Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

With a small boy’s love of the abnormal—haunted houses, demon-murderers, crime, violence, and so on—it is not unnatural that the Willard farm should from the first have fascinated me. Nothing, for example, could have kindled my imagination about it more than the fact that I was from the outset warned against it. It was on my very first drive from Hackley Falls to “Witch Elms” that old Jim had first called my attention to the place—he pointed to it, sidelong, with his folded whip.

“See that?” And on my assenting, he added, “Keep away from there. That’s the Crazy Willards’. Old Crazy Willard.”

He chewed tobacco slowly, not turning his face toward the house. I looked at it, and it seemed then harmless enough.

“Who’s Crazy Willard?” I asked.

“He’s the very devil. The very devil himself in flesh! If you touched him with a wet finger, it would hiss.”

This metaphor so impressed me at the time that I made no further inquiry. Too much had been presented to me all at once; and it was some days before I myself, one evening at milking time, when Jim was squirting the warm white froth into a resonant pail, his knees under Lemon’s belly, again brought up the subject. I had passed the house daily—eying it across the little river, of course—but had only once seen any sign of life there. It had been a tall young woman, wearing a poke bonnet, who was rather fiercely raking the grass on the front lawn or yard and who, seeing me (I was taking home the mail), had turned for a moment, resting her hands on the rake handle, and shot at me a look of discomfiting intensity. I at once pretended that I was merely looking at the river.

“What does Old Crazy Willard look like?” I said. “And why is he crazy?”

Jim took so long to answer me that I thought he wasn’t going to answer me at all. His rusty old bowler hat was tilted back on his forehead by Lemon’s belly, and he chewed his cud of tobacco. The tiny white threads of milk shot into the pail on alternate sides, sping—spong—sping—spong , and Lemon now and then tossed her head to shake off flies.

“Why is he crazy?” Sping—spong—sping—spong . “Well, I guess because the Lord meant him to be. Him and his wife, and Lydia, too.”

“Who is Lydia?”

“Lydia? She’s his daughter.”

I reflected on this.

“But what does he look like?”

“Well, he’s tall and white-haired and kind of stringy, and he has a lot of teeth.”

“Does he do crazy things?”

“You leave your mind off him, Billy.”

“Well, but does he?”

“He’s crazy for religion. They all three are. They sing hymns, mornin’, noon, and night.”

“Oh.”

“You listen when you go by—you’d think they was having conniption fits. And sometimes they are.… He’s a powerful hand with a whip.”

“A whip?”

My puzzled question fell unanswered, except by the singsong of the milk in the pail.

My aunts were as nice as they could be. I think they didn’t know much about children—or small boys—and that I was a problem which very likely they discussed, sometimes, till late at night. What fantastic conclusions they reached, heaven only knows! They were very much alike—in fact, at first I couldn’t tell them apart. They both wore spectacles and both had thin, white, kindly faces; they dressed in black, with lace over their shoulders, parted their hair severely in the middle, and had bright blue eyes. It was a day or two before I knew that Aunt Julia was the one who had gray hair and usually folded her hands as she talked. She was very gentle. Aunt Jenny was plumper, stuck out in front a little more, had a loud sudden laugh like a man and an aggressive sense of humor. Except to church on Sundays, when Betsy the mare was harnessed to the old closed carriage, and Jim wore a special coat, not quite so green with age as his other, and once a month to tea at the Minister’s, and about as often to Captain Phippen’s, they never went out. They lived in the house and garden, only occasionally going to the barn for an official inspection. Now and then, if there happened to be a “special sunset,” they would take me with them to the upper orchard, from which one had a fine view right along the valley to the west, where one could see the notched mountains against the sun. But this was seldom; and they did it gravely, as if it were a kind of religious duty.

It was on such an occasion, as we stood by a fallen apple tree which, though half broken through at the ground, still continued annually to blossom and bear, and as we watched the sunset fading in the curves of the Mill River, that I first heard the Willards mentioned by my aunts. At that hour and in that light the Willard farm was unusually conspicuous. It stood very black and square and alone against the western light, and even at that distance it looked forlorn and deserted. From where we stood we could see also the little white footbridge which led across from it to the main road. And it was Aunt Julia who first noticed that someone was crossing the river.

“There he goes now,” she said.

“Who?”

“Old Isaac. I wish he’d fall in and drown.”

“He’d do well to drown in Mill River!”

I could just make out on the footbridge the figure of a man, who seemed to be carrying something in one hand.

“What’s he carrying, Aunt Jenny?”

“Keg of hard cider, most likely.”

“There’ll be hymn-singing tonight, I guess.”

“And more than that.”

“What does he do?” I asked.

Aunt Jenny gave Aunt Julia a quick look, not meant for me.

“He beats time,” she said. And then added, “With a razor strop.”

“Jim said it was a whip.”

“Well, I guess he isn’t particular. It might even be a broomstick. Anyway, you can hear it for miles around!” Aunt Jenny gave a quick laugh. “And then Lydia keeps out of sight for a while.”

I wanted to ask questions, feeling that something queer was behind all this, but at that moment, as the best of the sunset was over, my aunts, picking up their long skirts, began to retrace their steps toward the house, and nothing further was said. In fact, though the Crazy Willards were seldom far from my mind, and though I never went out without hoping, or half hoping, to meet Isaac, I made no further discoveries about them until several weeks later, when I had walked up to Captain Phippen’s to take him a present of gingerbread from Aunt Julia. Long before I had climbed the hill (it was a very hot day) I could see him in his usual rocking chair, with his feet against the porch-rail and his spyglass at his eye. He watched me climb, and when I arrived at last he told me that he had been counting the sweat-drops on my forehead.

“You look hot,” he said.

“I am!”

“Well, sit down on your hunkers and rest. Don’t tell me your Aunt Julia is sending me more gingerbread! That woman will be the death of me.”

I sat down and presently was allowed to look through the precious glass, and of course instantly turned it on the Willard farm.

“I’m looking at the Willard farm,” I said.

“Well, I’d be careful, if I was you.”

“I can see two great big seashells by the front door.”

“If that’s all you can see,” he said, chuckling, “you’re a lucky boy.”

“Does old Isaac beat Lydia?”

“What made you think that?”

“Something Aunt Jenny said.”

“Well, I dunno, I dunno, maybe he does.”

“Is she bad?”

“Maybe she was. She ran away once with some young feller.”

“Did she want to marry him?”

“Perhaps she did.”

“And what happened then?”

“Old Isaac went and brought her back again.… You’ll understand it when you’re older.”