The Winter Sisters

by Tim Westover

  What had come after, though—Sarah didn’t know if that was an accident or not.

  Effie inhaled sharply, snorting, and Rebecca rolled out of the bed. Sarah heard her foot bump something metal—the chamber pot. Rebecca swore. Sarah rolled into the warmth Rebecca had left behind, and Effie settled among the folds of the quilt, which quieted her restless breathing. Rebecca muttered, pulled on her shoes, and left the room. Sarah imagined her sister’s discomfort with piss drying between her toes.

  I awoke to the sound of a hundred hogs trying to wriggle their way into my office, or so it sounded. When I dressed and descended from the hayloft and slid open the door, I saw not a collection of curious hogs but a crowd of people.

  When I appeared, a hush fell across them. I should have combed my hair, but I’d thought I was going to be shooing pigs, not seeing patients. I was overwhelmed—at first flattered but then fearful. So many cases appearing all at once could only be an epidemic: cholera, diphtheria, malaria, hydrophobia. Has it finally struck?

  Then my sleepy brain cleared, and I realized the crowd of patients was not there for me but for the Winter sisters. As at the confectionary, a crowd had assembled for them. It was no epidemic, only the gamut of ordinary and seasonal discomforts that afflict us all.

  “Good morning, Doctor,” said P, and two dozen others murmured likewise.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” I said. “The Winter sisters aren’t here yet. I can see to you while you are waiting.” I stepped forward and took P by the shoulders. I looked into his eyes and pushed his forehead back so that I could look into his throat. “What are the symptoms? Weakness? Trouble breathing?”

  P stepped out of my examination’s reach. “Just the weather in my hip. Begging your pardon, but I ain’t going to let you saw my arm off because my hip is hurting me.”

  I winced at the accusation, but it was not new.

  As if summoned, the Winter sisters rounded the corner from the square into the hog yard outside my office door. The crowd’s attention turned. A babble of voices and noises started again: coughs, sneezes, wheezes, rales—a cacophony of illness. That was what I had wanted ever since I’d come to Lawrenceville: a bevy of patients, with the usual complaints, seeking my honest and scientific aid. Really, the patients were there for the Winter sisters’ cures, but now, they couldn’t have one without the other, could they? A quiet thrill of accomplishment curled my toes. I could turn the herb women from superstition to medicine. I could prove to them to leave off their more nonsensical cures and work into our joint practice any of their medicines that could be shown, in the ways of science, to have a good effect. I stood at the edge of discovery.

  “Aubrey, did you hurt all these people already?” chimed Sarah above the din. “It’s not even eight o’clock in the morning.”

  Her bite could not wound my spirits. “I haven’t hurt anyone,” I protested to the back of the patients’ heads. “I haven’t had the chance to examine them.”

  Rebecca took the hands of a woman I didn’t know, whose child complained of stomach pains.

  “Please,” I said, “can all of you form an orderly line?”

  “Have you drawn up any water yet, Aubrey? Lit a fire? We’ll need some boiling water for infusions.” Rebecca led her patient into my office—our office.

  “I’ve only just woken up,” I said meekly to her back. “I’ll fetch some.”

  Effie looked flushed to me. A little color would be a sign of health for her phlegmatic constitution, but not that shade. Her forehead was dappled with perspiration, as if she’d exerted herself with more than just the short walk from the Snells’ house.

  “Miss Winter,” I addressed her, stepping up into the circle of patients surrounding her, coaxing them back with my arms. “Are you quite well?”

  “It’s nothing,” she said, but barely had she gotten the words out when her spindly body jolted forward, and she took a step to catch herself. An instant later, a second blow. My hands were spattered crimson.

  “Witches! Witches and demons! Mistresses of the panther that stalks us all!” hissed someone, or several someones, the voices unrecognizable among the shouts of indignation and shame. “Now their demon familiar will come right into town, stalk you in your homes!” People retreated in every direction, fleeing the scene in the panic of the moment. No one stepped up to defend the Winter sisters, whom they would otherwise trust with all their mortal frailties.

  I dashed forward to catch Effie, but she’d already regained her balance. Her right side and her back, the two sites of the impacts, were red and sticky with… with the juices of rotten tomatoes.

  “I’m all right, Aubrey,” she said. Her color, perhaps in contrast to the tomato skins plastered to her, looked better. She was her customary shade of unnatural paleness.

  Her gray eyes softened, and I saw Eva again. A memory of helplessness overcame me, but this time, I was not helpless.

  “A very foul act,” I said as I pulled out my handkerchief to remove the worst of the stains from her face and hands. “I shall tell the mayor at once. If he has any sense, he’ll find a respectable fellow to act as constable and bring the matter to justice.”

  “Tomato is a nightshade,” she said. “Nightshades are full of hate.”

  My handkerchief was only smearing the mess, not removing anything.

  “I’ll fetch that water, and we’ll get you clean.” I grabbed two buckets from the hog yard and trotted toward the town spring.

  To my thinking, the whole axis of the problem had turned. The Winters weren’t the ones who traded in superstition. Those were the pastor and his adepts. They were the fearmongers and falsehood spreaders…. and now fruit throwers, too.

  When I came back holding a brimming bucket in each hand, I couldn’t find Effie. The waiting patients shrugged their shoulders when I questioned them. I went inside my office.

  “Effie?” I asked.

  Sarah, standing nearest me, poured a clear, pungently alcoholic liquid into a shallow bowl. “She’s with a patient,” she said, gesturing upward with her eyes.

  Luckie Maddox and Effie were sitting in my hayloft. I couldn’t hear them. The shadows of the loft covered their faces. Only a few shafts of dusty sunlight came through the gaps in the chinking, illuminating in spots and streaks the crimson, indelible stains on Effie’s dress.

  “What was wrong with Luckie?” asked Sarah as soon as Luckie had gone.

  Waycross was attending Rebecca on some herbal poultice.

  “Luckie misses his dog,” said Effie as she climbed down the hayloft. “It was one of the dogs that got bit by the panther. It was rabid. He had to shoot it.”

  “And you didn’t… bring his dog back to life, did you?”

  The far corner of Effie’s mouth curved upward in an approximation of a smile.

  “Because if he misses his dog, that would be the easiest way to cure him.”

  “Don’t be silly, Sarah.”

  “So what did you do for Luckie’s melancholy? Bleed him, like the city doc? Chop his arm off?”

  Effie shook her head. “No cure for sadness.”

  There are a million cures for sadness, thought Sarah, and some of them very good. “Effie, you can’t… you can’t stick out here in town.”

  “Never in my life have I stood out,” said Effie.

  “Right, because that’s what I do. I’ll be outlandish. I’ll be mocking and provoking. And you, please, just… stay safe.”

  “Nothing will—”

  “People will be watching you more closely. Waycross especially. Don’t do anything that fascinates him.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “You didn’t mean to, I know. But they’ll all be watching you, Effie. They’ll be knocking on our door, day and night, for hangnails and bunions. If you think you’re going to bring anything back to life, just don’t. Say you can’t.”

  “I don’t understand, Sarah.”

  “Then never mind. Just… never mind. Those bastards and thei
r tomatoes.”

  Effie took her sister’s hand, holding it in her small palms. “Are you all right?”

  Sarah took her hand back. “Cowards. I wish I knew who did it. I’ll find them. Hell, they’ll probably show up here with a wrenched elbow and ask you to cure them. You’d fix them, wouldn’t you, Effie? You’d know them, and you’d fix them anyway?”

  Effie shook her head. “I wouldn’t know.”

  Sarah thought, How can she be so good? The world is a poison to goodness. Next time, it won’t be tomatoes. It’ll be rocks and, the next time, knives.

  The pastor summoned me that afternoon, sending word by way of a messenger boy. The parsonage was a tiny white house in the shadow of the shoddy chapel. The windows were caked with mud, and green trails of grime leaked down the facade. The Lord cares for the sparrows, but he doesn’t always give them three-story nests. The child opened the door without knocking, and I stepped into the gloom. From the shadows came the pastor’s voice.

  “Waycross, you have been a great disappointment to me.”

  “What’s the trouble, Pastor?” I said this in my most hospitable voice. “Loose pigeon?”

  “No.”

  “Cough? Dry heaves? The hell-roarin’ trots?”

  “Waycross, do not bring your bowel-related blasphemy in here.”

  “I beg your pardon, Pastor. I should have said ‘the squirts.’”

  “You should have said and done much differently, Waycross. You should have been in church this morning. Everyone should have been in church this morning instead of queuing up to see our hometown witches.”

  Is it Sunday again?

  I crossed my arms. The pastor rose from his chair, walked to the fireplace, where a few cinders were smoldering, and took out a red-ended brand. He used it to light a candle and settled back into his chair. Then he appeared as a disembodied head floating in a circle of yellow candlelight. The parsonage was eerily dark for the daytime.

  “I thought you were going to bring us bleeding and blistering and other cures more painful than prayer. But, instead, you’ve brought three witches and their demon familiar and their magic right onto the town square.”

  “Have you seen the panther around here?” I said. “I haven’t heard the first growl. How can you think that the Winters have anything to do with that panther?”

  Boatwright ignored me. “You’ve sold your soul to magic and superstition, to potions and herbs and the perversion of religion. In your fallen state, polluted by ether, you’ve opened your soul to their enchantment. Pray for your redemption, and help me drive them away, back to the hollows where they belong.” His talk was far worse than any I’d heard from patent-medicine salesmen.

  “Drive them away? Certainly not. And it will take more than tomatoes. Were you the one who threw them?”

  “No, but I bless the soul that dared to. And with courage, there will be more to follow.”

  My mouth felt dry. The corners of my lips clicked as I spoke. “The sisters are under my auspices and protection. I am a scientist and healer, and I would not permit them to do anything that was harmful. I’m looking for the truth underneath the superstition, to use it for the benefit of all who are afflicted. How can that be evil?”

  “You’re raking through stinking manure, looking for a pearl. But why would there be a pearl in that filth? The Winter sisters are quacks and herb women, the type that permitted your sister Eva to die. And you are apprenticing yourself to them.”

  The Winters were not that sort of quacks and herb women. The Winters did not trade in false hopes but in the essence of true ones. The more the pastor inveighed against them, the dearer the sisters felt to me. They were not the kind that would have just let Eva die. Rebecca would have soothed her with a poultice, and Sarah would have spun some tale, and Effie, looking at Eva with the selfsame gray eyes, would have… I didn’t know yet, but I was going to find out. She would have at least done something. I wondered if it would have done Eva any good.

  “All paths can lead to knowledge if they are carefully trod.” I glanced behind me to see if I could open the door and let in more light, but it was already ajar, and the light it permitted didn’t scare away the darkness.

  “Not all paths. Some lead straight to error and perdition. The devil can’t be tricked, Waycross.”

  “I don’t believe in the devil, sir,” I said.

  “Enough!” The pastor’s chair suffered a blow from his fist. “Waycross. I know what you and those witches are doing in your hayloft. Fornication. Vulgarity. Impiety. Fornication.”

  “You already said fornication.”

  “Such is the gravity of the sin.” The pastor’s skin stretched tight around his mouth. “Waycross, I brought you here to Lawrenceville,” he leaned toward me, his eyes glowing amber in the firelight, “because I hear the devil whispering at night.”

  I kept my composure until I’d descended the steps of the parsonage and rounded the front of the church. Then I erupted. I stomped, kicked up rocks, and fumed in wordless syllables.

  “It’s all right, Doc,” said someone from behind me.

  I looked up from my shameful display. “Thumb?”

  “In the flesh.” Thumb held up his palms for investigation. He was wearing the Quaker clothing—black hat, white wig, buckled shoes—from his last spectacle. “I’ve got a little shopping to do. A few folks to meet. Doc, if you don’t mind me asking, what has you so hot?”

  “The pastor has swallowed a wasp or three. He’s swollen up over my peddling superstitious cures for the devil. He wants me tarred and feathered.”

  “Tarred and feathered is no joke,” said Thumb gravely. “Tar hurts. Can’t scrub it off without taking part of your epidermis.”

  I was instantly uncomfortable at the idea that Thumb was speaking from experience, that he had endured more than a tongue-lashing from enemies of his work.

  “Come on, Doc, let’s get some grub.”

  We did not go to the Flowing Bowl, as I’d expected. That was a relief. The crowd there was still not welcoming to me over the hurt I’d caused Pendleton. Instead, we went to Molly Rhodes’s boarding house, which was less popular than the Flowing Bowl because Mrs. Rhodes insisted on temperance at her table. Her biscuits were higher and softer, her pork smokier, her sweet-potato soufflé made with more molasses than sweet potato. But all she offered to wash it down with was buttermilk.

  Thumb drank his buttermilk lustily, three full glasses. That should have inverted the stomach of any man, but his constitution seemed peculiarly immune. “Boatwright’s a blowhard,” he said. “Don’t fret over what he says, so long as you feel you’re doing right. Goodness knows I’d have been run out of every town there is if I hadn’t played the banjo till the naysayers changed their minds or gave up. Like you.”

  I nodded. “Words I don’t fear. Tomatoes I don’t fear. But what if Boatwright whips his congregation into a mob? Whoever threw the tomato could be taught to throw fire.”

  “Well, that’s what you’ll just have to wait and see. And watch out for. But you’ve got friends. The whole town is not against you.”

  “When are you lighting out again, Mr. Thumb? I should miss your reasonable counsel.”

  “Not for a while yet. I’ll be here to help if you need me to catch any tomatoes.”

  “Why stay put? I can’t imagine that the sisters and I have left much business for your tonics, I’m sorry to say.”

  Two crimson patches rose on Thumb’s cheeks, and I had an answer.

  “A lady friend?” I said, leaning in conspiratorially. “Who’s the lucky lass?” A chord rang in my brain—the crossing of the Alcovy, all his elixirs spilled into the river. “Surely not Effie?”

  Thumb nodded, his mouth turning up at her name.

  “She’s too young for you, Thumb.” I shook my head. “Her gray hair notwithstanding. She can’t be any more than eighteen.”

  Thumb smiled, ignorant of my distress. “How old do you think I am, Doc?”

  His skin loo
ked as though it was peeling away at the hairline and behind his ears. I would’ve said fifty, but few on the frontier lived that long.

  “Forty-five?” I asked.

  Thumb exploded with laughter. A good minute passed before his barking subsided enough for him to catch his breath. “All part of the show, Doc. Folks would rather buy medicine from an old fellow than a young one. They get confused between age and wisdom.”

  Thumb took off his Quaker hat. His white locks came with it, revealing a close-cropped, healthy head of jet-black hair. He scrubbed at his temples, and to my astonishment, skin came away in great globs. His jowls melted like wax, and the cracks around his eyes smoothed out. What remained was a face pink and fresh.

  “Doc, I’m twenty-one. Not too old for anyone, especially not Miss Effie Winter.”

  9

  A CURE HE LIKES

  The myriad materia medica of four healers, all crammed into my office, was a dizzying spectacle. Rebecca’s enormous mortar and pestle took up the table I’d dedicated to my laboratory equipment. The shelves sagged with powders, unguents, saps, oils, milks, mucuses, and miscellaneous effluvia. Sarah’s pigeon cried from its cage. We’d hung it up with the hams in the rafters. Happily, none of the sisters wanted to undertake purposeless beautification. No one insisted on carpets, curtains, lace, flowers, or wall hangings. A spray of lavender branches and a fresh layer of sawdust by the window were the only new niceties.

  I had precious little space left for my own living. My personal effects got crowded into the hayloft with me. This is how a homesteader must feel when, having ordered his cabin just so, he decides to take a wife—except that I had three, and they weren’t wives.

  I was taking my supper cold in my office. The sisters took theirs with the Snells. The gossip-starved townsfolk might consider Rebecca and me dining together an undue, premature familiarity, and we wanted to be respectable.

  In my supper bowl were pork and sweet potatoes. I eased the digestive action of the heavy food with a bottle of Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic, which was, as promised, tasteless. The bowel movements that it produced were regular, strong, and healthful. As a cure, it was useless, but it was satisfactory as a digestive.