She gave it through the screen door closed between them: “No, not with John. There wouldn’t be no sense. Eliza’s had too many other men.” Laban was forced to fall back on his plan To buy Eliza a plot to lie alone in: Which gives him for himself a choice of lots When his time comes to die and settle down. TWO WITCHES I. THE WITCH OF COÖS _Circa_ 1922 I staid the night for shelter at a farm Behind the mountain, with a mother and son, Two old-believers. They did all the talking. _Mother._ Folks think a witch who has familiar spirits She could call up to pass a winter evening, But won’t, should be burned at the stake or something. Summoning spirits isn’t “Button, button, Who’s got the button,” I would have them know. _Son._ Mother can make a common table rear And kick with two legs like an army mule. _Mother._ And when I’ve done it, what good have I done? Rather than tip a table for you, let me Tell you what Ralle the Sioux Control once told me. He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him How could that be—I thought the dead were souls, He broke my trance. Don’t that make you suspicious That there’s something the dead are keeping back? Yes, there’s something the dead are keeping back. _Son._ You wouldn’t want to tell him what we have Up attic, mother? _Mother._ Bones—a skeleton. _Son._ But the headboard of mother’s bed is pushed Against the attic door: the door is nailed. It’s harmless. Mother hears it in the night Halting perplexed behind the barrier Of door and headboard. Where it wants to get Is back into the cellar where it came from. _Mother._ We’ll never let them, will we, son? We’ll never! _Son._ It left the cellar forty years ago And carried itself like a pile of dishes Up one flight from the cellar to the kitchen, Another from the kitchen to the bedroom, Another from the bedroom to the attic, Right past both father and mother, and neither stopped it. Father had gone upstairs; mother was downstairs. I was a baby: I don’t know where I was.