SECRETS

The summer she turned 11, Mandy could hardly hold back her excitement as she waited for school to end. Every year, for as long as she could remember, she'd spent two weeks with Aunt Callie and Uncle Gus. Her senses tingled with anticipation as her fath er helped her aboard their 30-foot skiff for the 12-mile trip to Smith's Point. This was the summer she must learn about the charm; she'd made up her mind to that.

Even before the boat reached the shore, Mandy could make out the stout figure of her aunt waiting at the edge of the steep bank. The figure got bigger and bigger as the boat knifed its way through the rippling waters. In spite of her father's warning t o be careful, she hurried over the side of the boat as soon as it got close enough to the land. The black waters made sucking noises against the sharp rocks as Mandy's rubber boots plopped her against the soft turfed landing. Without waiting for her fat her's help, she crawled up the slope, afraid that if she stood straight she would fall into the blackness of the sea. Reaching the top of the embankment, she eagerly grabbed hold of a wooden rail, then swung herself and her small suitcase onto the gravel led road.

Her aunt stood waiting, and rubbing her heavy hands down her white bibbed apron. "Glory be, Child," she exclaimed, "You've grown some, and as polished as a button too."

"Mom made me scrub," Mandy answered absently. Growing, or looking like a button was not what was on her mind as she followed her aunt along the dusty road.

"Aunt Callie," she blurted out, "Are you a witch?" The words leaped off her tongue almost without her thinking them. Perhaps it was the sight of the two-storey house that rose in the air and came to a point like the peak of a witch hat.

She watched anxiously as Aunt Callie's jaw dropped and her chin sagged and became two. She straightened her face to ask tolerantly: "Now Child, do I look like a witch?"

"No, I don't think so," Mandy answered, now unsure of herself. Witches, she knew had long noses and even longer faces; her aunt's nose was short and fat and her bumpy cheeks were wrinkled like shrivelled potato skin. "But you must be almost a hundred y ears old and have lots of secrets," she insisted.

"I'm seventy, Child - seventy," her aunt sounded annoyed. She stopped to push a clump of grey hair up inside her black cap, then she moved along the road a little brisker. Afraid that she had offended her, Mandy fell silent.

She scuffed her way up the lane and followed her aunt around the corner of the house. Aunt Callie lifted the latch on the back door and they went into the porch. Mandy, determined to please, pulled off her boots and walked across the bumpy canvased flo or in her stocking feet. Her aunt frowned, "Put your boots back on," she said sharply, "You'll catch your death."

Mandy quickly shoved her feet down into her boots and took her suitcase into the hall. Uncle Gus, from his oval frame on the wall at the top of the stairs, looked down at her. Dashingly handsome in his navy uniform, this man was a stranger to the uncle she knew. Suddenly a ramshackled version of the man in the photograph came up from behind, grabbed her with his strong, beefy hands, and smacked a wet kiss on her face. The stench of his chewing tobacco made her nose feel pinched as if she was suffocat ing. Perhaps he'd forgotten that he was no longer the man in the picture, the young sailor who had courted her aunt on a train and proposed to her - all in one day. Mandy's mother was fond of declaring that the marriage had gotten off on the wrong track . "A woman chaser", was what Mandy had heard relatives say in low tones behind their hands. Now she wiped away the offending kiss, no longer feeling the urge to crawl under the table as she had done in other years when her uncle had grabbed her.

Later, as she lay in the big feather bed in the spare room, Mandy pulled the heavy quilts up around her face and tried hard to think of a way to get the secret of "the charm." As she lay in the darkness, all kinds of ideas came to her mind, but graduall y, one by one, her thoughts folded themselves away into the drawers of her mind and she drifted into sleep.

Morning came so fast that it surprised her. She sat up quickly, rubbing her eyes against the brightness of the sun pouring through the window. The sweetness of lilacs and honeysuckles drifted across her nose. She took a moment to enjoy the feel of her toes against the tightly fitted bed sheets, then bounced out of bed and pulled the quilts up over the big feather pillow. She dressed and washed quickly, then bounced down the stairs straddling two steps at a time.

Her aunt was looking into a small mirror on the wall and buttering her face with Noxema. Mandy wetted her lips nervously. "Please, Aunt Callie," she asked, "Won't you tell me how I can stop blood."

"My gracious," her aunt declared, "You are a curious child." She turned and patted Mandy's hand with her large greased one. "Perhaps I'll tell you some day," ....

Excerpts from each story in WIDDERSHINS:

OLD NART

She was almost glad when she slipped and fell. Down she sank into a warm, feathery bed, feeling something like a skinned bird might feel at finding its feathers again. She closed her eyes and drifted with the snow....

SECRETS

...she was horrified to see a red stain on her brown ribbed stockings. Panic rose in her like an animal trying to claw its way up through her throat. The door was pushed against the wind. Unheeding the key that pressed into her palm like a sliver of ice, Mandy ran calling, "Aunt Callie - Aunt Callie!"

UNCLE ERLKING

Little Mary's face flashed in front of her eyes. Little Mary from across the cove, only six, holding a candy bar in her hands on a hot summer's day. She'd whispered that she got it from the old man in the shed. Her eyes were wide and frightened, and her hand was all dirty from the melted chocolate.

ON THE WINGS OF AN EAGLE

She loved him. Her feelings rose to a fullness she could hardly take, and she couldn't bear the thought of him slipping farther away every moment that passed. There was an urgency inside her to see him, to touch him - to say good bye.

WIDDERSHINS

"Widdershins?" Mandy screwed up her face. "What's that?" Her aunt explained, "That means he turned back the hands of the clock to the time Josh got the fright; then he wound the clock contrariwise until the spring broke. That was the doctor's way of breaking the spell. þTwas a lovely grandfather clock...

THE LADY IN BLUE

... daydreaming could take her away from now, and back to times when the sea brought a romantic edge to the lives of people living near it. Tales were written of women at windows, curtains hanging down their faces like white mantillas. Their eyes burned with hope and fear as they speared the distance...

THE WITCH

Suddenly "the witch" jumped in front of her. She had never been so close and Mandy drew back, startled. Aunt Jerusha squinted at her, her eyelids easing down over her eyes in doughy folds. "What would you give me if I gave you the $100,000 coupon - your soul?"

THE FEATHER

She wasn't really vain. How could she be? No one would let her - not her classmates who called her nicknames... nor her mother who cut a week off her summer stay with Aunt Callie because she smeared her lips with chuckley pear juice, and put gravy browning on her eyelashes. Not even God would let her be vain. He made her with hair the color of dried blood, a bad case of freckles and what the minister called a retrousse nose.

THE DEVIL DANCES IN EMPTY POCKET

She would go back - sometime - to cleanse the spot and wrinkle from her soul, but first she had to think about all the things that might happen to her if she did. She could be put in jail. She imagined herself bringing in her thirty cents and, while the cashier was busy, leaving them on the counter.

TORN PICTURES

She pushed the chair back unsteadily and, holding her covers tight to her chest, stood up. A kind of mesmerization took over her body as she moved like rubber towards the teacher's desk. She held her precious pictures out hesitantly, careful not to touch Mr. Rachit's clammy hands.

A MARE'S NEST

"Stretch up!" she called. "Stretch!" She closed her eyes. The cold wind was whipping her dress around her legs. What if he falls on me! she thought. We'll go banging down the cliff like old cans. No, not cans - pulpy oranges - and our skin will tear off, and we'll drown in the ocean.

A PERFECT LOVE

She felt insulted, and shamed that he had tried to French kiss her. She couldn't tell anyone about it. Her friends would think she was some sort of - . She couldn't say the four-letter word. Her mind would feel even dirtier than her mouth was.

THE ACCIDENT

The truck heaved back and forth across the road with her father's hands gripping the wheel and trying to hold it steady. Suddenly it lurched and lifted, turning on its nose, tipping Mandy upside down. She heard the sound of gravel beating like hailstones against the cab, and her hand went up to grab the seat to keep herself from falling. Suddenly her world ended.