Dispatch by Bentley Little Page B

crazy. I hurried quickly away. Maybe she wasn't a real witch, but the truth was that she scared the hell out of me.
    I decided to do something about it.
    Flush with my success at creating a new college-bound persona for myself, ruining the reputation of Sandra Fortuna and turning back Acacia's tide of redevelopment, I wrote a series of letters to the mayor, city council and police chief decrying the presence of mentally ill people wandering the streets of our fair city and accosting ordinary citizens. In particular , I noted, there is an old woman commonly referred to as "the Witch of Acacia," who walks throughout the downtown business district scaring away customers from our stores. I repeated this sentiment in every letter, wording it slightly differently each time, then signed the letters with names that sounded like fine upstanding members of the community, slightly pompous Waspish names like "James R. Worthington" and "Graham Oswald." One I signed with the name of my old buddy Carlos Sandoval, president of the Hispanic Action Coalition, for some flavor and added weight.
    Homelessness was now a major national issue, so it was on everyone's mind, but there was no consensus as to how it should be dealt with. The only thing all seemed to agree on was that the mentally ill who were now wandering our streets as a result of budget cuts that had closed outpatient clinics and hospitals should not be where children could come into contact with them—a point I made in my letters.
    I told Robert and Edson what I'd done, and they were amazed by my audacity. The witch still creeped them out, too, and Robert said, "You better hope she doesn't find out who wrote those letters."
    "Maybe she knows," Edson said.
    "Jesus Christ," I told them. "She's not a real witch. There's no such thing."
    "Remember the bird?" Edson said.
    "Well, if I drop dead or turn into a toad or something, you'll know why. Tell my parents to sue her."
    But the truth was that I was a little worried. I didn't believe in witches, but the old hag still freaked me out, even at my age, and I planned to make sure that if I ever saw her again, I stayed out of her way.
    As it happened, I saw the police pick her up a little over a week later. I'd mailed my letters over a period of several days so as to stagger them and not make them look so suspicious, and I assume the accumulation of complaints caused the police to finally act. The witch was doing nothing really, simply walking down the sidewalk the way she usually did, in her weird birdlike manner, but she was walking in front of the high school and toward the junior high, and I guess the proximity to children gave them the pretext they needed. I was at my locker getting out my sack lunch and putting away my math textbooks when I looked out toward the street to see what the commotion was. I watched two policemen get out of their vehicle, walk up to her, talk for a few seconds, then lead her to the backseat of the patrol car.
    They drove away.
    I couldn't be positive, of course, but I had a pretty good idea of what had happened, and I immediately tracked down Robert and Edson to tell them what I'd seen.
    "She's gone," I bragged to my friends. "The streets are once again safe!"
    I wondered what the police were going to do with her, what they were going to charge her with, how long it would take until she was back on the street. I imagined her being photographed and fingerprinted, wondered whether she'd be scared or angry. This was all because of me, I thought.
    But I didn't have much time to reflect on the day's events when I got home. The house was in an uproar: Tom was leaving. My dad was yelling at him from down the hall and my mom was shrieking crazily in the kitchen, but Tom emerged calmly from his bedroom, carried a suitcase out to the crappy Dodge Dart he'd bought, then walked back in to pack more stuff.
    "You never could plan ahead!" my dad was shouting. "That's what's wrong with you!"
    "Let him go!" my mom yelled. "Let