by Bill Crider
“I’m sorry,” Vera said. “I thought I might be able to help, but it looks as if I just got them cranked up again.”
“Don’t say anything,” Sally told her. “Just look at them.”
Vera caught on quickly. She’d been a teacher for as long as Sally had, and she knew how to deal with unruly students. She stood beside Sally without moving anything other than her eyes, which roved over the small crowd. Sally had to admire her impassivity, which was even more practiced than Sally’s own.
It took a bit longer this time, but after a while the volume of the chanting got lower and lower until Jennifer was carrying on alone. Then she stopped, too.
“You’re trespassing on my property, you know,” Sally said into the silence.
It was getting closer to dark now, but she could still see Jennifer’s thin, intense face. Her eyes were as brilliant as if she had a fever.
“If you’re not gone in two minutes,” Sally said, “I’m going to go back inside and call the police.”
“We’re within our rights to be here,” Jennifer said.
Sally wondered who was giving her such bad legal advice. She wished she had her Ladysmith. If she fired a couple of shots over their heads, even Jennifer might change her mind.
Or she might have a stroke.
Or the bullet would hit an innocent bystander a few blocks away.
As satisfying as it would be to see Jennifer Jackson’s face as Sally pulled out her roscoe and blazed away, it was better to leave the pistol right where it was.
“We don’t want witches teaching at our college,” Jennifer said. “When you resign, we’ll leave.”
“You’re going to get very hungry out in my yard if you wait for me to resign. And the dew is awfully uncomfortable in the mornings.”
Jennifer thought that over for a while.
“We’ll leave now, but we’ll be back. You can’t corrupt the youth of our town anymore with your satanic ideas.”
Sally hoped Vera would keep quiet. This was no time for a lecture about the fact that Satan didn’t figure into the religion of Wicca.
Vera took a deep breath, and Sally nudged her with an elbow. Vera let out the breath slowly and said nothing.
“The thing is,” Sally said, “that there are no witches here, and there are no witches teaching at HCC. You’re mistaken about that, even though you don’t seem able to admit it.”
Jennifer pointed her sign at Vera.
“We know about that woman’s pagan book. You can’t deny that it exists and that it belonged to her.”
“Yes, and whoever stole it could be arrested for theft,” Sally said. “Besides, Ms. Vaughn owns quite a few books on different religions.”
Jennifer gave her cohorts a triumphant look, and Sally realized her mistake. To Jennifer, to own a book written about any religion other than Christianity was probably just as heinous a crime as being a witch.
“They’re for the courses she teaches,” Sally said, and then she clamped her mouth shut as she realized that was the worst possible thing she could have said.
“Corrupting our kids!” Jennifer said, pumping her sign. “Witches get out! Witches get out!”
“There they go again,” Vera said.
“Sorry. I made the mistake of thinking we were dealing with rational people.”
Jennifer put down her sign and picked up a cloth carryall that had been sitting at her feet. She reached in and brought out something that Sally couldn’t quite see. Then she threw it, and an egg splattered on the side of Sally’s house.
“She’s a total bitch,” Vera said, “and she throws like a girl.”
“Which is a good thing,” Sally said, as another egg hit the wall not far away.
“Are we going to stand out here and get egged?” Vera asked. “Or are we going out there in the yard and beat the crap out of them?”
Sally wasn’t sure that was a good idea.
“There are a lot more of them than there are of us. And we’d be lowering ourselves to their level.”
Vera shrugged. “As if I cared about that.”
“What about Jack? We could use a little help since we’re so outnumbered.”
Vera looked over her shoulder. “He was right here a second ago. I don’t know where he went.”
She sounded a little disappointed, as she’d expected Jack to be at least as macho as she was.
“Maybe he had to use the bathroom,” Sally said.
“Maybe he’s just a coward.”
Sally thought about some of the things she’d been through with Jack.
“He might not be Sir Galahad,” she said, “but he’s no coward.”
Another egg hit the wall, much closer this time.
“She’s getting better,” Vera said. “If we’re going to take them on, now’s the time.”
“Do you want to call Jack?”
“Two tough chicks like us? I don’t think we really need him, do you?”
“No,” Sally said. “Let’s go beat the crap out of them.”
So they went out into the yard to do just that.
18
“Jennifer Jackson is mine,” Sally said as they stepped out of the house. “Do you have any favorites?”
“I’ll take whoever I can get,” Vera told her.
The Mothers Against Witchcraft appeared somewhat alarmed when Sally and Vera began to advance on them. They all retreated a few steps, except for Jennifer, who held her ground.
And she held her sign, too, brandishing it like a club.
“You’d better stay away from me,” she said. “I have a right to defend myself.”
“You need to get a lawyer, just to make sure,” Sally said.
She grabbed the posterboard and gave it a jerk. Jennifer was so surprised that she let go of the sign. Sally dropped it to the ground and stepped on it.
“Get off my property,” she said. “Before you get hurt.”
“I’ll sue you for assault!”
“I haven’t assaulted you yet. But I’m thinking about it.”
While she was thinking about it, Sally looked for Vera, who, as Sally might have guessed if she’d tried, was shoving her way through the other women to get to Sherm Jackson. Leave it to Vera to go for the man.
The women weren’t trying to stop her. They were mostly just getting out of her way. Sally didn’t think they’d expected a fight.
Instead of looking for Vera, Sally should have kept her eyes on Jennifer, who reached down for the sign. She grabbed hold of the stick and wrenched the sign from beneath Sally’s feet, throwing Sally off balance.
As Sally stumbled backward, Jennifer swung the sign like a baseball bat and hit Sally in the side.
It didn’t hurt, since the posterboard had too much wind resistance to allow Jennifer to make an effective swing, and the sign didn’t weigh much anyway. But it made Sally angry. Until that moment, she had been perfectly calm, but getting hit by the sign put her over the line.
For just a second she wished that she were a real witch, one with the power to give Jennifer Jackson blood to drink. Since that wasn’t possible, she did what she thought was the next best thing.
She stepped up to Jennifer and punched her in the stomach.
It wasn’t much of a punch, but it took Jennifer completely by surprise. Her mouth made an O of shock. She dropped her sign and staggered for two steps before sitting down on the ground. Hard.
Sally, who was almost as surprised as Jennifer, recovered more quickly. She picked up the sign and snapped the stick in two over her knee. She tossed the pieces to the ground and gave the other women a who-wants-a-piece-of-me-next look.
Nobody did. The women were all backing away, trying to escape. A couple were already getting into one of the cars parked at Sally’s curb.
Then Sally saw Vera, who was boxing Sherm Jackson’s ears.
Sherm wasn’t trying to fight back, and he wasn’t doing much to defend himself, either. Vera seemed to be having a wonderful time, and she might have ke
pt it up forever if it hadn’t been for the sirens.
Sally heard them faintly at first, but they rapidly increased in volume. As they did, the Mothers Against Witchcraft moved more quickly, dumping their signs and jumping into cars. In less than a minute, two police cars turned the corner and came squealing to a stop, but the Mothers were one step ahead. Three carloads of women peeled away from the curb at almost the same moment the police cars’ sirens started winding down.
In fact, only two Mothers remained, Jennifer and her husband, and Sally wasn’t really sure that a man could be counted as a mother. Well, she supposed it was possible, metaphorically speaking.
Sherm stood in front of Vera not saying a word. He looked dejected, as well he might, considering how Vera had boxed his ears.
Jennifer sat on the grass, still panting a little as if she couldn’t quite catch her breath. Sally allowed herself a small grin. She knew it was wrong to feel good about what she’d done, but she couldn’t help herself.
She stopped grinning when the uniformed cops reached her. They didn’t look happy.
“All right, what’s going on here?” one of them said.
“Trespassers,” Sally told him. “I was trying to get them out of my yard. They wouldn’t go, and one of them”—she pointed to Jennifer—“hit me with that sign.”
The cop picked up the half of the sign that had the posterboard on it, turned it over, and read it aloud.
“Mothers against witchcraft,” he said. “What’s that?”
Sally didn’t think she could explain it, but she didn’t have to. Another car arrived at the curb, and Lieutenant Weems got out.
He walked over to Sally, shaking his head. Then he looked up at the darkening sky.
“Why me, Lord?” he said.
Sally didn’t even try to answer that one. He wasn’t talking to her, anyway.
“Are you going to file any charges?” he asked Sally after his brief communication with the sky.
She was about to tell him that she hadn’t given any thought to what she was going to do, but he didn’t let her speak.
“No,” he said, “you’re not.” He looked down at Jennifer. He didn’t offer to help her get up. “And you aren’t, either. Get your sign and get out of here.”
Jennifer stood up with an exaggerated look of pain and annoyance. The cop handed her the sign, and she picked up the other piece of it. Clutching the pieces to her chest, she stalked over to join Sherm, who was now looking more sheepish than dejected. They didn’t speak. They just got into their SUV and drove away.
There were still several abandoned signs lying in the yard. Sally wondered if the Mothers could be arrested for littering, but she didn’t think this was the time to ask.
Vera came over to stand by Sally and punched her upper arm.
“I guess we showed those candy asses,” she said.
Clearly she felt no guilt about having taken advantage of Sherm. Sally found that she wasn’t sorry for hitting Jennifer, either.
Weems sent the other cops away. When they’d left, he joined Sally and Vera.
“You two are a lot of trouble. I shouldn’t have come, but I figured I owed Neville a favor.”
“You gave me the third degree,” Jack said, coming out of the house. “Coming over here was the least you could do to pay me back for my pain and suffering.”
“There wasn’t any pain. And anyway I apologized for that.”
“Not exactly. I don’t think you ever said ‘I’m sorry.’”
“And I’m not going to say it, either,” Weems told him. “I was just doing my job.”
Vera said, “That’s what all the jackbooted fascists say.”
Sally didn’t know if she was joking or not.
Weems looked Vera over. “I’m beginning to be sorry I came to help you out. I should have let those uniform boys haul you off to the jail for the night. A few hours in the tank might have changed your attitudes. And it would have served you right.”
“I’d like to see you try hauling me off,” Vera said.
“Yeah,” Jack said. “You should have seen her whipping up on old Sherm Jackson.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, just in case the gentleman decides to file assault charges.”
Sally wondered why the police always referred to criminals as gentlemen and ladies. It had always seemed odd to her that when a police spokesman was being interviewed on TV, he would say something like, “The gentleman we’re looking for has already shot two people tonight, and we consider him very dangerous.” Or, “The lady stabbed her husband thirty-five times.” Sally didn’t regard shooting people as gentlemanly behavior, nor did she consider stabbing a particularly ladylike activity, but maybe she just wasn’t being politically correct.
“Nobody’s going to file assault charges against me,” Vera said. “And if he does, I’ll kick his butt.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, either,” Weems said. “But that’s it. If I ever owed you a favor, Neville, it’s taken care of. We’re even.”
Jack nodded. “If you say so.”
“I just did. I have a lot more to worry about than some little neighborhood rumble, and I’m afraid the three of you might be mixed up in it.”
Sally didn’t like the sound of that one little bit.
“What are you talking about?” she said.
“You don’t really want to hear it, but I’ll tell you this much. Your friends who just left will love it if you’re implicated.”
That sounded even worse.
“Don’t play games with us,” Sally said. “We have a right to know what you’re talking about if you think it has something to do with us.”
“Maybe you do have a right, at that. I guess I can tell you. You’ll be reading about it in the paper tomorrow anyway. You remember your friend Curtin?”
“How could we forget?” Jack said. “But he wasn’t our friend.”
“Yeah,” Weems said. “I know that. I also know that he didn’t die of natural causes.”
Sally had been afraid that might be what Weems had to tell them.
“How did he die, then?”
“It wasn’t a curse, if that’s what you’re wondering. Maybe it was supposed to look that way, but thanks to some smart police work, we figured it out.”
“Figured what out?”
“That Curtin was poisoned,” Weems said.
19
Sally never missed a class unless there were compelling reasons why she should. In her entire teaching career, she had missed exactly one day of school because of illness, though she had missed more than that in order to attend conventions or teachers’ meetings that were held out of town. In those cases she had always found someone to take her classes for her and either teach the assignment or give a test.
But on the day after the Journal editorial, she seriously considered giving her American literature class a walk. She just didn’t feel up to going into the room and facing Wayne Compton and the rest of the students. She might have stayed in her office with her door closed if Vera hadn’t come by and given her a pep talk.
“You can’t hide in here and eat Hershey bars forever,” Vera said. “Although I have to admit it’s an attractive idea.”
“How did you know about the Hershey bars?” Sally asked.
She’d thought the candy was a secret from everyone except Eva. After all, keeping candy, and for that matter any other kind of food, in the office had been expressly forbidden by order of Dean Naylor, who claimed that it attracted roaches and ants. Sally didn’t believe it, so she ignored the order.
“Everybody knows about your Hershey bar habit. Your office is practically right across from Wynona’s, and you never close your door.”
Sees all, knows all, Sally thought.
“I should have known. Have you forgiven Jack for calling the police last night?”
“I’m going to let him suffer for a little while longer. We didn’t need the cops. We had that bunch of wimps on the run.”
Sally had to admit that Vera was right about that, but she felt she had to defend Jack.
“He was just trying to help.”
“If he wanted to help, he could have come out in the yard and done some of the fighting.”
“Not that we needed him,” Sally said, and Vera laughed.
“No, and he did the sensible thing. I’ll forgive him later today.”
She went off to get ready for her own class, and Sally sat at her desk and tried to concentrate on what she was going to say about Poe’s “Berenice.” She liked to approach it as a story of vampirism, having recently read an article on the topic by two professors named Blythe and Sweet. It had appeared in Poe Studies, and Sally had found it convincing. But it wasn’t easy to think about fictional vampires when there was a real murder to be considered.
From what she had been able to coax out of Weems after he’d told her that Curtin had been poisoned, Sally gathered that Curtin had been drinking more than a little the evening of his death. He might not have been falling-down drunk, but he was close to that point. He was so drunk, in fact, that he never noticed when someone slipped a glass filled with poison into his hand.
Except that it wasn’t really poison. It was what Weems had called a “cationic detergent.”
“Like fabric softener,” he’d said.
“You mean that stuff is poison?” Jack had asked. “I use it in my laundry.”
“Yeah, but you aren’t drinking it. And you’d need quite a bit of it, or a more concentrated solution, to kill yourself. It can wreck your esophagus and cause vomiting, which is what happened to Curtin. That’s where the blood came from, not from any curse. Someone wanted us to think it had to do with witchcraft. Maybe trying to throw us off the track.”
That last remark had made Sally feel a little better, and she asked about the time of death. Weems had given her a puzzled look, as if wondering why she wanted to know, but Sally didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell him that several people from the college had been at a meeting with Curtin the evening he’d died, even if Fieldstone had asked her to do it. Now wasn’t the time. So she told him she was just curious.