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

up at her face. She didn’t talk loud either.
    “Beer,” Jim said and meant it.
    He looked past her and out the window. The night was
black. It made him think. His mind rushed through the forest. There was a funny
thing about this one tree that started fiddling in his head. There was some wiry
shape, writhing. It faded out.
    The bar came back in his vision. It was a nice place;
maybe it was even pretty. It wasn’t exactly a bar either. Jim Falk had stopped
in many such places. Small settlements like this one usually had some spot that
doubled or tripled as a store and a bar and whatever else. Some of them even
had pianos. This one did not have a piano. There were some oil lamps, candles,
and even a picture on the wall of a boat going down a river. There were other
things that they were selling—rope, nails, mallets, marked bottles, and other
such things on shelves.
    He saw this Simon Starkey kid, from the Far East (so
Bill Hill supposed), doing card tricks for the men with hats and red faces. Then
they laughed, and the kid from the Far East made a noise like a bird and flittered
his hands around. Then they all laughed again and started to play poker for
money.
    Just as the game started, Hattie Jones tapped his fiddle-bow
four times on the wood table. His pipe blew smoke as a song began whining out
of the fiddle, and a little boy with wide eyes stood up beside him and hummed
exactly what the fiddle whined.
    Hattie sang a song. His voice was cracked and old, and
it made Jim think of the sounds of cold birds in the mud. The little boy stood
up and started singing with him.
    Old them woods was, shiver, shiver
    Filled her boots with snow
and silver
    Shiver, shiver! Shiver,
shiver!
    Little darling by the river.
    Jim took a drink of beer and smiled while the mug covered
his mouth, but stopped smiling when he put the beer down.
    Jim could never remember all the words to that song because
for some reason he had started to focus in on this Simon Starkey, but the song
was something about a lost little girl in the snow who was loved by the
fairies. He wanted to write it down, but he didn’t.
    It was this Simon fellow who had got all Jim’s focus.
When he was over at the Hills’ earlier, Violet was saying some things about this
kid, Simon.
    “He was raised up by them from a little baby, is what
they said,” she had said from in the kitchen.
    “Violet,” Bill said, “you open up that window if you’re
gonna be smokin’.”
    The kitchen window squealed and there was a pause as
she tinkered with something. She continued, “They came here with the baby, but that
boy was full-grown sixteen years.”
    “That’s right,” Bill said and pushed away his coffee
cup a little.
    “He spoke perfect too, just like me or you or Bill, remember?
Even better than some around here speaks their own,” she called in.
    Bill said, “Most foreigners have an accented speech.”
And he eyed Jim with a half-squinted eye.
    Jim gave a quick nod and called in to Violet, “Violet,
this is very good coffee, thank you.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Falk,” she said and came back in the
room with a smile and looking a little flushed and fiddling with her necklace.
    Jim Falk gazed at her and then back at Bill. Bill was
staring out the window at a fog rolling in from the woods. Since Bill’s eyes
were looking out the window, Jim took a second glance at Violet Hill. She was
looking right back.
    “How you get such a thick fog when it’s cold out like
this?” Bill said, and Jim looked out the window fast.
    Violet’s green eyes drew Jim back to her. “Dan, who was
married to Elsie—he moved outta here about four or five years ago now, I guess,
whenever that spring was right after the real bad winter and the awful snow.”
Violet swallowed, put her left hand to her throat, fiddled with a silver chain,
and then went on. “Elsie’s older than me. They come up here from some river
town. They used to talk about that big river that comes down from the town