Witness

  even though she was filled with bootleg liquor and i

  could have been sent to prison for my kindness.

  i turned the packard around and told the boy

  his family was undone over his disappearance.

  they wanted him home, no matter what.

  at least give them word, i said.

  the boy denied he was merlin van tornhout and

  walked away.

  i thought about going straight to the van tornhouts when i

  got back in town.

  but i couldn’t tell the family i saw the boy

  without giving out what i was doing in plattsburg.

  and sorry as i am to know the worry of the family,

  there’s some things you just can’t do anything about.

  three keys came to me

  in a package

  postmarked

  stamford, connecticut.

  the keys were wrapped in

  a piece of gray shirting,

  snug in a nest

  of brown paper.

  one key fit the storeroom,

  one the back door,

  and one started the truck.

  i made this set last year

  for merlin van tornhout.

  so he could work the graveyard shift.

  well, merlin,

  at least you didn’t give them to the klan.

  johnny reeves climbed

  to the highest point of the arch

  of the steel bridge across the connecticut river

  and said nothing.

  johnny reeves,

  who always has something to say to the crowd

  stood,

  swaying in the air,

  silent.

  no traffic moved from one shore to the

  other while constable johnson

  climbed to the top of the bridge

  on an extension ladder.

  he balanced, 70 feet from the roadway,

  trying to talk johnny reeves down.

  constable johnson asked

  what reverend reeves was doing up there.

  johnny reeves looked at him,

  said,

  i’m afraid of the klan.

  and then he jumped

  just like that.

  i did go inside the church of johnny reeves

  while sara chickering and doc flitt did swap stories outside.

  i did go inside to warm my face and talk to God about daddy being shot

  and how the bullet

  might have had goings through sara chickering or me

  or it might have had goings through daddy’s heart and

  made the living run out of him.

  i did go inside the church of johnny reeves

  and have talkings with God

  about all the good thinkings and feelings that do race around inside me

  and that it didn’t matter that someone didn’t like us

  so

  much that they did take a gun to kill us

  because so many people did like us

  and did come to sara chickering’s house to help us.

  and no one did hear my little talks with God

  because no one is supposed to know the

  thinkings of little girls

  but just the little girl and God.

  but i did come inside the church of johnny reeves

  because even if i did not tell constable johnson

  what i did see,

  i can tell God that i saw johnny reeves

  that night daddy did get a bullet through him.

  and i did think

  if i tell God in johnny reeves’ own church,

  God does know what to do.

  couldn’t find johnny reeves’ body.

  river running pretty fast after the fall storms.

  folks say maybe he didn’t die.

  but the way he hit,

  no one could survive.

  sara chickering does bundle me

  in my coat and boots

  and hat and scarf and gloves.

  and i do go down western avenue

  knocking on doors,

  selling christmas seals

  and eating cookies

  while sara chickering

  does stand outside each door

  waiting for me to come back out

  so she can bring me safely home.

  she is so funny, sara chickering.

  i have thinkings she is like a hen over the warm eggs

  since i tried to take the heaven train.

  but since the bullet did come through her kitchen door

  she does jump when a tree cracks,

  she does stand and watch me in my bed when

  she thinks i am having sleeps

  and i pat my bed

  and i do say good things to sara chickering

  so she can sleep.

  i do tell her stories about the animals in the woods

  and the animals on the farm

  and the animals in the circus

  and at the fair.

  but i still have wakings and she is watching me in my

  sleeps.

  senator greene sent a letter to the press

  urging every man and woman

  to get out and vote for coolidge and dawes.

  well, i would have cast my vote without being told.

  women have waited far too long for the vote

  to stay out of it now.

  but i’ll vote for the man i choose.

  i don’t need anyone, not even senator greene,

  telling me what to think.

  by the most tremendous majority

  ever known in the country

  the voters of the united states

  went to the polls

  and elected a vermonter.

  never before has a presidential candidate

  conducted himself during the campaign as did mr. coolidge.

  he remained in washington

  and did the day’s work.

  he did not make what can be termed

  campaign addresses.

  he totally disregarded all attacks made upon him

  by his political opponents.

  he did not even defend himself against

  a personal attack on his record.

  he ignored all criticism directed either at him

  or at his party.

  he was the most silent candidate the country has ever seen.

  and he won by a landslide.

  let the future take note.

  that crazy mr. field.

  i’ve been taking him out for an airing

  most days, lately. says he likes the smell outside this time of year.

  wood smoke and leaf rot.

  we had stopped to rest on the courthouse steps

  when three klansmen decked out in their robes came by

  with a wreath of flowers for

  armistice day.

  mr. field, he attacked those klansmen

  as they tried placing their wreath for white men

  on the courthouse lawn.

  he got so worked up

  he snatched the wreath

  and threw it down the courthouse

  basement,

  then chased the klansmen away with

  his cane,

  made from the timbers of andersonville prison,

  and that’s the first I knew he could see.

  even through those grimy glasses, he had pretty dead aim.

  mr. field stood guard at the courthouse

  the rest of the evening.

  i had to bring him his dinner.

  and sit

  and eat with him.

  right there,

  in front of everyone. and wasn’t he in the best mood he’s been in

  for months.

  walked with sara chickering,

  and little esther to

  rehearsal

  of the choral society.

  caring for that merry child has
changed sara.

  she’s lost her hard edges.

  and that bitter sag to her lips looks almost kind,

  and she smiles.

  i wasn’t home ten minutes

  when constable johnson showed up and

  brought me in on charges of attempted murder.

  i didn’t shoot any bullet through sara chickering’s keyhole.

  the man who works at the jew store,

  ira hirsh,

  if he got shot,

  i didn’t do it. i was supposed to poison the sutters’ well.

  i couldn’t even do that.

  i should be scared, but i don’t care what happens anymore.

  i just couldn’t run another day.

  figured facing the trouble i left behind

  couldn’t be worse than dodging

  the klan preacher,

  johnny reeves

  following two steps behind me

  shadow-eyed,

  smelling of river slime,

  showing up every place i stopped.

  the secretary of state of vermont

  has rejected the application

  received from the k.k.k.

  to do business here.

  good.

  if i had done what the klan sent me out to do,

  i’d be in jail a long time. but i didn’t. i couldn’t.

  leanora sutter was looking straight at me.

  i remembered her

  racing that train

  and she was still a colored girl

  but she wasn’t just a

  colored girl,

  and i couldn’t poison her well,

  so i ran.

  and now instead, I’m accused of doing something worse.

  of trying to shoot mr. hirsh.

  i wouldn’t hurt mr. hirsh.

  he gave me galoshes to bring to

  my girl, mary, when he heard about her walking halfway across the state,

  trying to get back home.

  they were good galoshes.

  mary grinned when she saw them and threw her arms around me.

  they’re the ones the girls wear open so they flap.

  mary was so pleased she strutted around the orphanage

  like she was some kind of queen.

  i wouldn’t shoot someone who did that for

  mary.

  but i’m not going to jail at all.

  leanora sutter came to constable johnson

  and told him i couldn’t have put that bullet in ira hirsh

  because she saw me at her well that night.

  constable johnson asked if that was true.

  yes, sir, i said.

  and what were you doing at the sutters’ well?

  the klan told me to poison it.

  you poisoned the sutter’s well?

  no, sir, i told him.

  i couldn’t. that’s why i left town.

  a long time ago i wrote miss helen keller

  about how maybe we’d be better off

  if no one could see.

  then nobody would mind about

  a person’s skin color.

  i sent the letter to her when i first started looking after mr. field.

  and now, in the mail comes this book,

  the world i live in,

  and it’s signed to me,

  to leanora,

  from miss helen keller

  herself.

  i curled right up

  and started reading

  and my chores weren’t even started

  when daddy came home.

  i keep looking over my shoulder

  since constable johnson let me come home.

  but the hoods and robes have vanished from vermont.

  guess after everything else, when the government threw out the

  klan’s petition

  they figured vermont wasn’t such a good place for them

  after all.

  can’t say i’m sorry about that.

  there are always those

  who think the world is

  going to the dogs

  and that everything

  approached perfection

  only in the

  good old days.

  they say winters today demand less of us,

  and summers now are meek.

  and yet little has really changed.

  those who move away remember

  the massive town hall,

  the solid stone church,

  the imposing brick schoolhouse.

  yet when they return after many years,

  they find the buildings

  though identical in reality,

  strangely shrunken in size and majesty

  from the impression

  memory produced.

  to those who swear our young are on the road to perdition

  take comfort in this—

  every generation

  has felt somewhat the same

  for two or three thousand years

  and still the world goes on.

  i stand in the pulpit.

  the round-faced child

  listens a moment,

  then laughs,

  covering her mouth with the tips of her fingers

  before she turns and walks out.

  i did give helpings to sara chickering.

  we did dip all the keys in oil and put the oil keys in the locks

  and then

  openshutopenshut

  we did take feathers and we did oil those

  and we did move through the house,

  out to the barn,

  tickling hinges with our oiled feathers.

  we did oil every little place but the porch steps.

  sara chickering has thinkings that the porch steps

  should make creaky creaks.

  she says she does like to know when company

  is about to call.

  harvey, have you ever seen anything like it? viola asks,

  dancing in harvey’s arms

  at the grange.

  harvey looks up at the lights

  swirling around the room

  from the new myriad reflector,

  the enormous cut-glass sphere suspended from the ceiling,

  revolving horizontally while

  beams of colored lights

  play upon it.

  it’s like a snowstorm in may, viola, harvey whispers.

  and for a moment

  viola remembers

  why she fell in love with the great mule of a man in the first place,

  and all he’s done lately to make things right.

  and she nuzzles closer

  and they dance to joe ladner’s orchestra.

  found a young buck trapped

  between cakes of ice

  on the west river.

  dogs chased the buck to the water

  and it tried crossing the ice jam

  but it fell

  into a narrow break

  between the cakes of ice.

  constable johnson came.

  we got hold of the buck and

  pulled it up

  out of the crevice. lord that thing was big.

  the buck was too cold to move at first.

  it stood on the ice

  staring at us. finally

  it scrambled to its feet

  gave a jump

  and plunged back into the same dang hole we just pulled it from.

  constable johnson and i hauled it out again.

  this time

  the buck stayed clear,

  beat it across the ice

  stopping on the far bank

  taking one last look

  before it bounded away through the woods.

  it snorted once.

  you could hear the echo all through the valley.

  when i saw merlin at the well that night,

  i knew he meant no good.

  when our eyes met he looked like

  he’d been caught in
a trap.

  i could have come forward and cleared his name from the first.

  i could have told that detective from boston.

  i could have leveled with constable johnson.

  i didn’t.

  someone had to pay for me being a colored girl in a white world

  i thought.

  merlin ought to pay. so i waited.

  but then mr. field said,

  leanora, no way to pay a debt

  by stealing from someone else to do it.

  he’s pretty smart, mr. field,

  for a skinny, half-blind, old white man.

  so i told my story to constable johnson,

  and told it again inside the courtroom.

  funny thing merlin said the other day when i asked him why he

  came back.

  i didn’t know if he’d talk to me at all.

  but he did.

  he said he came back to town cause johnny reeves

  had been tailing him, showing up in every town he stopped.

  should have seen merlin’s face when he heard the news

  about johnny reeves jumping from the top of the arch bridge.

  looked like he’d seen a ghost.

  The author and editors gratefully acknowledge the Walter Dean Myers photograph collection, and the families of Edith and Herbert Langmuir, Dean Langmuir, and Joan Lacovara, for permission to use their photographs to portray the characters depicted herein.

  The characters portrayed in this book are fictitious and not intended to represent specific persons living or dead.

  With sincere thanks to the staffs at the Brattleboro and Springfield, Vermont, libraries; to Randy, Kate, and Rachel Hesse; to Bernice Millman; to Liza Ketchum, Eileen Christelow, Bob an d Tink MacLean, and Wendy Watson; and to Liz Szabla and Elizabeth Parisi.

  KAREN HESSE is the author of many acclaimed books for children, including The Music of Dolphins, Just Juice, and Out of the Dust, winner of the Newbery Medal. She lives with her family in Brattleboro, Vermont.

  Copyright © 2001 by Karen Hesse

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, a division of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC, SCHOLASTIC PRESS and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hesse, Karen

  Witness / by Karen Hesse

  p. cm

  Summary: A series of poems express the views of various people in a small Vermont town, including a young black girl and a young Jewish girl, during the early 1920s when the Ku Klux Klan is trying to infiltrate the town.