The Witch at Sparrow Creek: A Jim Falk Novel (4 page)

Benjamin Straddler tipped up his hat brim and laid his
eyes on Jim Falk. He pulled on his stogie. The cigar breathed an orange light
on his face and on his one raggedy eye where the eyelid was torn and the eye
was whited over behind.

Jim didn’t like this look, but while he’d been faded
out thinking, May had brought him another muddy-looking beer. He looked at the beer
in the glass mug, picked it up, and drank some, trying to see if maybe Benjamin
might look away.

Benjamin Straddler was looking at him harder now; Jim
could feel that raggedy, busted eye poking around in his head. Straddler was
looking in there for who Jim was. Jim patted at his pockets as if he were looking
for some tobacco.

“No, thank you,” Jim said finally and raised his glass
to the group. “Thank you very much, but I’m not a card player.”

“I guess he’s not a card player,” Simon said and
grinned way up with only half of his mouth.

Benjamin Straddler just shook his head and said, “Outlanders.
What? They don’t play cards where you come from on account of the scriptures?”
Then he forced a laugh out of his throat and looked around at everyone, but no
one else was laughing.

Hattie Jones squealed the fiddle and put it down all
of a sudden. His lips puckered up and his brows went together and he took his pipe
out of his mouth and said, “Hey! Who are you anyways?”

Jim had his nose back in his beer cup and wasn’t expecting
such a straightforward question. He felt the urge to bark at the old man, but
instead he held his eyes on the table and slowly drank the rest of his beer in
one long drink. He stood then, and May and Huck and all the rest of them who
were in there took notice.

Jim Falk made a thin silhouette in a long, dark coat.
His hair, which before had looked blond, they could now see was gray as ash.
His hands were strong and bony, but his face was lined and honest with eyes
blue and strange. He tipped his hat, but did not take it off.

“My name is Jim Falk,” he said. “I believe that around
these parts, you might call me a ghost killer or maybe even a hunter. I rid
spooks.”

All the folks looked around. Huck Marbo looked over at
May, who was pretending not to listen. When she caught his eye, he twirled his
finger fast in a little circle in the air. This was to tell her to clean her
tables and clean the kitchen and go to bed.

That night, after more beers and some kind of talk and
excitement with the rest of them, Jim made his way along a dark path back to
the Hills’. He couldn’t remember whether he’d made friend or foe at Huck Marbo’s
bar, but he couldn’t care. His head was filled with whatever this little town’s
good beer was and it gave his mind a soft, wooden feeling.

Back at the Hills’, Jim fell straight to sleep. His legs
went up on the table in the Hills’ backhouse and his chair leaned back against
the windowseat in the little room.

When he woke the next day, he had no memory of when Violet
had come in and moved him out of the chair and onto the bed. She laid him
there, right by his sack of gear, which he reached out for. He hugged it and
snorted.

She stared for a long time at his drunken face all snarled
and snorting. She looked over her shoulder and out the window and could see
that the lamps were still burning where Bill had been up looking at his plans
for fixing up the storehouse. Her hand lifted because she wanted to touch the
outlander’s forehead to make the wrinkles go away. Instead, she left quickly
and quietly shut the door behind her.

Jim sniffed and rolled around in the bed. “On that one
tree,” a face in his dreams told him, “there was a black spider eating another
black spider that was exactly like it.” Again, the lips said to him, “A black
mirror eating a black mirror. Which one is the black mirror?”



That same night, Benjamin Straddler hurried through Sparrow
mumbling to himself. Mumbling
to himself past
the shuttered windows, mumbling and stumbling along the rickety bridge over
where Sparrow Creek ran through the middle of town, pulling his coat close to
him and huffing along
and looking from side to
side with his one eye in the black and fog.
.
He wanted to go talk to the
preacher’s brother, John Mosely. He figured that if he went straight to the preacher
there might be a lot of trouble all of a sudden and it might come toward him.

He came up two steps and onto the flat porch and knocked
fast. John’s wife answered the door with a mean face, “It is very late, Benjamin
Straddler. John is sleeping. You smell drunk. Go away.”

She started to shut the door and he put up his hands.
“Ruth? Uh, how is John?”

Benjamin wasn’t the kind to drop by here
at the Moselys’ late at night, drunk or otherwise. In
fact, the only other time he’d been by was during the big snow
a few years back.

“It’s cold and black out there, Benjamin Straddler. You
could lose your way on a night like this. Come in and sit down. Should probably
have some coffee before you’re back out in the night.”

She squinted and looked him up and down. Watching him
as he pulled at his coat and looked this way and that, she helped Benjamin bump
through the door. He slumped down and propped himself up very slowly, but neatly,
in a soft chair in the foyer. He smiled at Ruth. “No moon, no moon out. Coffee
. . .”

She turned to him before disappearing into the little
kitchen. “John’s asleep nice and sound. Let’s try not to wake him. He doesn’t
often get good sleep these days.”

Benjamin Straddler remembered this foyer. He had dug
snow out of it with John Mosely and John’s older brother Vernon, the preacher. Vernon
had his ears all burned up with the frost. Them preaching folk, like Vernon,
they were always somehow finding bad trouble. Benjamin didn’t understand a bit
of it. He didn’t understand how a man could believe stories and old writings so
strong to think that others should believe them too, and he especially didn’t
understand why good folk like these Moselys who tried to do good would run into
such bad problems all the time. But when Vernon and John and this here Ruth had
come to town, it just seemed as if their own special trouble came with them,
might have followed them here. Just the way a special trouble had come for
Notham Taylor, who’d been the other preacher, trouble, trouble, trouble.

It wasn’t long after the Moselys showed up that the bad
winter laid hold of Sparrow. Yes, Benjamin had surely saved Vernon from
frozen death in the frozen night.

“I dragged him outta the snow and back up the church,
and Pritham worked at him,” Benjamin said.

“Benjamin Straddler, are you talking to yourself?”
Ruth said as she reappeared in the foyer entryway
with a white cup.

“Ruth?”

“Here’s your coffee, now drink it fast and let’s out
with it. What’s so important that Benjamin Straddler comes knocking around the Moselys’
in the middle of the night
?
We haven’t seen you
around the
church in a long while. So
what’s the trouble that’s finally brought you along?”

Benjamin opened his mouth and then shut it and then opened
it again and then said, “Well, Ruth, there’s
a man
come to town called Jim Falk, and, Ruth, he says he’s a ghost-killer.” He swallowed.
“You know, a spook ridder? He rids out spooks is what he said, if you know what
that might be . . . and he’s here on account of he wants to get rid of a spook.
That’s what he says. I told him that there ain’t no such spook and that Violet
and Bill Hill are a couple of troublemakers. He’s stayin’ up their place, he
says. A spook!”

“So
who
is this now? A spook ridder? And try to
sit yourself up, Benjamin.”

Benjamin drank a fast half-cup and said, “Well, that’s
what he says. I don’t know. He says he comes from a town around down South. I
can’t remember now the name he said, it was a plain name that you can’t
remember well, but he talks like he comes from up North from one of the big
cities. He’s got a real straight-like voice, like he’s done a lot of book reading,
almost kind of sounds like a preacher, but he also kinda sounds like one of
them natives from the backwoods; you know he’s got that sound to his voice,
like them old people
.
He said that he’s crafty
with ways of ridding out spirits. And, Ruth, you know, I think he may have got
. . . He did something. I don’t know how he did it. But, Ruth, well, we got to
thinkin’ that maybe he’s got a power.”

“A power,” Ruth said to him. “You’re sure?”

He nodded, but then looked into his cup for a long time
and then looked back at her and back at the cup. “He did something. I don’t
know how he did it.”

Benjamin Straddler’s eyes began to close.

Ruth was older and looked tired too, but she also looked
at him with her mouth pulled down and one eyebrow up. She must have understood
something of what he was saying
.

She said, “Let’s get you headed toward home. I’ll tell
John all about this in the morning and we’ll need to go and see about this.
This stranger is staying up with the Hills?”

“Well, yeah.” Benjamin drank the other half and swallowed
hard. “He’s staying with the Hills is what he said. He told us Bill’s got him
roomed up in their backhouse back there.”

“Well,” Ruth said, “I’ll tell John and in the morning,
well, we’ll need to see about this.”

Her hands passed something small back and forth between
them. Benjamin could not see it.

She let him out the door with a few encouraging words
and looked up and down the crooked street that led up to their home. It was so
dark.

She closed the door behind her and looked into her right
hand. In it, a long, black spider curled wispy legs.



Benjamin got home somehow and laid down his head by his
wife’s head. Lane was sleeping deep and soft, but her face looked concentrated.
The coffee Ruth made for him had given him just enough energy to get home and
dizzy.

He blacked out. In his mind he saw Jim Falk, though.
He saw the way he looked at all the men in Huck’s place. He saw how those eyes held
some secret. Then he saw Falk in Benjamin’s own kitchen. He was eating Benjamin’s
bread at Benjamin’s table, laughing with Lane. Lane was laughing and Falk was
pouring dark wine into a golden goblet in her hands. There was an emerald light
growing and jumping between them.

He sat up quick in his bed in the dark.

“Spooks!” he yipped and squeezed his temple as the blood
rushed forward.

Lane woke up then and put her hand on his shoulder and
climbed herself up on his back and hugged from behind. Hopefully he wouldn’t be
sick tonight.

She pressed her long nose into his fat cheek, kissed
him, and whispered, “You smell very bad
.
”

“I’m sick. I feel sick.”

“Go back to sleep,” she said and kissed his ear. “There’ll
be eggs in the morning and toast with butter.”

This thought of the hot eggs pushed away all the other
thoughts, and he fell asleep smiling with his head on Lane’s chest. He dreamed
of the little horse. The little horse was running through a pumpkin patch. The
little horse licked his hands and he could feel the hot tongue. The little
horse kicked and started dancing with him in the amber light of October. Red
and gold leaves floated and swirled around them, and in the sunset was the black
shape of a stranger with a beat-up hat.

Her husband was already headed into Sparrow to pick up another
bucket of nails, some glue, and some other such things. He was pretty near
finished fixing up the busted storehouse.

Jim Falk rolled out of the small bed and washed up quickly.
Violet was knocking on his door right away.

“Mr. Falk!” she called through the wood.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Falk, I’ve got breakfast.”

He opened the door. Violet had a tray, and on it was
a decent breakfast with milk and coffee. Jim, for the first time, saw she was
about half-a-head shorter than he. The trees reached up behind her gray
silhouette in the white morning.

“Thank you,” he said as she handed over the tray of food.

She gave him a little half-smile. “You’d better get to
your work soon. The last thing this town needs is another lazy drunk.” She might
be serious, but there was a smirk on her mouth when she said it, and turning
quickly, she invited his eyes on her neck and waist. “I’ve got some extra rolls
and butter. When you’re done, put the tray out the door.”

Jim ate the eggs and toast and thought about the spook
and this woman. Did she know? Did she know that she’d appeared in his head?

Last night, at Huck’s bar, Benjamin Straddler told him
there was no spook.

“Ain’t no spook up in them woods or up in any
woods,” Benjamin said, looking slowly, one at a time, from Jim to Simon to
Hattie. “Those Hills are troublemakers and they want to have some kind of
importance in this town, and so they make up tales and become a part of them.
Bill Hill was a good man before he fell into marrying that Violet. She comes
from the Gray family up the Ridges. The Grays are known for their insanity.”

Jim thought about that and looked over at Simon. “Simon,
then, what about that baby? The Baby Starkey?”

Simon’s eyes grew dim and his smile faded out. “What
was it that they told you? That the spook come and got her? Sorry, stranger. That
baby died because of the cold and we ran outta wood. We ran outta wood and we
were all huddled up close, but it just got too cold. It just got too cold one night
and all of us all fell asleep. It was like the winter cast a spell on us, a
deep spell. When we all woke up, we could not wake up that baby, and then Elsie
started in something awful. Screaming at that baby. It was worse than the cold
or the whole winter, or even that little dead baby—Elsie’s screaming.”

Benjamin said, “You see, now? The Hills will tell you
it was the spook that got that baby, and that it was the spook howling in the
night. It was Elsie in her grief.”

Jim Falk listened to it all, but he remembered especially
“a deep spell.”



He shoved the tray on the table empty.

Today was the day to do two main things.

The one thing to do was to go into town and see. He had
to see what kind of a town this was, and how many people were in it. Maybe he’d
ask around a little bit, a few questions, but not a lot. People don’t like outlanders.
People don’t trust outlanders. Outlanders, if they don’t wind up dead, at the
least get sent back out, out into the outland.

He had to make it all very natural, gentle, and piecemeal.
You can’t ask all the questions to one person, or it gets their blood up. You
spread the questions out, take it slowly, and be patient. You be patient and
you look and see what their eyes say. You have to watch the light in their
eyes. Or the darkness. A lot of times people will say what they want
you
to
say. They’ll also say things without saying things, so that’s why you look in
their eyes.

The other main thing was getting up behind the Hills’
and finishing up to try and memorize the woods. He’d slept already late and had
to hurry. In town, he would need to get some oil for his lamp for when the sun
goes down. He had some burning oil anyway, but he needed lamp oil too.

Violet said when she came to pick up the tray, “It’s
a little while’s walk to get there, but if you need anything else there’s Huck’s
shop as you know on the north side by the main road. You gotta pay for it
there, though. But we might not have some stuff as you might need.”

She left with the tray, walking back down the lumpy hill
that led up to the house where she lived. Jim watched her go. She walked sometimes
with her head looking as if it was about to turn and look at him.

Jim stood on the steps to the backhouse. They were sturdy
and made of blackwood. Blackwood was hard to find and harder even to build
from. Bill Hill must be a good woodman, and a strong one. Jim looked over where
the storehouse was going back up; the morning light came down in through the
places where the walls weren’t so done yet.

He looked at the shafts of white light against the black
insides of the half-done building. He squinted. Was there a shadow leaning in
there?

Jim wondered at this while some birds chirped and rustled.
At times, he was sure that his father was out there watching him. Sometimes he
sensed it like a wind or a tone in his soul—that he was watching him. It was
the only thing that pushed him forward. To come to a town like this, to follow
a dim dream down from the north. Only to hope to see him again, to find him.
Jim didn’t know where his father was; all he knew was that his father was not
dead.

He blinked a few times, and some clouds moved to let
the light open up in the shed. Jim saw the gray blanket that Bill Hill must have
thrown over a nail on the wall. No one leaning, just a tricky shadow.

Maybe he wouldn’t go into town. Maybe that Straddler
fellow and Simon were right. Maybe Violet Hill, with her bright red hair and her
cigarettes, maybe she was just another crazy Gray from the Ridges. He reached
into his pack and felt the little satchel that held the leaves and looked back
into the half-built storehouse. A wind picked up and blew the little blanket
like a cloak.

Barnhouse warned him that he shouldn’t eat them too fast.
He squeezed the package and ground his teeth. It was an important day.

Today was the day to do the two main things.