The Winter Sisters

by Tim Westover

  “Ouida Bell?” asked Effie.

  “What?” My head was still ringing from my fall. “No. The violence of her hydrophobia hasn’t—”

  The whole facade of the Flowing Bowl shuddered from a mighty blow from inside.

  Mayor Richardson ran past us at full tilt, pumping his arms. “Don’t just stand there, doctors!” He threw himself into the fray.

  “Effie, come.”

  “I prefer—”

  “I don’t give a damn what you prefer,” I said. “You have a Hippocratic duty. Well, perhaps you don’t because I didn’t make you swear to it. But I have a Hippocratic duty to render assistance in every case, and the best assistance I can render is you.”

  I took Effie by the hand and pulled her into the Flowing Bowl. She let herself be led.

  Mayor Richardson was sitting on top of Mrs. Maltbie, pinning her to the floor. She thrashed, her fists clutching her cane, which banged on the wooden planks.

  Effie knelt down beside Mrs. Maltbie. Quiet fell across the Flowing Bowl. Her breathing became calm and rhythmic. Then Mayor Richardson helped Mrs. Maltbie to her feet and guided her out with a stern hand on her arm. Effie lifted her eyes but did not stand up.

  The Flowing Bowl awakened slowly to the sounds of men muttering curses as they picked splinters and glass from their arms. Renwick had a gash across his forehead that was dripping blood into his eyes. I couldn’t see all of P’s injuries. He was a pair of legs protruding from under a table. There would be two dozen broken bones. I hoped vainly that none would require amputation, but I knew that for compound fractures, sometimes no other choice was available.

  I needed bandages, lancets, debridement acids… Along his forearm, Buck had one gash of particular concern. The skin had opened in a way that would be hard to close. The cut was deep enough that not much blood was flowing, which was a bad sign. That was a difficult injury. A piece of bread lay on the ground beside us. It wasn’t moldy, but it was dirty, and perhaps that was just as good. I took the bread and pressed it against the cut.

  “You’ll be fine, Buck,” I said though I was by no means sure of it. “Hold this on here until… until you get tired. Two hours, at least. I want to see you tomorrow. We’ll see that you’re on the mend.”

  I left him to ponder his treatment. Effie was moving from patient to patient, soaking clean rags in water and then wiping away blood and debris from the wounds. The labor was useless—a physician does not clean a wound unless it is for stitching or debridement or amputation. Better that the blood forms a crust to hold in the laudable pus.

  As I fretted, Effie tended to the terrible gash on Renwick’s head. As she cleaned the bloody wound, it became a thin white line across his brow. It hadn’t been as bad as I’d feared.

  P was bearing his full weight as he brought more cloths for Effie, not a broken bone in his body. The man at the chuck-luck wheel had taken a cane whack to the left side of his head, which might have been a mortal blow, but Effie washed away the blood, the bruise, the hurt, and the daze. He picked up the chuck-luck wheel from a puddle of chicken and dumplings and gave it a spin for luck.

  I was not sure what I was seeing. I paid attention to every twitch and sign and quiver. I considered the position of her hands, the angle of her face, the way she daubed at the injuries, the pattern of stains on the ever-growing pile of dirtied rags. I would have accepted green sparks leaping from her fingertips or fire alighting on her hair or whispered songs of angels or the ghosts of ancient heroes returned from the dead. I would have believed anything, but nothing was happening. I stood in the doorway, lost, as Effie brought the wounded to their feet.

  I woke that night to strange noises. The sound was an extended, wet scraping, like some creature with a long tongue licking the door. The window afforded no view. I saw only hogs in the moonlight, and peeking between the boards of the wall, I only saw slivers of light.

  I listened and heard human breathing, intermixed with soft mumbling, angry words. My anxiety vanished. I slid open the door to confront Boatwright just as he lifted a paintbrush for another swath.

  “Pastor, what are you doing?”

  His face was frozen. Red drips of paint dribbled onto the threshold.

  “Are you quite well, Pastor?” I said.

  Boatwright flung his brush to the earth, causing a spattering of paint to spray his shoes and my bare feet. “Waycross, I am not all right,” he fumed. “Mrs. Maltbie is not all right. This town is not all right.”

  “It was a terrible scene at the Flowing Bowl, sir,” I said. “I don’t know what possessed Mrs. Maltbie to such violence.”

  “You possessed her. You and the Winter sisters have possessed her. She was a faithful woman, always in church, always at prayer, always loyal to me. And your pernicious influence has driven her mad. It was that skull that you gave her husband. A wicked thing.”

  “The skull is used to treat his headaches.”

  “That’s ludicrous, Waycross. Listen to yourself.”

  I crossed the threshold into the yard, my bare toes turning over straw and dust. In large red curves, I saw that Boatwright had painted flames on my door.

  “The signs of heresy and hellfire, Waycross. They are a warning to all good people to stay far away from this cursed place. You’ve awoken the devil. Rabies in Ouida Bell. Savageness in Mrs. Maltbie. This wicked town will burn, burn, burn.”

  Boatwright talked fire, but he was only wind. “So, Pastor, what else do you have in mind to scare me, besides the painting?”

  Boatwright’s mouth flapped before his rage let him expel words, too. “I’ll denounce you to the authorities. I’ll write to the Georgia Medical Society and have them revoke your diplomas.”

  “Taking away my diplomas does not revoke my knowledge, Pastor. No one in Lawrenceville cares if our cures are attested by the academies so long as they work.”

  “I’ll have you indicted for quackery. I’ll have you deported from the county as disturbers of the peace. I’ll tell all the legislators in Milledgeville that the county seat should not be granted to a town as corrupted and dissipated as Lawrenceville. What happened to my God-fearing, goodly people, Waycross? Why do my best congregants turn into raging demons?”

  I scratched my chin and made a great show of pondering. “Too much blood and not enough sleep,” I said at last. “Get away from my home, Pastor.”

  “You cannot command—”

  “Get the hell away from my home.”

  “The hell, sir, is—”

  I stepped closer to Boatwright, and he recoiled. Then he fled into the night, leaving behind footprints in red paint.

  17

  SO MUCH MYSTERY

  At the Flowing Bowl, I had seen as near to a miracle as I dared to believe, and it was all Effie Winter’s doing. Had she not come, had she not worked whatever nothings she’d worked on Mrs. Snell, I would have had to take the bone saw to half a dozen compound fractures.

  If Effie was working wonders for Mrs. Snell, for Mrs. Maltbie, and for the patrons of the Flowing Bowl, could she not also work them for Ouida Bell? I had to see what would happen.

  I found Effie at the spring, running cold water over her hands. The creases around her eyes deepened at the sight of me.

  “We’re going to Ouida Bell’s cabin,” I announced.

  Effie continued her ablutions. Her hands, pale and wet, looked like ice. “I’d prefer not to,” she answered, barely audible over the water bubbling from the spring. “You don’t need me.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” I said sharply. “Come with me, and we’ll talk about your misgivings.”

  Effie trudged behind me on the walk over, saying nothing.

  Autumn had touched the earth. The chestnuts were aglow with reds and yellows, and the hemlocks flickered like candles under the leaden sky. The pines retained their verdant greens, so the character of the forest was dark and deep yet lit at turns by bursts of color.

  The cabin was gray and still. Dark cloths were tied over the
porch railing and drooped over the windows. The wooden steps sighed as Effie and I ascended. Nobody answered when I knocked, and I felt an ominous gravity. I cracked the door open, and Effie went in first.

  A spirit was flittering around the hearth. It had Ouida Bell’s face. It had Ouida Bell’s eyes, full of intelligence and clarity. It threw the windows of the cabin open to the air. Sunlight poured in, and the room glowed with autumn light.

  “It’s kind for you to come all this way, Miss Winter.”

  Her voice was not at home yet in her body. Words stumbled strangely from her tongue.

  The age of miracles had not passed. It was dawning new upon us.

  How did you heal her, Effie?”

  I’d kept my peace while we were with Ouida Bell, but as we returned along the path that followed the Alcovy river, I couldn’t stay quiet any longer.

  She jumped at my question. Our path back to town was taking us alongside the shallow shoals of the Alcovy, in the shadow of a bluff. The soil was thin beneath us, and in that clearing, the earth had eroded to the naked granite. Parts of the bluff had broken off through the years and fallen to the stone below. The orthogonal splits looked architectural and artificial, as if we were among the ruins of a sacred structure, a temple from times long gone.

  “How did you heal her?” I asked again.

  Effie stopped because I’d caught her hand. She shook me off then sat down upon one of the sundered stones, its flat top like an altar, but she made no reply.

  “Ouida Bell was dying of rabies,” I said. “Rebecca and Sarah and I could not have been mistaken. She was at the edge of death. And now, there is not a sign of the hydrophobia on that girl. The mad animal is gone. How did you cure her?”

  “Why do you think it was me?” Her eyes were closed.

  “Effie!” My voice burst loudly on the first syllable and cracked on the second.

  She pulled her legs up from the stone and seemed to shrink. “I can’t say. I can’t tell you.”

  “You can’t or you won’t?” I sat down beside her and waited a moment until the world surrounding us was again heedless of our presence. “Whatever you’ve done or think you’ve done or don’t understand or are afraid of, tell me. We will solve it together.”

  She shook her head.

  “Am I not wise enough, Effie? Then tell me what to read. Am I not spiritual enough? Tell me to whom I should direct my prostrations and prayers and sacrifices. Am I not pure enough? Tell me how to wash away my impurities.”

  “What’s your favorite color?” she asked in a whisper.

  Taken aback, I answered truthfully. “Blue, I think. Sky blue.”

  Effie was looking past me, watching the river. “Everyone answers so easily. Rebecca’s was lavender, then green, and then yellow. Sarah’s always liked brown because she thinks no one else does. They made fun of me because I would not pick. But I’ve never had a favorite color.”

  “Why?”

  “I would prefer not to. Who am I to choose?”

  “Patient delivered of hydrophobia.”

  When I returned to my hayloft, I wrote that on a clean square of paper, folded it, and sealed it with wax. On the front, I wrote, “Eva.” As I had no other address, I placed the letter into the hearth, atop a smoldering pine log. The edges of the envelope caught fire first, and a ribbon of bright orange passed across the burning paper. Pale smoke rose up the chimney, taking the good news higher and higher, up to… but that is only a superstition.

  Treatment

  “A little knowledge about cleanliness and care can do more good than many costly potions from the apothecary.”

  —Nicholas Culpeper

  18

  REBECCA WINTER’S CELEBRATED BRAIN SALT

  SEPTEMBER 1822

  The fat, full moon was low on the horizon, barely above the trees. It was orange as a pumpkin and just as large, plump and overripe and ready to be picked. In its eldritch glow, a dozen men and women, naked, were setting fire to the fallow field.

  “Glorious, isn’t it?” whispered Sarah, with reverence. “Like something from the Old World.”

  Ouida Bell, next to her, made no sound.

  The naked men and women—Catherine, P, Maltbie, Mrs. Parr, and a dozen others—had dug a trench around the fallow field with harrows that Sarah had rubbed with mare’s milk. They were lighting torches from a central bonfire and spreading the fire to the four corners of the field, touching the dry hay and wildflowers and chestnut saplings and rhododendron bracken until it sprang into sparks. Then they stood back in wonder at what they’d done, the orange moon reflecting the flames they had made.

  “You didn’t have to let my mother in,” said Ouida Bell at last. “I didn’t want to see her old dugs drooping down.”

  “I don’t turn anyone away,” said Sarah.

  The farmers had come to her. They wanted good harvesting for this year and good planting for the next. Sarah thought of burning the fallow fields. Fire would wake up both the earth and the fire lighters. She’d told them when to assemble and what to bring. They passed the word in secret so as not to offend the pastor. Sarah regretted not mailing him an invitation. Word would get back to him, no doubt, of those pagan doings in the fields just outside of town, but hearing the tale is inferior to the whole effect: the twirling flames, the acrid scent of green shoots turning to smoke, the moon and the earth collaborating on the coloration. Perhaps he would come anyway, and the sight of so many of his congregants in the nude around a bonfire would seize up his feeble Protestant heart.

  “Where’s Effie?” asked Ouida Bell.

  “She doesn’t care for fires,” said Sarah.

  Ouida Bell’s toes dug farther into the soil. “What do you think she’d do about the harvest? Not set fires. Not make my mother get naked and dance in the moonlight.”

  A wet branch exploded with a thundercrack, setting up sparks.

  Ouida Bell kept talking. “She’d do something. I don’t know what, but something, and better than this. What’s a naked mother with a firebrand ever done for anyone?”

  “If you’re not having fun, then go home.” Sarah put a silver-tipped measuring stick down next to her rifle. The measuring stick was an old trinket from the hayloft at Hope Hollow, covered in her mother’s black letters. Sarah found it worked just as well for pointing or dowsing as any other stick. “Head on home. Go to sleep.”

  “I’d prefer not to,” said Ouida Bell.

  “Then be quiet. Your complaining is spoiling the mood.”

  Ouida Bell began to say something, but someone shouted. A disturbance in the bushes, a moan and a wavering—the panther rose from its resting place, which was alight. The creature looked exhausted. Its disease had nearly run its course, and all the viciousness had been sapped from its spirit. It stood on its four shaking legs and opened its mouth to roar, but no sound came from its foam-filled jaws.

  “Hey, you damn pussycat! Git along now!” A naked man with a torch was standing in front of the panther, and it was the panther that was afraid.

  “Scram, you! Scram!” said a naked woman.

  Sarah had her gun in her hands and drew a bead on the animal, but the flames had frightened it badly. It was fleeing. In one leap, it cleared a gnarl of roots and a cowering Pendleton and the harrowed trench. The shot was an easy one. Sarah could have plugged it in the back of its skull at twice the distance.

  “Shoot it, Sarah!” Ouida Bell flapped her arms.

  The panther was rabid, a danger, but Ouida Bell had been rabid too, and Sarah had… She’d run away. Then Effie cured Ouida Bell. Perhaps Effie could cure the panther, too—if she supposed it worthy.

  “Sarah, damn it, shoot it! Kill it!”

  Effie had let Everett die, but Effie had not let Ouida Bell die. Why? What did Ouida Bell deserve that Everett did not? What did Sarah deserve that Rebecca did not? Sarah lowered her rifle, and the panther reached the far woods, escaping into shadow.

  “Sarah, why didn’t you kill it?”

  “
I’d prefer not to,” said Sarah.

  Mayor Richardson had fixed a late-September Tuesday for the census and an important referendum on the county seat. To lure his constituents away from their farms and to overcome the final lingering fears of the panther, which was weak and dying, Richardson arranged entertainments for all ages, sexes, and tastes and had them printed on handbills to be delivered throughout the county. The schoolhouse was hosting a literary event, which featured a debate between two pupils on the slavery question, a spelling bee, and readings from Shakespeare. A revival tent was erected down by the river, and Boatwright promised the water was still warm enough for baptizing. The First Daughters auxiliary was holding a cakewalk, and excellent doctors would be on hand to see to any troubles, free of charge.

  I’d read the handbills three times before I realized the Winter sisters and I were the promised doctors.

  The celebrated Tuesday of the vote began with rain, but that did not dissuade the influx of patients. Autumn is a hale time of year. The placid turn of weather makes for high spirits, and overindulgences rather than afflictions drove the infirmities we saw. P’s flaxen-haired little boy ate too much green corn and got the squirts. Buck showed up with pitchfork wounds in his thigh. He’d found the tool in a haystack at a most inconvenient moment for himself and his lady friend. Old Elizabeth fell off her chair and needed all her bones reorganized. I lost count of the teeth I extracted. I put them all in a jar so that I could tally them later. My ears rang with shouts of pain, and my hands were slick with the drool and tears of dozens of people. Rebecca ran out of sassafras and turpentine. Sarah’s hands were raw from mixing up graveyard-dirt poultices.

  The evening fell clear and crisp. Flaming oil-brands had been stuck into the ground around the square. Skinny children roasted fat sausages, sweet griddle dough, and sugar apples over three heaping bonfires. Every person cast ten-foot shadows, so the earth writhed and wriggled with a thousand specters.

  Rebecca and I had looked forward to an evening of frolicking. She wanted to dance, but I found I didn’t have the spirit for it. I was exhausted from my efforts, the pain, and the cries.