“What’s hexin’, ma’am?”
“Heathen doings by that old Miz’ Sigafoos. She’s been warned and warned plenty to stick to her doctoring. I hold nothing against her for curing the croup or maybe selling a young man love potion if he’s goin’ down to Scranton to sell his crop and play around a little. But she’s not satisfied with that, I guess. Dud Wingle must of gone to her with a twenty-dollar bill to witch my farm!”
I do not know what to make of this. My mama, of course, has told me about la vecchia religione, but I never know they believe in stuff like that over here. “Can you go to the cops, ma’am?” I ast.
She snorts like Belshazzar the Magnificent. “Cops! A fat lot old Henry Bricker would know about witchin’. No, Bub, I guess I’ll handle this myself. I ain’t the five-times-great-granddaughter of Pru Posthlewaite for nothin’!”
“Who was Pru— what you said?”
“Hanged in Salem, Massachusettes, in 1680 for witchcraft. Her coven name was Little Gadfly, but I guess she wasn’t so little. The first two ropes broke—but we got no time to stand around talkin’. I got to find my Ma’s truck in the attic. You go get the black rooster from the chicken run. I wonder where there’s some chalk?” And she walks off to the house, mumbling. I walk to the chicken run thinking she has flipped.
The black rooster is a tricky character, very fast on his feet and also I am new at the chicken racket. It takes me half an hour to stalk him down, during which time incidentally the Ford leaves with Brenda in it and George drives away in his car. See you later, Brenda, I think to myself.
I go to the kitchen door with the rooster screaming in my arms and Mrs. Parry says: “Come on in with him and set him anywhere.” I do, Mrs. Parry scatters some cornflakes on the floor and the rooster calms down right away and stalks around picking it up. Mrs. Parry is sweaty and
dust-covered and there are some dirty old papers rolled up on the kitchen table.
She starts fooling around on the floor with one of the papers and a hunk of carpenter’s chalk, and just to be doing something I look at the rest of them. Honest to God, you never saw such lousy spelling and handwriting. Tayke the Duste off one Olde Ymmage Quhich Ye Myn-gel—like that.
I shake my head and think: it’s the cow racket. No normal human being can take this life. She has flipped and I don’t blame her, but it will be a horrible thing if it becomes homicidal. I look around for a poker or something and start to edge away. I am thinking of a dash from the door to the Willys and then scorching into town to come back with the men in the little white coats.
She looks up at me and says: “Don’t go away, Bub. This is woman’s work, but I need somebody to hold the sword and palm and you’re the onliest one around.” She grins. “I guess you never saw anything like this in the city, hey?”
“No, ma’am,” I say, and notice that my voice is very faint.
“Well, don’t let it skeer you. There’s some people it’d skeer, but the Probation Association people say they call you Tough Tony, so I guess you won’t take fright.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Now what do we do for a sword? I guess this bread knife’U—no; the ham slicer. It looks more like a sword. Hold it in your left hand and get a couple of them gilded bulrushes from the vase in the parlor. Mind you wipe your feet before you tread on the carpet! And then come back. Make it fast.”
She starts to copy some stuff that looks like Yiddish writing onto the floor and I go into the parlor. I am about to tiptoe to the front door when she yells: “Bub! That you?”
Maybe I could beat her in a race for the car, maybe not. I shrug. At least I have a knife—and know how to use it. I bring her the gilded things from the vase. Ugh!