The Winter Sisters Page 8
Ignoring her, Sarah held out the cup to Effie, whose hands were still in front of her face.
“Give me the cup.” Rebecca moved to grab it.
Sarah tossed it into the washbasin, splashing soapy water onto Rebecca’s apron. “I wonder if Waycross is any better at washing up than at doctoring.”
“Maybe next time, we’ll see.”
“You think he’ll come back? He’s too much of a fool to come back.”
Rebecca plunged both hands into the washing. The sodden remnants of potatoes, biscuits, and greens swirled against her forearms. “Foolishness is pathological. He’s only ignorant, and fortunately, ignorance is curable.”
“You still believe that? After what happened? You didn’t succeed in curing it when we lived in town.”
“In some people, ignorance is planted far deeper.” Rebecca caught hold of a fork and used a fingernail to pick away the burnt crumbs stuck between the tines. “Just go, both of you.”
Sarah looked at her older sister: the candlelight from the open door cast a hard line across Rebecca’s face. An oily shimmer of grease floated on top of the gray, soapy water. The panther howled again, the sound softer and farther away.
As I climbed out of Hope Hollow, the moon rose above the encircling hills. I could see well enough to stay to the path. At the Alcovy ford, I proceeded with great care. I used two oak limbs as staves to keep me from falling headlong into the black current. I took comfort in the small noises of the forest. My pace synchronized with the rhythmic chanting of crickets. The chirrups of small mammals skittering away told me that they smelled no creature more dangerous than myself.
I ruminated on the Winter sisters. They hadn’t asked for money. That thought startled me, and I immediately patted at my pockets, feeling for my coin purse. Foolishness: I didn’t have any money in it anyway. The only dollar I still possessed was secured in the sole of my damp left shoe.
What did their spurious cures offer that my true cures could not? Was Rebecca truly trying to heal me with an ointment? Sarah wanted a rise from me, but to what end: my improvement or her amusement? As for Effie, I could not hazard a hypothesis. I scratched at my temple, where a mosquito had begun its feast.
The townsfolk’s belief in the Winter sisters seemed even more perplexing since I had met them. Simpletons would always fall for the easy tricks of hucksters and granny women, but the Winter sisters were neither of those. I couldn’t classify them, and that itched worse than the mosquito bite.
My left foot caught the edge of a root, and I stumbled. It was only a missed step, and I was on good footing again in an instant, but I realized that I felt no complaints from my knees or bruises, even in those contortions. I took a moment to consider and realized I was almost back to Lawrenceville. I’d gone miles without noticing the soreness of my spine or the sprains of my joints. I hadn’t needed a bleeding after all, nor a red-oak cataplasm. Time was the correct cure, helped along by mild exercise and cool air.
I strained my eyes to catch a glimpse of the courthouse square, the off-kilter steeple of the church, or the brass sign at Honest Alley. All I saw was featureless vegetation. The dull glow of the sky did not penetrate the foliage. The woods were a solid expanse of black.
Then a part of that blackness seemed blacker. Solid. Large. Moving.
The flash of a firefly reflected from the creature’s eyes. I held my breath, hoping to disappear from its attentions, but when I stopped, I heard a change in its throaty respiration. It had seen me.
I could run but didn’t know if I could outrun whatever was in the underbrush. My heart shuddered. My palms turned to ice. I had to run because to do nothing meant giving myself over to destruction.
Then the darkness coughed and swore.
“Damn it, just the doctor again,” said Pearson, standing up from his hiding place, still holding his gun.
“You’re never gonna get that panther,” said Hodgson, crawling out from beside him.
I’d never been more grateful to see two utter fools.
4
AND THE MOON IN A SILVER BOTTLE
Sarah waited in the glade with her gun. She’d left a brace of dead pigeons in the center of the clearing, but the panther was too clever for that. Perhaps it wanted its meat fresh. The pigeons in the trees above carried on with their noisy lives.
If a deer came by, Sarah decided, she would shoot it and clean it for the meat. If Boatwright came by, she’d shoot him too, but his carcass would go to rot. Even a rabid animal like the panther would turn up its nose at preacher meat.
Clumsy steps approached from the distance, and Sarah surrendered any hopes of a kill. She took her finger off the trigger of her rifle but didn’t emerge from her blind. Better to see who was coming her way. The smart money was on some hunter: Pearson, Hodgson, or Pa Everett. Possibly, it was Waycross again, lost on some errand, or the medicine man leading his wagon to the next town.
“Hallo, Miss Sarah? Are… are you here?”
“Ouida Bell?”
As Sarah came down, two dozen pairs of white wings went up. Ouida Bell pressed her hand to her chest in surprise. Her bonnet was a bright and pretty thing, bedecked with flowers. The birds cooed at it.
“Why, Ouida Bell, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you without… without anybody around. Seems like you always have a crowd. Or you’re sitting in a whole bottle of glue in ruined clothes.”
Ouida Bell tucked a loose blond curl back into her bonnet. “That’s… Yes, that’s very true.” She twisted the toe of one shiny leather shoe in the earth and, too late, realized it was half an inch deep in pigeon droppings. “I’ve been up to Hope Hollow, and Miss Rebecca said you’d be out here.”
“You came all this way by yourself?”
“Yes.”
“And you weren’t frightened?”
“I wasn’t very frightened. I’ve got to live, panther or no panther, haven’t I? Life goes on.”
“I’m figuring,” said Sarah, looking the girl up and down, “that you’ve got an itch that a vegetable compound can’t cure. Need something to get all the glue off, even from underneath your underdrawers?”
Ouida Bell swallowed a grimace. “I need a kind of medicine… not truly a medicine… I told Rebecca about it, and she said it was your sort of doing.”
“I see,” said Sarah.
For all her faults, no one could accuse her older sister of being a miser of patients. Rebecca knew there were troubles—people, rather—who would not be cured by witch hazel or mustard seeds. “I don’t have anything here but a gun. Is this a trouble I could shoot for you?”
“No! I mean, I suppose it would work, but I don’t want to hurt anyone. It’s the suitors—”
Sarah spat. Her mother had done a fair trade in love charms. “No magic in making a boy fall in love with you, Ouida Bell. Your dress unlaces in the front, don’t it?”
Ouida Bell laughed. “It’s too many suitors. Jimmy. Randall. Pendleton—though he’s ten years too old for me—”
Sarah narrowed her eyes. Few wooers found their way up to Hope Hollow. Not even Everett had gone up there when he was courting Rebecca. She had dragged her sisters to town for his sake.
“—the other Jimmy, crook-nose Jimmy. Crogan. Pike. Perry and his brother. Philip.”
“My heart is breaking for you, pretty girl,” Sarah said, cutting her short.
“But what can I—”
“Tell ’em to stick it in the horseshit.”
“But I—” Ouida Bell nearly fainted in protest.
“Not exactly those words. Just tell ’em to go sniff up some other tree.”
“My mother. My mother doesn’t want me to offend a soul. I couldn’t say anything like that.”
“The cruel truth is better than a cruel lie.”
“But can’t you give me something that’s not so—”
“Cruel?”
“Well, yes.”
They stared at one another as the pigeons cooed and crapped around them.
“The quickest way to lose your reputation,” said Sarah, biting her lip, “is to be seen whispering with a witch.”
“Maybe that would scare off the goodwives,” Ouida Bell said. “Maybe it would scare my mother. But the boys wouldn’t mind it a bit. Nobody sensible is afraid of witch stories.”
“Yet you believe I’ve got some charm that can help you in your current predicament.”
“A trick, maybe.”
Tricks, charms—Sarah’s mother made charms. Not so many love charms as “loveless charms,” sold to goodwives who didn’t want their husbands to press other children on them. The menfolk always wanted another hand around the fields, but the women knew a child took more than it gave—in raising, in feeding, in love and worry—and mothers knew the perils of childbearing, leaving the older children motherless and the husband alone to find some younger bride. They also knew the pains of a child’s early death. Women sunbaked by fieldwork would come to the Winters’ door in the twilight hours, and Sarah’s mother gave them sachets of herbs or drams of black liquid or twine curiously knotted into a shape a bit larger than a thimble. Sometimes, they were wrapped in scraps of paper, decorated with writing. Sarah could never decipher them, but she loved the heavy black lines and the sharp angles: Old World workings or maybe just figures copied from books. Effie wasn’t but a little thing back then. Sarah had been able to keep her close. Sarah shook her head. Ouida Bell wanted a loveless charm. Her work was not like her mother’s. Her mother was dead, buried, rotted, and returned to the soil.
“I thought maybe I could get a skunk,” said Ouida Bell. “For the smell. But I work in a candy store, and that wouldn’t be good for business.”
Sarah pursed her lips. Many tricks came to mind, but not all suited Ouida Bell nor her own sense of entertainment.
“What about a toad, then?” asked Ouida Bell. “Maybe warts on the end of my nose, and if’n I want to start sparking with someone for true, I could have you take the warts off, Miss Sarah.”
“That’s a damn fool old story,” said Sarah. “You can’t get warts from a toad.”
“But doesn’t—”
“Try it all you like.” Sarah threw up her hands. “Take all kinds of toads and rub ’em on your forehead, on your arms, wherever you please. It’ll never come up a wart.” She leaned forward and spoke conspiratorially: “I’ve done it to myself and to lots of other people.” Sometimes even in their knowing. “Never come up a wart. And nothin’ gets rid of a wart but time.”
Ouida Bell shook her head. “My momma will steal a dishrag and wash the warts away with it. Seven times a day for seven days. I’ve seen it.”
Your momma just wanted a reason to steal dishrags, thought Sarah. Then an idea appeared. “You need to steal someone’s underdrawers.”
Ouida Bell blushed again, but not as crimson as before.
“Not just someone,” Sarah continued, barely able to hide her glee. “Boatwright’s. Get Boatwright’s underdrawers. And you gotta hang them up in the window. Nothing will put a boy off more than the preacher’s underdrawers hanging in your window.”
“But… how will I get them? And what will Momma—or anybody—say? About me or the preacher? They’ll think vile things.”
So vile they’ll run the preacher out of town, and so much the better for us all. “I’ll steal them for you. No extra charge.”
“I can’t do it, Miss Sarah.”
“But fancy you could. What a trick that would be.”
“I couldn’t do it.”
“That’s your whole trouble, isn’t it?” Sarah frowned. “You’ve got to find a little meanness. Even a dram.”
“If’n I can’t?”
Anybody can find meanness, thought Sarah.
“What am I to do if I can’t find my meanness?” asked Ouida.
Sarah sighed. “Well, we’ll put unpleasantness into your suitors’ minds.”
“How?”
“We’ll grind up something foul. You’ll give ’em a glass of water when they come courting, and stir in your special powder. They won’t feel it until later, when they puke. And then, when they think of you, they’ll feel queasy. No affection can overpower nausea.”
Ouida Bell nodded. “Not anything that would hurt them, right? What will we grind up? A frog?”
Sarah made a sour face. “You ever tasted a frog? Tastes almost like a fresh-plucked hen. Folks love frogs’ legs when they’re fried in good, rich fat. No, go ask my sister for some asafetida. Tell her you’ve got a cold you can’t shake in your lungs. But don’t hang the leaves around your neck like she tells you. Mash them up, and soak them in clear liquor for a week. Give the bottle a hard shake three times a day. And that’s what you’ll put into the boys’ water glasses. You think you can manage that?”
“Reckon so!” Ouida Bell gave Sarah a spontaneous, affectionate squeeze. “What do I pay you?”
Intertwined pieces of red, white, and blue cloth made a banner over the courthouse door. The bare boards of the floor were painted in alternating squares of black and white, like a chessboard. I could not help but focus on imperfections in the execution—squares not on the square, drips of white paint on the black. A dais at the front supported an ordinary table and a Windsor chair. Fruit crates were stacked up for a lectern. Draped on the far wall was a flag of the United States showing twenty-one stars. Lawrenceville hadn’t kept up with the times.
“Hear ye, hear ye! Let’s all take our seats!” said Mayor Richardson, climbing onto the dais. I found a place in the third row.
“Fellow townsmen, wives, and assorted guests,” Richardson began, “I wish to present the latest intelligence from Milledgeville on our bid for the county seat.”
Richardson had gotten a letter. Mine, then, must have gone out on the return route.
“Hell with Milledgeville!” somebody shouted from the back row. “What are you doing about the panther?”
Richardson shifted on his feet. I noticed that now, unlike when I met him in Honest Alley, he was wearing shoes. “A pair of huntsmen, Pearson and Hodgson, have been engaged—”
My snort of derision was as loud as any of the others among the assembled crowd.
“Nevertheless, they are huntsmen, and either they will kill the creature, or the creature will die on its own time.”
“And what are we supposed to do while we wait for it to die?” shouted someone else. “I can’t make it to Hope Hollow for my trick knee. It was always too far, and now with the panther, I’m afeared.”
I stood up. “I am a trained physician, operating from the… facilities… located just behind Snell’s store. I would gladly treat your ailment, any ailment.”
“Sawbones here would fix your trick knee all right,” said a woman whom I wished I could have identified. “He’ll lop it off in twenty seconds and give you your trick knee back as a souvenir. ‘Put it up on the mantelpiece. It won’t trouble you there.’”
There was laughter, and I sat down, red-faced and chastened. I should have replied with a clever retort, a verbal riposte to turn the laughter back at them, but I am not so clever on my feet, and I did have, among my possessions, a rather large bone saw.
“Ladies and gentlemen, may we please get back to the Milledgeville letter?” asked a flustered Richardson. “The panther is another matter for another time—”
“How can we be the county seat if we’re all sick and dying because we can’t get to see the Winter sisters?”
“How can we be the county seat if we’re suffering witches in our midst?” That was Lizbeth Samples. Her tone was the same as when she’d berated Snell in front of me on the day of my arrival. “I think this is all their doing. Part of their scheme. The panther is their demon familiar.”
“Pastor didn’t run them far enough out of town,” said Mrs. Maltbie. “Should have run them farther, I think.”
Mrs. Snell puffed up. “Eula Mae Maltbie, I know that you’ve been to see the Winter sisters for your summer complaint. How can you be against—”
“Really, Mayor, this matter is far more serious—” started Mrs. Maltbie.
“You will remember, I’m sure, that the petition of April twenty-second was well received, but so was the petition from Rest Haven. Our committee has learned…”
Richardson’s speech failed to overcome the musk of too many bodies in too small a space and the hum of horseflies. The emotion was too high to keep silence: the matter of the panther, of the Winter sisters, all commingled. Women whispered behind me, and my ears wandered to the gossip.
“It’s what I’ve been telling you all along.” A quick glance confirmed the speaker to be Miss Lizbeth Samples. “Witches. That’s the reason my cows get the tremors. My boys, too.”
“Maybe it’s just sour milk,” said Mrs. Snell.
“Sour something,” said Mrs. Parr, Ouida Bell’s mother.
“I saw the middle one, in her red kerchief, walking past my yard. She stopped and picked something. And right then was when the cows went blinky, and the milk. I knew they were witches, but none of you believed me.”
Their conversation was attracting glances, but Richardson droned on like a schoolmaster.
“Milk just goes sour sometimes,” said Mrs. Parr. “Witches or no witches.”
“But this milk is more sour than sour. It’s poison, baleful poison.”
“Now, really, that’s nonsense,” said Mrs. Parr, blowing a dismissive breath out her nose.
“Just ’cause you don’t believe it doesn’t mean it ain’t true,” said Mrs. Maltbie, raising her volume.
“Just ’cause you do believe it,” said Mrs. Parr, “doesn’t mean it is true.”
“Not true? My cow’s tail fell off.” Lizbeth stood as she spoke, and the weight of her presence loomed over both doubters and believers.
All eyes turned from the mayor to the woman seething with righteous fury. Richardson couldn’t keep up his speechifying.