Rivendell
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The Horribles' Parade
John PedrickNo entrants over the age of ten. No rented costumes. All the child's own idea. Yah, how we push our homemade zits at the people, scare the babies, make our grannies drop half dead, we are so horrible! In the parade we're horriblest and going to win five dollars, Yah! § A merperson, sex indeterminate, tail sewn with tatters of ruptured balloons, skin sicklied-o'er with a green wash, wounds - it has been swimming with sharks - suppurative, crusted, (this achieved by a beading at the edges of half-chewed gumdrops, three lemony kind; one lime.) § A bad pirate, eye-patch, pants, boots, a knife, that's all but he's filled the boots half-full at dockside so they'll slosh right, and by appointment, out back at the butcher's, gets smeared with the real thing. "Lamb's blood keeps the color longest, kid, but pig's blood sticks.". § A tiny girl Her brothers in khaki, maimed doughboys, kettles on their heads for helmets - one has doubled one leg up against itself and taped it so tight it throbs. He hops on a crutch; sweat pours from his kettle. The other turns a foot upside down and drags it out behind him. He hugs one arm inside his jacket. Its sleeve flaps in the wind. She wanted to be a soldier, too, but was too little, they said. (Also they'd used up all the khaki.) They told her she could be a refugee child on the road, going behind the mother pushing the little cart. "Mama's going to have a cart?" "No, dummy, no grown-ups. But in the war, the mothers pushed the carts with all the stuff and the babies ran behind and got in the crossfire, Blam, and spilled their guts." A cry sails up. "I going to spill my guts!" In buttonless reach-me-downs and a pouchy gauze belly-band she lets down and retrieves tangles of brownish-yellow see-through rubber tubing. She displays slyly, as though these maybe really are her guts. § A parade of lumps like the serpent on the flag DON'T TREAD ON US it snakes through town. Forms up not at nine but when all creature is mustered Passes Cabot Hall not at ten-thirty but when the town's been smirched and fanged to death with it The Selectmen in their nice shirts and arm-garters come out, cover their heads with their elbows, point, shoot from the finger, huddle, go back, come back, pick something, someone's little dear. No matter whose. Horrible is its own reward.« Back to Excerpts