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believed it. When he went back to the garden to join his mother, he was whistling under his breath, and
the sound made Ma look up and smile with relief.
* * * *
There had been a tale used by mothers and grandmothers to keep their children in line, down in the
Brakes when Wash was little.  If you're not good, we'll call Miz Lena on you. She'llwitch you! That had
been enough to bring even the most rambunctious child into line.
Now, as he turned out of the ruts marking the lane into the Dooley place, Wash considered deliberately
bearding that little old lady in her den. It still scared him to think of it, and he wondered if it wouldn't help
to take someone along who knew her and might have some influence with her.
He remembered Auntie Libby telling him that Boze Blair had been carrying groceries and such out to the
McCarver place for many years. If he could catch Boze at home, maybe the old fellow would go with
him to visit the little witch. Not only would it make it easier to approach her, but Wash felt it might be a
bit safer for him, too.
He still had those childhood visions of a sharp-eyed old lady with dangerous abilities. His mother's
description of Lena had stuck in his mind for over thirty years, he realized, and as he turned off on the
oiltop leading to the Blair farm he found himself clenching his teeth.
What a way for a big, tough grown man to act! he thought. He ought to be ashamed. But he kept right
on going toward the turnoff to Boze's place.
After World War I, Joseph Blair had used his veteran's bonus and bought, for a dollar an acre, most of
the land on a long sandy ridge rising above the Nichayac River bottoms. There he cut enough timber to
build a frame house, where he and his Nancy reared four sons.
Two of those sons died in World War II. The remaining two, Boze and his brother Titus, had farmed
together until Titus died of snakebite some ten years before. Now Boze and his wife lived there alone,
their own children being grown and gone to make a living in some less depressed area of the state.
Wash had known Boze since he was a child. In fact, back when Boze hauled hay for the dairy farmers
that used to be so numerous in Nichayac County, Wash made most of his school money helping him load
hay bales in the field and unload them into barns or sheds. Even after he went away to college, he'd spent
several summers working with the old fellow.
 So Boze was a known and comfortable quantity. Wash intended to sound out the old fellow before
asking him to go with him to the McCarver place. If anyone down here knew about strangers poking
around in the river bottom country it would be Lena.
When Wash turned into the long, tree-shaded drive, he could see the Blair pickup parked before the
arbor vitae bush that flanked the yard gate. He was in luck. Old though he was, Boze stayed busy, if only
visiting neighbors or playing dominos in the shade of the oak tree beside the general store.
Today he was sitting in the swing in the side yard under his pecan tree. His lap was full of late fall peas,
and he and his wife were shelling them into big pans, dropping the hulls into bushel baskets at their feet.
A brindle cow was watching them, her head hung over the lot fence some yards from the scene of
action, waiting. Wash grinned. She knew she'd get the hulls, in time, and her mouth was already
watering.
He honked politely and got out of the car. Three hound pups came lolloping out from under the arbor
vitae and began yipping and growling and worrying his shoe-laces.
"Sandy! Pinch! Grover! Get down now, the old man yelled.  Come in this yard, Wash, and shell some
peas. Bet it's been a coon's age since you did that."
"Not since July, anyway, Wash said.  I need some help, Mr. Blair. You mind if I sit down and tell you
about it?"
Blair's colorless wife rose and slipped into the house, as her generation had been taught to do when
there was  man talk to be conducted. That was one of the main things that bothered Jewel about going
with him to the back country.
Wash took her place and picked up her basin of peas, shelling absent-mindedly as he talked.  You
know there's been a lot going on down here, I'm sure, he said.  Not much of my business, until now.
Maybe not altogether my business now, but somebody has burned the sheriff's house, right there in town,
and I take that to mean I've been invited to the party. A rattle of peas hailed into the pan.
"I know nothing much goes on down here that the old timers don't know about. Of all your bunch, Lena
McCarver probably knows the most. I want to go see her. I'd like for you to go with me, if you don't
mind. I'm still... he felt sheepish at saying the words ...  a little scared of her."
 Boze snorted and spilled a handful of peas into the sun-cooked grass at his feet.  Well you might be,
boy. Well you might! I've knowed that woman for fifty years, and I'm a'scared of her, too. He spat into
a clump of ageratum.
"Be glad to go with you, boy. Leave the rest of this to the old lady to finish up. It's a good thing you
come around to me,  cause Miz Lena has locked her gate and hid her road. I got me a key, long years [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]