The Witch at Sparrow Creek: A Jim Falk Novel Read Online Free

supposed to have
moved up north somewhere and Elsie lives with her other boy now, that Simon. It
ain’t right by the scriptures, him leavin’ her alone like that, just walking
away from her, leavin’ her with that boy. That boy, Simon, he takes care of
her, they say I guess on account of she’s been sick.”
    “Except he ain’t her boy,” Violet said and went back
fast into the kitchen.
    Bill looked at Jim and watched him write things in the
book with the oily stick. He shook his head and said low, “That boy’s not from
around here. He’s from some other place across the sea or some such place. Like
them peoplefrom the Far East that they took
out west to make ’em build the towns in the West. Them Starkeys raised him up
from young. Guess they found him all alone.”
    “You meanyou think he’s
from the Far East?”
    “A foreigner of some kind. Maybe a one from the Far East.”
    Jim drank some coffee. Violet was off in the kitchen
making noise, and the wind was blowing against the little house.
    They drank some more coffee. Jim closed his writing book
and looked around the little house. It wasn’t too different from the one he
grew up in. A wood-burning stove in the kitchen filled it with that fire and coffee
smell he remembered from times long ago. He didn’t want to think about that.
Jim glanced at the stack of firewood in the corner.
    “These woods are the woods the spook appears in right
here in back of your house?” Jim finally asked.
    “Yes,” Bill said. “Yessir.”
    
    At the bar down in Sparrow, they were drinking beer—Hattie
Jones, Benjamin Straddler, and Simon.
    Simon, the Starkey boy, was telling them about a trick
with cards. The trick was called the moving hole. Hattie was laughing at the
idea, and beer was jiggling out of his mug.
    Hattie said, “I need me one o’ those, a moving hole.”
He looked down at the little boy, who was playing with some papers on the floor
by his stool. “Show us!”
    Simon did the trick, and everyone was taken aback. He
punched a hole in an ace of spades with a knife. Then he took the hole out of
the ace and put the hole in his hand. He held up his hand and showed the hole
all the way through. Then he took the hole from the middle of his hand and moved
it to the king of hearts. He showed the ace again. It was okay. He showed his
hand again. No hole.
    Hattie Jones just about swallowed his pipe.
    Benjamin Straddler was too serious to smile, but he said,
“That is some trick.”
    Then, Jim Falk came in the front door.
    Everybody looked at him for a second or two, but he looked
honest and plain enough. They looked back at their beers and their friends, but
they listened close in a sideways way.
    Huck Marbo was the owner of this bar, and he had one
leg and one daughter. Many years and many trials were upon his brow, but his smile
was still bright and quick because of his daughter. May ran the table service for
Huck, and though she was not generally thought of as pretty, she had a brighter,
bigger smile than her father and her simple hands were quick to service.
    Jim Falk came and sat down at a table by the window,
and Huck nodded for May to serve him.
    Jim felt good to sit down. All that afternoon, after
talking to Violet and Bill Hill, he had gone tramping in the woods. A gray light
was on everything, a fog. The sky was white and cold and the trees stuck out
over the loam black as hairs. Everything was dim and solid. The woods got colder
and harder to see as he went up the mountain. His black boots crackled on the
leaves.
    Even though the fog was thick, he focused his eyes on
everything, and that wore him out. His mind and eyes got tired, but the pictures
might stay forever—or at least if he couldn’t see them in his mind’s eye when
he was awake, when he slept tonight the dreams might show him the details.
Maybe he would see something he didn’t see. It happened.
    “We have beer and whisky and coffee,” May said and looked
at the table when Jim looked