The Mustang Drive In

what’d we see?

We weren’t chasing trouble or anything that night. We weren’t the types to get scared either. It was just another Fort Erie summer evening in the eighties. The kind that feels lazy from the start, with air warm enough to make the stars sweat. I remember the smell of exhaust fumes from the cars parking in formation in front of the screen at the Mustang Drive In.

Soon enough the sun would fade and the movie’s light would flicker on the white screen, making the night look like it was breathing. Bruce, Kenny, and I sat back behind the snack bar, just on the edge of the property behind the chain link fence. A couple of nearly busted lawn chairs were there, sun bleached and cracked, Bruce and I claimed them like thrones. Kenny was happy enough to sit on the ground, hell, we weren’t picky.

We had joints to sell, and better ones to smoke. Before the movie started, some people who knew us would drift by, whisper our names, and pass a fin through the fence for three joints, or a ten spot for six. We’d lean against the fence, trade the goods, and laugh quietly when they scurried back to their cars like they’d just bought secrets.

It wasn’t much of a business, but it kept us in free weed, which at fifteen was as rich as life got. We smoked. And smoked. The night didn’t feel special then. It felt familiar, the softness of a sativa buzz. The movie that night was D.C. Cab, a comedy from ‘83. Adam Baldwin, Gary Busey and Mr. T. mugged on the screen while the sound came back to us fuzzily from the metal mono speakers perched on car windows far ahead of us.

The glowing beam of the projector, the faint echo of laughter from people who’d paid to sit in their cars. The movie was background noise. I remember Bruce trying to quote Mr. T. through a mouthful of smoke and coughing so hard he dropped his lighter. Kenny just grinned that grin of his that always looked halfway to trouble.

At the end of the movie, the projector’s light went off. The sky had transitioned to that deep blue black that almost looks liquid. Cars began to trickle out, a slow parade of headlights and taillights crawling across gravel and stone. They would turn left toward Garrison or right toward Dominion road. We waited until it got quiet, and then we started across the field toward the trails behind the drive in. It was the walk home when everything changed.

Those trails wound through what people around town long before us called the Indian graveyard. That’s what the older kids had told us it was called anyway. You’d hear them talk about it in the smoking area of the high school. Or outside Becker’s convenience store, saying there were headstones out there. I rode my dirt bike around there like a lot of kids did. I didn’t stop to examine anything, just rode through as respectfully as I could.

I don’t like using the name Indian graveyard now. I didn’t then, either. But that’s what everyone called it. Later, I learned the land had once been home to the Attawandaron, the Neutral Nation. Some said the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe passed through, too. Nobody could say if anyone was really buried there, but it didn’t take much for teenagers to tell stories.

When riding through those fields in the daylight, I’d seen what looked like old stones half buried in the soil. Some looked marked, most just looked like rubble. You could tell something had been there once, something old. The three of us were pretty high, laughing, having fun and trying to keep our balance on the dirt trail. The moon gave us barely enough light to see, and we used the stars to keep our bearings.

We talked about nothing, the usual noise. But somewhere along the way, the air changed. The breeze that had been soft went still. Even the crickets went quiet. It was like the whole world had turned its head to listen. “Did you hear that?” Kenny said. “Is it the wind?” Bruce asked. “There is no wind,” I offered, and that was the truth. The trail ahead looked darker than it should have. The shapes of the trees felt wrong, like they’d shifted when we weren’t looking. Then we saw him.

He was standing about thirty yards ahead, half shadow, half moonlight. At first I thought he was just another stoner like us, someone cutting across the field after the movie. His clothes looked - they looked old. His pants were brown and rough looking, maybe leather. He had on a brown vest and his chest was bare. His skin had a bronze sheen, like someone carved him from wood and polished him smooth. His black hair hung long.

We stopped walking, dead in our tracks, none of us said a word. I think part of me wanted to call out, to say hey man, what’s up? But my mouth wouldn’t move. Whether he was man or Bhagana, the figure turned his head toward us, slowly and deliberately. The moonlight caught his face, I wish it hadn’t. His eyes didn’t look human, they looked lit.

Faintly glowing, like candlelight behind glass. His expression wasn’t angry or kind. It was something else, ancient, watching, like we’d stepped on something sacred without meaning to. He said something, a low sound, nothing that I recognized, words that weren’t English. The syllables rolled like thunder across stone, rhythmic, mournful.

It wasn’t shouting, it was a kind of speaking meant for the earth to hear. Bruce took a step back. “Shit,” he whispered, “let’s go.” The figure raised a hand, I couldn’t tell if it was a warning or a greeting. His fingers were motionless. My legs wanted to move, but my brain couldn’t give the order. It was like being trapped inside my own skin. Then he moved.

One moment he was thirty yards away, the next he was closer, ten or fifteen yards in front of us, maybe. I swear I didn’t see him step. He was just there, the space between us was gone somehow. The moonlight flickered, like a cloud passed over it, but the sky was clear. He spoke again, louder this time, and a breeze hit us from nowhere, cool and smelling of mud and smoke. I think Bruce screamed, or maybe it was Kenny.

I just remember the three of us started running, crashing through the brush with reckless abandon, not caring about the path anymore. Branches tore at our arms, the ground passed quickly underfoot. The only thought in my head was don’t fall. I didn’t look back, not once, but I could hear something behind us. Not footsteps, something heavier, slower, like the sound of a drumbeat muffled by the earth.

It followed us until the streetlights appeared through the brush and the trees, and then it stopped. Just gone. We burst out onto Rosehill Road, panting, scraped up, our hearts thundering. Bruce bent over and threw up in the ditch. Kenny lit a cigarette with shaking hands and said, “You saw him too, right? Tell me you saw him.” Bruce spoke up and asked, “what’d we see?” None of us answered right away. It felt wrong to say it out loud, like naming it would make it come back. When we finally split up that night, we promised not to talk about it. Not to anyone.

For years, I know I didn’t. I don’t think we ever talked to each other about it again. Life happened, school, bands, jobs, girlfriends, all the normal things. But sometimes I’d see Kenny at Becker’s, or run into Bruce in the smoking area at school. There’d be this flicker of something in our eyes, a kind of shared question we were both too uncomfortable to ask. Bruce passed away twenty-five years ago or more and Kenny moved way up North.

Sometimes I drive down Rosehill Road, where the Mustang Drive In used to be. There’s houses built there now, they are beautiful and must cost over a million a piece. I’ve heard that the Indian graveyard is still there, behind them, undisturbed. Every time I pass those pristine houses, I get that same chill I felt the moment the crickets went quiet. Like the air remembers. I don’t know what we saw. Maybe it was a man, maybe it wasn’t.

Maybe we were just stoned kids with overactive imaginations and a night too full of shadows. But sometimes, when the moon’s just right, I swear I can still hear it. That low voice, speaking to the earth in a language older than any of us. And when I hear it, I always try to listen. Because part of me is still waiting to understand what it said. And part of me is afraid that, one night, I will.