A Treasury of Doctor Stories

by Fabricant, Noah D. ; Werner, Heinz;

  We sat down to preference for halfpenny points. Trifon Ivanich won two rubles and a half from me, and went home late, well pleased with his success.

  The Witch Doctor of Rosy Ridge

  MACKINLAY KANTOR

  THE old-timers used to tell tales about Granny Blackshears and the boy she raised up, Thin Jimmy, and of the mighty tussle he had with a gang of Bobcats who came through the woods to do him harm. I reckon they would tell those same tales today; but now all the old-timers lie quiet amongst the moss.

  And so I will speak a history which they might utter if they were flesh again. It is true as any tale can be, because I got it from my mother’s own lips.

  Before a man can fathom the ways of Thin Jimmy Blackshears and why he wore amulets around his neck, and carried his pockets full of charms, he must listen to another account sadder by far; and the waters at Lorn Widow Crossing still talk about it.

  Because Granny Blackshears herself was the widow of the legend. Her husband it was whose team lost footing in a springtime flood, and went twisting and fighting through the angry riffles until they were drownded, and their master along with them.

  Yes, and more than that: for the Blackshears’ daughter was smothered in the currents at the same time, and the Blackshears’ daughter’s husband too. But the elder woman held their baby safe in her arms, after her nearer relations were drowned.

  Then, according to the story, Mrs. Virginia Blackshears made herself a camp nigh to the water’s edge, and there she was abiding with her grandchild when people chanced to find her; and it was weeks before the soundness of her mind returned.

  Some say the soundness never did return, and that only a smidgin of her wits resumed their proper place—which would account for the strange life she began to lead. But wiser folks declare that no great innocence clouded her memory; they say that beneath the hard lines of her little face and under the fresh-turned graying of her hair, she was wiser and kinder than many a woman whose husband is alive and hearty and willing to eat the best she can bake, and to pet her or squabble with her as the spirit moves him.

  That was in the earliest times, when Mr. Blackshears and his horses and relations were washed to their death. Indian trails still ran crooked through the woods, and the timber was thick and untrodden enough to hide miraculous things. There were catamounts still claiming this new country—or painters, as some folks described them—and bear marks still showed upon trees where the animals had scratched them. Fresh-arrived citizens would wake up sometimes to see Indians pacing past in the moonlight.

  No matter how fierce and cruel the high, dark ridges seemed to other folks, poor Mrs. Blackshears declared that the thickets and the creatures prowling therein were the only friends she had left in this world. She had come from Kentucky, Mrs. Blackshears had, and her father was a reckless man who crossed over from Eastern states in the time of Daniel Boone. She was brought up to poverty and dangers of all kinds; she had a plumb courageous eye, and it would have taken more than a mouse to send her squealing.

  Though poor, she swore that she was rich, and maybe that was the reason some people opined that her ways of thinking were addled beyond recall. She said that she owned every morsel of root and nut that grew in the timber—that snake-root and vervain and blood-root and mandrake all were hers. She believed that she had especial claim on every bluebird’s wing, and that the feathers of the orioles were a kind of gilt that nobody else could purchase. She understood the activities of shooting stars and lightning blaze, and she was never known to be afraid of fox-fire.

  And when thunder rattled and laughed beyond the western limits or Rosy Ridge, she said it spoke a language that few other mortals could interpret; and that some people’s milk might be turned to sourness by the thunder’s booming, but never hers.

  Deprived of husband and daughter, desolate of household goods and skillet and spinning wheel and bed covers to wrap her in, she whispered that the riches of the woods were meant for her and her grand-boy, and she would take them. Her money would be a peculiar kind of yellow leaf which she dried and kept in a bag, and her fat would be the fat of pines, and rattlesnakes would leave her path when she walked abroad.

  Oh, there were kind people even when they dwelt so far apart and when every cabin had a hog-pen finish. They tried to do the best they could by her. I reckon there were half a dozen families in the region who would have taken the Blackshears woman to board and sleep and toil with them—to treat her like a maiden aunt, perhaps, and let her share their pone and hominy, and eat the meat their men brought home—since she had no man to fetch a haunch of venison to her.

  But she was independent-minded. Maybe violent misfortunes had strengthened her independence and taught her to build little trust in human love, since it could easily be swept away when the waters rose.

  Sole alone she dwelt, and she became a doctor to be summoned in time of need. Many were the horses’ hoofs that cut the trail towards her door in the night-time. Granny Blackshears’ fame went abroad, far over past Billingsgate and up into mountains that block the sky a day’s journey to the south.

  The panthers were killed and the brush thinned down somewhat, and the last Indians came bedraggled to the doors and begged for whiskey. And the hair on Granny Blackshears turned yellow-white and stringy; and some said that she was a witch.

  But no witch who ever rode upon a broomstick had such soothing ways with a baby that was puny. And some folks do recite that Granny Blackshears sighed a compact with the Devil himself; but if that is true, the Devil taught her what to do when young mothers lay gasping for breath, or when strong men had flayed themselves with mishandled axes and the proud flesh started to grow. I reckon his name wasn’t the Devil at all—not Him who taught her year by year the wondrous things she managed to do. For if her riches lived yonder among the pale clumps of liverwort, her God lived up those gullies too.

  Her cabin was a lonely one, and I have heard that in early days she made her bed in a cave. But finally she managed a log house.

  Granny Blackshears was no spring lamb when first she met her tragedy at Lorn Widow Crossing; she aged more rapidly than even a hard-working housewife of that time, and people called her Granny from the start. But she didn’t mind. She was intent on raising her orphaned grandchild, and raise him she did.

  The child grew wild as a ground-hog, and able to move faster on his feet. Jimmy was his name; by the time the boy had seen five summers he was called Thin Jimmy, because of the way the bones showed in his face.

  It is told that she fed him on fox food and wolf food and coon food, but you can take a lick of salt along with that. Still, victuals were scarce in Granny’s cabin during plenty of winters, and frosty air and a corn-shuck bed never put meat on anybody’s bones, no matter how health-giving such a life may be.

  Thin Jimmy was ungainly looking as he grew older, but he could climb a tree in a way to make any squirrel look sick. I reckon if he had had a tail, he could have hung by it, possum fashion, for he got his first training hanging onto Granny Blackshears’ shoulders; and she had a kind of papoose arrangement to tie him in, when she went abroad on her doctoring business.

  When he got old enough, Thin Jimmy kept house for Granny whilst she was gone, and other children believed that he entertained spooks and lizards and wildcats all together. To joke about Thin Jimmy—to make outrageous sport of his long arms and legs and his fierce, hard face was one kind of occupation; but to meet him in the berry bushes was another. Many was the youngun who came hightailing home with eyes popping and wind clean gone, gasping out the fearsome news that he had met Thin Jimmy amongst the brambles.

  And children believed that Thin Jim could walk abroad at night even when the moon and stars were concealed by clouds, and that he had cat eyes to see around the tree trunks. He wore buckskin and linsey-woolsey; he had a coonskin cap all rough and scraggly atop his unshorn head.

  Many’s the time that he was seen loping through the woods like a scairt deer, when people came nigh. For he
didn’t understand that most of the younguns would have cut and run if he had said Boo; and he was shy and secretive and retiring through all the years of his growth.

  He was found, sometimes, laying quiet beside the pools that formed behind fallen trees on the edges of Agony Creek. His moccasins made tracks in strange places when snow was on the ground. As he grew older, he acquired himself a rifle-gun and was said to be skillful with it. Wild turkeys now cooked on Granny’s fire, and rabbits stewed in their gravy whenever the old lady had a mind for such fare.

  Far above six feet Thin Jimmy grew, before he was seventeen. His legs and arms and chest were thin, but they were hard as old hides at the tanner’s. His hair hung dense and stringy to his shoulders, and the first fluff of manhood’s beard showed like a gray lichen on his face.

  He accumulated money too—at least in such amount as Granny Black-shears needed to purchase herself things of comfort. For he dug gentian roots and dried them, and carried quantities down to the trading store at Delight. It was a moment of wonderment when Thin Jimmy dropped his little pack upon the counter, and told the man to weigh what he had brought.

  Yes, he must have been a comfort to poor old Granny Blackshears’ heart; she led a meager life, except for him. Her only relation with other folks was when they were sick or when plentiful troubles roosted on their doorsills. She saw miseries through all her years, and devoted herself only to finding out the remedies if she could. And sometimes I wonder what she and the boy talked about, in the mysteriousness of nights when they sat within their home, and when there was no necessary curing to be done elsewhere. But it’s certain fact that she taught Thin Jimmy how to read and how to write his name, and more than that.

  The Rosy Ridge medical doctor in those days, and the only doctor for miles around, was named Doctor Hardaway Mercer; you could make no joke about his name, for his way of life was never hard. He was a genial and good-tempered man unless badly roused, and when highty-tighty folks used to assail the notion of what they called grannyizing and witch-doctoring, Doctor Hardaway Mercer would merely chuckle.

  He’s say that where there was so much smoke, there must be some flame; he held opinion that Granny Blackshears did more good than harm, with all her roots and dried leaves and queer understandings.

  “I reckon she hain’t got a license,”’ Doctor Mercer would say. “I reckon she doesn’t know the oath of Hippocrates—but it’s my belief that she observes it.” And then he’d laugh deep within his heavy chest and tug knowingly at his whiskers, and go striding up Agony Creek with a pole over his shoulder.

  For he enjoyed angling after the tender little fish that flickered themselves amongst the colored riffles, better than he did fishing for ailments in mankind’s inner regions, though I reckon he was successful at both. He was a widower-man, and his pride and joy was in his little daughter Adela; and when she was grown up enough to trot along with him on his fishing, he had her trot.

  There she stood one day, in the shallower flows of Agony Creek, and it was the same summer that Thin Jimmy Blackshears had come to be seventeen. Adela Mercer was only twelve, but her feet were the prettiest sight that the sleek little leeches and water skaters ever saw.

  Her father had gone upstream to whip the quieter pools with his fly, and Adela had decided to catch herself some craw-daddies. She stood there with the water talking around her legs, and her long black hair hanging thick to her waist. Her hair was so black that the sun seemed to find silver shadows amidst its softness.

  Her luck at craw-dad catching was bad, because she was fearful lest the craw-daddies nip her fingers. Then Thin Jimmy Blackshears came from the willows, quieter than any water snake, and showed her how to catch them.

  “Craw-dad nippers,” he said. “They’re mighty good. You keep them in your pocket, little girl, and you’ll never suffer miseries of the stomach.”

  Perhaps because she was so small and gentle and trusting, he took the little girl to a grassy place above the bank, and there he said he’d show her things. And he opened up a kind of pouch he carried within his clothes, and it was full of mixed-up wonders. There was a mad-stone and a snake-stone and a blood-stone, and there was a piece of turtle shell and some dried toenails, and ever the white tooth of a bull.

  And then he showed her what he wore around his neck upon a piece of greasy string: a squirrel’s tooth to make him forecast the things to come, and a wolf’s fang to make him brave. And sewed tight against his coonskin cap, he had a string of snake rattles; as long as he wore them, Thin Jimmy declared, his head would never ache. He had a dead spider, too, and pink pearls that came in clams. And the queerest thing of all was the stone which he called a toad-stone because it was shaped that way, and when he had it no poison could affect him.

  Along with these preventions that he toted wherever he went, he understood that humankind is weak and subject to a million ills. He had learned a sight from Granny Blackshears about plants and herbs and Indian tonics, and he poured his wisdom out into the little girl’s ears, as if he were glad to have someone to talk to.

  But when her father came downstream and hailed the child, Thin Jimmy went slithering away into the thickets so fast that the little girl rubbed her eyes.

  “Adela,” inquired Doctor Hardaway Mercer, “were you scairt of Thin Jimmy?”

  She shook her head and said she wasn’t scairt no way. But she clung close against her father’s side as they went home; and after that she would never squint at a new moon through window glass without turning something over in her pocket; she dreamed about mad-stones on more nights than one.

  And maybe Thin Jimmy Blackshears’ dreams had been occupied solely with mad-stones and such implements, up until that time. But from then on, a small and skinny girl with calm brown eyes must have walked in them.

  Naturally she was far too young for romancing, and in any case Thin Jimmy was far too savage and shy to think of courting any female mortal that ever breathed. Still, it can be imagined that he considered her hair glossier than the soft feathers of a blackbird, and her voice as trusting and full of wonderment as the green peepers of spring when they played their fiddles in the grass.

  A fat partridge found its way somehow to Doctor Mercer’s front stoop, and there it lay when the doctor’s sister by marriage, Miss Eulalie Kershaw, went out to sweep the step one fine morning. And later in the season there was a brace of plump squirrels, and people wondered that Thin Jimmy would have the courage to creep so close to civilization as the outskirts of Delight, to leave these gifts for the child who had touched his fancy.

  And when spring moved over the land again, it was Adela Mercer herself who went frequent to the stoop to see if Thin Jimmy had fetched a present out of the forest. Sometimes there were violets and sometimes the little thread-flowers, paler and more delicate than any other wild thing a-growing; and once there were pearls from clam-shells taken out of the river far away. Things like this Adela kept as a kind of treasure. She had a colored Christmas box in which she stored her ribbons and other girlish truck: the dried flowers given her by Thin Jimmy, and the pearls too, were cherished there.

  Her aunt used to rare around at such doings—as season after season went by, with uncommon tributes laid before Adela’s door.

  “He’s wild as a civet-cat,” she would cry in dudgeon to Doctor Mercer. “He’s the offspring of an old-witch-granny, and I doubt the wisdom of Adela’s accepting presents from a timber-bred critter like him.”

  But Doctor Mercer just laughed. He wanted to know if her aunt would have Adela kick the bouquets off the porch, and feed the game to the hog he was fattening.

  “Never you mind,” cried Miss Eulalie. “Adela is growing tall and comely all of a sudden, and it’s time you gave serious thought to the matter. Why,” Miss Eulalie clattered away, “there were a dozen young bucks rolling eyes at her, when we attended the last play-party at the Baggetts’. I’d sooner see her coloring up when one of the Billins boys looked at her.”

  And it wasn’t asking
much to have that occur. For by the time Adela Mercer was in her earliest womanhood, the men of the neighborhood would go far out of their way to pass her house and catch a glimpse of her behind the vines. And foremost in the crew rode young Letcher, second son of the Billinses.

  There was a scad of Billins boys—twelve in all, when the record was complete—though some died when they were babes. But in those days there were Zeke and Letcher and Jack, grown more or less to man’s estate, with three younguns trailing them. Their father was a substantial person who farmed good acres in good fashion, and conducted a saw-mill into the bargain. But he ruled his boys with an easy hand, and most citizens agreed that he didn’t rule them hard enough.

  Certain it is that Letcher was a tribulation to the schoolmaster and a sore trial to other people in the community, when he outgrew his shirt-tail days. He had a claybank horse that he rode like greased lightning, and at the Christmas season Letcher and his ornery friends would get full of Christmas cheer and go whooping and shooting around the neighborhood. They had a kind of band or army, those boys did, and called themselves the Bobcats, and every Bobcat wore a fur tail of that variety sewed to his hat.

  They were nothing like so mean as the Dessark boys who galloped those hills in later periods; their inclinations were not towards robbery and murder, like the night-riders who followed them. But they hankered to make a noise in the world, and do frantic stunts, and perform pranks that quieter boys might shun. They were known to shoot gourds off each other’s heads, and to frighten old ladies with ticktacks against their windows; and once five cats came into prayer-meeting, stepping high with paper boots tied on their feet, and it was the Bobcats who sent them there.