The Winter Sisters

by Tim Westover

  “Hydrophobia is incurable.”

  “That’s what they taught me in my schooling. And Culpepper and Hippocrates have remedies, but they are futile. So what do the old wives’ tales say? What do the savages say?”

  “Madstone,” said Rebecca sharply, pushing my hand off her shoulder. “That’s what the Cherokee say.”

  “Show me, please.” My hands were folded together in petition, but it might have looked like a prayer. “I’m dying to see it.”

  Rebecca frowned. “You’re not the one dying.”

  Then perhaps she realized that part of me had died that day when Eva died. I knew as near the pain of hydrophobia as any living mortal. I’d seen that terrible suffering written in Eva’s eyes, and for me, not for Ouida Bell or for Eva, Rebecca’s expression softened.

  She undid a collar button, and from her dress, she took out a leather bag, which had hung around her neck by a braided strand. “Hold out your hand.” She opened the pouch and dropped its contents into my upturned palm.

  It was a single white, wrinkled spheroid, about the size of a hazelnut, though lighter. It rolled on the lines of my palm.

  “Where does it come from?”

  “Why does it matter?” said Rebecca.

  “I want to know.”

  Rebecca retrieved the madstone from my palm and put it back into the leather pouch. “Sarah took it from the stomach of a deer.”

  “The deer swallowed it?”

  “A madstone is an accretion of calcium,” said Rebecca. “But it’s rare. Sarah’s killed a thousand deer, and she’s only found one. I make her check every stomach.”

  “How do we give it to Ouida Bell? Does she swallow it?”

  “No, no. That might choke her. Or lacerate her bowels. Or it won’t do anything.” Rebecca scratched at the back of her neck. “Aubrey, I don’t think there’s any use to it. Madstone is for poisoning. Rabies isn’t a poison.”

  “But old wives and savages believe in it.”

  “They throw mysteries at mysteries. They put too much hope in strange things.”

  “We must try. Either the madstone does nothing and humanity is none the worse for our experiment, or the madstone cures her and we celebrate a victory over death.”

  “It is a hopeless case.”

  “Then why not try?”

  “Because the last time I put hope into a hopeless case, I was broken. He died, Aubrey. I couldn’t help him.”

  “Everett?”

  Rebecca nodded, barely perceptibly.

  “Then perhaps we ask Sarah,” I said. “Or Effie. If you do not believe in the madstone, then we can bring Effie and ask how she might treat poor Ouida Bell. I don’t know what she will suggest, but it is better than nothing, than hopelessness.”

  Rebecca stood in thought for what seemed like a very long time. The trio of chickens that had followed me before regained their courage and started to explore my feet.

  “What about Effie?” I asked at last.

  Rebecca shook her head. “Let’s try the madstone.”

  Rebecca moved Ouida Bell’s thin shift so that the bruise on her leg was visible. Ouida Bell did not resist. She was like a corn-husk doll, papery and limp. The wound was not oozing, as Eudoxia’s had been. It was nearly invisible, only a barest shadow of a bruise. Rebecca took out the madstone, telling me to hold it against the bruise. I demurred, citing decorum, but Rebecca insisted. I touched the madstone against the skin ever so lightly.

  “Harder,” said Rebecca.

  I pushed on the stone with all my strength. The wound turned white from the pressure. My wrist complained about the awkward position, and Ouida Bell made whimpering noises. I kept pressing the stone into the wound, and she wriggled her legs in discomfort. I changed my position to keep the angle and the force. The thrashing might have been a sign that the medicine was working. The body is not healed by gentleness, I reminded myself.

  Suddenly, the bed was a mess of toes, blankets, and drops of sweat. Rebecca and I dodged kicks aimed at us. Then Ouida Bell fell back to her blankets, spent.

  Rebecca tapped me on the shoulder, and I let up. She’d put a bowl out on the table and filled it with sweet milk. I carried the madstone to her, holding it out at arm’s length from my body. I set it down into the bowl of milk as instructed, and it bobbed on the surface. Rebecca watched the madstone as though watching for the first green shoot of spring to rise from the earth. Her nose was almost in the milk itself. I watched her and the madstone with equal intensity, not knowing what signs I should be hoping for. Then Rebecca swore under her breath. The madstone was sinking, taking on weight. In a minute, it had disappeared completely.

  My hopes sank with the stone. “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing, Aubrey,” she snapped. “If the madstone had absorbed any poison from Ouida Bell, we would have seen it ooze out into the milk.”

  She fished the madstone from the bowl and shoved it into her pocket. Then she marched from the cabin, away from the darkness and the stink, away from me.

  Sarah hadn’t believed, so she went to see. She waited until Mrs. Parr left the cabin, then she stole in, using an old nail to lift the wooden latch. She opened the door just enough to let herself in, keeping out the sound and light of the afternoon. A chicken tried to come in at her heels, but Sarah kicked at it, and the nosy bird squawked and fled.

  Mercifully, Ouida Bell was asleep. Sarah reached out to put her hand on Ouida Bell’s shoulder but stopped. She couldn’t let herself touch that skin, pale and sweat soaked and covered in gooseflesh. That wasn’t how Sarah wanted to remember.

  A rash. A summer cold. Sarah cursed herself. What foolishness. What utter, hopeful foolishness. She should have known from the start that Ouida Bell wasn’t suffering from a simple ailment. It had to be that rabid panther. If only she’d been able to kill it weeks before… but it had eluded her. Of the three sisters, only Effie had seen the animal. Effie could have shot it, but Effie didn’t carry a gun. She didn’t kill.

  Sarah slipped back outside. Her legs failed her. She fell to the earth. The chickens flocked around her. Sarah let them come. They pecked around her toes. Their wings brushed her cheeks, her face. When the shadows moved with the changing sun, and a beam of dusty evening light crossed her face, Sarah picked herself up. She wiped away the memories from her eyes.

  “We’re not going to say anything about that,” she told the chickens.

  Chapter 15

  A DISEASE ONLY FOR THE WICKED

  I staggered through the town square, my arms wrapped around an enormous melon. It was, incredibly, the smallest one at Almonton’s patch. I had accepted it because Almonton was grateful for his treatment, which had been a welcome and easy distraction from the weightier plight of Ouida Bell, and he had no other currency with which to pay me except watermelons.

  Even the hungry hogs ignored me as I carried it. They’d had countless watermelon rinds added to their late-summer feed, and familiarity bred contempt, but my affection for the watermelon was growing. I liked the neat bands of green that alternated in rhythmic, regular patterns. I knew what was inside—pink and goo and seeds—without having to crack it open. Neighbors along the road said, “Sir, that’s a nice watermelon,” and I said, “Madam, thank you.”

  After walking for several minutes in contemplative silence, I heard angry voices behind the Brambons’ house. Picking up my feet, I hied toward the noise. I rounded the back of the house, still carrying my watermelon, and I stumbled. I rebalanced the fruit from my right hip to my left, and I saw Effie. She was sitting on a cracked stump. A brown-and-blue crockery pitcher, decorated with abstract vines, sat on the earth beside her. She’d been on her way to fetch water or on her way back. Her legs were drawn up close to herself so that she was perched, sparrowlike.

  I also saw three men in Sunday clothes though I was fairly certain it was Thursday. Each had on his best brown trousers and black suit coat, and they all had shirts with cufflinks, but they were not respectable men. I did not rec
ognize them and took them for visitors from Hog Mountain or Jug Tavern.

  Effie was wearing an orange calico shawl over her shoulders. I’d never seen her with that garment before. The three men surrounded her in menacing postures, but they stepped back a pace when they saw my watermelon approaching them.

  I dropped the melon, which bounced on the pine-straw-covered earth, and undid my cuff buttons to roll up my sleeves. “Are these men accosting you, Miss Winter?”

  She shook her head. “They want what everyone wants. I’m not hurt.”

  “We need her help, and she’s not listening,” said one of the men.

  I glared him into silence. “But are they troubling you?” I asked.

  Effie closed her eyes. “People are not the trouble. People cannot help what they are.”

  I walked toward her and knelt. I wanted to catch her hands in mine, to reassure her that I would defend her, but she’d hidden her hands in the folds of her clothes.

  “Tell me, plainly,” I said.

  “These men are sick and want a cure,” she said.

  I looked at the men, who had folded their hands behind them like soldiers at parade rest. I stood and addressed them, continuing to keep my body between them and Effie. “Come to my office, sirs. I am a doctor. I will see you in the ordinary course.”

  “It’s not a trouble you can cure, Doctor,” said one of them.

  “I will be the judge of that,” I said. “I’ll give you my advice, free of charge, and then you will leave Miss Winter alone.”

  “French gout,” they said into their shoes. “Fireplugs. The rising pins and needles.”

  “Only syphilis?” I said. “You couldn’t find a doctor in Jug Tavern to give you calomel?”

  One of the men lifted his Sunday hat, and I gasped. Beneath irregular patches of hair, his scalp was covered with blisters. He was as good as dead. Once the affliction had advanced to that stage, it had already conquered the brain. Under that man’s skull, his brain was coming apart in meaty chunks.

  The other two took off their hats. They had the same degree of affliction. I’d never seen such a pitiable sight, even in the charity wards of Savannah. “What, all three of you? How did you—” But then I decided I did not want to ponder their immoralities. “Sirs,” I said, regaining a diagnostic calm, “I will give you all the mercury I have. I will bleed you. But I fear that you have come looking for a miracle.”

  “That’s why we came to Effie Winter,” said one of the men.

  I knelt down again to Effie’s side and spoke softly to her. “Can you help them, Effie?”

  Effie drew her arms into herself and said nothing, which was no answer, and the men saw it. But whether Effie would help them or not was not for them to decide. I wasn’t even sure if it was for Effie to decide.

  I stood up and addressed the men. “All I know is calomel, gentlemen,” I said, showing them my empty hands. “Do you want it or not?”

  The three dying syphilitics shook their heads. They’d staked their faith on Effie Winter, and when they realized that nothing was there for them, that Effie was unmoved by their pleas and sorrows, they slunk away. Like men to the gallows.

  Effie and I watched them go.

  “Don’t blame yourself, Effie. No medicine could cure those men. They are too far gone with their disease.” I offered her my arm to help her stand.

  She took it and rose from the stump, then she brushed splinters and sawdust from her dress. Her hair was dirty. Her eyes were wet, not as if she’d been crying, but as if they were irritated by the slicing of an onion. I saw the resemblance of her eyes, again, to my sister’s, perhaps because, in my remembrances, I always see Eva through tears. I wished I could ignore that superficiality. Effie and Eva were not the same. Likely, Eva had died before Effie was born. They’d never even shared the Earth, but the sympathetic workings of my mind could not be made sensible.

  “Those scoundrels brought their death upon themselves,” I continued. “Syphilis is self-inflicted. It’s not a disease that can afflict the innocent.”

  “I’m glad there is a disease only for the wicked,” said Effie.

  “Of course, we would not refuse to treat anyone, wicked or not,” I stammered to my defense. “It’s only because those men were hopeless that we did nothing for them. But there is less sadness with syphilis, I think, than consumption.”

  “Or rabies.”

  Effie knew about Ouida Bell. That’s who she meant.

  “Or rabies,” I echoed. “I do not hold out hope for a miracle, but whatever can be done to ease her suffering.”

  “Yes,” said Effie. And we stood in silence, respectfully, until a moment had passed.

  “Come now, Effie, are you going back to the office or to the Snells’? I’ll see you the way, lest those men come back.”

  “Aubrey, your watermelon.” She gestured at the enormous fruit, which sat intact on a heap of pine straw.

  “Ah, this silly thing. What I am going to do with it, Effie? You wouldn’t want some, would you?”

  “Yes, please.”

  I’d so anticipated a refusal that I thought I’d misheard. Only a moment later did I say, “We’ll slice it up when we get to Mrs. Snell’s.”

  “Why not now?” Effie took out her knife, which I had not supposed she carried everywhere.

  I wondered what else was hidden in her pockets. That was the same knife I’d used at their cabin in Hope Hollow, the knife Sarah had warned me not to cut myself with, yet I had. No trouble had come from that injury, despite Sarah’s fear.

  “Why not now?” Effie held out the knife handle to me, her own palm wrapped around the blade.

  I ate my fill of watermelon, as did Effie. I’d never seen her eat so much food. She always ate like a bird, a spoonful or two, but she ate far more of that watermelon than I’d supposed would fit inside her little frame.

  Later that evening, after I’d left Effie and the remnants of the watermelon in town, I met Rebecca. We had plans to prepare a meal, just the two of us, and even though I was full of watermelon, I was glad of the chance to pass an evening with Rebecca.

  “That’s a good job,” Rebecca said, inspecting the potatoes I’d peeled.

  They were rosy and spherical, apples from the earth. Each matched its siblings in size and character.

  “A scalpel and a kitchen knife are not so different.” I put my surgical experience into removing every scrap of red peel. I excised the brown eyes as though removing tumors. It was soothing to the mind.

  Using a much larger knife, Rebecca cut the potatoes into perfect cubes and scraped them into a pot that hung over the fire. Two weeks had passed since we’d shared any but the hastiest meal together. Rebecca had arranged for the Snells to be out at the Flowing Bowl this evening so that she and I could be together, and I was grateful. Even if we’d been in Savannah, with a theater for us to attend or boxwood gardens for strolling, I would have chosen an evening in the kitchen with Rebecca over any lecture or performance. If Lawrenceville and Rebecca were of a piece, then I would take them both together.

  Mrs. Snell’s kitchen had a wide hearth, provisioned with a complicated series of pot hooks to hang food at different temperatures. Creosote blackened the ceiling. As befitting the kitchen of a shopkeeper, the shelves displayed commercial cooking and cleaning aids, all with the labels facing outward: Charming Charlie’s Chicken Seasoning, Edgar’s Amalgamated Soap, Popular Potash, Scientific Pure Italian Soda, Limewater Liniment for Meat Tenderizing and the Relief of Corns, and a viscous black goo cryptically called The Almighty Hammer. A bottle of Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic was also there. When Rebecca uncorked it, the room filled with the smell of vinegar.

  “Just reusing the bottle,” she said.

  “It’s a nice bottle,” I replied. “Almost worth the price of the medicine.”

  “The bottle and the story,” said Rebecca.

  She cut pats of butter into flour, working the mixture with her fingers, breaking the butter into pea-sized pieces.
“Do you know this is no ordinary butter?”

  “Isn’t it?” I picked up another potato.

  “It’s suffer butter, salted with tears,” she said. “The milk comes from cows that have broken legs or rheumatism. They must also have lost their calves to newborn fever. Otherwise, the butter is not sweet enough.”

  “A rare and terrible treat.” I nodded.

  “And the cows are part of a failing herd, a few staggering animals haunted by the memory of their deceased sisters. They pasture on the grasslands of Yorktown and Saratoga. Their hay tastes like gun smoke.”

  “But that isn’t enough, is it?” I replied, warming to the spirit of the jest.

  “No. The milking boys are all youngest sons who suffer the beatings of their elder brothers and know that they will never share in the inheritance of their labor. And the milkmaids who do the churning are spinsters that once stood at the parson’s door, clutching a bouquet of posies for a groom that never came.”

  “And what of the churns?” I prodded. “Were they made from thousand-year-old oaks riven by lightning bolts? And the carts onto which they load the butter—”

  “Are also used to bring home the bodies of the dead. The spokes of their wheels are stained with graveyard dirt. And the carts are pulled by ill-tempered mules with ill-tempered drivers, cuckolded by their wives and scolded by their mothers.”

  “And why is suffer butter the most delicious butter?” I asked. “Why does it make the lightest biscuits and the richest cakes?”

  “Because it is the most costly bought butter in the world,” she said. “Aubrey, careful! Watch what you’re doing.”

  In my distraction, I’d peeled all the way through the flesh of a potato, slice by slice, until I was about to peel into the skin of my palm.

  “I think that’s enough potatoes.” Rebecca took the knife from me and chopped the last one into cubes and added them to the cauldron over the fire. “Now, we leave them to stew.”

  I hovered right at the hearth, my nose nearly in the soup. The mingling aromas reminded me of simpler pleasures.