The Honey Witch

Chapter XIII





While I slept, she wove into the night on a loom under the light of the kerosene lamp. While I dreamt images I could not fully recapture on awakening, she slept somewhere I could not determine. When I awoke, the be-speckled Jemmy Isaak sat on the edge of the bed.

“Whatcha doin’, Yankee Doctor?” he beamed. “You live here with Possum now? You goin’ up t’Melvin’s with us today?”

“Melvin?” I asked, suddenly, and very desperately, confused.

“Black lung,” the child replied.

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes with the palms of my hands and glanced around the room. It was the light of true morning this time around. I noted that my clothes were dispatched to a folded pile on a nearby chair.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Jemmy, with some residue of disorientation in my tone.

“Egg day!” Jemmy exclaimed, holding up a basket of eggs for emphasis.

I felt an extreme sense of bladder urgency, as I had the evening before, and an even greater sense of nausea, as I had two evenings before. I covered my mouth and managed to roll from the bed with the quilt wrapped around my torso. Fleeing to the edge of the forest behind the cabin, I regurgitated a substance with such force, it left my body weak and shaken. I lost complete bladder control.

Shit, I am dying. She has poisoned me.

I leaned against the rough bark of a nearby maple, catching my breath.

For the love of Christ, they’re going to find nothing but a pile of moss bones in fifty years.

Damn you to hell, Josiah Fitch.

I felt an instant panic, but then a flush of unadulterated lightness. I breathed in a final, clarifying breath as the world came back into focus. I glanced over at the grass and wildflower tangled cemetery. For a fleeting moment, I experienced such an intense morbidity, that the weightless release of the moment before vanished with the brush of a passing breeze.

It’s time to get away from here.

But then, I turned to the sound of pumping water and my resolve weakened. There Ana Lagori stood, the morning sun shining an aura of light around her willowy and pale body in such a way she appeared almost seraphic. It came to me, in that moment, that nothing untoward, nothing sinister, could come from such pure vision and my feverish anxiety was borne from little more than the unexpected severity of nausea.

I exited the forest boundary and tightened the quilt around my waist. I stepped to the well and rinsed my face over and over again until my flesh numbed.

“Here,” she instructed, “put your head under the water.” She pressed my shoulders down and soaked my hair, scrubbing at the scalp with her minted soap until the roots tingled; scrubbing my arms and back until the skin felt contrastingly electrified under the heat of the sun and the striking cold of the water. She then pumped the cistern briskly, while I rinsed my scalp and arms.

I pulled away and experienced such a rush of energy flowing through every pore of my body, that I imagined such sensation as equal only to a vast and fabled mammal rising from the sea, to breathe breath for the first time since captivity.

Ana handed me a fresh towel in exchange for the quilt. I removed the ax from its wood stump and sat facing the full sun’s warmth.

“Today, we go to Melvin Fuller’s,” Ana informed me as she rubbed my head dry with another sun dried towel. “I promised the boy you would help gather mushrooms.”

“You think it wise to let Jemmy think he is some sort of magical gnome?” I asked.

“Wise is as wise does,” she replied.

“Melvin has black lung?” I then asked, knowing it was useless to argue the child's delusion.

“He returns from the mine with disease,” she said, almost contemptuously, “but it is not his time to die.”

“You seem quite certain of this,” I noted.

I heard her impatient sigh from behind as she combed her fingers through my damp hair. “Go inside and dress, Ethan Broughton.”

We breakfasted on syrupy cakes and fresh butter, the endless wild strawberries and cheese, Ana Lagori, Jemmy Isaak and I. It was one of those brief, commonplace moments, wherein one imagines all is right with the world.

I found a self-sustaining pleasure in the minor domestic tasks assigned to both Jemmy and myself: hang out the quilts and linens, pick the early summer peas from the garden. While we busied ourselves, Ana attended to a basket of jarred broth, bread, honey and precisely measured herb blends for the ailing Melvin Fuller. All the while, Jemmy chattered on: Grammy Nana made him socks, Coobie scratched his hand on a rose thorn, Mommy’s hens had a batch of chicks, Daddy brought him and Coobie a baseball glove from town. It was fun, he went on, to have Cousin Gracie visiting, as long as she didn’t interfere with his duties as a mud poke. I surmised said duties did not go much beyond gathering turtles and salamanders, wherever either creature might be stumbled across.

The worn path to Melvin Fuller’s failing homestead was near a two mile walk. Throughout Jemmy’s incessant babble and Ana’s indulgent patience, I followed behind with heightened self-absorption, doubting my perception in this unlikely province of riddle and allusion, yet convinced I was privilege to something intimately complex and inviolate.

We found Winnie Mae Clark standing on the dulling wood porch of the Fuller cabin, her brow furrowed with a terrible worry. The cotton dress she wore framed a rather stalky form, but she appeared more weary than frail.

“Mama says our Melvin ain’t long, Miss Ana,” Winnie Mae related mournfully. “Been coughin’ up tar and blood all the night long.”

“Where are the children, Winnie Mae?” asked Ana calmly.

“Home,” Winnie Mae replied. “Got Emma Tanner takin’ care of ‘em, ‘long with her own brood.” She eyed me curiously, if not somewhat suspiciously. “This the Yank the womenfolk been admirin’ so much?”

“Ah-huh,” Ana nodded and cocked her head to the side. “Winnie Mae is Melvin’s sister, isn’t that so, Winnie Mae?”

Before I could extend any gesture of acknowledgement, Winnie Mae brushed aside a stray lock of hair loosened from the twisted bun at the nape of her neck. “Pretty enough, I s’pose, but don’t look like he’s done a workin’ man’s job a speck in his life.”

“Ethan Broughton, here, is a Wort doctor,” replied Ana, “come to study our wild mountain plants.”

Winnie Mae nodded, unimpressed and only vaguely self-conscious.

“He’ll find ‘em in abundance,” she agreed.

“I came to help Melvin today,” said Ana quietly. “Do you mind?”

“Surely not, Miss Ana,” replied Winnie Mae, a trace of moisture welling in her pale blue eyes.

“Is your Aunt Ruthie here?” asked Ana.

Winnie Mae nodded solemnly. “Mama, too. Melvin’s Kate been at his side since he come home. Still sleeps beside him, too.”

Ana returned an agreeable nod. She turned to Jemmy. “Do you have your basket? Let me see.”

Jemmy raised the basket in his hand.

“Do you remember the mushrooms I asked you to gather?” Ana inquired. “Do you remember each one?”

Jemmy nodded excitedly.

“Then run along with our Ethan,” she told him, “and return only when you are finished.”

Jemmy pulled at the sleeve of my shirt. “This way, Yankee Doctor. Bye, Miss Winnie Mae! Bye, Possum! C’mon, Yankee Doctor.”

As I walked away with the child and his mental list of fungi, I thought I heard the whisper of Winnie Mae Clark’s peculiar inquiry: “Blood seed?” and the hum of Ana’s confirmation.

A sudden and piercing whistle caused both Jemmy and I to turn and find Winnie Mae stepping toward us. She tossed a strapped .22 caliber rifle in my direction, which I caught firmly in my hand via a quick response for self-preservation.

“Wild things,” she stated, “live out there. You know how to use that gun?”

“I’ll manage,” I replied, raising the strap over my shoulder.

In a space deep in the forest, Jemmy Isaak stopped and stepped mindfully in circles, scouting like a dutiful truffle pig for the agaricales expected of him.

“Jemmy,” I said, “I hope you know where we are.”

“Don’t worry, Yankee Doctor,” Jemmy assured, “ya can’t get lost if you know the way you came.”

“Jemmy, I’m serious,” I said. “I don’t want to get lost in here.”

“A mud poke always knows his way,” Jemmy declared. “Possum told me so. I’m a mud poke and I always know my way.”

"I thought a mud poke was a magical boy," I reminded him.

“I am a magical boy,” said Jemmy brightly. “That’s why I can’t get lost.”

But you can die and you nearly did I thought dismally. I gave up trying to convince him of remaining closer to the Fuller homestead and attempted to note each nuance of our surroundings should we, despite the confidence of this wonder child, lose our way.

Jemmy collected a several morchella esculenta, common morel, mushrooms near a tree stump and slipped them into the basket. Finding another sun-slivered stump, he deposited several more.

“You know your mushrooms, then,” I complimented, inspecting the gathered specimens closely. “Did Ana teach you?”

“Teacher Westmore,” he said. “It’s one of our lessons at school. Possum says no teacher’s worth nothin’ if he can’t teach a child not to eat a toadstool and why.” He walked ahead and pointed to a cluster of amanita phalloides, Death Cap. “Those will make you sick and dead,” he informed me and pointed to a tight clump of fleshy orange toadstools not far beyond. “Those will make you see monsters and then make you dead.”

He found an assemblage of rare auricularia auricula-Judae, Judas’s ear, growing on the blanched wood of a fallen elder tree and painstakingly scraped the clump with his nimble penknife. We both inspected each one before placing it in the basket: he, with focused determination and I, with surprise that such a fungi, rare in North America, was on Ana’s instructed list at all.

I followed the child deeper into the thick coppice until he found a circle of red, warty fungus. He reached into his pocket and produced a bundle of neatly folded scrap papers, once used to cushion peaches in a shipping crate. He pressed the stack against his knee to flatten each one against the other.

“Do you know what these are?” I asked him, bending down and plucking a single sticky stem from the ground, careful not to allow much of the moisture inside the forepart to touch the flesh of my fingers. “They are fly agaric and a bit early, too. I’m not sure you want these.”

Jemmy carefully plucked the mushroom from my fingertips and placed it on a single square of paper.

“It’s okay, Yankee Doctor,” he told me confidently. “Kill fly’s just for healin’ ways, as far as I know of.” He gingerly picked several more and wrapped them scrupulously between the pressed papers.

It can also cause hallucinations and violent expectoration. I felt my stomach tighten. Could this be the clue? Highly proficient in the use of plant resources, Ana would undoubtedly know how to prepare the exact proportions of the wild fungi to induce just enough response from the psyche, but not enough to poison altogether.

Did she think I was completely ignorant? I searched my mind for any purpose in her having allowed me to view Jemmy’s talents with identifying wild mushrooms. She was not a careless woman or, was she? Was she showing me that she, in fact, utilized them to induce desired responses or, indeed, had not used them at all? Was she answering my private suspicions or, increasing the stakes of the growing riddle?

Jemmy gathered a few more handfuls of coprinus mushrooms and wiped his hands repeatedly against the dewy grasses before announcing: “We can go back now.”

We were so deep into the woodland, the ground was still damp from the rains. I followed Jemmy’s lead in the hope he really did possess some internal compass, to steer our way back to our original beginning. The weight of the strapped rifle felt suddenly oppressive on my backside. The last time I had carried a weapon, of any measure, was in South America during a university expedition. I had not needed to discharge it then and I hoped my luck remained, with no incident between man and irritable beast.

“Are we getting any closer?” I finally asked.

Jemmy pointed to an overgrowth of brush. “Right through there, Yankee Doctor. Just a quarter ways, maybe.”

I exhaled the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “You’re one incredible kid, Jemmy Isaak, you know this?”

“I told you, Yankee Doctor,” he reminded me, “a mud poke always knows his way.”

“Yes,” I reflected thoughtfully, “you did tell me that, didn’t you.” In my moment of relief, I could almost fathom the fantasy.

“You gonna stay on the hill with Possum now?” asked Jemmy without warning. I glanced at him and took note of an unusual worry creasing his brow.

“Would it bother you very much?” I replied.

“I don’t know,” he said, oddly reticent.

“You’d still be her favorite,” I smiled.

He smiled at that, but the reassurance was short lived.

"What is it?" I inquired.

“Girls can’t be mud pokes,” he explained once more, “only boys.”

“I don’t think Ana wants to be a mud poke, Jemmy,” I said. “I think you have no worry there.”

“Not Possum,” said Jemmy. “The girl.”

“What girl?”

“The girl Grammy Nana said will come thirteen moons from midsummer,” Jemmy related dolefully. “When the girl comes, she might not want any mud pokes around.”

“Did your Grammy Nana tell you that, too?” I asked.

“No,” said Jemmy, resigned. “I just think it.”

I almost laughed out loud. I placed my hand on the back of his head and nudged him forward. “I would think such a girl would be very pleased to have a magical boy as her friend.”

“Her name is Amelia,” said Jemmy, “and she will come thirteen moons from midsummer.”

“Grammy Nana knows her name, as well?” I asked, with some amusement.

“Yep,” said Jemmy, his tone rather cheerless.

“There is no girl, Jemmy,” I told him. Your Grammy Nana is addled. “Let’s go see how Melvin is getting along.”

In the short distance between the forest border and the Fuller homestead, we saw an older woman sitting on a stool next to the front screen door. The woman’s stern expression appeared focused on the methodical scrubbing of an object in a bucket of water. Stepping closer, the object appeared to be a raw piece of meat or possibly a freshly dead fish. Jemmy immediately sat cross-legged on a weaved rug, and intently observed the woman’s activity.

I set the rifle quietly at the corner of the warping porch and winced at the potent, unmistakable odor of internal organs thickening the air around the doorway. On closer inspection, the object in the woman’s hand resembled a human lung. Cringing, convinced I could only be mistaken, I grasped the brittle handle of the screen door and peered inside the cabin interior.

Stretched on a table like an autopsy study, was the emaciated body of the presumed Melvin Fuller; his chest wall opened wide and blood spattered. A glaze of horrific stupefaction froze his facial features, his eyes staring outward in a glassy, deathlike trance. I observed the man’s gaping mouth with a volcanic sickness in the pit of my belly. The only sign that Melvin Fuller still lived, was the beating of his heart through a narrow width of space between Winnie Mae Clark and two women I assumed, respectively, were the earlier suggested Aunt Ruthie and Kate Fuller.

Across from the three women, stood Ana, blood dripping from either side of her closed mouth. I could not see the shape of her teeth, but I knew they had changed. Her adept hands spun feverishly with what appeared, as Aaron Westmore had chronicled, to be a web-like substance oozing from the very tips of her fingers and encasing a strange globular and sticky mass between her hands.

The old woman with the bucket brushed grimly passed my shoulder. I watched, with increasing disturbance, as Ana carefully assessed the scrubbed pink lung the woman held up for her apparent inspection.

It was at that moment, I backed away from the tilting wood porch, my sense of self-possession and logic reeling.

“You okay, Yankee Doctor?” I heard Jemmy’s voice reverberating itself in my ear, even as his form receded into the meshing blend of rapid circling against a vast carousel made up of treetops, clouds and rich blue skies.

The last reference to consciousness was a loud humming in my inner ear, until the world before my eyes went black.





~*~