Witness Read online

  plenty of room to carry a load.

  and it’s got damn good springs.

  have you seen the way the girls dance?

  sinful, neighbor, sinful.

  these girls

  doing the unspeakable gyrations of satan.

  with each step they unravel the

  moral fiber of our country.

  they must be stopped.

  not by law, neighbor,

  not by legislation. this is no business of the government.

  it is up to us, neighbor.

  it is up to us to lock our daughters in

  until they learn to behave,

  until we destroy in them

  the wanton will of satan.

  the flapper

  is not the least bit alarming,

  nor a sign of the declining social standard.

  though she drinks cocktails and shows an inordinate fondness

  for lipstick and the rouge pot,

  we have nothing to fear.

  i doctor these women

  and i have seen over the last years a transformation in them.

  and what i see,

  the opening of roses kept bud-tight so many years,

  it warms this aging soul.

  they say maple sugar

  is becoming as old-fashioned

  as the paisley shawl,

  but to see esther hirsh suck on a lump,

  her face star-blissed with

  sweet delight,

  i think that old-time maple,

  it’s still all right.

  harvey says:

  the ku klux are here, vi.

  there’s not a thing to stop them. we might as well join them.

  why not?

  they’re not low-down, like some folks say.

  they’re good men,

  100 percent american men.

  and they might bring us some business.

  viola says:

  in texas, harvey,

  those “good” men thought a certain fella was

  keeping company with a married lady.

  they had no proof of hanky-panky, harv.

  they beat him, anyway,

  held a pistol to his head,

  said they’d kill him if he didn’t clear out.

  harv, you don’t want to join a group like that.

  but harvey says:

  that’s just rumor.

  they have parades, vi,

  and picnics,

  and speakers from all over.

  wouldn’t you like that?

  picnics and speakers?

  viola washes up the dinner dishes,

  her hands gloved in soapy water.

  they do good, vi. they take care of their women.

  and liquor can’t ever tear up a family with them around.

  harvey examines a spot on one of the glasses.

  shouldn’t we join, vi?

  viola shakes her head slowly back and forth.

  no, harv, viola says. i don’t think we should.

  this paper is neutral.

  this editor is neutral.

  i have attempted to remain neutral

  in the face of the klan question

  and i intend to continue neutral

  until i have reason

  to do otherwise.

  teacher says lewis won’t be coming back to school.

  he got himself killed yesterday

  playing in the sandbank. it

  buried him.

  he was alone.

  lewis was always alone,

  down in that sandbank,

  making big sand cities

  that he limped away from when his ma

  called him home for dinner,

  big sand cities willie pettibone and those boys

  came in and wrecked

  so lewis’d have to start again.

  this time the sand slid right down on top of lewis

  and buried him

  in the very city he was building.

  i am being buried, too,

  in all this whiteness.

  well how do you like that.

  down in texas,

  mrs. miriam ferguson,

  the wife of the impeached governor,

  defeated the klan candidate

  by 80,000 votes

  to win the democratic nomination for her state.

  if she wins,

  she’ll be the first woman

  governor in

  this whole damn country.

  imagine.

  if we join the klan, harvey says,

  we can wipe out bronson’s grocery by next year, vi.

  all the klan members will shop here,

  even if they live closer to bronson.

  bronson’s made his feelings against the klan clear.

  if we join up with them, how long could bronson last? six months, nine?

  viola says:

  and what about all our regulars, harv?

  we make this store “klan only”

  we lose a lot of business.

  where do you think they’ll all go?

  harvey says:

  it doesn’t matter. that little bit of business,

  it won’t be enough to keep bronson flush, vi. you’ll see.

  i don’t think so, viola says.

  folks ask why i never married.

  i watched my

  father swallow his breakfast whole and rush away,

  leaving mother with us children to be readied for school,

  lunch to be prepared for noon,

  washing to be done,

  and the fitting out of a big evening meal.

  father would come home late,

  tired out,

  falling asleep in the best chair after supper,

  while mother put the house to rights,

  got me, my brothers, my sister

  and, finally, father off to bed.

  from morning until night,

  every day of the week,

  that was mother’s life.

  father got a holiday from time to time.

  mother never did.

  that’s why i moved out and came to work on the farm.

  soon as i could i bought it for my own.

  all these years i’ve managed fine without a man.

  i may work as hard as my mother,

  but i’m drudge to no one.

  we shall reign in the kingdom,

  neighbor.

  we shall form a great fist,

  and we shall still those who oppose us.

  we shall strike them out,

  wipe them out,

  blot them out.

  together we cast a long shadow, neighbor,

  and with our shadow

  we cast our foes in darkness.

  we cast those who are not like us into the arms of satan.

  every one of the lord’s lambs wants the light shining on him,

  neighbor,

  every lamb can see the right way when he is

  standing in the light of the lord.

  every lamb, once he has known the light,

  cannot endure the darkness.

  come stand with me in the light, neighbor.

  there was a boy in chicago,

  a rich boy.

  he was kidnapped.

  the kidnappers wanted $10,000

  from the boy’s daddy

  to bring the boy back alive.

  only he was already dead.

  even before the ransom note came,

  the boy was already dead,

  naked in a ditch, miles away from his house.

  that boy was fourteen.

  and now he’s dead.

  and he was rich.

  and he was white.

  my brain did get hurt yesterday.

  doc flitt says

  it did get hurt a little like senator greene.

  i was having chasing games with margaret

  and i did fall and hit my head on a rock.

&n
bsp; the rock made big heart beatings in my eye.

  i did find my way home to sara chickering

  with the good dog jerry helping me

  but i didn’t feel any good feelings anywhere.

  and then my eyes did see only darks

  and i did get confused and

  thinkings i did drown in sand

  the way lewis did with his lame leg.

  and then lewis did take my hand

  and he gave me showings of the way back home

  to my nice little bed in sara chickering’s house.

  this morning i did wake up

  and my brain is all good feelings again.

  and i can have seeing again and the darks is all gone

  and the big heart beatings is just a little thump thumps.

  doc flitt says

  i am like senator greene

  only i did get better so much faster.

  the chicago police did it.

  they solved the case of that murder

  of fourteen-year-old bobby franks.

  it was the spectacles that

  led detectives to the slayers.

  nathan leopold, jr.,

  son of a millionaire manufacturer,

  and richard loeb,

  his companion,

  were taken into custody

  for kidnapping and killing their neighbor.

  the reports say both leopold and loeb are smart,

  students at the university in chicago.

  they made full confessions to the charges,

  said they’d been planning the job

  since november.

  if leopold had not dropped his spectacles,

  if the spectacles had not been so uncommon,

  they would have gotten away with it.

  they would have gotten away

  with murder.

  it took two of them

  my age

  to kill one skinny jew boy.

  two of them.

  planning every detail.

  they rented an automobile, killed the kid,

  dumped the body, buried the boots and belt buckle

  in different places.

  they planned for weeks to kidnap,

  to kill.

  to see how it felt.

  to prove they could.

  it didn’t matter about jail,

  or being haunted by a ghost,

  didn’t even matter about going to hell.

  if i wanted to, i could kill someone all by myself.

  wouldn’t need anyone’s help,

  and i’d make damn sure i got some money for my trouble.

  but they were rich jew kids.

  what do you expect?

  caught a

  german

  carp

  just below

  the falls.

  measured

  two

  and

  one-half

  feet and weighed

  37 pounds.

  caught it on

  plain old

  silk line.

  esther helped.

  my daddy said mr. field, the uncle of miss stockwell, our landlady,

  was feeling poorly

  and i might take myself over to see

  if i could be of any use.

  when i got there i washed up his dishes

  and swept his floor

  and boiled some potatoes for his supper.

  while i worked he talked.

  at first i didn’t listen.

  mr. field is a white man

  with cheeks shrunk in enough to make his

  ears and his eyes too big for the rest of his face.

  and a neck so scrawny,

  not a collar exists that could tighten around it.

  he started in on war stories.

  civil war.

  he told me about being a bugler for his regiment.

  but he said that didn’t keep him out of danger.

  he was standing right beside a colonel who was shot through the middle.

  mr. field said: i saw the brigade of negroes under general burnside.

  like a long streamer of dark silk they were.

  he stared off through his wire spectacles,

  the lenses so dirty

  even if his eyes were clear

  he couldn’t have seen much.

  they were a sight, he said.

  that line of negroes,

  marching toward the rebels,

  straight as a dress parade.

  what happened to them, i asked,

  expecting nothing good.

  mr. field said: why,

  those negro soldiers chased the rebels out.

  every one.

  i made a pie for mr. field.

  he kept talking.

  i don’t know if he could see me well enough

  to judge the color of my skin.

  i don’t know if my color mattered one whit to him.

  he just said:

  you come by anytime, miss sutter.

  you move nice and quiet

  and you make my kitchen smell like it

  did when i had a wife here. and i do

  like a flaky apple pie.

  i marched home in a straight line,

  with my back tall,

  and thought about that regiment of men

  like a streamer of dark silk.

  when the barn cat did have her six little kittens

  sara chickering had takings of the baby kittens

  away from their mamma.

  what did you do with the little things?

  i did ask sara chickering.

  sara chickering said the kittens did go far away.

  that is what they said about my mamma, too. she did go

  far away on the train to heaven.

  will the kittens come back? i did ask.

  no, sara chickering said. the kittens won’t come back, esther.

  if the kittens come back they will eat the birds.

  if the birds are eaten they can’t catch the bugs.

  then the bugs will come and kill my crop.

  that’s why the kittens are gone.

  i do like the little kittens. even when they are blind

  and have no fur and move around like

  pink baby tongues and smell like

  warm rubber balls. i do like to watch them.

  i did go along the railroad tracks to find where

  sara chickering left the little kittens. i did think i could find them

  before they had leavings on the train to heaven and

  i could be their mamma and keep them in the woods

  and make them eat only warm milk and biscuit.

  but i could have no findings of the little kittens.

  hey, vi, harvey says.

  did you know the average woman

  is happiest when she prepares food in her own kitchen

  and sits down with the family to enjoy it?

  viola is cutting up chicken in the back room.

  where’d you hear that, harv?

  harvey says: johnny reeves was in the store

  picking up groceries for old mrs. reeves.

  he had a crowd gathered around him

  and he was preaching. he said we’d all be better off if we

  got the family

  out of the restaurant

  and back to the dinner table.

  he said the average woman,

  she loves her home and family first.

  she might have got distracted

  when she was earning wages

  while her man fought in the great war.

  but the trend is the other way now.

  viola says:

  was iris weaver in the store when he was doing this preaching?

  harvey says:

  no. matter of fact he waited until she left.

  viola nods and smiles.

  i guess he did.

  it’s not hard putting up with mr. hirsh.

 
; he isn’t like my father.

  maybe since he’s so young.

  he washes dishes,

  helps with chores,

  he even does a turn at the stove every few days.

  he bathes esther,

  reads to her in all manner of voices,

  makes us both laugh till our sides hurt.

  he washes her clothes,

  gets her to school and helps her with her homework.

  best man i ever saw.

  i know i shouldn’t be running liquor.

  and maybe i’ll end up in jail.

  but i paid for this restaurant

  by transporting hooch

  and i’ve made enough

  to fork out tuition for two of my brothers

  and my baby sister, who is smart as sateen,

  and would have been trapped in this valley forever.

  when i was taking care of mr. field,

  doing the light chores,

  keeping him alive with my plain

  cooking and housekeeping,

  i told him about helen keller and how she was blind all the way

  and how i wrote her a letter.

  and he showed me a

  remington portable typewriter,

  almost new.

  you have any use for that? he asked.

  for your letter writing and all?

  no sir, i said.

  i would have liked a machine like that to write on.

  but if i went carrying a big old

  typewriter home from

  dickenson street

  all the way to

  mather road,

  constable johnson,

  he’d get ten calls before i got halfway to the covered bridge,

  telling him how the colored girl

  stole some

  expensive machinery.

  not worth the trouble.

  mary said:

  what about we get married, merle?

  you’re almost done with school,

  you got that night job at the paper,

  we could live on that.

  come bust me out of this place, merle.

  i like mary fine.

  maybe enough to marry her.

  but i don’t know.

  she wrote a letter to johnny reeves

  asking if he’d do the ceremony and

  if we could get married in ku klux robes,

  with flowers embroidered over the fiery cross.

  and johnny reeves said, yes.

  but i never yet have

  paid my 10 dollars to the klan.

  and mary,