright declaration being, of course, that Henjie, Peewee, and Muttonhead were not about to visit the cemetery after dark to ascertain our veracity.

Part of the arrangement was that the three of them would accompany Skip and me just before the sun went down to select the most ominous spot. I carried with me the pup tent and a sack of provisions: a can of pork and beans, two Moonpies, some bologna for Skip, a can opener, and a canteen of water, plus two blankets and a pillow. To my dismay my antagonists gleefully chose the most forbidding place in the whole graveyard for me to pitch the tent: a gloomy glade not far from the witch's grave, with moldy nineteenth-century crypts and tombstones all around, and tall, ghostly trees, and dank, sinister shrubs and bushes. All this was part of one's worst nightmares. As I set up the tent in this somber and disturbing terrain Henjie said: “I’ll tell you this, they ain't never gonna spend all night here. My share is two dollars and eighty-three cents.” Then the three of them laughed, a chorus of righteous mirth. It was that unfortunate juncture between dusk and dark, close on to Midsummer Night, with still a little light at nine o'clock, and what was left of that light was fading fast, and formidable shadows were accumulating, and I was beginning to have second thoughts myself. I steeled myself to see it through. As the three of them turned to depart, Peewee chuckled and said, “Pleasant dreams!” As I watched them go, I noticed that only a few yards down the road they began to trot, and then to run because it was pitch-dark by now.

“Well, boy …” I said to Skip. I sat down by the tent and opened the pork and beans and gave Skip some of his bologna. A half-moon shone out over Brickyard Hill up the way, casting over the whole graveyard a dread, shimmering aura. Lightning bugs were around us everywhere, lending grotesque incandescence to the surroundings. Not far away a mockingbird began her nocturnal song. I had always

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