Page 33 of The Witching Hours

Crawdad Creek was what we called the tiny tributary that ran through a stand of big peach trees. Nobody ever called it a secret hideout. But that’s what it was. Some of us kids gathered there almost every day. In season we’d eat peaches. Other times we’d just make plans for mischief, try to sort out the mysteries of life, or simply revel in the fact that no grownups were around. If somebody was able to get a bit of baloney or a couple of weenies from home, we’d tie bits onto string and delight in fishing for crawdads. Those crawdads loved baloney and weenies more than anything. Sometimes there’d be three or four hanging on a single bite of weenie and fighting over it.

We never kept the ones we caught. We just pulled them off and threw them back in. They probably just kept getting bigger because we were doing more feeding than fishing.

The peach trees had grown so tall they blocked out the sun and made it cool even on the hottest days. One time when nobody was there except R.W. and me, he said, “It’s kinda spooky when it’s just us.”

I didn’t say anything back, but secretly I thought he was right. For once.

There were two times when Crawdad Creek wasn’t the best place to be. One was when there weren’t many people there. The other was when the peaches ripened, fell on the ground, and rotted. For a while in the middle of summer those rotten peacheskicked up a smell I’d never forget. Nobody wanted to be around till that was over.

Just a short run up on a rise, there was an old clapboard house that had been abandoned. There were signs that it was white at one time, but it’d been a long time since anybody cared to paint it. So, it was mostly gray, and falling down on one side. Maybe the peach trees had belonged to the people who lived in that house. Like an orchard or something. I thought it was sad. I also thought I didn’t want to get any closer to it.

Some of the kids said they’d been inside. They talked about broken boards in the floor, said most of the windows were knocked out and there were signs of raccoons living there. That was okay. Somebody ought to get the good out of it.

I knew we shouldn’t go around there because if any of us ever got hurt at that old house, it’d be the end of secret gathering at Crawdad Creek.

After I skinned my knee, R.W. got back on his bike and went on without me without ever looking back. That was R.W. for you. He was an aspiring woman-hater who just didn’t see the point of being a gentleman.

“Can’t tell yet,” Auntie Nan said in answer to my question about being one of them. Nan was my grandmama’s younger sister. They’d been real close in age.

I didn’t remember much about my grandmama because she’d been gone a long time, but I could see from pictures that my Auntie Nan and my grandmama looked like twins. They weren’t really, but one time I heard somebody say they were Irish twins and that the Campbells were close as peas in a pod.

Auntie Nan lived with Daddy and me because my mama and grandmama had given up the ghost. That’s what they called it when somebody’d passed. Auntie Nan loved to tell storiesabout when she and my grandmama were growing up and she told the same ones over and over.

I had my favorites. I liked the one about the two of them walking to school one day and seeing a car for the first time. Nan said they thought it was a monster. They dropped their books and went running home screaming. “Quick as Jack Robinson,” she said. “That’s how fast we were goin’.” She laughed so hard telling that story. “Nearly scared our mama to death when we came through the door yellin’ about a monster on the road.”

It was funny because what could be more ridiculous than thinking a car might be a monster.

I watched Auntie Nan put mercurochrome on my knee as carefully as if she’d been doing an appendectomy and I was planning on a career in surgery.

“That boy R.W. laughed at me when I fell down,” I said quietly.

“Why?” she asked.

I shrugged. “He’s always laughing at me. Saying women aren’t any good at stuff except maybe cooking and cleaning up.”

“Well. Maybe he’s sayin’ that ‘cause women in his family are…”

“Are what?” Now she had my curiosity firing on all cylinders. I could feel my eyes flash, burning to know something I probably shouldn’t.

“Well. They know things.”

“What kind of things?”

“How to get their way.”

“How to get their way?” Now that sounded pretty good to me. I’d like to be somebody who knows how to get her way. “How do they do that?”

Auntie Nan laughed a little at that. She picked up the folded paper program from service the past Sunday and fannedmy knee till the mercurochrome was dry and then put a Band-aid on. It felt a lot better.

“I don’t rightly know the whole of it,” Auntie Nan said. “Now your grandmama could’ve told you, but she’s not here. We’ll just see how things go. That’s always best. All I’m sayin’ is maybe he’s kind of scared of women.” She looked me in the face like she was gonna say something important. “Maybe he has a good reason. You just never know.”

I nodded like I was an authority on wisdom and, truthfully, that had a ring to it. Auntie Nan made “just seeing how things would go” sound like the right thing to do in just about every situation.

“If you get your homework done early, we’ll play some checkers after supper.”

I said, “Okay,” and hopped down. I loved checkers, partly because I was pretty darn good at it. I liked all kinds of games.

Of course, I’d been told I’d get a righteous kind of spanking if I ever played that Ouija thing at somebody else’s house. Auntie Nan was pretty easy on rules, but she was spitting sure about that one. I knew if I ever touched that Ouija thing nothing would save me from the wrath of Nan. Heck. Daddy might even add on a grounding.

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