The Witch of Coos

by Robert Frost

　　

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The Witch of Coos (1922) was featured in Frost's Pulitzer Prize winning collection, New Hampshire (1923). staid the night for shelter at a farmBehind the mountain, with a mother and son,Two old-believers. They did all the talking.The MotherFolks think a witch who has familiar spiritsShe could call up to pass a winter evening,But won't, should be burned at the stake or something.Summoning spirits isn't "Button, button,Who's got the button?" I'd have you understand.The SonMother can make a common table rearAnd kick with two legs like an army mule.The MotherAnd when I've done it, what good have I done?Rather than tip a table for you, let meTell you what Ralle the Sioux Control once told me.He said the dead had souls, but when I asked himHow that could be—I thought the dead were souls,He broke my trance. Don't that make you suspiciousThat there's something the dead are keeping back?Yes, there's something the dead are keeping back.The SonYou wouldn't want to tell him what we haveUp attic, mother?The Mother Bones—a skeleton.The SonBut the headboard of mother's bed is pushedAgainst the attic door: the door is nailed.It's harmless. Mother hears it in the nightHalting perplexed behind the barrierOf door and headboard. Where it wants to getIs back into the cellar where it came from.The MotherWe'll never let them, will we, son? We'll never!The SonIt left the cellar forty years agoAnd carried itself like a pile of dishesUp 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.I was a baby: I don't know where I was.The MotherThe only fault my husband found with me—I went to sleep before I went to bed,Especially in winter when the bedMight just as well be ice and the clothes snow.The night the bones came up the cellar-stairsToffile had gone to bed alone and left me,But left an open door to cool the room offSo as to sort of turn me out of it.I was just coming to myself enoughTo wonder where the cold was coming from,When I heard Toffile upstairs in the bedroomAnd thought I heard him downstairs in the cellar.The board we had laid down to walk dry-shod onWhen there was water in the cellar in springStruck the hard cellar bottom. And then some oneBegan 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 any one who could be there.The bulkhead double-doors were double-lockedAnd swollen tight and buried under snow.The cellar windows were banked up with sawdustAnd swollen tight and buried under snow.It was the bones. I knew them—and good reason.My first impulse was to get to the knobAnd hold the door. But the bones didn't tryThe door; they halted helpless on the landing,Waiting for things to happen in their favor.The faintest restless rustling ran all through them.I never could have done the thing I didIf the wish hadn't been too strong in meTo see how they were mounted for this walk.I had a vision of them put togetherNot like a man, but like a chandelier.So suddenly I flung the door wide on him.A moment he stood balancing with emotion,And all but lost himself. (A tongue of fireFlashed out and licked along his upper teeth.Smoke rolled inside the sockets of his eyes.)Then he came at me with one hand outstretched,The way he did in life once; but this timeI struck the hand off brittle on the floor,And fell back from him on the floor myself.The finger-pieces slid in all directions.(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 choiceOf the door to the cellar or the hall.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.I listened till it almost climbed the stairsFrom 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,"Don't make me get up; I'm too warm in bed."So lying forward weakly on the handrailI pushed myself upstairs, and in the light(The kitchen had been dark) I had to ownI could see nothing. "Toffile, I don't see it.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 bedAnd sit up by me and take hold of me.I wanted to put out the light and seeIf 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 thinkOf 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,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,And push the headboard of the bed against it.Then we asked was there anythingUp 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,Let them stay in the attic. When they sometimesCome down the stairs at night and stand perplexedBehind the door and headboard of the bed,Brushing their chalky skull with chalky fingers,With sounds like the dry rattling of a shutter,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 themFor helping them be cruel once to him.The SonWe think they had a grave down in the cellar.The MotherWe know they had a grave down in the cellar.The SonWe never could find out whose bones they were.The MotherYes, we could too, son. Tell the truth for once.They were a man's his father killed for me.I mean a man he killed instead of me.The least I could do was to help dig their grave.We were about it one night in the cellar.Son knows the story: but 'twas not for himTo tell the truth, suppose the time had come.Son looks surprised to see me end a lieWe'd kept up all these years between ourselvesSo as to have it ready for outsiders.But to-night I don't care enough to lie—I don't remember why I ever cared.Toffile, if he were here, I don't believeCould tell you why he ever cared himself....She hadn't found the finger-bone she wantedAmong the buttons poured out in her lap.I verified the name next morning: Toffile;The rural letter-box said Toffile Lajway.

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