The Hex Witch of Seldom (17 page)

“Cornstarch,” she said.

Ponderously swiveling her broad backside in the dead leaves and forest loam on which she sat, Witchie turned her back on Bobbi, opened her dress and began applying cornstarch to herself.

“Got to put some under my breasts every day,” she told Bobbi, “or they gall. My lands, they gall till they bleed.”

Bobbi thought of several possible replies to this, gave up on all of them, stood up and went off in the woods to relieve herself. When she got back, Witchie had made herself decent again and was replacing the vial of cornstarch in her staff. Bobbi lay down to get some sleep, squirming around in an attempt to settle herself comfortably on the rocky ground.

“I don't suppose you got a sleeping bag in there,” she said wistfully to Witchie.

“In a walking stick?” the old woman scoffed in utmost scorn. “Good heavens, girl.”

“Or a pillow.” Ignoring her companion's sharp tone, Bobbi sat up again, got all her spare clothes out of the bag and bundled them into a makeshift pillow. After a moment she unwrapped the bundle, divided it into two and silently offered a share to Witchie. Instead of taking it, the old woman suddenly smiled at her, a warm, mischievous smile, and thrust Kabilde at her.

“Here,” Witchie said, “you try it. You can get horse brushes out of my attic, maybe you can get a four-poster out of this here stick.”

Bobbi looked hard at the old pow-wow witch before taking it. Witchie would not hurt her, she felt sure by then, but Witchie meant to laugh at her. And Witchie did. In succession Bobbi pulled from the walking stick a small, elegant fishing pole with glass-globe handle, a silver flute, an umbrella, a tiny kaleidoscope, a cheerleader's pom-pon on a stick (in the colors scarlet and black), a flag of truce, a blowgun for shooting poisonous darts, and a long, slender sword.

Witchie had stopped laughing. “Bobbi,” she said in a tone the girl could not read, “you have a peculiar mind.”

“What's my mind got to do with it?”

“Everything.” Witchie gestured her to put the sword away. “That's enough,” Witchie added, taking the walking stick away from her. “Tired?” she asked tenderly, as gently as Bobbi had ever heard her say anything.

Touched to her heart, Bobbi blinked back tears. No one had ever spoken to her like that, not since she could remember. Maybe her mother, when she was a tiny baby, had loved her enough to talk to her that way—

Jesus shit. The old woman was talking to Kabilde.

Gently, carefully, Witchie set the pow-wow staff upright in a crack of the rocks, as if it were standing in its urn at home. Bobbi lay down on the ground and turned her face away to hide her burning eyes. The surge of angry mortification she felt was very much like her feeling for Grandpap, which she had formerly called hatred—but she had felt real hatred now, and knew the difference. It blazed, but it did not sting like this—this disappointment. And thinking of her grandfather, Bobbi felt the stirring of some feeling deeper than chagrin, something that hurt. Something that she did not want to face.

To send it away, she went to sleep.

When she awoke, sometime in the afternoon, Witchie was sitting up and peering at her as if she had been watching Bobbi's dreams. Bobbi's daytime sleep had been floating, disjointed, uneasy, and once again she felt as if Witchie herself and everything about the past several days ought to be gone once she woke up. Sometime in her sleep, when she was off her guard, the sense that she should be home had overtaken her. She rubbed it away, rubbing her face. She had no home any longer, and only one thing mattered to her.

“Where's Shane?” she demanded of Witchie, for she saw that the old woman held Kabilde between her gnarled hands.

“Quite a ways from here.” Witchie heaved herself up off the ground and stood adjusting her voluminous underclothing. “I been thinking, young'un, it's no use we should pussyfoot around any more if we're going to get anywhere. So let's hit the road.”

“Now? In daylight?”

“No time better for a person to see where they're going.”

The old hag had settled on some sort of scheme, Bobbi decided. There was a bright glint in Witchie's yellow-brown eyes. Silently she helped Witchie gather up sweater and purse. Bobbi took the paper bag, and Witchie held the walking stick, and the two of them headed westward.

They walked straight through the little town of Veto on the main road. It was Sunday afternoon; there were plenty of people around to stare at them. Some old men were sitting on the benches near the war memorial. Some old women were rocking at their windows. Children were playing in the yards. Parents were sitting on the porch swings for the first time of the year in the mild weather. They all stared. Witchie plodded along, seeming to be in no hurry, paying no attention. Bobbi kept her eyes on the ground.

Someone lost no time in calling the cops. The state police caught up to them halfway up the next wooded hill after Veto.

“Don't run,” Witchie ordered just as Bobbi was about to, as the cruiser pulled onto the shoulder behind them. “That didn't take long,” she added, looking back smugly.

“What the hun do you think you're doing?” Bobbi whispered between clenched teeth. The question was rhetorical. No way could Witchie answer it with a big-bellied Smokey ambling toward her.

“We ain't hitchhiking, Officer,” Witchie chirped at the man. “We're just walking.” She folded her face into a big, bedentured smile.

The trooper paid no attention to her. He was looking straight at Bobbi, and he called her by name. “You're the Yandro girl, aren't you. Bobbi Yandro.”

“Why, that's my granddaughter Hepzibah!” Witchie informed him. “Hepzibah Snort.”

The name startled Bobbi so badly that she managed to remember it. But the policeman seemed hardly to notice it. “Your granddaddy's been going crazy with worrying about you,” he said to Bobbi.

The words made her feel a sudden pang of longing for Grandpap. She smothered it quickly.

“I'm not her,” she said in a small, wispy voice such as she imagined a Hepzibah might use. “My name's Zibby.”

“That so,” said the cop. He regarded her sourly, unbelieving and unamused. “Zibby.”

“That's short for Hepzibah,” said Bobbi wispily.

Witchie abandoned her beaming smile. “You got no call making fun of her name!” she complained.

The state trooper did not even look at the old woman. “Come on.” He motioned Bobbi toward his cruiser. “Into the car.”

“No!” Bobbi exclaimed, abandoning wispiness. She couldn't go back to Grandpap, not yet. Too much unfinished business, too many things she needed—she needed to know …

Witchie clutched Bobbi's arm with one knobby hand and shook her stick with the other. “You can't just haul off my granddaughter away from me!” she shrilled.

Bobbi picked up her cue. “I ain't leaving my grandma!” she wailed, grabbing Witchie around her stocky middle.

The cop finally acknowledged Witchie's unwelcome existence. “Both of you get in,” he said to her. “I expect the investigators will want to talk to you, too.”

“We ain't done nothing!” Witchie screeched.

“Just get in before I arrest you for vagrancy. You too, Hepzibah,” the Smokey added sardonically. He took Bobbi by her elbow and propelled her into the back seat. In a moment Witchie thumped down beside her. As soon as the trooper closed the car door and turned his back to go around to the driver's seat, Witchie nudged Bobbi and winked.

Something unexpected was going to happen at the end of this ride. Bobbi felt sure of it.

But meanwhile she found it long, silent, and tense. She could not help thinking of the man lying dead on Mandawa Mountain and feeling that he was a guilty secret she had to hide. They would put her in jail if they knew.… The cruiser took the Appalachian hills like a ship breasting small waves. It passed through the little towns between them, mere channel markers, without a change in speed. Since the two vagrants had been picked up by the state cops, they were being taken to the state police station, clear at the western end of the county. Miles washed by. The sun sank low. Witchie looked out her window with an air of satisfaction.

Bobbi knew the state police station at once, without looking at the sign. It looked just the same as all the others: a low brick-and-concrete building set amid a sterile expanse of grass and blacktop, level and open and starkly out of place amid the wooded hills. And gray. Night was coming on. Everything looked gray in the dusk.

“Here we are,” Witchie declared as if arriving at a long-awaited destination. Eagerly she readied her sweater, stick and purse as the cruiser pulled up to the concrete apron in front of the door.

The state trooper got Bobbi out of the car first, and kept a firm grip on her arm. Witchie heaved herself out as soon as the cop made room for her.

“Thank you for the lift, Officer,” she said brightly. “We'll be on our way now.” Appearing to hurry, the old woman tottered off.

Bobbi, who knew how fast Witchie could scuttle when she really wanted to hustle, did not understand at first. Why was Witchie so slow? Then she saw. Witchie was the mother pheasant drawing the fox away. And the Smokey was no smarter than the average fox. He was fooled.

“Hey!” he yelled, and he grabbed for the old woman. He had not wanted anything to do with her, back there along the side of the road, but now that he had brought her in he was determined to keep her. She had moved just out of his reach. Old bat, who did she think she was? “Hey! You stop right there!”

Not too smart, that cop, but he was smart enough not to let go his grip on Bobbi. He pulled her along with him as he lunged forward and caught Witchie by the arm. “Hands off, young man!” Witchie snapped, and she gave the big fingers curled around her elbow a smart rap with her walking stick. Bobbi felt the cop catch his breath, but his grip on her arm only tightened, though he snatched his other hand away from Witchie's arm in a hurry. He glared at Witchie, intent on subduing her.

“Hand over that cane!” he ordered.

“I'll do no such thing!” Witchie shrilled. The cop at the desk inside looked up, then heaved himself out of his chair and ambled toward the door.

“Hand it over, or I'll have you for assaulting a police officer!”

Witchie raised the stick as if assaulting the man sounded like an excellent idea. The trooper got hold of Kabilde by the shaft, then did something no police officer should ever do when merely threatened by an irate old woman. He screamed.

The snake on the staff was writhing under his hand. The snake's head darted at his hand and bit him.

Bobbi saw the wooden head dart and bite. Its eyes shone red, like tiny rubies. The inside of its mouth was the soft, pulpy color of balsa. She glimpsed the thornlike teeth. She heard the cop scream, a high-pitched, startled scream. The weirdness of the thing made him scream, not any pain. He snatched his hand away; his other hand left Bobbi's arm; he stepped back. He stood white-faced, and the other state trooper, coming out of the building, froze where he was and did the same, and the snake on Witchie's staff glared and hissed at them both while the globe on the handle blazed eerily in the twilight.

“Now, as I was saying,” Witchie told the officers sternly, “me and my granddaughter will be on our way.” She walked off, not too fast, with Bobbi at her side, and the men didn't follow them. Glancing back, Bobbi saw them still standing near the cruiser, looking stunned.

“Take them a while to figure out how to report this,” Witchie said.

Bobbi grumped, “Did you have to tell them my name was Hepzibah?”

“What's wrong with that?” Bobbi heard the quirk behind the injured innocence in the old woman's tone. Witchie had some private joke.

“What's wrong with it! God! If I had to have a name, I wish you would have let me pick it. Now I'm stuck with Hepzibah Snort.”

“That was my mother's name,” Witchie said. “You should feel honored. I've made you kin, giving you that name, girl.”

Something warmer than laughter in Witchie's voice … Not knowing how to respond, Bobbi fell silent. At Witchie's side, she headed straight across the state police station's broad expanse of grass to the woods beyond. As soon as the trees hid the two of them from the station, Witchie accelerated into her fastest scuttle. Bobbi had to trot to keep up with her. Kabilde's angry flare of light faded away into a faint glow, just enough to light their way through the shadowy woods, and the carved snake on the shaft settled back into its usual attitude.

“Can you ride that thing like a broom?” Bobbi asked, panting from fighting her way through the woods.

“Have some respect, girl!”

Whether her idea was insulting to Mrs. Fenstermacher or to Kabilde, Bobbi wasn't sure, but it didn't much matter. She said, “What I mean is, those cops won't stand there and shiver for long. They'll be after us. We're going to have to do better than this, somehow.”

“Alls we have to do is get to where our friends are,” Witchie said, “and that's less than a mile from here.”

Witchie had taken the two of them on that risky ride with the police because—

“Shane?” Bobbi gasped.

“No, child.” The old hag sounded regretful. “Shane's quite a ways from here still.”

“Who, then?”

Witchie didn't answer, and Bobbi knew without seeing the glint that was in the old scamp's eye. Witchie wanted Bobbi to beg and pester, but she would never tell.

“Huh,” Bobbi muttered, and she kept stubborn silence as they struggled through the benighted woods.

Chapter Thirteen

Firelight.

Campfires, quite a few of them. And as she and Witchie walked closer Bobbi could see the cars pulled up on the abandoned strip site, the tents and camper trailers, the people. She blinked. The cars were Cadillacs and Mercedes. The people: dark men with kerchiefs knotted around their throats, darkly beautiful women in low-cut blouses and long skirts which dragged on the ground as they squatted beside the fires. Ragged, half-naked children ran everywhere, screaming. Dogs, nearly as many dogs as children, set up a din as soon as Bobbi and Witchie stepped out of the woods that surrounded the place.