The Winter Sisters

by Tim Westover

  Sarah swore aloud, vigorously. She wondered if she oughtn’t go back inside for another candle, but that would be giving up too easily. She had hated how easily they’d given up in Lawrenceville. She could have shut that preacher’s mouth with a single bullet even through all the smoke and cinders.

  Sarah followed the path from Hope Hollow out toward the river. Cherokee feet, then the white settlers after them, had kept the path worn down to the dirt. Even after that spectacle in town, the sisters had a regular traffic of rheumatics and bleeders and croup-whoopers—rotten hypocrites, all of them. When the pastor had hung up those awful effigies, he’d had everyone in town behind him, but since the Winters had fled back to Hope Hollow, Boatwright’s loyal parishioners got their hurts fixed there, where the pastor couldn’t see.

  She came to the ford at the Alcovy, and at last, the forest was not so quiet. The water ran among the rocks just the same at night as during the day.

  “There you are,” said Sarah. She’d spied Effie sitting cross-legged on one of the granite boulders sticking out from the shallows.

  Effie’s gray hair had caught the moonlight and helped Sarah spot her. Effie was the youngest of them, but her hair had started to turn silver when she was a child, and now that she was eighteen, almost all the black was gone from it. Her gray hair would have given her an aura of wisdom, had it been well-kept. Before Everett, Rebecca had helped Effie to brush it out, which gave it a little luster, but now, it was unkempt—clean but ill ordered. Sarah might have taken up brushing Effie’s hair, but that was not Sarah’s way. She looked after her sister in more profound ways, searching her out in the night when she’d gone a-wandering.

  “How long have you been sitting here?” said Sarah.

  “Since supper,” said Effie. She was facing upriver, away from her sister.

  “You didn’t show up for supper. I kept a couple biscuits and some ham for you.”

  “Then it must have been since dinner.”

  Sarah nodded. “See anyone on the road?”

  “Yes, but not yet. We’ll get a visitor tomorrow.”

  “That panther’s been scaring them all away. You think that someone will brave the bogeyman of the woods?”

  Effie nodded.

  “I should have killed that panther a week ago,” said Sarah. “Ain’t that the right thing to do? That way, all the little biddies and the goodwives can come up here for their sassafras beauty faces, get their hemorrhoids washed away, and have no fear for it. And they can turn up their snouts at us when we go into town.”

  “You aren’t going to kill the panther,” said Effie. “Not ever.”

  “You think the rabies will kill it before I will? Seems a safe bet. But I’m not going to let you wait here all night just to see or wait up for tomorrow’s visitor. It’s time to come home. Get to sleep.”

  Effie didn’t move.

  “I sure as shit am not going to stay here until sunrise,” said Sarah. “You want me to throw you over my shoulder and carry you back home? Get off that rock. Make sure you don’t fall. It’ll be slippery.”

  But Effie still didn’t move.

  “Goddamn it, Effie. I’m going to get my boots wet, and it’ll be the devil getting them dry before the morning. I hate walking around in wet boots.” Sarah left her gun on the shore and stomped into the shallows. She was used to crossing the ford. She knew where little dry rises offered better footing. She got to the rock where Effie was perched. “What’s your fascination with this stupid rock?”

  “Not the rock, the river.” Effie pointed upstream.

  In the cane bracken was the carcass of a deer, a young buck. Sarah could see, despite the twilight, that the creature had been mauled and mangled.

  Effie nodded. “The panther caught it up there, by that oak. Tore into it. But the deer got away and ran for the river. The panther didn’t follow it.”

  Sarah felt the knotting of guilt in her stomach. “Why didn’t you run away? Come get me?”

  Effie tilted her head. “I was safe on this rock.”

  “A panther can swim a creek. A panther can climb a rock.”

  “It was afraid of the water. It wouldn’t come down to the river even to get its kill.”

  Sarah understood—hydrophobia. Rabies.

  Effie glanced at her sister then looked back toward the deer. “I watched it die. There was still life in him—no more than in a plucked twig of belladonna berries, but still, enough. I brushed my fingertips on the surface of his existence, and ripples flowed across the waters of life and death. And then he slipped below the water, and I did not reach out to pull him back.”

  “You can’t tell this to Rebecca,” Sarah said quietly then shook the thought away. She had never before been afraid of her little sister. “Effie, you’re exhausted. You don’t know what you’re saying. I’m tired of standing here and getting creek water between my toes. Go on back home. Go to bed. Now.”

  Effie climbed down from the rock and pattered back to the creek side. She looked back, but Sarah hadn’t followed her. “What about you?”

  “I’m not going to leave this deer carcass in our river. I’ve got to clean up this mess.”

  “That panther’s still around here.”

  “Yeah, that’s why I’ve got the gun and why I want you to go home. Now get on, Effie.”

  Effie lowered her head.

  “I want to get to bed,” said Sarah, “so let me clear this deer carcass and get on.”

  Effie walked back out into the creek. Her feet were bare and kicked up sprays of silver water wherever they fell. She moved quickly and was soon beside the mangled deer. Effie put her hand on its flank, next to a terrible wound from the panther’s claws.

  “Effie, you’ll get blood all over—”

  Sarah stopped because the deer stood up and shook its horns. It peered down at Effie, its black animal eyes dumb and uncomprehending. Sarah didn’t understand either.

  “Let it die somewhere else,” Effie said.

  The deer turned away from the cane at the riverbank. It ran strongly on its mangled legs, ascending the hill and disappearing among the closing chestnuts.

  “What in the hell was that?” said Sarah. “What in the hell was that?”

  I’d come to Snell’s store to buy a walking stick, but he had none in stock.

  “Just pick up any old stick in the woods,” he said.

  Any old stick from the woods would not do, though. A proper walking stick, with a brass tip and the right heft to it, would help the miles pass more quickly, and I wanted to confront the sisters as soon as possible, while my righteous fury was still at its height.

  “Then I want some provisions for the trek to Hope Hollow. Something invigorating.”

  “What would perk you up, Doctor? Some coffee? Turpentine? A dram of Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic?”

  I shook them all away.

  “Maybe some ginger nuts from Ouida Bell at the confectionary?”

  I had no time for that, either. “Just cold water, then.”

  “Water’s free. Out by the spring.”

  “Is there nothing you’d sell me?”

  Snell laughed. “You don’t have any money, Doc! What could I sell you? Listen, why are you so hot and bothered now?”

  I told him, as quickly as I could, about Pearson and Hodgson and that the panther was no myth and how the beast had raked its claws down Pearson’s shoulder. “That won’t spread the disease, but think… That’s even worse. The panther attacks Pearson, but he doesn’t get hydrophobia. And you will all think it’s because of an ointment or a Bible verse. But it’s because of the animal, you see. Not a bite, but a claw. And the sisters’ reputation will grow even higher. But real hydrophobia, when it comes—because I’ve seen it now, I’ve seen that panther—won’t be cured by an ointment. It doesn’t listen to Ezekiel.”

  “Listens to nothing,” said Snell. “But what can you do?”

  “I can put them in their place, these pretend healers,” I said. “I’ll g
o into their dark house hung with vines and crepe and skulls.”

  “Skulls?” Snell looked at me. “I’ve never seen any skulls.”

  “Herb women, fortune-tellers, supposed alchemists. Always of a type, as if they’ve studied the same Durer woodcut. Sunken eyes. Wrinkled fingers. They make their faces ugly to scare away the demons—as if illness can be frightened! Old women, acting as if wisdom and power comes with age.”

  “I don’t know how old the Winter sisters are,” said Snell, frowning. “They’ve been here longer than most all of us, but we’ve only been here ten years. It’s the frontier, remember.”

  “They cultivate an air of mystery,” I continued, “as if that increases the power of their cures. Rubbish is what it is. Real medicine doesn’t care if it’s worked in an operating theater or a hog shed.”

  “You sure you don’t want a bottle of Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic?” Snell had one in his hand. “I think it’d be mighty fine for what ails you.”

  “What ails me are lies and superstitions. How do I get to their house?”

  “Seven miles,” said Snell. “You can take my mule if you’d like.”

  “I don’t suppose riding a mule would save me from a rabid panther, would it?”

  “A gun would serve you better,” said Snell.

  “I’ve never shot one,” I said.

  Snell’s face blanched whiter than I imagined mine had the day before. “What do you mean, you’ve never shot a gun? You wouldn’t have weaned off your mama’s breast out here before you shot your first gun.”

  “Ways are different in the city, if you can credit it, sir. I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to shoot.”

  Snell lifted a rusted tube of metal, oil-streaked and neglected, from behind the store counter. “You point this end at the critter you’re wanting to kill,” he said, “and then you pull this bit here to do the killing.” He extended the battered old weapon toward me.

  I could have taken the gun. It would have been better protection than taking nothing. It might even have served as a walking stick, but what if I tapped it wrong and the thing blew up in my face? And what would the Winter sisters think if I arrived at the door bearing such a weapon? They’d suppose me a mob of one or a bandit. But I meant to confront them on the sound basis of science—no gun for me.

  “It’s daylight,” I said, “and the beast is likely to be asleep. If it spies me and thinks me likely prey, I am spry enough to run or even climb a tree. And if I had this gun, I am as likely to miss it completely as hit it somewhere far from its vital parts and send it into a rage. No, I shall leave the gun behind.”

  Snell shook the rifle insistently.

  I shook my head. “I am on an errand of mercy, not of death.”

  “That sounds like a damn fool superstition,” said Snell.

  As the road descended from the higher elevations of Lawrenceville, it became less and less of a road. What had begun as a track of packed earth traced by the wheels of mule carts became a dusty path. The soil was red, of the famous Georgia clay, and more boldly colored there than at any other outcropping I’d seen. The wear of feet kept the gash fresh, showing the earth’s bloody heart. Fear of the panther hadn’t let the grass grow on this path. The sick and infirm still took this road to Hope Hollow though no one was out that day.

  Perhaps if I were to be mauled by the panther and fight it off, the encounter would redound to my credit. Rumor would grow the event from a skirmish to an epic struggle. I, the conquering doctor, would tell my tale, and the folk would hearken to me.

  My ears, sharpened to every sound, distinguishing songbirds from pigeons, squirrels from chipmunks, heard a low growl. So faint yet so close—rhythmic, like breathing, rise and fall. The growl continued, its rhythm increasing but its volume no louder. It was so very close, as though it were just at my right ear, but I felt no presence there and saw nothing. I willed my head to turn toward the sound, and willed it slowly, for whatever lay there was waiting for my movement, waiting for my mistake before it would make its strike. When I turned my head, though, the sound moved with it, just as much as I moved. It was too clever to be a panther. It was… it was a phantom! A spirit of fear and trembling had taken up on my shoulder to whisper terror into my ear. A gun would do me no good. I’d blast a hole through my own head, so near was this sound, which could only be a panther about to pounce, a ghost, a—

  Then I knew what it was. It was the sound of my own breathing. My right nostril, half clogged with the rheum of the season, had settled into a snorting, rasping rhythm coinciding with my respiration. That was the growl I heard, the phlegm rattling in my skull. I’d been so afraid, heightened to every sound.

  “Bah!” I cried into the wilderness. “Bah and foolishness!”

  A pair of pigeons, startled from their lovemaking in a branch overhead, flapped away. Their stupid cooing I took for laughter at my expense.

  As I set off again, rain clouds built in the sky when I neared the Alcovy River. Whoever had named it a river had never seen the Savannah or any other watercourse of consequence. The Alcovy was a creek with delusions. The road crossed it where the water was shallow and broad, running over an expanse of worn granite. I was still bothered and distracted by my foolishness, how I’d been spooked by my own breathing. I would not let a river scare me. I did not slow my pace as I stepped into the current but went with confidence. White-tipped water flowed around my shoes, and my legs slipped from under me like a buffoon’s in a lowbrow comedy. I came down hard on my coccyx. The impact shot up my spine and out my teeth. I gritted them together, suppressing an oath as I dragged my sorry carcass to the far shore. I was soaked. My handkerchief was sodden, useless for wiping off my face. The current had stolen my hat. I saw it downriver, entangled in a jam of sticks. A forked branch had impaled it through the crown.

  Could I really appear hatless before the Winter sisters? A hatless man cannot be taken seriously. At least I could conceal my foolishness at being startled by my own breathing—no one need know about that, least of all the Winter sisters—but a man cannot hide if he is hatless. The very item that he might hide under has been taken from him.

  I tried a few tentative steps and felt no broken bones, but the ankle was sprained. I needed to bleed the joint so that I could release the excess fluids. I felt for my traveling kit, but I didn’t have it. I’d taken it out of my pocket to treat Pearson. Had I left it behind in that pigeon-blighted grove? Or had it fallen from my coat into the river? I looked around me, peering into the shallows, but I saw no sign of my lancets, blistering plasters, or prussic acid. I was useless for my own complaint. This was worse than the embarrassment of the fall, the loss of my hat, and the discomfort of my wet underdrawers. I considered turning back. I could ford the river again, hobble on my bad leg the six miles back to Lawrenceville, drag myself into the hayloft, and recuperate with ether. But then where would I be? Back in town—damp, defeated, and useless.

  No, I would go on. A little water never hurt anyone.

  I passed a quarter hour, chasing the sunlight as afternoon slipped into evening on the last part of the walk. My damp clothes gradually dried into smelly wrinkles. Nothing would restore my hat, which was lost forever. I hadn’t thought the journey would take so long. I thought I would have reached Hope Hollow, excoriated those pretended witches, and been back in Lawrenceville in time for supper. Now, though, I would miss supper, and what’s more, my return trip would be through the darkness.

  Someone was coming the other way, a young woman. She was coming down from Hope Hollow. Not to meet me—certainly, it was a patient leaving. Few times had I seen anyone so sickly. The woman was no more than a scrap of rag—thin, waiflike. Her skin was pale. A little black was left in her hair, but most of it looked to be prematurely gray. I could see the woman was no more than eighteen or twenty, despite her paleness and gray hair, but her pallor was so poor. Her humors were textbook phlegmatic though no textbook would have illustrated so extreme a case except in a chapter on cad
avers. And this was the state of the patient leaving the care of the Winter sisters!

  “Good evening, mademoiselle,” I said. “Is it much farther?”

  “Is what much farther?” she said meekly, sickly.

  “Hope Hollow. The Winter sisters. I have… an appointment.”

  I cannot say why I lied. Perhaps it was compassion for this patient. To tell the truth to her, I would have had to explain the futility of the treatments she’d undergone with the witch doctors. That would spoil any of her hopes for a cure, hope being the only value she could have taken from an encounter with the Winter sisters. The chill of shame, wet clothes, and the evening air had taken all my anger.

  “Then I won’t keep you, sir.” She started to leave, but I held out my hand, and she stopped.

  “You will be careful, won’t you?” I said.

  “Of what?”

  “Of what? Of a thousand things, but chiefly of that rabid panther that’s terrorizing the countryside!”

  “Oh, I shouldn’t worry in the least about him.” Then she turned away, at the same time drawing her arms up and tucking her head down toward her chest, as if she caught a sudden chill.

  The pitiable creature… I should have asked to see to her condition. I should have asked what was wrong. I should have done so much just at that very moment, before all the other moments to come, but I did nothing, for I did not have my medical kit or my traveling bag, and I felt a sopping, limping, dreadful fool.

  I came around two more bends in the path and saw my destination. Hope Hollow was a clearing curled up in the shadow of a rocky hill. The violet light of the evening sky was just enough for me to survey the place. The trees gave way to a farmstead: corn, pole beans, sweet potatoes, and watermelon vines. The house was a simple dogtrot cabin. A common roof connected its two little structures, forming a breezeway between. A chimney on each end puffed smoke. Low fences kept the vegetation away from the swept dirt yard. A kitchen garden bloomed with tomatoes, eggplants, kale, and collards. Four orange trees were there, improbably alive and fruit laden at this latitude. A doe-eyed mule was finishing its supper from a wooden bucket. The farm was in splendid order, ready to settle into night. Fireflies winked in the distance. The first stars appeared over the trees.