Homecoming Dance

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. Leastwise, there certainly weren’t any of the fire breathing, fly around the sky on leathery wings, stealing sheep and treasure kind. The only dragons seen in Booneville were the crepe paper and chicken wire kind following the high school marching band down Story Street each year in the annual homecoming parade. Yes, somehow, in this small, Midwestern town, located in a swath of the state largely settled by Scandinavians in the 19th century, the school’s booster club opted not for the Vikings, but chose a mythological beast as the school mascot. The Reindeer would have been a more appropriate name considering the school colors are red and green. That, and the fact the football team had shown scant ferocity against their cow town rivals in recent years.

The parade line-up was always the same. The cheerleaders led off, followed by the flag brigade. Next was a big John Deere tractor towing a flat trailer with rows of hay bales for the football players to sit or kneel on; dry, prickly perches from which they threw candy to the littlest kids lining the route.

The marching band took up a lot of space in the middle. Damon was front and center behind the majorettes, I guess the only person in town with the pipes to play piccolo. I was on the outside edge of row four, tenor sax, charged with barking orders at a clump of freshman alto players to get their knees up and keep the line. Our friend Elizabeth, aka Lizard, marched in the back. Her 5’3” frame looked kind of silly toting around that sousaphone, but D.R., the band director, knew she blasted out more sound than any of the other tuba players, including Chris Talbot, who got out of marching because he was on the football team. Even though I couldn’t see him, I knew his fat ass was [plonked] right down, chafing straw with the seat of his black jeans.

After the band came five convertibles. In each car, with their feet on the back seat and their butts on the trunks, rode one boy and one girl, both dolled up with costume crowns and sashes representing two members of the royal homecoming court. The king and queen will be announced at the pep rally in the high school gym after the parade.

Finally, the aforementioned dragons. Four of them. One for each grade level. Four tissue paper dragons breathing fire at, stomping on, or in some way attacking some version of the opponent’s mascot. This year it was the Timberwolves. And this year, the Booneville Dragons might have an actual chance at victory.

“FIE!” A yell echoed through the air. The rows in front of me started squeezing their lines toward the other side of the road to avoid a broken hay bale and a struggling figure trying to right itself. Bartok McLeod, dressed in bib overalls and a tight, white t-shirt, kicked at the straw, put his hands on the pavement, and jerkily got to his feet. He looked puzzled to have found himself on the ground, but quickly brushed off the pebbles and dirt from the road, and started marching next to me, swinging his beefy arms without concern for the cadence the percussionists played.

There he was, savior of the Dragons. Bartok was a new student this year and claimed to have moved from a small community near the northern border of the state. Built, if you’ll pardon the expression, like a brick shithouse, he took over as fullback for the football team. Practically unstoppable once the quarterback put the ball in his hands, he’s the reason our team remained unbeaten this year. And he’s the reason the Booneville Dragons are likely to make the state playoffs in the 3-A division. Of course, his overtly dopey demeanor drew plenty of derision from Damon, Lizard, and the rest of the band geeks. I, however, preferred to mock his ridiculous pageboy haircut; the golden locks, parted down the middle, cut to a length just below his ears, straight but for the last inch or so that curled tightly against his thick neck.

“Fie?!” I said to him, looking askance at his helmet of hair. “Simmer down, Prince Adam, this isn’t Eternia!”

“Bah!” he said, glancing at me. His lip was curled in a sneer, but his eyes seemed to be laughing at me as he added, “That a mere minstrel would speak so to me.” He turned his head quickly to look back at the people watching the parade. As he did so, his hair flipped aside from the back of his head. In that moment, it seemed that there was a hollow spot between his ears. Rather, I saw an indentation in the back of his head, almost as if the sides and front of his face were a mask, but one not molded to fit over a human. It looked like it would fit over the tapered beak and head of a bird. A large bird.

“{KREE!}” A high, keening screech pierced the air. It sounded like a cross between the haunting call of a loon and the menacing caw of a condor. I looked up and saw a dark shape dive behind a tall tree. It looked like a raptor of some kind, but it had a longer neck, like a vulture, and an eerily long tail. Whatever it was, it was enormous. The tree it darted behind had been a block away at the time, but the creature looked two or three times larger than any of the hawks I’d seen flying over the cornfields near my home. I looked at Bartok, but his action-figure coiffure was back in place as he gave high fives to the little kids lining the street. As the band approached the tree, I gazed into its branches, trying to get another glimpse of that strange animal.

“LINE!”

Joanie, the freshman alto player directly on my right tittered behind one hand and pointed at me with the other. I saw the other underclassmen start to look my way as well. Searching for the strange, flying animal in the trees, I missed the turn back towards the high school and had to jog back up to my place in the marching formation. I was about to say something back to Joanie, but the majorettes blew their whistles signaling we had to play the fight song again.

The song lasted until the parade made it back to the school. The cheerleaders opened the doors to the gymnasium and held them open for the flag twirlers. The tractor towing the football team drove past the entrance so the players could line up. The band marched towards the door, but broke apart to form a line on each side of the entryway. The convertibles carrying the homecoming court stopped to let the princes and princesses out. We started playing A Total Eclipse of the Heart as the royals sauntered past the band and into the gym. The students on the dragon floats all jumped off without waiting for the cars pulling them to slow down. They were followed into the building by a number of the community members that watched the parade.

We had to wait a few more minutes to go in. The cheerleaders were setting up a metal hoop covered with paper. The had prepared a target for the football players to run through as they were announced by the coach. Finally, the band was allowed to enter and take our seats in the section of the bleachers reserved for us. Finally, I could seek out Damon and Lizard to ask them if they saw what I saw on the parade route.

“OMG, Lloyd! Do you think you could have disappointed D.R. anymore?” Lizard bumped into me with her tuba.

“Ow! What was that for?” I rubbed my triceps ostentatiously.

“I saw that! You were about half a block down Story Street because you missed the turn down 7th.” Lizard rolled her eyes at me and sat down, still wrapped in her monstrous sousaphone. “You chasing butterflies or something?”

“Hey!” Damon said as he joined us on our bleacher, sitting down on the other side of Lizard.

“It wasn’t a butterfly, but it was something. Didn’t you see it?”

“See what?” Damon asked.

“Well, for starters…Did you know Bartok’s head is hollow?”

“Did you just figure this out, Einstein?” Lizard rolled her eyes at me again.

“No, I don’t mean he’s stupid. I mean, under that hair helmet, there’s just this dent, this cavity. I don’t know, like, his head would nest with the head of another.” I thought about the odd, conical indentation in the back of Bartok’s head. Then, I thought of that strange, flying creature I couldn’t get quite a good look at. “Did either of you see that thing flying in the air?”

“Bro?” Damon looked at me with sad, imploring eyes. “I’m asking because I care about you…are you, um, uh, are you on the pot?” He broke into a smile when he said this. I couldn’t help myself from cracking a smile, either.

“No!” I said, somewhat defensively. “But, I’m serious. First, Bartok falls off the team trailer with a bale-“

“No, he got kicked off!” Damon interrupted. “He stood up on one of the bales of hay and was waving to all the kids. Then that fat ass Talbot kicked at the bale and knocked them both off. What a dick!”

“So, anyway, he’s on the ground, and when he gets up, his hair moves aside and I see this hollow outlined in flesh, deep enough I could see the roundness of his eyeballs.” I couldn’t believe how much detail was coming back to me as I described the vision I had to Lizard and Damon. “And, it was weird, like right when I saw that, I heard this loud screech, like of an eagle or something. I look up and see, I don’t know, a wyvern or something-“

“A wyvern?” Lizard gives me an exasperated look. “Did you fall asleep hugging your Pokemon, again?”

“I don’t know. It was too big to be a hawk. And it didn’t look right, didn’t look like a bird, I mean.” I stumbled over the last my words, wondering if I had just imagined it all. I turned my head to look at what was happening on the gym floor.

The coach of the football team had just handed the microphone off to Chris Talbot. Of course, in addition to being an insufferable prick to his fellow students, Talbot ingratiated himself with the teachers by being a cloying suck-up. That would explain why a rather mediocre player that doesn’t even start on varsity gets to pep up the rest of the students. But, at least for the call and response cheers he shouted, it was hard fault the blowhard his spirit.

“So, those stinking Timberwolves are coming to Booneville tonight. What do we say if they try to score?” Chris paced in front of the football team, facing the crowd of students in the bleachers.

“NOT IN OUR LAIR!”

“And who’s going to stop those ‘Wolves from scoring?”

“OUR MIGHTY, MIGHTY DRAGONS!”

“And so what do you want your Dragons to do tonight?”

“BEAT THOSE WOLVES! BEAT THOSE WOLVES!”

D.R. signaled to the band to begin playing the fight song. We all lifted our instruments, blaring out the notes. The football players jumped around, pumped their fists, and made to another section of the bleachers to sit down. The students sang off key the lyrics until they ceded all musicality to shout the part that goes “Booneville, Booneville, Fight FIGHT FIGHT!”

D.R. then shouted out the song Open Arms. We played while the royal court made their way to the gym floor so they could crown the homecoming king and queen. It was a ritual that occurred the same way every year. Last year’s king and queen would stand behind the line of candidates holding a crown over each one’s head, moving down the line, pausing, allowing the assembled students to gasp or cheer, inevitably placing the coronet on the winner’s head. The band played one more sappy pop song as the court left the gym.

“Dang! That pep assembly lasted too long.” Damon looked at his watch. “We barely have any time to get something to eat before we have to come back here and get into uniform.” Damon, Lizard, and I walked slowly with the marching band crowd back to the music rooms. We put our instruments away and walked outside to the student parking lot and got into Lizard’s car. She drove us to the diner a few blocks away where a line was already forming. We bought burgers and fries to go and drove back to the school where we munched our food while sitting in the car.

After tossing our to-go bags onto the growing pile of them behind the driver seat, we stepped out of the car and stretched our arms and kicked our legs. While resting against the side of the car, we heard whooping sounds coming down the street. A yellow bus with the opposing football team was making its way down the street. Many of the players were hanging out the window, yelling incomprehensibly, and holding up their middle fingers at whoever looked at them. The inside of the bus seemed to glow with a flickering orange incandescence. It made the faces of the players appear gaunt and elongated. I couldn’t tell if there was something inside the vehicle, or if it was a trick of the gloaming light as the day neared sunset.

“Did those players look odd to you?” I asked my friends.

“Oh, come on, man. Why are you so spooked today?” Damon wrapped his arms around my shoulders. “Let’s go suit up and get ready to march.” Lizard, Damon, and I walked from the car back into the school and to the music room. We each went to our instrument lockers and dug out our full marching uniforms: high-wasted wool pants, wool jacket with tails, an ornate overlay, hats with plastic straps to go under our chins and a soft white plume sticking out of the top.

After the rest of the band was all suited up, we walked en masse the couple blocks to the football stadium. We lined up in the end zone, making sure we were the correct distance apart, gauging our position by the hash marks painted on the turf. We performed our pregame show for the stands, then, parked ourselves on a special set of bleachers set up between the field and the track surrounding it. From there, we would play brief spurts of upbeat songs during timeouts or after the Dragons scored, which was frequent enough.

When five minutes remained in the first half, D.R. led us around the track to the other side of the field. We formed our lines behind the opposing team’s players to prepare for the half time show. As we approached the field, I noticed a strong musky scent rising from the grass. I could tell others smelled it, too, because I saw their noses crinkling. A few people were even pinching their nostrils or fanning the spaces in front of their noses. The Dragons kicked a field goal as the clock wound down to zero, making the score 31-7 in favor of the home team. Both teams then jogged to their respective locker rooms, ceding the field to the marching band. We played our half-time show as usual, except we paused in the middle so the game announcers could introduce the homecoming court as they drove around the track on golf carts. The band played another round of A Total Eclipse of the Heart, and then finished our performance by playing the Timberwolves’ fight song to their stands, followed by the Booneville fight song to loud cheers from the home stands. We got back to our designated bleachers as the Timberwolves kicked off to start the third quarter.

The Dragons were lining up for first and ten on the 23 yard line. Bartok lined up as fullback while the quarterback walked up to crouch behind center. The defensive linemen were down on all fours, crowding the line of scrimmage. Their calves quivered as the linebackers clapped their hands and ran at the line showing blitz. The quarterback shouted his cadence. The air felt thick, electric, like I could look at the grass and see it standing up. The ball was hiked.

As soon as the ball came up from the ground, the defense changed. Hair grew down the lengths of their limbs. Their faces elongated, lupine. Noses turned into snouts. Hands and feet turned into paws. Helmets cracked as large, wolfen faces turned to the sky and howled. Bartok ran from his position towards the quarterback who handed him the ball. The now literal Timberwolves reared on their hind legs and swiped down with their front paws onto the offensive line, forcing the still figurative Dragons’ face masks into the turf.

“{KREE!}” It was that same, strange screech I heard during the parade. I looked up and saw a dark shape diving from the sky. It was scaly, with bat-like wings, and a long, thick neck that tapered into a conical face. The body was like an eel, slithering through the air. It leveled its flight and sped towards Bartok’s head. Bartok couched the football in one arm, grabbed his face mask with his other hand. He stepped onto the center’s back and leaped into the air. At the same time, he yanked his helmet off and threw it at the ground. The flying shape, the wyvern or whatever it was, poked its head threw that stupid looking pageboy haircut on Bartok.

Once the wyvern’s face was fully inside Bartok’s, they changed. The eely body stretched flat. Bartok’s body swung backwards until it touched the belly of the beast. A sizzling sound floated across the air as the two creatures melded into one. Bartok’s arms and legs grew into large, scaly limbs with long claws at the end. On one spiked claw clung a now deflated football. Bartok’s face grew into a broad, scaly snout. The dragon crashed into the ground behind the defense. It’s claw with the football resting at the 40 yard line. A referee blew his whistle. The dragon turned around to face the defensive players, all of who were now large wolves baying at Bartok. The dragon inhaled a long, deep breath. It blew a spume of fire from its mouth, igniting the Timberwolves. Bartok, the dragon, chuckled deeply in its throat.