Children of Salem

by Robert W. Walker

  He roused himself, stood, stretched, intentionally being noisy and hoping she might turn and acknowledge him, say something like “Are you hungry? Can I get you water to wash your hands and face? How are you this morning.” Nothing of the kind came from her, of course. Nothing but a flinch when she felt him step toward her, and now standing near, he muttered I her ear, “You know, child, I’d fight that old bastard—” he pointed to Bray Wilkins’ closed door—“to the death, I would, to keep any harm coming to you. One single hair on your pretty head is harmed, and I—”

  “She turned and placed a skillet of hot oil between them. “I’m not afraid of Goodman Wilkins,” she let it be known, her eyes like fire.”

  “Nor should you ever fear for a thing, Susana. One day our copper mine will pay us well, your Uncle Bray and me, and we will be well off, all of us. Telll me, child, how old are ye?”

  She backed off, trembling before him as he reached out, touching her cheek, despite her threatening him. He backed Susana into a wall beside the hearth. He placed stout hands on each of her shoulders. She seemed to relent, giving no resistance this morning, perhaps afraid of his anger. So he pressed closer, feeling her ample breasts, pushing his hand below the linen dress, not much more than a sack.

  “Please, sir, please no.”

  He believed her protests translated to ‘Please sir, touch me all over’. Instead, she said, “You’re drunk, Mr. Putnam and dunno what you’re doing. S’pose your wife, your church fellows, your child were to hear of—”

  In an instant he kissed her, ignoring the threat. His kiss was rough-bearded, savage. He believed that his touching her must ignite a youthful fire in her she’d be unable to resist.

  “How unusual and unlike anyone you smell,” he said in her ear.

  “It’s a bath I need,” she confessed. “They don’t give me ‘nough water. I haf’ta go to the river—and it’s—”

  “Then your sweat is wonderful,” he countered.

  “No it ain’t, and you mustn’t talk this way.”

  He sniffed her and inhaled more deeply than before. “Neither sweet nor fresh but a surprising wild, animal scent.”

  “Are ya calling me a cur, Mr. Putnam?”

  “No, I like it—the scent of your curse. Is it that time for you?”

  Susannah’s face reddened that he should ask such a question. Then she overturned the hot grease down his front, dropped the pan on his foot, and was gone.

  Putnam screamed, burned and hurting. He caught a glimpse of her running out of the house. The little wench had dared do this to him, a Captain in the Militia, a Deacon at the village church. His pants ruined and his penis afire, he hopped about, searching for some way to relieve himself of the pain, knowing his shouts and groans had awakened the house.

  At the master’s bedroom door stood Bray, his eyes wide, his mind in obvious consternation. Bray then asked a single question. “Have you violated my servant girl?”

  “I have,” Thomas lied, “and she wanted it; she enticed me.”

  Bray then lost all control, and he threw Putnam out, saying, “Liar! That girl is a virgin, and she won’t be undone by the likes ’o you, Thom! Now get out!”

  “She enticed me, Bray! You’ve gotta believe that.”

  “Out!”

  “But-but—”

  “Not another word! Out!”

  Thomas started for the door, angry, when it suddenly opened inward, hitting him. He stumbled back, still hung over. He and Bray had drunk ale and hard cider until they could no longer think. They’d toasted repeatedly to the three men who’d died in the mine collapse only six hours before; his and Bray’s mine—their future now in ruins.

  On his rump at the center of the small room, Thomas looked up to see John Williard had entered the cabin home. Williard, the Sheriff, was also Bray Wilkins’ peculiarly strange son-in-law whose withered right arm made him an unusual pick for Sheriff of Salem Village. At any rate, the taller man now stood over Putnam, frowning and reaching out a hand to help him to his feet.

  “What’s happened here to the front of your pants, man?” he asked.

  Putnam took the hand offered, stood, and pointed at the still warm, upturned pan on the floor.

  Williard’s deformed right arm made it about the length of another man’s forearm, yet he was a crack shot with a blunderbuss or a smaller gun, and he proved a fine hunter and fisherman as well. He could also bring a larger man down with his one good arm. Williard, with his children, ran a thriving timber mill along Ipswich Road northeast of the village. “I told you two fools you’d need twice the buttressing you placed in that damned mine!”

  “So you’ve heard the bad news, have ya?” muttered Putnam. “Accidents happen.”

  “This one needn’t’ve if you and Bray’d just heeded my word!”

  “You don’t know that, John!” shouted Bray Wilkins, still standing in his bedroom doorway—his horse-faced wife beside him now, blinking and trying to shake off sleep. “Sit and take breakfast, John. Putnam here was just on his way.”

  Williard dropped into a chair at the table. Mrs. Wilkins shouted in an ear-shattering voice, “Susana! WhereinGod’sname! Good for nothing child!”

  Hefting a bucket of water she’d taken from the well, Susana scurried in like a shadow past Putnam and the others. She placed the water onto the hearth rack to boil, and she quickly picked up the fallen skillet and worked to clean the grease-stained floor.

  “You listen to me, Putnam, old man,” began Williard, pointing an accusing finger at his father-in-law, Bray, who’d plopped down in a chair across from him. “What’d I tell you two just a fortnight ago? Heh? Didn’t I warn you ‘’bout that damn mine? Those walls? Now two men injured for life, and three lives taken—and for what?”

  “Predicted it, you did, John . . . like a witch man, you did, and for all I know,” blustered Bray, “you had something to do with this-this tragedy.”

  “You daft fool!” Williard stood and pounded his one good fist on the table. “It’s got nothin’ to do with predictions and magic! It’s all to do with your cheapskate partnership, and that goes for your silent partner as well. Cheap bunch of—”

  “Now hold on!” Thom Putnam rushed at Williard, shoving him into a wall that nearly sent the other man’s rifle flying from his shoulder.

  “There’ll be no fightin’ under this roof!” shouted Mrs. Wilkins. “Outside with you both if it’s come to that!”

  John Williard’s eyes glared at Putnam, and his mustache twitched with his gnashing teeth, but he waved off Mrs. Wilkins with an upturned palm, and he set his long rifle, strapped to his shoulder, down and leaned it against the wall into which he’d been shoved. He turned his attention back to Bray, saying, “You were told to by experts, the bloody ground round here runs like water through a sieve, and you two know it’s true, Bray. It’s no place for a mining venture you got up ’bove your house, man.”

  “And no swearin’ in this house neither!” came Mrs. Wilkins next order to her son-in-law.

  “It’s God’s will the collapse,” returned Bray, “and so it be done.” He crossed himself where he sat at table.

  “Told you it’d take more than God’s will to hold up those walls.”

  Thomas Putnam slipped out to the sound of the two kinsmen tearing into one another until Bray’s wife erupted, shouting and pushing John Williard out the door. By this time, Putnam was well away from the fray.

  But Williard rode his horse hard, and going in the same general direction for the village, he soon caught up. “And you, Putnam, will you go to tell young Hodnett’s family he’s dead? Or Wiley’s? Or Cornwell’s? Died of swallowing dirt?”

  “Look here, neither Bray nor I wished this tragedy!”

  “I’d like to take a shovelful of sand and put it against Bray’s pipes. See if he’d call that God’s will.”

  “You blaspheme, Williard. All and all that happens is God’s will.”

  “Talkin’ with a fool only makes me one!” He kicked his
horse to ride on, muttering to himself.

  “We gave a lot of thought to the injured!” Putnam shouted after the sheriff. “Toasted them on to eternity!”

  “The dead you mean!” Willliard shouted back and was gone as quickly as he’d come to do his duty as he saw it, to serve notice that they were to shut the mine down until it was shored up properly and steps were taken in the name of safety, but Thomas wondered where would the money come from?

  # # # # #

  As he made the overland journey home to Salem Village by horse, Thomas Putnam tried to shake the incident with Williard, the memory of the great loss to Bray and himself, his hangover, and his failure with Susana. To the silent woods all round him, he shouted loud enough to frighten birds into flight, “That girl of Bray’s should be honored, proud I’ve taken a liking. A man of my standing in Salem.”

  The trees did not answer him.

  After all, he thought and spoke again to the air, “I rose to rank of lieutenant during the Indian wars, and now I’m a captain with the company, and by God, girl, you can call me Captain Putnam.” At least he’d finally gotten that Mercy Lewis trained to properly address him.

  But only the birds in the trees heard him now.

  Captain Putnam’s aged horse struggled to keep footing over the rough, boulder-strewn cow path. Still woozy, the rider must be cautious. As he picked his way back to Salem Village and home to Anne and little Anne Jr., and now Mercy, his thoughts went back to Susana, Bray’s so much prettier maidservant. Just as with Mercy Lewis now placed in Putnam’s care, Reverend Parris had placed Susana in Bray’s. They were told to not spare the rod, to bring these girls up in a righteous manner, according to custom and the dictates of Puritanism, so the young person might learn discipline and chores. To be trained to one day easily step into the role of Goodwife. A woman’s trade. Putnam thought it a well-born custom.

  Putnam started when first heard and then saw movement out of the corner of his eye, just over his left shoulder. Then he gasped to see that it was young Susana—or a dream of such. She was running like a fawn amid the trees. How’d she get here? It seemed as if she must have flown. She was kneeling at the water’s edge where Will’s Brook played over the stones—distracted and unaware of him, focused it seemed on her reflection in the water. Her shoulders heaved. She was crying.

  Putnam turned his horse and carefully moved toward the clearing, and so as to not frighten her off, he cleared his throat and said, “Susana?”

  She turned her head and the beautiful features he expected behind the long, loose, yellow hair turned into those of Sarah Goode, the witchy woman. “Can I help you, Goodman Putnam?”

  “No, no, no! I mistook you for-for someone else.”

  “If it’s a warm shanks you’re needin’ Goodman, it’ll cost ya two shillings.”

  “You vile old woman! Wash your mouth while you’re at it!”

  “My mouth is not so vile as your mind!” she countered and cackled.

  “Steer clear of my hearth and family!”

  “If you’ll have a word with Paris, restore my child to me!”

  He gritted his teeth. “Someone ought to see you to the hangman!”

  Goode had regained her feet, and now she again cackled and leapt into the brook and splashed and danced like a madcap monkey.

  Putnam rushed off for village and home and the semblance of safety, realizing that if she was a witch, he could be at mercy of her curse here and now. He turned his horse and kicked. Forgetting the rough terrain, he was taken by surprise when his mare snorted and abruptly balked, throwing him headlong between the nag’s ears to land among fallen tree limbs and stones.

  Putnam’s body hit with a horrendous thud to Goode’s cackling delight. He sat up, her awful laughter filling him with a venomous rage when he realized he could not stand, that one ankle was broken. He’d need a crutch; he’d have to go about the village like an old man. And it had all happened the moment old Goode had cast her eye on him.

  The crone bewitched my horse, made him throw me, he thought while struggling to remount and move on—twisted ankle, cuts, bruises, and a curse of his own on his busted lip for Goode, and one for Sheriff Williard for good measure for having held him over at Bray’s place. Had Williard not shown up with his self-righteous speechifying, Thom Putnam would not have crossed paths with this despicable witch.

  Chapter Nine

  Not long afterward, Sarah Goode saw Susana Sheldon at their private meeting place in the woods near Will’s Brook at the bend called Three Forks. With Susana’s grimy face tear-stained and smeared, she spoke between sobs. “I hate them! I hate both of them and their friends!”

  “The Wilkinses is ugly people sure.” Goode gave the child a smoking pipe to suck on. “They all calls me ugly, and sure I am on the outside—ha! Given me age, and me spots, and me warts, but they’re uglier’n me by degrees with their black innards and their black hearts.”

  “They never let up.”

  “But is the bear grease helping, child?”

  “Helps when he’s sober, but not when he’s drunk.”

  “Never know’d a man with no sense-a-odor like Bray; likely all that tobacco he chews and snorts and smokes.”

  “He’s disgusting, and she’s hateful—and now I’ve got that other one after me, too.”

  “We’ve got to find of that snake pit, child. We must.”

  “You got your own worries now with Dorcas.”

  “Aye, I do. But I’ve not forgotten ye! Maybe, if we work things right, dearie, you can come live with Dorcas and me, and I can teach you the arts.”

  “The black arts?”

  “Them arts, too, but mostly the art of protection.”

  “What’d you bring me this time?” asked Susana, hands behind her back, eyes closed, swaying as if a toddler again.

  Goode held up a small sack. “Open yer eyes, girl! Put this into his bed.” The sack moved, wriggling with some life within.

  “Wh-h-h-at is it? A rat?

  “Nay, a poisonous snake.”

  “I-I ain’t sure I-I can . . . ”

  “Yes you can. Choose which of the two you hate most—Bray or the hag he calls Goodwife, and use the snake. He’s charmed against harmin’ you.”

  The wool bag changed hands. “I best get back.” Susana rushed off, going back toward the house, wondering where to hide the snake until she might use it.

  “Men’re an ugly, sorry lot, they are!” shouted Goode after Susana.

  Susana shouted back, “They ought hang every sorry one of ’em, ’specially those calling themselves reverend and deacon and elder and captain!”

  “Reverend, ha! Nothing reverent ’bout Sam Parris. May he rot in hell for his dirty blasphemies. Using the Lord’s own words when he’s got nothing but evil for a heart.”

  # # # # #

  The following day in Salem Village

  Samuel Parris called Jeremiah into his sparse private quarters. He asked Jeremy to sit in a chair in one corner while he straddled a second, nothing between them. “I want to count you more than my apprentice alone, Mr. Wakely,”

  “Really, sir? How so? I mean, whatever I can do to be of service, you know—” Jeremy had affected his role as naïve stumbling apprentice well up to this time, and he hoped to continue on with his true nature invisible to the minister and his network of friends, relatives, elders, and deacons.

  “I wish to count you, Jeremy, as . . . as a reliable Goodfriend.”

  Goodfriend Wakley, Jeremy thought, a nice ring to it. There were Goodmen, Goodwives, and Goodfriends in Puritan life. “Ah . . . Goodfriend, me, sir?”

  “I hope in our short acquaintance, Jeremy, that I have earned the title along with your trust and companionship? Jeremiah?”

  “Yes. . . yes, Goodfriend Samuel, you have it.” The lie had Jeremy biting his tongue.

  “And your backing in all things.”

  “I would likewise hope for the same in re-reciprocation, sir . . . ah-ah Goodfriend.” Jeremy had been
taken by surprise at this turn of events, and he wondered what he’d done to warrant this declaration of trust from the reverend.

  “Good, good!” Parris smiled in a manner Jeremy had never seen from him before except when he played with little Betty, tossing her in the air. “I need to know you are on my side in any fight, Jeremy.”

  Jeremy swallowed hard. “I hope you have no fights you cannot win, sir. . . I mean Goodfriend.”

  “I like the sound of it, Jeremy. Like the arrangement, and you can dispense with the sir-sir-sir.”

  “But in public, sir.”

  “Yes, most likely best, and perhaps best that we keep this between us for the time being, not to be too openly aligned. Most of all, I like you, young man! And I will do my utmost to be a good friend to thee.”

  “Excellent…excellent.” Jeremy felt a rising sense of guilt. He had always been told that people warmed to him, even strangers; that he had a gift for putting people around him at ease, and that it was not so much what he said and did as what he didn’t say and didn’t do that afforded him the trust of others. It was a trait that Increase Mather had ceased upon early on.

  “Now about our talk yesterday?”

  “We’ve had many talks, sir.”

  “Regarding George Burroughs.”

  “Ah, yes, the former minister here.” Parris seemed to have a fixation on this man who had preceded him in the village parish. Time and again, he brought up stories and rumors that had swirled about the name Burroughs for years here.

  “Do you know there is talk among my enemies about this man.”

  “Talk? What sort of talk?”

  “Talk of importing him back here to reinstate him in my position. Can it be believed?”

  “Smells of a bad rumor, sir, and you know how people love to talk, but honestly, I’ve heard nothing of it.” This was new information, and Jeremy tried placing it in the scheme of things and in the context of Higginson’s wishes and Mather’s string-pulling. When Parris said no more but fell silent, running both hands through his hair, Jeremy offered, “Why would anyone in his right mind speak of such foolishness? The village parishioners ran this Burroughs fellow off for nonpayment of debts!” Jeremy thought of how Reverend Burroughs’ debts had been incurred. They’d accumulated due to successive funerals for his three children and his wife.”