Part 12

It wasn’t my not weighing anything So much as my not knowing anything-- My brother had been nearer right before. I had not taken the first step in knowledge; I had not learned to let go with the hands, As still I have not learned to with the heart, And have no wish to with the heart--nor need, That I can see. The mind--is not the heart. I may yet live, as I know others live, To wish in vain to let go with the mind-- Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells me That I need learn to let go with the heart.

_Place for a Third_

Nothing to say to all those marriages! She had made three herself to three of his. The score was even for them, three to three. But come to die she found she cared so much: She thought of children in a burial row; Three children in a burial row were sad. One man’s three women in a burial row Somehow made her impatient with the man. And so she said to Laban, ‘You have done A good deal right; don’t do the last thing wrong. Don’t make me lie with those two other women.’

Laban said, No, he would not make her lie With anyone but that she had a mind to, If that was how she felt, of course, he said. She went her way. But Laban having caught This glimpse of lingering person in Eliza, And anxious to make all he could of it With something he remembered in himself, Tried to think how he could exceed his promise, And give good measure to the dead, though than If that was how she felt, he kept repeating. His first thought under pressure was a grave In a new boughten grave plot by herself, Under he didn’t care how great a stone: He’d sell a yoke of steers to pay for it. And weren’t there special cemetery flowers, That, once grief sets to growing, grief may rest: The flowers will go on with grief awhile, And no one seem neglecting or neglected? A prudent grief will not despise such aids. He thought of evergreen and everlasting. And then he had a thought worth many of these. Somewhere must be the grave of the young boy Who married her for playmate more than helpmate, And sometimes laughed at what it was between them. How would she like to sleep her last with him? Where was his grave? Did Laban know his name?

He found the grave a town or two away, The headstone cut with _John, Beloved Husband_, Beside it room reserved, the say a sister’s, A never-married sister’s of that husband, Whether Eliza would be welcome there. The dead was bound to silence: ask the sister. So Laban saw the sister, and, saying nothing Of where Eliza wanted _not_ to lie, And who had thought to lay her with her first love, Begged simply for the grave. The sister’s face Fell all in wrinkles of responsibility. She wanted to do right. She’d have to think. Laban was old and poor, yet seemed to care; And she was old and poor--but she cared, too. They sat. She cast one dull, old look at him, Then turned him out to go on other errands She said he might attend to in the village, While she made up her mind how much she cared-- And how much Laban cared--and why he cared, (She made shrewd eyes to see where he came in.) She’d looked Eliza up her second time, A widow at her second husband’s grave, And offered her a home to rest awhile Before she went the poor man’s widow’s way, Housekeeping for the next man out of wedlock. She and Eliza had been friends through all. Who was she to judge marriage in a world Whose Bible’s so confused in marriage counsel? The sister had not come across this Laban; A decent product of life’s ironing-out; She must not keep him waiting. Time would press Between the death day and the funeral day. So when she saw him coming in the street She hurried her decision to be ready To meet him with his answer at the door. Laban had known about what it would be From the way she had set her poor old mouth, To do, as she had put it, what was right.

She gave it through the screen door closed between ‘No, not with John. There wouldn’t be no sense. Eliza’s had too many other men.’

Laban was forced to fall back on his plan To buy Eliza a plot to lie alone in: Which gives him for himself a choice of lots When his time comes to die and settle down.

_Two Witches_

I

THE WITCH OF COÖS

I staid the night for shelter at a farm Behind the mountain, with a mother and son, Two old-believers. They did all the talking.

MOTHER. Folks think a witch who has familiar spirits She could call up to pass a winter evening, But won’t, should be burned at the stake or something. Summoning spirits isn’t ‘Button, button, Who’s got the button,’ I would have them know.

SON. Mother can make a common table rear And kick with two legs like an army mule.

MOTHER. And when I’ve done it, what good have I done? Rather than tip a table for you, let me Tell you what Ralle the Sioux Control once told me. He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him How could that be--I thought the dead were souls, He broke my trance. Don’t that make you suspicious That there’s something the dead are keeping back? Yes, there’s something the dead are keeping back.

SON. You wouldn’t want to tell him what we have Up attic, mother?

MOTHER. Bones--a skeleton.

SON. But the headboard of mother’s bed is pushed Against the attic door: the door is nailed. It’s harmless. Mother hears it in the night Halting perplexed behind the barrier Of door and headboard. Where it wants to get Is back into the cellar where it came from.

MOTHER. We’ll never let them, will we, son! We’ll never!

SON. It left the cellar forty years ago And carried itself like a pile of dishes Up one flight from the cellar to the kitchen, Another from the kitchen to the bedroom, Another from the bedroom to the attic, Right past both father and mother, and neither stopped it. Father had gone upstairs; mother was downstairs. I was a baby: I don’t know where I was.

MOTHER. The only fault my husband found with me-- I went to sleep before I went to bed, Especially in winter when the bed Might just as well be ice and the clothes snow. The night the bones came up the cellar-stairs Toffile had gone to bed alone and left me, But left an open door to cool the room off So as to sort of turn me out of it. I was just coming to myself enough To wonder where the cold was coming from, When I heard Toffile upstairs in the bedroom And thought I heard him downstairs in the cellar. The board we had laid down to walk dry-shod on When there was water in the cellar in spring Struck the hard cellar bottom. And then someone Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step, The way a man with one leg and a crutch, Or a little child, comes up. It wasn’t Toffile: It wasn’t anyone who could be there. The bulkhead double-doors were double-locked And swollen tight and buried under snow. The cellar windows were banked up with sawdust And swollen tight and buried under snow. It was the bones. I knew them--and good reason. My first impulse was to get to the knob And hold the door. But the bones didn’t try The door; they halted helpless on the landing, Waiting for things to happen in their favor. The faintest restless rustling ran all through them. I never could have done the thing I did If the wish hadn’t been too strong in me To see how they were mounted for this walk. I had a vision of them put together Not like a man, but like a chandelier. So suddenly I flung the door wide on him. A moment he stood balancing with emotion, And all but lost himself. (A tongue of fire Flashed out and licked along his upper teeth. Smoke rolled inside the sockets of his eyes.) Then he came at me with one hand outstretched, The way he did in life once; but this time I struck the hand off brittle on the floor, And fell back from him on the floor myself. The finger-pieces slid in all directions. (Where did I see one of those pieces lately? Hand me my button-box--it must be there.) I sat up on the floor and shouted, ‘Toffile, It’s coming up to you.’ It had its choice Of the door to the cellar or the hall. It took the hall door for the novelty, And set off briskly for so slow a thing, Still going every which way in the joints, though, So that it looked like lightning or a scribble, From the slap I had just now given its hand. I listened till it almost climbed the stairs From the hall to the only finished bedroom, Before I got up to do anything; Then ran and shouted, ‘Shut the bedroom door, Toffile, for my sake!’ ‘Company?’ he said, ‘Don’t make me get up; I’m too warm in bed.’ So lying forward weakly on the handrail I pushed myself upstairs, and in the light (The kitchen had been dark) I had to own I could see nothing. ‘Toffile, I don’t see it. It’s with us in the room though. It’s the bones.’ ‘What bones?’ ‘The cellar bones--out of the grave.’ That made him throw his bare legs out of bed And sit up by me and take hold of me. I wanted to put out the light and see If I could see it, or else mow the room, With our arms at the level of our knees, And bring the chalk-pile down. ‘I’ll tell you what-- It’s looking for another door to try. The uncommonly deep snow has made him think Of his old song, _The Wild Colonial Boy_, He always used to sing along the tote-road. He’s after an open door to get out-doors. Let’s trap him with an open door up attic.’ Toffile agreed to that, and sure enough, Almost the moment he was given an opening, The steps began to climb the attic stairs. I heard them. Toffile didn’t seem to hear them. ‘Quick!’ I slammed to the door and held the knob. ‘Toffile, get nails.’ I made him nail the door shut, And push the headboard of the bed against it. Then we asked was there anything Up attic that we’d ever want again. The attic was less to us than the cellar. If the bones liked the attic, let them have it. Let them stay in the attic. When they sometimes Come down the stairs at night and stand perplexed Behind the door and headboard of the bed, Brushing their chalky skull with chalky fingers, With sounds like the dry rattling of a shutter, That’s what I sit up in the dark to say-- To no one any more since Toffile died. Let them stay in the attic since they went there. I promised Toffile to be cruel to them For helping them be cruel once to him.

SON. We think they had a grave down in the cellar.

MOTHER. We know they had a grave down in the cellar.

SON. We never could find out whose bones they were.

MOTHER. Yes, we could too, son. Tell the truth for once. They were a man’s his father killed for me. I mean a man he killed instead of me. The least I could do was to help dig their grave. We were about it one night in the cellar. Son knows the story: but ’twas not for him To tell the truth, suppose the time had come. Son looks surprised to see me end a lie We’d kept all these years between ourselves So as to have it ready for outsiders. But tonight I don’t care enough to lie-- I don’t remember why I ever cared. Toffile, if he were here, I don’t believe Could tell you why he ever cared himself....

She hadn’t found the finger-bone she wanted Among the buttons poured out in her lap. I verified the name next morning: Toffile. The rural letter-box said Toffile Lajway.

II

THE PAUPER WITCH OF GRAFTON

Now that they’ve got it settled whose I be, I’m going to tell them something they won’t like: They’ve got it settled wrong, and I can prove it. Flattered I must be to have two towns fighting To make a present of me to each other. They don’t dispose me, either one of them, To spare them any trouble. Double trouble’s Always the witch’s motto anyway. I’ll double theirs for both of them--you watch me. They’ll find they’ve got the whole thing to do over, That is, if facts is what they want to go by. They set a lot (now don’t they?) by a record Of Arthur Amy’s having once been up For Hog Reeve in March Meeting here in Warren. I could have told them any time this twelvemonth The Arthur Amy I was married to Couldn’t have been the one they say was up In Warren at March Meeting for the reason He wa’n’t but fifteen at the time they say. The Arthur Amy I was married to Voted the only times he ever voted, Which wasn’t many, in the town of Wentworth. One of the times was when ’twas in the warrant To see if the town wanted to take over The tote road to our clearing where we lived. I’ll tell you who’d remember--Heman Lapish. Their Arthur Amy was the father of mine. So now they’ve dragged it through the law courts once I guess they’d better drag it through again. Wentworth and Warren’s both good towns to live in, Only I happen to prefer to live In Wentworth from now on; and when all’s said, Right’s right, and the temptation to do right When I can hurt someone by doing it Has always been too much for me, it has. I know of some folks that’d be set up At having in their town a noted witch: But most would have to think of the expense That even I would be. They ought to know That as a witch I’d often milk a bat And that’d be enough to last for days. It’d make my position stronger, think, If I was to consent to give some sign To make it surer that I was a witch? It wa’n’t no sign, I s’pose, when Mallice Huse Said that I took him out in his old age And rode all over everything on him Until I’d had him worn to skin and bones, And if I’d left him hitched unblanketed In front of one Town Hall, I’d left him hitched In front of every one in Grafton County. Some cried shame on me not to blanket him, The poor old man. It would have been all right If some one hadn’t said to gnaw the posts He stood beside and leave his trade mark on them, So they could recognize them. Not a post That they could hear tell of was scarified. They made him keep on gnawing till he whined. Then that same smarty someone said to look-- He’d bet Huse was a cribber and had gnawed The crib he slept in--and as sure’s you’re born They found he’d gnawed the four posts of his bed, All four of them to Splinters. What did that prove? Not that he hadn’t gnawed the hitching posts He said he had besides. Because a horse Gnaws in the stable ain’t no proof to me He don’t gnaw trees and posts and fences too. But everybody took it for a proof. I was a strapping girl of twenty then. The smarty someone who spoiled everything Was Arthur Amy. You know who he was. That was the way he started courting me. He never said much after we were married, But I mistrusted he was none too proud Of having interfered in the Huse business. I guess he found he got more out of me By having me a witch. Or something happened To turn him round. He got to saying things To undo what he’d done and make it right. Like, ‘No, she ain’t come back from kiting yet. Last night was one of her nights out. She’s kiting. She thinks when the wind makes a night of it She might as well herself.’ But he liked best To let on he was plagued to death with me: If anyone had seen me coming home Over the ridgepole, ‘stride of a broomstick, As often as he had in the tail of the night, He guessed they’d know what he had to put up with. Well, I showed Arthur Amy signs enough Off from the house as far as we could keep And from barn smells you can’t wash out of ploughed ground With all the rain and snow of seven years; And I don’t mean just skulls of Roger’s Rangers On Moosilauke, but woman signs to man, Only bewitched so I would last him longer. Up where the trees grow short, the mosses tall, I made him gather me wet snow berries On slippery rocks beside a waterfall. I made him do it for me in the dark. And he liked everything I made him do. I hope if he is where he sees me now He’s so far off he can’t see what I’ve come to. You _can_ come down from everything to nothing. All is, if I’d a-known when I was young And full of it, that this would be the end, It doesn’t seem as if I’d had the courage To make so free and kick up in folks’ faces. I might have, but it doesn’t seem as if.

_An Empty Threat_

I stay; But it isn’t as if There wasn’t always Hudson’s Bay And the fur trade, A small skiff And a paddle blade.

I can just see my tent pegged, And me on the floor, Crosslegged, And a trapper looking in at the door With furs to sell.

His name’s Joe, Alias John, And between what he doesn’t know And won’t tell About where Henry Hudson’s gone, I can’t say he’s much help; But we get on.

The seal yelp On an ice cake. It’s not men by some mistake?

No, There’s not a soul For a wind-break Between me and the North Pole--

Except always John-Joe, My French Indian Esquimaux, And he’s off setting traps, In one himself perhaps.

Give a head shake Over so much bay Thrown away In snow and mist That doesn’t exist, I was going to say, For God, man or beast’s sake, Yet does perhaps for all three.

Don’t ask Joe What it is to him. It’s sometimes dim What it is to me, Unless it be It’s the old captain’s dark fate Who failed to find or force a strait In its two-thousand-mile coast; And his crew left him where he failed, And nothing came of all he sailed.

It’s to say, ‘You and I’ To such a ghost, ‘You and I Off here With the dead race of the Great Auk!’ And, ‘Better defeat almost, If seen clear, Than life’s victories of doubt That need endless talk talk To make them out.’

_A Fountain, a Bottle, a Donkey’s Ears and Some Books_

Old Davis owned a solid mica mountain In Dalton that would some day make his fortune. There’d been some Boston people out to see it: And experts said that deep down in the mountain The mica sheets were big as plate glass windows. He’d like to take me there and show it to me.

‘I’ll tell you what you show me. You remember You said you knew the place where once, on Kinsman, The early Mormons made a settlement And built a stone baptismal font outdoors-- But Smith, or some one, called them off the mountain To go West to a worse fight with the desert. You said you’d seen the stone baptismal font. Well, take me there.’

‘Some day I will.’

‘Today.’

‘Huh, that old bath-tub, what is that to see? Let’s talk about it.’

‘Let’s go see the place.’

‘To shut you up I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll find that fountain if it takes all summer, And both of our united strengths, to do it.’

‘You’ve lost it, then?’

‘Not so but I can find it. No doubt it’s grown up some to woods around it. The mountain may have shifted since I saw it In eighty-five.’

‘As long ago as that?’

‘If I remember rightly, it had sprung A leak and emptied then. And forty years Can do a good deal to bad masonry. You won’t see any Mormon swimming in it. But you have said it, and we’re off to find it. Old as I am, I’m going to let myself Be dragged by you all over everywhere--’

‘I thought you were a guide.’

‘I am a guide, And that’s why I can’t decently refuse you.’

We made a day of it out of the world, Ascending to descend to reascend. The old man seriously took his bearings, And spoke his doubts in every open place.

We came out on a look-off where we faced A cliff, and on the cliff a bottle painted, Or stained by vegetation from above, A likeness to surprise the thrilly tourist.

‘Well, if I haven’t brought you to the fountain, At least I’ve brought you to the famous Bottle.’

‘I won’t accept the substitute. It’s empty.’

‘So’s everything.’

‘I want my fountain.’

‘I guess you’d find the fountain just as empty. And anyway this tells me where I am.’

‘Hadn’t you long suspected where you were?’

‘You mean miles from that Mormon settlement? Look here, you treat your guide with due respect If you don’t want to spend the night outdoors. I vow we must be near the place from where The two converging slides, the avalanches, On Marshall, look like donkey’s ears. We may as well see that and save the day.’

‘Don’t donkey’s ears suggest we shake our own?’

‘For God’s sake, aren’t you fond of viewing nature? You don’t like nature. All you like is books. What signify a donkey’s ears and bottle, However natural? Give you your books! Well then, right here is where I show you books. Come straight down off this mountain just as fast As we can fall and keep a-bouncing on our feet. It’s hell for knees unless done hell-for-leather.’

‘Be ready,’ I thought, ‘for almost anything.’

We struck a road I didn’t recognize, But welcomed for the chance to lave my shoes In dust once more. We followed this a mile, Perhaps, to where it ended at a house I didn’t know was there. It was the kind To bring me to for broad-board panelling. I never saw so good a house deserted.

‘Excuse me if I ask you in a window That happens to be broken,’ Davis said. ‘The outside doors as yet have held against us. I want to introduce you to the people Who used to live here. They were Robinsons. You must have heard of Clara Robinson, The poetess who wrote the book of verses And had it published. It was all about The posies on her inner window sill, And the birds on her outer window sill, And how she tended both, or had them tended: She never tended anything herself. She was “shut in” for life. She lived her whole Life long in bed, and wrote her things in bed. I’ll show you how she had her sills extended To entertain the birds and hold the flowers. Our business first’s up attic with her books.’