The Winter Sisters

by Tim Westover

  “My cow’s tail fell off,” repeated Lizbeth, and she produced from her apron pocket a shrunken piece of brown leather tipped with white hairs. She whipped the object to the floor and hit the boards with a sharp crack. “Believe or don’t believe. It doesn’t put the tail back on a cow. Tell me that’s not witchery.”

  Boatwright was absent from the meeting. He was preaching a circuit in Jefferson, and I was grateful for his absence. He might have seized Lizbeth’s dramatic moment to launch into a sermon even worse than Richardson’s speechifying.

  I was compelled to speak. If the town were to be cured of its fascination with the Winter sisters, the idea of the Winters as powerful witches first needed to be dispelled.

  “Miss Samples,” I said as the crowd’s eyes all turned toward us, “I assure you that you needn’t resort to supernatural malice to explain these incidents. Any number of natural causes might spoil milk, and there are one or two that cause a cow’s tail to fall off. Chronic bovine bubo comes to mind.”

  “Are you a physician of beasts, Dr. Waycross?” growled Lizbeth.

  “No, but we share many of our infirmities with our farmyard companions.”

  “That’s a worse heresy than denying the witches,” said Lizbeth. “You went to Hope Hollow, I hear. Have they ensorcelled you?”

  “Quite the opposite, Miss Samples, but I still must defend them on charges for which they are wholly innocent. No one’s poisoned your cow, and there are no such things as witches.”

  Lizbeth fumed in her own anger, and I fancied I could see wisps of smoke coming from her pores. Then the tolling of a bell shattered the fragile silence. The ringing seemed to strike at the top of my spine. It was not the church bell, nor was it a fire bell. The air was fresh with the aroma of smoked ham.

  “No sense keeping on here,” said Richardson from the podium. “We’ll get to our business when the doctor doesn’t have some speech to make and when our huntsmen get that panther. Go on, then, see to that bell.”

  “I’ll bet it’s the medicine show,” said Snell.

  We all trotted out to Honest Alley with a sense of relief at the escape. The medicine show had indeed returned, braving the specter of the woods, though Salmon Thumb had abandoned his banjo. He was now dressed like a Quaker, all in black, save for a white wig and a few silver buckles on his hat and shoes.

  “Friends, friends,” he said, his open arms reaching to us all. “No, I should say, ‘fellow mortals.’ For it is our sad, sad lot, you and me, that we will die.”

  His audience, as one, looked at their feet. His appearance and demeanor were so changed from before that I was startled into silence. I supposed I should intervene when his speech made its turn to inevitable hucksterism, but for the time, I wanted to see how it unfolded.

  “You want me singing and dancing for your entertainment,” said Thumb. “Someday, I will again pick up my banjo and play for you. But this morning, I come with a message such as your pastor might preach. Though I’ll be less long-winded and more interesting.”

  That raised only a meager chuckle out of the crowd, which was still pensive from the revelations of Lizbeth Samples and her cow’s tail.

  “We are mortal, friends. How many husbands lose their wives on the joyous day of birth? And how many wives lose their husbands to the thresher or to cold lead shot? How many of us have scars from smallpox where lovers once planted kisses? Oh, friends, my friends, few and evil are the days of our lives.” Thumb turned his eyes to the sky. “It is the sad truth, my friends, that we are born to die, and the dead cannot be brought back to life.”

  He must have been surprised at the power of his words, to have put us so quickly into a somber mood, but we’d brought our somber mood with us to his show. Thumb took off his hat and put it against his chest. His gray hair was messy. His entire face seemed to be slumping.

  “But I bring you something new. Different. Unexpected. Wonderful!” Thumb’s voice rose in pitch and enthusiasm with each staccato sentence. “Listen! Don’t miss out! Investigate! Place your finger here”—he touched his nose—“to assure you of your senses. Pinch the soft skin of your elbow, here”—and he did—“so that you know you are awake. For my news may seem like a dream.”

  I could hear the collective heartbeat of the crowd thumping in time with his rhythm.

  Thumb opened his black Quaker vestments and revealed a pocket with ermine lining. From this, he took a bottle as large and wide as a port decanter. It seemed far too heavy to lug around in a cloak pocket. He held it aloft in both hands. His arthritic pinky finger stuck out at an odd angle from the rest of his fingers.

  “This, my friends, is the best thing that has ever happened.”

  I burst out in laughter, but I was alone. The rest of the crowd was enraptured. I thought Thumb looked right at me and winked. He and I were the ones laughing, though for different reasons.

  “My friends, this is the Elixir Salutis: the Choice Drink of Health, or Health-Bringing Drink, Being a Famous Cordial Drink. A long name, yes, but if all its wonders were listed on the label, we would be here an epoch to recite them.”

  Finally, the product emerged from the pitch. It was a strange new way to sell the same old swill. What was in this formula that was not in Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic? For all their promises, these medicines couldn’t even take the rheumatism out of Thumb’s littlest finger.

  “I am asking for your belief, friends. How much does that cost you? Not a penny. To believe is light and easy. It is harder to doubt because to doubt, you must flounder while, all around you, your friends and neighbors are drinking of the elixir of life. You have nothing to gain by doubt but everything to lose. For sure results, have faith.”

  The group started to move forward like the tide. I’d waited too late to make my rebuttal. Thumb’s unusual delivery had kept me silent—or spared me the embarrassment of another ineffectual tirade.

  “The Elixir Salutis: the Choice Drink of Health, or Health-Bringing Drink, Being a Famous Cordial Drink will not make you immortal, friends. For we all must die. But no longer will you lament that your elders were taken before their time—nor your children before their prime. Your days will be many and merry. Who loves a dollar more than he loves his life?”

  “Not me!” said the crowd.

  “No one!” cried Thumb. “No one will go away unblessed. If you are too poor to buy, and if your neighbor will not love you as he loves himself and buy a bottle for you, then I will give you one from my own pocket. For sure results, have faith!”

  A great cheer went up from the crowd. Whenever a free bottle—small and brown, sealed with a bit of wax and marked with a plain paper label that read, simply, Elixir—was bestowed, there was joyful weeping and words of blessing.

  I stayed in Honest Alley until the crowds thinned. I wanted a word with Thumb without the masses looking on. Finally, all the customers were served. Thumb scratched his mule behind the ears, helping it to settle down. The creature showed its contentment under his ministrations by flopping its ears and yawning, which proved contagious. I yawned in sympathy. Thumb patted the mule on its muzzle and stepped away. He rolled up the funerary backdrop and secured crates of glass bottles with twine. I approached and held out a dollar. It was my last one, wrinkled and wet and ill smelling from its hiding place inside my shoe.

  “Hiya, Doc. You want to buy my hollow promises, easy cures, and impossible hopes?” He took my dollar, wrapped it around a bottle of Elixir, and handed both back to me. “Good for what ails you,” he said.

  “What if what ails me is an arthritic pinky finger?”

  Thumb smirked. “You noticed, huh? That’s what years of playing the banjo will get you. Reaching way down the neck for those highest notes. It’s not a natural way to move your fingers.”

  “A change of climate would help, as would leaving off the banjo playing.”

  “That’s just what you’d like, isn’t it? Have me skedaddle to the desert or at least stop with my ditties. Well, I can’t leave off
the banjo for too long. That’s my only trick. What do you think of the Elixir Salutis?”

  I uncorked the bottle. It smelled of alcohol and sugar and flowers, but it tasted of nothing at all. I took another sip, holding the liquid in my mouth and then in my throat. “Nothing.”

  “Maybe there’s nothing wrong with you, Doc.” Thumb smiled.

  I laughed heartily. “What’s in it? A narcotic?”

  “It’s good for what ails you,” repeated Thumb. He took a comb out of his pocket and arranged the hairs on the flanks of his mule.

  “A melancholic acetate? Sublimated tincture of white vitriol?”

  “Maybe.” Thumb worked on a tangle along the mule’s neck. “Maybe not.”

  “I won’t spill your secret formula to any of your competitors.” I put my finger up to my lips. “Not even the Winter sisters. What’s in this bottle?”

  “Couldn’t say.” He didn’t meet my eyes.

  “The ingredients aren’t the important part. You’re selling promises.”

  Thumb slapped the sides of his mule. “I can’t tell you what’s in it because I don’t know. I buy it wholesale from Milledgeville. There’s a fellow that gets it from Charleston.”

  “Doesn’t that cut into your profits? Can’t you brew up any old thing and put a label on it?”

  Thumb looked offended. “Then it wouldn’t be the Elixir Salutis, would it? It would be Thumb’s Theoretical Tipple. Doesn’t have near the ring to it.”

  “Who’d know the difference?”

  “I would,” said Thumb. He looked down the swaying back of the mule. “Holtzclaw here would.”

  “Why’s that? You don’t feed your mule your patent medicines, do you?”

  “Surely, I do when poor Holtzclaw needs them. A sick mule makes your own heart sick. And he’s the proof of the medicines. If he gets better, it’s because of the ingredients, not the show. Poor fellow can hardly read a label, can’t pay attention to a speech. Ain’t that right, buddy?”

  The mule gave no sign of disagreement.

  “We’ve tried them all, Doctor. Holtzclaw spat out Avery’s Celebrated Radish Medicine. Couldn’t swallow Edgar’s Invigorating Lineament Tablets. He took two draughts of Dr. Pepper morning and night for a year, and he never got any better. But Grove’s, we like. Elixir Salutis, we like.”

  “So you and—Holtzclaw?—believe there’s good in these potions?” Thumb’s face seemed earnest, but he was well practiced in faking honesty. “As much good as you promise?”

  Thumb drew in his lips and then let them out with a pop. “No, not that much. But some.”

  “Then, why not leave off the huckstering? Let your medicine sell itself for what it is?”

  Thumb sighed and seemed to crumple. “Wish I could, Doc. But people want a show. Banjos and crazy promises and the moon in a silver bottle. And what I’ve got is great stuff. So I sing and dance and pontificate and speechify to help them so that they’ll take a chance on the few drops of good that I can do for them. You see, Doc? You see?”

  He was like the Winter sisters. He wasted good intentions on bad medicine.

  Three days after Thumb and his Elixir Salutis had moved on to the next little town, a different gathering occurred in Lawrenceville. Two dozen people assembled in front of Parr’s Confectionary. The window display generally drew them—or the sight of Ouida Bell Parr—but that day, it was the presence of two visitors: Rebecca and Sarah Winter. I could see them myself through the glass, making selections from the confections on offer.

  In a few moments, I gathered the sentiment of the crowd. I worried that a mob had gathered to heckle the Winter sisters, and certainly, some in Lawrenceville would have been all too glad to shout curses at those supposed witches, but the people I knew to be partisans of that faction were absent. Perhaps they were massing their forces with Pastor Boatwright. Instead, everyone gathered there was sick. Ailing folk of every sort were loitering nearby, hopeful for an audience.

  I mingled with the crowd, and all around me, I heard wheezes, eructations, and sharp inhalations of pain. A few bottles of Elixir Salutis and Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic were passed around, as well as whiskey, turpentine, and spring water. The sight of one man in the crowd chilled me. His illness could bode far worse for the town than any other person’s.

  “Pearson, what’s happened with your panther wound?” I wondered if he might be there to seek treatment for hydrophobia even though it had only been a clawing and not a bite.

  “Healing up all right, Doctor,” said Pearson, scratching under his cap. “But I’ve got an itchy trigger finger. All my fingers, really.”

  “Poison-ivy leaves,” said Hodgson.

  “Damn it, they weren’t poison ivy. Not the right shape. I keep telling you.”

  I questioned him for the signs of rabies. “No fever, then? No tremors? No fear of water?”

  “Naw, Doctor,” said Pearson. “Just itchy, like I said.”

  “Well, good, good.” My relief was only provisional. “So, poison ivy. The scientific remedy is to blister the feet, followed by a week of fasting.”

  Pearson made a sour face. “I’d rather the Winters make up a poultice for me. Hurt a lot less.”

  I swallowed my rejoinder. Let the silly fellow have his poison-ivy poultices. I did not care what cure he put to his nuisance condition as long as the real danger was in check for the moment.

  I noticed a woman who hopped up every time she tried to sit—hemorrhoids. A lancet would dispatch those with satisfying speed, but the woman had suffered her hemorrhoids rather than consulting with me. They should have been my patients, yet they were lined up, in sight of my office, for the Winter sisters.

  I clasped my hands behind my back and swayed on my feet. I noticed a ruddy-faced man, his face slicked with the perspiration of fever. He kept his eyes fixed on Rebecca and Sarah. An old man was nearby, using his cane to keep the weight off his trick knee. A bleeding would set him right, but when I caught his eye, he looked away.

  “Sir,” I said, venturing to address him, “I can have your knee—”

  “You’ll just cut my leg off, sawbones, and call it a cure,” he spat.

  “Never! Amputation is only recommended in cases of infection or blood poisoning…”

  But he’d already limped away from me on his cane and trick knee, preferring the folk medicine of the Winter sisters to my time-honored Hippocratic cures.

  The crowd waited respectfully, but I went inside the store. I was… not angry, precisely, but vexed, confused, indignant: all rare emotions that I did not like. A tiny bell signaled my arrival in the store. The inside of the confectionary was covered in lithographs advertising Pharaoh’s Flour. They were beautiful, if mercenary, works of art. A laughing Amenhotep stood before the Great Pyramid, letting milled flour flow from his fingers like desert sands.

  “Can I help you, Doctor?” asked Ouida Bell. She pointed at the cases. “Molasses candy is just out of the kettle. Did you want peanut nougat? Horehound drops? Creamed walnuts?”

  “Oh, I’m not…” I sputtered. “I haven’t thought about it.”

  She understood and turned back to her paying customers. “Anything else for you ladies?”

  “Ginger nuts,” said Sarah.

  Rebecca gave her sister a puzzled look. “We’ve got ginger snaps at home.”

  “A snap isn’t a nut, is it?” Sarah rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “No ginger nuts.” Rebecca rummaged through her coin purse for what she needed.

  “Am I a child?” asked Sarah. “Who are you to tell me what I may and may not have?”

  Rebecca glared at her sister. “Sarah, what are you trying—”

  “I’ll buy the ginger nuts,” I said, trying to hush the argument. I had a more pressing issue. “How many would you like, Miss Sarah?”

  “Aubrey, you don’t need to,” said Rebecca. “She doesn’t even like ginger nuts.”

  “Three pounds, Dr. Waycross!” Sarah clapped her hands. “Wrapp
ed in ribbons.”

  “As the lady wishes,” I said, looking toward Rebecca.

  Ouida Bell smirked as she measured the ginger nuts. I had the dollar Thumb had returned to me, and I gave it over. We watched as Ouida Bell secured the nuts with a handsome knot of silk ribbons.

  Sarah accepted the wrapped box with a wide grin. “Why, thank you, Aubrey. I’m glad I could help you feel better.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You want to make a peace offering,” Sarah said. “Show us that you feel like an imbecile about your visit. But you can’t say that. Too stiff an upper lip. So, thanks for the ginger nuts.”

  She walked to the shop windows and pressed her nose against the glass. People in the crowd looked up her squashed nostrils.

  “Let me pay you for the nuts, Aubrey,” said Rebecca, blushing.

  “No, it was my choice,” I said, not at all certain that it was.

  Through the glass, I could hear children’s laughter. Rebecca looked uncomfortable. In her demeanor, I saw the symptoms of shyness, care, and intelligence. It was a shame that she’d never had the opportunity for a proper medical education. The Savannah Poor House and Hospital would not allow her as a doctor, but perhaps as a ward nurse or a midwife. I could see her pressing a cool cloth to a fevered woman’s forehand and the woman finding relief in Rebecca’s calming presence. I imagined her seeing the sores of a suffering child and debriding them with the gentlest touch, causing not the least bit of pain.

  “Keep them, please,” I continued. The business of the ginger nuts had put me off my distemper at the crowd outside. “A peace offering, as Sarah said.”

  “Effie likes ginger nuts,” said Rebecca. “She’ll eat them.”

  Sarah snorted, not turning around.

  “Why didn’t she come to town with you?” I asked.

  “She never knows what to pick. If she picks the pecan roll over the molasses ball, she’s hurting its feelings,” said Sarah.

  Ouida Bell disappeared into the back room, beckoned by her mother.

  “I am sorry about our last meeting, Miss Rebecca. My injury robbed me of my gentility. I hadn’t meant to be so…”