Witness

by Karen Hesse

  jerry

  went away to have the long sleep.

  i could have standings upstairs and

  call downstairs

  things for jerry to do

  and he did do what i say.

  after i did leave the fresh air of sara chickering the first time

  to have seeings of daddy in new york,

  jerry had leavings too.

  sara chickering says he did go to find me.

  sara chickering did have such sad feels when jerry did

  leave and i did leave too. she

  did ask all people who

  do love dogs to bring home her jerry.

  but no one had knowings where jerry did go.

  then a lady did send a letter from connecticut,

  and sara chickering did go all that way to see

  if the lady had jerry.

  when sara chickering did come to the house in connecticut

  she made callings from outside

  and jerry did bark all the happy feels in his heart

  and sara chickering knew she did find her own jerry.

  and he did come home to wait with sara chickering for me.

  and when i did come again to stay

  and i did bring my daddy,

  jerry did come with me every day to the post office

  to fetch sara chickering her mail.

  but today i did go to the post office without my friend jerry.

  i did have to tell my feet every time to make one step

  and one step more.

  my feet did feel so lonely.

  if a dog dies between night and morning,

  neighbor,

  it is blamed on the

  klan.

  a threat came from the klan, in the form of a letter,

  advising me to be careful what i print

  and what i say,

  or the day would come

  when i would not print or

  say anything again.

  it has come to pass that ordinary,

  sensible,

  hardheaded vermonters

  are entertaining these

  kluxers.

  but surely the moment will pass,

  and the same ordinary,

  hardheaded,

  folks who invited them in,

  will sensibly suggest the klan

  pack up their poison

  and go.

  the president and his wife

  will be coming through town soon

  on their way to plymouth

  to visit the grave of their young son,

  taken this year from them,

  the same year that brought me esther.

  sara chickering helps me dress up

  like i am a goblin

  and i do dance through the doors of the schoolhouse

  and i do sing a goblin song

  in my clothes of green that sara chickering did sew for me.

  leanora sutter did dress like a gypsy

  and she had sittings by a cauldron

  where she did stir the air inside with a big shovel

  and she did tell the fortunes to the bob-haired

  chatterbox girls

  and now they do not have fearings

  of being old maids

  because leanora did tell them

  it would not be so.

  the room did have streamers of black and orange.

  and owls and black cats and witches on their brooms had flyings

  up the walls.

  we did eat of carrot cake and cheese sandwiches and

  we did drink pots and pots of cocoa

  and i don’t ever have rememberings of so much fun.

  one of the things i like best about mr. hirsh is

  that he didn’t move himself up here

  thinking how rich he would get

  on the backs of some rustic vermonters.

  he just came up to keep his daughter happy

  and to sell shoes.

  johnny reeves’ mother

  slipped me a letter

  when she came in the store to do her shopping.

  i think johnny’s in trouble,

  she wrote. i caught him with

  a schoolgirl, she wrote. he said he was teaching her

  about the good book,

  but it looked like something different to me.

  he’s a good son, she wrote,

  but he’s been awful

  quick to anger lately.

  i know how important that klan is to my johnny,

  she wrote.

  maybe you men could see to helping him,

  lost lamb that he is,

  maybe

  you

  could lead him back to

  god’s pasture.

  we threw johnny reeves

  out of the klan.

  imagine a grown man

  a preacher

  forcing himself on a child.

  viola says:

  what you looking at, harv?

  harvey turns from the mirror to look at viola.

  would you say my head is small?

  viola looks at the enormous

  locust stump of a head on harvey’s shoulders.

  yes, harv, your head is small.

  harvey grins.

  it doesn’t matter, he says. small heads can have

  as many brains in them as big heads.

  i happen to know i have a very well-filled head.

  viola smiles and says:

  harvey, that sounds like the reasoning of a man

  with a small head.

  meeting of the klan

  and every man standing

  demanding those coloreds, the sutters,

  get out of town,

  and the hirshes,

  worse for the hirshes,

  who stained a pure

  christian woman

  by mixing their jew selves

  up with her.

  but the shoe man and his kid, they’re just living there.

  in private, harvey pettibone handed me rat poison

  from his store.

  pour it in sutter’s well,

  he said.

  but it’ll kill them!

  no, he said, though

  it will make them pretty

  sick.

  and he didn’t look too happy about any of it,

  but the exalted cyclops was looking on

  so harvey pushed the poison at me.

  that’s when the roar started inside my head.

  there is only one way

  to redeem myself

  with my klan brothers.

  only one way

  to redeem myself

  with god.

  someone did shoot my daddy

  right through sara chickering’s door.

  and my daddy did have so much

  blood rushing out of him

  and sara chickering did leave me alone with my daddy

  and i had so quiet talkings to my daddy and

  sittings on the floor

  next to his poor head

  and he did listen to every thing i did whisper in his big white ear

  but he had the bad kinds of breathings

  and all the blood kept

  rushing out of my daddy

  and the bullet went clink in

  the water pail.

  i was called to see to ira hirsh,

  who moved here from new york with his little girl.

  i found a soft-nosed rifle ball had passed

  through ira’s left arm above the elbow,

  scratched a two-inch gouge across his chest,

  then passed through his right arm

  to land in a

  waterbucket beside the table.

  sara chickering sounded rattled enough

  when she phoned from iris weaver’s.

  sara chickering, who never gets rattled.

  doc, i left him with esther. i’m sure he’s bleeding to death.

  h
urry.

  when i got to sara’s kitchen,

  she had ira on the floor and she and

  esther were holding handkerchiefs tightly to the wounds.

  sara said he was sitting at the table after dinner

  and in his lap was esther, not leaning back in his arms as usual,

  but leaning forward,

  studying the crossword puzzle he’d just finished.

  someone came onto the porch, so silent, and sara’s dog

  dead.

  the curtain was shut. they must have aimed their rifle

  through the keyhole.

  why would someone do such a thing?

  i asked sara.

  klan,

  sara answered.

  one viola sleeps,

  she is so soft and warm when she sleeps,

  and i am silent as i come in

  from night riding.

  sent a boy to do a man’s job.

  then i wasn’t man enough

  to finish it. i never thought it’d come to

  this. thought i’d be helping the law,

  not breaking it.

  viola pats the bed for me to

  join her.

  she makes room for me in her sleep.

  i cannot get in bed with viola.

  when i couldn’t put the poison in sutter’s well,

  i went to harvey. he said they’d come after me, the klan would.

  i don’t have any choice but to run.

  esther might have heard the gunman

  with those ears of hers,

  but she won’t talk about it.

  how grateful i am that she was leaning forward

  over mr. hirsh’s crossword puzzle.

  if not she would have taken the bullet herself,

  straight through,

  and she wouldn’t be alive now,

  clinging to my nightgown,

  even as she sleeps.

  sara chickering did feel afraid this morning

  to go out and do the milkings

  and deliverings of her creams and butters.

  i did come out in my chore clothes to help her

  and she had smilings for me

  and chasings off of her afraid

  like a big horse, rolling off the itchings.

  it did take a long time

  for all the people who wanted to have talkings with us

  but we did finally have done all the chores

  and i did stay home from school.

  been interviewing people all day,

  trying to figure who stood on sara chickering’s porch

  and fired a shot through her kitchen door.

  mr. hirsh is at the randolph sanatorium,

  resting comfortably.

  how’s the child resting i keep asking myself?

  how’s the person resting who fired that shot?

  and where the hell is merlin van tornhout?

  persecution is not american.

  it is not american to give the power of life and death

  to a secret organization.

  it is not american to have our citizens judged by

  an invisible jury.

  it is not american to have bands of night riders

  apply the punishments of medieval europe to

  freeborn men.

  the ku klux klan must go.

  daddy says:

  the k.k.k.

  went and burned down the great bethel african church in chicago.

  i feel that old rope of dread

  dragging up the ridge of my spine

  daddy, i say,

  the klan burns down a negro church in illinois,

  they rob a catholic church in burlington,

  they try killing a jew right here.

  well, they’re just giving white folks a bad

  name.

  giving white folks a bad name, daddy repeats

  and he starts to laughing, and then,

  i’m laughing, too.

  until the laughter turns on us and we are wringing grief,

  our faces touching,

  our hands entwined.

  first time we’re right together like that

  since mamma’s gone.

  i hate calling for help.

  but i just couldn’t get to the bottom

  of ira hirsh’s shooting

  and i couldn’t let go,

  especially with things in town the way they

  are with the klan.

  detective came over from boston, a mr. wood.

  it didn’t take him long to uncover all the dirty little

  things that were going on here,

  the letters sent to mr. hirsh

  threatening to tar and feather him

  if he didn’t move out of sara’s place.

  it was merlin van tornhout wrote those letters.

  i thought i knew merlin. he’s got some roughness to him,

  but i never thought he’d try killing anyone.

  especially with that little girl on mr. hirsh’s lap.

  but merlin disappeared the night of the shooting.

  what else can i think?

  detective wood says it was merlin for sure.

  says he come up on foot around dusk,

  peered through the keyhole in the kitchen door,

  saw mr. hirsh seated at the table

  with esther on his lap.

  thought he could get two with one shot.

  says merlin fired through the door

  as soon as sara left the kitchen to put the dishes away in the pantry.

  just doesn’t sound like merlin van tornhout.

  harvey says:

  viola, what have you done with my phonograph and records?

  viola is silent. she simply hands harvey a thank-you note.

  it is with sincere appreciation

  that we accept these useful gifts.

  the residents at the winslow home for the aged

  will get such pleasure from your donation of

  a phonograph

  and fine record collection.

  harvey says:

  what did you do, viola?

  viola says:

  i’m trying to buy back your good name, harvey pettibone.

  you with your broom sales

  and your liquor smashing

  and your klan.

  but you don’t make it easy.

  harvey turns like a slow mule

  and lumbers back into the room

  where his phonograph once sat.

  he touches the table where the feet of the

  phonograph left a divet in the lace cloth.

  merlin van tornhout couldn’t have shot ira hirsh.

  i know

  because he was here

  standing by the well.

  i know merlin was here.

  he looked straight at me,

  i looked straight back.

  it happened the same time someone

  shot a bullet through

  sara chickering’s kitchen door.

  whoever fired that shot,

  it couldn’t have been merlin.

  i saw them

  in their hoods,

  in their robes,

  like ghosts.

  they were like ghosts. but

  it was the klan who

  knocked at my door.

  who came after me.

  why come after me?

  i am redeemed.

  they do say that merlin van tornhout

  did shoot my daddy.

  i think merlin did go on the heaven train

  after the bullet did come through sara chickering’s door.

  no one can see merlin since that night.

  he did go like the kittens, and lewis, and my mamma.

  but he did not come onto sara chickering’s porch with a rifle

  before he left on the heaven train.

  merlin didn’t make a bullet shoot through my daddy.

  i know.

 
i did see who did.

  percelle johnson found

  johnny reeves

  wandering,

  exhausted,

  hungry.

  he was branded on the back

  with the letters

  k.k.k.

  and was suffering from shock,

  unable to give

  any

  explanation of his condition.

  it’s been weeks now

  since merlin van tornhout disappeared.

  i don’t know where he’s gone.

  darn that boy.

  the radio station over in schenectady

  broadcast his description.

  but it didn’t bring him back.

  merlin’s got family down near boston.

  they put the word out on the boston stations, too.

  no reply.

  we got word that a boy was found,

  but it wasn’t merlin.

  that boy went home to

  his true family,

  and merlin’s still missing.

  percelle johnson found

  a baby girl,

  two days old,

  stuffed in a shoe box,

  wrapped in newspapers,

  tied with a heavy cord,

  and left behind a tree to die.

  what is this world coming to?

  i always wanted a baby girl.

  harv caught me sniffling over the pork chops.

  there, there, vi, he said, patting my shoulder with his beefy hand.

  there, there.

  i wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

  thirty years ago

  the people of this country

  tolerated 200 lynchings a year.

  now, though the klan does its best to stir up racial strife,

  there have been

  only five lynchings reported.

  we have antilynching laws on the books.

  but that isn’t why necks

  are less often

  swinging in nooses.

  it is the people

  saying no.

  i swear i saw merlin van tornhout yesterday.

  he was walking along a back road in plattsburg, new york.

  i slowed down, called “hey, merle.”

  he looked up.

  called “hey” back.

  i turned the packard around,