The chew witch lived up in the hills, on one of them dirt roads that never had any gravel on it in the first place, because nobody had the money to spread it or care enough to. Her real name was Clara Lou or Lou Claire or something like that but everybody called her the chew witch because my cousin Kathy Jo once called her that when she was five and didn’t know better, and it stuck better than gum up under the railing at the grocery. Our grocery, that is, where I spent many a summer afternoon bored to near death, picking paint and gum off the railing outside. Or trying to anyway. Some of that stuff was stuck tighter than the nickname that Kathy Jo gave poor old Lou Claire….or you know, maybe it actually was Clara Lou. It was definitely a double first name just like almost everybody I knew who comes from the holler. In my family there was Mary Sue and Jenny Kate and me, Peggy June. Our Momma and Daddy ran the only grocery for about 15 miles round, at the base of one of them smaller hills that’s not quite one of the mountains of Appalachia, but pretty darn close. We sat outside that grocery store at the railing for half our lives it seemed like, waiting for anything exciting to happen. Nothing ever did.

Unless the chew witch came in. That’s the only place I ever saw her. She never came to church or went to get an ice cream cone or a soda across the street at Pete’s, and who knows how she put gas in the rickety old black pick up. I never saw her at the gas station up by the state highway. That truck was missing a bumper and three hubcaps, and looked like it might just shake all to pieces, it’s pistons and hoses flying out from underneath it all over the road if she hit a bump too hard. It was mighty sight to see, the old chew witch working that clutch as she came down the hill in to the grocery store parking lot, truck belching more than my uncle Alvey, who was always sneaking away when Momma wasn’t looking to have another beer in the cooler. She’d slide that big old pick up-and when I say, old, I mean that truck was probably older than my daddy-nearly right up to where our toes were hanging over the railing, and she would climb down and just give us the dirtiest look, like we were in her way. Kathy Jo called her the chew witch because she was always chewing when she came in, and she looked mean as a snake. Kathy Jo was old enough to run the register when me and my sisters were still too young to do anything but sweep up and stay out of Momma’s hair, which is why we spent so much time outside at the railing, just watching for something to happen. If the chew witch showed up though, we would quickly find something very interesting inside, so we could watch her as she shopped.

She never bought anything that looked like she could make a meal from- just odd ends and bits and part that maybe sorta might go together if she was hungry. Looked like she was hungry all the time, honestly; she was such as skinny old crone. Mommas said it’s because she chewed too much tobacco and didn’t eat enough food and I believed her. She always left a big steamy pile of nasty tobacco spit in her parking space before she climbed back into her truck. I didn’t know hardly any ladies that chewed tobacco, so it made send to me that Kathy Jo would have noticed that at age five, and fixated enough on it to make it part of her no so pleasant nickname. And as for the witch part- well, let’s just say nobody ever liked a weird old lady who lived alone.

I was maybe 12 or 13 years old when she came in the store on blazing hot day in July. She bought two cans of beans and a bag of flour. It was one of the small bags too, not the big five pound one like most people bought. I had been watching her from behind the rack of potato chips when Momma spooked me by whispering in my ear to mind my own business. I knocked the rack over when I jumped, and then I had to clean up that mess, Momma fussing that I might have crunched up all the chips. Jenny Kate and Mary Sue laughed, but Kathy Jo just gave me a mean look, like I was doing something wrong. When the chew witch left the store, I went up the register to fuss at Kathy Jo to mind her own business, but before I could say anything about it, Kathy Jo began lecturing me, like she was in charge or something!

“There’s nothing special about her, Peggy June. She’s just an old lady who lives up the holler. Why do you spy on her?”

“‘Cause she’s a weird old lady that live up the holler!” I said, feeling my face flush. I didn’t like to be corrected or embarrassed and I’d been both in the last five minutes.

“Well, maybe you ought to get to know her then, and she’ be less weird,” Kathy Jo grumped at me.

“Maybe you should get to know her,” I said, crossed my arms as I pouted. I didn’t have a better come back than that. Kathy Jo was a bit smarter than me, so even if I did, she’d have been clever enough to turn it back around on me in some way that would make me look worse than I already felt.

“Well, maybe I will! Besides, she told me just now to tell you and the girls to knock it off.” Kathy Jo always called the three of us sisters that girls, like she was an adult or something. She wasn’t. She was only 3 years older than me.

“Oh?” I said, putting my hands on my hips. “What’d she say?”

Kathy Jo leaned over the belt and looked at me pointedly. “She said, ‘tell your cousin that she can follow me around all she wants, but she won’t see anything really exciting unless she follows me home.’”

I didn’t know if it was a threat or an invitation or something else. But it did put an idea in my head.