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

they
were in, River Top, River Den, River something.” She squeezed her eyes real
hard as if that might help her remember. “See, Mr. Falk, Elsie might be older
than me, but she’s still young, and that Simon boy isn’t at a right age, where
they . . .” She wagged her finger at the empty coffee cups and raised up her
eyebrows.
    Bill said, “Yes, we’re done.”
    “The right age?” Jim said, watching her hands take the
cups.
    Violet looked him straight in the eye, and he saw again
that strange, moving jewel behind there. This time it slithered. “Well, I just
mean that he ain’t the right age to be really raised by her. Since Dan’s gone,
gone who knows where, she and that foreign boy that ain’t her boy have been
shacked up in that house, if you catch my meaning.”
    
    “Hey! You! Stranger!” Simon yelled over Hattie’s wiry
fiddling.
    The little boy who had been singing there along with
Hattie stopped singing suddenly and started working at drawing pictures with ink
and a feather on some yellow papers. He was working hard.
    Jim had been staring at Benjamin Straddler’s hat and
had faded out. It happened when he was thinking.
    “Hey! Stranger!” Simon stood up now. He was a strange-looking
kid for sure and he was strong, had strong arms. His eyes had an uncomfortable
effect on Jim. “You wanna play?”
    Benjamin Straddler tipped up his hat brim and laid his
eyes on Jim Falk. He pulled on his stogie. The cigar breathed an orange light
on his face and on his one raggedy eye where the eyelid was torn and the eye
was whited over behind.
    Jim didn’t like this look, but while he’d been faded
out thinking, May had brought him another muddy-looking beer. He looked at the beer
in the glass mug, picked it up, and drank some, trying to see if maybe Benjamin
might look away.
    Benjamin Straddler was looking at him harder now; Jim
could feel that raggedy, busted eye poking around in his head. Straddler was
looking in there for who Jim was. Jim patted at his pockets as if he were looking
for some tobacco.
    “No, thank you,” Jim said finally and raised his glass
to the group. “Thank you very much, but I’m not a card player.”
    “I guess he’s not a card player,” Simon said and
grinned way up with only half of his mouth.
    Benjamin Straddler just shook his head and said, “Outlanders.
What? They don’t play cards where you come from on account of the scriptures?”
Then he forced a laugh out of his throat and looked around at everyone, but no
one else was laughing.
    Hattie Jones squealed the fiddle and put it down all
of a sudden. His lips puckered up and his brows went together and he took his pipe
out of his mouth and said, “Hey! Who are you anyways?”
    Jim had his nose back in his beer cup and wasn’t expecting
such a straightforward question. He felt the urge to bark at the old man, but
instead he held his eyes on the table and slowly drank the rest of his beer in
one long drink. He stood then, and May and Huck and all the rest of them who
were in there took notice.
    Jim Falk made a thin silhouette in a long, dark coat.
His hair, which before had looked blond, they could now see was gray as ash.
His hands were strong and bony, but his face was lined and honest with eyes
blue and strange. He tipped his hat, but did not take it off.
    “My name is Jim Falk,” he said. “I believe that around
these parts, you might call me a ghost killer or maybe even a hunter. I rid
spooks.”
    All the folks looked around. Huck Marbo looked over at
May, who was pretending not to listen. When she caught his eye, he twirled his
finger fast in a little circle in the air. This was to tell her to clean her
tables and clean the kitchen and go to bed.
    That night, after more beers and some kind of talk and
excitement with the rest of them, Jim made his way along a dark path back to
the Hills’. He couldn’t remember whether he’d made friend or foe at Huck Marbo’s
bar, but he couldn’t care. His head was filled