A Novella in installments, tracing the intermingling autobiographies of a boy and a violin, spanning over a century. The previous episode is right here. To find any episode, look here.

(The protagonist posing with some old friends.)

(2) – A Date With the Witch Lady, rural NJ, 1961

I watched my father build a log fence in the front yard one summer weekend. Right near the edge of the property, a couple of feet before the road. His friend Arthur helped; I was too little. First they got some logs with holes cut in them. A few fatter ones for being the stakes. These would go into the ground where my Dad dug holes with a kind of sharp scooper tool. Then there was three or four times as many longer thinner logs without holes, but with tapered ends to slot into the post holes. He explained to me they had to be varnished with a big can of this sticky stuff that looked like Aunt Jemima’s pancake syrup (but it smelled icky). He laid lots of newspapers out on the driveway for this and then rested them against the big rock to dry. That was Saturday.

Then next day, happy cause I got to skip church, I watched the two of them pound the stakes into the holes in the ground and carefully slot the horizontal logs into the post holes. A couple had to be pounded in with this cool white rubber mallet hammer my father had. I always liked looking at the shapes of his tools, of which dozens were in the garage. Mommy never went in the garage; it wasn’t a girl’s place. But I could go. Dad had a cool trick he did there. Underneath a wooden shelf on the wall he had hammered the tops of glass jars. I checked: two nails per jartop. Everything came in glass jars then. Orange marmalade, Maxwell House coffee. Tons of stuff. It was before my country, the U.S. of A. succumbed to that horrifying invention known as plastic. Anyway, these jar lids were all screw tops. So he put all sorts of different nails and screws and things, sorted, into these various glass jars and then turned them into their nailed-up lids and there they all stood like magic. Easy to find what you needed. Not that I had a clear idea what each item was for.

After the adults left I waited a little and then went and smelled and touched the varnished log of the new fence. Very very slightly sticky if I pushed my finger hard into it. But not really sticky enough to avoid touching. But the smell was still pretty strong. I preferred the smell of the plain wood. But my father said the varnish was needed to protect the wood from getting old too fast, from the wind and the rain. I went bike riding and looking for friends. When I got back home a couple of hours later, there were five or six deep holes, circular, dug into the ground about eighteen inches behind the new fence, which puzzled me.

The mystery was solved the very next weekend when my father brought five rosebushes out of the car trunk. Well, he told me they were rosebushes. But they were all wrapped up and had no flowers yet on top and thick clumps of really black soil at their base. I could see the serious looking thorns through the clear wrapping, and each bush had a name on the part where there was writing and a picture. Like “Jeanette’s Glory” or “Royal Persian Beauty“. They were going to be pink and yellow, white and red… I asked if one would be orange and was told “maybe”. He then put a handful of lighter dirt, fertilizer, in each hole and a bush.

Sure enough by the end of the summer they were all blooming, some more than others, and most all of them smelled great. In the evenings, after we finished dinner, I would sometimes sit outside by them. Especially if no kids were around to play baseball. One such night I was carefully removing about a dozen thorns from one of the thick stalks. I didn’t really do this clandestinely — I didn’t think about it much. I just liked that I could make a tall stack of them by diligently sticking the one into the fleshy bottom of the other till I had a long row of them. I was trying out different methods to stop the stack from tilting too much to one side when I heard the bicycle bell.

I looked to the right and saw right away it was Mrs. Markey approaching. I didn’t know her but some friends who lived closer to her house, up the road, told me her last name. And they also would tell me to be careful cause she was a witch. Mrs. Markey always wore plaid jackets and a neckerchief, even when riding on her bike. Which was the only time I ever saw her, ever, except a couple of times at church. Today she had a cream colored jacket with dark blue and brown stripes to make the plaid. She wore brown pants. I never saw other ladies wear pants before. She had silver gray hair and clear bright brown eyes. The rest of her looked oldish and wrinkled but not her eyes. Her bike was sturdy and clunky, not fast like what me and my friends had. The bike had two big baskets around the rear wheel for carrying stuff, and she usually was. (Carrying stuff.) Her voice sounded like what I thought maybe people from England sounded like, an accent. But very clear. She pronounced words exactly. Maybe once every couple of months or so one of us would see Mrs. Markey going by and the most she would say is ‘hello’ and we would be too scared to answer. So I did not really think too much of it. We never knew exactly where she pedalled to. Once Richie had the idea to try and follow her from a big distance, but nobody ever did it.

But this evening was different. She stopped her bike right in front of me! And she looked at me, sitting there on the grass behind the roses. I think she looked at my hands to see what I was making, but was probably too far away to make it out. “Hello, young man. I have been thinking about you. Do you have a favorite among these rose bushes?” I was pretty sure my face got red, at least I know my head got real hot all of a sudden. She didn’t exactly seem like a witch though. Almost friendly, if not for the accent. Eventually, I answered hello, and told her my favorite color flowers were orange. I dropped the thorns and stood up to be more proper. I saw a brown paper bag filled with some little red globes, and she noticed me looking at them with surprise. She reached in and handed me one, a perfect one. I realized then it was a little baby tomato, something I had never seen before. “Try it.” It exploded in my mouth and was delicious. Then she explained she had to be off because she was delivering them to a friend some blocks away. But before leaving, she thought and said: If you want to find out more about them — and other things (she smiled at this) — then come to my house at exactly 6:30 this thursday evening. She studied my reaction briefly. I was flabbergasted. Then she began rolling and looked back. “Don’t forget — we have a date!”

The word hung in the air like a sword. Date! I never had anything like a date before and I was far from sure how to go on one. Plus I pictured it would be with someone much younger and when I was a good deal older. I was scared shitless. It didn’t even occur to me whether I had a choice or not. I had a date, and I figured I better not tell anybody else about it. A date! Me!

_______RS

NOTE: The next episode, if it exists yet, is right here. To find any episode, look here.

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