TUGGIE BANNOCKS’S MOONACK
Tuggie Bannocks, the Narragansett negress, decided to work a charm on old Bosum Sidet, the negro tinker. She was not going to charm him in the ordinary commonplace way, albeit pleasing, that most dames follow—be they old or young, black or white—to allure human beings of the opposite sex. Her charm was, alas, a malignant one, a “conjure,” that she angrily decided to work upon him as a revenge for his clumsy and needless destruction of her best copper tea-kettle while he was attempting, or I suspect pretending, to repair it. This charm was not a matter of a moment’s hasty decision and careless action; it required some minute and varied preparation and considerable skill to carry it out successfully, and work due and desired evil.
Tuggie’s first step, literally, was to walk over the snowy fields, the frozen roads, to Bosum’s house to obtain some twigs or sprigs of withered grass that had grown and still lingered in his dooryard. Lest Bosum’s wife should suspect any uncanny motive for her visit, she carefully elaborated a plan, and carried on, in its furtherance, a long conversation with regard to a certain coveted dye-stuff which Mother Sidet manufactured; it turned all woollen stuffs a vivid green, and was in much demand throughout Narragansett to dye old woollen rags and worn-out flannel sheets and shirts this brilliant, verdant hue, when they could thereafter be used to most astonishing and satisfactory advantage in conferring variety in the manufacture of those triumphs of decorative art, those outlets of rural color-sense, home-made woven rag-carpets, and hooked and braided rugs. Tuggie argued with much dignity and volubility that she should be told the secret of this dye-stuff as some slight compensation for her ruined tea-kettle. It is needless to state that she was unsuccessful, nor had she expected to be otherwise. The secret of the dye was Molly Sidet’s stock-in-trade, just as the soldering-iron and solder were her husband’s.
At Molly’s refusal Tuggie waxed wroth, and a most unpleasant exchange of personalities took place, which culminated in Tuggie’s exasperating reference to an event which had occurred in Bosum’s youth, and about which he and his wife were exceedingly and naturally sensitive. He had once gone proudly to Boston for a three months’ visit to ply his trade and see the town. At the end of two weeks he had reappeared in Narragansett, kit in hand and depressed in appearance. When interrogated as to the reason of his sudden and speedy return, he had answered, acrimoniously, that “Boston folks is too full of notions.” In the course of a few weeks, however, news came to Narragansett that Bosum had been arrested in Boston for his well-known trick of stealing, and had been whipped through the town at the cart-tail. Nothing could anger Molly Sidet more than a reference to “Boston notions.” Tuggie used this thorn in the side with well-planned judiciousness and with the pleasing and wholly satisfactory result that Molly ordered her fiercely out of the house. This was precisely what she desired, for a witch cannot work a full, a thoroughly successful conjure on one who has always treated her well and kindly, and shown her due hospitality; hence old Tuggie, by Molly’s abrupt expulsion of her from her house, was left free to work her wicked will.
Though Tuggie did not get the coveted dye-stuff, nor the recipe therefor, she did not return home empty-handed; she managed to pick without discovery a few leafless twigs from the great bush of southernwood that grew by the stone doorstep of Bosum Sidet’s house, and she felt that her visit had not been in vain. Fortune favored her. As she passed the door of the tinker’s barn she slipped in unobserved and clipped a few hairs from the tail of his cow. It would have been much better, much surer, to have had these hairs from Bosum’s own head, but to aspire to a fibre of his close-cropped wool was useless.
As Tuggie Bannocks walked home over the crisp snow she muttered to herself with delight, and she glowered and scowled at the children as she passed the school-house at the corner, and they hooted and jeered at her in return, and called out, “Te-Rap, Te-Rap,” which everyone knows is the greeting that witches cry out to each other.
She certainly was deemed a witch by her neighbors as well as the children. And this reputation was not accidental, it was jealously cultivated. She conformed her mien and behavior to all that was expected of a witch; and she had been gifted by nature with one feature which, much to her satisfaction, enabled her to exhibit convincing proofs of her pretensions. She had two full rows of double teeth (front teeth and all were double), which could be displayed to telling and bewildering advantage to those who thought her “just like other folks.”
She did have some uncanny habits; some that, a century previous, in a Puritan community, would have set her afloat to sink or swim.
She never sat upon stool or chair or settle in anyone’s house; no one had ever seen her seated save on a table or dresser or bed, or even on a cradle-head—this to the painful apprehension of the mother who owned the cradle. When spinning flax in one house she sat on a saw-horse. She had not a chair in her house, but there was an oaken chair-moulding at the top of the wainscoting in her spacious old kitchen; and it was currently reported and believed that when she was alone she perched or clung with her heels on this moulding. The Newport chap-man, Chepa Rose, told at the Ferry that he saw her one night running round the room on the moulding. But Chepa was not truthful, so I do not believe it.
Tuggie dwelt alone in the ell part of an old gambrel-roofed house, which had seen better days, but was now deserted and sadly dilapidated, and was indeed in its main portion almost roofless. The ell, which contained the great raftered kitchen and two other rooms, was, however, tight and comfortable, and made a cheerful, picturesque home. Tuggie, who was strong and capable, worked for the farmers’ wives around; dipped candles, made soap, spun yarn and wove carpets, brewed and salted; she also cultivated a little patch of land of her own, and knit stockings to sell, and was altogether a very thrifty, industrious person. She was in reality far more afraid of being bewitched than she was confident of bewitching, and that evening, as she prepared to “burn a project” to conjure old Bosum Sidet, she started at every sound, and turned her petticoats inside out, to keep off evil spirits, and at last hung a bag of egg-shells around her neck as a potent saving-charm.
She first mixed a little flour and water into dough and stirred in the hairs from the cow’s tail—these were the straw for her brick; then she moulded the dough into the shape of a heart and stuck two pins in for legs and two for arms; this would surely give Bosum “misery in de legs and arms”—in short, rheumatism. This dough-heart she set aside, for it was not properly part of the project, and would only fulfil its diabolical mission when it was carried to Bosum’s door and set upon his fence or doorstep, when the “misery” would begin.
She then, with rather a quaking heart, prepared to burn the project. The sprigs of southernwood from Bosum’s door-yard, a few rusty nails, the tail of a smoked herring, a scrap of red flannel, a little mass of “grave-dirt” that she had taken from one of the many graveyards that are dotted all over Narragansett, and, last of all, that chief ingredient, the prime factor in all negro charms—a rabbit’s foot—were thrown into a pot of water that was hung upon the crane over a roaring fire. Of course everyone in Narragansett knew that when a project began to boil the conjured one would begin to suffer some mental or bodily ill; hence Tuggie listened with much satisfaction to the premonitory bubbling within the pot.
She stepped into the centre of the room on account of the heat of the fire, and because it is not good luck to watch a boiling project; and as she stood in the red glow of the firelight she was the personification of negro superstition. Tall and gaunt, with long bony arms, and skinny claws of hands, with a wrinkled, malicious, yet half-frightened countenance, surrounded by little pig-tails of gray wool that stuck out from under her scarlet turban, with her old petticoat turned inside out, and a gay little shawl pinned on her shoulders, she stood like a Voodoo priestess eagerly watching and listening. When the boiling fairly began, she commenced swaying, rocking herself backward and forward, patting the floor with heavy foot, almost dancing while she muttered and sung, in a low voice, a few gibberish charms that had been taught by her mother, Queen Abigail. She rolled her eyes up in a superstitious ecstasy, and swung her long arms to the rhythm of her heathenish song, when suddenly a shock like an earth-quake struck her door; it flew violently open, and some long, heavy object rushed in, struck Tuggie violently on her tender shins, and threw her, face downward, on the floor. She was for a moment stunned with the fall and with the suddenness of the assault, but when she regained her senses she still lay on the floor with eyes tightly closed and her face covered with her hands, for this violent assailant was surely that terrifying creature, a “moonack,” that she had raised and brought by her wicked conjuring, and if she glanced at it, it would cause her instant death.
Perfect stillness had succeeded the assault. The old negress groaned and tried to pray. She repeated some old Voodoo charms, the Creed, all kinds of words to ward off evil spirits, and at last pleaded aloud, “Oh, Mass’ Debbil, you only lets me go dis time, I won’t nebber burn no projects no more; I warn’t a-goin’ to hurt Bosum anyway, I only wants to git a new tea-kettle outen him. I’ll frow de project out, and burn up de dough-baby, an’ lug back dat wool I stole from Debby Nickkels, an’ I won’t nebber purtend I’se a witch agin. Oh! Mass’ Moonack! Don’t take me dis time.” At this juncture she again became speechless with terror, for she heard soft, irregular footsteps entering the door. She groaned and moaned, but did not open her eyes.
Four pale and staring boys, Tom and Jeffrey Hazard, Zeke Gardiner, and Pel Noyes, stole softly in on tiptoe, caught hold of the clumsy caricature of a bob-sled that had so fiercely assaulted Tuggie’s shins and knocked her down, dragged it out of the house and disappeared with it down the road. Jeffrey Hazard, who had in him throughout his entire life a far more active and real devil than any evil spirit that Tuggie conjured or dreamed of, could not resist, ere he left the house, catching the old woman by the foot as he passed her and pulling her as if to take her off with him, until her groans of fright made him desist.
Old Tuggie listened to the light footsteps and the dragging noise in agony. With close-shut eyes she listened to the steps of the devils and moonacks as they gradually went away from the house. The cold, icy night-air blew in upon her as she lay on the floor, the water burned down in the pot, and a nauseous odor of burning fish and flesh filled the house. At last she tremblingly arose, closed the door, swung the pot off the fire, seized a horseshoe and prayer-book, and went to bed.
The week previous Pel Noyes had been to Boston, and had returned with his brain and tongue full of a fine sled for coasting that he had seen in that great metropolis. With four old sleigh-runners and a few boards he had rigged an imitation of the beautiful “double-runner,” and the four boys sallied out that winter night to use and enjoy it. They intended to skim past Witch Tuggie’s door with a shrill and annoying shriek of defiance, but alas! their clumsy steering-apparatus broke when they were half-way down the hill, and the contrary sled, rudderless and uncontrolled, instead of gliding past the witch’s door banged into it, with the full success that we know. The boys were thrown into the snow outside the door, and their first impulse was to abandon their newly manufactured sled and run for their lives; but they were quick to discover, from manner and word, that Tuggie was more frightened than they were, and they stole in softly and rescued the sled out of the very witch’s den.