The Boogeyman Tree

October 31, 2023

The Boogeyman Tree

by

Jeff Byrne

When I was a kid we lived on a street named after a dead Indian chief.  Fitting perhaps, since it was a dead-end street.  Pretty much all of the streets in that part of the county were named that way.  I guess by the time those streets got laid out they ran out of names of presidents and Civil War generals.

The houses were small but the yards were big, at least by today’s standards.  In summer, we’d play marathon games of hide and seek, running through everyone’s backyard to hide.  There were woods and a B&O freight line that ran twice a day at the dead end of the street.  I spent a lot of time in those woods regardless of the season – footpaths and hideouts in the summer, sled runs in the winter.  There were vine swings in the trees and turtles in the creek, and always a couple of major league cases of poison ivy waiting for me in there.

We first moved there when I was about 5 and the things I’m going to tell you about happened during the summer I turned 10.It was a summer when some weird things happened that I still think about sometimes.  What happened at the boogeyman tree is one of them, but there were others too.

For instance, that summer there was a rash of fires in the woods.  The fires started just after school let out in mid-June and ended just before July 4. They didn’t burn much, just some dry brush and a few dead trees.  But they were close enough to the neighborhood to be a nuisance to the local fire company, who were of the opinion that the fires were the doing of just-out-of-school firebugs. They cited the charred remains of a Mad magazine found at one of the fires as a clue supportive of this viewpoint.  Pretty much all of the boys in the neighborhood, and a few of the girls, were suspects.  Weasel Durocher and Turd Callaghan were prime suspects, because of their names.  But they denied any involvement.

The fire chief discussed the situation with the neighborhood parents, following which the unanimously-and-loudly-expressed opinion of said parents was that if the fires did not stop immediately nobody would be allowed to set off fireworks for the upcoming July 4^th holiday.  Now, cancelling 4^th of July fireworks was tantamount to cancelling Hallowe’en or Christmas, so needless to say, the fires stopped immediately.  Nobody ever found out who set the fires, or why, although suspicions lingered about Weasel and Turd. 

Even weirder was what happened to the head of the American Nazi Party, who owned a big old house just a few blocks away from my neighborhood. It sat back off the street in a densely wooded lot, just like you’d see in an old scary movie.  He lived there with some of his Nazi buddies in a kind of fascist fraternity house.  Weasel told me he creepy-crawled up the driveway there one night, on a dare from Turd.  He said he was confronted by a man with a pistol who told him it was private property and to get lost, which he did.  But Weasel lied about pretty much everything, so who knows if that really happened.

Now, all the adults in my neighborhood had served in the war in one way or another and were none too pleased that there were Nazis about, especially Nazis who periodically paraded in their brown shirts and swastika armbands and Nazi flags.  They even complained to the county board about it, but were told that there was nothing that could be done, he owned the property and could do as he pleased.

So everyone was surprised and then pleased when the head Nazi was shot and killed about a week before the neighborhood Labor Day shrimp boil.  It was one of his own guys who did it, with a deer rifle from the roof of the 7-11, right next to the laundromat and barber shop.  Turd told me later that he was in the barbershop when it happened. He said he heard the shot and went running out to the parking lot with the cape still on, Tom the barber following with the scissors still in his hand.  Turd said the Nazi was lying face down in the parking lot, his laundry bag laying beside him, blood running down the asphalt and into the gutter.  He was coming out of the laundromat with a fresh set of brown shirts, no doubt.

Like I said, it turned out it was one of his own guys who did it.  He’d been thrown out of the Nazis and killed the leader to get revenge.  Just how big an asshole you have to be to get thrown out of the Nazis was a subject of considerable speculation among kids and parents that summer, along with who set the fires and the identity of the window peeper.

Like I said, the identity of the window peeper was a subject of considerable speculation that summer.  For about a week, women in the neighborhood reported seeing a man looking through their bedroom window at night, a man who ran away when they yelled at him. Nobody was able to get a good look at him, although a few saw him run into the woods and disappear.  The men of the neighborhood had a meeting and agreed to take turns on patrol duty at night.  All the dads participated except for Mr. Frazetta, who showed up the first night drunk, waving his service .45 around until cooler heads prevailed and sent him home to sleep it off. Weasel actually did see the guy coming out of the woods one night, but the guy took off and Weasel lost him in the woods because he was wearing penny loafers instead of Keds and lost a shoe during the chase.  The guy never came back, but the dads stayed on patrol for another couple of weeks, just in case.  There was some speculation that the peeper might have been Steve Whitey, because he disappeared into the Army right about then.

Steve was a greaser and a gearhead who divided his time pretty equally between working on cars, chasing girls, and running from the cops. Turd once bought some illegal Black Cat firecrackers from him and we spent an afternoon setting them off in the woods.  Steve admonished him that if we got caught we better not tell where we got them.  I don’t know what else he did, but finally a judge told him to go into the Army or into jail.  He chose the Army.

The Whiteys lived two houses down from us, closer to the dead end of the street.  Mr. Whitey looked a bit like Art Carney in “The Honeymooners”, and was the owner of Whitey’s Tavern.  He grew rhubarb in his backyard, some of which he always gave my mom, who transformed it into an inedible pie.  Mrs. Whitey was a drunk who kept the tavern’s books and drank the profits.  I would discover in later years that Whitey’s Tavern was the sort of place that smelled like beer piss and old men’s despair.

But that’s for another story.

Cliff and Morgan Whitey were Steve’s younger brother and sister. Cliff Whitey was a screaming queen in a physical, cultural, and psychic space that knew nothing of screaming queens.  He was invisible and inescapable at the same time, with his snorting laughter, flapping hands and highpitched screams of “Magpie!”, his nickname for Morgan, who was a star player in the local semipro softball league.  Cliff was an early fire-starter suspect like Weasel and Turd, but not because of his name.

Anyway, Steve Whitey had to go into the Army and he didn’t come home. Well, he did kind of, and that’s what this story is really about.  One day after Steve had been gone for about a year, Weasel told me he heard that Steve OD’d on heroin.  I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I kind of figured it wasn’t something they gave you the Purple Heart for.  All I know is the Whiteys were really sad.  I mean, he was a greaser and a gearhead who fell afoul of the law a lot, but he was still theirs, after all.

Nobody really wanted to talk about Steve.  The kids didn’t really know anything or pretended that they did but they wouldn’t tell.  And adults would just say that it was a sad thing and change the subject.  Even Cliff, who could usually be seen swanning about the neighborhood on his bike or screaming after Magpie, was rarely seen that summer.

The boogeyman tree was in the Whitey’s backyard.  It was a rotted-out tree stump of impossible-to-determine species totally engulfed by Virginia creepers.  The neighborhood kids said that the boogeyman lived there. It definitely looked like the kind of place the boogeyman would live. Sometimes when we were playing back there, Mr. Whitey would emerge from behind it and yell it’s the boogeyman! while shaking a handful of rhubarb at us, who all ran squealing as he laughed out loud.  It was fun and kind of scary at the same time, and none of us kids would ever admit whether we really believed in the boogeyman or not.

The last weird thing that happened that summer happened during the annual neighborhood Labor Day shrimp boil.  The adults put sawhorses across the open end of the street and church picnic tables in the middle of the street, then made themselves busy with shrimp, potato salad, and cold Schlitz.  There was a separate party for the teens, in the Whitey’s front yard.  My friend Bryce Shaft and I had our fill of shrimp and were in the process of putting together a game of hide and seek when a drunk Mrs. Whitey, a glass of Jack and ginger in her right hand and a Lark 100 in her left, regaled us about a submarine up in the sky.  Now, I had heard about flying saucers and knew what they looked like, but I had never heard of a submarine up in the sky, and I told Mrs. Whitey that.  Bryce and me both looked for it anyway.  I didn’t see it and Bryce said he didn’t either, and we both told Mrs. Whitey that, too.  Mrs. Whitey gave us both a long look, a bourbony snort, and tottered off to bum a light.  Bryce and I looked at each other, shrugged, and went on organizing the game.  I didn’t see the submarine that night, and I haven’t seen one since then, either.

Like I said, the teens had their own party in the Whitey’s front yard, with pizza for the teens who didn’t like shrimp.  During the hide and seek game, I slipped around to the Whitey’s back yard while Bryce’s younger brother Carl counted to 100, because I wanted to see if I could snag a Coke from the teens’ party without being chased off.  It was kind of a competition that Bryce and I had.  I handhopped over a couple of chainlink fences and then I was in the Whitey’s backyard.  It was darker back there, where no streetlight or porchlight got. When my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could see that Steve was sitting beside the boogeyman tree, wearing his Army fatigues, smoking a cigarette. At first I thought it was Mr. Whitey, on a smoke break following some nighttime rhubarb-tending.  But then I realized it was Steve.

I guess Steve was a ghost. I’d never met one before, and I haven’t met one since.  I knew from the movies that ghosts sometimes visited people, but it had never happened to me.  I wasn’t scared but it did feel weird.

- Hey Steve

He didn’t answer. His cigarette lit up his face when he puffed on it.He looked at me in its glow.

- Are you really here?  I heard you were dead.

He puffed his cigarette again and looked at me.

- How’s the party going?

- OK I guess.  You came back.

- Yeah

- It’s really you?

- Yeah it’s me

- Why did you come back?

- It’s lonely where I am

- It’s lonely here too sometimes

- Not like where I am

- How?

- Nobody there but me

- Nobody?

- Nobody

- You in hell?

- Don’t know

- The boogeyman got you?

- No.  There is no boogeyman.  He’s just a story

- But…

- That’s not real. This is.

- Is hell underneath the boogeyman tree?

- Don’t think so

- Does it hurt?

- No.  It’s not like that.  I don’t feel anything.

- What’s OD on heroin?

That made him smile.  Not a happy smile, though.  A hollow kind of smile, just with his mouth but not with his eyes.  And with that, he stood up, ground out his butt under his heel, and walked into the boogeyman tree.

I stood there for a minute or two, to see if he would come back.  He didn’t, so I went to the Whitey’s frontyard, any thoughts of trying to swipe a Coke forgotten.  The teenagers were still doing the frug to Beatles and Stones records, eating the last of the pizza, and smoking cigarettes purloined from their parents, hating the thought of going back to school tomorrow.  The adults were all still half drunk or completely drunk and arguing about the war and that bastard Johnson. 

I thought about what Steve’s ghost said, and I wondered if the Nazi became a ghost and went visiting, what it would have to say.  I was pretty sure I wouldn’t go looking for him at the boogeyman tree.  No way I wanted to meet a Nazi ghost back in there.  Steve Whitey was one thing, but a Nazi?  No way, man.

I never told anyone about Steve’s ghost.  Weasel and Turd would just kick my ass for telling lies again.  Thing is, I didn’t tell lies. I told them true things they didn’t want to hear about.  Like flying saucers.  Anyway, I never told anyone about it because I didn’t really need any more ass-kickings.

It had been a strange summer, with brush fires, a window peeper, a dead Nazi, and Steve’s ghost come to visit.  In later years it would be called the Summer of Love.  I didn’t know at the time that even stranger summers were soon to come, that other kids from the dead end street would not come home from the war, would OD, would die from diseases as yet unknown; that there were no submarines up in the sky (but there might be something else up there), that telling the truth will get you your ass kicked, that Nazis still march, and that, in some small, strange, sad corner of a backyard, Steve Whitey still smiles with his mouth, but not with his eyes.