She was one of those. Most of us were, one way or another.
The witch had a couple of names, depending who you ask, but everybody in town called her “Sal.” She wasn’t the only witch there, I’ll tell you right now, but she was the best of the lot.
If you went south and east from town, you got into the sandhills, where the rain runs down through the dirt without ever stopping, and there was a witch out there named Elizabeth Gray. Her heart was as dry as the sand and things ran through it without ever stopping. She couldn’t be moved by pity or anger, and she only dealt in cash.
If you went north, you’d run into the river, and there was a shack down on the riverbank and an old woman lived in it who was madder than a shoe. She’d have had to come a long way to just be senile. She believed she was a witch and she’d cast a curse for a slug of whiskey and a couple of cigarettes, but whether the curses did anything much, I couldn’t tell you.
(They do say that the sheriff riled her up and she cursed him and that’s why he took a nail in the foot and got sepsis and his daughter ran off with a horse-thief. If you ask me, though, the nail was bad luck, and his daughter was fixing to run off with the first person who looked at her twice. But I don’t know, maybe it was the woman from down on the mudflats.)
Sal, though … Sal was good. She never promised what she couldn’t deliver, and she wouldn’t ill-wish somebody just on a customer’s say-so. She wouldn’t brew up a love potion, but she’d cook up a charm to make a girl look a bit better or to give a bit of fire back to a man who was down to the last of the coals, if you understand what I’m saying.
And if somebody got a little too much fire in their belly, well, Sal knew how to make some unexpected surprises go away, too. That didn’t put her in good order with the preacher, but preachers aren’t traditionally fond of witches anyhow, so she didn’t lose much by it. You didn’t get so many girls in our town going to visit relatives for a year and turning back up with a baby and a tale of a dead husband, either.
Now, you’d think that somebody who provided this sort of community service would live in the middle of town in a house with glass windows, but you’d be wrong. Sal lived halfway up a mountain in a tumbledown house with a porch like a cow’s hipbones. It was a long trek out to see her, and that was the way she liked it. She didn’t have many friends to be inconvenienced by the walk. People want a witch when they need one, but they don’t much like them. It was a little too easy, when you saw Sal go by, to remember what all she knew about you.
She didn’t make it easy for anybody, either. She’d catch your eye and smile a little, and you’d remember that little matter she took care of for you and know that she was remembering it, too.
She was a good witch and a decent person, but decent people aren’t always easy to live with.
So at the end of the day, Sal’s best friend was a razorback hog.
He was a damn big animal, size of a pony. Some idiot over by Graham got the bright idea to bring in boars for rich people to hunt, thinking he’d keep them fenced up in a park, and of course there were boars on either side of the fence before you could say “Well, that’s a stupid goddamn idea, isn’t it?” So this razorback’s granddaddy was a boar from the old country. Sal used to say he could see the fairies and liked to dig up their nests and gulp ‘em down whole.
She called him “Rawhead.” If you’ve ever seen the hogs down at the butcher shop, before they make headcheese, you know what she was talking about. They take the skin right off and what you’ve got left is a bloody skull with teeth like tent pegs.
Rawhead turned up one day in the garden and started rooting around in her compost heap. He had a taste for magic and there was plenty of it there, alongside the eggshells and the wishing melon rinds. (I never met a witch worth her salt who didn’t love her garden more than any mortal soul.)
Well, she busted out of the door shouting at this half-grown hog in her compost heap. He’d been trampling down the pumpkin vines, so she put a curse on him that turned his tail straight. He staggered off and Sal thought she’d seen the last of him, but the very next day he was rooting off in the compost again.
She put a curse on him that time that turned his ears inside out. He staggered off again, his hooves going opposite directions, and took down one of the bean teepees in the process. Sal wanted to scream, but you can’t stop pigs being pigs, so she grabbed her broom and shooed him out by the garden gate.
“Get gone!” she yelled. “You come back, I’ll haul you down to the butcher and you’ll be a raw head and bones by nightfall!”
Third day, she comes out on the porch and there Rawhead is, in the compost heap, with his tail straight, his ears inside out, and a rotten tomato sliding down his chin.
“You don’t learn, do you?” says Sal.
No, ma’am, says Rawhead, and takes another bite of tomato.
You would have had to be a witch to hear him, but it’s not all that surprising. Pigs aren’t that far off from talking, most of them, and it doesn’t take more than a few wishing melons to tip them right over the edge.
Well, things that talk are people, however they look, and you don’t throw people out of the garden without offering them some hospitality. She invited Rawhead up to the porch and gave him a bucket full of water and yesterday’s leftovers, and he sat next to her rocker and thumped his straight tail on the boards.
“How’s that taste, then?”
Tastes good, ma’am.
“I see your momma raised you to be respectful,” said Sal, rocking.
Have to be, ma’am. If you aren’t, she rolls over on you and squashes you flat.
“Huh!” Sal rocked harder. “Not a bad notion. Know a few people who could’ve used a good squashing back in the day.”
It does make you think before you speak, ma’am. He rolled a beady little boar eye up at her. You cook good cornbread, ma’am. Can I stay with you a little while?
“Huh!” said Sal again, and after that, you couldn’t have found a closer pair than Sal and Rawhead the hog.
People tend not to mess with a witch, but there’s always some damn fool who sees a woman living alone and gets thoughts in his head.
The next time someone tried, he got a tusk in his behind and went off yelling.
So word went out that Sal had a razorback hog as her familiar, and that did nothing but good for her reputation.
Well, stories always grow in the telling. Before long, they were saying Rawhead could talk, and after that they said he walked upright and sat in a rocking chair, same as a person.
Couple of people said some other things, too, about Sal and Rawhead, but there are people who say any damn thing.
The truth of the matter, as near as I ever learned it, was that Sal went on and Rawhead went on, and two days out of three, he slept on the porch at her feet and ate her leftovers. A razorback hog is a good friend to have in zucchini season, when the vines get huge and start throwing out zucchinis as big as your thigh. Useful for cleaning up yellow cucumbers, too.
Now, the way I always heard it, Silas the hunter had been one of those men who came sniffing around Sal when she was living alone, and it was Rawhead who broke him of that habit. But I’ve also heard that he was one of those folk who come up and try to give you charity you don't want. There was a lot of that going on up there, and nobody gets mad like a do-gooder if you won’t hold still and let ‘em do good on you.
Maybe he had a bit of a fancy for Sal, not in a marrying way, but thinking that somebody plain and lonely ought to be grateful for any attention. Maybe he thought that having a witch be grateful would be worth some trouble, or maybe he thought that a witch as good as Sal had a box full of money around the place.
But maybe those are just ways to make the story tidy again. The hunter could have just been one of those people who thinks he owns anything that doesn’t have somebody else’s name stamped on it. Lord knows, there’s enough of them around.
One way or the other, a day came along when Rawhea
d didn’t show up, and then another day, and then Sal started to get worried.
It wasn’t like Rawhead to go away for more than a day at a time. His territory was the mountaintop, and he didn’t leave it often. But pigs are social, same as human people, and they like each other’s company. So Sal let two days pass, then three, and then she heaved herself out of her rocking chair and said some words I won’t repeat in company.
She rummaged in her pantry ‘til she found a good saucer, then she laid it on the table and filled it up with water and a drop of ink. The ink melted into the water and turned it black, and she breathed a witch’s breath onto it.
Then she tapped her nail on the water’s surface, and it rang like a bell.
“Good,” she said. “Good. Now, show me the front porch.” (Never ask to see something important right off. Water’s tricky, even with ink to gentle it.)
The water showed her the front porch, with the empty rocking chair and the faded mat by the door. A wren flew up to the railing and looked around for something, then flew away again when it didn’t find it.
“Good,” said Sal. “Now, show me the sheriff’s daughter, who ran off with the horse-thief.”
The water swirled—though the surface didn’t change—and Sal was looking at a girl wearing a clean apron, with a light in her eyes.
“Huh!” said Sal, pleased. “Glad it came out all right for her. Now, show me that razorback friend of mine.”
The water darkened.
Under the table, where the water couldn’t see it, Sal clenched her fist.
Then the water got light again—just a little—
And there was Rawhead.
She knew him right away, even though he was lying dead with three other hogs, in the back of a wagon moving down the road. She knew him just fine, and when the driver turned his head, she knew him, too.
Sal jerked back from the table and the water boiled away into steam.
She sat there for a minute, breathing through her nose, then she stood up. She picked up the saucer, because it was a good saucer with a little ink stained on it, and she washed it up careful, because a lifetime’s habits die hard.
Her head ached and her heart ached, but she folded up the dish towel and set it back on its loop. She would have cried, but she didn’t dare start.
“Somebody killed him,” she said out loud. It felt like a knife, and she stabbed herself with it again—“Somebody went and killed my Rawhead.”
That was better. If she said Rawhead’s dead, she was going to fold right up like a broken leaf, but if she said Somebody killed him—well, then, that Somebody was going to have to pay.
The core of being a witch is that you don’t fall down while there’s work to be done. Sometimes that means you invent work to keep yourself standing upright.
She went to the coffee can in her bedroom and took it down. There was eighty-seven dollars stuffed into it, and Sal took the money out. It was all she had, and not a bad amount, but she didn’t think she’d need it much longer.
Sal’s nearest neighbor was a woman named Madeline, who had a hard life and stayed cheerful for it. People like that are a blessing and occasionally an affliction.
Even Madeline was a little surprised when Sal showed up while she was hanging out laundry on the line. She pinned up a sheet and turned around, and there was Sal, not five feet away.
Madeline yelped. “Lord, Sal, you about scared the life out of me!”
“Right,” said Sal. “Came about the chickens.”
Madeline wasn’t quite done yet. “Seeing you right there like that! My heart’s pounding, so it is. Let me sit down a minute. You can kill a body if you scare ‘em too hard, you know.”
“Don’t have much time,” said Sal bluntly. “It’s my chickens. I’d appreciate it if you’d look in on ‘em tonight and make sure they’re in and fed.”
“Sure, Sal,” said Madeline. And then, though it wasn’t the sort of thing to say to a witch, “You all right, hon? You’re looking hard.”
“Hard times,” said Sal. “Take care of my chickens. If I don’t come back by tomorrow, they’re all yours. Watch for the rooster, he’s a devil.”
She turned away.
Madeline, moved by some spirit, called “You be careful, Sal!” and Sal’s shoulder twitched, but she didn’t make any reply.
She walked into town without talking to anybody. She watched for a certain wagon out of the corner of her eye, but she didn’t see it, and she was glad.
“I’ll fix him,” she muttered. “I’ll fix him good for this. But I got to figure out a way.”
That’s the real problem being a good witch all your life. Time comes when you need to do something real bad, and you don’t have the knack for it. If she’d seen the man who murdered Rawhead walking down the street, what would she do?
She didn’t have the sort of magic that made people drop dead. Hardly anybody did.
“I’d yell at him like a crazy old woman,” muttered Sal, “and that’d be the end of me. Just some senile old woman yelling in the street.”
But the wagon wasn’t there, and she was still a witch.
So she walked on south for an hour, into the sandhills, looking for Elizabeth Gray.
Sal found her sitting on the front porch, looking over the sundew pool. Sundews are little devil plants, covered in sticky hairs, and when a bug lands on them, the sundew sticks it tight and eats it from the inside out.
Elizabeth Gray found their company congenial.
Sal came up on the porch with her heart in her eyes, and there were two chairs there, and a second cup of tea set out.
“Have a seat,” said Elizabeth Gray.
Neither one of them saw fit to comment on the fact that Sal had been expected. They were both witches, and they knew how things were done. Sal took a sip of her tea and it was still hot, like it had just been poured a moment before.
She let out her breath, and her throat ached from not crying.
“Got a problem, I see,” said Elizabeth Gray.
“It’s my hog,” said Sal. “My friend. That hunter shot him—Paul Silas did it, and he knows full well that was my Rawhead.”
“Silas,” said Elizabeth Gray thoughtfully. “Didn’t his mother come from over by Bynum?”
“That’s him. She wasn’t a bad woman.” Sal took another slug of tea. “Good thing she’s dead. No mother ought to see what I aim to do to him.”
Elizabeth grinned. “Listen to you,” she said. “A white witch and all. What are you planning?”
“Don’t know,” said Sal honestly. “Had a thought, that’s all.”
And then she took a deep breath and said the words that witches hate to say, even to each other. “Need your help.”
The porch creaked as Elizabeth rocked in her chair. Down by the sundew pool, the plants rippled.
“What’s in it for me?” she asked. “That I ought to help you, who never did give me the time of day?”
“That ain’t fair,” said Sal. “You had your spot and I had mine. You ever asked, I’d have come. You know that.”
Elizabeth Gray knew it, even if she didn’t like to admit it. She tilted her head one way and another, and her neck bones popped and creaked like an old man’s knuckles. “It’s so. And you’re in my spot now.”
“I’ve got eighty-seven dollars,” said Sal, and laid it out on the table between the teacups.
“You should’ve said,” said Elizabeth Gray, all business. “Now, what is it you’re looking to do?”
Sal told her.
The sun moved a little bit in the sky before anyone spoke again.
“Listen,” said Elizabeth Gray, “listen close. You’re asking me to bring him back, and I can’t do that. Nobody can. You walk through that door and there’s no walking back through. You know that, Sal, you’re a witch to your teeth. You ever hear of anybody coming back for good?”
Sal stared into her empty teacup. “Thought you might have,” she said quietly. “Figured maybe there was a way
.”
Elizabeth Gray shook her head, and that was truth, because witches don’t lie to each other.
Sal stood up. She went down the steps and made three paces.
Then she sank down by the pool filled with sundews and put her bony hands over her face, because her friend was dead.
Elizabeth Gray’s face didn’t change. Her heart was still like sand and triumph ran through and pity ran through and neither one sank in.
But things do grow on sand, complicated things like sundews, and something grew now in the witch’s heart that I wouldn’t try to put a name to.
“I can’t bring him back,” said Elizabeth Gray. “But if you’re willing, I can open the door.”
Sal looked up, her face streaked with an old woman’s tears.
“It’ll take your life,” said Gray, as if a witch’s life wasn’t any big thing. “Somebody’s got to shove their foot in the door. He’s all the way dead and you’re all the way alive, and if you’re willing, I can take you both halfway. I don’t swear you won’t wind up in one skin together, but it’s the best I can do.”
Sal thought about it. She thought about it hard, the way you do when every word in your head has an echo and you slam it down on the floor of your skull. She sat by the sundew pool and she thought, and Elizabeth Gray brought her another cup of tea, but all of it was second-guessing. She’d known what she was going to say as soon as Gray had made her offer.
“Do it,” Sal said.
I’m not going to tell you what the spell was like. You think I want that sort of thing being common knowledge? You need a silver spoon to see by and a half-handful of rabbit tobacco, among other things, but that’s as much as you’re going to hear. Some stuff doesn’t need to go any farther. You want to know details, go ask Elizabeth Gray.
She did the spell, anyhow. People say it was a hard spell, but I think that’s because most people don’t understand magic. It was easy, the way dying’s easy or birthing’s easy. It’s not hard, it just hurts a whole hell of a lot.
Sal sat in the sand, because it was easier that way. Her hip joints ached getting her down, and she didn’t think she’d be able to stand back up, but that didn’t matter, because she figured she wouldn’t be standing up again. Not in this life, anyhow.
Jackalope Wives And Other Stories Page 9