Under the Skin

by Vicki Lane

  “No … it’s hard for me to get away, and Gloria …” Gloria hates it here. She wouldn’t have come if it weren’t for this supposed death threat. “… Gloria stays pretty busy too.”

  “Ay law, that’s a cruel shame.” The sharp blue eyes grew misty. “I had me four sisters but they every one of them married and went off while I was still just a little thing—me being the least un. The only one I remember at all is Fairlight—and they’s ever one of ’em dead and buried long since. No, talking of sisters, I’d say Belvy—you remember the one they call Aunt Belvy, her at the Holiness Church over to Tennessee?”

  Oh, yes, I remembered Belvy—a formidable presence who spoke in tongues and prophesied when the Spirit took her. Little chance I’d forget Belvy.

  I nodded and started to answer but Birdie wasn’t paying any attention to me. She was staring at the gray screen of the silent television, just as if she were watching one of her stories unfold.

  “Belvy was my playmate growing up and as close a thing to a sister as there is. And though we’ve gone our different ways this many a year and don’t hardly see one another but once in a great long while, I always knew that in time of need …”

  Her voice trailed off and she shook herself as if waking. “I do go on, don’t I? But I’m proud that you and your sister will have some time together now. You know, Lizzie Beth, a sister’s a comfort and a treasure in good times … and she’ll always look out for you when times is bad.”

  It was early afternoon and I was weeding the nasturtium beds down at the lower place when I heard the scrape of metal on rock. Looking up I saw Gloria’s Mini Cooper bucketing up the dirt and gravel driveway—far too fast for the low-slung car to negotiate the ruts and water breaks.

  With a final clang as it wheeled into the parking spot beside the corncrib, the little car stopped, the door swung open, and my sister—my comfort and treasure—leaped out.

  “Lizzy!” she shrieked and began to run toward me, her high heels teetering on the uneven terrain. “Lizzy! He was there!”

  II~Amarantha

  Cripple Tree Holler~May 1887

  “Come three angels from the North,

  Take both fire and frost.”

  The boy stood before the gaunt woman, his bared arm outstretched, his hand held in hers. The burn was on the inner arm, an angry red that reached from wrist to elbow with watery blisters covering much of its surface. As she spoke the words a second time, Amarantha waved her free hand over the burn, fanning the heat away from the trembling boy.

  “Come three angels from the North,

  Take both fire and frost.”

  The boy shut his eyes as Amarantha bent to blow on the burned area but his companion—a younger brother, to judge by their identical bowl-cut, carrot-colored hair and shirts cut from the same blue-checked homespun—leaned in closer to watch.

  “Zeb! Them blisters, they’s—” he began in great excitement, only to be silenced by a sharp glare from the burn doctor. Once again she repeated the charm.

  “Come three angels from the North,

  Take both fire and frost.”

  And again she waved her hand and bent to blow on the reddened forearm. Finally, she straightened. “Well, I believe we’ve drawed the fire out. Now you uns wait here whilst I go to the house and get some balm to dress it.”

  The two young boys nodded and stood transfixed, their eyes following the witchy-woman as she climbed the log steps to her front porch. When she had disappeared into the dark interior, the younger whispered, “Zeb! Them blisters just dried plumb up! I was watching while she spoke the words. I seen it!”

  Zeb was examining his forearm with openmouthed awe. Only a faint reddening remained of what had been an angry and painful burn.

  “Well, I be … and hit don’t hurt no more, not one little bit.” He tapped a cautious finger up and down the length of his forearm, repeating the words. “… not one little bit.”

  “Reckon she really is a witch, like old man Henderson done said.” The younger boy’s eyes surveyed the bare-swept dirt of the yard where a few yellow hens scratched, the looming boxwoods near the branch, the iron wash pot upside down on three big fire-blackened rocks. “Her place don’t look noways different to most folkses’ places. Seems as how a witch’d ought to—”

  “Hsst!” A sharp jab from his brother’s elbow and the younger boy’s mouth snapped shut as Amarantha reappeared at the door. A basket on her arm, she descended the steps with measured tread and solemn face, having found that her charms always worked best if the patient was a little afraid of her.

  Setting the basket on the ground, she lifted out a small dark brown crock filled with yellow ointment. A smooth wooden handle protruded from the waxy-looking substance.

  “Hold out your arm again, boy,” she directed. “This balm’ll seal the healing in.”

  Zeb did as he was told, wincing slightly at the first cold touch of the ointment but then relaxing as the small paddle slid gently up and down, spreading the greasy stuff over the wound.

  “Now,” said Amarantha, returning the crock to the basket and taking out a little cloth bag, “let’s us see about your brother.”

  She fixed the younger boy with a stern gaze. “You want to get rid of them ugly warts on your hand, young un?”

  Instantly the little brother whipped his right hand behind his back, ready to deny its very existence, but Zeb answered for him.

  “Thanky, ma’am, we’d be obliged. Mommy purely hates the look of them things on Clete’s hand. I told him not to go fooling with them old toads but—”

  “How many warts are there, young un?” Amarantha’s clear blue eyes held young Clete with an uncompromising stare till he produced a grubby hand for her inspection.

  “Reckon they’s five … ma’am.” The boy stared at the ground to avoid the icy gaze. “But they ain’t—”

  “They ain’t gone trouble you much longer.” Amarantha was already reaching into the cloth poke and counting out five kernels of corn. “Hold these in t’other hand and don’t drop them. Now I want you to close your eyes tight and count out loud. I want you to count to five, five times, you hear?”

  Clete, both hands extended, began to count in a shaky voice. Zeb watched wide-eyed as Amarantha reached down and withdrew a silver needle from the hem of her apron. In a lightning blur, her hand darted out and pricked the largest of the warts.

  “… four, five. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five.” The count was finished and the boy appeared not to have noticed the needle’s sting. On the largest wart, a drop of bright blood was forming.

  “All right, young un, you done good. Open your eyes and pour the corn over to your other hand and don’t you dare to drop it. You see there’s a bitty of wart blood—you want to get it on the corn … Good. Now say after me, ‘You grow and you go.’ ”

  “You grow and you go,” Clete quavered, his hand trembling but still outstretched.

  “That’s a good boy. You’re almost done—now cast the corn to the ground.”

  Hardly had the red-stained kernels hit the dirt than the hens were at the boy’s feet, gobbling down the corn.

  “You grow and you go,” Amarantha repeated, watching with satisfaction as the last piece of grain disappeared. “Now you boys get on home—leave that balm on till this time tomorrow, Zeb. And you, Clete, wash your hand in branch water for the next five nights and them warts’ll fall off afore the week is out.”

  She watched them go, tumbling over each other in their eagerness to be well away from the witchy-woman. But just before they reached the trees that ringed the cabin site, the older boy slowed and turned. “We thank you, ma’am!” he called, and the younger echoed him.

  “Thanky, thanky …” The words still hung in the air as the two plunged into the woods and vanished from sight.

  Amarantha’s stern expression softened. “Fine young uns … My, how I wish …” She left the sentence unfinished. With a sigh, she climbed the steps to return the conte
nts of the basket to her cabin. With only one day in the week free from her work at the hotel, there wasn’t time to stand about considering the what-ifs.

  She set the crock on a shelf amongst others then tied on a faded blue poke bonnet. “I got to get on down the mountain after them merkles,” she muttered. “That cook said he’d pay high for as many as I could bring him. What did he call them—mo-rels. Funny how many names them things has. I’ve known some to call them honeycomb musharoons and others name them wood fish. Hit don’t matter what he calls them, long as he pays. And they’s bound to be a mess of them in the old orchard round the Gahagan place.”

  “What a peculiar name! Why Cripple Tree, do you suppose?”

  The woman’s voice was raised to be heard above the steady clip-clop of hooves. Amarantha could see the riders clear: a dark-haired young woman and a portly older man. Struggling to prevent his gelding, one of the Mountain Park’s more obstinate hacks, from pausing to browse every few seconds, the man answered in little bursts of polite words to the woman, interspersed with loud invective directed at the wayward horse.

  “Who can tell about these outlandish names? … Come up, sir! … The natives appear to delight in the drollest and quaintest designations for their remote creeks and coves … Leave it, you vile creature, fit only for glue … Forgive me, I was going to mention Bone Camp, Spillcorn, Shake Rag, and Shut In—but a few that I’ve noted.”

  The man yanked at the reins and with repeated kicks urged his nag alongside his companion’s mount.

  “Miss DeVine … or may I say Miss Dorothea …?”

  The young woman pulled her horse to a halt and turned to look at the petitioner. She made an elegant picture atop the bright bay mare, deep green twill riding habit draped over her mount’s shining russet flank, and her slender torso, encased in a severe high-buttoned basque, rising straight and elegant. Behind the half-veil of her modish little hat, long eyelashes fluttered like captive birds.

  “Mr. Peavey … our acquaintance is hardly an old one, only a week and a day, I believe. But at a genteel resort such as this, where one meets one’s friends daily, surely a little … familiarity is allowable …”

  Mr. Peavey, his ruddy face wreathed in smiles, pressed his horse closer. “My dear Miss Dorothea, how wisely you speak—” He reached for Dorothea’s gloved hand.

  Eluding his grasp with a lift of her reins that put the bay mare to a walk, Dorothea giggled, a liquid burble of merriment. “Mr. Peavey, we are approaching a fork in the trail. Pray, which way do we go? To the left or to the right?”

  Kicking the gelding into a marginally more rapid walk, Mr. Peavey squinted ahead. “Let me think … I was here last week with a local guide … Oh, yes, now I remember, we take the right and downward fork—it joins another trail a little farther on and that trail leads back to the stables.”

  The truth of this statement was verified as both horses strained toward the right-hand fork. Dorothea reined in her mare and looked longingly up the other trail.

  “But I wonder what lies that way? Perhaps we should explore—”

  “My dear Miss Dorothea—the guide warned us against taking that road. He was quite adamant—claimed that a witch—or as he put it, a witchy-woman—lives up there.”

  Dorothea’s eyes were sparkling with lively delight as she tugged at the reins to turn her mare. “Then we certainly must explore. A witch—how delicious!”

  Peavey pulled his mount to a stop, blocking the way. “But, Miss Dorothea, have you forgotten? I am engaged to support my friend Harris when your sister attempts to summon the spirit of his late wife. He is relying upon me.”

  Dorothea’s mouth fell open and she clapped a gloved hand to it. “How could I have forgotten! Of course we must return at once. Your poor friend—he’s quite low in his spirits, I believe you said?”

  As the two horses moved down the trail, the man’s earnest tones rose above the brisk tattoo of the horses’ hooves.

  “… If only your sister can fulfill poor Harris’s longing to communicate with his wife just one last time. The carriage accident that took her from him was cruel enough. But he lives daily with the memory of his parting words to her—hasty words said in the morning; words that would undoubtedly have been kissed away in the evening. He still carries with him the diamond bracelet he had purchased earlier on that fateful day, hoping to win her forgiveness …”

  As the sounds drew away, Amarantha shook her head. “A man’s a fool for a pretty face like hers,” she murmured. “By the time they’re back to the hotel, she’ll have turned him inside out and she’ll know ever last thing he knows about poor old Mr. Harris. I see how them two huzzies work it. But it ain’t right.”

  BURN DOCTORS

  From FOLK MEDICINE IN SOUTHERN APPALACHIA by Anthony Cavender. Copyright © 2003 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher.

  The testimonial below was obtained in 1989 from a fifty-five-year-old male, a resident of eastern Tennessee. The incident described, however, occurred in the 1970s in West Virginia. We had people who could talk the fire out of you. I don’t know how they done it but they did. I seen them do it. Stood there and watched them. I couldn’t believe it, but, anyway, grease all over the woman’s hand. I mean, it just burnt her whole arm and the guy sits there and took a hold of her hand and just talked and the damn thing [the burn] just went away. I mean, the blisters just went away and everything … Yes, I sat there and watched him, J.B., do it. L.J. jerked a pan of grease back and it went all over her arm. Her hand is burned up! There’s blisters all over it and he sits there and talks and the blisters are going away. I said, “What are you doing?” And he’s holding her hand and, I swear, the s.o.b. is sitting there holding her hand, and he’s talking, you know, and the burn is going away. L.J. said, “I still don’t believe it because I ain’t got no scars or nothing.” Anyway, you can go to Talledega Alabama Central Prison and see him and talk to him about it.

  It is likely that the burn doctor in this case used a charm well known in the region, and in English folk medicine as well, to “talk the fire out,” a version of which is the following: “There came an angel from the east bringing fire and frost. In frost, out fire. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” Another version collected in 1939 in western North Carolina substitutes “salt” for “frost”: “God sent three angels coming from the east and west. One brought fire, another salt. Go out fire, go in salt. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

  Chapter 6

  The Monkey in the Middle

  Tuesday, May 15

  What about it, Hawk, have you two set the date? I need to work out the duty rosters for June.”

  Sheriff Mackenzie Blaine—high sheriff of Marshall County, in the old-time parlance—stood in the doorway of Phillip’s tiny office, a cubicle partitioned off from a conference room, frowning at the clipboard in his hands. “You said you wanted to take a week sometime in June … that’ll work … long as it’s not the first week … Travis’s put in for leave then—his wife’s due the end of this month. So, when do you want me to put you down for?”

  Phillip rolled his chair back from the computer. “You got me, Mac. We were waiting to find out when the kids would have some time off. Now it looks like they’re all available anytime after the middle of June. But Lizabeth hasn’t actually settled on a date. There’s been a distraction … and her name is Gloria.”

  Blaine’s brown eyes widened and he stepped into the cubicle, closing the door behind him. “You want to talk about this? I thought—”

  “Have a seat, Mac.” Phillip reached over and swept an accumulation of paperwork from the chair next to the desk. “I need to bring you up to speed.”

  “… so I’ve been doing a little online snooping re this Jerry Lombardo—the husband Gloria swears is out to get her. And no,” Phillip held up a hand as Blaine started to speak, “I haven’t tried to contact anyone with the Tampa PD—according to Gloria, old Jerry�
�s pretty tight with them. And what’s more, according to Lizabeth, it’s possible that Gloria’s making the whole thing up.”

  The sheriff said nothing but Phillip felt Blaine’s shrewd brown eyes on him. “What?”

  The sheriff tapped the clipboard on his lap. “I was just wondering … is everything okay between you and Elizabeth? Back at the first of the year when you told me you two were going to make it official, you were—hell, I don’t know, Hawk—without getting all sensitive, I’d have said you were as happy a fella as I’d ever seen. But recently … well, it seems like something’s changed. Is it the cop work? That always gets to spouses sooner or later. One reason I’ve never thought about remarrying—”

  Phillip broke in, shaking his head. “Yeah, I felt that way too … After Sandy and I split I swore there was no way I’d ever get myself into that situation again. But then I got to know Lizabeth …”

  And she got to me … in spite of all the reasons not to get involved … and especially not with her.

  Setting aside those troubling thoughts, Phillip shrugged. “It’s not the hours—hell, Lizabeth keeps pretty long hours herself. And the woman’s as independent as a hog on ice—those years alone after Sam died, she pretty much got into the habit of not needing anyone. So if I’m out late or leave home early, she just rolls with it.”

  Blaine raised his eyebrows but Phillip ignored his boss’s skeptical expression. “No, Mac, it’s not the job. What it is … well, at least part of it’s her sister Gloria. You never saw two more different women—I don’t know how the hell they came out of the same family. And even though Lizabeth is trying really hard, Gloria’s always making these little comments and suggestions … I don’t know, I guess she means well but it rubs Lizabeth the wrong way and it’s making her … well, short-tempered … and sometimes a little … if it was any other woman, I’d say she was acting bitchy. Plus she’s gotten kind of distant—like something’s on her mind. And when she and Gloria start sniping at each other, I feel like I’m the monkey in the middle.”