The Witch Narratives: Reincarnation (23 page)

“No, Patrón,” Pacheco said after a lengthy pause, and bowed his head, his chest heaving.

The Sheriff cautiously approached Salia. He quickly untied her wrists and jumped backed from her.

She sucked on one of her damaged wrists, glaring at him.

“Next time, Whitie, investigate all the facts, before you telegram me,” Samuel said.

The sheriff nodded his head.

“Please see Miss Esperanza is safely escorted to her home. If anyone in Madrid bothers her, they’ll have to answer to the court.” Of course, this meant Samuel, since he was both judge and jury in Madrid.

“I ain’t taking her all the way to Witch Hill, Your Honor. I’ll just take her part way. Nope. Ain’t doing that for nobody,” Whitie said.

Samuel rolled his eyes. “Very well, but run her by the doctor first and see about her wrists,” he gruffly ordered. “Have the doctor send me the bill,” he said, remembering the holes in her shoes and ignoring the gasps from the people in the courtroom. Samuel had never been known for either his generosity or his charity.

He looked at Salia and opened his mouth. He was about to give her some advice, some words of wisdom to avoid future trouble. His thoughts got all mixed up in his head when he noticed her shoulder, exposed by her shawl hanging down the side of her arm. The shawl had dragged some of her white blouse with it. His eyes traveled up her feminine shoulder to her chest. He felt a keen disappointment in the gut of his stomach that the tops of her breasts were hidden.

He then looked at her full, rose colored lips, and he swallowed, gulping in fresh air.

He pounded the desk with the gavel. “Court’s adjourned,” he barked, tearing out of the building, followed by an entourage of hangers on.

“What of the money Mrs. Gelford owes me?” she screamed at his back. “You call this justice, Patrón?”

Pacheco seemed to think the same thing as he stormed from the courtroom, followed by his entourage of Penitentes.

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S
alia walked stiffly down the Turquoise Trail with her head held high and her arms swinging briskly at her sides.

Whitie Smithson followed behind on his horse.

“You do not have to escort me, Sheriff. I can find my own way home.”

“But Mr. Stuwart said…”

“I don’t care what the patrón said. Go.”

“But…”

“Go!”

“Jesus, you almost bit my arm, you wild cat.”

“Go, Sheriff, or I shall bare my claws.”

Whitie turned his horse towards Madrid, and she marched up the road by herself. The villagers thought her power diluted because they believed there was nothing to hold her in Madrid, yet, she stayed and put up with their abuse. She would never be known as El Esperanza, like Mother had been. Mrs. Gelford had misread her fresh young face, and delicate body, and thought her weak.

When she got home, she grabbed a small shovel and dug behind the house by the outdoor oven. She shoved her hands into the hole and brought out a photograph. She blew on the picture, clearing the dirt and walked into the kitchen, setting the photograph on the table.

She removed her skirt, soaking it in the sink.

She dipped a misshaped, home-baked cookie into a glass of milk, smiling down at the picture which had been torn in two, the bride being missing from the photograph. The groom had his arm bent with his bride’s arm linked through his. Her arm was all the groom had left of his bride.

“How are you feeling today, Mr. Gelford?” she asked the picture. “Did you miss your wife while you lay there, feeling like you were buried alive? Mrs. Gelford spoke of your ordeal in court today but never said how long it took you to die. Surely, you wished for death, as you lay there on your bed, struggling to breathe. Did you know, Mr. Gelford that as you lay dying beside your wife, that she wished for your death? Until I dug you up, you had
been buried for six weeks. I wonder what you look like after being dead that long. Surely, you are no longer the handsome groom, like in the picture your bride gave me. Has your flesh yet rotted off your bones, Mr. Gelford?”

She tapped the photograph, narrowing her eyes. “Well, Mrs. Gelford, if you do not want to pay me my money, then I shall just have to give you back your husband, won’t I?”

She smoothed the picture’s ragged edges. “Perhaps, I shall spy in an egg and be there at your homecoming, Mr. Gelford. It will be most amusing to see Mrs. Gelford greet her husband, newly raised from the grave.”

Mr. Gelford stared back at her with a menacing look.

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M
rs. Gelford visited her sister, Mrs. Wilson, who comforted her and fed her. It was now dusk. Arm in arm, Mrs. Wilson walked Mrs. Gelford home, a few doors up the street.

“Please don’t become depressed over this trial nastiness. It was most upsetting to see that…that creature, Salia Esperanza, set free. Oh, I am sorry I brought the subject up. I’ve distressed you, Sister.”

Mrs. Gelford held her fist to her heart. “A party will cheer me. You should invite the Widower Smith,” she said, batting her short lashes.

“I’ll come over early and do your hair. You mustn’t wear black or else you’ll scare the poor man off,” she said with a twinkle in her eye.

She giggled.

“You’ve always been rather silly when it comes to romance and turning 47 has not changed you.”

“Deep in my worn heart, I am still fourteen.”

She and her sister had once been the silliest young women in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They were now the silliest women in Madrid.

Mrs. Gelford sighed down at her gloomy dress. “Black is not my color. Well, we have arrived at my door.”

“Oh, Sister, I do hate having you stay here all by yourself.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve placed a cross of two sewing needles inside a broom and stood the broom behind the door. The witch won’t be paying me a visit. I stood up to her, putting the fear of God into her. No one before me ever brought charges against a witch in Madrid.”

“There, there, now. Don’t get riled up. Your eggs, Sister, have been delivered early,” she said pointing to a basket, prettily tied with a yellow ribbon, that was on the porch.

“I shall have me an omelet for a bedtime snack,” she said, picking up the egg basket.

The sisters waved good-bye.

Mrs. Gelford opened her front door. The broom leaning against the door fell over. It was dark in the parlor. Mrs. Gelford didn’t notice the sewing
needles had rolled from the broom, one beneath the chair, the other under the sofa. She merely stood the broom back up against the door. The needles hardly mattered anyway because, unknown to Mrs. Gelford, she carried a witch into her home. She set the basket of eggs on her bedroom dresser and lit a lamp. She removed her coat and hung it up. She turned and screamed, “Oh, Mr. Gelford!”

Leaning against a crocheted, pink pillow was the torn wedding picture of her dead husband.

“Why, I…I never,” she sputtered. “You’ve returned to me.”

She picked up the picture, lovingly placing it against her breast. The photograph smelled moldy. Nevertheless, she kissed her groom.

She smoothed the picture as best she could. She picked up the frame imprisoning her bridal picture, only the picture was cut in half, and the groom missing. She placed the groom back where it belonged, with its better half. The two halves lay a bit crooked in the frame. The tops of their heads leaned towards each other, their hearts away from each other.

She carried the basket of eggs into the kitchen, not noticing she left behind one egg teetering on her dresser. The egg glowed yellow, and Salia became visible through the shell. She rocked in the egg, hunched over, with her hands clenching her knees.

She made two omelets, one for herself and the other for her dead husband. She ate both her share and his. “Waste not, want not. Food is the only comfort I have left, now that I’m alone,” she said, sobbing into her napkin.

After a good cry, she changed into her nightgown and climbed into her solitary bed.

“Good night, John,” she told the picture.

She lay for some minutes, with her eyes wide open, trying to remember her wedding day, but the only memory remaining was of the wedding cake her elder sister baked.

She tossed and turned, sleeping lightly, until the clock struck midnight.

She yawned, blinking her eyes, trying to adjust to the light and the fuzziness of her brain still drugged with sleep.

Someone had turned on the lamp on the nightstand next to the bed.

She heard footsteps, her heart fluttering, and tiny mews bubbling from her lips, along with saliva dribbling down her chin.

She burped and the stinky smell of rotten eggs wafted from her mouth.

The wooden floor creaked in the same manner as when John walked about the bedroom with a limp from his accident at the mine. His limp was the reason their son was killed. For months after their son’s death, she tried to communicate with her dead son through a medium, but in the end, the medium was a drunkard and thought Mrs. Gelford had lost a daughter. The séance had been most distressing.

The chair in the corner rocked—John’s chair, the one he always sat upon when reading his paper and smoking his pipe.

The odor of cherry tobacco filled the bedroom.

“John, is that you?” she whispered.

The shape of a large man sitting in the chair, rocking. His face was shaded so, she couldn’t quite make him out, but a woman married to a man for thirty years would recognize her own husband.

“John?” she again whispered, yanking the covers to her neck.

“Here, Mother.” His voice was raspy and gravelly, as though choking from pebbles.

Only John ever called her Mother and their son, Ignatius. He died in the mine when he was only fifteen. She began hating her husband, for killing their son.

She blamed him, because Ignatius became a miner, like his father.

She faulted John for being sick that day and not at the mine to watch over their son.

She condemned her husband because Ignatius had to work in the first place.

She accused John for not dying instead of her son.

She held him responsible, because they should have had more money, if only Ignatius had lived, and worked, giving them his wages. A son was supposed to help support his mother and look after her in her old age.

Well, she was alone now with no children to help her. So many times she wished she had more children, instead of turning away from John after the birth of their son. She blamed her husband for the pain of childbirth, for the burden of being born a woman, and for her monthly curses that became a lifetime of curses, because she used them as an excuse to not allow her husband near her after Ignatius was born.

Finally, she hated John because he continued to call her mother, even after their son died, when she was no longer a mother.

But that was all in the past, buried, like she thought John had been. Here was a second chance. The witch must have tricked her and John was okay.

“Oh, John, come here. I’ve missed you so,” she said, holding out her arms.

John stood from the chair, walking zigzagged towards the bed. A filthy suit hung loosely from his body. As he got closer, she could see his brown suit was torn in shreds. However, the formerly brown suit was multi-colored because his skin was, also, in shreds. What skin was left on his corpse was discolored in shades of green and grey.

She placed her hands on her cheeks and opened her mouth to scream.

There was only silence. She coughed, choking on saliva and mucus.

A putrid smell engulfed the sheets and the blankets.

Her stomach convulsed with the dry heaves, not quite willing to part with her omelet.

She kicked the bedding and swung her legs to the floor.

John growled, grabbing her by the ankle and twisting her around.

His face. Oh, God, his face was eaten away.

His hair stood up from his head, as if he was the one being scared to death. Mrs. Gelford had always looked most frightening when in bed, with her hair in curlers, and her face smeared white with cold cream, and her flab set free from its girdle.

John screamed at her frightening face.

Half-digested eggs rose to her throat and she choked, and went into convulsions, her body flexing as if she was making wild love to her husband.

He screeched even louder.

Her body stiffened, and her eyes rolled around her head.

Then, everything went dark.

The egg rolled out the bedroom door and cracked in the living room. A miniature Salia climbed out of the shell. She clutched her piedra imán, growing in size with each spin until she was her full height of five-foot eight-inches.

She watched the dead John stumble into the Christmas tree, toppling it, bulbs and lights popping.

“Go back to your grave, Santa,” she ordered him.

She walked out the back door, swinging the basket of eggs in her arm. “My spell cancellation fee.”

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