no one following. Had she won, outsmarted them, outrun
them, or had she lost, they had never really been after her
anyway. She might hide, or stalk the boys, dazzle them by
showing herself, and then they would chase her and she would
lose them again or hadn’t they really tried at all? Or she would
see one in the distance, maybe half a block away, and he didn’t
see her, or did he, and she would start running and running
and congratulate herself on getting away, or had she? Then a
long time would go by and she would get bored and tired and
want the game to be over and wonder where everybody was
and make her way back to the starting point and no one would
be there so she would make her way to the back alley and the
telephone pole, but from far away, toward it but not to it, not
directly walk up to it, always stay far away from it and the
boys, safe, and see the boys huddling around the cage and try
to see who was in it and hear the screams and watch the cage
go up, two or three boys hoisting it while the rest stood under
it and watched, and you could never see who it was. Later
when they let her down you could see. They would untie her
hands and walk away and she would be left there and the
scattered ring of lonely girls would watch. She was the witch.
No one talked to her at least the rest of the day.
¦
1
The convent gave us the right atmosphere. We never saw anything except the thick stone walls, and they were thick, not brick or cement, but huge stones like something medieval,
black and dark gray with moss and other hanging things and
shadows falling like God over the stones: and above the high
walls thick leafy green trees all casting shadows and it seemed
like no sky or light could ever get through them, in or out. It
was completely silent. We never saw anything or heard anything. No door ever opened or closed. No Latin poured out, no bells chimed, no music pierced the early dawn or night.
The wooden cage was hoisted in the back alley closest to the
convent, and you could see it from there, hanging over the
tops of the houses, a place of gothic mystery, Catholic, eerie.
From the telephone pole, hoisted up, inside the wooden cage,
you were raised above the stone walls and the ghastly trees:
and with your hands tied there you were the witch: and the
Catholics could see you.
They had things called nuns, women dressed all in black, all
covered up, and we thought they walked around in twos and
never said a word and had their heads bowed and shaved and
their hands together in prayer. But we didn’t know. We weren’t
supposed to go too near it, the convent, and we were afraid of
disappearing in there for life, because once you went in you
could never come out. There were ghosts there too. We didn’t
know if anyone in there was really alive. When you saw the
top of the convent and the menacing trees above the backs of
the row houses and the wooden cage with a slight figure inside
