peddled so fast I thought my heart would burst. The house on Mistletoe Lane was dark but for one dim light in the living room window. “Selsie!” I called, running up the walk, then remembered shouting was useless. I banged on the door, on the window, waved my hands like a maniac. Selsie glanced up from the novel she was reading and leapt from the old armchair. Did I even look like myself, with shoe polish on my face and egg soaking my hair? I jabbed my fingers back toward town, made sure my expression was appropriately desperate, and finally she unlocked the door.
“Selsie, they’re coming!” I said.
She read my lips but failed to understand my meaning.
“Trev Reynolds and his bullies are
“Who?” she asked. “Police?”
“No! Boys from school. Mean boys. You have to leave. Come to my house.”
She backed away, shaking her head. How long since she’d left her house? How did she get groceries and cat food if she never left? “You have to! Please!” Grabbing her wrist, I tried hauling her toward the door, but Selsie squealed like my hands were made of fire. I’d never seen such a freak out, not even when my sister got her Barbies taken away from her. It scared me so bad I released her and damn near started crying.
A roar down the street. The dragon was coming. I ran to the window, peered through the grime. Randy Tillman’s truck pulled up outside the gate, and the biggest boys in High School bailed out of the back. Trev climbed out of the driver’s seat and called toward the house, “We know you’re in there, witch! We’ve seen what you can do, and we don’t like it. We’ll give you till the count of three to show yourself, then we start firing.” Firing? With bullets? Surely not with eggs. Someone clicked a lighter and lit a cigarette. Trev started the countdown, “One!” Selsie had stopped freaking out and hovered over my shoulder, staring out the window. “What are they saying?”
I gave her a nudge toward the kitchen. “Back door. Run. I’ll stall
‘em.”
“Two!”
Sure I was going to get the crap beaten out of me, I hopped across the rotten porch and hurried down the sidewalk. “Y’all leave Selsie alone! She ain’t hurting nobody.”
“Brisby! I knew it,” said Trev.
“Selsie can’t hear you anyway. She’s deaf. Please! Leave her alone.”
“Grab that little turd and make him shut up.”
One of the team linemen was built just like a gorilla. He jumped the fence, nabbed me by the sleeve, and pinched me in a headlock till I thought my brains would burst.
“She’s a witch, deaf or not,” said Trev. “Three!”
The screen door banged, and Selsie emerged. Just as she had run to scoop up the wounded cat, so she ran at the lineman holding me hostage.
She loosed that horrifying, strangled scream of outrage and raked her nails across his face. The lineman let me go and staggered back into the fence, breaking a big gap in it with his meaty ass. His teammates dragged him to safety. “Let’s get out of here!” some cried. Others demanded, “Burn it up, Trev. C’mon!”
“Read my lips, witch,” said Trev, pointing at his mouth. “We don’t want you here. Saint Claire is our town, and we mean to keep it safe.” Whether she got the message or not, her fingers started flying with God knows what kind of curses, obscenities, and warnings.
“What are you gonna do? Cast a spell on us?” Trev taunted, mocking her with his fingers. “You gonna leave town, or do we have to get serious?” I planted myself in front of Selsie, preparing to plead some more. She clenched my shoulders and together we started backing for the house.
“Light it up, Curtis,” Trev ordered.
The idiot with the lighter set fire to a strip of fabric tucked into the mouth of a beer bottle. Trev seized it and hurled it like a football. The bottle sailed high, snagged in one of the arborvitaes, dropped straight down and burst under the porch. Fire exploded. The stink of burning gasoline wafted past on the wind.
“Stop!” I shouted. With her mouth open in silent horror, Selsie watched the flame lick up the porch railing.
Three more bottles sailed across the yard. One busted on the roof.
Another through the second story window. The last bounced off the arborvitae and set flame to the jungle of weeds in the front lawn.
“Burn the witch! Burn the witch!” The chant filled the night as the fire spread. The brave jocks didn’t dare cross the fence, however, and actually lay hands on Selsie. Burning her house satisfied them just fine.
Selsie turned me, shook me by the shoulders. “Cat!” she cried. “Cat!”
“They’ll run out,” I said, but the fire had nearly engulfed the house already. All those stacks of books and the old dry wood provided an ample feast.
“Cat!” she screamed and ran for the house.
“No, Selsie!” I chased her as far as the porch. She hopscotched over the flames and rotten planks and disappeared inside.
The frenzied chant withered; the jocks watched the house just as I did, waiting. Afraid. I could see it their faces. They realized the weight of what they’d done. “Do something!” I shouted. “Call somebody!” Randy Tillman started his truck. The lineman with the scratched face bellowed, “I’m getting outta here!” Some fled on foot. Some vaulted into the bed of the truck just before it sped off. Trev Reynolds missed his chance, so did three others. They cursed Randy for leaving them behind. When sirens wailed in the distance, they took off, disappearing down one street or another. I ran, too, afraid the cops would pin the fire on me. In the empty, overgrown lot across the street, I collapsed behind a boxwood, crying, and watched Saint Claire’s only fire engine go to work. The bright stream of water seemed to turn to steam before it hit the house. Wade arrived amid flashing lights and screaming siren. I heard him tell the fire chief, “ ‘Bout time that old place gave up the ghost.”
“How long’s it been empty?” asked the chief.
“I don’t think it was. Crazy woman lived there.”
“Damn. Nobody could survive that inferno. When it’s out, we’ll look for bodies.”
They found bodies, all right. Lots of them. Eight cats, in fact, charred to the bone. But they never found Selsie. I like to think she snatched her black cat and her broom on the way out the back door and flew through the night, all the way to Dallas, where she lives to this day in her sister’s posh apartment. But who’s to say? Strange, lonely creature like that might well have turned into a beam of moonlight and escaped all our hatred and suspicion, and so much the better for her.
The love potion wore off eventually, but only after Randy and Rebecca had eloped. She came home, brokenhearted and crying, a few weeks later, and Randy lost his status as “one of the good ol’ boys,” not because he’d married Rebecca, but because he kicked her out. Nobody but Jimmy Harden and me believed Randy’s story about being ensorcelled, and we never said a word. So maybe there’s a little justice to be found in Saint Claire, after all.
Five years later, I left for college in St. Louis without once landing a date with Elizabeth McDuffy. By then, she was married anyway and running a beauty shop on Main Street. Me? I had to get out. Saint Claire had become stifling, as most small towns do for most boys. I have traveled half the country, England and France, but everywhere I go, there is something to remind me of home, and of Selsie. I still get cravings for peanut butter cookies, but none equal hers. I have followed countless cats, hoping they would lead me to her. And the sight of trick-or-treaters and the clatter of dry leaves along the sidewalk bring her to mind every October. So who knows?
Maybe Jimmy was right. Maybe Selsie ensorcelled me, too.
No. Enchanted, and the spell has yet to diminish.
