The Witch of Coös

The Witch of Coos

By Robert Frost

Circa 1922 I STAID the night for shelter at a farm Behind the mountain, with a mother and son, Two old-believers. They did all the talking.   The Mother   Folks think a witch who has familiar spirits   She could call up to pass a winter evening,         5   But won’t, should be burned at the stake or something.   Summoning spirits isn’t “Button, button,   Who’s got the button,” you’re to understand. The Son   Mother can make a common table rear   And kick with two legs like an army mule.         10 The Mother   And when I’ve done it, what good have I done?   Rather than tip a table for you, let me   Tell you what Ralle the Sioux Control once told me.   He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him   How that could be—I thought the dead were souls,         15   He broke my trance. Don’t that make you suspicious   That there’s something the dead are keeping back?   Yes, there’s something the dead are keeping back. The Son   You wouldn’t want to tell him what we have   Up attic, mother?         20 The Mother                     Bones—a skeleton. The Son   But the headboard of mother’s bed is pushed   Against the attic door: the door is nailed.   It’s harmless. Mother hears it in the night   Halting perplexed behind the barrier         25   Of door and headboard. Where it wants to get   Is back into the cellar where it came from. The Mother   We’ll never let them, will we, son? We’ll never! The Son   It left the cellar forty years ago   And carried itself like a pile of dishes         30   Up one flight from the cellar to the kitchen,   Another from the kitchen to the bedroom,   Another from the bedroom to the attic,   Right past both father and mother, and neither stopped it.   Father had gone upstairs; mother was downstairs.         35   I was a baby: I don’t know where I was. The Mother   The only fault my husband found with me—   I went to sleep before I went to bed,   Especially in winter when the bed   Might just as well be ice and the clothes snow.         40   The night the bones came up the cellar-stairs   Toffile had gone to bed alone and left me,   But left an open door to cool the room off   So as to sort of turn me out of it.   I was just coming to myself enough         45   To wonder where the cold was coming from,   When I heard Toffile upstairs in the bedroom   And thought I heard him downstairs in the cellar.   The board we had laid down to walk dry-shod on   When there was water in the cellar in spring         50   Struck the hard cellar bottom. And then someone   Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step,   The way a man with one leg and a crutch,   Or little child, comes up. It wasn’t Toffile:   It wasn’t anyone who could be there.         55   The bulkhead double-doors were double-locked   And swollen tight and buried under snow.   The cellar windows were banked up with sawdust   And swollen tight and buried under snow.   It was the bones. I knew them—and good reason.         60   My first impulse was to get to the knob   And hold the door. But the bones didn’t try   The door; they halted helpless on the landing,   Waiting for things to happen in their favor.   The faintest restless rustling ran all through them.         65   I never could have done the thing I did   If the wish hadn’t been too strong in me   To see how they were mounted for this walk.   I had a vision of them put together   Not like a man, but like a chandelier.         70   So suddenly I flung the door wide on him.   A moment he stood balancing with emotion,   And all but lost himself. (A tongue of fire   Flashed out and licked along his upper teeth.   Smoke rolled inside the sockets of his eyes.)         75   Then he came at me with one hand outstretched,   The way he did in life once; but this time   I struck the hand off brittle on the floor,   And fell back from him on the floor myself.   The finger-pieces slid in all directions.         80   (Where did I see one of those pieces lately?   Hand me my button-box—it must be there.)     I sat up on the floor and shouted, “Toffile,   It’s coming up to you.” It had its choice   Of the door to the cellar or the hall.         85   It took the hall door for the novelty,   And set off briskly for so slow a thing,   Still going every which way in the joints, though,   So that it looked like lightning or a scribble,   From the slap I had just now given its hand.         90   I listened till it almost climbed the stairs   From the hall to the only finished bedroom,   Before I got up to do anything;   Then ran and shouted, “Shut the bedroom door,   Toffile, for my sake!” “Company,” he said,         95   “Don’t make me get up; I’m too warm in bed.”   So lying forward weakly on the handrail   I pushed myself upstairs, and in the light   (The kitchen had been dark) I had to own   I could see nothing. “Toffile, I don’t see it.         100   It’s with us in the room, though. It’s the bones.”   “What bones?” “The cellar bones—out of the grave.”     That made him throw his bare legs out of bed   And sit up by me and take hold of me.   I wanted to put out the light and see         105   If I could see it, or else mow the room,   With our arms at the level of our knees,   And bring the chalk-pile down. “I’ll tell you what—   It’s looking for another door to try.   The uncommonly deep snow has made him think         110   Of his old song, The Wild Colonial Boy,   He always used to sing along the tote-road.   He’s after an open door to get out-doors.   Let’s trap him with an open door up attic.”   Toffile agreed to that, and sure enough,         115   Almost the moment he was given an opening,   The steps began to climb the attic stairs.   I heard them. Toffile didn’t seem to hear them.   “Quick!” I slammed to the door and held the knob.   “Toffile, get nails.” I made him nail the door shut,         120   And push the headboard of the bed against it.     Then we asked was there anything   Up attic that we’d ever want again.   The attic was less to us than the cellar.   If the bones liked the attic, let them like it,         125   Let them stay in the attic. When they sometimes   Come down the stairs at night and stand perplexed   Behind the door and headboard of the bed,   Brushing their chalky skull with chalky fingers,   With sounds like the dry rattling of a shutter,         130   That’s what I sit up in the dark to say—   To no one any more since Toffile died.   Let them stay in the attic since they went there.   I promised Toffile to be cruel to them   For helping them be cruel once to him.         135 The Son   We think they had a grave down in the cellar. The Mother   We know they had a grave down in the cellar. The Son   We never could find out whose bones they were. The Mother   Yes, we could too, son. Tell the truth for once.   They were a man’s his father killed for me.         140   I mean a man he killed instead of me.   The least I could do was help dig their grave.   We were about it one night in the cellar.   Son knows the story: but ’twas not for him   To tell the truth, suppose the time had come.         145   Son looks surprised to see me end a lie   We’d kept up all these years between ourselves   So as to have it ready for outsiders.   But tonight I don’t care enough to lie—   I don’t remember why I ever cared.         150   Toffile, if he were here, I don’t believe   Could tell you why he ever cared himself….     She hadn’t found the finger-bone she wanted   Among the buttons poured out in her lap.     I verified the name next morning: Toffile.         155   The rural letter-box said Toffile Barre.   from