The farm where they went to buy fertilizer was miles away. Katie and her mother walked there, of course.

  Behind their house was a broad field, and the farm was on the far side. Katie tried to think of how to phrase her request as she pushed their wheelbarrow over the ruts and rocks of the field. She might begin by saying that she wanted to read more books than the ones they had. Then even if her mother said no she might get the idea that they needed more books than the ones they had.

   She was still lost in thought when she came upon something in the middle of the field. Before her mother could stop her, she had picked it up: a receptacle of some sort, a little sticky, and light as a feather. It seemed to be made of thick, white paper. The top was covered with a white disc and a long, thin cylinder protruded from a hole in this. On it was a picture: a grotesquely grinning man with a big red nose and a fringe of wild red hair, and wide-open eyes with rings painted around them.

     Katie gasped in horror and dropped it instantly.  “What is it?” she asked.

    “The trash of fools” her mother answered. “The detritus of idiots who deserve no better than the rubbish that vessel contained. Rubbish they paid dearly for, too.”

    They walked along in silence. “Many people are ignorant, Katie,” continued her mother, uncharacteristically talkative for some reason. “They do not know how to nourish themselves, so they waste their time and money on things that are useless or harmful. I am surprised that you have not seen one of those before; people tend to discard them wherever they please, and as there are many ignorant people about, their waste is always in evidence.”

    Katie had half a dozen questions she wanted to ask – what was in the receptacle, what it tasted like, why people bought it – but she put all of that out of her mind now. Because suddenly, she knew what to say:  how to ask her mother for permission to go to the library.  “I do not want to be ignorant,” she said firmly.  “At the library I can read books and learn. Please, may I go?”

    Her mother did not respond at once. She looked at Katie briefly, then shook her head.  

“Katie…we will talk about this on the way back.”

   And for the time being, Katie had to be content with that.

    Katie liked the fertilizer farm. There were dogs and cats to play with, wild flowers to pick, and people to watch. There were cows and horses, and on one occasion Katie had even been shown a litter of tiny pink pigs, suckling their large, hairy mother. There was the large, weather-beaten, handwritten sign to read and puzzle over:  ORGANIC PRODUCE.  FERTILIZER,  FREE CONVERSATION.  There were pictures on it too, of funny-looking men with long grey beards and lots of wild-looking hair, dressed in overalls, holding rakes and hoes and giant vegetables.

    Her mother went off to the barn with the wheelbarrow, as she usually did, to see about their fertilizer, while Katie waited.  Katie could see three men and a woman standing in front of the farmhouse. One man was bald, another was small and wiry, and the third had a bushy grey and brown ponytail. Katie knew the bald man well; his name was Silas and he dropped by their house occasionally – but she had never seen the woman before. She was wearing overalls and hiking boots and a dirty flannel shirt with a bright red scarf around her neck.  After talking to the men, the woman caught sight of Katie and stared.  Then to Katie’s amazement, the woman came her way. All the years they’d been coming here, Katie had barely exchanged greetings with anyone except for the time she saw the baby pigs.  Silas always said hello to her, and the man with the ponytail winked at her sometimes. But no one ever talked to her.

    The woman came loping over to Katie, grinning. Surely her mother would have their fertilizer by now?  But no, her mother was still in the barn, and here was the woman right in front of her.

    “Hiya” she said brightly. “How’ya doing?”  Katie stared back in surprise. “Hello” she said politely.  The woman stared at her for a moment or two before continuing. “Is that your mom in there?”  She pointed to the barn. She seemed to be eating something; she was chewing furiously, at any rate, but she never actually swallowed whatever it was.  Katie nodded. The woman drew closer, her eyes shifting from right to left. She looked down at Katie again eagerly, almost greedily. There was something about her that made Katie nervous.

    All of a sudden the woman stopped chewing, looked over her shoulder, then turned back to Katie and asked, in a loud whisper, “Is your mom really a witch?”

   Katie looked at her curiously. Thin gold rings winked from one of the woman’s nostrils. The bright red stubble of her hair caught the weak winter sunlight and reminded Katie of the newly-shorn fields with their short, sharp stalks.

   “What?” asked Katie, her heart sinking.     

    The woman looked at her incredulously and burst out laughing.  “Come on, you know – warts, black cats and pumpkins. Spells and all. Spooky stuff!” Then when Katie simply stared back at her, she stopped smiling and said, “Are you, like, retarded or something?”

    My mother doesn’t have warts thought Katie.  And she shoos cats out of the garden all the time…She looked up at the woman cautiously.  She wanted to ask what spells were, but she had a feeling that it would not be wise.

    “We don’t have a cat,” she began hesitantly. “But…we grow pumpkins.”

   For some reason the woman seemed to find this enormously amusing.  Katie fidgeted, wishing she could think of a way to escape.  Then she saw with relief that her mother was coming, followed by Silas, who was pushing their wheelbarrow.

    “Thank you, Silas,” said her mother. But she was not looking at him; she was looking at the woman, who was staring back at her with open curiosity. Suddenly the woman stopped staring at her mother and looked down at her feet as though she were embarrassed. Katie darted a quick look at her mother and thought she saw a look of quiet satisfaction on her face as the woman with the nose rings turned and walked back to the house.

    “Estelle,” said Silas, shaking his head. “She’s a big talker…talk your ear off if you let her.”  Katie’s mother smiled faintly and gripped the handles of the wheelbarrow.

     Silas turned to go, then suddenly slapped his forehead. “Oh, I forgot. We got a big order of bone meal in yesterday. But I guess you got enough of that already.”

    Katie’s mother stopped in her tracks and turned. “Ah,” she said, “bone meal would be useful, in fact.” She stared down at the load of fertilizer in the wheelbarrow. “Perhaps just a bag, though.”

   “I’ll go and get that, then,” said Silas, turning to go, but Katie’s mother shook her head. “I will come with you.”

   Katie leaned back against her tree. It was good to get out of their house, even if only for short trips like this one. She stretched and looked up at the sky, a dazzling blue today with the merest puff of clouds floating high.

   Suddenly a gust of wind blew the barn door open – then shut – and Katie heard a squealing noise and the sound of a dog barking.  She looked up, interested.

    Something small – a dog? – was running pell-mell across the field towards her. Katie looked again – no, not a dog, a pig.  A piglet, actually.  The piglet saw her and changed course, disappearing through the hedge behind Katie into the fields.

    For a moment, Katie wondered what to do. Should she go and tell someone that the pig had escaped?   It wasn’t really her responsibility, was it? But the more she thought about it, the more it seemed the right thing to do. When she had been shown the baby pigs months ago, one of the men had told her that they had to be protected from predators such as loose dogs. What if the piglet got attacked by a dog because she’d been too afraid to tell someone it had gotten loose?

    Katie stood in front of the barn door, not sure whether she should just push it open and go inside.  “Hello?” she called, but the wind seemed to swallow her voice.

   Suddenly she heard men talking. They were just around the corner of the barn from the sound of it, and Katie began to move in the direction of their voices – then stopped.  She stood stock still and listened. They were talking about her – and her mother!    

   “. . . always got that wheelbarrow. And the kid,” one of the men was saying. His voice sounded strained, as though he was lifting something heavy.

   “How long’s she been comin’ here?”  Another man’s voice, but higher and reedier.

   “Dunno, maybe twenty-five years – ever since we started this place, anyway. When’d you start workin’ here?”

   “Couple a years ago,” said the man with the high voice. “Silas sure likes her.”

   “Yeah, seems like they’re pals. Silas always wants to be the one to serve her.”

   Katie hardly dared breathe. She knew that she ought to call out to the men, but she was seized by the desire to keep listening.

   “You know how you tell people, ‘man, you haven’t changed a bit?’ the man with the gruffer voice was saying. “You know, whether it’s true or not, I mean, the guy might look like Methuselah’s granddaddy from hell, but you just say it to be nice?”

      Katie heard the reedy-voiced man grunt a reply.

      “Well, with her it’s true. She looks old and all, but she really doesn’t look any older than when she first came here. I’d a been in my twenties then and she was, you know, kind of a middle-aged lady.”

    His friend grunted again. “She’s still a middle-aged lady.”

    “Yeah, but I want some of what she’s been eatin.’”

    The reedy-voiced man now sounded like he was lifting something, too. “Estelle claims she’s a witch,”

    His companion laughed.  “Come on. Estelle’s a twenty-year-old bird brain, what does she know?”

    “She says her great-grandma says that Centerville has a witch and it’s her.”

    “You ever meet Estelle’s great-grandma?”

    “Nah.”

    “Well I have. You wanna meet Centerville’s witch, you just go and find Estelle’s great-grandma. She’s it.”

    “Katie!”  Katie jumped and turned around. Her mother and Silas were standing there staring at her.

    “What are you doing here, Katie?” her mother asked. Just then the barn door swung open and the woman they called Estelle came racing out.

    “One of the pigs is gone!” she shouted. Two men – surely the ones whose conversation Katie had been eavesdropping on – came around the corner.  One was the man with the bushy ponytail and the other was the short, wiry man Katie had seen earlier.

   “How’d that happen, Estelle?” asked the pony-tailed man.

    Estelle looked dismayed – and a little guilty. “I was going to clean the pen, so I opened the door. Next thing I knew, there were seven piglets instead of eight.” She stared accusingly at Katie. “Did you see it?”

   Katie nodded faintly. “It ran through the hedge.”

   For a moment, all four adults stared at her. Katie gulped. “I came to tell you, but . . .” she said, her voice trailing off.

   “Never mind,” said Silas, “you did good to come and tell us. We’ll find that pig, won’t we?”  The others agreed, but Katie felt their eyes on her all the same.  

    “Come, Katie,” said her mother. “It is time we went home.”  As they walked towards the wheelbarrow, they could still hear Estelle’s whining voice.