by James Gunn
"She did this?" Matt asked weakly.
"This ain't nothin'." Jenkins' voice quavered; it was a terrible sound to come from that massive frame. "You should see the other room."
"But how? I mean why?"
"I ain't a-sayin' Ab done it," Jenkins said, shaking his head. His beard wobbled near Matt's nose. "But when she gets onhappy, things happen. And she was powerful onhappy when that Duncan boy tol' her he wan't comin' back. Them chairs come up from the floor and slam down. That table went dancin' round the room till it fell to pieces. Then dishes come a-flyin' through the air. Look!"
His voice was full of self-pity as he turned his head around and parted his long, matted hair. On the back of his head was a large, red swelling. "I hate to think what happened to that Duncan boy."
He shook his head sorrowfully. "Now, mister, I guess I got ever' right to lay my hand to that gal. Ain't I?" he demanded fiercely, but his voice broke.
Matt stared at him blankly.
"But whop her? Me? I sooner stick my hand in a nest of rattlers."
"You mean to say that those things happened all by themselves?"
"That's what I said. I guess it kinder sticks in your craw. Wouldn't have believe it myself, even seein' it and feelin' it -- " he rubbed the back of his head -- "if it ain't happen afore. Funny things happen around Ab, ever since she started fillin' out, five-six year ago."
"But she's only sixteen," Matt objected.
"Sixteen?' Jenkins glanced warily around the room and out the door toward the car. He lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. "Don't let on I tol' you, but Ab allus was a fibber. She's past eighteen!"
From a shelf, a single unbroken dish crashed to the floor at Jenkins' feet. He jumped and began to shake.
"See?" he whispered plaintively.
"It fell," Matt said.
"She's witched." Jenkins took a feverish swallow from the bottle. "Maybe I ain't been a good Paw to her. Ever since her Maw died, she run wild and got all kinda queer notions. "Tain't allus been bad. For years I ain't had to go fer water. That barrel by the porch is allus filled. But ever since she got to the courtin' age and started bein' disappointed in fellers round about, she been mighty hard to live with. No one'll come nigh the place. And things keep a-movin' and a-jumpin' around till a man cain't trust his own chair to set still under him. It gets you, son. A man kin only stand so much!"
To Matt's dismay, Jenkins' eyes began to fill with large tears. "Got no friend no more to offer me a drink now and again, sociable-like, or help me with the chores, times I got the misery in my back. I ain't a well man, son. Times it's more'n I kin do to get outa bed in the mornin'.
"Look, son," Jenkins said, turning to Matt pleadingly. "Yore a city feller. Yore right nice-lookin' with manners and edyacation. I reckon Ab likes you. Whyn't you take her with you?" Matt started retreating toward the door. "She's right purty when she fixes up and she kin cook right smart. You'd think a skillet was part of her hand, the way she kin handle one, and you don't even have to marry up with her."
Matt backed away, white-faced and incredulous. "You must be mad. You can't give a girl away like that." He turned to make a dash for the door.
A heavy hand fell on Matt's shoulder and spun him around. "Son," Jenkins said, his voice heavy with menace, "any man that's alone with a gal more'n twenty minutes, it's thought proper they should get married up quick. Since yore a stranger, I ain't holdin' you to it. But when Ab left me, she stopped bein' my daughter. Nobody asked you to bring her back. That gal," he said woefully, "eats more'n I do."
Matt reached into his hip pocket. He pulled out his billfold and extracted a five-dollar bill.
"Here," he said, extending it toward Jenkins, "maybe this will make life a little more pleasant."
Jenkins looked at the money wistfully, started to reach for it, and jerked his hand away.
"I cain't do it," he moaned. "It ain't worth it. You brought her back. You kin take her away."
Matt glanced out the doorway toward the car and shuddered. He added another five to the one in his hand.
Jenkins sweated. His hand crept out. Finally, desperately, he crumpled the bills into his palm. "All right," he said hoarsely.
"Them's ten mighty powerful reasons."
Matt ran to the car as if he had escaped from bedlam. He opened the door and slipped in. "Get out," he said sharply. "You're home."
"But Paw -- "
"From now on, he'll be a doting father." Matt reached across and opened the door for her. "Good-by."
Slowly Abigail got out. She rounded the car and walked up to the porch, dragging her feet. But when she reached the porch, she straightened up. Jenkins, who was standing in the doorway, shrank back from his five-foot-tall daughter as she approached.
"Dirty, nasty old man," Abigail hissed.
Jenkins flinched. After she had passed, he raised the bottle hastily to his beard. His hand must have slipped. By some unaccountable mischance, the bottle kept rising in the air, mouth downward. The bourbon gushed over his head.
Pathetically, looking more like Neptune than ever, Jenkins peered toward the car and shook his head.
Feverishly, Matt turned the car around and jumped it out of the yard. It had undoubtedly been an optical illusion. A bottle does not hang in the air without support.
Guy's cabin should not have been so difficult to find. Although the night was dark, the directions were explicit. But for two hours Matt bounced back and forth along the dirt roads of the hills. He got tired and hungry.
For the fourth time, he passed the cabin which fitted the directions in every way but one -- it was occupied. Lights streamed from the windows into the night. Matt turned into the steep driveway. He could, at least, ask directions.
As he walked toward the door, the odor of frying ham drifted from the house to tantalize him. Matt knocked, his mouth watering. Perhaps he could even get an invitation to supper.
The door swung open. "Come on in. What kept you?"
Matt blinked. "Oh, no!" he cried. For a frantic moment, it was like the old vaudeville routine of the drunk in the hotel who keeps staggering back to knock on the same door. Each time he is' more indignantly ejected until finally he complains, "My God, are you in all the rooms?"
"What are you doing here?" Matt asked faintly. "How did you -- How could you -- ?"
Abigail pulled him into the cabin. It looked bright and cheerful and clean. The floor was newly swept; a broom leaned in the corner. The two lower bunks on opposite walls were neatly made up. Two places were laid at the table. Food was cooking on the wood stove.
"Paw changed his mind," she said.
"But he couldn't! I gave him -- "
"Oh, that." She reached into a pocket of her dress. "Here."
She handed him the two crumpled five-dollar bills and a handful of silver and copper that Matt dazedly added up to one dollar and thirty-seven cents.
"Paw said he'd have sent more, but it was all he had. So he threw in some vittles."
He sat down in a chair heavily. "But you couldn't -- I didn't know where the place was myself, exactly. I didn't tell you -- "
"I always been good at finding things," she said. "Places things that are lost. Like a cat, I guess."
"But -- but -- " Matt spluttered, "How did you get here?"
"I rode," she said. Instinctively, Matt's eyes switched to the broom in the corner. "Paw loaned me the mule. I let her go. She'll get home all right."
"But you can't stay here. It's impossible!"
"Now, Mr. Wright," Abigail said soothingly. "My Maw used to say a man should never make a decision on a empty stomach. You just sit there and relax. Supper's all ready. You must be nigh starved."
"There's no decision to be made!" Matt said, but he watched while she put things on the table -- thick slices of fried ham with cream gravy, corn on the cob, fluffy biscuits, butter, homemade jelly, strong black coffee that was steaming and fragrant. Abigail's cheeks were flushed from the stove and her face was peaceful. She looked a
lmost pretty.
"I can't eat a bite," Matt told her.
"Nonesense." Abigail filled his plate.
Glumly, Matt sliced off a bite of ham and put it in his mouth. It was so tender, it almost melted. Before long he was eating as fast as he could shovel the food into his mouth. The food was delicious; everything was cooked just as he liked it. He had never been able to tell anyone how to fix it that way. But that was the way it was.
He pushed himself back from the table, teetering against. the wall on the back legs of his chair, lit a cigarette and watched Abigail pour him a third cup of coffee. He was swept by a wave of contentment.
"If I'd had time I'd a made a peach pie. I make real good peach pie," Abigail said.
Matt nodded lazily. There would be compensations in having someone around to --
"No!" he said violently, thumping down on the two front legs of his chair. "It won't work. You can't stay here. What would people say?"
"Who'd care? -- Paw don't. Anyways, I could say we was married."
"No!" Matt said hoarsely. 'Please don't do that!"
"Please, Mr. Wright,' she pleaded, "let me cook and clean for you. I wouldn't be no trouble. Mr. Wright, honest I wouldn't."
"Look, Abbie!" He took her hand. It was soft and feminine. She stood beside his chair obediently, her eyes cast down. "You're a nice girl, and I like you. You can cook better than anyone I've ever known, and you'll make some man a good wife. But I think too much of you to let you ruin your name by staying here alone with me. You'll have to go back to your father."
The life seemed to flow out of her. "All right," she said, so low that it was difficult to hear her.
Dazed at his sudden success, Matt got up and walked toward the door. She followed him, and Matt could almost feel the tears welling in her eyes.
Matt opened the car door for her and helped her in. He circled the front of the car and slid into the driver's seat. Abbie huddled against the far door, small and forlorn.
Since Matt's speech, she hadn't said a word. Suddenly, Matt felt very sorry for her and ashamed, as if he had hit a child. 'The poor little thing!' he thought. Then he caught himself. He shook his head. For a poor little thing, she had certainly managed to browbeat her father.
He thumbed the starter button, and the motor growled, but it didn't catch. Matt let it whine to a stop and pressed again. The motor moaned futilely. Matt checked the ignition. It was on. Again and again he pushed in the button. The moans got weaker. He tried to roll the car -- but the brakes locked.
He glanced suspiciously at Abigail. 'But that's absurd,' he thought. Since he had met Abbie, his thoughts had taken a definite paranoid tinge. It was foolish to blame everything that went wrong on the girl.
But the car wouldn't move. He gave up.
"All right," he sighed. "I can't put you out this far from home. You can sleep here tonight."
Silently, she followed him into the cabin. She helped him tack blankets to the upper bunks on each side of the cabin. They made an effective curtain around the lower beds. As they worked, Matt discovered that he was unusually sensitive to her nearness. There was a sweet, womanly smell to her, and when she brushed against him the spot that was touched came to life-tingling awareness.
When they finished, Abbie reached down and grasped the hem of her dress to pull it off over her head.
"No, no," Matt said hurriedly. "Don't you have any modesty? Why do you think we tacked up those blankets?" He gestured to the bunk on the left-hand wall. "Dress and undress in there."
She let the hem of her dress fall, nodded meekly, and climbed into the bunk.
Matt stared after her for a moment and released his breath. He turned and climbed into his own bunk, undressed, and slipped under the blanket. Then he remembered that he had forgotten turn out the lamps.
He rose on one elbow and heard a soft padding on the floor. The lamps went out, one by one, and the padding faded to the other side of the room. Rustling sounds. Darkness and silence.
"Good night, Mr. Wright." It was a little child's voice in the night.
"Good night, Abbie," he said softly. And then after a moment, firmly, "But don't forget -- back you go first thing in the morning.
Before the silence wove a pattern of sleep, Matt heard a little sound from the other bunk. He couldn't quite identify it.
A sob? A snore? Or a muffled titter?
The odor of frying bacon and boiling coffee crept into Matt's nightmare of a terrifying pursuit by an implacable and invisible enemy. Matt opened his eyes. The bunk was bright with diffused sunlight; the dream faded. Matt sniffed hungrily and pushed aside the blanket to look out.
All the supplies from the car had been unloaded and neatly stowed away. On a little corner table by the window were his typewriter and precious manila folders, and a stack of blank white paper.
Matt dressed hurriedly in his cramped quarters. When he emerged from his cocoon, Abbie was humming happily as she set breakfast on the table. She wore a different dress this morning -- a brown calico that did horrible things for her hair and coloring, but fitted better than the blue gingham. The dress revealed a slim but unsuspectedly mature figure.
How would she look, he wondered briefly, in good clothes and nylons, shoes, and make-up?
The thought crumbled before a fresh onslaught to his senses of the odor and sight of breakfast. The eggs were cooked just right, sunny side up, the white firm but not hard. It was strange how Abbie anticipated his preferences. At first he thought that she had overestimated his appetite, but he stowed away three eggs while Abbie ate two, heartily.
He pushed back his plate with a sigh. "Well," he began. She got very quiet and stared at the floor. His heart melted. He felt too contented; a few hours more wouldn't make any difference. Tonight would be time enough for her to go back. "Well," he repeated, "I guess I'd better get to work."
Abbie sprang to clear the table. Matt walked to the corner where the typewriter was waiting. He sat down in the chair and rolled in a sheet of paper. The table was well arranged for light; it was the right height. Everything considered, it was just about perfect for working.
He stared at the blank sheet of paper. He leafed through his notes. He resisted an impulse to get up and walk around. He rested his fingers lightly on the keys and after a moment lifted them, crossed one leg over the other knee, put his right elbow on the raised leg, and began to finger his chin.
There was only one thing wrong: he didn't feel like working.
Finally he typed in the middle of the page:
THE PSYCHODYNAMICS OF WITCHCRAFT
With Special Reference to the
Salem Trials of 1692
He double-spaced and stopped.
It wasn't that Abbie was noisy; she was too quiet with a kind of purposeful restraint that is worse than chaos. With one ear Matt listened to the sounds of dishwashing and stacking. And then silence.
Matt stood it as long as he could and turned. Abbie was seated at the table. She was sewing up a hole in the pocket of his other pair of pants. He could almost see the aura of bliss that surrounded her.
'Like a child,' Matt thought, 'playing at domesticity.' But there was something mature about it, too; a mature and basic fulfillment. 'If we could all be happy with so little. It's a pity, with so small an ambition, to have the real thing so elusive.'
As if she felt him looking at her, Abbie glanced around and beamed. Matt turned back to his typewriter. It still wouldn't come.
'Witchcraft,' he began hesitantly, 'is the attempt of the primitive mind to bring order out of chaos. It is significant, therefore, that belief in witchcraft fades as an understanding of the natural workings of the physical universe grows more prevalent.'
He let his hands drop. It was all wrong, like an image seen in a distorted mirror. He swung around. "Who wrecked your father's house?"
"Libby," she said.
"Libby?" Matt echoed. "Who's Libby?"
"The other me," Abbie said calmly. "Mostly I keep her bottled
up inside, but when I feel sad and unhappy I can't keep her in. Then she gets loose and just goes wild. I can't control her."
'Good God!' Matt thought, 'Schizophrenia!' "Where did you get an idea like that?" he asked cautiously.
"When I was born," Abbie said, "I had a twin sister, only she died real quick. Maw said I was stronger and just crowded the life right out of her. When I was bad, Maw used to shake her head and say Libby'd never have been mean or cross or naughty. So when something happened, I started saying Libby done it. It didn't stop a licking, but it made me feel better."
