I staid the night for shelter at a farm Behind the mountains,
with a mother and son, Two old-believers. They did all the talking.

MOTHER Folks think a witch who has familiar spirits She 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 would have them know.

SON: Mother can make a common table rear And kick with two legs like
an army mule.

MOTHER: And when I’ve done it, what good have I done? Rather than tip
a table for you, let me Tell you what Ralle the Sioux Control once told
me. He said the dead had souls, but when I asked him How could that
be – I thought the dead were souls, He broke my trance. Don’t that make
you suspicious That there’s something the dead are keeping back? Yes,
there’s something the dead are keeping back.

SON: You wouldn’t want to tell him what we have Up attic, mother?

MOTHER: Bones – a skeleton. SON: But the headboard of mother’s bed is
pushed Against the’ attic door: the door is nailed. It’s harmless.
Mother hears it in the night Halting perplexed behind the barrier Of door
and headboard. Where it wants to get Is back into the cellar where it came from.

MOTHER: We’ll never let them, will we, son! We’ll never!

SON: It left the cellar forty years ago And carried itself like a pile of
dishes Up 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.

MOTHER: The only fault my husband found with me – I went to sleep
before I went to bed, Especially in winter when the bed Might just as
well be ice and the clothes snow. The night the bones came up the
cellar-stairs Toffile had gone to bed alone and left me, But left an open
door to cool the room off So as to sort of turn me out of it. I was just
coming to myself enough To wonder where the cold was coming from, When I
heard Toffile upstairs in the bedroom And thought I heard him downstairs
in the cellar. The board we had laid down to walk dry-shod on When there was
water in the cellar in spring Struck the hard cellar bottom. And then
someone Began the stairs, two footsteps for each step, The way a man with
one leg and a crutch, Or a little child, comes up. It wasn’t Toffile:
It wasn’t anyone who could be there. The bulkhead double-doors were
double-locked And swollen tight and buried under snow. The cellar windows
were banked up with sawdust And swollen tight and buried under snow.
It was the bones. I knew them – and good reason. My first impulse was
to get to the knob And hold the door. But the bones didn’t try The door;
they halted helpless on the landing, Waiting for things to happen in
their favour.’ The faintest restless rustling ran all through them. I never
could have done the thing I did If the wish hadn’t been too strong in me
To see how they were mounted for this walk. I had a vision of them put
together Not 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 fire Flashed 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 time I 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 choice Of 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, Stillgoing 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 stairs >From
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 handrail I pushed myself upstairs, and in the light
(The kitchen had been dark) I had to own I 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 bed And sit up by me and take hold of me. I wanted to put
out the light and see If 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 think Of 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
anything Up attic that we’d ever want again. The attic was less to us than
the cellar. If the bones liked the attic, let them have it. Let them stay
in the attic. When they sometimes Come down the stairs at night and stand
perplexed Behind 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.
2o3 Let them stay in the attic since they went there. I promised Toffile to
be cruel to them For helping them be cruel once to him. SON: We think they had
a grave down in the cellar.

MOTHER: We know they had a grave down in the cellar. SON: We never could
find out whose bones they were.

MOTHER: Yes, 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 him To tell the truth, suppose the time had
come. Son looks surprised to see me end a lie We’d kept all these years
between ourselves So 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 believe Could tell you why he ever cared himself- She hadn’t found the
finger-bone she wanted Among the buttons poured out in her lap. I verified the
name next morning: Toffile. The rural letter-box said Toffile Lajway.
-Robert Frost