by Karen Hesse
even though she was filled with bootleg liquor and i
could have been sent to prison for my kindness.
i turned the packard around and told the boy
his family was undone over his disappearance.
they wanted him home, no matter what.
at least give them word, i said.
the boy denied he was merlin van tornhout and
walked away.
i thought about going straight to the van tornhouts when i
got back in town.
but i couldn’t tell the family i saw the boy
without giving out what i was doing in plattsburg.
and sorry as i am to know the worry of the family,
there’s some things you just can’t do anything about.
three keys came to me
in a package
postmarked
stamford, connecticut.
the keys were wrapped in
a piece of gray shirting,
snug in a nest
of brown paper.
one key fit the storeroom,
one the back door,
and one started the truck.
i made this set last year
for merlin van tornhout.
so he could work the graveyard shift.
well, merlin,
at least you didn’t give them to the klan.
johnny reeves climbed
to the highest point of the arch
of the steel bridge across the connecticut river
and said nothing.
johnny reeves,
who always has something to say to the crowd
stood,
swaying in the air,
silent.
no traffic moved from one shore to the
other while constable johnson
climbed to the top of the bridge
on an extension ladder.
he balanced, 70 feet from the roadway,
trying to talk johnny reeves down.
constable johnson asked
what reverend reeves was doing up there.
johnny reeves looked at him,
said,
i’m afraid of the klan.
and then he jumped
just like that.
i did go inside the church of johnny reeves
while sara chickering and doc flitt did swap stories outside.
i did go inside to warm my face and talk to God about daddy being shot
and how the bullet
might have had goings through sara chickering or me
or it might have had goings through daddy’s heart and
made the living run out of him.
i did go inside the church of johnny reeves
and have talkings with God
about all the good thinkings and feelings that do race around inside me
and that it didn’t matter that someone didn’t like us
so
much that they did take a gun to kill us
because so many people did like us
and did come to sara chickering’s house to help us.
and no one did hear my little talks with God
because no one is supposed to know the
thinkings of little girls
but just the little girl and God.
but i did come inside the church of johnny reeves
because even if i did not tell constable johnson
what i did see,
i can tell God that i saw johnny reeves
that night daddy did get a bullet through him.
and i did think
if i tell God in johnny reeves’ own church,
God does know what to do.
couldn’t find johnny reeves’ body.
river running pretty fast after the fall storms.
folks say maybe he didn’t die.
but the way he hit,
no one could survive.
sara chickering does bundle me
in my coat and boots
and hat and scarf and gloves.
and i do go down western avenue
knocking on doors,
selling christmas seals
and eating cookies
while sara chickering
does stand outside each door
waiting for me to come back out
so she can bring me safely home.
she is so funny, sara chickering.
i have thinkings she is like a hen over the warm eggs
since i tried to take the heaven train.
but since the bullet did come through her kitchen door
she does jump when a tree cracks,
she does stand and watch me in my bed when
she thinks i am having sleeps
and i pat my bed
and i do say good things to sara chickering
so she can sleep.
i do tell her stories about the animals in the woods
and the animals on the farm
and the animals in the circus
and at the fair.
but i still have wakings and she is watching me in my
sleeps.
senator greene sent a letter to the press
urging every man and woman
to get out and vote for coolidge and dawes.
well, i would have cast my vote without being told.
women have waited far too long for the vote
to stay out of it now.
but i’ll vote for the man i choose.
i don’t need anyone, not even senator greene,
telling me what to think.
by the most tremendous majority
ever known in the country
the voters of the united states
went to the polls
and elected a vermonter.
never before has a presidential candidate
conducted himself during the campaign as did mr. coolidge.
he remained in washington
and did the day’s work.
he did not make what can be termed
campaign addresses.
he totally disregarded all attacks made upon him
by his political opponents.
he did not even defend himself against
a personal attack on his record.
he ignored all criticism directed either at him
or at his party.
he was the most silent candidate the country has ever seen.
and he won by a landslide.
let the future take note.
that crazy mr. field.
i’ve been taking him out for an airing
most days, lately. says he likes the smell outside this time of year.
wood smoke and leaf rot.
we had stopped to rest on the courthouse steps
when three klansmen decked out in their robes came by
with a wreath of flowers for
armistice day.
mr. field, he attacked those klansmen
as they tried placing their wreath for white men
on the courthouse lawn.
he got so worked up
he snatched the wreath
and threw it down the courthouse
basement,
then chased the klansmen away with
his cane,
made from the timbers of andersonville prison,
and that’s the first I knew he could see.
even through those grimy glasses, he had pretty dead aim.
mr. field stood guard at the courthouse
the rest of the evening.
i had to bring him his dinner.
and sit
and eat with him.
right there,
in front of everyone. and wasn’t he in the best mood he’s been in
for months.
walked with sara chickering,
and little esther to
rehearsal
of the choral society.
caring for that merry child has
changed sara.
she’s lost her hard edges.
and that bitter sag to her lips looks almost kind,
and she smiles.
i wasn’t home ten minutes
when constable johnson showed up and
brought me in on charges of attempted murder.
i didn’t shoot any bullet through sara chickering’s keyhole.
the man who works at the jew store,
ira hirsh,
if he got shot,
i didn’t do it. i was supposed to poison the sutters’ well.
i couldn’t even do that.
i should be scared, but i don’t care what happens anymore.
i just couldn’t run another day.
figured facing the trouble i left behind
couldn’t be worse than dodging
the klan preacher,
johnny reeves
following two steps behind me
shadow-eyed,
smelling of river slime,
showing up every place i stopped.
the secretary of state of vermont
has rejected the application
received from the k.k.k.
to do business here.
good.
if i had done what the klan sent me out to do,
i’d be in jail a long time. but i didn’t. i couldn’t.
leanora sutter was looking straight at me.
i remembered her
racing that train
and she was still a colored girl
but she wasn’t just a
colored girl,
and i couldn’t poison her well,
so i ran.
and now instead, I’m accused of doing something worse.
of trying to shoot mr. hirsh.
i wouldn’t hurt mr. hirsh.
he gave me galoshes to bring to
my girl, mary, when he heard about her walking halfway across the state,
trying to get back home.
they were good galoshes.
mary grinned when she saw them and threw her arms around me.
they’re the ones the girls wear open so they flap.
mary was so pleased she strutted around the orphanage
like she was some kind of queen.
i wouldn’t shoot someone who did that for
mary.
but i’m not going to jail at all.
leanora sutter came to constable johnson
and told him i couldn’t have put that bullet in ira hirsh
because she saw me at her well that night.
constable johnson asked if that was true.
yes, sir, i said.
and what were you doing at the sutters’ well?
the klan told me to poison it.
you poisoned the sutter’s well?
no, sir, i told him.
i couldn’t. that’s why i left town.
a long time ago i wrote miss helen keller
about how maybe we’d be better off
if no one could see.
then nobody would mind about
a person’s skin color.
i sent the letter to her when i first started looking after mr. field.
and now, in the mail comes this book,
the world i live in,
and it’s signed to me,
to leanora,
from miss helen keller
herself.
i curled right up
and started reading
and my chores weren’t even started
when daddy came home.
i keep looking over my shoulder
since constable johnson let me come home.
but the hoods and robes have vanished from vermont.
guess after everything else, when the government threw out the
klan’s petition
they figured vermont wasn’t such a good place for them
after all.
can’t say i’m sorry about that.
there are always those
who think the world is
going to the dogs
and that everything
approached perfection
only in the
good old days.
they say winters today demand less of us,
and summers now are meek.
and yet little has really changed.
those who move away remember
the massive town hall,
the solid stone church,
the imposing brick schoolhouse.
yet when they return after many years,
they find the buildings
though identical in reality,
strangely shrunken in size and majesty
from the impression
memory produced.
to those who swear our young are on the road to perdition
take comfort in this—
every generation
has felt somewhat the same
for two or three thousand years
and still the world goes on.
i stand in the pulpit.
the round-faced child
listens a moment,
then laughs,
covering her mouth with the tips of her fingers
before she turns and walks out.
i did give helpings to sara chickering.
we did dip all the keys in oil and put the oil keys in the locks
and then
openshutopenshut
we did take feathers and we did oil those
and we did move through the house,
out to the barn,
tickling hinges with our oiled feathers.
we did oil every little place but the porch steps.
sara chickering has thinkings that the porch steps
should make creaky creaks.
she says she does like to know when company
is about to call.
harvey, have you ever seen anything like it? viola asks,
dancing in harvey’s arms
at the grange.
harvey looks up at the lights
swirling around the room
from the new myriad reflector,
the enormous cut-glass sphere suspended from the ceiling,
revolving horizontally while
beams of colored lights
play upon it.
it’s like a snowstorm in may, viola, harvey whispers.
and for a moment
viola remembers
why she fell in love with the great mule of a man in the first place,
and all he’s done lately to make things right.
and she nuzzles closer
and they dance to joe ladner’s orchestra.
found a young buck trapped
between cakes of ice
on the west river.
dogs chased the buck to the water
and it tried crossing the ice jam
but it fell
into a narrow break
between the cakes of ice.
constable johnson came.
we got hold of the buck and
pulled it up
out of the crevice. lord that thing was big.
the buck was too cold to move at first.
it stood on the ice
staring at us. finally
it scrambled to its feet
gave a jump
and plunged back into the same dang hole we just pulled it from.
constable johnson and i hauled it out again.
this time
the buck stayed clear,
beat it across the ice
stopping on the far bank
taking one last look
before it bounded away through the woods.
it snorted once.
you could hear the echo all through the valley.
when i saw merlin at the well that night,
i knew he meant no good.
when our eyes met he looked like
he’d been caught in
a trap.
i could have come forward and cleared his name from the first.
i could have told that detective from boston.
i could have leveled with constable johnson.
i didn’t.
someone had to pay for me being a colored girl in a white world
i thought.
merlin ought to pay. so i waited.
but then mr. field said,
leanora, no way to pay a debt
by stealing from someone else to do it.
he’s pretty smart, mr. field,
for a skinny, half-blind, old white man.
so i told my story to constable johnson,
and told it again inside the courtroom.
funny thing merlin said the other day when i asked him why he
came back.
i didn’t know if he’d talk to me at all.
but he did.
he said he came back to town cause johnny reeves
had been tailing him, showing up in every town he stopped.
should have seen merlin’s face when he heard the news
about johnny reeves jumping from the top of the arch bridge.
looked like he’d seen a ghost.
The author and editors gratefully acknowledge the Walter Dean Myers photograph collection, and the families of Edith and Herbert Langmuir, Dean Langmuir, and Joan Lacovara, for permission to use their photographs to portray the characters depicted herein.
The characters portrayed in this book are fictitious and not intended to represent specific persons living or dead.
With sincere thanks to the staffs at the Brattleboro and Springfield, Vermont, libraries; to Randy, Kate, and Rachel Hesse; to Bernice Millman; to Liza Ketchum, Eileen Christelow, Bob an d Tink MacLean, and Wendy Watson; and to Liz Szabla and Elizabeth Parisi.
KAREN HESSE is the author of many acclaimed books for children, including The Music of Dolphins, Just Juice, and Out of the Dust, winner of the Newbery Medal. She lives with her family in Brattleboro, Vermont.
Copyright © 2001 by Karen Hesse
All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, a division of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hesse, Karen
Witness / by Karen Hesse
p. cm
Summary: A series of poems express the views of various people in a small Vermont town, including a young black girl and a young Jewish girl, during the early 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan is trying to infiltrate the town.
