A Century of Noir

by Max Allan Collins

  Toll almost whispered it. “You might be witched.”

  This sure enough surprised the Perfessor. His mouth went open and he had to grab for his pipe. “You mean you think she was a witch?”

  Cephus hadn’t said a word up till then. Now he started sing-songing real loud, the way he used to do afore the Granny Woman died. Though we-uns was used to it, it always made me jump. It almost made the Perfessor jump out of his skin.

  “She witched the cow out of her milk! She witched away my little girl, my little Rosebud! She witched my old hound dog! Howling into the woods he went and he never come back no more.”

  Orville said, “Now, Paw—”

  “She won’t lay no more spells on me and mine,” Old Cephus declared. “She’s dead. Dead and buried deep.”

  The Perfessor seemed sorry for Cephus. He turned away from him and he asked Toll, “Do you honestly believe she was a witch?”

  Toll nodded his head solemn and slow. “She was a real Granny Woman, Perfessor. Not the kind you hear tell of nowadays, the kind that births the babies. A real Granny Woman.”

  I was surprised that the Perfessor knew what Toll was talking about, but he did. He said kind of to hisself, “The old kind. The witch.”

  I couldn’t keep quiet no more. I cried out, “She wa’nt no witch!”

  “She was witching you,” Orville hollered back at me. “You just didn’t know it.”

  Toll reached inside his shirt and hung out the carved hickory nut on a string which he always wore. “You see that?” he said to the Perfessor. “Onct when I was a little shaver, the Granny Woman tried to take aholt of me in the woods. I skun home so fast you couldn’t see my dust and my maw tied this to me. So’s that old witch would never put a spell on me.”

  “If she’s dead,” the Perfessor asked him, “why do you still wear it?”

  Toll stuck it back under his shirt. “It don’t do no harm,” he muttered.

  Old Cephus burst out loud again, “There ain’t but one way to kill a witch! With a silver bullet!”

  Orville come quick to him, helping him up from the chair. “Now, Paw, no use gitting het up. She cain’t witch you no more.” He headed Cephus toward the hearth. “Git him his snuff stick, Bluebell.”

  When he had his snuff stick, Old Cephus would almost always quieten down. But this time he kept right speaking. “She was the purtiest girl in the Pineys. I promised her maw I’d care for her.”

  Toll said offside, “He gits to wandering some, Perfessor. He was mighty partial to Rosebud. She was his youngest. She run off to the city.” He snickered, “He claims it was the Granny Woman witched her away, but I don’t see as how you can blame her for that.”

  The Perfessor picked up his hat from the bench. “I’m obliged for the supper.” He looked at me and sort of made a bow. “I’ve never had a better one in the Ozarks, Miss Bluebell.”

  When he turned round to the door, Orville was in his way. “Where you going at?”

  “Like I told you, I’m going to the Granny Woman’s cabin. I’ve never been afraid of witches. And I’m not trespassing. I have permission from Deputy Clegg to visit it.” He took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and passed it to Orville.

  Orville studied it when he passed it to me. “Speak it out loud, Bluebell. You’ve had more book larning than we-uns.”

  I read it oral, like he told me. I had to go slow on the big words, but I sounded them out like the teacher had larned me at the school house. “To whom it may concern: This gives permission for Professor Richard James to visit the Granny Woman’s cabin at Tall Piney. Signed, Deputy Jim Clegg.”

  Orville and Toll never said no word. I reckon they was too overcome right then. The Perfessor took back the paper from me and said, “Good night, Miss Bluebell. Good night, Old Cephus. Good night, Orville and Toll.”

  With that he walked plumb out the door, Orville moving out of his way like in a daze. When he was gone, Orville sunk down in a chair. “Jim Clegg had no business writing them words on the paper. He’d no business letting a furriner rummage and root through the Granny Woman’s belongings.”

  Old Cephus didn’t appear to be listening, but he heerd. He set his mouth tight. “You aim to let him do that, Orvy?”

  Orville said, “No, Paw.” He walked to the corner where he kept his rifle and he took it up.

  Toll run over to him. “Look here, Orvy! Scaring him out is one thing, but you got no call to take a gun after him. We don’t want no trouble with the law.”

  “If Jim Clegg wants to let a furriner snoop around our property, I reckon it’ll be his fault if trouble comes of it.”

  “I ain’t talking about Deppity Jim’s law,” Toll argufied. “I’m talking about city law, Orville. This here feller’s a college perfessor from the University. If you was to harm him . . .”

  “Leave me be, Toll. I know what I’m at.” I’d never seen Orville so mean and determined.

  “Wait a minute, Orvy.” Toll hung on his arm. “We got to talk this over. He ain’t going to run away. He’s going to snoop through that there cabin first. But he ain’t going to do no harm there.”

  Orville didn’t put down his rifle but he did set hisself down again. “How do you know he ain’t?”

  “There’s nothing there for him to find out. So ain’t it best to let him do his snooping there? Instead of certain other places?”

  Orville wasn’t convinced. “That property’s ourn now. He’s got no call to set foot on our property.”

  I’d been working at the dishes while they was talking. I had to warn the Perfessor man that Orville was coming after him with a load of buckshot. But I didn’t know how I was going to get away to do it. Old Cephus give me my chanct. All at onct he reared up from his rocking chair and reached for his Old Betsey. His voice was like thunder. “It takes a silver bullet to kill a witch!”

  Toll and Orville both hurried over to calm him. I took up the dish pan of water, just in case they should ask where I was going, and I skun on outside. I dumped the water and I run like a hare through the trees towards the special path to the cabin that only the Granny Woman and I ever used. The menfolks knowed about it, but they never set foot on it. They called it the Witch’s Path.

  I got the edge of the clearing before the Perfessor did. I could hear him coming, strangers can’t move soft-footed through the brush like we’ns can. And I could smell his pipe. It was dark of the moon, but I didn’t want to step out into the open for fear Orville and Toll might already have set out. When the Perfessor was nearby, I whispered, “Perfessor man!”

  He jumped like I was a bobcat. “Who is it?”

  I stepped out where he could see me.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I come to warn you. Orville’s got his rifle. He means to stop you.”

  He sort of smiled. “I’m not afraid, Bluebell.”

  “But you got to be afraid!” I told him. “Orville won’t let nobody up there. Not even me.”

  He said, meaning to be kind, “Then you better get back to the cabin before your Paw misses you. I wouldn’t want any trouble to come to you from me.”

  “He ain’t my Paw.” I up and told him like I’d never told nobody before. “He states he is but he ain’t. My Paw was a Joplin man.”

  He seemed real surprised. “Then you’re Rosebud’s daughter.”

  “What if I am? It ain’t true all them lies they tell about her. She didn’t run off to the city. The Granny Woman helped her to git away. She saved up her yarb money to help her. Afore she died she was saving her yarb money for me to get away, too.”

  “And so they killed her.”

  I couldn’t explain it all to him then, there wasn’t time. “She died natural. In her bed.”

  “Then what are they afraid of, Bluebell? Why don’t they want me to go to her cabin?”

  I told him part of the truth. “They promised Cephus. He’s afeered of stirring her up. He’s afeered she might come back.”

  “Is that it?” H
e puffed on his pipe and then he smiled at me again. “Well, I’m not afraid of ghosts or ghoulies or Sorkinses. You scat home now, Bluebell. I don’t want you following me to the cabin, just in case trouble should develop.”

  He set off. The only way I could of stopped him was to run after him, and I was scairt they’d be missing me if I was away longer. I run all the way home. After I’d caught my breath, I picked up the dishpan and come back in.

  “Where you been?” Orvy asked right away.

  “I been out back,” I said. I carried the pan over to where I kept it by the stove. Then I noticed that Toll was loading a rifle, too. I rushed over to him. “What you doing with that gun, Tolliver Sorkin?”

  “Orvy and me aim to do a little hunting tonight.”

  I could scarce believe my ears. Instead of him talking Orville around, it was the other way.

  “You’re going to the Granny Woman’s cabin!”

  “It’s nary of your business where we’re going.” Orville got up on his feet. “You stay put and tend to your knitting. And see to it that Grampaw don’t foller us.”

  “You cain’t shoot the Perfessor! He don’t know nothing about what you done.” I clamped my hand over my mouth, but I’d said it.

  Orville come advancing to me and I backed up fast, nigh to Old Cephus by the fire.

  “You been spying on us.”

  “No, I ain’t. Swear to God, I ain’t!”

  “You swear to a lie, you’ll burn in hellfire.”

  “I ain’t swearing to no lie!”

  Orville didn’t stop for Grampaw being there. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me out to him. “You follered us to the grave.”

  “I didn’t!” I screamed it because he was hurting me bad. “I swear—”

  “Leave her be,” Toll shouted over my screaming. “We’re wasting time. You can take keer of her later.”

  Orville give me a shove as he let go. I fell down to the floor. He stumped out the door after Toll. Every bone in my body was bruised. When I leaned on my wrist trying to get up, it felt like it was broken though it wa’nt.

  Cephus asked, “Where they going? Why don’t they want me to go with them?”

  I was mad enough to tell him, “They’re going hunting.”

  “Whyn’t they wait for me? I can outhunt both of them.” He commenced to rise up from his chair.

  “It’s night times, Grampaw.” I managed to push myself up from the floor, favoring my bad wrist. “You cain’t hunt at night no more. You don’t see no good.”

  “I can see further than both of them together. Me and my old hound dog—” He remembered and sank back sorrowing. “My old hound dog. He never come back. She witched him away.”

  “She didn’t have naught to do with it, Grampaw. It was Orville’s meanness druv him away.”

  “It was her done it.” He was starting to meander into the past again. “If’n I’d knowed she was a witch, she couldn’t of witched me with her daughter like she done. When I first seen Amarylly, she didn’t look like no witch’s brat. She had yellowy hair and rosebud in her cheeks. Rosebud! That’s the name she give our own little one.” He come back from his meandering. “She witched Rosebud away from me.”

  “My maw.” I don’t know why I said it to him then, I never had before.

  “Who’s been telling you sech things?”

  “The Granny Woman told me.”

  “What else did she tell you?”

  “Nothing wrong. She said you was the strongest man in the Pineys onct. You stood so straight and tall, there wa’nt a man could match up to you.”

  He recollected, “I was felling a big old pine tree when she and her child come on me. They was gathering yarbs.”

  “After her child was dead, you took Rosebud away from the Granny Woman.”

  “I wa’nt going to let my little Rosebud grow up a witch’s child. My old woman never knowed why I took the little one.” Without any warning, he stood up, roaring mad. He towered over me. “What else did she tell you? How to dry up the old cow? How to sour the milk?”

  “No!” I tried to inch away. I’d never seed him like this before.

  “Did she tell you how to witchride a man all night through the brambles? Did she tell you how to set a pure young gal to lallygagging in the woods? Did she tell you how she witched Rosebud into running away from her own Paw? Did she tell you how to drive a man’s faithful old hound howling into the night?”

  I kept saying No and No and inching, but I couldn’t get clear to make it to the door. When he reached to take down Old Betsey, I tried to stop him. But he brushed me aside, not mean like Orville, just like I was nothing, a pine branch in his path.

  “She didn’t know I was a witchkiller like my pappy afore me. She didn’t know he larned me to kill witches same as him. You got to have a silver gun and a silver bullet to kill a witch.”

  “No, Grampaw, no!” I screamed it at him. He had that rifle pointed right to my heart. Somehow he’d made hisself believe she’d passed her witching on to me, that I was a witch child. And then I remembered. “You got no silver bullet,” I hollered. “You used it on the Granny Woman.”

  Slowly he lowered the rifle. The spirit went out of him. “It takes a long time to git enough silver to make a bullet.”

  “Set down, Grampaw,” I said to him kindly. “I swear she didn’t larn me no witching. She was good to me.”

  He stood there holding fast to the long rifle. “Nigh on to fifteen years it took me to git enough silver. Pure silver it’s got to be.”

  I freshened up his snuff stick and held it out to him. “Just rest yourself, Grampaw. Rock a bit.”

  Instead of setting down, he started to the door. I run after him. “No, Grampaw. Orvy don’t want you to foller him. It’s dark of the moon.” You see, I knowed his intent. He was going after his silver bullet.

  He paid me no heed. He kept right on walking. I didn’t hardly wait until he was out of sight. I tore out of there and over to the Witch’s Path. The only chanct I had was to get the Perfessor to protect me. I knew what Old Cephus meant to do. And Orville and Toll wouldn’t stop him if’n they could. They’d be a-feared he was right.

  I didn’t reckon Orville and Toll would be at the Granny Woman’s cabin yet. First they’d have gone down to the stump, where their mountain dew was hid out, to get some courage in them. They was shy of her cabin even in daylight.

  I run like I never run before and when I come to the cabin I didn’t knock on the door, I busted right in. The Perfessor man looked up real surprised to see me. He’d lit her table lamp and he was rummaging through her old horsehair trunk. He’d already took out the face fan she’d carried back in Virginny when she was a girl. And the silk and satin baby bonnet, so tiny you wouldn’t think it would fit a poppet, but it had been my maw’s. He was holding her papers, the ones she kept tied with a blue ribbon, when I busted in.

  He said, “I told you not to come here, Bluebell.”

  “I had to. Old Cephus is out gitting him a silver bullet to kill me with.”

  “To kill you?” His eyes most popped out of his head. “Why would he want to kill you?”

  “Because . . .” I didn’t want to tell him. “Because he thinks she made me into a witch.”

  Just then I heerd someone outside the door and I run over and crouched down behind the Perfessor. Maybe I was daft thinking he could protect me without no gun nor nothing, but I did think so. I reckon it was because he wa’nt afraid. He didn’t even put down the papers.

  I closed my eyes when the door started to open. And I heered him say, “Come in, Jim.” So I opened up my eyes and there was Deputy Jim Clegg closing the door.

  Deputy Jim said, “Looks like you got you some company, Rick.” Deputy Jim was as big as Orville, but he wa’nt nothing like him otherwise. He was clean and strong and I never in my life seed him do a mean thing to man or beast. He was born and raised right here in the Ozarks, but he’d gone to school up at Columbia and knowed how to talk good. He said to me, “W
hat you doing here, Bluebell?”

  I told him, “Orville and Toll are hunting the Perfessor man and Old Cephus is hunting me. He’s got in his mind that the Granny Woman made a witch of me.”

  “So he’s going to kill you like he killed the Granny Woman?”

  The Perfessor spoke up. “Bluebell says she died natural, in her bed.”

  Deputy Jim said, “A witch killer doesn’t have to kill you to make you die, Rick.”

  Because he understood, I told him, “Orvy stuck the pins in the dishrag and burnt it. Toll trapped the screech owl to set outside her door. Old Cephus molded the silver bullet and feathered it into the tree. And she died.”

  The Perfessor looked across at Deputy Jim. Deputy Jim put his hand in his pocket and brought out what looked like a ball of silver. He said, “I found the silver bullet. In the tree, not in her heart.”

  “You don’t have to put the bullet in a witch’s heart,” I told them. “You can peel the bark off the tree and sketch her shape there. Then you can feather the bullet into her on the tree.”

  Deputy Jim put the bullet back into his pocket. “Thanks to you keeping them busy, Rick, we found the grave, down by Piney Run. And we didn’t have any interruptions at the exhumation. Doc’s taking her down to Little Piney for an autopsy, but it looks like she died what you’d call natural. So I was wrong. I’m going down to their cabin now. Want to come?”

  I didn’t know much what he was talking about, but I knowed I didn’t want to go back to the cabin again. Not even with Deputy Jim and the Perfessor for protection. I was readying to say so when we heard Orville roaring outside, “Come out of there, Perfessor. If’n you don’t . . .” He shot off his gun for a warning.

  Deputy Jim walked over and swung open the door wide. When Orville and Toll saw who it was, they let their rifles down. Deputy Jim asked them, “Could it be you’re hunting witches?”

  Orville said, “We come to protect our property.”

  “It’s not your property,” Deputy Jim said. “It’s Bluebell’s. By direct descent from the Granny Woman.” He shook his head and sighed. “Seems like there ought to be something I could arrest you for, Orvy, but blamed if I know what it could be this time. You might better watch your Paw closer, however, before he gets in some trouble I might have to arrest him for.”