From where old Pol Gentry lived on Rocky Fork of Webb's Creek she could
see far down into the valley of Pigeon River and across the ridge on all
sides. Her house stood at the very top of Hawks Nest, the highest peak
in all the country around. Pol didn't have a tight house like several
down near the sawmill. She said it wasn't healthy. Even when the owner
of the portable mill offered her leftover planks to cover her log house
where the daubin had fallen out, Pol refused. "The holes let the wind in
and the cat out," she'd say, "and a body can't do without either."
There was a long sleek cat, with green eyes and fur as black as a crow,
to be seen skulking in and out of Pol Gentry's place. If it met a person
as it prowled through the woods, the cat darted off swift as a weasel
into the bush to hide away. Young folks on Rocky Fork of Webb's Creek
learned early to snatch off hat or bonnet if the cat crossed their path,
spit into it, and put it quickly on again--to break the witch of old Pol
Gentry's black cat. But never were the two, Pol and the cat, seen
together.
Truth to tell there were some among the old folks on Rocky Fork who long
had vowed that Pol and the cat were one and the same. They declared Pol
was a witch in league with the Devil and that she could change herself
from woman to cat when the spell was strong enough within her, when the
evil spirits took a good strong hold upon her. Moreover, Pol Gentry had
but one tooth. One sharp fang in the very front of her upper jaw. "A
woman is bound to be a witch if she has just one tooth," folks said and
believed.
Pol Gentry was a frightful creature to look upon. She had a heavy growth
of hair, coal black hair all around her mouth and particularly upon her
upper lip. Her beard was plain to be seen even when she turned in at a
neighbor's lane, long before she reached the door. Little children at
first sight of her ran screaming to hide their faces in their mother's
skirts.
There wasn't a child old enough to give ear to a tale who hadn't heard
of Pol Gentry's powers. How she had bewitched Dan Eskew's little girl
Flossie. It wouldn't have happened, some said, if Flossie had spit in
her bonnet when the black cat crossed her path as she trooped through
the woods one day gathering wild flowers. That very evening when she got
back home Flossie sank on the doorstep, the bonnet filled with wild
flowers dropped from her arm. She moaned pitifully, holding her head
between her hands and swaying to and fro. Right away her head began to
swell and by the time they got word to Seth Eeling, the wizard doctor
who lived in Mossy Bottom, Flossie's head was twice its size. Indeed,
Flossie Eskew's head was as big as a full-grown pumpkin. The minute the
wizard clapped eyes on the child he spoke out.
"Beat up eggshells as fine as you can and give them to this child in a
cup of water. If she is bewitched this mixture will pass through her
clear."
Orders were promptly obeyed. Flossie drained the cup but no sooner had
Flossie passed the powdered egg shells than the witch left her. Her head
went back to its natural size. Nevertheless Flossie Eskew died that
night.
"Didn't send for the wizard soon enough," Seth Eeling said.
Some believed in the powers of both, though neither witch nor wizard
would give the other a friendly look, much less a word.
Pol Gentry was never downright friendly with any, though she would hoe
for a neighbor in return for something to eat. "My place is too rocky to
raise anything," she excused herself. And whatever was given her, Pol
would carry home then and there. "Them's fine turnips you've got,
Mistress Darby," she said one day, and Sallie Darby up and handed her a
double handful of turnips. Pol opened the front of her dirty calico
mother-hubbard, put the turnips inside against her dirty hide and
tripped off with them. Nor was Pol Gentry one to sit home at tasks such
as knitting or piecing a quilt. But everyone admitted there never was a
better hand the country over at raising pigs. So Pol swapped pigs for
knitting. She had to have long yarn stockings, mittens, a warm hood, for
her pigs had to be fed and tended winter and summer. Others needed meat
as much as Pol needed things to keep her warm. Tillie Bocock was glad to
knit stockings for the old witch in return for a plump shoat. Tillie had
several mouths to feed. Her man was a no-account, who spent his time
fishing in summer and hunting in winter, so that all the work fell to
Tillie. Day by day she tended and fed the shoat. It was
black-and-white-spotted and fat as a butterball, she and the little
Bococks bragged.
"Another month and you can butcher that shoat." Old Pol would stop in at
Tillie's every time she went down the mountain, eyeing the fat pig.
Sometimes she would put the palms of her dirty hands against her mouth
and rub the black hair back to this side and to that, then she'd stroke
her chin as though her black beard hung far down. Pol would make a
clucking sound with her tongue. "Wisht I was chawin' on a juicy sparerib
or gnawin' me a greasy pig's knuckle right now," she'd say. Then Pol
would begin on a long tale of witchery: how she had seen young husbands
under the spell of her craft grow faithless to young, pretty wives; how
children gained power over their parents through her and had their own
will in all things, even to getting title to house and land from them
before it should have been theirs. She told how Luther Trumbo's John
took with barking fits like a dog and became a hunchback over night.
"Why? Becaze he made mauck of Pol Gentry, that's why!" She rubbed a
dirty hand around her hairy mouth and cackled gleefully.
At that Tillie Bocock turned to her frightened children huddled behind
her chair. "Get you gone, the last one of you out to the barn. Such
witchy talk is not for young ears."
Then old Pol Gentry scowled at Tillie and her sharp eyes flashed and she
puffed her lips in and out. Pol didn't say anything but Tillie could see
she was miffed and there was in her sharp eyes a look that said, "Never
mind, Tillie Bocock, you'll pay for this."
Next morning Pol Gentry was up bright and early, rattling the pot on the
stove and grumbling to herself. "I'll show Tillie Bocock a thing or two.
So I will. Sending her young ones out of my hearing."
Far down the ridge Tillie Bocock was up early too, for already the sun
was bright and there was corn to hoe. Tillie and the children had washed
the dishes, and she had carried out the soapy dishwater with cornbread
scraps mixed in it and poured it in the trough for the pig. "Spotty,"
they called their pet. The Bococks had no planks with which to make a
separate pen for the spotted pig so they kept its trough in a corner of
the chicken lot.
"Mazie, you and Saphroney go fetch a bucket of cold water for Spotty,"
Tillie called to her two eldest. "A pig likes a cold drink now and then
same as we do." So off the children went with the cedar bucket to the
spring. When they returned they poured some of the water into the
dishpan and Spotty sucked it up greedily while they hurried to pour the
rest into the mudhole where the pig liked to wallow.
The sun caked the mud on the pig's sides and legs as it lay grunting
contentedly in the chicken yard.
And when Tillie and the children came in from hoeing corn at dinner time
Spotty still lay snoozing in the sun. An hour later they returned to
toss a handful of turnip greens into the pig. But Spotty didn't even
grunt or get up, for on its side was a sleek black cat. A cat with green
eyes stretched full length working its claws into the pig's muddy sides,
now with the front paws, now with the hind ones.
The children screamed and stomped a foot. "Scat! Scat!" they cried but
the black cat only turned its fierce eyes toward them.
Hearing their screams Tillie came running out. She fluttered her apron
at the cat to scare it away but it only snarled, showing its teeth,
lifting its bristling whiskers. Then Tillie picked up a stone and threw
it as hard as she could, striking the cat squarely between the eyes. It
screamed like a human, Tillie told afterwards. Loud and wild it
screamed, and leaping off the pig it darted off quick as a flash.
When the cat reached the cliff halfway up the mountain that led toward
Pol Gentry's it turned around and looked back. With one paw uplifted it
wiped its face for there was blood pouring out of the cut between its
shining green eyes. It twitched its mouth till the black fur stood up.
"Come, get up, Spotty!" Tillie and the children coaxed the pig. "Here's
more dishwater slop for you. Here's some cornbread!"
Slowly the pig got to its knees, then to its feet. It grunted once only
and fell over dead.
After that old Pol Gentry wasn't seen for days. But when Tillie Bocock
did catch sight of her, Pol turned off from the footpath and hurried
away. Even so Tillie saw the deep gash in Pol's forehead oozing blood
right between her eyes. She saw Pol Gentry's mouth widen angrily and the
black hair about it twitch like that of a snarling cat, as she slunk
away.