The Winter Sisters Read online

  “Didn’t I tell you she’d win?” said Snell. “Put us out of our misery, Miss Effie.”

  Sarah tipped the cup, and the dice clattered onto the old board. A hundred years of falling dice and fast fingers had finished the wood to a smooth, dark surface.

  “Double threes. That’s all right, isn’t it?” She advanced two of her red checkers toward Ouida Bell’s black ones. “Should I do that?”

  Ouida Bell leaned forward to watch Sarah’s move then flopped back against the pillow. The backgammon set was an heirloom. A paper label in French was barely legible on the front side. It probably gave the rules, but Sarah couldn’t read French. The Winter sisters didn’t have a backgammon set, just as they didn’t have a deck of cards, and Sarah had never learned the rules. Ouida Bell had promised to teach her, so while Waycross and Rebecca and Effie were busy with their ombre party, Sarah had gone up to Ouida Bell’s cabin.

  She found Ouida Bell in bed, heaped over with blankets. She had a fever and muscle weakness. Her fingers were tingling, which made even picking up the dice a chore. Sarah looked her over, peering into her throat and her nose, checking her neck, and squeezing her toes. All seemed well. The rash, for which Sarah had prescribed graveyard dirt, had cleared up fine. Sarah brought down the backgammon board from the shelf, and they started playing, but Ouida Bell’s heart wasn’t in the game.

  “I’m sorry, Sarah. I just can’t think straight right now.”

  “Well, never mind,” said Sarah. “You can teach me later. It’s probably a summer cold. And don’t let anyone say you caught it from the graveyard. That’s a damn lie. Colds don’t come up from graveyards.”

  Ouida Bell closed her eyes for a moment. “What do you give people for summer colds? Same as for winter colds?”

  “For most folks, I’d say to get a potato. Keep it in bed with you for a week, and then put it in your pocket while you go about your living for a second week. And then don’t eat the potato! Don’t let anybody eat the potato. Throw it in the river.”

  Ouida Bell laughed, which tickled her throat and made her cough.

  “Does the potato do anything?” asked Ouida Bell.

  “Four times out of five, a person with a potato gets better faster than a person without a potato. Waycross would say that’s not scientific. It’s not Hippocratic. How could it be? The ancient Greeks didn’t even have potatoes.”

  “They didn’t?”

  “No, ma’am. We came up with potatoes on the new side of the ocean.”

  “Well, I never figured that.” Ouida Bell sighed and leaned back again. “No potato for me, though?”

  “I ruined the cure by telling you about it. Now you won’t believe in it, so it won’t work.” Sarah fiddled with the checkers on the backgammon board. “The only real cure for a summer cold is some rest and some time.”

  “But that’s no fun,” said Ouida Bell. She closed her eyes.

  “I know. Not near as fun as burying you in the graveyard and scaring the living daylights out of Pastor Boatwright.” She chuckled at the memory, and Ouida Bell did too, which started her coughing again.

  “I’ll bet they’re talking about it down at their ombre party,” said Sarah. “Richardson is shaking his finger at Waycross and Rebecca. ‘Can’t you two keep your sister from stirring up trouble?’ But it’s not me they’ve got to worry about.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Ouida Bell.

  “Nothing, nothing,” said Sarah quickly. “Just… nothing.”

  She couldn’t tell Ouida Bell about Effie. Rebecca and Waycross and Snell and Richardson and the rest were fooling themselves, playing at manners and society and fashion, when sitting at the table, pale and cold, was a marvel of ancient savagery in the person of Effie Winter.

  “So, what kind of remedy would Rebecca cook up for a summer cold?”

  Sarah grinned. “Fried earthworms.”

  Ouida Bell tittered. “Really?”

  “Fried in butter with garlic. Mashed up into a paste. Mix it with a little milk. And spread the paste all over your neck.”

  “That’s so disgusting!” Ouida Bell smiled.

  “It’s supposed to be. The smell crawls into your nose, tickles your brain parts, opens up your ears. You hear the earthworms sizzling. You hear their little fleshy bodies go pop! pop! pop! in the hot butter. Their gray goo gets right here.” Sarah pressed at the hollow of her throat, just at the bottom of her neck. “You smell it for days. It soaks into your skin. Everywhere you go, people smell it on you, the earthworms and the garlic. And in two weeks, you’re all cured.” Sarah shrugged. “It’s a crock of shit, just like the potato. I think that’s all we have, Rebecca and me. Waycross, too. It’s all right for little cures, like a summer cold or dyspepsia or gravel or the hell-roarin’ trots. But there’s nothing we can do about the real troubles.”

  “Lucky for me that all I’ve got is a summer cold.” Ouida Bell propped herself up on an elbow. “You should just make up a big lie.”

  “What?”

  “If it’s all lies, then the bigger the lie, the better the cure. Tell just a huge crock of lies. A miracle cure.” Ouida Bell’s voice rose in excitement. “Good for all that ails you.”

  Sarah sniffed. “Like a medicine show?”

  “Yeah, a medicine show. You’ve got no competition. I’ve seen Thumb around, but he hasn’t gotten up a show in weeks.”

  Courting Effie has distracted him, thought Sarah.

  “I’ll bet you can do it. Get up a crowd. Make it disgusting. Tell them about a potato or fried earthworms or whatever. Really get them going. Then, it’d cure just about anything.”

  Sarah imagined the crowd, drawn up close. They believed her. She could use that. She’d charm an affliction out of them. “Ooh, Boatwright would hate it.”

  “Sure would.” Ouida Bell giggled and blushed. She didn’t cough that time.

  “Why, that’d be some fun,” said Sarah. “Some fun.”

  13

  LIKE HOGS IN A HAILSTORM

  I was returning from the confectionary with a box full of ginger nuts. Passing by Honest Alley, I was startled to hear my own name being called, and not in greeting.

  “Dr. Waycross thought that Baxter had stomach poisoning, but you know what we have here, right, fellows?”

  Sarah Winter was holding her own show in Honest Alley. I was shocked to see her before the crowd. I’d never consulted with her on a case of food poisoning. I wondered if I should protest.

  “So, Baxter said, ‘What can you do for me, Doctor? My stomach is one big puffed up sack of wet slush. If I could stick a pin in it, all the goo would come out, and I’d feel right again. One huge fart would make it right.’”

  She grinned at the disgusting details, and so did the audience.

  “I knew what it was, though. Worms. A worm.” Sarah rolled her hands as though unrolling thread. “Not indigestion. Not nerves or exhaustion. Waycross wanted to give a syrup of ipecac to scour out the stomach. But that would kill him.”

  “Damn right, it would kill him!” said a man. He drove his fist into his palm to emphasize the fatality.

  “Purges work on city worms,” said Sarah, “but our worms are nasty sons of bitches. They’re all barbs and teeth. If you puke ’em, those worm hooks will bring your insides out.”

  The gathering laughed.

  Sarah drew strength from the collective praise. “So, I said, ‘We’ll charm that worm out.’ I poured a bottle of milk into a pot over the fire. I told Baxter, ‘Whatever happens, whatever you feel, you’re going to sit still. Put yourself right in this chair. Grab onto the edge of the table. Keep your mouth open. Don’t shout, don’t shake around. Don’t move your hands. Stay still.’”

  “Boy howdy, ain’t no way he knows what’s coming,” said a thickly bearded mule trader.

  “I made Baxter sit down at the table, tilt his neck up so that it was in line with his throat.” Sarah pantomimed this to the audience, squatting in the air to mimic sitting at a table. “Once that milk
got hot, I sprinkled it with spices. Have to make it smell delicious, not like you smelly whoresons. Cinnamon, cloves, maple syrup. And then Waycross and I scooted back from the table because we didn’t want to be near this thing.”

  I had no idea what thing my fictional self was supposed to fear.

  “‘Do you feel the worm, Baxter? Feel it shimming up your throat?’ He was going to say, ‘Na,’ but he hushed up because a big purple head was coming out of his mouth. A giant purple turd as big as his mouth, bloody and chunky, and it was getting bigger.”

  The audience grinned with disgust.

  “Baxter’s shaking in terror. Now, that purple turd was two feet long, swaying around. It swayed over the milk, sniffing it in. Baxter’s turning blue because he can’t breathe. And Waycross has got his hair in his hands. He’s not seen our worms before. Now, that worm dunks his head in the milk, so for just a second, it can’t see me, can’t hear me. I jump for it”—she jumped forward, and the crowd gasped and fell backward—“and I grab that worm with two hands around its neck or whatever a worm’s got instead of a neck. I yank it down like I’m yanking a sheet off a bed, and the tail snaps like a whip crack. But it’s slippery. It gets loose. Its spikes come out, the spikes it keeps in its head so that it can stick itself inside a body. It turns to look at Waycross, and it hisses, all blood and teeth, and it’s coming right for him—”

  Sarah threw something purple and long and fleshy to the ground—rope or a pig’s intestine, or the tail of Lizbeth Samples’s cow. The crowd squealed like hogs in a hailstorm. They stumbled backward until they fell over each other, scrabbling in the muck and manure for footing. Then Sarah stepped down on it with her boot.

  The guts of the thing popped out of its skin and spilled out into the alleyway. Slime and sinew covered the lower hem of her dress.

  “See, I told you,” said Sarah. “Our worms are nasty sons of bitches.”

  I didn’t wait for Sarah to emerge from the crowd’s adulations. My part in the tale, such as it was, was finished, and I returned to the office, wondering if any patients would follow me, their own minor stomach ailments grown by hyperbole into worm infestations. The show might drum up some business for us, but I wished she were less flamboyant. We did not need to advertise, especially with such grotesqueries, which our detractors would take for superstition and monstrosity. Perhaps Sarah wanted more of my attention, and that was her method of asking, casting me into her spectacle.

  Rebecca and Effie were both in the office when I arrived, and no patients were there at the moment. The sight of the two of them together gave me pause, for I couldn’t recall when I’d seen just the two of them without Sarah. They sat in queer tension, in opposite parts of the room. Effie was washing some of my surgical implements in a basin of clear water. Rebecca tended to a tray of seedlings, which she’d been raising under glass. Each planting plate had sprouted five or six young shoots, far too young to tell what sort of plant they were, and from each grouping, Rebecca culled all but the strongest. The plucked shoots were gathered in her hand. She would toss them on the trash heap or into the fire because they’d grown just a bit slower than their siblings.

  “Your sister is telling the wildest tales at Honest Alley,” I said, putting away my hat. “Luring out stomach parasites with warm milk. And dramatically illustrated, too. She’s never really done that, has she? Charmed out an intestinal worm?”

  Rebecca sniffed. “All for show. It’s easier to give the patient an anthelmintic draught. I make a tea of chamomile and pumpkin seeds, strong enough that the patient can barely tolerate the bitterness, morning and evening for five days. A sure cure.”

  “Or a hot clyster,” I added. “Takes care of worms in three days. Anthelmintic is a fine, fine word. Where did you learn it? It’s not in Hippocrates even though it’s Greek roots.”

  “I know many fine, fine medical words without having read a word of Hippocrates. I know Culpepper and Trismegistus and a hundred others.”

  Effie splashed her fingers in the washing basin and dried her hands against her dress. “There’s a letter for you, Aubrey.”

  “From who?” I could think of no one at all who would have written me.

  “I haven’t opened it.” Effie produced the envelope from her pocket and gave it to me.

  The paper was damp from Effie’s fingers and battered from its journey. It was addressed to “Dr. Waycross, Fellow of the Georgia Medical Society, Lawrenceville.”

  When I broke the wax seal, two dollar bills fluttered to the floor. Rebecca regarded them with interest. “Who sent you money?”

  I said nothing.

  “Go on and tell us, or I’ll think the worst,” said Rebecca teasingly.

  I moved to fold the letter and put it away, but Rebecca grabbed for it and got it out of my hands. “‘Honorable Dr. Waycross,’” she began, making her tone more formal to match the language and writing. “‘We are saddened to hear of your straitened circumstances in Lawrenceville. You went thence on a noble mission, furthering the aims of the high society of physicians, and to find the place bedeviled with granny women and superstition must have come as an unpleasant revelation. These granny women, or witches, as we suppose they style themselves, ought to be prosecuted for their fraud. Alas, the frontier gives rise to many fraudsters of their ilk—’”

  “Rebecca, please, that’s quite enough,” I said, mortified.

  Rebecca laughed. “I suppose we are the granny women, aren’t we, Effie? The frauds to be prosecuted?”

  “This was before I had met you. I posted the letter my very first night in Lawrenceville.”

  “Before you even knew us. Based on rumor. Doctor, that is most unscientific of you.” Her voice began playful, but as she spoke, her hurt grew. “To have come to a conclusion about us without having made any investigation or personal observation. To tattle on us to your society friends in Milledgeville—”

  “Savannah,” I corrected.

  “In Savannah, the fine gentlemen that you so admire, to give them rumors and gossip and superstition. Well, I don’t think much of that at all, Aubrey. Why did they send you the money? Here’s more. ‘Give every effort to the eradication of these quacksalvers and to the edification of your new home. We have taken up a collection among ourselves for your support. Herewith is enclosed the proceeds to encourage you in your fight against the ignorance that these women represent. Do not use this money to abandon Lawrenceville, sir, for it was not collected for that purpose. You are a physician of excellent character and good standing, and we have no doubt that you will prevail. Excelsior, sir. Yours cordially,’ some name that I cannot decipher. The doctor’s handwriting is terrible.”

  I looked at my feet, near which lay the two dollars collected to support my persecution of superstition and ignorance. “I wrote that letter in a very dejected spirit. As you said, I didn’t know the truth yet.”

  “No, you did not,” said Rebecca.

  Effie looked through the window, watching the hogs cavort in the muddy yard.

  “I shall return the money to the Georgia Medical Society. I have no need of it.” I gathered the bills from the floor, where they’d fallen near Effie’s feet, and pressed them into my pocket.

  “And when you return the money, will you write about your changed impressions?” asked Rebecca. “How you’ve learned from the witches? Become their pupil? How you’ve seen a girl’s leg saved by moldy bread?”

  “They wouldn’t believe me.” I shook my head. “Not unless I could explain the mechanism. What balance of humors did the bread alter, and how? I cannot say.”

  “You can tell them that the world is more than the sum of its bloods, phlegms, and biles.” Rebecca paced away from me, saw Effie, and turned back. “That the tens of thousands of plants in this sublunary world do not all obey the laws of Hippocrates.”

  “That, my dear, the medical men would never believe. To revise the fundamentals of their art, throw over three thousand years of evidence—it’s impossible.”

&n
bsp; “Every idea, if it lives long enough, is proven wrong,” said Effie.

  Rebecca snapped at her sister, “And so you’d rather have no ideas at all?” She turned back to me. “It has been possible for you to overthrow your beliefs in the face of truth. Or am I deceived in that as well?”

  I nodded, but then I thought I should have shaken my head. I wished for words to describe my thinking, but my mind faltered. In the space where an answer should have been was but a cottony haze.

  Rebecca continued, “Well, are you leaving us? Back to Savannah? To your medical men and their convictions?”

  I’d never supposed myself to be a country doctor forever. Lawrenceville and I had needed each other in a time of desperation, but once all that was settled, shouldn’t I find my fortune somewhere more civilized, prestigious? Savannah and Milledgeville and Charleston were the capitals of the world as I knew it.

  “I wouldn’t leave alone.” I lowered my eyes, not courageous enough to deliver my intentions directly.

  “You would,” said Rebecca. “If you left Lawrenceville, you would leave alone.”

  She was courageous enough to fix me with her eyes, no hesitation in her reply. The quickness and conviction struck me like a blow to the stomach. Had I known and feared this all along? That to be with Rebecca, I had to be with Lawrenceville, too?

  “Is this ungrateful town more important to you than… than your own happiness?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because, in another place, I would not be the same person. I am my roots. My vegetables. My leaves and herbs. I know where they bloom, year after year. I know when they die and when they come back to life. For what I have sown and nurtured all my life, I shall remain to reap.”

  So I could not have both Rebecca and the life of a city doctor.

  Though I knew she would not be the strongest ally in my defense, I had no other. “And Effie, would you ever leave Lawrenceville if there was good fortune or prospect or sense in it?”

  Effie turned to us, seeing my cheeks red from embarrassment and Rebecca’s red from the force of her conviction. “I would prefer not to.” She turned back to the window and the hogs.