They said it wasn’t a real bad stroke, but it must have been bad enough because Mrs. Mabry didn’t come down to the grocery store after that. But that didn’t mean I never saw her again. Now that I knew where she lived, me and Momma went to go check on her, just like we were used to checking on Mr. McCaffree. ‘Course, we had to take the car to where Mrs. Mabry lived, it was too far on foot. But we went once a week to take her some groceries and make sure she had what she needed. She could get around the house alright, but she had trouble with stairs and one of her arms didn’t work so well. Other people went to check on her too, since she didn’t really have nobody. That’s just how folk are around here.
About three months after she came home from the hospital, Momma and I pulled up the house just before dark. I was raining and the storm was getting worse. The mud was sucking at my boots even though I tried my best to avoid it. The paper bags got all wet and I was afraid the canned goods would spill out the bottom all across the yard. By the time we had finished taking the groceries inside me and Momma were both drenched. I felt wet right down to my bones.
Mrs. Mabry couldn’t talk too well, but she always tried. It seemed to tire her out some days. I learned kinda quick how to recognize when she was just bone tired. The rain seemed to be sucking all her pep out of her that day. She just sat in her rocking chair watching me and Momma put the groceries in the fridge and cabinet. She didn’t say nothing as we worked, just watched with a steady gaze. When we were done I went out to the living room to sit on the couch while Momma tidied up a bit.
Sometimes Mrs. Mabry got her paper pad and wrote things down for us, little instructions that she didn’t want to struggle through trying to explain. She still sounded a little like she had marbles in her mouth. She was looking at me with kind of a funny look as I waiting for Momma. She reached to her end table, which was draped with a lace doily that looked like it hadn’t been washed since she put it on the table top, and picked up her pad of paper. It was one of them yellow legal pads. She scratched out a note with her dull pencil and passed it over to me.
I didn’t know when I told you to come visit that you’d be visiting me a lot. I stared at the words for bit, not knowing what to say back to her. I raised my eyes, and she was giving a smile that only raised half of her face. “Why’d you invite me?” I asked, thinking back on that day in the grocery store. She had looked so mean and cruel and scary, not at all like the frail old lady who sat across from me, smiling as best she could.
“Lonely,” Mrs. Mabry said, the single word crawling out of her like a inchworm. It crawled up inside my heart and I felt it trying to find a home there. Lonely.
“Did you think I would come, when you asked?” I had been almost sure it wasn’t a real invitation at the time, but I had been so curious I didn’t care.
There was suddenly a twinkle in her eye. “I hoped,” she said. Then she gestured for the legal pad. I handed it back to her and she slowly scrawled another sentence underneath the one she’d already written. I waited, the scritch-scritch of the pencil the only other sound in the house other than Momma humming while she tidied. Mrs. Mabry handed the legal pad back to me. The word nearly stopped my heart, but not stopped it cold. Almost like, it stopped it warm, if that makes any sense. Like my whole heart was ready just to burst with something that felt good that I couldn’t identify. Pride, or maybe joy, or perhaps even love.
You remind me of me when I was young.
I looked up at her and I smiled a big smile. “Will you tell me about it?” I asked. I handed the legal pad back to her.
I phoned Kathy Jo before I went to bed that night. We’d gotten that phone put in only about three years ago. Daddy always asked what we wanted it for, we could just talk to each other if we wanted to talk. But Momma had convinced him we needed it in case of emergencies, and to check on Aunt Annabelle when Uncle Alvey was in a bad way like he got from time to time.
The phone rang twice before Kathy Jo picked it up. “Hello?” she said lazily.
“Kathy Jo, it’s me, Peggy June. Listen, I know where to go, but we gotta go tomorrow.” I was rushing. I didn’t want anybody to start eavesdropping after the dishes were all washed up. Momma didn’t make me help because I’d been up to check on Mr. McCaffree that afternoon, and it was rule that you didn’t do dishes if went to check on him. That’s how she got us to agree to visit with him.
“What? Tomorrow? No, Peggy June. I gotta work at the store!” she protested.
“Listen! Momma’s gotta take Mr. McCaffree to town tomorrow morning. Tell your daddy to tell my daddy you’re sick. Then go out like you’re going to work once he leaves.”
“That’s not gonna work. If I tell Daddy I’m sick, then Momma’s gonna wonder why I’m going to work.” I could almost she her crossing her arms, wearing that smartypants smile like she knew so much better than me about everything just ’cause she was older.
“Come on, Kathy Jo! Figure out how to make it work. We gotta go tomorrow!”
She huffed into the phone. “Alright, Peggy June. I’ll figure something out. But you owe me for this.”
“Oh, I know. I’m gonna owe you a long time I think,” I said, grinning at my own joke. “See you tomorrow.”
Momma left the house next morning about 8:30, to give her enough time to get all the way to the hospital with Mr. McCaffree. Daddy said he was going down to the store early, so he left around the same time as Momma did. I pretended I didn’t feel good, just like I’d planned, and as they went out the door, I thought they might have suspected something was up. They didn’t say nothing to me about it though, just gave me that stink eye look as they went out the door, Jenny Kate and Mary Sue in tow.
“If you start feeling better later, you better find a way down to the store to help out,” Daddy said. “It’s stocking day.”
It sounded more fun that it actually was. Calling it “stocking day” made it sound like Christmas, but it was only when we put new cans out on the shelves. “Okay,” I said weakly, pulling an old afghan up to my chin as I hunkered down on the couch. I pretended to drift off to sleep until I was sure everybody was gone. Then I popped up and waited for Kathy Jo to come get me. It was like watching water boil- worse actually. Most boring morning of my life, watching out the window for Uncle Alvey’s car to come rolling into the drive.
When it finally did, I was so excited I hollered. I flew out of the house at lightning speed, making for Uncle Alvey’s old Ford as quick as a thoroughbred. I yanked open the door of the truck and climbed up onto the bench. Kathy Jo looked a bit nervous as she eyed me from behind the wheel.
“I sure hope you ain’t gettin’ us both in trouble with this con you’re pullin’ on your momma,” Kathy Jo said. “I didn’t exactly lie to mine, but I didn’t tell the truth neither, you hear me?” She lectured like she was grown. Irritating, since I would be just as grown as she was in a few years. She was looking over her shoulder as she backed down the gravel driveway.
“She’ll never know, Kathy Jo. Just hush up,” I said. “Just take me up past Mr. McCaffree’s place. He told me yesterday you gotta just keep on going until you get there.”
“That’s the way to everybody’s place,” Kathy Jo huffed. But she did as I said without any further comment on it. I held my breath as we rolled back Mr. McCaffree’s house. Of course nobody was there. He’d gone with Momma to town, but it still made me nervous. That irrational part of me was thinking all kinds of horrid stuff like “What they never left, and she sees us?” Silly, really. Momma would never let Mr. McCaffree miss his appointments.
We drove for longer than I thought was right, and I was just starting to wonder if maybe Mr. McCaffree had gotten it all wrong somehow when we turned round a bend in the road and I saw it- the Chew Witch’s old rickety bucket of a truck parked outside a rough looking house. I saw rough looking because the wood was rough and unfinished. There were web all over the outside windows. The roof looked like it might have leaks in it, and some of the gutter was hanging off the side of the porch. The porch was nice looking either. It had a big hole in it near the stairs. As we pulled in behind the Chew Witch’s black truck, I could see that somebody had put a couple cinderblocks on top of each other to create a makeshift stair case that avoided the rotted out wood.
Kathy Jo killed the engine of the Ford and we sat in silence for just a minute, staring at the house. My palms were all sweaty. “Well,” I said, trying to find my courage. “You gonna come with me?” I asked.
She sighed real heavy, and then shrugged. “Why not. I came all the way here.” Kathy Jo hopped down out of the truck and I followed quick behind her. But we went slow up the cinderblocks and across the porch. This place looked as good as abandoned and it gave me the creeps. I knocked on the door anyway to show Kathy Jo I was braver than I felt.
The Chew Witch didn’t answer. I knocked again harder. All I heard in return was the calling of birds up in the trees. I looked up at Kathy Jo. “What should we do?”
Kathy Jo frowned. “Well, she’d gotta be here. Her truck is here.” She stepped up beside me to the door and turned the handle. It wasn’t locked. The door creaked open, and Kathy Jo called inside, “Hello?”
From somewhere inside the house we heard a thumping, real rhythmic, but also frantic, like someone was trying to get our attention. All my hair stood on end. “Mrs. Mabry?” I called, louder than Kathy Jo had called. “Are you home?”
The thumping sound grew louder. Me and Kathy Jo followed it, winding through the house until we found the room where it was coming from. The door was only closed over, and we could see the footboard of a bed. “Mrs. Mabry?” I asked again. And this time we heard a human noise, like a whimper almost. It was a horrifying sound, but also one that made you wanna spring into action to help. Kathy Jo pushed open the door of the room so we could see all the way inside.
Mrs. Mabry was lying in her bed, still in her nightgown, but her face looked all wrong. She was thumping her arm against the headboard. She didn’t turn to look at us at all, she was just staring straight up at the ceiling. The way her mouth drooped on one side filled me with dread. I’d seen Kathy Jo’s granny like that once, before she died. I didn’t know exactly what it meant, but I knew we had to get her help.
“She’s having a stroke, Peggy June!” Kathy Jo ran over to the bed. “It’s okay, now,” she said tenderly, grabbing Mrs. Mabry’s hand to still it. “Hey, hey, you just hush. We’ll get you some help, ok?”
Mrs. Mabry sounded like she was trying to talk back, but it was just a jumbled up mess, like her mouth was filled with marbles.
Somehow- and I still don’t know now- me and Kathy Jo managed to carry Mrs. Mabry out of her house and put her in the bed of the Ford. Then Kathy Jo drove as fast as she dared down the mountain to the grocery store. Before the truck even stopped rolling, I had flung open the door and went running and yelling for Daddy. He came fast, practically running up the store aisles himself when he heard that distress in my voice.
“Peggy June!” he exclaimed. “I thought you were sick, child!”
“Daddy, you gotta call an ambulance,” I said, not wanting to waste any time.
“What?” he asked, his confusion rooting him to the floor. I could see the phone right next to the check stand. I started to move towards it, but Daddy caught my arm. “What’s going on?” he asked, all stern, but also looking mighty scared.
“Daddy, Mrs. Mabry’s in the back of the truck. Kathy Jo says she’s had a stroke you gotta get an ambulance here to help her!”
I was so glad that he didn’t ask any other questions of me before he picked up the phone and called 9-1-1.
You know when you get all fluttery in your stomach because you don’t know if you’re getting Christmas gifts or not, or you find out a secret that’s real juicy and you know you aren’t supposed to know it? That’s how I felt next day going up the road from our house to Andy McCaffree’s on the narrow gravel road that ran up the mountain. Mr. McCaffree was an old friend of my Papaw, and he was always real nice to me, especially since Papaw died. They both were lucky enough to still have jobs when mining got all fancy with technology. But old Andy wheezed something bad now, just like Papaw had before he died. His wife Doris used to take him out to the big roads where they built the hospital to get his heart checked, and get his oxygen refilled. Doris died over the winter though, and Momma and Daddy had us girls check up on Mr. McCaffree from time to time. I’d known it was my turn to go up to his house when I’d asked Kathy Jo to take me to see the Chew Witch. Mr. McCaffree was about as old as these old hills; I just knew that he’d know where to find her.
I crunched up the road, thinking about how best to ask him, swatting at bugs that tried to fly up into my face as I went. The downpour yesterday had left everything damp, even the air. I was sweating buckets by the time I got to the turn off. His road was all dirt, just like ours, but his house was a bit nicer. Probably because he didn’t have a bunch of kids making messes all the time. Mrs. McCaffree had kept the house so nice while she was alive. She even took down the curtains on Fridays, and washed and ironed them. I didn’t think Mr. McCaffree was doing all that, but he did his best. I liked visiting him. He reminded me of Papaw, and he always had a story.
The house was real simple. It only had about four or five rooms, but I’d only ever seen the living room and the tiny eat in kitchen and the bathroom. The bathroom had been an addition to the house back when Momma was a kid. The McCaffree’s didn’t have indoor plumbing until then. There was a big ol’ porch on the front of the house and one just as big on the back where the two ancient, weathered rocking chairs were rocking on their own as I approached. It was probably just the wind whipping through the hills, but I kinda like to think that maybe Mrs. McCaffree was sitting in one right now. I smiled at that as I knocked on the door. “Mr. McCaffree?!” I called. “It’s Peggy June!” I opened the door slowly and poked my head inside.
“Peggy June!” I heard him wheeze. He waved to me from the couch, where he was sitting with his glasses on the very end of his nose, looking like they might slip off at any second. He was doing one of them puzzle books he liked-crosswords or sudoku, that kind of stuff. He coughed, putting down his book and pencil beside him on the blue threadbare couch. He was trying to stand up, because that was good manners, but between the coughing and his bad knees, I could see he was struggling.
“Don’t get up, Mr. McCaffree. I just come to check up on you,” I said.
His coughing fit continued. I reached for the empty glass that was sitting on his end table, and went into the kitchen to the tiny fridge to get him some water. I filled up the glass with the store bought water and took it back to him. Once he finished coughing, he drank just about all of it in no time. I sat down across from him in the big armchair that matched the couch.
He got himself under control. “Thank you,” he said. “You girls are so kind to check up on me.”
He voice sounded measureably weaker than last time I had visited. “You eat yet today, Mr. McCaffree? I can make you something.”
“Oh, I had a bit of oatmeal this morning.,” he said.
It was 4 o’clock in the afternoon. “Let me fix you something,” I said, not waiting for his protests before going off to the kitchen again. Momma always told us that Mr. McCaffree would try to act like he didn’t need anything, so you just had to do it for him. I rummaged around in his fridge for a bit, until I found some bologna and mustard and a few pickles. The bread was sitting on the counter and didn’t look too fresh, but it wasn’t moldy. I made two sandwiches for him. One for now and one for later, in case he was still having trouble getting off the couch later. Plus, I figured he’d skipped lunch and we were half way to supper now, so he’d probably need two sandwiches to fill him up.
I watched him eat the bologna sandwiches meticulously. He didn’t like spills and stains, so he was careful not to let any mustard drip. He had a thicker growth of beard today. I wondered why he’d quit shaving. “You need Momma to get you to the doctor?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said absently, as if he’d forgotten he had an appointment. “Actually, yes. I do need a ride soon. Do you think she’d mind?”
I smiled at him cheerfully. He should know better. “Mr. McCaffree, Momma wouldn’t make me come up and see you if she didn’t have a concern for you. What day do you need to go?”
“Tomorrow,” he said.
Well, she wouldn’t be too happy about the short notice, but it fit into my plans nicely. “Okay, I’ll tell her. What time?”
He pointed to his table, which was stacked with dirty plates and papers and other random bits of life. “My appointment book is on the table. Can you check for me?”
I walked over to the table, searching among the debris. The book was black, and about as big as my school notebook. I flipped to tomorrow’s date. “10:30?” I asked. Does that sound right?”
“Yes. Yes, that’s right,” he said. He had finished one sandwich and was working on the second one. “Tell your mother I said thank you, in advance.”
“I will,” I said. I was thinking through all the logistics of how Kathy Jo and I would get to the Chew Witch while Momma was gone with the car. With Momma gone to town with Mr. McCaffree Daddy would be in charge, but he would want Kathy Jo to run the register like she always did. Daddy didn’t keep tabs on us like Momma did, so it’d be easier to hoodwink him.
“Can I ask you a question?” I said, making my way back over to the arm chair.
Mr. McCaffree put the plate that had held his sandwiches on the end table. “Of course,” he said, patting his lips with the paper napkin I’d included on the plate.
“You know that old lady that everybody calls the Chew Witch?” I asked.
He frowned at me, and I didn’t think it was one of them frowns for when you were simply thinking. “The Chew Witch? Is that what you call Clara Lou Mabry?”
Clara Lou Mabry. I had her name, now I just needed to know where to find her. “Yeah, I think that’s her. Always chewing tobacco. Looks real mean. Drives an old black truck that might fall apart at any second?”
“That’s her alright,” Mr. McCaffree said. “What do you want to know about her?” He had a twinkle in his eye now. Like he knew some secret or something.
“Well, she comes into the grocery, just like everybody. And my cousin told me that she had invited us to come visit her sometime, but we don’t know where she lives.”
“You didn’t ask her?” he said, his smile widening. I was about to say I hadn’t been invited direcly, she’d talked to Kathy Jo, but he interrupted me before I even got started. “Why don’t you just ask next time you see her.”
“Don’t know when that will be,” I said.
“Well,” Mr McCaffree sighed, but that caused him to start coughing again, and I had to wait for him to quit hacking, and guzzle down the rest of the water I’d brought him. “Ah,” he said, after he had composed himself. “If I didn’t know any better, Peggy June, I’d think you were snooping on poor old Mrs. Mabry.”
“No sir, I ain’t snooping on her!” I said. It might have been a little too forceful, but I was getting the feeling he was onto me and I didn’t like it. Not that I thought he’d tell anybody. Only person he was likely to tell was Momma, and by then it’d be too late to stop me.
“Okay,” he said, with a smile, like he knew the lie for what it was. “Okay, Peggy June. I believe you.” He didn’t. I thought I was a pretty good bluffer, but Mr. McCaffree was a tough old mountain man and nothing got past him. “Tell me, though, why do you think she wanted you to come see her?”
“I don’t know. She’s not very nice to me at the store. She’s not very nice to anyone, is she?”
“No, not anymore, she’s not,” he said. “But would you believe that she comes to check on me too?”
I almost yelped in surprise, but managed to keep it to myself. “She does? Then she lives around here?”
“Oh, yes,” Mr. McCaffree said. “In fact, you take the road from here further up into the mountain, and the next house you find is hers.”
Hallelujah! I thought, though I didn’t really use that word too much. I’d just heard it a few times when Momma made us go to church- which we didn’t do but two or three times a year. I figured that’s what the pastor would shout now, having been given such a great gift as this bit of information.
“Oh!” I said sweetly. “Then it won’t be too bad to get to her place,” I said. I might not need Kathy Jo at all. I could fake sick and get out of going to the store to work. I could walk there from our house, surely.
“It’s a little far on foot,” he said. He smiled. “But it’s a nice walk. I think you’d enjoy the hike.”
I took Mr. McCaffree’s plate to the kitchen, and gathered up all the other dishes on the table too. “I’ll have Jenny Kate and Mary Sue come wash these up for you,” I said. I was the oldest, so I could boss them like that, and Momma would back me up, because she’d know that Mr. McCaffree needed the help.
“You’re too kind to me,” he said. He was trying to stand up again, and when I told him he didn’t have to, he said he had to use the toilet. So I helped him off the couch and to the bathroom, and waited to make sure he didn’t fall, and then helped him back to his spot on the couch.
“I’ll make sure Momma comes in the morning,” I said, as I was going out the door, the information he’d given me tucked away like a precious piece of treasure. He waved goodbye to me and I left him there to do his puzzles. I nearly skipped back home, thinking about tomorrow and meeting Clara Lou Mabry face to face.
The next day it rained buckets and we girls were even more bored to tears than usual since we were stuck inside. I swept the canned goods aisle maybe 15 times in 30 mins just to give me something to do. Momma put Mary Sue to work scrubbing the walls of the bathroom. Me and Jenny Kate laughed at that until Momma said she was gonna put us to work on the sink and toilet once Mary Sue was done. She got done faster than lightning too. Or so it seemed. Took me longer to scrub that toilet than it took to walk up the holler to home at the end of the day. Not because it was so dirty, but because I was in no hurry to get it done.
Uncle Alvey came round in the afternoon, when the downpour had fizzled out into a drizzle. “Come on, girls,” he said, hiccoughing before letting out a mighty belch. Mary Sue and I laughed, but Jenny Kate just rolled her eyes. “I got my check from Uncle Sam,” he said. “Let me take you over and buy you an ice cream from Pete.” There was a soft serve machine at the gas station across the street. Uncle Alvey always liked to treat us when his government check came in. I didn’t really understand back then why the government paid him when he worked in our store, but I didn’t ask questions. I knew better.
“Daddy, you spoil them,” Kathy Jo called out from the register, where she was running the belt so she could clean it.
“Spoil you too, if you like, baby,” he said to his daughter.
Kathy Jo shook her head. “I gotta work, Daddy,” she said.
“Oh!” he scoffed at her playfully, as he moved towards the front of the store. “Aunt Mary Anna will watch over the place. We won’t be too long.”
“Plus, nobody is coming shopping in this mess,” Jenny Kate said. “There ain’t been nobody in here all day!”
Kathy Jo turned off the belt with a smile, and we all ran across to the gas station. Pete served us up quick- nobody was in the gas station either, considering the weather. We hung around inside the station eating our ice cream, me and Kathy Jo standing next to one another in comfortable silence at the window, while Uncle Alvey chatted with Pete about some grown up stuff I didn’t understand nor care to. When I was sure my sisters weren’t listening I elbowed Kathy Jo in the side.
“Ow! What’d’ya do that for?” my cousin said, rubbing her ribs with a deepening frown.
The rain was coming down harder now, and I knew that nobody would want to go back across the street until we’d finished our ice cream and the rain let up a little again. I had my cousin trapped right where I wanted her- as long as Mary Sue and Jenny Kate didn’t interfere. “Take me to see the Chew Witch.”
“What?” Kathy Jo hissed at me. I knew she knew how to drive her daddy’s old beat up Ford, even if she wasn’t supposed to. And honestly, nobody would care if she did. It’s not like her daddy ever followed any rules, and her momma was always too busy making jams, jellies, pies and whatever else she could sell to keep the family afloat. If the car was gone, she’d probably just assume that Alvey took it to go drinking with his buddies again.
“You scared?” I asked, my grin growing wider as she furiously shook her head.
“Why would I be scared of an old lady?” Kathy Jo said. But I could see in her eyes, she was scared. Everybody was at least a little scared of the Chew Witch. She reminded me of that woman from that old German story, the one about the two kids getting lost in the woods. Except I couldn’t imagine that the Chew Witch lived in a house of candy that would lure children right into her cauldron. I almost shivered, but kept my stoicism in the presence of my older cousin. She couldn’t see that I had any cracks, or else I just knew she wouldn’t take me.
“Well, if you aren’t scared, then take me to see her. She said I’d never see anything interesting unless I followed her home.”
Kathy Jo was thinking mighty hard about it. She was mostly done with her ice cream cone, and I knew I wouldn’t really have a chance to talk to her about it again once we were back in the grocery. “Why do you want to go?” She finally asked. She crunched into the bottom of the cone, chewing like a horse while she waited for me answer.
“Didn’t she invite me?” I asked. Honestly, that was the best answer I had for Kathy Jo. Why did I want to go see the Chew Witch? It wasn’t because I thought she’d be a good cook. And it wasn’t because I thought she lived in a nice house or would be very nice to me once I was there. Regardless, there was something compelling about her. That’s why I always watched her when she came shopping. It was like she had a secret about life in the mountains, and I had to know what it was.
“I don’t know, Peggy June,” Kathy Jo said. She wiped her hands on her jeans.
“Pleeeeease,” I begged. “Just tell your momma you’re going to see Annie Mae. Annie Mae was a friend of hers that lived a little further out towards the state highway, near the school. Her momma was a teacher.
“Okay, but I don’t know where she lives,” Kathy Jo said as she crossed her arms. She looked like she’d won some sort of argument, even though we hadn’t really be fighting.
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.
The Quick and the Dead 