The Salem Witch Society

by K. N. Shields

  The man hauled Grey to his feet, then drew back a massive fist to finish him off. Grey, still holding the noxious liquid in his mouth, stuck the burning brand directly between their faces and sprayed the Sagamo Elixir. The man fell to the ground, screaming as he slapped at burning bits of hair. Grey seized another small cask from the wagon and smashed it down on the man’s crown.

  He hauled the unconscious body a safe distance from the wagons, then tossed the cask onto the fire and watched the smoke drift skyward. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Fire! Fire! The wagons are on fire!” He repeated this twice more, collected his broken walking stick, and disappeared into the trees.

  11

  An hour after the confrontation with the mob, Lean sat in a midsize tent with his ankle wrapped in a cool compress. Grey’s fire had startled the mob into thinking their means of escape had been sabotaged. The spirit of the attack had been broken, and the men had fled into the night. The whole affair ended quickly, keeping major injuries to a minimum on both sides. Lean suffered a twisted ankle in the melee and also came away with bruised knuckles. Now he and Grey were inside a makeshift museum of Indian artifacts that served as a bunkhouse for the performers after the shows. Chief White Eagle was present, as well as several Abenaki men of various ages who were around a table, smoking and playing cards. The kind-faced fortuneteller, Sister Neptune, was tending to Lean after taking care of some other cuts and bruises. Also present was the attractive Indian sharpshooter, who, Lean observed, was taking a keen interest in Grey’s minor scrapes.

  The fortune-teller handed Lean a clay mug. “Drink this. It will help keep the swelling down.”

  “Thank you, Sister Nep—”

  “Agnes. Just call me Agnes. Least I can do for your help out there. That could have been a load of trouble.”

  Lean took a sip and nearly spit it out. “My God! Tastes like cat piss.”

  “Well, when you move about the way we have to, you learn to make do with what’s at hand.” Agnes smiled at Lean’s incredulous look. “Don’t worry, it’s a simple herb-and-bark tea.”

  Lean forced down a second sip, then handed the mug back. He stood up and limped over to Grey. “We should be going.”

  Grey glanced at his pocketwatch. “I doubt the train will be coming back after all this. And the road to Old Orchard won’t be safe for us to walk tonight. Besides, you’re in no condition to be moving about on that ankle.”

  “I told my wife I’d be home,” Lean said.

  “Listen to your friend,” said Agnes. “After all, a husband who’s late is better than one with a cracked skull.”

  “We’ll bunk here on spare cots. Your wife will understand,” Grey said.

  One of the card players passed a bottle to Lean. “If you’re staying, you might as well have something real to take care of the pain.”

  Lean took a swig and felt the harsh warmth rush down into his chest. He handed the bottle to Grey, who passed it along without drinking.

  Chief White Eagle spoke in a quiet voice. “I don’t know any called Grey. What was your father’s name?”

  “He went by Poulin. Joseph Poulin.”

  The chief nodded in recognition. Lean was not surprised by the name, being familiar with the practice of Indians in Maine to assume names showing a French-Canadian influence.

  “I knew him,” said one of the other men at the card table. He paused and peered at Grey. “I remember you now too. Wouldn’t have known you if you hadn’t said the name, but now I see it plain enough. Scrawny kid, you were.” The man stubbed out his cigarette. “I was there the day they found your father. When they pulled him out of the water below the falls. He was a good man, though I suppose you know that well enough.”

  “Thank you. I don’t actually recall. Awfully long time ago.”

  Lean stared at Grey, astonished to hear that his father had drowned when Grey was just a boy. Even more surprising was that Grey hadn’t so much as blinked at the mention of such a tragic event from his childhood.

  “Let us not dwell on the troubles of yesterday.” The chief moved toward the smoking circle around the card table. He motioned Grey and Lean to join them.

  “Yeah. Not when there’s today’s troubles to worry about,” said the man who had spoken of Grey’s father.

  Lean shook his head. “I expected a few minor incidents after news spread of the killing in Portland. But nothing so big, not such a mob over a prostitute’s death.”

  “She was still white, and we’re still not,” said one of the Abenaki men.

  “Men’s passions are like a massive boulder perched on a mountainside,” said Chief White Eagle. “In a civilized society, they seem held in place, solid among the rocks. But things have a natural inclination to return to the lowest point. A man’s basest instincts are no exception. Often only the smallest push can set them in motion. And old hatreds are as steep as any slope I have ever seen.”

  “Welcome to the reservation, Deputy,” said the other man as he raised his glass and let out a sorry laugh. “Sorry to tell you, but it sits square at the bottom of a great, wide mountain.”

  More drinks were poured, and a long-stemmed pipe was passed around. It took Lean a moment to get a proper handle on the bowl. He wasn’t used to pipes in general and had never smoked one of this length and shape. Lean’s new friends all had a good chuckle over his struggle. When it came to Grey, he examined the pipe in his own grip, took a small puff, then passed it on.

  Some of the other men spoke in low tones in Abenaki. Grey was trying to follow their conversation, but with limited success. Chief White Eagle noticed this.

  “They wonder at how far you have gone from the old ways. They think perhaps you look down on us, think we put on these costumes and play at make-believe for the amusement of the white men.”

  Grey shrugged. “Everyone has to earn a living. I don’t begrudge any of you that. Though I do question the honesty of the images that you portray here.”

  Chief White Eagle thought about that for a moment before answering Grey. “We all take on identities that are not true to ourselves. Sometimes we choose to become what the world expects to see of us, who the world thinks we should be. Perhaps you think it reflects poorly on you. You wonder, if this is how the white man sees all of us, then how does he see you?”

  Grey gave the chief a bit of a smile, raised the cup that had been poured for him earlier, and took a small drink. The others around the circle were more enthusiastic with the bottles, and before long the stories turned to past episodes of troubles encountered as they moved among white people. Most of these ended without harm, though the mention of the infamous beating death of an elderly Penobscot man named Denny caused a stir.

  “And what about Old Stitch?” said an Indian man.

  “That wasn’t murder,” said another. “The old witch just drank herself to death.”

  Lean looked up. The name of Old Stitch stirred a faint memory in him.

  “No, but it was murder years ago when they burned her house out,” said the first man.

  “She wasn’t even an Indian,” argued the second.

  Agnes held up a palm to quiet the two men. “It just shows that the white man’s hatred isn’t reserved for us. Anyone who lives apart from their ways, in harmony with nature, seeking to learn from the earth rather than be her master, is to be feared.”

  As the Indian men went on with their stories, Lean turned to Agnes. “Old Stitch. That name’s familiar. Tell me about her.”

  “I knew her a long time ago. She was a fortune-teller like me. Only she worked as a spirit medium.”

  “And she died recently?”

  “She made potions, and she drank a lot. Probably grabbed the wrong bottle.”

  “Why was she called Old Stitch?” asked Lean.

  “Her real name was Lucy. Old Stitch because she made her name crafting poppets.”

  “Puppets? What, like Punch and Judy stuff?

  “Poppets,” Agnes said. “Cloth dolls, the k
ind you might stick a pin in.”

  “She have a last name?” Lean asked.

  “I can’t tell you what it was.”

  “And what about that business years ago? There was a fire, and someone was killed.”

  “That’s the story. They tried to kill her one time. In the early days, when her and the boys were working out of Back Cove.”

  “The boys?”

  “Yes, her two kids—different fathers, of course. And hardly an ounce of kid in them. They earned what little keep they got.”

  “How so?”

  Agnes’s eyes drifted up. “Her customers would ride out over Tukey’s Bridge to see her down there by the cove. When they left, one boy would be in the woods nearby and tail them back. He’d signal the other at the far end of the bridge. That one would follow the carriage to their houses to spy on them, eavesdropping, reading mail, then sealing the letters back up. When a customer came for a second visit, Old Stitch could tell them so many details about their lives that they’d believe anything she said.”

  “Seems a harmless bit of graft.”

  “Harmless for the clients,” Agnes said. “Not them boys. Blamed them for her lot in life and made sure they knew it. If she got paid, they would eat. Maybe. Them two were thinner than shadows. Lived on whatever they could steal, catch, or dig out of the cove mud. If they couldn’t get what she needed on a customer, they’d feel it on their backs. She kept them in absolute fear. Had poppets of each of them that she’d threaten to burn. It went on like that for years. Until they burned her out.”

  “Who did?” Lean asked.

  “Some church folk got wind of her ways. Came down with torches crying witchcraft and bloody murder. After that, she came along and traveled about with us for a while. A few years later and she was back at the cove, talking to spirits and selling medicines to all sorts of ladies.”

  “So someone died in the fire.”

  “One of her boys. The little one, I think.” A hint of sadness lingered in Agnes’s voice.

  12

  Grey stood on a large, flat rock two hundred yards out on the jetty. He ignored the local fishermen farther along the rocks, working the outgoing tide for the striped bass that fed at the mouth of the Saco River. He stared across the water, dull beneath a slew of morning clouds. Free from the distracting smells and sights of the Indian encampment, he refocused on the scene at the Portland Company: Maggie Keene laid out like a pentagram on the dark, exposed earth. Why would the killer go through the tremendous effort to pry up the floorboards? It would have been quite a task even for several men with the right tools. He gave his mind a shove in the direction of the murder inquiry and then let it go. To his annoyance his thoughts kept circling back to the night before and the mob of club-wielding locals. His mind raced on to another image of armed men, decades earlier.

  The men spoke politely to his mother, but he could not ignore the menace of the shotgun held casually on the shoulder of one man. Another man collected their family possessions into a sack. The cabin door hung loose in the frame. They were hustled along, out into a four-wheeled carriage. There was the crack of a whip, and the carriage bolted forward. He glanced back at the cabin, all dark and empty like a discarded shell. He clung to his mother as they sped along the bumpy road. He started to ask for his father before he saw his mother’s glistening eyes and remembered everything.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To your grandfather’s.”

  “N’mahom?”

  “No, your white grandfather. In Portland.” She laid a warm palm on his cheek and smiled through her tears.

  Lean glanced at his pocketwatch: half past seven. He favored his swollen ankle as he navigated the uneven granite blocks that made up the jetty. His head ached, and he felt unsteady from drinking too much the night before. He continued his slow progress until Grey was only twenty yards ahead, facing out to sea with his hands behind his back.

  “Any sign of that bear?”

  It took Grey a moment to react and turn toward Lean. “What bear?”

  “The one that slipped into the tent last night and shit in my mouth.” Lean managed a feeble smile before he turned his head and spit into the ocean, trying to clear out the taste of cheap whiskey and Indian tobacco. Lean watched the waves slosh against the side of the jetty. “‘Break, break, break, / On thy cold gray stones, O Sea! / And I would that my tongue could utter / The thoughts that arise in me.’”

  Grey looked aside at Lean.

  “You never did tell me why you came here. What you were looking for?” Lean waited for a response, then added, “A killer’s on the loose. If you know something that will help bring him in, you have to tell me. Whether he’s one of your people or not.”

  “My people? I was seven years old the last time I lived with Indians. After that, I spent years sequestered with the finest tutors in Portland and Boston, until I was socially skilled enough to no longer be an embarrassment to my grandfather. Then I was sent packing to the finest schools and colleges in New England. Once old enough to direct my own education, I spent six years in Europe studying under the greatest criminalists in London and Paris. Even Professor Gross in Vienna. A tenuous statement at best, to call the Indians my people. You needn’t worry about any old sympathies of mine.” Grey turned and began to walk along the top of the jetty, back toward shore. “None of us is the child he was at age seven.”

  Lean let the words hang in the air as he followed behind. There was a gravity in Grey’s voice that convinced him the man was sincere. “Fair enough, Grey. Then tell me why the killer’s not an Indian. The message above the body was in Indian, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Taking the simplest view of facts is certainly a wise course.” Grey stopped and pulled a notebook from his side bag. “Provided you have all the facts.” He wrote the message from the Portland Company and held it out for Lean to see.

  “The chalk message was Kia K’tabaldamwogan paiomwiji. But I noticed that something about the writing wasn’t quite right. Old Chief White Eagle, or whatever his true name is, confirmed it. ‘Thy kingdom come.’ Kia means ‘thy’ or ‘your,’ but adding it to this sentence is unnecessary. The ‘K’ at the start of K’tabaldamwogan already functions as the possessive pronoun. As written, the killer’s message really is more like ‘Thy kingdom of yours come.’ It’s grammatically incorrect. An amateur’s mistake. The author has studied the language, perhaps, but is not a native speaker.”

  “Maybe he’s an Indian who simply can’t write well,” Lean said.

  “I don’t think so.” Grey motioned to the middle word. “He also used an ‘o’ toward the end of K’tabaldamwogan. An Abenaki would have used this symbol.” Grey traced a figure eight on the page. “It represents a nasal vowel not found in English. Though it’s approximated in English with an ‘o,’ a native writer would have used the figure eight.”

  “Hardly conclusive. Rather trivial details to conclude that the killer is not an Indian.”

  “Trivial details are often the most telling.” Grey returned his notebook to his bag and starting toward the shore again. The pair reached the beginning of the jetty and paused on the sand. “And so,” Grey continued, “I have not yet formally eliminated the possibility that an Abenaki is indeed the killer. But there’s a false element here. I can’t yet put my finger on it, but something doesn’t fit with an Indian as the killer.”

  “That may be enough for you, but I have to do my duty and follow the evidence as I see it. If you’re going to pursue your theories … well, I won’t try to stop you. So long as you do it quietly.”

  Grey nodded and tipped his hat.

  13

  A full day later, Archie Lean sat outside Mayor Ingraham’s City Hall office. He mentally sorted through the dozens of reports and letters, many anonymous, that had landed on his desk from people with suspicions as to Maggie Keene’s killer. Eventually the secretary’s voice summoned him.

  Lean closed the office door behind him, and Mayor Ingraham stare
d up from his large desk. “Where have you been all morning?”

  “Following up on tips. Plus a stop back at the consulate.” Among the other trouble caused by news of the murderer’s race, a man attached to the Spanish consulate had been mistaken for an Indian and assaulted.

  “Well, forget about that for now.” The mayor handed over a letter. “This came to my house this morning.”

  Lean opened it and saw a message written in blocky letters, which he read aloud. “‘I am writing so you will know your errors. Of course I’m not an Indian! The Master is above all others. I stand with the Master, above them. The black man serves the Master. In the third month, the month of the Master’s power, you will see the truth and know I hold the Master’s power. You will know this in time.’”

  Lean looked up from the page. “The strangest of the lot, but I’ve seen a dozen—”

  “This came with it.” Ingraham’s face was pale as he set a small folded section of leather on his desk. With a pen he lifted the flap open to reveal a dark object.

  It looked like a bit of meat. Lean moved closer for a look.

  “Dr. Steig’s come by already. It’s the tip of a human tongue, and it would match the section cut out of Maggie Keene’s mouth. The man’s a savage.”

  “Yet he’s angry at being made out as an Indian.”

  “Mad that he’s been revealed,” the mayor said.

  “If that’s true, then why would he leave Indian writing at the scene?” Lean read through the killer’s note once more. “He mentions something happening in the third month. So is this the second month? Maybe Grey was right about an earlier murder.”