The Honey Witch

Chapter X





Perhaps to assuage some lingering sense of trespass over the rainy adventure with the disquieting Fitch or, perhaps simply avoid any complicated communication over the preservation of Jemmy Isaak’s breathing capabilities, I did not intrude on Ana Lagori for another three days.

The story of my grandfather and his unusual scar began to fall from grace, the more I became lured by the riddle of the woman in the woods. Fabled Evangeline, resourceful chimera or authentic primitive healer, her cloistered existence and botanical secret in the hollow of a dead oak, was becoming the last impression of consciousness before an increasingly reckless pharmaceutical sleep. It was the first vision upon the smoldering perplexity of awakening.

In more practical moments, I approached the entire venture with greater sensibility and considered taking my leave, as Fitch suggested. I had the plant specimen. What more did I need from this strange and isolated hill?

Yet, in the sparse distance between days of seeing Ana Lagori and not, the more compelled I was to remain and satisfy the pull of insistent inquiry regarding her skill, her presence of mind, her very story.

I handed my laundry to a cordial Adelaide Pennock, who, in turn, profited a fair business over my dependency on her domestic services, shower access and daily meals. In the restless aftermath of the Jemmy Isaak incident, it was a good day to go into town.

“You’re the talk of the entire mountain, Broughton, bringing Jemmy Isaak up to Ana’s the other night,” Aaron remarked, while we followed the sloping trail to reach his bronze Jeep Cherokee, parked little more than a mile and a half down hillside.

“The credit goes to Ana, alone” I replied.

“Perhaps,” agreed Aaron, “but certainly no one else around here would have gone up there at night.”

“Not even to save that boy’s life?” I asked skeptically. “There’s nothing up there, except some white dog I’ve never seen before.”

“I doubt even then,” said Aaron. “Superstition runs deep here on Porringer. You must have figured that out by now.”

By late morning, we reached Bernie Lloyd’s small pig farm, a homestead consisting of one dilapidated house, three slowly disintegrating outbuildings, a squeaky whirligig atop a sagging clothesline, a rusty chevrolet pickup truck and Westmore’s vehicle. After a brief admiration of Bernie’s seven prize piglets, we were driving on the paved road in the direction of Halstead Mill, the nearest town by twenty miles from the Four Corners side of the mountain.

Reviewing the obstacles in the bold light of day, little Jemmy Isaak may or may have never made it off the hill alive.

In the three weeks which passed between the last time I had seen the mill town, I all but forgot the convenient splendor of civilization, even in a place as unassuming as Halstead Mill. Aaron carried his list of supplies for Sam Pennock to the local Piggly Wiggly, and I agreed to meet with him at a bar and grill down the street upon filling my own list at the Five and Dime.

I stopped at the rather quaint brick post office, after calling an old colleague in Boston from a corner phone booth. I also called my sister, Nina, to whom I sent a padded envelope, that was to remain unopened and refrigerated. I speculated the item would arrive by the end of the week.

Telling neither my sister nor my old colleague where it was I actually called from, I claimed, with an uncharacteristic compulsion, to be visiting friends in Maine, when asked. Who was I protecting? I wondered. Ana or myself?

Passing a small flower shop, with an attached greenhouse, I gave into an impulse to find a white lilac bush. As fortune would have it, I was able to chose from the only two remaining.

I found Aaron leaning patiently against the passenger door of his Jeep Cherokee, parked in front of an establishment called Maxine’s Bar & Grill, thoughtfully smoking a cigarette.

“Planting a garden?” he asked, opening the back hatch of the vehicle, where I placed the potted bush and the plastic bag of assorted toiletries from the Five and Dime. I tossed a half-consumed liter of 7-Up on the front seat.

“A lilac,” I smiled absently. “For Ana. I thought she might like it.”

“Ah,” returned Aaron with what sounded like approval. He stretched his back and said: “I’m hungry and thirsty as hell. Let’s go into Maxine’s and get some food.”

Maxine’s Bar & Grill was clean and richly paneled in the polished knotted wood befitting the taste of any local sportsman, who, while he drank among his peers, could admire the mounted plaques of fresh water northerns and glass-eyed, horned buck heads sharing wall space with neon beer signs. I followed Aaron passed framed photographs of rushing waters and thirsty fishermen, proud hunters with rifles and dead bounty in tow, to a quiet booth at the far end of the lounge.

"I'm going to get a beer," Aaron announced. "You want something?"

“I’ll just order coffee,” I said. “You go ahead.” I pushed my sunglasses on top of my head and sat back against the wall beneath the fake green ivy spilling over the high window ledge. I plucked out a menu from its metal bracket and viewed the variety of choices.

Aaron appeared preoccupied as he walked up to the bar and I briefly wondered at the cause. I searched the sandwich list and decided on a Philly cheesesteak, made Tennessee style, I presumed, when Aaron returned to the table with an open bottle of Miller Genuine Draft. He slid into the booth, leaning forward with some reserve, as though he had some great revelation he wished to impart.

“Listen,” he said confidentially, “what you saw the other night doesn’t happen all the time. It was an emergency with Jemmy, you know?”

“Hey, sugar,” a thin, thirty-something bottle brunette addressed Aaron. She set down two glasses of water. “Haven’t seen you in awhile.” She flashed an unabashed wink in my direction. “Who’s the handsome stranger?”

“Lacey, meet Ethan Broughton from Boston,” introduced Aaron with a wave. “Ethan, meet Lacey Jennings, waitress extraordinaire.”

“Well, Ethan Broughton from Boston, “ Lacey smiled, “anybody ever tell you, you got the prettiest brown eyes?”

I glanced at Aaron, who smirked in return. I smiled only slightly. “Not for a few days,” I told her.

“Well, you do and that’s a fact,” she replied. “What’ll you boys have?”

I pointed to the Philly sandwich and ordered a pot of coffee. Aaron ordered a roast beef on rye and another beer.

“Don’t be such a stranger,” she told Aaron, tapping him on the shoulder with her pen. “And bring your Boston friend, too. Wednesday night is Ladies Choice, remember.”

Aaron turned and watched her walk away. Assuring himself that we were again in private conclave, he stated: “You fell asleep afterward, didn’t you.”

“It was four thirty in the morning,” I reminded him.

“No,” he replied, “it was more than that. Remember how you felt after Clem and Merilee’s baby was saved from that bite, even though it was the middle of the day?”

“Ok,” I agreed, “a little like that, I suppose. But the circumstances were entirely different. What are you getting at?”

Aaron seemed to struggle for the right words. He leaned over the table a little more. “It’s like…how can I put it?…too much energy or something. This is why you went into some kind of sleep condition after Clem and Merilee and didn’t remember. It could be you were too tired to feel it the other night, but it was still there. I know. It happened to me.”

I must have looked somewhat astonished. Aaron nodded his head knowingly, as though we both now shared some complicated affliction.

I watched him steadily. Waited. Listened.

“You know Scully Owen?” he asked.

“The tall, bony guy with the arched spine,” I responded. Yes, I knew who he was.

“Two summers ago…” Aaron began, just as Lacey brought the beer and pot of coffee.

She flashed a quiet, flirtatious smile which seemed to suggest that beneath the tender surface of cheery banter, life had become painfully predictable, with little hope of reprieve.

“Thanks, Lace,” said Aaron impatiently.

“Anytime, sugar,” she replied. She turned and her expression brightened. “Hey, Jonesy!” she greeted as the tall, uniformed sheriff stepped lazily toward the booth where Aaron and I sat. He smiled reservedly and nodded, “Lacey,” and grasped a wooden chair from a nearby table. He straddled the chair at the edge of the booth, leaning his elbows on the back rim.

“How’s Kay?” asked Lacey.

“Real fine, Lacey,” said the sheriff.

“You boys just be patient,” Lacey told Aaron and I. “Your order will be out directly.”

The sheriff appeared to be in his early forties, at best, and as Jemmy Isaak once noted, he wore the mirrored sunglasses similar to my own. One could readily identify a man of implacable confidence, with a strong jaw and rugged good looks.

He smiled through a row of even white teeth and toyed deliberately with an unlit cigarillo between his long fingers.

“Westmore,” he greeted precisely and waited patiently, if not somewhat curiously, for an introduction.

Aaron sat back and gestured his hand. “Sheriff Roland Jones, Dr. Ethan Broughton, a friend from Boston.”

Sheriff Jones then held out his hand and grasped mine in a firm grip.

“Doctor?” noted the sheriff. “What kind of doctor would that be?”

"Ethan, here, is a research biologist," Aaron answered. "He's studying some indigenous plant life up on Porringer."

Roland Jones’ evaluation of the reply was unreadable through the advantage of mirrored sunglasses, but I suspected that, not unlike Ana, he was unamused on meeting a stranger with a possible agenda.

“How long do you intend on staying?” he asked.

“Not too long,” I replied. “A month or two, maybe.”

Jones nodded, apparently satisfied as to my answer. He inclined his head toward Aaron .

“He has met our lady?”

“I believe they have spoken, yes,” Aaron told him.

The sheriff appeared thoughtful for a moment, and then swung his leg back around the chair and replaced it at the opposite table. “Your friend from Boston is a good looker, Westmore. See he stays out of trouble.”

I watched the sheriff retreat with that same easy resoluteness he arrived with. He stopped and lit the filtered cigarillo, nodding pleasantly to the barkeeper. Lacey sailed passed him with a, “See you Wednesday night, Jonesy. Say ‘hey’ to Kay,” and set our hot sandwiches on the booth table.

“Here you go, boys,” she said. “Shout, if you need anything.”

“What was that all about?” I asked, watching Jones as he stepped casually out the door.

Aaron shrugged. “You’re a stranger. From what I’ve heard, Ana’s mother saved him from certain death as a rookie cop shot on the roadside. He’s the only one, below the mountain, who knows Ana exists up there. He was grateful, apparently. I think he wanted to make sure you weren’t going to be a problem.”

“Problem?”

“Telling someone,” said Aaron. “Maybe bring in outsiders, know what I mean?”

Lacey set down another beer and Aaron handed her another empty bottle. “Darlin’, why don’t I just bring you a pitcher?”

Aaron nodded. “That’d be just perfect, Lace. And two shots of Jack while you’re at it.”

“You told me about Ana,” I reminded him. “Wouldn’t that make you a problem?”

“It could,” Aaron agreed, “but since you’re the only one I’ve told or ever expect to, I don’t see it as any question Jones need worry about. As long as he thinks you’re a friend of mine, he won’t bother with any further inquiry.”

“I see,” I replied, but I didn’t really see at all.

Lacy brought a pitcher of foaming beer, a mug and two shots glasses filled with the requested whiskey. She asked about the coffee, but I waived any refill.

“Do you know how to drive a stick?” asked Aaron.

“I do,” I replied.

“Good,” said Aaron, “because I plan to get stinking drunk.”

He downed both shots of whiskey and seemed rather morose. I vaguely marveled at his obvious familiarity with liquor, a trait I had not suspected ran quite as deep as it apparently did.

“So, what about Scully Owen?” I inquired, taking a bite of the Philly sandwich, which I found surprisingly agreeable.

“It was two summers ago,” explained Aaron, “when we were finishing up the renovation of that old church to accommodate some classroom space. Scully falls off the ladder, right on his back. I mean, the man can’t survive being taken down the mountain, much less any paramedics coming up in time to even try getting him to a hospital.”

He washed down a bite of his roast beef with the last of the bottled beer and poured a glass from the pitcher.

“There’s blood coming out of this guy’s nose and ears. I mean, he’s as near dead as you’re going to be, right? You could hear the spine crack when he fell.”

Aaron shifted in his seat and took a quick swallow of the foamed beer in his glass. He sighed deeply, perhaps to erase the full picture of Scully’s broken body from his mind.

“Someone shouts to go up and get the witch,” he continued. “I hadn’t been here long enough, and thought Ana was just some screwy folk healer that backwoods people called a witch. She comes down and everyone just sort of scatters off like they know something is about to happen. No one seems to notice I’m still there, so I just stay, thinking maybe I might be needed to help, right?”

He swallowed the last drop of beer and poured himself another. His eyes flickered with a hint of distress, and it seemed he battled to weigh any words he might now speak with extreme discretion. I watched him closely, my appetite slowly abating. I picked off a corner piece of the Philly sandwich and consumed it thoughtfully.

“I’m going to tell you this,” Aaron began, “because of what you saw with Clem and Merilee and even then, you didn’t see much, ok?”

“Ok,” I agreed.

Aaron leaned closer, pushing his unfinished plate aside.

“Ana, she assesses Scully, right? It takes her maybe ten minutes, I don’t know. It seemed like forever. She kind of crawls around him on all fours, stretching his leg, tapping his leg, things like that. She even rolls him over real careful like and then, oh, Jesus…”

I waited wordlessly, feeling the intensity of expectation over what he might reveal.

Aaron’s voice began to tremble, debating, perhaps, whether he had gone too far in the telling of his story. “She grows these teeth, like an animal; like some wolf or something. She bites right into his spine; rips him right open, I swear to God. There’s blood everywhere and Scully, he’s like in some shock and his mouth is wide open, but he can’t scream. He can’t make any sound.

"Ana, she takes this clear glob of something from her pocket and sort of fuses his spine together with it. After she’s done, she holds his skin together and you know how a spider makes a sticky web? It’s like that same web comes out of the tips of her fingers and she meshes the flesh like she’s weaving a cocoon. Then, she traces this purplish red ink-like substance up and down Scully’s spine. There’s blood all over Scully and all over her.”

Aaron lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “She then starts screaming for water,” he went on, “and I mean, screaming. So, I get her some from Pennock’s well. My legs and arms are shaking so bad I can hardly keeping standing, but I bring her the water in a bucket. She drinks it like a horse at a trough and then falls backwards. She’s completely out.”

He exhaled a low, smoke filled sigh. “Next thing I know, I’m stretched out in the weeds next to the church. I wake up to see Jemmy Isaak and Clara Russell, with her idiot doll, standing over me, asking if I want any plums.”

I could feel a pulsing rush inside my ears. “What in the damn hell are you saying?”

“She’s not human,” said Aaron, butting out his cigarette in the fish logo ashtray and lighting another. “Nobody human could have saved Scully Owen that day. Nobody. Not like that. To change, to grow teeth, to stitch and weave like a spider. I wanted to leave that place and never come back.”

“What made you stay?” I asked.

Aaron shrugged. “Fear, maybe. Fear, I’d never make it down the mountain, if I ran. Fear, they might think I’d tell somebody what happened and bring outsiders. I don’t know what I was afraid of. Nobody ever talked about it. Nobody ever said anything at all. Just like they won’t now about Clem and Merrilee’s baby and won’t much longer about Jemmy.”

I exhaled a pent-up breath of my own and tapped my fingers anxiously on the table. It was obvious, by Westmore’s present demeanor, that he was affected by having witnessed something deeply troubling on that singular day. While it was certainly true that Scully Owen had the obvious curvature of a healed spinal injury, I wanted to deny the details as Aaron perceived them, just as I wanted to deny my own the morning of Clem and Merilee’s child’s recovery.

“You realize what you’re telling me is profoundly impossible,” I said.

“Is it?” he asked. “What happened to Scully Owen could very well be similar to what happened with your grandfather.”

“It might fit, yes,” I agreed. “I just don’t know what to think right now.”

“You might think about leaving,” advised Aaron. “Leave, while you still have your wits about you. You haven’t really seen anything and at this point, she probably wouldn’t make any attempt to stop you.”

“Ana?” I asked. “Why would she try and prevent me from leaving?”

Aaron hesitated. He gulped down another glass of beer, pouring yet another. “Call it a gut feeling.”

“You’ve had too much to drink in too short a time, Aaron,” I replied. “This is all the result of some type of misinterpretation or hallucinogenic reaction to trauma.”

“Was it hallucination that saved your grandfather?” asked Aaron. “Or Clem and Merilee’s son? Or Jemmy Isaak?”

“I do not doubt the existence of some unidentified medicinal plant,” I replied, trying to reason away my own unanswered questions. “There are things all over this planet yet to be discovered. What I am disputing is any miraculous, magical healing power on the part of Ana Lagori or any of her ancestors.”

“Do you ask me to doubt the evidence of my own eyes?” asked Aaron with some strain in his voice. “Would you? Do you?”

I pushed my plate aside. Aaron looked more bereft with my argument than annoyed.

“Look, Aaron,” I said earnestly, “I admit I saw how Ana was that morning after the Clem and Merilee drama, but even in witnessing what I thought I did, I had definite problems with it. You’re from St. Louis, you know what happens in the real world. What you saw, what I saw, both have some rational explanation.”

“The hell, you say,” retorted Aaron anxiously. “I know what I saw and I’m telling you, that woman is not goddamn human!”

I could feel a tremor in my fingertips as I traced a hand along my brow line. “What are you saying, then? She’s some kind of monster? Some Lilith out of time and myth, only real?”

“I’m saying she’s not human,” said Aaron. He pointed at me nervously. “And she knows about you. She knows all about you.”

I stared at him incredulously. While Aaron’s experience was certainly affecting, had he hoped I would view it as entirely plausible? To Aaron’s perspective, yes, as perhaps it had been to my grandfather’s as well, but I was not prepared to let go of my own rationale. I could sense the clear danger of slipping where Aaron had already slipped: believing what he thought he was seeing without questioning what he was seeing.

“So, Aaron, tell me,” I asked a bit wearily, “what does she know, exactly.” I, of course, was reminded of the rainy morning spent with the mad Fitch in the forest clearing, but dismissed any notion of Aaron’s knowledge of it. I convinced myself, days earlier, that any recrimination would have already occurred, had the intrigue been discovered. Now that I mailed the specimen to Nina, I was certain no one, outside of Fitch and myself, knew anything about it.

Aaron stared at me and the sides of his mouth took on the spasms of one who wanted to speak, but couldn’t quite place together the exact wording.

“I don’t want any ill will between us, Aaron,” I informed him honestly. “You’ve done me an immense favor by inviting me here and as to Ana Lagori, she is an intriguing woman with doubtless abilities, but no miracle worker and no seeress.”

Aaron sat back, flushed and defeated...and none too inebriated.

I glanced up and saw Lacey's attentive approach. I stood quickly and handed her my Visa card. Aaron ordered another shot of whiskey and disappeared into the men's room. I downed two sedatives and signed the card transaction at the counter. Perhaps out of gratitude to be parting in relative harmony with my intoxicated friend, I increased an already sizable tip.

Once outside, Aaron tossed me his keys and crawled inside the passenger side of his vehicle.

“You think you'll take my advice, then?” asked Aaron sullenly, leaning against the window frame; staring at the passing gullies and hillside thickets along the roadside.

“And what advice is that, Aaron?” I asked, twisting the toothpick I held in the corner of my mouth. My mind flitted between the probability of Ana Lagori’s very real, if not limited, skills and Aaron’s conviction of the highly fantastic. Perhaps there was something in the water, as the old adage went; except, in this instance, perhaps there really was.

“About leaving,” he said.

“Is there some personal interest in all of this, Aaron?” I asked.

Aaron laughed doubtfully. “It’s not me she wants, Broughton, and if you’ve any sense, you’ll get out while you can.”

“You sound as though you can’t,” I said.

Aaron continued to gaze moodily out the window, breathing in a deep inhalation of smoke. “I wish I’d never heard of Porringer Hill or, the Four Corners. It used to be a mountain pass, but was abandoned decades ago. Why people still live up there, cut off from everything, God only knows.”

I glanced over at my friend and found him preoccupied in such a way that I felt genuinely concerned for his well being. He sucked in another breath of smoke. He reached and turned on the radio to the steamy voice of Robbie Robertson crooning a lazy river over the FM airwaves.

Aaron contemplated the burning cylinder between his fingers for a moment and said: “Take my advice and leave with the slate clean.”

“I’m not interested in Ana Lagori in the way you might think,” I told him. “I’ll not deny a fascination with her method, but I won’t be here long enough to pursue anything beyond that.”

Aaron sucked in another deep inhalation of smoke. “Bewitched, more like.” He gazed out of the window, briefly diverted by a red-tailed hawk swooping down on some unsuspecting prey, and with a bitter laugh added: “And be warned: Jolene Parker, she’s another one.”

“Another what?”

“Damned witch.”

“A what?” I laughed with an almost exhausted humor. “Christ, listen to yourself. You sound like the lunatic, Fitch.”

“A goddamned witch, I tell you!” Aaron blasted. He leaned back against the seat and sighed wearily. “A witch’s apprentice, that’s the truth of Jolene Parker.”

He pointed at the windshield and narrowed his eyes, as though straining to see something beyond his immediate vision. “Not a witch like Ana, no, not like that one, but a helper, you know? Like the guy who eats bugs in those Dracula movies and makes sure no one finds the sleeping bloodsucker in his ungodly tomb.”

“You’re talking stupid,” I accused decisively, “and you’ve had way too much to drink.”

Aaron threw his head back and laughed. “You have no f*cking idea, Broughton. No f*cking idea under God.” He jabbed his cigarette into the ashtray. “And you’re right, I am drunk, but not so much I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.”

“You know,” I said, “when you wake up from this, you’re going to feel like shit.”

“I feel like shit now,” said Aaron, flailing his arm to the left. “Here’s our turn.”

I turned the Jeep Cherokee up the gravel drive leading to Bernie Lloyd’s, when Aaron gestured toward a barely concealed road that veered off the main route.

“Go up there,” he instructed. “It’ll take us up the creek. It’ll be closer to drop off the stuff for Pennock, and I don’t want to walk.”

I steered the vehicle over an estimated half mile of rutted road, and alongside wooded overgrowth continuously scraping the windows, until ending just before the low bank of the Cutler.

“Well, what now?” I inquired dismally.

“The Cutler’s low up at least two miles,” Aaron assured, pointing out the incline on the hill. “It’ll take us maybe a quarter mile from the Four Corners. Just drive up over the grass to Pennock’s.”

I drove as Aaron directed, gratified to note there was an alternate access out of seclusion.

We dropped off the numerous sacks of supplies at Sam Pennock’s, passing Jemmy’s Grammy Nana rocking on the porch, knitting a walnut dyed wool into what appeared to be a child’s sweater. I nodded in wordless acknowledgment. Perhaps it was only Aaron’s cryptic babble and that, alone, which caused the trace smile at the withered corner of the old woman’s mouth to appear eerily secretive.

Aaron pleaded intoxication and insisted I return the vehicle to Bernie Lloyd’s without him. I steered the jeep along the river route to the delight of passengers Jemmy, Coobie and a freckled little girl with reddish-blond curls introduced as Cousin Gracie, who, I was informed summarily, was not a mud poke.

It was on the long walk back to the Four Corners behind the chattering Jemmy and Gracie, trailed by a dreamily detached Coobie, that I came to fully recognize my position as a man sailing uncharted waters.

Blue skies gave way to a slow, but persistent cloud cover through the advent of early evening. I ingested one more sedative and decided to bestow the white lilac bush on Ana before any rain set in.

Perhaps I was compelled only to satisfy any final inquiry that distracted my mind or, perhaps I wanted to prove she was no monster. Perhaps I was seriously reconsidering what was becoming a navigation through complexity.

Perhaps I wanted to know that my interests remained purely academic.





~*~