The Winter Sisters

by Tim Westover

  “Go try the cakewalk,” I said, not wanting to hamper her fun. “Win us a splendid cake.”

  I wanted only to go to sleep, to let the darkness take away the lightning storm in my head. The willow bark was useless. I should have asked Sarah for a skull to smash. I opened my flask of ether. Precious little was left, and I hadn’t had time to make more.

  Music and clapping and laughter and sweet promises filled the air, and their scent was thicker than the smoke. I excused myself from the expectant faces that approached me, more patients with more problems, and slipped through the gaps between dancers and frolickers, aiming for escape. A hand fell upon my shoulder.

  “Hiya, Doc.” Salmon Thumb had a vast grin connecting his earlobes. “A fine show you’ve got here.”

  “It’s not a show. It’s an appeal to democracy.” I pressed a hand to my forehead.

  Thumb whistled, and the high note traveled like a dart straight through my ear. Then Effie was standing next to him. She stood straight and tall, her feet placed symmetrically. She wore a bright-blue dress trimmed in yellow ribbon.

  Thumb bubbled over with high spirits. “Well, Doc, we just wanted to say hi. We’re going to join the frolics.” In a flash, he scampered into the thick of the masses, leaping and dancing and whistling. He started singing at the top of his lungs, “Oh, I wish I was a lizard in the spring!”

  “I should go see that he doesn’t hurt himself.” Effie followed Thumb into the masses.

  I could not let her vanish.

  “I wish I was a lizard in the spring!”

  Effie was singing—singing!

  When Thumb jumped and clicked his heels, Effie copied his movements. She leapt a little higher, clicked a little louder, and landed a little sprier. Thumb bounded closer, and then they were dancing together. His head was on her shoulder, a great heavy mass against her fragile collarbone. His lips were flapping, and she was nodding, and by the placement of her head toward his ear, I knew she was answering him. I couldn’t hear over the din of the crowd, which swelled to a crescendo.

  Thumb and Effie joined hands and spun around each other, heedless of anyone but themselves. Their trajectory sent them on a wild course. I followed in their wake across the square, out into the darkness beyond.

  They fell together with a roar and splash. The stone trough of the spring had risen from the dark ground to catch them. They were drenched. Their clothes stuck to them, clinging in inopportune ways. Water dripped from Effie’s hair.

  Thumb gazed up at her, and he echoed the closing words of the song: “I wish I was a lizard in the spring!”

  Effie made a sound of happy exasperation. She swatted her hand at the brim of Thumb’s hat to push it down into his eyes. She clambered to her feet but slipped on the bottom of the trough. Her momentum took her body one way, but her leg went another. I was fifteen feet away, but I heard the snap of bone.

  Thumb gawked. Effie made no cry of pain. She looked at her leg with curiosity.

  A tremendous excitement filled me. How would Effie treat herself? I squinted through the darkness. I held my breath so that I could hear her incantations.

  “Aubrey? I’ve been looking all over for you.”

  Rebecca’s hand touched my shoulder. I did not feel it until she spoke, accusation in her voice.

  “I… I saw Effie fall,” I said, shame coloring my voice. “I think she’s hurt.”

  Thumb and Effie heard, and Thumb came over to investigate. He stepped between me and Effie, and I saw nothing, nothing, nothing.

  By the time the three of us turned to look at her, we saw only a superficial injury, no more than a scrape. Rebecca must have wondered what all the fuss was about. Thumb, if he had an impression of a more grievous wound, would not have trusted his senses, but I knew Effie had knit her own bones back together.

  “You saw that, Rebecca—”

  “I saw nothing, Aubrey, and you saw nothing, either.”

  “Let me go help her up.”

  “Thumb can do it, but she doesn’t need his help.”

  Thumb did offer to help Effie out of the trough and to her feet, but she waved him away and got up by herself.

  “What did you see, Aubrey,” asked Rebecca, hurt and anger burning in her voice, “that you find so fascinating… that would lure you away?”

  “I was only looking after her, your little sister, and then when she fell, there was the natural doctor’s urge to help…”

  My reply was unconvincing, though. I swallowed the rest of my words, trying hard to calm myself. I closed my eyes and saw everything again: the slip, the fall, the motion, the bone, and Effie standing up again, whole and unbroken.

  “We’re leaving,” said Rebecca. She had her arm around Effie.

  “Let us see you ladies home, at least,” said Thumb, who was only a witness to the darker drama.

  “We know our own way,” said Rebecca, and Effie made no protest.

  Thumb and I watched the sisters until they disappeared around the corner of Perry Street. A clot of choler rose into my throat. I wished I could swallow the rest of my ether to send me to sleep. As I wondered what Thumb was feeling, I looked at him. He was soaked from top to toe. The brim of his hat drooped low over his eyes. He was scratching his Adam’s apple with a thumb and index finger.

  “Doc?” he asked, his voice wide with wonder.

  “Yes, Mr. Thumb?”

  “If your sweetie and my sweetie are sisters, what does that make us? Sweeties-in-law?”

  “I’ve brought these for you,” I told Rebecca when she answered the door the next day.

  “They aren’t very pretty.” She took the flowers and held them in front of herself as though bearing a torch.

  “They aren’t meant to be,” I said. “Look at them.”

  The yellow lady’s slippers had been the hardest to find. The wispy fennel was slightly aromatic, but it could not overpower the stink of lobelia leaves, and sassafras would never be the belle of the ball, no matter how many fevers it broke. Taken together, though, they make an excellent nerve tonic. The bouquet was not a pretty one but a useful one.

  That brought a faint smile. “Well, you have been paying attention, Aubrey.”

  “If you have water boiling over the fire, you can dunk this in it and drink the tea until I’m forgiven.”

  Rebecca exhaled, rattling the drying leaves of the flowers. “What’s to forgive?”

  “I mean—”

  She raised a single finger, and I shut up.

  “Let’s take a walk, Aubrey.”

  We walked, side by side but not touching, for half an hour. Silence passed between us, but the woods were not quiet. Squirrels rustled among fallen leaves. Acorns fell like heavy raindrops. New bird songs passed from branch to branch. The summer birds had flown south, and northern species had taken their place.

  The road curved to skirt a hillock of granite. We slowed as we passed over tossed and disordered ground. Ancient upheavals had broken stone from stone. Water had further confused the landscape. Two crows perched on a branch above us, and their calls passed back and forth as easily as a human language. I looked up at them then remembered that one should never look directly up at a bird.

  “Come on, let’s keep going.” I pointed upward at the threatening tails as an apology for breaking the silence. “They have the high ground.”

  “Don’t mind the droppings,” said Rebecca. “It’s a blessing.”

  “A blessing?” More than the sentiment, it was the specific word that surprised me.

  “Sassafras loves a little sprinkle of manure. All herbs do.”

  I was no roadside weed and did not care to be shat upon by birds, but I didn’t say that to Rebecca. I was so pleased that she’d spoken, that the tension of silence was slackening. She could talk about manure or the moon, so long as we were talking.

  Ahead of us was the sound of water, a stream bouncing. The road met the river, their paths chasing each other over the Georgia foothills. Water ran over the wide, slick
rocks, jumping up in spray where the flow crashed into a log or ridge.

  At the water’s edge, Rebecca headed upstream. I stayed close behind her. She brushed aside a thicket of fallen branches, and I saw chaos there that was not all nature’s doing. A stone dam had been breached long before, and the river fell six feet through a crack in its face. The rest of the dam was home to lichens, moss, and assorted detritus. A breeding pair of towhees was perched on a hanging ledge. A separate channel, a millrace, ran parallel to the river. It did not carry any water, having long been cut off from the main channel. It was clogged with limbs, bracken, and bramble. Charred pieces of metal and rotten planks stuck out of the mud. A snarl of vines stretched out to draw the blackened stones back to the earth.

  Rebecca clambered along the bank toward the ruins, and I followed. She entered the maze of burned-out foundations, respecting the old walls though they were no longer there. Wide granite slabs marked former thresholds. I recognized where the driveshaft to the waterwheel must have rested and where the millstones had turned.

  She arrived at a chosen spot, a low stone that work and rain had smoothed. Around her were the picturesque ruins of the mill and the dark Appalachian woods. An artist could not have arranged the scene any better.

  I sat down in a crumple next to Rebecca’s pastoral perfection. No artist would paint it. The scene was only for us.

  “There are rare specimens here,” she said. “It’s the fast water, the shady crevices.”

  “Hmm,” I said.

  “I’ve never seen any mosses like the ones that grow on the dam. I grind them up and put them into a tea for appetite. And the ash, well…”

  “The ash from when the mill burned down.”

  “The millstones throw out so many fine particles of flour and corn that the air can carry a flame. One spark, and the room is an inferno.”

  “Spontaneous combustion,” I said.

  “Not spontaneous, but instantaneous.” She bent over to draw her finger through the remnants at our feet. “And Everett…”

  “You don’t have to explain, Rebecca.”

  “No, I need to tell you.” In her cupped hands was a clod of fragrant black mud. “Everett didn’t die here. He was still alive when Paxton and Snell brought him to us. I did all I could, Aubrey. Every salve and poultice and bandage that any witch or doctor has ever put to burned flesh, I tried. But I knew from the first that I couldn’t save him. He needed greater medicine than mine.”

  “So you asked Effie.” I knew the whole tale, though I had not heard it from her.

  The muscles in Rebecca’s cheeks tightened. “The last few times he’d come calling, it was to see her. He’d changed. Effie fascinated him, like a serpent fascinates its prey.” She scooped a handful of ash and mud from the charred foundation.

  Rebecca’s jealousies and darkness suddenly had a new sense to them, and I breathed in sharply. My curiosity about Effie wounded Rebecca. It was an echo of love and loss.

  “I wanted him to live. Even if Effie was the one who cured him. Even if that left him completely in her thrall. Hearts can change, but the dead cannot be restored to life.” Rebecca let the mud fall back to the earth, but her hands were stained with the ashes of animals, vegetables, and mortals. “No, that is wrong. I admit it. I hated him in that moment, hated both of them. I hated that she had captured his mind, that he did not love me anymore, or if he did, that his love was second to his fascination. He did not understand Effie, and when he came to visit, it was not to see me, but to see her. Not to understand me but to understand her. But how can there be an understanding of a creature like Effie?”

  I kept silent, for fear I would say the wrong words and betray my own total fascination.

  “She did nothing, Aubrey. She did nothing, and he died.”

  “Do you think she could have healed him?”

  “I don’t know, Aubrey! If she could have cured Everett and didn’t, that’s as good as murder. Or it’s a trick, a medicine show, and she’s fooled us all.”

  “But the hydrophobia—”

  “What about it?” she snapped. “What did you see? A person who was sick and then wasn’t sick. That happens every day. A body heals itself most of the time, doctor or no.”

  A body does not heal itself from hydrophobia.

  The flow over the dam was a thin, constant sound, more like wind than a waterfall. Pigeons stirred the air above us. The smell was stagnant, moldy, and decayed. The river did not purify that place of its history.

  “If it was a miracle,” muttered Rebecca, “why did Ouida Bell get one and not Everett? Why did she do it for you—for Sarah—and not for me? Was it because she had fascinated Everett? Was it because he’d thrown me over and Effie thought she was doing right?”

  “I would not suppose that hydrophobia and burn wounds have the same remedy,” I said. “Perhaps her cure is only specific for particular conditions.”

  Rebecca looked down at me. I met her eyes.

  “Aubrey,” she said. “I need to know if you were watching Effie frolic with Thumb out of… friendship, I suppose, and not out of fascination.” Her voice was affectless, held by concentration and discipline. “And in everything. In her cures and her actions, in her person. Tell me that you are not fascinated by her. I need to know so that I am not destroyed again.”

  Neither Rebecca nor I were souls that could live with ignorance, and that made me love her all the more. “I swear to you, Miss Rebecca Winter, that my heart belongs only to you.”

  I sealed my promise by leaning toward her, but her face met mine before I was ready, and our lips mashed together. We were both surprised, but we accepted that we could not begin again. Too much was awkward and abrupt for the moment to be passionate, but it was heartfelt. Also, no doubt stood between us. We were a matched pair, two lovers twined. The wind picked up a handful of dust and ashes and scattered it across our shoulders. I heard prurient whispers in the rustle of fallen leaves, but I have never worried about offending ghosts.

  19

  GOOD FOR WHAT AILS YOU

  The smells of balsams and burning candles were too strong in the office. Chemical odors set my chronic headache to throbbing. My arms itched from nervous agitation. I opened the window to let out the miasmas. A fine breeze was stirring the atmosphere, and the air improved. What would I do when winter’s chill sealed us in with our stinks?

  “Borrow a cup of sugar?” asked a loud voice, right at my ear.

  I started like a squirrel at the crack of a stick. Thumb’s head poked through the window.

  “What did you say?” I asked with annoyance. “Sugar? I don’t have any sugar, sir.”

  Thumb looked perplexed. “No, see, I was askin’ if you needed to borrow a cup. Or wanted to have any. Sorry—I was trying to spare a word or two, get the message across faster, and now, look, I’ve been rattling on trying to explain what I meant. Here’s the story. I bought fifty pounds of white sugar and figured you might use a bit. For your coffee. Or medicine.”

  “Fifty pounds of sugar? White sugar?” I was aghast at the extravagance.

  Frontier folk sweeten their food with honey or molasses. If any sugar is to be had, it is by teaspoons.

  “Yup, white sugar.” He lifted his elbows off the windowsill and scratched the back of his neck. “I had Snell bring it in special. Paid him cash on the barrelhead. Need some? You take as much as you like. Free of charge.”

  I had no more need of white sugar than I did of silk or silver, which were equally as rare and opulent. I shook my head. “Can’t say that I do though it’s kind of you.”

  I started to turn away, but he spoke again. “See, what I really need is help carrying fifty pounds of sugar. It was too much trouble to bring the wagon in, but I forgot how heavy fifty pounds is. And I thought that if I gave you some, you’d feel obliged to help me out.”

  “I’m not sure I have time just now…”

  Thumb grinned his best medicine-show smile. “Come on, Doc. Effie and I are brewing a potion
up on the Alcovy. A walk will clear your head. It’ll be a nice surprise.”

  Thumb was right, a constitutional would help clear my head. If I happened to run into Effie, why, it would be innocent and accidental. I had made a promise to Rebecca, but I was not breaking this promise by helping Thumb with his chores or by looking after Effie to make sure she was well. I was still true to the promises of my heart. “Well, Mr. Thumb, you’ve persuaded me,” I said, but I had persuaded myself.

  Thumb whistled the whole way to the creek, filling in any silence that might turn to conversation or thought. He never kept to a single tune for more than three measures. Whenever I caught the melody, he would change to another in a different key. Matching his tune or his pace was impossible, and his nervousness prevented mine from dispelling. Our anxieties fed into each other’s.

  His camp was spread out along the shore of the Alcovy River. The glade looked beautiful, covered by a patchwork of ochre and crimson. Silver water in the river flashed in the long afternoon sun. Effie bustled among a laboratory’s worth of barrels, fires, worktables, and bottles near the river’s edge.

  “La-la-loo!” Thumb hollered in greeting.

  I’d been told that all frontier lovers have their own hollers. I hadn’t worked one out with Rebecca yet. Hollering was not in my nature.

  “La-la-loo!” she hollered back. Effie swung her arms over her head in greeting. “Hello, Salmon! Hello, Aubrey!” Joy animated her face.

  She accepted the bags of sugar from us. “This should be plenty.”

  She poured water from a washtub into the largest of the barrels. Next, she took spice pouches, fist-sized bags of cheesecloth stuffed with aromatics. I longed for a single sniff though my olfactory system was less sensitive than it should be. The scent of ether clung to my nostrils. One odor was unmistakable: ginger. I would have expected sassafras or ginseng or even turpentine, but those were Rebecca’s remedies.

  Next, Effie picked up a broom that had been lying across the top of a barrel. As far as I could tell, it was a well-used corn-husk broom with a hickory or poplar handle. She stirred one barrel counter-clockwise, but the next clockwise. When the stirring was finished, she put wooden lids over the barrels, tamping them into place with a mallet. Did successive blows impart greater powers to the concoction?