Garden Plot
by Steve Burt

I visited Vermont when I was ten. I’ll never go back.

That was the summer I went to stay at Grampa Harder’s farm. He lived in Bethel, out on the Back-Bethel Road that leads along the White River to Gaysville. Everybody called it the Injun Path, because there had been a couple of Indian settlements there around the time of the Revolution. Grampa said they were always turning up arrowheads in the fields after a hard rain or after plowing.

Every day I walked the two miles to town along the Injun Path, if not for the mail then for tobacco for Grampa

A woman lived halfway between Grampa’s and town. Folks said she was descended on the one side from the Abenaki Indians and on the other side from runaway slaves. She spent all her time tending a garden on the back corner of her property, a piece of river bottomland where the river oxbows and the land’s shaped like a thumb. The garden had a low stone wall around it and a tall scarecrow in the middle. Grampa said every year that woman would shine up a couple of metal pie tins and hang them from the wrists of the scarecrow so the reflecting sun would scare off the crows. Nobody I talked to had ever seen her face.

I noticed when we drove by her place that no matter how hot it got, the old woman would always be dressed in dark clothes. She had a black veil—no, it was more of a hood—that covered her head so you couldn’t see her face. Grampa said she was superstitious and wore it to ward off spirit-stealers, so they couldn’t look her in the eye. That, Grampa said, was the only way they could possess you. Once they looked you directly in the eye, your soul belonged to them. Grampa also said spirit-stealers couldn’t cross water.

A few months before I arrived, the Congregational Church hired a new minister, Reverend Evans. He made a lot of enemies in a short time. I sort of liked him, though. (My father died when I was young, and there weren’t a lot of male figures in my life.) Reverend Evans was a character and, with that black suit and black broad-brimmed hat he wore, he could’ve played Ichabod Crane on stage.

I went to church with Grandma Harder most Sundays that summer, but Grampa only came along once. Grandma believed you should go whether you liked the minister or not, and always said, “Go to church through thick and thin, or heaven’ll come and you’ll not get in.” Grampa disagreed and after one sitting under Reverend Evans’ sharp tongue, he swore he’d never go back.

But it wasn’t only the preaching that put Grampa off. It was that Reverend Evans didn’t take Grampa seriously. When Reverend Evans came to dinner, the two of them got into a discussion about souls, and Grampa brought up the spirit-stealers, saying that his father and grandfather had cautioned him about them. Reverend Evans pooh-poohed the notion, in the process belittling Grampa in front of Grandma and me. So, as if to issue a parting challenge when Reverend Evans left that night, Grampa said, “I’ll tell you somebody who can give you an earful about spirit-stealers—the woman down the road. Why don’t you stop by and chat with her some afternoon? Maybe you’ll convert her.”

Reverend Evans snorted back at Grampa, “I may just do that, Brother Harder. I do believe I may.”

Two days later I was walking to town. When I passed the old woman’s place, I could see her standing out near the back of her property, by the bow in the river, her regular black outfit on, bent over her garden. I could make out the scarecrow with its broad-brimmed straw hat, red plaid shirt, and black pants. Two pie tins hung from its wrists, glints of sun ricochetting off them.

Now who should come walking up the road but Reverend Evans in his minister’s suit and hat. We talked beside the road for a minute, and he said he was going to see the old woman. I told him I’d seen her in her garden, then I went on toward town.

It was late afternoon when I started for home. Still plenty of sunlight, but I’d have to hustle to get back in time for supper. I approached the old woman’s place and saw she was still out there, bent over, weeding. At first I thought nothing of it, then a feeling came over me like a cold breeze on the back of my neck. I looked behind me. No breeze and no one watching.
Something was wrong. When I turned to look at the woman, she was gone. Had she collapsed in the garden? I squinted but still couldn’t make her out, so I walked fast toward the stone wall. I still couldn’t see her, and broke into a run, scared I’d find her dead and scared to death I’d find her alive. I stopped at the wall. She had to be inside. There was no gate. Something—dread—stopped me from climbing over the wall. It was waist high, so I looked over it.

It wasn’t just a garden. Mixed with the snap-peas and knee-high corn were stones, markers with faded writing on them. A bone yard. A burial ground. She was tending a grave garden. The cold chill pricked my neck again.

I glimpsed a movement to the right—sensed as much as saw it—something black and fast ducking behind the corn. Then a rustling, but not the wind. Water. Rippling. The river. The sound brought me back to myself.

Something moved. I glanced at the scarecrow and, my God, it wasn’t wearing its usual broad-brimmed hat—now the hat was black. I looked into its face and, my God, it was Reverend Evans, eyes popped wide, mouth gaped as if trying to scream a warning. But no sound came out.

Suddenly I glimpsed a reflection in the pie tin on the scarecrow’s arm. A head. In a hood. No face. More like oil on pond scum. She was behind me. Her icy breath pricked my neck, and the odor of rotten cheese invaded my nostrils. I shut my eyes and held my breath to keep from vomiting, and as I did, Grampa Harder’s warning came back to me. If I turned around, she’d have me.

I sighted in on the water, shut my eyes tightly, and lit out for the river—leaping, sobbing, swatting at the back of my neck, all the while shouting out a prayer, “Now I lay me down to sleep; now I lay me down to sleep...” With who-knows-what riding my shoulders and chewing my neck, I plunged in darkness through the reeds and clawed my way across the shallows, cutting and scratching my knees. Finally, deep water. I stayed under longer than I ever have, and let the current carry me downstream, coming up only a few times for air, always eyes clamped shut. I felt and floated my way downriver to town, and when I climbed onto shore near the town bridge, whatever had been on my back was gone.

I have no idea what happened to Reverend Evans. The constable couldn’t find him. Grandma said he had likely left town before the church could ask him to resign. As for me, I begged so hard to go home that Grampa put me on a train early the next morning.

I haven’t been to Vermont since, or even to the country, for that matter. My nerves wouldn’t take it. At least here in the city I feel somewhat safe. Even so, though, if I see a bag lady coming down the sidewalk with a scarf over her head, I’ll cross the street to avoid her. Just the thought of having to look her in the face gives me the creeps.