Couple of people said some other things, too, about Sal and Rawhead, but there are people who say any damn thing.
The truth of the matter, as near as I ever learned it, was that Sal went on and Rawhead went on, and two days out of three, he slept on the porch at her feet and ate her leftovers. A razorback hog is a good friend to have in zucchini season, when the vines get huge and start throwing out zucchinis as big as your thigh. Useful for cleaning up yellow cucumbers, too.
Now, the way I always heard it, Silas the hunter had been one of those men who came sniffing around Sal when she was living alone, and it was Rawhead who broke him of that habit. But I’ve also heard that he was one of those folk who come up and try to give you charity you don’t want. There was a lot of that going on up there, and nobody gets mad like a do-gooder if you won’t hold still and let ’em do good on you.
Maybe he had a bit of a fancy for Sal, not in a marrying way, but thinking that somebody plain and lonely ought to be grateful for any attention. Maybe he thought that having a witch be grateful would be worth some trouble, or maybe he thought that a witch as good as Sal had a box full of money around the place.
But maybe those are just ways to make the story tidy again. The hunter could have just been one of those people who thinks he owns anything that doesn’t have somebody else’s name stamped on it. Lord knows, there’s enough of them around.
One way or the other, a day came along when Rawhead didn’t show up, and then another day, and then Sal started to get worried.
It wasn’t like Rawhead to go away for more than a day at a time. His territory was the mountaintop, and he didn’t leave it often. But pigs are social, same as human people, and they like each other’s company. So Sal let two days pass, then three, and then she heaved herself out of her rocking chair and said some words I won’t repeat in company.
She rummaged in her pantry ’til she found a good saucer, then she laid it on the table and filled it up with water and a drop of ink. The ink melted into the water and turned it black, and she breathed a witch’s breath onto it.
Then she tapped her nail on the water’s surface, and it rang like a bell.
“Good,” she said. “Good. Now, show me the front porch.” (Never ask to see something important right off. Water’s tricky, even with ink to gentle it.)
The water showed her the front porch, with the empty rocking chair and the faded mat by the door. A wren flew up to the railing and looked around for something, then flew away again when it didn’t find it.
“Good,” said Sal. “Now, show me the sheriff’s daughter, who ran off with the horse-thief.”
The water swirled—though the surface didn’t change—and Sal was looking at a girl wearing a clean apron, with a light in her eyes.
“Huh!” said Sal, pleased. “Glad it came out all right for her. Now, show me that razorback friend of mine.”
The water darkened.
Under the table, where the water couldn’t see it, Sal clenched her fist.
Then the water got light again—just a little—
And there was Rawhead.
She knew him right away, even though he was lying dead with three other hogs, in the back of a wagon moving down the road. She knew him just fine, and when the driver turned his head, she knew him, too.
Sal jerked back from the table and the water boiled away into steam.
She sat there for a minute, breathing through her nose, then she stood up. She picked up the saucer, because it was a good saucer with a little ink stained on it, and she washed it up careful, because a lifetime’s habits die hard.
Her head ached and her heart ached, but she folded up the dish towel and set it back on its loop. She would have cried, but she didn’t dare start.
“Somebody killed him,” she said out loud. It felt like a knife, and she stabbed herself with it again—“Somebody went and killed my Rawhead.”
That was better. If she said Rawhead’s dead, she was going to fold right up like a broken leaf, but if she said Somebody killed him—well, then, that Somebody was going to have to pay.
The core of being a witch is that you don’t fall down while there’s work to be done. Sometimes that means you invent work to keep yourself standing upright.
She went to the coffee can in her bedroom and took it down. There was eighty-seven dollars stuffed into it, and Sal took the money out. It was all she had, and not a bad amount, but she didn’t think she’d need it much longer.
Sal’s nearest neighbor was a woman named Madeline, who had a hard life and stayed cheerful for it. People like that are a blessing and occasionally an affliction.
Even Madeline was a little surprised when Sal showed up while she was hanging out laundry on the line. She pinned up a sheet and turned around, and there was Sal, not five feet away.
Madeline yelped. “Lord, Sal, you about scared the life out of me!”
“Right,” said Sal. “Came about the chickens.”
Madeline wasn’t quite done yet. “Seeing you right there like that! My heart’s pounding, so it is. Let me sit down a minute. You can kill a body if you scare ’em too hard, you know.”
“Don’t have much time,” said Sal bluntly. “It’s my chickens. I’d appreciate it if you’d look in on ’em tonight and make sure they’re in and fed.”
“Sure, Sal,” said Madeline. And then, though it wasn’t the sort of thing to say to a witch, “You all right, hon? You’re looking hard.”
“Hard times,” said Sal. “Take care of my chickens. If I don’t come back by tomorrow, they’re all yours. Watch for the rooster, he’s a devil.”
She turned away.
Madeline, moved by some spirit, called “You be careful, Sal!” and Sal’s shoulder twitched, but she didn’t make any reply.
She walked into town without talking to anybody. She watched for a certain wagon out of the corner of her eye, but she didn’t see it, and she was glad.
“I’ll fix him,” she muttered. “I’ll fix him good for this. But I got to figure out a way.”
That’s the real problem being a good witch all your life. Time comes when you need to do something real bad, and you don’t have the knack for it. If she’d seen the man who murdered Rawhead walking down the street, what would she do?
She didn’t have the sort of magic that made people drop dead. Hardly anybody did.
“I’d yell at him like a crazy old woman,” muttered Sal, “and that’d be the end of me. Just some senile old woman yelling in the street.”
But the wagon wasn’t there, and she was still a witch.
So she walked on south for an hour, into the sandhills, looking for Elizabeth Gray.
Sal found her sitting on the front porch, looking over the sundew pool. Sundews are little devil plants, covered in sticky hairs, and when a bug lands on them, the sundew sticks it tight and eats it from the inside out.
Elizabeth Gray found their company congenial.
Sal came up on the porch with her heart in her eyes, and there were two chairs there, and a second cup of tea set out.
“Have a seat,” said Elizabeth Gray.
Neither one of them saw fit to comment on the fact that Sal had been expected. They were both witches, and they knew how things were done. Sal took a sip of her tea and it was still hot, like it had just been poured a moment before.
She let out her breath, and her throat ached from not crying.
“Got a problem, I see,” said Elizabeth Gray.
“It’s my hog,” said Sal. “My friend. That hunter shot him—Paul Silas did it, and he knows full well that was my Rawhead.”
“Silas,” said Elizabeth Gray thoughtfully. “Didn’t his mother come from over by Bynum?”