Edith was washing dishes when she heard Aggie Thomas calling from the front steps.
“Oh for goodness sake,” said Edith, “can’t she just leave me alone? She`s here to share gossip, mark my words.”
“Jack,” she said to her husband who was lying on the couch demanding his second cup of tea, “you’ll have to damn well wait for your tea.”
“Hello Aggie,” she said as she opened the door, “what brings you here so early in the morning?”
“Did ya hear the news? That old witch Nellie Strong, she die yesterday. Sam Jackson found her with her legs sticking out the front of her cave. Dead as doornail she was. Good riddance I say,” said Aggie.
“Yes, I heard,” said Edith. “She meant no harm. Just last week I took her food when me and Jack had leftovers. I often go to visit. My Jack said one day she’ll cast a spell and I’d be a goner. But me and her, we go way back. To tell you the truth I liked to visit old Nellie, better than sitting here with that lazy lump I married. And I tell ya, that Nellie, she kept that place up there in the hills neat as a pin.
“Oh,” said Aggie, “I knows you went to school together but you are still friends, ay? As a matter of fact, I didn’t know Nellie had any friends ‘cept for the witches that visit her on the nights of the full moon.”
“Nellie was not a witch,” said Edith, “she was just like you and me, but we had an easy life. Nellie had a very hard life. Her father, he beat her up every day and, like a servant she had to take care of all her brothers and sisters. When Nellie was 16, her mum was poorly and she died. The Children’s Aid come and take the young ones. Nellie, she goes live way up north but she comes back here when that pig, the old man Strong, he dies too. That is maybe twenty years ago now.”
“Anyways Aggie,” continued Edith with a deep sigh, “I must get on. I have to go clean the big house that belong to the rich folk. If Jack would get off his backside maybe I wouldn’t have to work so hard. I got me a ticket in Friday’s lottery. You never know.”
As she closed the door and went back into the kitchen, Edith thought to herself: They always talked nonsense about Nellie. Called her a witch and they blamed her for stuff that had nothing to do with her – they say she lays a spell when the apple crops failed, when the wind blew the steeple off the church, when the Jones child died. Nonsense.
Nellie was buried the next week in the local cemetery in a faraway corner where all paupers were laid to rest. Edith went to say her goodbyes. No one else bothered. Even after Nellie died, some in the village continued to blame her, saying she was sending her evil back to earth from her dark place in hell but by the end of the year most had stopped speaking of Nellie. It was like she’d never lived in the cave in the back of the woods.
But Edith remembered. One spring day when the fiddleheads were turning into fronds, the wild violets and the snowdrops were peeking up through the dirt, and the bright green ivy was winding its way around the tree trunks, Edith scrambled up the hill over the bramble to see if Nellie’s cave had survived the colder months. Edith had decided to go clean it up a tad, ‘cos she thought Nellie would like that and she’d brought a cuppa tea and a jam donut to leave for old time’s sake.
As she approached the entrance Edith heard a noise. She jumped. “Who’s there?”
Clear as a bell Edith heard the whispery sound of Nellie’s voice. “There’s a oil can hidden in a hole in the back corner under brambles – it’s for you. Will take care of yis like you care for me when we was little kids.”
Pictures flashed through Edith’s mind, as if she was watching a movie.
A bunch of kids taunting Nellie; “You stink, you’re dumb, you have maggots, your father shoots hedgehogs and you eat them for your supper with dead mice.”
And, Nellie standing there staring, saying nothing like she was mute.
Edith remembered how sometimes they’d walk home from school together. They’d go out the back gate and along the road past the Methodist church.
She could see it now in her mind’s eye. The old reverend and the choir mistress taking a short cut from the church over to the manse, Fred’s Garage littered with old cars and other junk, the back entrance to Hodgets butcher shop where old Mr. Hodgets would often be cutting meat from a headless sheep that hung from the ceiling with huge hooks through its neck, and the back entrance of the Four Square grocery store with hundreds of flies buzzing around bins full of rotting vegetables.
We’d walk all this way, more than a mile, without speaking until we reached the bakery and the fork in the road, oh my, did we love it when the baker would give us a jam donut. We’d separate there and go to our own houses. I’d say goodbye and Nellie would nod and without a word in return she would start running the three more miles to her house that was just a shack down by the river. Nellie would run especially fast if we’d dawdled on the way. She got a whipping if she was late home even by five minutes.
Edith brought her mind back to the present; an oil can — what could that mean? She broke off the new growth of the trees that were hanging over the entrance to the cave and entered the space that had once been Nellie’s home. It was empty, someone, probably the council or local kids had taken everything. Edith crawled to the back corner and felt around just as ‘the voice’ had instructed her. She pulled back the dead leaves and the moss. She saw a patch where the soil looked a little bit loose, not so packed down. She dug away with both her hands, she felt something hard. The oil can? She put her hand in further, she felt something like a lid, and she twisted it. It opened, Edith closed her eyes and put her hand inside. She half expected spiders to jump out at her, she touched something damp. It felt like a wet notebook. She slowly brought it to the top of the can and opened her eyes. It was a large pile of one-hundred-dollar notes held together in an elastic band. On top of the money was a school photo of Edith and Nellie solemnly staring into the camera.
Edith gasped, “My good Lord which art in heaven. I ain’t tellin’ Jack nor nobody bout this,” she said. “This between me and Nellie.”
“Thank you, Nellie. Wherever you get this much money I don’t know, but you rest in peace you don’t need to run no more.”
