A Hard Witching by Jacqueline Baker

Author:Jacqueline Baker [Baker, Jacqueline]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Short Stories (Single Author)
ISBN: 9781443401722
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2010-08-15T04:00:00+00:00

So he did think she was desperate, Edna mused with a considerable degree of dissatisfaction, watching from the kitchen window as Monson paced the yard, still carrying that box tucked up under one arm. From this distance, he looked like a child, a boy, scuffing his boots through the dirt. She wondered what she’d seen threatening in him. Edna glanced at the clock over the stove. He’d been stalking around the yard for the better part of an hour. When would he get to business? She had to admit she was curious. She wondered what Mr. Crosie would think. Probably that it was a fine idea. She sighed and shook her head. That had always been the difference between the two of them. Even back before they’d married, Edna could see that Mr. Crosie was gullible, easily taken in. His naïveté had appealed to her then, in a way. But it soon became tiresome. She’d told him as much on several occasions, as recently as that past spring, just weeks before he died. Mr. Crosie had come in late again from helping Eulan seed.

“People take advantage,” she’d called out to the porch when she heard him come in. She set a plate of ham and boiled potatoes she’d been keeping warm sharply down on the table and poured a cup of coffee. “You believe any sob story going around. But you wait and see if any of them are there when you need a hand. You wait and see.”

She had peeked around the corner. Mr. Crosie was seated on the darkened stairs leading up from the porch, pulling off a boot in one long, tired motion. He had his back to her, and Edna thought for a moment that he could have been his own father, gone but five years that winter. He looked that old, that hunched, his thin shadow curled on the wall behind him. And for a moment, Edna felt inexplicably sad. She had been about to say, You’re no spring chicken, a phrase that always made Mr. Crosie cluck and flap his arms, high-stepping his lanky body in an absurd parody—an action that, against her will, always made her laugh. She’d been about to say it and then caught herself, aware all at once of the evidence of his age written on every bone, every hard curve of his body. Aware that he felt it, too. And for a moment, for the first time in years, she’d wanted to drop right down on her knees and hold him tightly, so tightly he would say, “Easy now, you’ll squeeze the life clean out of me,” just as he used to, and she would know—they’d both know—it was only a joke.

But then, as quickly as it had come, the feeling had gone. What good did all that silly mooning about do anyway? she had wondered. She spooned creamed corn on his plate, shook salt and pepper liberally over everything and sat down, waiting for him to join her. It seemed to take him a long time to remove his other boot.

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