The Winter Sisters

by Tim Westover

  Effie looked at Thumb and me. Her arms were crossed, the mallet tucked under her left forearm. A pleased smile covered her face. “It is finished,” she said.

  I folded my hands in reverence before her. “Tell me, what is it?”

  “Ginger beer,” she said.

  I pondered the meaning of this gnomic pronouncement for a full minute before I admitted defeat. “I’m sorry, ginger beer?”

  Thumb stuck his thumbs into his armpits. “Effie makes a mighty good ginger beer. Good pep on a lonely winter evening.”

  “Can it refresh the thirsts of the hydrophobe?” I cleared my throat. “Can it quench the regrets of the dying? Does it burn away agues, douse the flames of fever, or spice up a dull—”

  “It’s only ginger beer,” said Effie. “A recipe I learned from… I’m not sure. Everyone knows how to make it. Except you, Aubrey, I guess.”

  My fingers curled until my nails dug into my palms. A thread that ran between my brain and my bowels stretched and then snapped. “Is this a trick?” My words came out hot and fast. “Are you mocking me, you and your sweetie?”

  Effie reddened, a rare color on her face.

  “Because if this is a game to you, if you are having a good laugh at gullible Aubrey—”

  “Nobody’s playing a joke on anybody,” said Thumb.

  “What are you to gain from my suffering?” The words came out with flecks of spittle. Pigeons decamped from their high perches and fluttered away. “I might have expected it from Sarah. Not from you, Effie.” The strength seeped away from my legs.

  “Aubrey, sit down,” she said. “You look as if you’re about to faint.” She helped me to an empty wooden crate.

  “What do you need, Doc?” said Thumb. “A little whiskey? Grove’s Tasteless Chill Tonic?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Effie brought a dipperful of water drawn from the washtub. I wanted to drink. I was thirsty, so thirsty and exhausted and brain-addled. I put the dipper to my lips but could not tilt it back. The muscles of my arm resisted me. Nausea flooded up from my dyspeptic bowels. I shook my head, shivered down my spine, and tried again. Again, I could not drink.

  Then my mind cast back to the bite I’d gotten from Ouida Bell. It seemed such a superficial wound, only in the soft part of my hand and not deep, and I’d bled it. What else explains such a symptom as fear of water, though? My mind was flooded with sudden terror. Panic shook my every nerve, and I could not think straight. No, it could not be rabies. It must be something else. Call it exhaustion, brain fever, gravel, quinsy, catarrh: anything but rabies.

  “It’s all right, Doc,” said Thumb. “You’re all nerves. Let it out. Let it down.”

  He clapped his hand down on my shoulder two times as though trying to expel my distress with back blows. The sudden shocks sent my eyes pressing into my eyelids, and curiously enough, that settled out the heavier particles of my dyspepsia. I started to feel a little better.

  I wiped a fleck of frothy choler from the corner of my mouth. “I’m sorry. A fit came over me. Too much brainwork. Bad vapors in the office. Choler stirred up by the walk.” I still grasped for another answer.

  Effie studied me. I was a puzzle to her as much as she was a puzzle to me.

  Thumb took off his hat and twisted the brim distractedly. “Doc, are your eyes working fine? Your ears? If you need another minute…”

  “No, I’ll manage,” I said. “Why?”

  “Well, you see, Doc,” said Thumb. He was watching his heel dig a hollow into the soggy earth. “I need a witness.”

  “For what?” I asked though an ulcerous blemish on my stomach already knew.

  The white sugar was meant to impress Effie. Though he was an itinerant peddler, he could provide her every luxury. I understood why he’d been nervous in his whistling. The question on his mind was momentous, and he was so fixated on it, he was ignoring the colossally bad timing.

  “Effie…” he started, then his voice failed him. His eyes were wide and shimmering.

  “Not yet, Salmon.” Effie brushed her graying hair behind both ears. Her face was kindly, her cheeks tinted rosy.

  “But I would—” started Thumb.

  “Yes… but not yet, Salmon.” She picked up his hands in her own. “Not yet.”

  They embraced, heedless of me. Thumb’s face hid in Effie’s neck, and Effie’s sharp shoulders stuck out like wings as she reached over and around him.

  My dyspeptic bowels rumbled. They were seized by a nervous flatus, but I squelched it, the bad airs bubbling back into other parts of my body.

  Thumb intended to spirit Effie away.

  20

  FOR DEVILS AND ANGELS

  I consumed the bulk of my ether in three days. I could not sleep a wink without it. I wondered about Effie, about Rebecca, about how I’d been unable to drink even though I’d since been able to take a little water. My headaches struck again and again. My brain, unless a draught of ether quieted it, buzzed with anxiety.

  I did not relish the dull task of making more ether, but the matter was unavoidable. I couldn’t go on without it.

  I poured my ingredients—ethanol and sulfuric acid—into the glasses for distillation. I applied heat, setting the tubes and retorts at the proper height. Bubbles rose, each pop sending tiny droplets of liquid against the upper reaches of the glass. I smelled the ether more than usual. It gnawed at my raw nostrils. I looked over my connections to see if anything was leaking, but the lids were fastened and the seals tight. The odor was seeping out of the walls. I’d permeated my world with ether. A tickle started at the back of my throat, occasioned by the vapors, and I coughed full of phlegm.

  I walked outside for clean air and allowed myself to dwell on Effie. If I could not find out how—or if—she cured, I myself would be incurable. How could I live in untreated, pathological, chronic ignorance?

  In the hog yard were fewer inhabitants than usual. The animals had fattened up from the new crop, and before the lean times of winter caused that sweet fat to waste away, they were killed. The piquant fragrance of hickory smoke perfumed the air. I wondered who was barbecuing—P, Buck, Pendleton, or Pa Everett.

  No, it was me. The smoke was pouring from my office.

  I dashed back. My equipment had overflowed, and bottles had fallen over. Ether and unreacted ethanol had soaked into the wood and the corn sacks. The distilling fire greedily jumped into the fuel-dampened materials. The laboratory table was aflame in blue and pink and white—the colors of a chemical fire. Rolling blue vapors rose up the walls, leaving trails of sparks. I opened my mouth to cry out, but a retort, filled with half-made ether, exploded from the heat and sent showers of sparks across the room. Bags of corn exploded like gunshots.

  “Waycross!”

  “Oh, hell,” I said unthinkingly. “Oh, hell, hell, hell.”

  “Waycross!” Snell’s face appeared across the roil of fire. “Waycross, get out of there!”

  “Water, man! Water, water! Oh, hell! Bring water!”

  I had to act. I ran to the hog scalder and pried the metal basin from its rock surroundings. My desperation gave me strength. I ran to the spring, my feet slipping as alarms rang all around me—the church bell, the graveyard bell, dinner bells, clanging pots and pans. I filled the basin from the spring, but I knew it wasn’t enough. Half the contents sloshed away as I ran back to the office. The fire had gotten into the roof. Purple fingers reached out from collapsing beams, a demon struggling to escape.

  I approached the shimmering inferno. The hairs on my arms ignited, incinerated. I felt my eyebrows vanish. I heaved the contents of my basin, and the water evaporated before the flames. The sibilant hissing was the laughter of defeat.

  The door gaped wide, the fire breathing in to stoke itself. I had no hope of rescuing anything. My lancets and chemicals—gone. Rebecca’s herbs, Sarah’s candles—cinders. My beautiful, beautiful bottles—the precious medicines inside turned to vapor.

  Anonymous hands drew me back and into the
crowd that had assembled to watch the destruction.

  “Aubrey, Aubrey!” Rebecca was calling.

  Behind her, Effie spirited through the crowd. Her gray hair was like steam, the pools of her eyes moist and deep and clear.

  “Everything is gone, Rebecca. The books, the purgatives, the clysters. Your mortar and pestle. The hay in my hayloft. Those hams. No one got to eat those hams. Poor hogs, chopped up for nothing. Their whole lives, up in smoke.” I could not hold myself back.

  “Aubrey, shhh. What matters is that you’re alive. Herbs grow back, but people do not.”

  The flames reached the facade of Snell’s store. He and his wife stood at the head of the crowd. He wasn’t trying to fight the fire though he had more livelihood to lose than I did. It was Lawrenceville’s immense good fortune that the wind was calm. The crowd was free to watch someone else’s catastrophe with jubilant horror. The timbers gave their final, mortal cry, and the building slumped, staggered, and died. A concussion of hot air blasted forth, and we all turned our faces away. When we dared to look again, only phantasms of flame and cooling ash remained. I looked over my shoulder to find Effie, but she’d gone.

  “I told Waycross that this town would burn.” Pastor Boatwright was clambering atop a rain barrel. The crowd convulsed as he swung his wide hat in victory. “He perverted his healing arts. He brought witches into our midst. And he has made this town to burn.”

  Everyone began jabbering. Lizbeth Samples and Mrs. Maltbie added amens to the hazy air.

  “We suffer heretics in our midst!” roared Boatwright. “What have they done to us? Driven our most faithful friends to strange violence. Enchanted worms from our dumplings. Taken leeches and moldy bread and lobelia and other baleful things to the tenderest parts of our person. Crushed human skulls. Unnatural, unwise, unholy cures.”

  “Tell them, Boatwright!”

  “Do they sound like cures a person of science would allow? Or like devil’s work?”

  “Scourge them! Scourge their souls!”

  A wind from the west drew a line of smoke across familiar faces. The whites of eyes showed in the gathering darkness. Boatwright, on the rain barrel, rose above the smoke. “What have these witches done? They have brought a woman back from the dead.”

  There were gasps of shock.

  “Ouida Bell was plagued with rabies. Rabies is certain death. It was wielded by their familiar, that panther. But the Winters resurrected her. Resurrection is not a power given to mortals. It is for devils and angels.”

  Eyes sought Ouida Bell in the crowd.

  “And the Winters are no angels,” said Boatwright.

  Mrs. Snell shouted back, “But Ouida Bell’s alive! You can’t say that’s an evil.”

  “Panther’s almost dead!” shouted someone else.

  “Waycross and the Winters set Eudoxia’s leg right!” came another cry.

  “By evil they have done this!” shouted Boatwright.

  The smoke, the noise, and the vitriol were overwhelming. People were yelling at me, for me. I pressed closer to Rebecca. I did not know where my safety was, except beside her. The air felt hot with smoldering embers. Tempers rose. The atmosphere was rich with flame.

  “And what have you profited by these witches and their cures?” continued Boatwright. He punched the air with his fist. “What have you gained or preserved? Your health? What matters your health if you lose your soul? The Winters will take your soul, friends, and they will take your mind, and when doubt and confusion seep into your heart, friends, evil will come, too.”

  “YOU SHUT YOUR GODDAMN MOUTH, BOATWRIGHT!” The storm of Rebecca’s voice was so great that the angry bodies nearest to us fell away as though scattered by a thunderclap. “You shut your goddamn lying mouth.”

  “Listen to the devil’s talk!” said Boatwright. “Blasphemy and heresy! Ride them out of town on a rail. Tie their hands, tie their feet. Pour them over with tar and with feathers. We will not suffer witches in our midst. The pyre is burning still.”

  Rebecca grabbed me, and we crashed through the crowd, knocking neighbors aside as she aimed for the demagogue on the pedestal.

  “Waycross has brought you spells and potations and heresies. The fire has come to purge the enemy from our midst. Purge with fire!” Boatwright’s voice cracked from the strain on the last syllable.

  A riot was collecting at the corners of the crowd. Tremors of violence rippled through its muscles. Anger and mindlessness seized its sinews.

  Rebecca slammed her shoulder against the rain barrel, and Boatwright fell backward. The close-pressed crowd caught him. “It was you, you son of a bitch! You burned it down.”

  “No, Rebecca—” I dragged at her sleeve.

  She tried to shake me away. “You threatened Aubrey, you bastard.” Rebecca was trying to get on top of the rain barrel, but I was holding her back. “You told Aubrey the town would burn, and you made your own prophecy come true.”

  “No, that’s not what happened—” My grip on her sleeve was slipping.

  “You could have killed me, Pastor!” said Snell. “Have you gone mad?”

  “If a man of God sets a fire, it’s God’s will!” cried a defender of the faith.

  “Friends, please! Please!” I said. Though Rebecca held her arms out for me, I elbowed her to one side as I climbed the rain barrel, opening my own arms in supplication. “It was an accident. No plot by your pastor, no supernatural agency. Just human failure. I was mixing up ether, and the flames—got loose.”

  “But you said ether was harmless,” said someone.

  “Harmless but not inflammable,” I said, my voice falling. “And that’s caused a great deal of harm, I’m afraid. I’m so sorry, everyone. Whomever you punish, whoever is to be tarred and feathered or run out of town on a rail, let it be me and no one else. Punish me for my incompetence and ignorance, which need no supernatural explanation.”

  I descended from the rain barrel. I approached Boatwright, whose anger had fused into indistinct syllables. He couldn’t catch enough breath to rile up the crowd again. His faction was disappointed that the fire was not the cleansing wrath of heaven. Those in the crowd who sided with us also felt their righteous indignation cooling.

  “Here I am, Boatwright,” I said. “What will you do?”

  Boatwright locked eyes on me. He reared back with his left hand, but the blow came from his right. The fist caught my jawbone. My body spun clockwise, and I fell to my knees. I tensed up against another punch, but none came.

  I righted myself to a sitting position, then I stood. “What will you do, sir?” I asked again. Blood filled the space around my teeth.

  Boatwright fell toward me. Perhaps he was trying to land another punch, but he was spent, exhausted, defeated, diffused. He fell toward me limp, and I gathered him in my arms. My shoulder grew damp with perspiration and tears.

  “It’s no hard feelings, sir,” I said as his chest shuddered against mine. “No hard feelings.” A little bloodletting does a body good.

  Sarah had fetched her rifle at the first whiff of smoke. She’d climbed to the top of the courthouse roof and watched the whole farce from there. She could have gotten off several good shots if she’d needed to. But she never even drew a bead on Boatwright. Rebecca had done what needed doing. For the first time in a great long while, Sarah was proud of her oldest sister.

  With the office in ashes, Waycross and the sisters had no place to practice their medicine. Mrs. Snell wouldn’t abide them seeing patients in their little upstairs room. That was borrowed, anyway. Richardson might have let them have a corner of the courthouse, but that wasn’t a home. Hope Hollow was the only place that made sense. That’s where Rebecca would go, and she’d want to take Waycross with her if only he’d have the courage to ask.

  That would leave Sarah… where? Homeless.

  She wouldn’t wallow in pity for herself. She had always had a home at Hope Hollow. She’d always had a place squarely between her sisters. Now, though, she had freedom—ter
rible, cruel freedom. She could go farther away, as far away as she pleased… if she broke her promise, if she let the bonds be sundered.

  Rain started falling—just a little and far too late, but the rain served to cool even the most ardent spirits in the crowd.

  Sarah watched from a distance as the crowd dispersed. Waycross and Rebecca walked away together, and so did Snell and Mrs. Snell, arm in arm. Boatwright turned to his constituents, but he did not find them there: punching a doctor in the face was a greater sin than drawing up a mob to cast three supposed witches out of town. Boatwright had lost the trust of even his most faithful. He could not turn the crowd into a mob, rain or no rain.

  When no one was left around Snell’s store but the hogs, Sarah came down and went to the ruin. Sarah kicked through in the ashes of Snell’s store and the office. The cinders were still warm under the soles of her boots, which spurred her to keep moving, keep looking. She was looking for an answer or a sign, like some haruspex rooting around in the remnants of a burnt sacrifice. She knew looking for a meaning was foolish. The fire there and the fire at Tribble’s mill were accidents of inattention. No one had caused them, neither mortal nor supernatural force.

  A glint of metal in the dirt caught her eye. She rooted it up with a toe, curious, but even when she picked it up, she had no idea what she’d found. It was melted and mangled. No telling what it had been before, and it was no use now.

  She had no reason to stay there. She had left Rebecca to load up their remaining possessions in the mule cart. Her sister had plenty of help from Mr. and Mrs. Snell, who seemed eager to reclaim their upstairs room. They would need the space. Maybe Snell could keep a little store there. The people of Lawrenceville still needed their soap and ink and fabric. Effie’s few things were already gone. She or Thumb had fetched them.

  Sarah wondered if the two of them were already on the road or if they were going to stay in Lawrenceville another night. They should just go and not dawdle for sentimentality. She wasn’t going to waste any effort on finding them to say goodbye. They had each other.