familiar.” I nod my head.
Margaret lowers her voice to a hush.
“You know ’tis a lie.
Wilson be first your father’s dog
and then be Mercy’s.” Margaret signals
Wilson to come to her side, and he does.
I huddle the girls around me.
“Mercy talks a fool lately
about quitting our accusations.
She needs be taught a lesson,” I say.
“But you don’t mean to hurt Wilson.”
Elizabeth now hugs the ratty fleabag.
“Oh, Elizabeth. ’Tis but a dog;
your fits have sent Christians
to Gallows Hill,” I say.
Elizabeth motions Wilson to leave
with her, tears channeling down her cheek.
“Are you so quick in your boots
to return to Doctor Griggs and his beatings?
Your home is here with us.
Give up that dog and sit down,” I command.
Margaret rises to rescue the dog.
“Forget not, Margaret, Mercy be not your friend.
She be always before your enemy.
Why defend her? What bind has she to you?”
Abigail sobs, “So Mercy be banished from us?”
I shake my head.
“No. She just needs be taught
a lesson.”
INNOCENT DOG
Mercy Lewis, 17
I stare at Elizabeth
as they shoot him,
a creature without growl or bite,
but only lying there in the sun.
The sound of the gun
blocks out all else
as though everything
stops moving except the bullet.
Ann and Abigail nod.
“That’s the beast
Charlotte Easty’s specter
rode and tortured,” Abigail says.
My sweet dog’s blood floods
the ground, pooling
toward Ann’s feet,
but she remains unmoved.
The tears burn my cheeks.
“This be wrong,”
I say to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth with her soft eyes
looks to embrace me,
but I shrug away.
“Wilson never did but love.
It be we who do the Devil’s work,”
I say.
I run toward my Wilson
but like a root snarling my path,
Ann trips me and says,
“Don’t dare touch that dog!”
My face blares red as Wilson’s blood.
I leave her and Abigail and Elizabeth.
I march away from them and their stench.
THE TRIALS CONTINUE
Ann Putnam Jr., 12
I knock but Mercy
does not respond.
I crack open her door.
Her clothes crumple
over her body, her room
dungeon damp and dingy.
She stands up in her
undergarments;
and, without even
looking at me, Mercy leads
me out of her room.
Elizabeth, Margaret and I
ride to town,
silent as the cornfields we pass.
“Mercy is not herself,”
I say with a slight smile.
“Leave Mercy be,”
Elizabeth snaps,
quick and mean
like an angry gnat,
unlike herself.
I don’t look at Elizabeth
the rest of the ride into town.
Before we testify against him,
Judge Stoughton asks Giles Corey,
“How will ye be tried?”
Giles Corey says nothing.
His lips, like great boulders,
will not be moved.
“Will you not enter a plea?”
Judge Stoughton’s eyebrows
frown on his forehead.
All the judges look
to one another and murmur;
still Goodman Corey
does not speak.
I look to Mercy for what to do,
but she is not here.
I signal the girls to stay quiet.
“If you do not enter a plea,
that by God and your country
ye are either guilty or innocent,
Judge Stoughton peers
over his table to meet
Giles in the eye.
Giles nods his head.
“Ye will be pressed to death,”
Judge Stoughton says.
The courtroom chatter
escalates to frenzy,
more noise today than ever before.
Judge calls the day
as he cannot calm the crowd.
NO KIN IN SALEM VILLAGE
Mercy Lewis, 17
Though the mosquitoes
bite fierce and the hour falls
deep in the belly of the night,
I do sneak from the house.
I cannot be contained.
I crunch through the thicket.
I pat my thigh
three times calling
for the ghost of my dog,
the only one who really cared
for me in this town,
now rotting in a shallow grave.
I faint back into leaves
loosed from fat-trunked trees
and bury myself.
I wish to find family
somewhere, even if it’s underground.
CRUSHED
Margaret Walcott, 17
Isaac be there to watch Giles Corey
die,
the man for whom he rode ’bout town,
petitions in his satchel,
trying to save.
As they do drop heavy stones
’pon Goodman Corey’s chest
I clutch my own heart.
Why never did Isaac visit me
or speak to me after
he peeled away my bloomers?
My anger flattened out,
I wish to be back against Isaac’s chest.
I be not understanding why
Giles asks for more weight.
I fear well enough the stone
I’d be bearing were the town
to know I sinned out of wedlock.
They send all us home
for the night scares the sky,
and Giles Corey cannot yet be crushed.
THE EXECUTIONER’S PIPE
Mercy Lewis, 17
My throat’s dry as the ground.
The oxcart of eight condemned witches
catches in the road.
Abigail shouts, “The Devil
holds back the wheel.”
Ann nods. “Yea,
the Devil tries to save
his witches from their hanging.”
The cart breaks free of the rut
and journeys to the top
of Gallows Hill.
Elizabeth recites the Lord’s Prayer.
Margaret nudges her to quiet,
then directs her eyes to Isaac.
The crowd’s breath upon my neck,
I feel no tingles,
no power in my fingers.
The sky above layered with gray,
I cannot tell where the light
comes from or if the sun
shines down at all.
Martha Corey
folds her hands to God.
I pray for swift death,
but she gasps,
for the noose
is not quite tight enough
to break her neck.
Her body convulses like shocks
of lightning flaring the sky
for fifteen minutes.
Elizabeth and I clasp each other
in iron-bound restraint
so we will not run up
and cut her rope.
They noose the last witch,
Samuel Wardwell:
a man I do not know,
have never seen.
He opens his mouth
to proclaim his innocence,
but the executioner’s pipe smoke
chokes him and clogs his last words.
The crowd rumbles and storms.
“The Devil stands beside the witch
on the hanging platform.”
Abigail yells above the mob’s
mumbles and roars.
I see nothing.
I want to say I see nothing,
that I am tired
and wish to be left alone,
wish to be like the field
left fallow this autumn.
I stay mute now,
but ’tis too late.
What, Lord, have I done?
Reverend Parris
shakes his head at the corpses
dangling by their necks.
“What a sad thing it is to see
eight firebrands of Hell hanging there.”
Ann lifts her chin like a general
and says, “We meet ’morrow
at Ingersoll’s.”
“Not I.”
The wind blows behind me,
and hurries me to the Constable’s.
I burrow under bedcovers
as if I were among the soil
and the rocks and the worms.
As if I were all bones, no brain,
as rotted on the outside
as I feel poisoned within.
RESTORATION
Margaret Walcott, 17
Carrying the wool to town,
I feel as my feet are logs,
large to lift, and I can’t manage
their weight. My eyelids flutter
and I must be dreaming him,
Isaac, or maybe he be there,
for someone do catch me
before my head hits the road.
“Margaret, ye be whiter
than a soul and feel as a bag
of bones in my hands,” Isaac says
as he lifts me up. He carries me
into my uncle’s ordinary
and spoons soup into my mouth.
“When last didst thou eat?”
“I can’t rightly say.” My tears
fall heavy as I cling to his arm.
I push away the spoon.
“No, thou must eat,” Isaac says,
his voice soft as a rabbit’s back.
But then it cracks with thunder:
“’Tis them girls and their witches
been starving you. ’Tis that Mercy Lewis.”
Isaac stands liken he might put a fist
into something.
“Don’t leave me,” I say. “Please, I beg thee.”
I put myself to knees before him.
“Take me back.”
He holds up my chin.
“Farrars do not hang folk.
We do not call our Christian neighbors
witch. Dost thou understand?”
I wrap my arms around his legs.
“Yes, Margaret Farrar sees not.”
Isaac sits me down.
“A Farrar woman sees not.
She speaks not.
She must be a good Christian woman.”
He dunks bread into my porringer
and feeds me. “She must be hearty
and strong to raise me sons.”
I nod my head.
“Pray well and the Lord
shall forgive ye and we shall
be wed as planned.”
I move to wrap my arms
round Isaac, but he holds up
his hand. “We do not show
our affection in public.”
“Yes, sir,” I say.
Isaac’s eyes wander to the daughter
of the traveling merchant
in the smart blue frock
across the room,
but I just clasp my hands
and bow my head
and pray.
DISSOLUTION
October 1692
Holiday ends.
Time to unpack
your bags and launder
your clothes.
Some stay on the road,
refuse to reenter
home and resume
regular life,
the sunrise-to-sunset
day of cooking,
spinning, tending, study—
pierced with the dagger of silence.
NOT ALL FOLKS ALIKE
Ann Putnam Jr., 12
A stranger beats on our door,
a man the height and hat size
of my father, his arms heavy
with a young boy.
“Sorry to bother ye, sir,
but they say you have the sight
here, and I thought someone
might tell of who hurts my son.”
The man’s arms buckle,
and he nearly drops his son.
“Set the boy down, good sir.
Take rest. The Devil will out.
Ann can tell ye who afflicts
your son,” Father says.
He beckons me with a curled finger.
I close my eyes and raise
my hands above the boy.
His skin looks as though
he were dusted in chalk.
“’Tis Goody Cary beats the boy
till he cannot breathe,” I tell them.
“Goody Cary is a tried witch,”
Father says.
The man scratches his scalp.
“’Tis not Goody Obinson
that afflicts him? The old woman
half blind and all insane?”
No one breathes; for one moment
Father, the visitor and I
just stare at one another.
I let go my held breath and ask,
“Be she crazed and white-haired?”
“Yes, that be her,” the man says,
almost smiling. He smooths
his hand across his son’s forehead.
The boy coughs and sits up,
color pouring into him
as he drinks the water
Father provides.
“He is coming healed!”
The boy’s father falls to his knees.
“Praise the Lord!”
We pray for an hour,
no words except prayers
between us.
“Not all believe we must fight
the Devil, but I see proof today.”
The man tips his hat.
“My own Reverend, Increase Mather,
says to me, ‘Do you not think
there is a God in Boston,
that you should go to the Devil in Salem
for advice?’”
The man shakes my father’s hand.
“No devil I know cures a child.”
He and his son leave our home.
They leave no scent of their boots on our floor,
but the words that Reverend Mather spoke—
those cling to every fabric in the room.
STAND DOWN
Margaret Walcott, 17
“We’ve been called to Gloucester
for our spectral vision,” Ann says.
She crosses to stand aside me
as I poke at the crumbled logs
so the fire stays lit. When I say nothing,
she asks me, “What be the matter?”
“I can’t go,” I say, and feel
the scorn spread across Ann’s face.
“You preached about remaining
strong and united!” She kicks the embers.
Ann’s boot catches flame.
I stomp it out and she squeals
like I severed her foot.
“Make not such a fuss,” I say.
I
take her hands. “Isaac…” I begin,
but Ann boils a broth of anger.
I burn my hands
trying to touch her.
“You will not understand.
But I can’t go with you.
I can’t ever again. I be done.”
Ann screams, a wail what rattles
the chair. I step back from her.
Her father bounds into the room.
“What be about?”
Ann collapses in a faint,
and Uncle Thomas looks to me.
I shrug. “I can’t see the Invisible World.
I know not who torments her.”
Ann kicks. She catches me
under the chin, and my jaw
clenches together.
Ann recovers from her spell
and says, “Margaret cannot
see or speak anymore.
I will go with Abigail Williams
to Gloucester to name the witches.”
THE RETURN OF MERCY
Ann Putnam Jr., 12
Mercy winds up the path.
She squints her eyes.
In her arms she lugs a heavy bag.
I want to rush to meet her.
I wish to cling to her skirt,
and fall to my knees,
but I remain at the door.
The light behind her halos her
like an angel.
“Please help me bring this bag inside,”
she says.
I refuse, but watch her
stagger down the path