The Winter Sisters Read online

  “I wouldn’t have listened,” I confessed to her. “I had to come this far by myself, or I never would have understood.” Tears welled in my eyes.

  “Aubrey, dear, we’ll have you feeling better soon from the acute symptoms. I’m sure I can help with the chronic ones, too.” She sighed. “I’ve known for weeks.”

  “But how can you cure a case of hydro—”

  “Ether poisoning? Simple. Just like the hell-roarin’ trots.”

  “But it’s not ether poisoning…” Then I realized that it was. I’d fooled myself.

  My mouth must have hung open because Rebecca closed it with a gentle lift of her hand. She wiped away the drool from my lips.

  I had ether poisoning: the exhaustion, the headaches, even the aversion to drink. All of it fit. I was so inveigled by my own fear than I could not see the obvious answer.

  No, I had rabies. No competent physician could be so mistaken about his own health. What about when Ouida Bell had bitten me?

  “Clay, charcoal, and lots of water,” said Rebecca. “A few days, and the headaches will go away.” She sounded as bright and fragrant as her garden.

  No, Effie did nothing. I was never sick.

  My addled brain was shaking. My face still felt the memory of Effie’s cold touch. What if I still carried the seeds of rabies inside me, or whatever I’d caught from Ouida Bell’s bite? Effie knew. She’d sent me to get the cure from Rebecca.

  “Do you still have the madstone?” I asked, swatting at a winged creature that flew close to my ear.

  “Why?”

  “You said it was for poisoning.”

  She gave me a skewed glance, but for love or convenience, she humored me. She went inside to get what she needed, and I laid myself back on the earth and let the garden rise above me. If I needed to be buried, I could sleep soundly there. Ah, what maudlin foolishness. The dead don’t care where they are buried.

  Rebecca returned with a pottery bowl brimming with milk. She took out the madstone—hard, irregular, and unpromising. It looked like dried excrement.

  “Undo your buttons,” she said.

  I undid my jacket and waistcoat and lifted my shirttails to expose my navel. Rebecca pressed the madstone hard into my stomach, pressing my breath out, too. As she held it, I was asphyxiating. When she relaxed, I drank in the air with gladness.

  Rebecca took the madstone, dangled it over the milk, and dropped it. It submerged with a plop and bobbed back up. A yellow-and-green sheen formed on the surface of the liquid.

  “Is that poison coming out?” I asked, not feeling an instant relief.

  “No, only oils running off the stone.”

  I realized I was thirsty, and the thought of a drink did not frighten me. “How… how will I know that the cure worked?” I asked, but I did not mean only the madstone.

  “Every day that you are still alive, the cure has worked.” Rebecca put a kiss upon my nose. “I prefer you alive.”

  I thought those were the kindest words ever spoken.

  Richardson was accepting handshakes high and low, from fine farmers to the lankiest of shopkeeper’s sons. The word had come down from Milledgeville in a letter. The first legislative session of the new year had approved Lawrenceville as the county seat. The town would get a splendid brick courthouse and a smart gallows and straighter roads. Lawyers and land agents and tax assessors would arrive by the carriageload, and with them would come more boarding houses and taverns and wives and children, another school, a proper church. Prices on crops and land would improve. Regular transit would be available for goods to town, as well as a market for surplus produce. A great many more sick folk would arrive, too, enough to keep Rebecca and me hopping in our new practice at Hope Hollow.

  All the revelers had bundled up in their warmest against the chilly day. No room in Lawrenceville was truly big enough for the festivities, so the party was taking place on the courthouse lawn despite the weather. Coffee, whiskey, hot molasses, and square dances would keep the revelers too happy to notice the cold. “Cracking job,” they said. “Splendid.” With each compliment, Richardson’s spirit grew. I could see it in his shoulders, in his heels. He’d made himself worthy of his position.

  Rebecca and I sat near the bonfire. We had neither coffee nor hot molasses. We needed our senses, should anyone require treatment for a misstep in a boot or labor brought on by vigorous dancing. I shivered and moved closer to the bonfire, and Rebecca moved closer to me. Ah, this is enough.

  When Sarah appeared, she was glum. She’d been gone for weeks, ever since the day the office had burned down. Only at our invitation had she returned for the festivity. “I thought I’d get Ouida Bell to dance with the mayor,” she said, “for a lark. But he’s not up for it.”

  “Hmm,” I said.

  “I suppose Richardson thinks he’ll wait for one to move to town who’s even prettier.” She snorted, as if the thought was ludicrous. “Though I suppose I would do a better turn under the sheets.”

  Rebecca said, “Hush that talk.”

  “What, like Mr. and Mrs. Waycross haven’t been squaring the circle? I know all about the white liver, the wild cherry tonics, the yarrow, and the yellow sarsaparilla.” Sarah exhaled loudly. “Effie ran off with hers,” she said to me. “And you’ve got yours.” She blew some hair out of her face. “I don’t know why I’m the one left out.” She looked over at Ouida Bell.

  “Maybe it’s your filthy mouth?” I suggested.

  “My filthy mouth is my strongest feature,” Sarah countered.

  Rebecca put her hand on mine, which was resting on my knee. After a time, I felt her fingers tapping out the rhythm to the dance.

  “Go,” I said. “Go dance.”

  She put a kiss on my lips. We tilted our heads in our practiced way, so that our noses did not collide, and then, she was caught in the whirl of the dance.

  With Boatwright gone—run out of town on a rail for punching the doctor in the face—and the new pastor not yet arrived, no one was there to shame the dancers. The exchanges and intertwining looked quite complex. It seemed to be chaos, yet everyone stayed to the beat, and at the crescendo, every foot was in its destined place.

  Pa Everett was arm in arm with P and Snell. Pendleton was on the end of a row, his pinned-up sleeve not distracting him from his part in the steps. Ouida Bell and Rebecca and Old Elizabeth, holding hands, skipped sideways among them, following the intricacies of the dance. Mrs. Maltbie and Lizbeth Samples stood at the edge of the firelight and ate sweet-potato biscuits, but even they smiled when a scampering Eudoxia Everett brought them cups of hot coffee and molasses. They watched, as did I, the little girl join her elders around the fire. She careened from partner to partner, Rebecca to her father to P to Pendleton, without care or curiosity, with only happiness. Green wood cracked in the bonfire, and the wind lifted the frolicking sparks—lifted them higher and higher into the welcoming night.

  I summoned my tenderest smile, and Rebecca reflected it back to me. I was loved and loved in return. Also, I was happy. Not ethereally happy—that is, not as happy as the pure hilarity of ether—but I’d paid a high price for the genuine article. I wouldn’t buy any more happiness on ether’s discount.

  22

  EFFIE WINTER'S WIZARD GINGER ALE

  That’s right, Effie Winter’s Wizard Ginger Ale!”

  I would have preferred if he hadn’t used my name, but Salmon said folks would rather buy it from a pretty lady. That wasn’t flattery. He believed it, and it made me happy to think he did, whether or not I agreed, whether or not it was true. The face on the lithographed label was my own, nothing like a real advertising beauty’s. I told him he ought to put some glad and charming girl on the label, but Salmon said, “Just you look at that smile. That’ll sell better than any dreamed-up theater girl. Besides, it’s your recipe for the ginger ale. Oughtn’t your face be the one on the label?”

  “Why ‘Wizard’?” I asked.

  “’Cause I’m not going to say ‘witch’!” />
  He grinned with all his perfect teeth and threw his arms around me, and I laughed because that word had lost all its power.

  Salmon said he never cared for his name, either. It was ridiculous, and it had set him on a path to act ridiculous. He only liked the sound of his name when I said it, so I called him “Salmon,” and only I called him that.

  With five thousand bottles of Effie Winter’s Wizard Ginger Ale, we’d followed the path of the western frontier. Coming up the Federal Road out of Georgia, we’d seen only little logging towns and hunters’ camps. In Cherokee Territory were tiny pockets of Indians, most without even a nickel to spare. Tennessee was even less populated. We’d go days between even the smallest farms. Sometimes, Salmon gave a show for the trees because he wanted to practice a new tune.

  We could have gone east, where the people were, but we didn’t. The frontier was Salmon’s fascination. He said he wouldn’t turn the wagon east until Holtzclaw the mule had put his feet into the Pacific, and I didn’t mind. All the nation was pressing west, pursuing life and liberty and happiness. To follow seemed only right.

  Thus, we continued west until we met the Mississippi, the great river so wide and slow and brown it didn’t seem like a river at all, just a field of mud slowly sliding toward the ocean. But human life teemed at its shores: farmers bringing in their crops to merchants, crews of pole boats tying up for the night, roustabouts loading up corn and cotton, and passengers bound for New Orleans. Everyone was thirsty because the river wasn’t fit to drink unless you wanted a bellyful of mud. We weren’t even at a town, just a nameless bend of the Mississippi, but it held the biggest crowd we’d ever had for Effie Winter’s Wizard Ginger Ale.

  Salmon kept up his speech. He’d seen crowds, and I borrowed from his courage to stay at my task. I focused on his words because I liked the sound of his voice. Even when he was speechifying loudly, it was the same voice that whispered quietly to me.

  “Effie Winter’s Wizard Ginger Ale, from her own secret recipe!” he said. “Not another soul on this long, long road will sell you anything like the same.”

  Salmon lit into a banjo lick. The first string had broken, and we hadn’t been near enough a proper town to get another. Poor Thumb had to sing all the higher to make up for the missing notes.

  “All the church folks on their knees

  Askin’, beggin’, sayin’, ‘Please!’

  They’re all cookin’ in the wrong pot.

  They don’t know what I’ve got!”

  The hint of scandal caught the men’s ears.

  “That’s right: Effie Winter’s Wizard Ginger Ale! I can’t tell you all the recipe because this fine lady here…” He held up his hand to point at me where I stood, to one side of the stage, waiting for my turn. “This fine lady knows where I sleep, and if I gave away her secret recipe, I think she wouldn’t let me sleep there anymore!”

  The crowd chuckled, and Thumb sang again to the accompaniment of the crippled banjo:

  “If you’re dyin’ of powerful thirst,

  Effie’s Ale will quench it first.

  Glass of water makes you queasy?

  Effie’s Ale is nice and easy.”

  He hadn’t found the right song yet. Every night, once we’d set up our camp beside the wagon and made beans and coffee over an open fire, he’d tinker on his rhymes while I brewed up more ginger ale. He would say, “Effie, what do you think about this?” and try to rhyme “water” with “quarter,” and I’d laugh.

  “And how much? Just a nickel. A nickel of whiskey will leave you even thirstier and, what’s more, a nickel poorer. That’s not Effie Winter’s Wizard Ginger Ale. It’s good for what ails you, if what ails you is a thirst. And we’ll buy the empty bottle back for a penny, so it’s not but four cents for the best ginger ale you’ve ever had, and you’ll feel the zing in your step all day.”

  Thumb started to applaud, and applause, since it is infectious, spread to the crowd. “Let’s have her on out here. Effie, dear, where are you and your Wizard Ginger Ale?”

  Then I stepped out into the crowd, carrying a great gunnysack filled with tinkling glass. Salmon wondered how I could manage such a huge weight, a hundred bottles hefted over my shoulder, but I hardly noticed. Most of the weight was water, and my shoulders knew the weight of water very well.

  So many sick, suffering, and sorrowing people… I couldn’t help but see the crippled hands of an old farmer and the paralyzed leg of a mule-driving woman and the clouded eyes of the fur trappers and the rictuses of past and future apoplexies in a hundred men and women. So many were there. I hadn’t thought the world could hold so many in one place. All the sicknesses blurred into a single vision of human frailty, and no one wanted anything except a drink. Even the dying—they were all dying, all mortals—did not demand that I save them.

  Every hand that reached out to trade a nickel for a bottle of Effie Winter’s Ginger Ale was dirty. Their hands told their lives—dirt, manure, oil, grease, wisps of cotton, dry dust of milled grains. I must be clean, and whenever I was near water, I washed my hands. Putting them in the Mississippi wouldn’t have done a bit of good, though. They would have come out dirtier than they’d gone in. I couldn’t stand even the smallest smudge.

  Thumb sometimes poked gentle fun at my silly habit. “You’re gonna wash away all your skin, Effie, and then you’ll just have bare bones for fingers.”

  I thought that was the only way I could feel for the edges of life—with clean hands. So much dirt got under Rebecca's fingernails, and so much blood splashed onto Aubrey's skin—if they'd only wash their hands, perhaps they would work more healing and less hurt.

  Also, if I was clean, only so long as I was clean and blameless and selfless and good, then there was some power inside me. It did not exist in the same world as alembics and balances, so I couldn’t prove it except by its strange consequences nor describe it except by feckless and feeble words. The sick and suffering could draw on my cleanliness as though drinking from a well, and the well was deep, but it did not go on forever.

  Rebecca believed that either I could have cured Everett and did not, which meant I was evil, or that I could not have cured Everett, which meant I was powerless, a charlatan and huckster, a medicine woman selling alcohol and empty promises to a deluded people. Therefore, since, in truth, I could have cured Everett but preferred not to, then she must have judged me evil. Even if I’d cured Ouida Bell, I was still evil. The life of one did not atone for the life of another. They were not coins that could be traded. For even one failure, everyone must judge me guilty.

  The multitudes along the Mississippi did not know my failing. They knew me only as the girl with her face on the bottle.

  Salmon quit the melody he’d been playing and called out, “And why does Effie Winter’s Wizard Ginger Ale cost just a nickel? Every other medicine man comes through and wants a dollar from you, and what do you get for your dollar? No medicine. Just a long list of lies.”

  He’d made the same speech in Hog Mountain and Johnson Ferry, Vann’s Tavern and Rock Spring and Rossville, Bell Buckle, Indian Mound and Indian Forks. I never thought it sounded much good, and the bottles never sold any faster, but when he wound into the speech, there was no stopping him. It was a confession.

  “Friends, I used to sell patent medicines.” Salmon set down his banjo. His voice was not the medicine man’s peptic shout. He was thinking. “I had one called Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic. Doesn’t that sound fine? And one called Elixir Salutis: the Choice Drink of Health, or Health-Bringing Drink, Being a Famous Cordial Drink. Can you believe that? I remember the whole name.”

  Hands reached toward me. I took their nickels and pressed bottles back into their palms.

  “Not a dollar worth of good in those patent medicines,” said Salmon. “Not even a nickel’s worth. A superstition was all they were. They worked ’cause folks believed in them, not because they were real medicine. The only real medicine—”

  He looked at me, but I lowered my eyes
because I did not want him to say.

  “The only real medicine is time, friends. You keep on living as long as you have time, and when you run out of time, then you’re not living anymore. And that’s all there is, no matter how many promises you make on your label, no matter how many nickels or dollars you pay because you believe in those promises.”

  Though Salmon Thumb talked bad about them, his elixirs had done some good. The alcohol and the empty promises were the sweetness that made a bitter medicine easier to take. Aubrey and Rebecca did not cure all their patients. Did that make them evil or powerless? They were different, so they did not understand.

  No one, who was not born to this same burden, can understand. They are new creatures, who can be both good and happy. Their pleasure in life does not diminish their capacity to love and to heal. But I think I was an older creation—not greater than Aubrey or Rebecca, but different, with a strange power that is ill-fitting in this world. If I was given a capacity for miracles, then I could not be good and keep that power. Miracles cannot be worked by the selfish. The good show favor to none, and first, above all, they do no harm. The good sacrifice and suffer. That purifies their goodness, so that they can be good for others.

  Waycross couldn’t understand, nor should he. If I was real, then his world was incomplete, and I did not want it to be so. I wished only happiness for him and for Rebecca and for every living creature. I wanted them to discover, one day, that I did not exist anymore, so every capability for redemption and healing and joy could belong to them without my intercession. I was a remnant, left from a time before understanding.

  “Do you know what I think about medicines?” said Salmon. “I think that, one day, a physician or an apothecary—or, hell, a pastor—will turn up with the best medicine there ever was or ever will be. Better than whiskey, better than ether. Better than sassafras and better than turpentine. And he’ll get up on the stage and say that his medicine is a sure and certain specific for every ailment under the sun. And it won’t be a lie. He’ll be right. He’ll call it the Brain Salt of Universal Delight, and it’ll be worth a dollar, ten dollars, all the money that ever in this world was ever made.”