The Winter Sisters

by Tim Westover

  Weary of the hard-knock life?

  All the sickness, storm, and strife?

  Well, bang the drums and toot the fife!

  And best of all, you’ll please the wife!

  Get some Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic.

  He lifted his fingers from the banjo strings and gestured to the crowd. “Good sirs, are you worn and wearied and plain tuckered out?”

  “Yes!” the men replied.

  “Can’t shovel it, chop it, or reap it like you used to?”

  “Yes!”

  “Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic!”

  The quack played a series of major chords. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I threaded my way through the rapturous crowd, aiming for the stage. The woman with the red kerchief stepped into my path, and I had to move her aside with my hand so that I could continue forward.

  “Good ladies, are your fingers worked down to raw bone?”

  “Yes!” the ladies shouted, right on cue.

  “Soap burned your skin, ironing singed your eyebrows, broom straw caught ’tween your toes? Are you beat like your laundry, whipped like your eggs, flat like your bread?”

  “Yes!”

  “Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic!” The entertainer tossed a bottle up, giving it a twirl so that it flew end over end, higher than the rooftops. He spun around and caught it behind his back, and in the same motion, he turned back to the crowd and beamed. He’d meant for the trick to seem effortless, but I was nearly to the stage by then and noticed that his pinky finger was rigid, arthritic.

  “Good husbands, can’t do your manly duty? Zip gone out of the tip? Zing gone from the thing? Power faded from your tower? Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic!”

  Some people blushed, but others roared with laughter, emboldened by the scandalous turn.

  “What’s the cure? Say it with me!”

  “GROVE’S TASTELESS CHILL TONIC!” roared the crowd in harmony.

  I hauled myself onstage. “Now, see here! I mean—”

  The crowd murmured at the intrusion, and my righteous indignation sputtered. I am no orator. I can bleed people, rinse their bowels, and restore their health and life and joy—but I cannot win their affections. I stammered, and I stumbled. Words would not come to me. The longer I wavered, the quieter the crowd became, and the entertainer seemed content to let me fail in front of the hundreds of eyes of my new charges.

  “Just say it!” said the woman with the red kerchief. “Say whatever it is you want to say, and then get the hell off the stage!”

  Her curse was enough to shake me from my stupor. I puffed myself up as best I could. “What’s your name, sir?” I asked, jamming my hands into my waistcoat pockets as I’d seen important men do. “Not Grove, is it?”

  “No, sir, not Grove,” said the entertainer. “If only I were! Grove is seven feet tall, with shoulders as broad as a steamer chest.”

  The crowd oohed.

  “He’s eighty-four years old and doesn’t look a day over thirty.”

  The crowd cheered.

  “No, sir, I’m not Grove. What’s my name? You don’t know it, but they surely do.”

  “Salmon Thumb!” roared the crowd.

  “Why, that’s right, it’s Salmon Thumb! How can you forget a name like that? But that’s the one I got in my cradle, and that’s the one I’ll take to the grave.” Then he lit into a little melody, and the crowded applauded.

  I raised my voice above the song and noise. “Well, Mr. Thumb—”

  “Dr. Salmon Thumb, if you please, sir.”

  “Clobber that blowhard, Dr. Thumb!” chimed a voice from the alley.

  “Mister Thumb. I am no blowhard. I am a real doctor, Dr. Aubrey Waycross, and I blow with the wind of truth.” This raised a chuckle from the audience. “I accuse you, sir, of falsehood. Of hollow promises and easy cures. I accuse you of misleading the good folk of Lawrenceville and distracting them from healers who can benefit them.”

  “Hear, hear!” said a man from the crowd. “Go up to Hope Hollow if you’ve got the rheumatism! The Winter sisters set me right!”

  “Witches! Haints and devilry!” someone countered with derision.

  Then another farmer in the crowd held up a small, sweat-stained bag. “Naw, good medicine! I’ve carried this bag of fennel, what the Winter sisters gave me, for three days, and I haven’t sneezed since.”

  “Wait,” I said, turning to the crowd and holding up my hands. “That’s not what I meant. I meant a real doctor, a physician—”

  “Right, the Winter sisters! Preacher ran 'em out of town a while back, but they’re the best doctors the world’s ever seen.” The fennel-carrying farmer turned from the stage and addressed what was now his audience. “Are you gonna forget about them because of a medicine show?”

  “What are they gonna do about the panther, hmm? What are they gonna do about the rabies?”

  Rabies! My ears perked at the very word that had brought me from Savannah to Lawrenceville, from the bright center of Georgia life to its darkest corner. Before I could interject, though, the shouts of the crowd took over.

  “What’s a medicine show gonna do about the rabies?”

  “Medicine show ain’t no harm,” said someone else in the crowd.

  “I need that tonic to sleep!”

  “I need it to wake up again in the morning!”

  “Ain’t nothing for the rabies except praying!”

  “Ain’t nothing 'cept for a bullet!”

  “Come on, Dr. Thumb, give us some more banjo!”

  Thumb started another tune:

  “You ain’t even got to listen

  To what this guy’s been pissin’.

  He says he’s a physician,

  But I’ll bet he is wishin’

  He had Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic!

  I’ll give you all an honest tip:

  If it’s a bleedin’ you’re to skip,

  To soothe that aching hip,

  Just take a little sip

  Of old Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic!”

  A cheer of jubilation erupted, and buyers surged forward. Coins flew. Bottles of the tonic sailed back. The rabies and the Winter sisters were forgotten in the exploding of popping corks. Old and young believed they were drinking to their health, but I knew they were ruining it.

  “Want some, Doctor?” Thumb beamed at me, showing perfect white teeth—a radiant smile for a haggard backwoods huckster, which made me wonder how he kept them so pearly. “For you, it’s free.”

  “Not a sip,” I said. “Not even if you paid me a thousand dollars.”

  “It’s good for what ails you.” Thumb pulled the cork from a bottle of Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic and took a short pull. “It’s no hard feelings, Dr. Waycross.” Thumb held out his hand as though he meant for me to shake it. “Really, Doc, it’s no hard feelings.”

  “Still, Mr. Thumb, I won’t shake your hand.”

  Sweat had collected on his hatband. His skin looked oily. I turned my back on him and walked toward the rear of the stage.

  “I’m not a bad fellow, Doc,” he called after me.

  “I think, sir, that you are.”

  The crowd paid no attention as I slunk to the edges of Honest Alley. I walked past the muzzles of horses, who let their nature fall onto the muddy streets. Mules and donkeys brayed at me. Dirty urchins and rheumy-eyed matrons jostled me. The malodorous breathing of man and beast made me sneeze. I hastened to vacate the noxious street, but a hand landed on my shoulder.

  “A moment, Doctor!”

  The man was both too young and too fat to be respectable. Given his wide straw hat and tattered trousers, I took him for a farmer.

  “Can I help you, sir?” I said, exhaustion filling my voice.

  “No, I’m quite healthy. A little whiskey fixes most troubles, and a great deal of whiskey fixes the rest.” He patted his rotund belly.

  “Then, if you’ve no urgent business, I will ask your leave.” I was weary from the road and weary
from the foolish display in which I’d become embroiled. “Unless you can take me to the mayor. You wouldn’t happen to know the man, would you?”

  “That’s me,” said the fat youngster, doffing his hat, and he was barefoot.

  Imagine, no shoes in a place with drifts of manure three inches deep!

  “I mean, the mayor himself. Mayor Richardson.”

  “Yep, that’s me. Elected executive officer of the incorporated town of Lawrenceville, Georgia.” Mayor Richardson stuck out his hand.

  “I beg your pardon,” I said, astounded. I shook his hand although goodness knows what pestilence clung to it. “You’re not what I expected.”

  Mayor Richardson laughed. “Well, Doctor, one’s got to be a real fool to get elected mayor. Doesn’t pay anything. You don’t even get a pair of shoes! But a town’s got to have one, like a town’s got to have a doctor and a body’s got to have an asshole.”

  I hid my chagrin at my mistake by straightening my collar. “Again, I beg your pardon, sir. I’m sure you have the health of your constituents in mind. You called for a trained physician to look after them, and here I am. You said it was hydrophobia. Rabies.”

  The place, a town at the edge of civilization, was not tempting. But any hesitation had vanished with one word: hydrophobia. I’d seen one life claimed by it, a life very dear to me, and if I could spare another mother, another little brother from seeing the horrors of that disease, if I could cast out the false hopes peddled by hucksters and replace them with the honesty of real medicine, then I would count my life useful.

  The mayor put a meaty arm round my shoulder. He spoke kindly though his grin faded. “See, the truth is… I had to find a doctor. I wrote several with the honest truth, and no one wanted the job way out here, what with what’s out in the woods. So I said to the pastor, ‘What should I write?’ and he said, ‘Write to this Waycross fellow and say rabies.’”

  “Your pastor knew my name? He meant for you to summon me especially?” I did not make a habit of associating with pastors. I couldn’t imagine any that would have recognized me.

  “He saw your letter and said that you’d come straightaway if I said rabies. Ain’t nobody got it. But folks are scared, real scared.”

  “How many infected? How many dead?”

  “Well, not a one, yet. But that’s just a matter of time, ain’t it? Pastor says creatures out in the woods are sick with it. A few dogs have shown the signs. We shot them. Had to do it, sad as it was. But what’s worse, there’s this panther…”

  “Do you mean you summoned me across this vast state, at the cost of all my money, and there is no hydrophobia? Just some foamy-at-the-mouth mountain lion.”

  “Ain’t no mountain lion. Folks wouldn’t be afraid of a mountain lion.”

  “I take it you’ve seen the creature?”

  “Naw, but why do you have to see it to believe it?”

  “Because that’s science, sir!” I placed my foot down, and the mud and ichor of the alley splattered all over my trouser legs. There was no chance a panther was in the woods of northern Georgia. The climate, the geography, and the fauna were all wrong. I would have been less surprised to see an albino kangaroo, but I shouldn’t have been rankled by mistakes in zoology. It was the mayor’s lie that should have bothered me—his false pretenses to snare a respectable doctor in his hog-cursed, mud-soaked, huckster-plagued little hamlet.

  “Pastor Boatwright says we’ll have sick people soon. But that’s ’tween you and him. And the panther.”

  I fumed in disappointment that I was not arriving in the midst of an epidemic. That would have afforded ample opportunity for study and good works, for me to offer consolation and succor, but then remorse took me. I felt guilty that I had wished rabies on anyone. No one should suffer for my edification or absolution.

  “The plague of hucksters is more deadly, I think, than this rumor of a panther.”

  “It’s the legislature that needs a doctor,” continued Richardson. “The muck-mucks in Milledgeville want any town aiming to be the county seat to have a respectable physician. But I don’t expect that you’ll find many takers for your bleeding and puking, Doctor. Lopping off arms and calling that a cure… If anybody will come to see you, it’s because they’re too afraid of the panther in the woods to go up to see the Winter sisters.”

  I moved my mouth, but no sound came out. Richardson gave me a squeeze, and I found myself squashed against his flesh.

  “Now, Doc, don’t look so glum. We’ll get a huntsman, not a doctor, who’ll kill this panther, and folks can go back to their regular healings. Meantime, the farmers might let you take a look at the livestock. Mules with cracked hooves, cows with sore teats. You can bleed a dog same as a person, right? Snell’s got a place out back where you can set up a little office in case anybody does come by. There’s a hayloft, too, where you can sleep.”

  I had a mind to shake the dust of this cursed place off my feet and catch the next stagecoach for somewhere—anywhere—else, but I’d spent the last of my money to get myself to Lawrenceville. I didn’t have a nickel for supper, and if I had the money to leave, where would I go? No other town had called for me. Lawrenceville would have to suffice until I could make other plans.

  “Where’s this hayloft?” I asked.

  Mayor Richardson pointed toward a store at the northwest corner of the square. As I tromped through the mud of the alley, staining my boots and trouser cuffs, I thought: A hayloft will be drier than sleeping under the stars.

  I gathered my possessions from the square. The hogs had left well enough alone, and Salmon Thumb’s show had distracted any thieves. I made my way to a storefront with a hand-lettered sign that read Snell’s Merchandise.

  The shopkeeper was waiting on a female customer, measuring out bolts of calico cloth to her exacting specifications. She wore an old-style bonnet, which conveyed modesty and virtue and made her look perfectly ridiculous, like a portrait of a Puritan.

  As I waited, I studied the shelves. They were stacked with burlap sacks, paper cartons, glass vials, sugar, coffee, beans, ink, tooth soap, tobacco, cigars, mirrors, lead shot, almonds, coconuts, and vinegar. Advertising lithographs smiled from several places around the store. Each plump-cheeked beauty with shining curls had eyes glimmering with desire for the product named in red capitals above her hair: Silverwhite Shoe Polish, True Brass Candlewax, Edgar’s Own Argentine Soap, and Pharaoh’s Flour. There were no advertisements for Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic, but I saw a long row of bottles placed at eye level.

  “Anything else, Miss Samples?” said the shopkeeper, unable to hide his exasperation.

  “No, Mr. Snell,” she snapped. “I suppose that will do. Though you really should order better stock. For a Sunday dress, it isn’t very suitable.”

  Miss Samples collected her purchases despite her objections, and when she turned toward the door, she noticed me for the first time.

  “What do you mean, sneaking up on a woman like that?” she barked.

  “Nothing, ma’am,” I sputtered. “I was only waiting for my turn.”

  “You’re not from here, are you?” The scent of her suspicion was as thick as that of onions on her breath. “Come in for Thumb’s song and dance?”

  “No, ma’am, just arrived. I’m the doctor, or I was supposed to be—”

  Snell clapped his hands. “Ah, the doctor! Yes, the doctor. Well, you’ve been expected. Welcome, welcome.”

  I was glad of the kind words, the first I’d gotten in town, and he read the relief in my face.

  Miss Samples did not seem mollified by Snell’s welcome. “The Great Physician is all that we need,” she said.

  As if I did not have enough rivals in Salmon Thumb and the Winter sisters, I was apparently also in competition against the Lord.

  Miss Samples curtsied perfunctorily as she left, and Snell came over to shake my hand. “I took the liberty,” he said, “of ordering some ingredients that would be of use to you.” He pulled out a trunk, which conta
ined glass bottles. Each had its own label: witch hazel, willow, foxglove, and sassafras.

  “What are these, sir? I am a doctor, not a gardener.”

  Snell frowned. “I only thought it would be things you’d need. How about turpentine? Lots of turpentine.”

  “I have no need of it.”

  “Well, you are a queer sort of doctor.”

  I began to have suspicions. “Are these the sorts of ingredients you sell to the Winter sisters?”

  “They usually fetch up their own, but I wasn’t sure about you. No sassafras and no turpentine. What do you do, then?”

  “Real medicine,” I said. “If you’ll wait a moment, I will show you a diploma.”

  Snell held up his hand. “Naw, I believe you, Doctor. Real city medicine, I guess.”

  “The body of a city man is no different from that of a country man.”

  “Here, let me show you where you’ll be sleeping, City Doctor.” Snell opened a door no bigger than a pantry’s, revealing a room that, while spacious enough, was not unoccupied. The south wall of the room was slid open like a barn door, and a brace of hogs was roaming the threshold. Sacks of corn ringed the chamber, and hams hung from the ceiling rafters. A ladder in the corner led up to a hayloft. The tongues of barnyard animals had polished the pine floor to a smooth shine. The chinking had fallen out between the boards, admitting both light and pestilent miasmas.

  “It is, Mr. Snell, more… rustic… than I had wished.”

  “Were you expecting a marble mansion?”

  In my embarrassment, I said nothing. Snell took this for haughtiness.

  “If you can’t make the best of it, Dr. Waycross, we’ll let the hogs take it back. They’re not so choosy as doctors.”

  Sarah Winter hadn’t come into town for the medicine show, and she certainly hadn’t come to see the spectacle of a new doctor making a fool of himself on stage, humorous though it had been. She’d come to Lawrenceville because the sisters needed a few things from Snell’s store.

  Rebecca still wasn’t much for coming to town—even after six months, there were too many hard memories—and Sarah would always rather Effie stay safely tucked away at Hope Hollow. So she made the journey alone, hiding her face behind a red kerchief. It would not really stop the curiosity of anyone, but it would mark that she didn’t want to be seen. People would leave her alone, and that suited her all right.