by Pamela Morsi
Those kinds of thoughts, rational as they were, offered little comfort. Jesse was bereft and embarrassed and confused. She was hurt and angry. And she hated the pity she saw in people’s eyes. Aunt Will, at least, didn’t pity her. She did smear her with smelly herbs, but Jesse figured she could put up with that much easier than the sympathy of her friends.
The day had taken on a crispness that was refreshing. She could forsake her jacket as long as she kept moving. But if she stood in the breeze, it was definitely chilly.
“We’re going to have to pull the tomatoes tomorrow,” Aunt Will told her. “It’s like to freeze the next day or so.”
Jesse didn’t know what was involved in “pulling” but thought that it sounded like something worthwhile to occupy her time.
“If you show me what to do, maybe I can get started with that this afternoon, while you take your nap.”
Aunt Will shook her head. “I’ll be going down the mountain this afternoon. I suspect you’ll be wanting to come with me.”
“Sure, I’d love to come with you. Where are we headed? Shopping? Visiting?”
“I’ve got a doctor’s appointment,” Aunt Will answered.
Jesse’s brow perked up like an antenna. “Are you having health problems?”
Aunt Will snorted. “At eighty-five, I don’t think you call it a health problem so much as a way of life,” she answered, chuckling.
After a light lunch, the old woman washed up, put on her best suit and sensible shoes and retrieved a well-worn handbag from the back of the closet.
“Is someone coming to pick us up?” Jesse asked.
Aunt Will shook her head. “I’ve still got two good feet on the end of my legs,” she answered. “Are you up to it?”
“Sure,” Jesse answered, assuming the doctor’s office must not be far.
It probably wasn’t, as the crow flies, but the path down the side of the hill was narrow, steep and twisting. Aunt Will led the way, using her walking stick to steady her. Jesse followed behind, carrying the heavy basket of eggs, fresh vegetables and jars of canned goods that her aunt felt obligated to bring.
“I’ve got to take something in trade,” the old woman insisted.
“Aunt Will, I’m sure your doctor visits are covered by Medicare,” she told her.
She made a tutting sound in disapproval. “The government pays for the clinic, but I can provide for myself.”
Jesse decided not to argue. But as she picked her way along the rocks and roots of the narrow trail, she was not so certain of the wisdom of that. It might have been a great day for a hike, but Jesse had no opportunity to notice as she kept a close eye on her own step as well as her aged aunt hurrying on ahead of her.
When they finally made their way to the wide expansive clearing, she was grateful. The space was like a little town, of sorts. There was a paved road and a couple of buildings with accompanying parking lots and a bit of open land before the gentle slope of flinty, chert pasture, complete with cows, continued on down the hill.
Without even pausing for breath, Aunt Will stepped onto the side of the pavement and continued on. Jesse followed, but with a wary glance. Where she came from there were sidewalks. An old woman strolling down a street seemed to be just asking for trouble. Jesse hurried up to saunter protectively at her right. If she was going to be hit by a car, at least Jesse would get hit first.
“Are there a lot of people on this road, Aunt Will?” she asked.
The woman glanced up at her as if just remembering that she was there.
“Oh, more than there used to be, I suspect,” she answered. “Sundays a lot of folks drive to church. And then there’s those coming to the clinic. If you keep on along here, in a couple of miles you get to the high school. Buses traverse this way back and forth, I suppose.”
Great, Jesse thought to herself. If a big yellow bus managed to miss them, a texting teen behind the wheel would be sure to finish the job.
She glanced over to the area at the edge of the pavement, thinking to suggest it might be a safer place to walk. It was not, however, a place at all. Heavy brambles and briers graced the uphill side. The downhill slope included a deep bar ditch. Neither option was conducive to walking.
As they rounded the corner of the first building, she noticed the sign painted on a huge bell sitting out on the ground in front. It read: McNees Piggott Families Church, est. 1834.
Jesse was immediately curious. McNees was her father’s name. Mac was what he’d been called, but she knew that was short for McNees.
“Is this where you go to church, Aunt Will?”
She gave a little humph that was almost disapproving. “When I go,” she answered. “Mostly weddings or funerals.”
Jesse was curious about her reaction and would have questioned it if something much more interesting had not captured her eye. Not fifty yards ahead, thrusting out of the hillside behind it, was a stunning geological feature. At first she thought it must be an exposed dolomite. But it was not.
“Oh, my God, that’s a quartz uplift!”
“Eh?” Aunt Will asked, before following the direction of her gaze. “Oh, DuJess, that’s just the Marrying Stone.”
“The Marrying Stone? So it’s not just a name, it’s an actual rock feature?”
“Don’t tell me your daddy never brought you by here?”
“If he did, I don’t remember,” Jesse said.
It was almost beyond imaginable that, with her love of geology, her father would have failed to show her such a rare outcrop. Jesse felt actual jitters of excitement as they came even with the rock. She could barely resist leaving her aunt in the road to run over and investigate.
“It’s a magic place,” Aunt Will told her, a little more quiet than necessary. “Most of the magic that takes place around here comes from there.”
Jesse didn’t believe in magic. But she did consider it luckily serendipitous that if she was going to be trapped on a subsistence farm in the wilds of the Ozarks for a couple of weeks, that there would be an interesting geologic feature to study.
Dutifully, she left the great rock behind her and continued with Aunt Will around the curve toward the clinic. The building was two stories high, though not overly large, and seated right up against the slope. It was covered with wood siding painted steel-gray. There was a small porch in the front, above which hung the sign: Community Clinic.
Jesse followed Aunt Will to the front, where she made her way up the handicapped ramp to the door. Jesse held it open for her as she went inside.
The place was clean and nice. It had a modern feel about it that was reassuring. Up at the cabin, Aunt Will’s world almost seemed stuck in time. But here, amidst the familiar scent of rubbing alcohol and sterile medications, everything seemed at least somewhat up-to-date.
Already there were several people seated on the couches and chairs of the waiting area. Aunt Will gave a nod of greeting toward them before heading to the reception desk.
Behind the counter was a heavyset, gray-haired woman with a bright smile and a voice just a bit too loud.
“Well, hello there, Aunt Will,” she said. “How are we today?”
Aunt Will eyed her critically. “I am just fine, Viola,” she said. “But it looks to me as if you’ve gained a bit since last I was in here.”
Jesse gave her aunt a quick look, shocked that she would comment on the woman’s weight.
“Now, I loved your mama, God rest her soul,” Aunt Will continued. “But she run to fat after the change and it shortened her life. You know that as well as I do.”
The receptionist’s color was high. Jesse felt sorry for her. Why was Aunt Will saying these things?
“Now it ain’t no miracle cure,” Aunt Will continued. “Just push yourself back from the table as soon as you’ve ate your fill. And have cabbage at one meal every day, boiled, raw, pickled or kraut—any way but slaw. Understand me? You’ll be wanting to see those grandchildren grow up and I want that for you, too.”
�
��Thank you, Aunt Will,” the woman said firmly, her gratitude not obvious in her tone. “If you’ll have a seat, the doctor will see you shortly.”
Aunt Will nodded and then glanced back at Jesse. “Give her the basket.”
Jesse lifted the load of foodstuffs she’d carried down the mountain and set it on the counter.
“I know most of this gets give away,” she said to Viola. “But make sure these pickled beets go home with Piney. Ain’t none what loves them like he does.”
“Of course, Aunt Will.”
Viola seemed considerably more subdued than when they’d walked in. If Aunt Will noticed it, she didn’t comment. Instead she took a seat in the waiting room. Jesse had hardly managed to get seated herself, when the occupants of the room made their way over to talk to her.
The first to sit down beside her was a young woman with a fussy baby in her arms.
“Aunt Will, I think my milk’s gone sour,” she said, her brow furrowed in concern. “Little Eli won’t hardly take a suck and when he does, the colic comes back.”
The old woman looked into the baby’s red, angry face and still managed a smile for the tiny, unhappy fellow.
“Swaddle him real tight around the middle when his tummy’s aching,” Aunt Will told her, demonstrating a tucking and folding that rendered the child with the appearance of a large sausage with a head attached. The little fellow began to calm almost immediately. “That should work,” Aunt Will continued. “And don’t let an onion pass your lips until you’ve got him completely weaned.”
The young mother looked relieved and thanked her effusively before moving back to her original seat.
She’d barely vacated the chair when a farmer took her place. “I’m getting this rash, Aunt Will,” he said, pulling up the sleeves of his shirt. “My wife been putting lotion on it, but that don’t seem to help.”
Aunt Will looked at the man’s arm and nodded. “You got bugs on your squash this year?” she asked him.
“Some,” he admitted. “I kill them as soon as I see them.”
“Do you smash ’em with your fingernails?”
“Well, sure.”
“Well, don’t,” she said. “Washing up in baking soda water is the best you can do. The freeze will do away with the bugs anyhow.”
The next questioner seemed distinctly out of place. Dressed nicely in slacks and a sport jacket, Jesse would have imagined him at a real estate office or fitting in perfectly at the Tulsa Country Club.
“What can I do for you, Handley,” she asked him.
“Oh, Aunt Will,” the attractive man told her with a heavy sigh. “I need some loosening weeds. My bowels are locked tighter than Fort Knox.”
Jesse barely managed to keep her jaw from dropping to the floor. But Aunt Will didn’t get a chance to answer.
“Wilhelmina Weston.”
Everybody in the room glanced up. The person who’d called her name was an attractive man, late thirties Jesse thought. He had a very nice smile, vivid blue eyes and a thick shock of reddish-brown hair. He glanced at Jesse, but his attention was distinctly focused on the older woman.
“If you’re trying to rile me, Piney,” Aunt Will said. “There ain’t no way quicker than using my full name.”
“I know exactly how you feel,” he replied, helping her to her feet. “I apologize. I was in such a rush to get you to the back before you heal all our patients and run me and poor Dr. Mo out of business.”
Aunt Will laughed delightedly. “Now that’s something I’d like to see. All the doctors and curing folks thrown out of work by a plague of good health.”
Utilizing her stick, Aunt Will got to her feet and let the man lead her farther back into the clinic.
Jesse continued to sit in the waiting room. The woman with the baby smiled shyly at her. The man with the bowel issues seemed embarrassed at having revealed too much. The farmer asked her about the weather.
“Has Aunt Will said when that freeze is likely to come?”
“Uh…in a day or two, I believe she said.”
The farmer nodded. “This is the last moon in the belly, so I was sure she’d be thinking soon.”
Jesse didn’t have a clue as how to interpret that.
“Miss Winsloe?”
The man who ushered away Aunt Will returned. “If you would step into my office for a moment,” he said, before looking beyond her at the constipated man. “Mr. Piggott, Exam Room Two, please. I’ll be right with you.” Without waiting to see if the man found his way, he led Jesse across the open area to a corner office in the front of the building. It was more a functional place than the chic medical offices that she’d been in before. An ordinary desk, a couple of chairs and some metal filing cabinets. The windows, however, offered a gorgeous view of the slope of the valley, which was at least as appealing as a cheesy art print.
“Make yourself comfortable,” the man said from the doorway. “I need to get vitals on Mr. Piggott and then I’ll be right back.”
Jesse wandered the room a moment. There were photos of several kids on the desk. Or rather, she thought after looking more closely, several photos of one kid. He was there as a chubby toddler, a freckle-faced imp missing his front teeth and a very tall, very serious-looking young man in a basketball uniform.
On the wall perpendicular to the desk, she stopped to read the man’s diploma. Erwin F. Baxley, Jr. was awarded a Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies from Missouri State University. In a matching frame nearby was his certification by the Arkansas State Medical Board.
Jesse perused the bookcase. But with no interest in Mosby’s Manual of Diagnostic & Laboratory Tests or Principles of Internal Medicine, she decided to simply take a seat on the narrow couch that gave a nice view through the windows.
It was truly a peaceful and bucolic area, she thought. I should bring Greg with me next time. He would love it here.
The thought had been conjured up so naturally and was immediately followed by a feeling akin to being stabbed in the gut. Greg would not be coming here or anywhere else with her, ever. It saddened her, but it also angered her. Jesse was ready to just snap out of it and was annoyed with herself that she hadn’t managed it.
“You doing okay in here?”
The occupant of the office returned to the doorway with a bright smile.
“Yes, yes, I’m fine, Dr.…I mean… What do I call you, P.A. Baxley?”
He grinned at her. It was almost a boyish look and Jesse speculated that it was quite effective with the local female population.
“Just call me Piney,” he answered. “Everybody does. And you’re DuJess. May I call you that? Everybody knows who you are.”
She wasn’t sure what to think of that.
“I…uh…I prefer Jesse,” she told him.
“Okay,” he said. “At least you didn’t say you prefer being called Miss Winsloe. That would really be tough.”
She couldn’t imagine why. She’d taught middle school for eight years, no one had ever called her anything else. She didn’t say that, however; instead she asked what seemed to be the most obvious question.
“Why did you bring me to your office?”
With a quick glance toward the waiting room, he stepped inside the room and shut the door behind him.
“Aunt Will is the nearest thing to a celebrity we have here on this mountain,” he answered. “We all love her. But sometimes it seems like everybody wants something, needs something from her. I’m sure you’ve seen yourself that her stamina is not what it once was. So here at the clinic we kind of try to protect her, protect her from all of us. And since you’re her…caretaker, I figured folks out there would start pumping you for information, as well.”
Jesse was surprised at the designation of “caretaker” even more than his suggestion that Aunt Will’s stamina was on the wane. But she did see, even in her short time in the waiting room, what he meant.
“A guy out there did ask me what she was predicting about the weather,” Jesse admitted.
“It was weird. He’s got a moon in his stomach or something like that.”
Piney’s expression was momentarily puzzled and then he laughed.
“New Moon in The Belly,” he explained. “The Belly is Virgo. I’m sure a new moon in Virgo must be some important omen in the stars. A lot of people around here still utilize astrology to farm.”
“Really?” Jesse had never even heard of that. “You don’t think Aunt Will is into astrology?”
“Aunt Will is Aunt Will,” he answered. “I don’t think anyone really knows what she’s thinking.” He took a couple of steps into the room and perched on the arm of the couch. “I’m sure she was thrilled to see you,” he said. “We all worry about her being up on that mountain alone. Are you going to be able to stay with her a while?”
“No, oh, no,” Jesse answered. “I’m only here for a visit. Maybe a week or two. Then I’ve got to get back.”
Piney nodded, understanding. He was still smiling at her when suddenly something in his expression changed. He looked at first bewildered and then incredulous as he suddenly sat up and sniffed the air.
“My God, you’re taking the lovesick cure!” he said. “I’d know that awful smell anywhere. I thought I’d never get the stink of it out of my nostrils.”
7
Piney knew that he was a bit rusty with the ladies, certainly out of practice with making clever compliments and smooth moves, but he’d never thought he’d gotten so blunt that he’d tell a very pretty young woman that she stinks.
“That didn’t come out exactly as it should have,” he said hastily.
Jesse’s cheeks were blushing bright red with humiliation. The last time he’d made such an untoward comment to a member of the opposite sex, he’d gotten his face slapped. He would have welcomed a full-throttle smack if it could have made the situation better.
“I wash and wash,” she explained, mortification clear in her voice. “I even used my expensive facial cleanser on it. I spritzed myself with cologne until I thought I was overdoing it. I…I’m so sorry.”