Witness Read online

  well, i don’t know what the klan would make of her.

  when she was still down here,

  she bought all her shoes

  from the jew store.

  merlin van tornhout

  just can’t keep himself out of trouble.

  with all the talk about

  leopold and loeb

  he goes driving off to

  rescue his 15-year-old girlfriend

  from an orphanage in burlington

  and gets hauled into jail for kidnapping.

  boy’s got spirit, i’ll give him that.

  his girl told him she wanted out,

  and he drove up there to spring her.

  they were caught in vergennes,

  mary placed in custody

  of a policewoman,

  merlin arrested and held in the lockup.

  he should be back in a few days.

  reynard alexander went and pitched for him.

  it helps having reynard alexander for a friend.

  i should know.

  constable johnson told me it’d be better

  if i watched my step after the trouble

  i got in

  trying to help mary.

  did you have to buy so many, viola says,

  looking at the stack of phonograph records.

  harvey closes his eyes and breathes deeply.

  when i go in the music store,

  i want everything, he says.

  viola says:

  if you would only sit in the booth and try out half a dozen records

  before you buy, you’d know exactly what

  you’re getting, you’d

  get exactly

  what you want.

  harvey says:

  i did get what i wanted. why should i spend half my life

  squeezed inside a soundproof cubby,

  when i can come home

  and listen in peace in my own chair.

  viola says:

  we’ll see how much peace you get, mr. pettibone.

  i was hoping to put

  new linoleum on the floor this month.

  now it looks like we might just have to

  nail your records down

  instead.

  we took a pine

  40 feet high and

  lashed a cross arm

  to it and set the

  cross in the ground,

  its arms stretching above the town. we soaked burlap bags

  in kerosene and wrapped the bags around the wood.

  at the foot of the

  cross i smashed

  a railroad torch.

  the fire took off

  so fast. a divine

  sight, neighbor,

  the flames spread

  from the base to the

  top. in a matter of

  minutes the cross arm

  pulsed with fire. the

  flames leaping,

  seeking heaven,

  neighbor, the white

  crucifix scoring

  the night

  blazed perfect.

  perfect.

  i don’t care what constable johnson says.

  before i left for work,

  i went up with johnny reeves and them

  and we lit up prospect hill

  with a fiery cross.

  the kerosene took off so fast.

  burned so fierce. christ.

  i can still see it when i close my eyes.

  i woke up Saturday night

  because the light coming through

  my bedroom window changed.

  on the hill across the valley

  i saw

  a flame

  rising.

  but it was

  no wild fire. it

  was a

  cross,

  burning.

  silently,

  silently,

  i crept down the hall,

  into the closet

  where,

  at the back,

  mamma’s cotton dress

  still dangled over her shoes,

  and the walls smelled of hair oil and oranges.

  in that dark and narrow place,

  i opened a hole for myself

  but no matter how i turned,

  the light from the cross

  curled its bright claws under the door.

  down in town,

  families listened to the independence day concert,

  while up on the hill a fiery cross was set ablaze.

  it started burning about the time the band finished

  the star-spangled banner.

  only a lunatic

  would ignore the dry conditions,

  or the fact that a crackling fire

  could spread so easily out of control.

  or perhaps it was the work of children

  stirred by griffith’s birth of a nation,

  that racist rubbish,

  which will not fade away.

  sara chickering did take me for a walk

  on the other side of flat rock

  from where the cross did burn

  the other night.

  sara chickering did grumble about men in their nightshirts

  with their filthy wet hems

  and i did laugh at her

  so serious

  and ask her the names for all the flowers,

  all the growing plants like

  ebony spleenwort and

  rusty woodsia.

  as we did walk through the meadow

  back to sara chickering’s house

  we did see flowers with more good names

  like violet and saxifrage and cowslip,

  and we did see birds with the most happy namings like

  meadowlark

  and bobolink

  and savanna sparrow.

  they did make a music in the shimmery air

  and there were flickers and

  orioles and

  bluebirds turning circles.

  and as i did look up to give thanks to sara chickering for all the namings,

  a whippoorwill had singings

  and the music did come from sara chickering’s mouth.

  i was born protestant.

  but i’d join the catholic church

  before

  i’d throw my lot in with the klan.

  i never thought much about it before.

  if esther hadn’t needed a place the last minute

  with all those fresh air kids coming to town,

  i never would think of it still.

  i might have joined the ladies’ klan.

  become an officer, even.

  klan can seem mighty right-minded, with their talk of family virtue,

  mighty decent, if you don’t scratch the surface.

  there’s a kind of power they wield,

  a deceptive authority.

  i think a lot about it these days.

  the klan says they don’t stand against anyone.

  but a catholic, a jew, a negro,

  if they got arrested,

  and the judge was klan,

  and the jury was klan,

  you can’t convince me they’d get a fair trial.

  it took having the hirshes here

  to see straight through

  to the end of it.

  someone did wrap a letter over a stone and they did send it

  through sara chickering’s kitchen window.

  i have not knowings what the letter said.

  daddy would not give readings of the words to me.

  he did say a hiss word like steams coming from the teakettle

  and make slow shakings of his head.

  sara chickering,

  when she did read the letter,

  she made angry sayings.

  when sara chickering does get angry she is

  walking

  so fast,

  like a dog who has needs for squats.

  she does go so fast
sparks are coming on the braided rug.

  daddy did say he would sit at the table and not have sleeps.

  sara chickering let me have sleeps in her bed.

  daddy did say nobody not anybody not even klan is hurting little girls

  and

  i can have sleeps with no fearing.

  i like

  having sleeps with sara chickering

  except it does make me

  hungry in the hot night

  when sara chickering is all

  smelling

  of spicy green tomatoes.

  ira hirsh

  saw in the paper

  an ad for a flat on main street.

  five rooms,

  completely furnished.

  he asked if he should take it.

  get the klan to leave me alone.

  i can’t imagine life without that child under my feet,

  asking a thousand questions

  with that odd way of hers,

  talking to the animals

  and the plants

  and the furniture

  as if everything

  was talking back.

  i can’t imagine life without that child.

  i told mr. hirsh so in so many words.

  damn klan.

  to think of what they could drive from my life

  with their filthy

  little

  minds.

  sara chickering did come with me

  and we did gather

  sticks and sticks of rhubarbs from the garden.

  we did put the rhubarbs in my wagon

  and have squeaks, squeaks to town,

  pulling the rhubarbs behind us all the places

  and we did sell sara chickering’s rhubarbs,

  ten sticks a nickel.

  and we had comings back with the rattle-empty wagon,

  and five jingle nickels.

  caught iris weaver

  with twenty bottles of bootleg whiskey in her car.

  but the man she was with

  said it was his hooch and iris didn’t know what all she was carrying.

  now i know it was iris running that booze,

  but the gentleman’s going to jail for her,

  serving the sentence she ought to serve.

  if you ask me,

  a girl goes and bobs her hair and her head starts

  filling with nothing but monkey business.

  heard talk around town that

  the hearse of a slain klansman

  caught fire on its way to the cemetery.

  what do you suppose the lord

  was trying to say about that?

  neighbor,

  as the hearse drove

  past hundreds of persons

  lining the sidewalks,

  an act of god,

  a thunderbolt

  struck the car itself,

  sparking it to

  smoke and flames.

  an act of god,

  neighbor,

  to express the lord’s anger

  that one

  of his special children

  had fallen.

  on arrival in a town,

  the klan appears to serve the best interest of

  the greater community,

  ”cleaning” it up, keeping a vigilant eye out for

  loose morals and lawbreakers.

  they deliver baskets to the needy,

  and money to the destitute,

  but the needy the klan comforts are white protestant needy,

  the destitute white protestant, too.

  a catholic with troubles, a negro, a jew, a foreigner?

  their problems are of no concern to the klan.

  from state to state,

  from town to town,

  men join who cannot be trusted.

  unscrupulous men

  who work in the dark

  behind hoods and masks.

  it takes but ten dollars.

  and when that sort of scoundrel

  starts hiding under hood and robes,

  no good can come of it.

  i have reached the pinnacle, neighbor.

  tapped by the exalted dragons.

  i, neighbor, led the klan

  in their opening prayers.

  the gathering prayed with me,

  neighbor, in the summer morning

  with the bees humming in the clover.

  they prayed with me as i declared the klan a

  movement of god.

  heads uplifted, we offered ourselves to the almighty,

  calling all

  protestants

  to band together

  for the sake of home and country

  and we sang

  america.

  i was on my way up main street when i saw esther.

  she was picking stands of dandelion, talking her strange talk

  about birds and kittens, about lewis and

  stopping the train

  so she could take flowers to heaven and visit her mother.

  i walked with her a while, listening,

  then waved goodbye at the bottom of main street hill.

  i hadn’t gone far

  when i heard the train whistle.

  i couldn’t see the tracks

  or esther

  but

  i saw my mother,

  running

  and i

  started running, too, toward her,

  racing between buildings.

  then my mother was gone, but there was esther,

  looking up,

  still as a rock,

  gazing at

  that big train,

  rushing down on her,

  expecting it to stop and let her on.

  i pretty near flew

  it didn’t seem i could ever move fast enough

  but i ran

  as the whistle shrieked

  as the brakes screamed

  as the fireman crawled out onto the grinding locomotive.

  the train was nearly on top of her when i leaped,

  grabbed esther, and rolled her to safety,

  locked in my arms,

  the two of us cradled in a mess of seed and dandelion.

  leanora sutter

  snatched esther from the path of the maine central locomotive,

  racing the engine while the fireman crawled out

  in the hope of a rescue,

  an impossible rescue.

  they saw esther on the tracks.

  set their brakes

  but the train was so heavy,

  it ran a quarter mile more

  before

  screeching

  to a

  stop.

  in that wrenching stretch

  the men were certain they’d killed her.

  can’t hardly think of anything

  but leanora sutter

  in my kitchen last winter, wrapped in my best quilt,

  and yesterday, esther, wrapped in

  leanora,

  inches from the railroad tracks,

  safe in a nest of dandelion.

  i do have the prickle scratches on my legs and on my arm

  from where

  leanora did push me down in the tangle grass

  and sara chickering says in a big scold voice

  that i am never, never, ever stopping a train

  not ever, never, never on the train tracks.

  but

  i do miss my mamma and her summer

  skin.

  wright sutter

  received a letter

  in the mail

  warning him to leave town.

  whoever wrote that letter said

  they saw the article about leanora

  saving the hirsh child from the train.

  said,

  they’d tie them both to the tracks next time,

  make sure neither walked away.

  fearing for leanora,

  sutter took the
letter to percelle johnson.

  johnson

  asked the head of the local klan what they knew about such threats.

  klan said,

  we didn’t send it.

  put a colored girl in the paper,

  call her a hero,

  just cause she saved a kid

  from being hit by a train.

  a jew kid.

  i could have saved the kid.

  i saw it, too. that train

  tearing along the track.

  i saw it, too.

  i didn’t run like that colored girl did.

  i didn’t try.

  maybe i was thinking no one could.

  no one could beat that train.

  but the colored girl,

  i never saw anyone move so fast.

  she ran like a deer,

  like a deer in a rifle sight,

  one you let go

  cause there’s no way to hit

  a swift brown rush weaving through the trees like that.

  i’m not saying she did anything i couldn’t have done,

  but when i think on it,

  maybe i didn’t try because something,

  something kept me in my place,

  watching that colored girl run.

  bossie did stray from the pasture

  into mr. hobart’s garden

  where she had eatings of all the good green stuffs

  and she did have happy goings up and down the garden rows.

  when mr. hobart had wakings up,

  he did see our bossie

  in his garden,

  and he did take his gun and fire at

  bossie.

  bossie is a smart cow

  and right away she had runnings home to us.

  the animal doctor did make a good promise that

  bossie does not ever have the living coming out of her.

  and i am having big glads to hear this

  because i do like it better to play with

  bossie with the living in her.

  some klansmen, goosed on bootleg whiskey, broke

  into the basement

  of the roman catholic cathedral in burlington

  expecting to find

  tanks and guns,

  airplanes and acid,

  ammunition enough to level new england.

  all they found was dust,

  some worn vestments,

  and a dented chalice,

  which they stole.

  what is the ku klux klan?

  is it the patriotic organization it claims to be?