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  • The Water Witch on Reading
  • Crystal Wilkinson (bio)

Oh I cipher pretty good and can’t no white man cheat me on my crops or on my change at the feed store. I’m known around these parts for being able to remove a wart with a bean. I’m the one they come to when they want their well witched and nigh everybody asks me how many snows we gonna have come winter or when they need to pull a baby from the mama’s teat. Man from way off stopped here once for me to teach him how to make sorghum. Been learning all my life. I can read a map, can read a man’s eyes and see if he’s truthful. I can level a girder by sight . . . I can read the tremble in a cow’s gut, a man’s footprints in the mud. I can read a man’s heart to see if he’s right with the Lord, though it ain’t my place to say. I can read time by my own shadow. I can read the corners of Christine’s red mouth and tell if she’s mad at me. Only thing I can’t read is words. [End Page 51]

Crystal Wilkinson

Crystal Wilkinson was the featured author of our Spring 2006 issue. She grew up on Indian Creek in Casey County, Kentucky, and is the author of two story collections. She presently teaches at Morehead State University, owns a bookstore in Lexington, Kentucky, and edits Mythium: A Journal of Contemporary Literature Celebrating Writers of Color.

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