The Witch

Once upon a time in the Tennessee Mountains, a particular and very young Marco Beach Boy was navigating the last throes of summer and beginning to embrace everything that comes with Halloween. On the rocky top of the Cumberland Plateau, autumn was descending like a whirling dervish. The early mornings were flirting with frost, and dust devils were spinning caldrons caught in the sunlight, but when fall finally fell into the season of the witch, magic was in the air. 

The maples might have gone first, or maybe it was the walnuts, but when the trees in the apple orchard finally began to turn, it was truly October. This was the year when the oldest member of the family began to conjure much more than a seasonal tradition.

Granny lived alone in the little house at the far side of the hedgerow and the end of the orchard. The beach boy - who did not know he was to become a beach boy - was living in the big stone house that was set above the orchard, the hedgerow, and the pasture leading to the barn and the horses. During the summer, Granny was never indoors. From the first plowing of the garden, until the last of the pumpkins came off the vines, Granny was busy.

During the season of apple harvesting, the beach boy was also busy fighting off hordes of yellow jackets while gathering apples, cranking the cider mill, and making apple cider. Meanwhile, Granny and Mother were beyond industrious as they were determined to can more jars of apple butter than other relative or churchgoer on the mountain. Granny might have been a weathered, little old lady of many years, but she was always feisty and about as stout as the Allis Chalmers tractor that plowed the garden and pulled the wagon.

After the summer chores were past and the harvest moon set into autumn, Granny became busy with other pastimes and seasonal activities. The walk from the big stone house to the barn was not long enough that the horses or anyone else could not smell the apple cobblers or the pumpkin pies coming out of Granny’s open windows. The setting for the changing leaves atop the Appalachian Mountains was idyllic but there was more going on than pies baking in the oven and hungry horses.

Alongside the hedgerow that covered the fence was the edge of the apple orchard and the original path to Granny’s back door. This was the path to the hollow and to where the oldest of the apple trees and the orchard began. The abandoned well was set in the deepest vale of the hollow next to a large, gnarled, and very dead peach tree.

Granny’s husband, who had long since passed, “planted for peaches” because he was originally from Georgia and wanted to relive his life as a young man in the peach tree state. Old Man Winter had a different idea, and after a deep snow, a hard freeze, and trouble by the well, Grandpa and his trophy peach tree both gave up the ghost.

The mountain top country property was indeed a paradise, but just as in the Garden of Eden, there was one place that came with a dire warning.

Mother, Granny, and even Daddy were all adamant that the “holler” was no place for kids, horses, or anyone else. Mother claimed deadly copperheads and rattlesnakes lived in the sandstones. Daddy’s warning came with a wink when he explained the old well led straight to the devil’s front door. Granny’s belief was enough to make her shudder and chill even in summer, but she never failed to tell her tale when the kinfolk gathered for the countywide family reunion.

The reunion was always in October and would always fill the patios of the big stone house, the picnic tables in the apple orchard, and especially the porch at Granny’s house. The relatives would gather and speak of the summer, the harvest, the canning of apple butter, and of the barrels of apple cider that would turn to liquor - and must be guarded - before it became wholesome and the best vinegar in the mountains.

Granny, as the matriarch, would nudge the truth and the tales and guide the conversations away from the relatives who could fall into bragging and stab any form of interesting discussion into total oblivion. Any of Granny’s stories that dealt with mysteries, the unknown, or the folklore that came from her grandparents and the old country was always a subject that could steal the limelight away from any of the boasters and the braggers.

Much of Granny’s talk was obviously for the younger cousins, who were always ready to listen to anything with a twist toward Halloween. Even though Granny was a church-going woman and never missed a Sunday with the Good Book, the weathered old lady with the crooked finger would point to the “holler” and warn that lighting would always strike Grandpa’s tree in a thunderstorm, and on the mountain, a witch could change the weather faster than a black cat could catch a mouse.

With everyone watching, listening, and spellbound, Granny explained that a witching moon was on the rise. As everyone knew, witches could not ride a full moon because it was round and too easy to fall off. A crescent moon, however, was easy to saddle and made allowance for a witch to ride astride. Just before the Halloween sunset, Granny cast out a warning. Stay away from the “holler” because this was where a witches’ brew of apple liquor tempted her husband, and that was why Grandpa pulled a cork and fell down the well.

After granny pointed with her crooked finger toward the “holler,” the well, and the top of the dead peach tree coming over the rise, all the young cousins scattered until dark and then went straight down and into the rocky gulch.

When the moon with the sharp horns began to climb over the mountain, everyone in the hollow was looking for a witch riding the crescent. When a distant cloud brought a flash of lightning to the faces that were waiting in the darkness, most of the reunion kids started scrambling up the rocky slope and away from the dead tree, the old well, and what was left of Grandpa. After clouds began to cover the moon, lighting flashed again and caught the bent figure of an old woman with a crooked finger pointing to the opening of Grandpa’s well.

Happy October, Marco, Goodland, and the Isles of Capri!