“Are we getting any closer?” I finally asked.
Jemmy pointed to an overgrowth of brush. “Right through there, Yankee Doctor. Just a quarter ways, maybe.”
I exhaled the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “You’re one incredible kid, Jemmy Isaak, you know this?”
“I told you, Yankee Doctor,” he reminded me, “a mud poke always knows his way.”
“Yes,” I reflected thoughtfully, “you did tell me that, didn’t you.” In my moment of relief, I could almost fathom the fantasy.
“You gonna stay on the hill with Possum now?” asked Jemmy without warning. I glanced at him and took note of an unusual worry creasing his brow.
“Would it bother you very much?” I replied.
“I don’t know,” he said, oddly reticent.
“You’d still be her favorite,” I smiled.
He smiled at that, but the reassurance was short lived.
"What is it?" I inquired.
“Girls can’t be mud pokes,” he explained once more, “only boys.”
“I don’t think Ana wants to be a mud poke, Jemmy,” I said. “I think you have no worry there.”
“Not Possum,” said Jemmy. “The girl.”
“What girl?”
“The girl Grammy Nana said will come thirteen moons from midsummer,” Jemmy related dolefully. “When the girl comes, she might not want any mud pokes around.”
“Did your Grammy Nana tell you that, too?” I asked.
“No,” said Jemmy, resigned. “I just think it.”
I almost laughed out loud. I placed my hand on the back of his head and nudged him forward. “I would think such a girl would be very pleased to have a magical boy as her friend.”
“Her name is Amelia,” said Jemmy, “and she will come thirteen moons from midsummer.”
“Grammy Nana knows her name, as well?” I asked, with some amusement.
“Yep,” said Jemmy, his tone rather cheerless.
“There is no girl, Jemmy,” I told him. Your Grammy Nana is addled. “Let’s go see how Melvin is getting along.”
In the short distance between the forest border and the Fuller homestead, we saw an older woman sitting on a stool next to the front screen door. The woman’s stern expression appeared focused on the methodical scrubbing of an object in a bucket of water. Stepping closer, the object appeared to be a raw piece of meat or possibly a freshly dead fish. Jemmy immediately sat cross-legged on a weaved rug, and intently observed the woman’s activity.
I set the rifle quietly at the corner of the warping porch and winced at the potent, unmistakable odor of internal organs thickening the air around the doorway. On closer inspection, the object in the woman’s hand resembled a human lung. Cringing, convinced I could only be mistaken, I grasped the brittle handle of the screen door and peered inside the cabin interior.
Stretched on a table like an autopsy study, was the emaciated body of the presumed Melvin Fuller; his chest wall opened wide and blood spattered. A glaze of horrific stupefaction froze his facial features, his eyes staring outward in a glassy, deathlike trance. I observed the man’s gaping mouth with a volcanic sickness in the pit of my belly. The only sign that Melvin Fuller still lived, was the beating of his heart through a narrow width of space between Winnie Mae Clark and two women I assumed, respectively, were the earlier suggested Aunt Ruthie and Kate Fuller.
Across from the three women, stood Ana, blood dripping from either side of her closed mouth. I could not see the shape of her teeth, but I knew they had changed. Her adept hands spun feverishly with what appeared, as Aaron Westmore had chronicled, to be a web-like substance oozing from the very tips of her fingers and encasing a strange globular and sticky mass between her hands.
The old woman with the bucket brushed grimly passed my shoulder. I watched, with increasing disturbance, as Ana carefully assessed the scrubbed pink lung the woman held up for her apparent inspection.
It was at that moment, I backed away from the tilting wood porch, my sense of self-possession and logic reeling.
“You okay, Yankee Doctor?” I heard Jemmy’s voice reverberating itself in my ear, even as his form receded into the meshing blend of rapid circling against a vast carousel made up of treetops, clouds and rich blue skies.
The last reference to consciousness was a loud humming in my inner ear, until the world before my eyes went black.
~*~
Chapter XIV
By wonder sublime or profane, Melvin Fuller survived his inconceivable vivisection. What I imagined to have occurred made little difference to what actually did occur. When I returned to consciousness, on the sparse grass, to find I was unable to speak or judge my circumstances with any significant clarity, I remember only Clem’s sympathetic stare and Lonny Parker’s studious frown. How I returned to Ana’s is not part of the equation. I held no memory of having done so.
I drifted through the following hours and days maintaining a functional level of existence, which scarcely rose beyond the daily routine between some semblance of wakefulness and grateful slumber. The afternoons were spent on Ana’s front porch, where I took to staring into the depth of forest beyond the oaks; the comprehension of my universe slowly divesting itself along with Melvin’s toxic lungs scrubbed pink in a dimpled metal bucket.
Time came and went as through a clouded hourglass, spilling its sand faithfully and unperturbed, but out of sight. Ana served the hours with her measured brews, brushed my hair and draped a summer’s coverlet over my thighs. She swept the wooden porch around my feet with the hushed movement of butterfly wings, and whispered within the cabin walls among those who sought out her expertise.
In and out the visitors came. Someone pulled up a chair and I was vaguely aware of Jesse Lee Isaak’s scrutiny.
“How long’s he been like this?” he asked, staid and curious, snapping his fingers, studying my inattentiveness.
“Reckon near three days now,” I heard an unfamiliar voice reply.
“Goddamn witches,” came Jesse Lee’s sour complaint.
“Is the Yankee Doctor crazy for good?” queried the fluttering voice of Jemmy Isaak.
“Couldn’t be the one t’say,” replied the unfamiliar voice. “Folks say, but folks say a lot, doncha know.”
This is what it felt like to be one hundred years old, I speculated in a more lucid moment. This is what it felt like to be waiting for death and disintegration.
For three days and three nights, when I closed my eyes, I saw Melvin Fuller’s polar expression: the beating of his exposed heart. For three days and three nights, I opened and closed my eyes to a microcosm that suddenly became disassociated from all things familiar in their course.
Sam Pennock brought one of his warm root beers, which sat uncapped on the table beside the rocking chair. The coquettish Jolene Parker set down a pottery vase of fragrant garden lilies and brushed a sympathetic kiss across my brow. Aaron Westmore played reflective bluegrass notes on his acoustic guitar, in likely hope the melody would jar my senses.
On the fourth morning, I awoke from the dimness of my psyche’s disturbance to witness the first coral thread of daybreak beneath the hems of the window drapes. A flush of coherency filtered through my brain and after a brief search, I discovered I was entirely alone at the Lagori homestead.
I do not know if, in that moment, I executed any conscious decision to either remain and await Ana’s eventual reappearance or, to leave and return to the rented cabin at the edge of the Four Corners.
I stepped down the dirt pathway without much more ambition than to simply move forward.
My private self-regard, in respect to the blue poke specimen snatched through the auspices of the suspect Fitch, felt singularly corrupt and I was filled with a dark apprehension that somehow the stakes had changed. It was no longer about my grandfather’s experience nor even an irregular plant medicine, but something buried and more critical than could be envisioned in even my most dauntless imaginings. I sensed a growing privileg
e to things not meant to be exposed, and I held the threat of that exposure in Nina’s refrigerator in Baltimore.
It was an unsettling revelation and I no longer felt assured in my position, as either guest on the hill or, scientist at large. To a scientist, all mystery is an invitation to study; to a guest, some things are more delicately kept in check.
First light in the mountains brings an unyielding symphony of songbirds and wild fowl, but amidst these sounds, there is a profound moment of glistening, which intones the absence of human activity. I found my rented residence as I had left it: books piled on the table, the bed carelessly made and an empty coffee mug at the dry sink. I soon realized, in my haste to return, I left my shaving supplies at Ana’s and with a muttered curse, I retrieved what was left of clean clothes, a bar of soap and a towel from the suitcase.
I spied one of the several plastic bottles of prescription opiates and examined the contents with dull indifference. Ana’s remarkable skill had lain waste the urge, but not the mystery of her method.
I tossed the container back into the case and rolled the clothing and soap into the towel with only one desire: to submerge myself in the crisp mountain waters of the Cutler and pray I’d not meet with the great-grandson of my grandfather’s ill-tempered serpent.
The low and rushing waters, against the pebbled sands of the river, stunned the naked flesh for only an instant, until it became as a holy fountainhead to the emotionally charged sense of receiving more than I ever imagined to accept.
I reclined against the smooth sand and allowed the shallow rapids to race over my body, perhaps in the vague hope of deliverance from the sin of witnessing the narrow divide between the actual unsanctified and the consecrated. I sought to discover what I once considered no less than virtue of science beneath common lore, only to stumble on that paradox which threatens the very foundation of the seeker. Melvin Fuller should be dead, yet against all rationale, he survived.
Pondering the contrast between that, which is possible and that, which is eminently implausible, I watched the smooth measurement of a blue heron as it glided low overhead. I heard the splash of graceful weight meeting the waters, even as the rapids rushed against my ears and soon felt the bird’s motionless presence not ten yards from where I lay.
The marvel of this close encounter did not quite absorb into my consciousness, as I observed the morning sunlight crown the expanse of sky between the aisles of trees along the Cutler’s edge. The waters took on a shimmering momentum, and I experienced an overwhelming sensation of moving through these very waters with great rapidity. Free and darting left to right, circling around, skimming the surface and slipping below, only to become suddenly aware of the long legged creature above, eyes alert to each nuance of movement beneath the glassy surface.
Startled, I sat straight up.
The heron raised its pointed beak and swallowed a passing trout.
An uncontrollable quaking seized my limbs. I expelled an involuntary groan that reached my ears as unfamiliar and strained.
God, what is happening to me?
Sound reasoning dictated I should leave this place. Clearly, an increasing impairment to evaluate the complex events I was witness to argued against any impulse to remain. So severe became the conflict between circumspect and desire, I felt its pull inside the very sinews of my living flesh and bone.
I breathed in the deep breath of the fully risen morning, dressed and bundled up the old clothes in the now damp towel.
And all throughout, the blue heron remained.
A witch is as a witch does. Are you a witch or simply a very clever woman?
I turned away from the battlements in my head and started back to my own place of temporary sanctuary.
“Damn idiot Yankee,” a shrill voice reached out from the morning air. I turned sharply to face my accuser. Old Fitch stepped menacingly from the slight incline of brush, with the allegiant Dulcy, and burnished rifle, at his side.
“I warned ya t’leave,” he said. “Didn’t I warn him t'leave, Dulcy?”
Weary enough by my own traumas, I raised my arms only slightly in a gesture of willing approbation and said: “Are you going to shoot me then, Fitch? Is that what you’re going to do? First, you’re going to spill my guts and then you’re going to show me secrets hidden in oak stumps. Now, maybe you want to shoot me. What the fuck way do you want it?”
“You lay with the witch?” he blurted out sourly.
Exasperated, I sank into an even deeper weariness. “What concern is any of this to you?” I asked, but it was a rhetorical question. I didn’t particularly care if he answered or even if I wanted him to.
“You got some of th’ poke,” he noted. “Did you tell her about that?”
“No, of course I didn’t,” I replied impatiently.
“Figured as much,” he said. “You’d be dead and feast for the worms by now, if you had.”
I sighed wearily. “What is it you want, old man?”
He squinted thoughtfully, as if deciding whether it was worth the bother to explain himself or just shoot a bullet through my head.
“You can still get out while the gettin’s good, Doc,” he confided, stepping closer. “Only wish someone had the good grace to warn me all those years ago.”
“Why is my relationship with Ana Lagori of such vast importance to you?” I asked.
He spit a small wad of tobacco into the grass. “Just a bit of Christian charity is all.”
I exhaled a labored breath. “But of course.”
He smirked and said: “It’s like I told you that day...if you leave, this will all end.”
“What?” I asked irritably. “What will end? Remind me, please, what it is, exactly, that will end?”
“What you seen up at Mel Fuller’s,” he said. “That.”
“Melvin Fuller is alive,” I reminded him.
“By the devil’s own hand, he is!” returned Fitch with a decisive grunt.
My annoyance grew with my exhaustion. “Look, I’ve had enough of tangled webs,” I told him dismissively. “And right now, I want only to go about my business in peace.”
“Alone or, with she what lives up in those woods?” he inquired, with a gesture toward the swell of the hillside.
“What is it about the woman that drives you to such distraction?" I asked. I glanced over his shoulder and saw the heron standing as it had earlier: attentive, listening.
Fitch raised a brow, nodding his head just once. “Aye, she sends the creatures out to watch over you.”
I turned again to walk away. “Crazy old fool.”
“You seen what happened at Mel’s!” he quickly cited, lunging forward and grasping my arm with an amazing strength. “You seen that baby cured! You seen what she done for Jilly and Jesse Lee’s boy. You drank the healing elixirs and now you don’t shake no more in your hands. She is the oracle no earthly man can ever know and you want her. You want her bad.”
I jerked my arm from his grip. “Get away from me.”
“I’m tryin’ t’save you,” he pleaded. “Idiot Yank, I’m tryin’ t’save you, can’t you see? Before midsummer; before it’s too late!”
I kept walking.
Alerted by the sound of buckshot, I whirled around and faced him. Fitch had shot in the direction of the heron and I suspected he deliberately missed hitting the bird simply to assert the power of potential threat. He spit out another ball of tobacco as he watched the creature fly off over the tops of the maples and elms.
“The moon grows full on the Evangeline’s demon garden,” he warned at my back when I turned away. “You’ll damn your soul to eternal hell, if you till the devil’s soil!”
Fitch’s warning sailed through the ether and dissipated without heed as I stepped beyond the trees and brush, returning to the relative security within my own cabin walls. I walked to Pennock’s with the empty mug from the dry sink and Sam filled it with a fresh brew.
No charge, Dr. Broughton. Good to see you up and about.
The clarity of mind I experienced since awakening at Ana Lagori’s sheltering homestead began to wane, and the atmosphere seemed to take on a surreal sheen.
“Do you have today’s paper?” I inquired, off hand.
Sam Pennock pulled a newspaper from beneath the counter. I saw it was yesterday’s and reached in my pocket for a quarter.
“No charge,” Pennock repeated. He seemed to sense my question and added: “Yesterday’s, after all.”
My bewilderment unabated, I thanked him and returned to the step of my sanctum sanctorum. Passing the mad Clara and her ridiculous doll, I was reminded of the unalterable character of this community and perhaps the deeper frailties of isolation on the human psyche. Each of them could escape into the modern world, but chose not to. Was it Ana, who held their devotion? Or simply the comfort of the familiar, no matter the disadvantage.
I sat on the wooden step and scanned the day old editorials in an effort to divert my thoughts momentarily, realizing quickly the effort was not working.
“What’s up, Doc?”
I looked over to find Aaron Westmore walking toward me. I folded the newspaper in half.
“Hey,” I replied sedately.
Aaron took his pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket and packed it lightly against the palm of his hand. He held out the cigarettes that jutted forth. This time, I took him up on his offer and extracted a single cigarette. He flipped out his lighter and I breathed in a deep inhalation, fighting the rapid dizziness induced by years of abstinence and coughing out the stinging burn in my lungs.
Aaron leaned his back against the cabin frame with a humorous smirk and lit his own cigarette.
“Whatcha gonna do there, Doc?” he asked lightheartedly, although I sensed a more sober note under the jovial affectation.
I sighed out a cloud of smoke. “I don’t know, and that’s the truth of it.”
Aaron turned and leaned a shoulder against the wall. “Are you going to go back up there?”
I butted out the half-smoked cigarette on the ground. “I saw, Aaron,” I told him. “I saw what you saw with Scully.”
The Honey Witch (A Tale of Supernatural Suspense) Page 12