if it were a snake it would've bit you

On account of her never having had children of her own, and being alone in that old house for all those years since the untimely (and, some would say, Lord knows I never would, but some would say suspicious) death of her husband (though you have to admit it’s queer as anything, no one ever could explain how in God’s name poor Abner ended up down the bottom of that well), she took quite a shining to the young Miller boy when he began to be of help, and would always invite him in after he’d done whatever his Pa sent him down the hill to do; mending a fence or wrangling a calf; and so often you’d find him sitting on her porch with a cool cup of water in one hand and a biscuit in the other that one might get the impression he was her son, she so doted on the boy, and really it was heartening to see, wasn’t it, after so many years of her being alone; of her being hid away in that drafty place with not a soul for company (it being some time, you remember, before anyone’d go back down that way for anything, after Abner’s eerie passing, rest his soul); and the Miller boy being as he is (one foot in the fairy ring is what Gran would say), well, he was lonely himself, I’d be willing to bet, and being as he is (a kind soul, too gentle to hurt a fly; Mr. Dorsey never forgot the time he near fainted at the sight of a rooster being slaughtered, bless him) seemed to have no trouble looking past her reputation as a (again, I’d never be the one to say this) murderous witch, if even he knew her reputation at all (I don’t see how he couldn’t have, even a solitary child like himself, when you think of that awful rhyme that got sung so often in the schoolyard, and the way the older boys would dare each other down that valley road on dark nights), so the two of them got on as well as two very odd and quiet persons can, like a pair of mismatched animals finding the same shelter.

Well, once enough curious folk saw that the Miller boy wasn’t afeared of her, and that there was no harm in letting her dote on him (his mother tried, Lord didn’t she, to keep the boy away, but with their eldest married (to that Catholic girl, you remember the talk) and living two villages over, Mr. Miller had no help but his youngest, and too much land to look after besides, so down the boy went every week to the widow’s house just as his Pa bade him), once folk saw with their own eyes just how content that boy was to be in her company, and how his own company seemed to soften her, too, put a smile on her that took twenty years off that solemn face, I swear it; well, once everyone got wind of all that, things started to happen like magic, because suddenly it wasn’t just the Millers’ son paying a visit to that old house in the valley, but the butcher’s boy, too, sent down with this or that from the shop like they’d been doing it all this time (a kindness twelve years too late, if you ask me, but no one ever asks me, do they), and soon after that it was all the village wives at her door, asking her if she wouldn’t like to come up to the market, if she wouldn’t like to stop in for lunch (though it was never Mrs. Miller going down there, mind you; she kept her distance through it all, said what business did that woman have looking after the boy, and didn’t she think she fed her own son for all the biscuits and stew she was stuffing him with); and her being the quiet sort of woman she is, she never turned a one of them away, but she never had the same sort of welcome for the rest as she did for the Miller boy, never that little smile.

Folks being fickle, they moved on from their fear, and the question of Abner and the well and all the rest of that ugly business seemed to be entirely forgot by most, and shortly after the forgetting was when that widower from town (the doctor, you remember the one, who’d moved from the city and lost his young wife to cholera that very same summer; the one Dotty Pince was always sending her homely daughter to call in on with bread and cakes, to no avail) began to take an interest, and I found out about that from Mrs. Miller herself; well what do you think of that, she said to me one day, the witch is on the hunt for a new husband now, and there’s about fifteen different ways that conversation could have gone, I don’t mind telling you, and none of them good, so I said I don’t rightly know that it’s our place to be speculating about that, Mirna, and you should have seen the look she gave me, like a mean and early winter, Lord above, and that was about the last time I was asked over to the Millers’; but that widower came down from the town to woo the newly-redeemed widow, and like the rest of her visitors she took this new one in stride and let the man bring her his flowers and his good-mornings, and he must not have minded much at all about her standoffishness, for if you called round on those late summer afternoons you might find him sitting on the porch between that peculiar pair, looking just as mismatched, talking on and on in his mild way while the two of them sat quiet, and for a short while everything appeared to be very easy indeed.

There are just a few small things that irk me about it all, things I never could make heads nor tails of; there’s young Ben Bailey, who that same September went all still and pale and never quite recovered, after the other boys dared him to peer into the widow’s window and he came back around the house white as a sheet and wouldn’t say what he’d seen for anything, and in fact wouldn’t hardly speak at all, not even after a smack from his father, and would never go near the house again; and there’s the widower, who disappeared just around that very time (men are always disappearing, mind you, for all sorts of reasons, and I won’t ever be the one to speculate as to why, but after a week of seeing neither hide nor hair of the man word did come down from the town that he was missing and his house left all ajar, and soon after that was the man from his office who came through asking questions, causing quite the upset, and when he went down and knocked on her door she wouldn’t see him, and really is it any wonder a woman wouldn’t let a man in who was banging down her door like a beast; and yes, he did come back up the way bleeding and raving and carrying on, claiming something’d chased him back up that dark road, claiming something’d bit him, and tried to accuse the Miller boy who he’d seen along the way, but Mr. Dorsey saw that bite, Beth, and swore it was no human teeth could’ve done what was done to that man’s hand; that it must’ve been some creature in the bush, though he couldn’t imagine what); and those few, strange things certainly weigh on me, certainly have kept me sleepless on more than one quiet night, because silly woman that I am, I just can’t seem to thread them all together into something that makes sense; but it’s not for me to know and it’s not for me to ask, so I remind myself, and so I’ll remind anyone comes asking after everything that happened down the valley road.

Well, it’s all still fine between she and the rest of us, but it’s not fine in the way it was before that man’s disappearance, nor, surely, can it be said to be fine the way it was before the death of poor Abner, rest his soul; it’s more the way the weather’s fine before it turns sour, all strange and still, when everyone keeps peering at the sky; and every day as before the boy is down there mending and tinkering and grinning on her porch while she rocks in her chair with that stillwater smile, both of them happy just to be; only now her little friend chases the older boys away, and takes great glee in it, too, now they’re all afeared of him; snaps his teeth to scare them all the more; and I think she must have an animal now, a big dog for protection, maybe, because on the rare occasion I’ve called down there (not many do anymore, not the way they did at the beginning of it all, but I try to do the right thing, try to be charitable where I can) I’ve seen something dark pacing in the woods behind the house, and once when I knocked and nobody seemed to be home I heard the sound of long nails pacing the floorboards just inside, and though I thought of going around to look in the window, a feeling came over me then that I really should get back home. Oh, go and close the window, will you, Beth; those children are so loud they’ll drive me mad, and they're singing that terrible old tune again.


Farmer Abner’s in the well

His wife is in the house

And if you look her in the eye

She’ll trap you like a mouse.

Farmer Abner’s in the well

His wife has gone to bed

But if she finds you looking in

She’ll strike you stone-cold dead.