The Honey Witch

Chapter XVIII





The resounding pound of footsteps on the front porch startled me from the formless vapor that infiltrated my sleep for days. Ana, always rising under the first hint of daybreak, set her measuring cup of flour in a bowl and walked to the door.

“Brother Randy took a fall!” declared the older of three children standing on the other side of the screen. “Ma’s all out of sorts. Knocked himself clean out, Miss Ana!”

“Fell from the tree, Miss Ana,” clarified a small waif of a girl with thin blond hair.

“Ma’s fearin’ he’ll go feeble,” the older boy breathlessly continued.

“Your pa still down to the mines?” asked Ana, wiping away the dusty white powder from her hands on a sun-faded towel.

“Four days now, Miss Ana,” replied the boy. “Ma’s sorely worried, Miss Ana, what with pa not due back ‘til Sunday. Says to quick fetch ya.”

Ana ushered the children inside and ordered the eldest to prepare a basket of biscuits, jam, jarred broth and milk. She set about adeptly blending a dried plant concoction from the shelved cabinet.

“That your Yankee beau, Miss Ana?” asked the little girl, staring through saucer-wide blue eyes as I leaned on my elbow atop the rustled bed linens.

“Hush up, Effie Jean,” chided the eldest. “That ain’t no concern of yours.”

“Ma says you got good bones,” said the little Effie Jean placidly, “for a Yankee man, anyways.”

“Effie Jean!” snapped the boy. “Come fetch this basket now. Keep your nose outta other folk’s business.”

Effie Jean squinted with a bemused expression and inclined her head to the side.

“Why you sleepin’ in Miss Ana’s bed? You sick or somethin’?”

The middle boy, in worn overalls, tugged his sister’s arm. “Don’t pay no mind, Mister Yank,” he interjected apologetically. “Effie Jean’s jus’ an ignorant child.”

“She’s just curious,” I smiled. “I’m a friend of Miss Ana, Effie Jean. My name is Ethan.”

“You really a Yankee?” she asked, surprised, perhaps, that a Yankee, a term she undoubtedly parroted, appeared distinctly human.

“I’m from a city called Boston,” I replied.

Effie Jean smiled, seemingly satisfied as to my answer. She waved good-bye noiselessly, as her brothers shuttled her out of the door with Ana’s prescribed haul.

Ana leaned her knee on the bed and kissed my mouth. “You will wait for me?”

“I might go down to Pennock’s,” I told her. “Maybe stop at the cabin. I want to pick up some things."

“What do you need that you don’t already have?” she frowned.

“Yesterday’s newspaper?” I suggested lightly. What I wanted was the taste of Pennock’s thick black coffee and further, I wanted to speak with Aaron Westmore.

“I’m off to tend young Randy John, then,” she said.

I studied the razor thin stitch across my wrist for the long, silent moments after Ana had departed with the three children, and marveled over the submerging of what I considered, up to this point, a dependable sense of rationale. Quickly dressing, I went out back and pumped the well cistern vigorously, as if by some aggressive act, I would be able to erase the surreal revelations of the previous night. I splashed my face with the frigid water, until I could no longer tolerate the sting.

“Ya cannot wash it away that easy,” came a gravelly voice from the edge of the overgrown cemetery.

Startled for the second time that morning, I looked over to see old Fitch and the ever-mindful Dulcy.

“You old fool,” I blurted out, but quickly regained my composure. I ran a wet hand through my hair. “What are you doing here?”

I was intent on going down to the Four Corners, securing the largest mug of coffee Sam Pennock possessed, and seeking out the one person whose introduction compelled me to this hill. I wanted no inane conversation to blight my mission.

“Visiting graves,” Fitch stated easily, gesturing toward the grave of Lily Ann.

“Well, I’ll leave you to your contemplations, then,” I said, and turned to walk away.

“Where ya goin’ this fine mornin’, eh?” he asked, but it was more accusation than curiosity.

“Pennock’s,” I divulged aridly.

“Ain’t no further for ya to go now, is there, Doc?” he responded incisively; “now the witch got ya in her sticky web. No matter. I’ll be waitin’ for ya when ya get back.”

Turning, I sighed: “Go away, old man. Just go away.”

“Best get used to it, Yank,” he said. “I’ll be breathin’ here longer than you.”

I rolled my eyes wearily. “And that’s supposed to mean?”

“Just what I say it means,” he replied shrewdly. “I told ya before, they like ‘em young and they like ‘em pretty. And maybe they like ‘em stupid, too. If you were smart, you’d have left when I warned ya the first time.”

“I’m going to Pennock’s,” I repeated and dismissed the deliberate veil of his admonitions, which had become stale at best. I wound a thin strip of cotton fabric, taken from Ana’s rag basket, around my wrist as I walked down the dirt trail to the Four Corners.

I experienced an uneasy estrangement when I stepped into the open clearing leading to the Four Corners, as though months had passed rather than the days it had been. And I wondered if this detached feeling would follow me into the space of the old cabin. When I touched the things that were familiar, would I feel separated from their personal significance?

The first glimpse of the quiet, abandoned structure brought to the forefront that the man who returned was but a shade of his former self. I was surprised, though not unpleasantly so, to find little Jemmy Isaak hunched in solitary meditation, his chin cupped in his hands, on the wood stoop of the front doorway.

“Jemmy,” I smiled, “what are you doing, sitting there all by yourself?”

The child looked up expectantly. “Yankee Doctor!” he grinned buoyantly. “I was waitin’ for ya.”

Under closer scrutiny, the pleasant familiarity of the child’s bright eyes appeared unsettled.

I frowned. “But why, Jemmy?” I inquired. “What if I hadn’t come here today?”

“That’s okay,” Jemmy shrugged. “I’ve been waitin’ everyday.”

“Why?” I asked, squatting to meet him at eye level. “Why have you waited here each day? Is something wrong?”

“Daddy says we got to move down the mountain,” explained Jemmy morosely. “Mommy says no. Me and Coobie’s been hidin’ under the bed.”

“You might like it down the mountain,” I suggested. “I think your daddy just wants what’s best for his family.”

“Grammy Nana says she’ll curse my daddy," Jemmy returned ardently, "if he takes us from this hill.”

“Jemmy,” I replied, weighing my words carefully, “your Grammy Nana is not going to curse your daddy.”

“Everybody knows Grammy Nana’s got the curse magic,” argued Jemmy stubbornly. “Even Possum says. And mud pokes can’t live away from the mountain!”

“I should think mud pokes can live just about anywhere,” I said.

“No,” Jemmy shook his head sadly. “Mud pokes is special. They can’t just live anywheres.” He looked at me earnestly and added: “I’m sure glad you ain’t dead, Yankee Doctor.”

Taken aback, I let out a short laugh. “What would make you think I might be dead, Jemmy?”

Jemmy shrugged. “I dunno. I just thought it. Daddy says: 'Possum’ll eat that Yank and spit him straight out.' I figured he was talkin’ ‘bout you.”

“Well,” I told him, loosely amused by the metaphor, if not somewhat disturbed, “as you can see, I’m perfectly well.”

Apparently relieved from his own imaginings, Jemmy nodded with a wide, characteristic grin.

“I’ve just got to put together some things here at the cabin,” I explained. I stood and opened the door. It was immediately apparent that someone had combed through the two rooms in my absence. “Jemmy, have you see anyone around this place?”

“Sheriff was here,” said Jemmy, “lookin’ for you. Maybe he thought you was dead, too.”

“I’ve got to speak with Mr. Westmore,” I told him, quickly assessing any damage from where I stood. Clearly, nothing had been confiscated, only inspected. “It’s a little early in the day, but how about you walk with me to Pennock’s and we’ll see if he has any ice cream with your name on it.”

“He does!” Jemmy nodded expectantly. “With blueberries!”

“We’re in luck, then,” I said, closing the door.

Jemmy climbed on one of the weathered gray chairs spread over Pennock’s porch and relished his bowl of ice cream, immersed with the anticipated blueberries Sam had brought up from town, “special”, only the day before.

I stood on the porch step, coffee mug in hand, and skimmed the day old newspaper, distracted not only by my purpose to speak with Aaron, but with the recent inspection by the sheriff. I folded the paper in half and tossed it on the nearby table, where the old men played checkers from time to time.

“Jemmy,” I informed the boy, gingerly swallowing a good sip of the hot coffee, “I’ve got to go see Aaron Westmore now.”

“Look, Grammy Nana,” Jemmy declared excitedly, “ice cream with blueberries!”

I turned to view the staid Grammy Nana, ascending the porch steps, carrying her customary basket of yarns and threads. I sensed a slight note of disapproval over the indulgence, but she nodded politely, despite any opinion I suspected she held either for the ice cream or, for myself.

“And look, Grammy Nana,” Jemmy added with equal verve, “Yankee Doctor’s come down from Possum’s.” The old woman rumored to hold the power of cursing another, eyed me with what I imagined a critical assessment. She took my hand wordlessly and turned the wrist, trailing the pads of her tissue thin fingertips across the thin cotton fabric wrapped around the stitched wound. A knowing smile formed at the corner of her mouth.

Agitated, I withdrew my hand.

“You must forgive me,” I informed her rather glumly. “It’s been a pleasure to see you again. I’m going over to visit with Aaron Westmore and I really must be off.”

“Yonder,” she motioned, with a nod, “at the church.”

The old woman had never spoken in my presence before, and I was mildly astonished she suddenly deigned to do so at all.

“Thanks,” I responded, and stepped quickly from the porch.

Jemmy waved his spoon. “See ya, Yankee Doctor!”

“Enjoy your blueberries, Jemmy,” I replied, waving a good day, with some trepidation, at Grammy Nana, who nodded solemnly in return.

When I reached the side door of the renovated church, I realized the encounter with Jemmy’s grandmother only compounded the events over the past several days. I was turning into a stranger of my former self; a mindless negative of a man who would not have entertained, much less participated in, the dark dramas he came to allow.

Although the main sanctuary of the white washed church had been renovated, the original side corridor had scarcely been touched. The hints of sunlight against the water stained drywall and dulled wainscoting, betrayed years of impoverished neglect.

“Aaron?” I called out.

“Down here,” came a reply from the far end of the hallway.

Relieved to know my efforts had not been in vain, despite the old woman’s assurance, I found Aaron Westmore in a small office, constructed out of what appeared to have been a storage area at one time.

“Hey,” Aaron greeted from the threshold of a room compacted with bookshelves and the general oddities one collects over time. A wooden desk, far too cumbersome for the space it filled, stood below a dulling glass window, adorned with a potted red geranium centered on the sill.

Aaron reached out his hand and squeezed my arm affectionately.

“I’ll spill my coffee,” I quipped, “you get too friendly.”

Aaron snorted and slapped my back shoulder blade. “Damn, it’s good to see you. Come in, come in. Sit down, sit down.

I slipped onto the tattered, vinyl chair he indicated and noted the telltale odor of stale tobacco smoke.

“Cozy little room, here,” I remarked, surveying the books, mostly educational, mostly dusty, set along the shelves.

“Stuffy, though,” he replied, “don’t you think?”

“A bit,” I admitted. “But nice. Practical.”

“Warm your coffee?” he offered.

“You’ve got some electrical going, then?” I inquired.

“A small generator,” he confessed. “Pennock’s is still the only building with power.”

Aaron topped off my coffee mug and poured a cup for himself. He took a seat behind the massive wood desk and pulled a bottle of rum from the drawer. He unscrewed the top and wordlessly offered a taste. I declined with a brief wave of my hand.

“A little early, isn’t it?” I asked mindfully. That he held a proclivity to overindulge, I held little doubt, given the episode in town, but I was surprised to find him so artless at this hour of the morning.

Aaron shrugged and measured a precise drop of the liquor into his coffee. “The Captain and I have become quite good friends.” He replaced the cap and exhaled a satisfied breath. “What about you, then?” he asked. He lit a Marlboro cigarette like a choirboy stealing a smoke in the back boiler room, snapping the butane lighter shut with a practiced click. “How are you getting along…up there…with Ana?”

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly.

“You don’t know?” he asked. “I don’t understand…”

“Understand what I’m telling you,” I interjected. “I don’t know. One minute I can’t envision a life without that woman and, in the next, I wish I’d never seen her face.” I set the mug on the desktop and stood up, turning toward the clusters of books and ledgers stuffing the wall shelves. I rubbed my brow anxiously. “And I think I may be having some sort of psychotic breakdown.”

“Hell, Broughton,” Aaron responded, with some alarm. “What’s going on?”

“She’s like an addiction,” I replied. “Something so damn dark, you fear it could really kill you, but yet you want it, and want it real bad.” I exhaled a tremulous breath. “Funny, the wretched Fitch…” I began, in haunting reflection, but erased the uncanny accusation from my mind. “I say to myself, this is all some lucid dream I’m having,” I continued. “That she, that this place, all of it, doesn’t exist except in some fractured zone I’ve made up in my own head. I convince myself she’s a master illusionist, and then I think this is no bullshit smoke and mirror thing; this is actually occurring.”

“What is exactly occurring?” asked Aaron seriously.

I flailed my arm in a bleak gesture of sorting the static in my own head and sank down heavily in the vinyl chair. “I’m losing the sense of recognition: of the world, of logic, of who I am. As much as I want her, the desire feels perverse. As much as I am intrigued by the whole enigma of her existence, I am equally abhorred by my attraction to it. If I feel myself satiated, she proves me insatiable.

“If I have the slightest grasp, she poses yet another riddle. If I think I retain my conviction, she weakens my resolve. My God, Aaron, I watched her cut my wrist like a masochistic slog in some grotesque melodrama, and took her to bed an hour later.”

I held out my arm and unwrapped the bruised evidence of my mortal corruption. Aaron reached over and took hold of my wrist, examining the stitched injury carefully.

“God damn…” he whispered; astounded, I supposed, either by the very act of it or by my apparent compliance. “You just let her do this?”

I bent my elbow and studied the damage. “It happened so fast. I was so damn...confused, maybe. I didn’t react as I might have granted a different circumstance.”

I traced my fingers lightly over the closed wound, distracted, for a moment, by what I was not telling him as much as by what I was.

“You’re saying she just lunged out and cut you?” asked Aaron. “Do you think she’s insane?”

“Insanity may be the least complication,” I told him in earnest. “She leaned over from behind and slashed the skin with her fingernail. As shocked as I was, I had enough presence of mind to consider she might cut through the artery, if I made an unexpected move.”

Strange, how a man will admit to one thing and not the other. That I also engaged in drinking the tainted wine of this cryptic bloodletting ritual, I conveniently omitted. That Ana Lagori was the possessor of the most profoundly arcane book of physic the world could possibly imagine; that having been shown its existence; indeed, experienced its magnitude enough to place my mortality in her debt, I could never confess to him or any other.

I swept my hand across my brow, suddenly conscious of an anxious perspiration along the hairline.

Aaron extracted the bottle of rum from the drawer once again and adroitly unscrewed the cap. Pouring the liquid in his coffee cup, he noted rather dryly: “And you question why I drink so early in the day, although I will admit I never considered the extent of her…shall we say, disposition?”

“I’m hardly one to judge,” I confessed reflectively.

“No?” he responded curiously, as though he thought it only reasonable that one might hold an opposing opinion over his vice.

“I arrived at this place with six months worth of pharmaceuticals,” I confided, “for a simple eight week sabbatical. Up until nearly three weeks ago, I took enough tranquilizers in the course of a single day to knock out a horse…everyday…for years. The only reason I could stand straight was due to a slow buildup of resistance over time, and enough caffeine to piss out half the effects. You must have suspected it.”

“I did suspect something like it,” Aaron admitted. “What happened three weeks ago?”

I sank back against the chair. “She took it away. What would take six weeks in some miserable institution, took her less than three days. No withdrawal. No fits. Gone. Simply, gone.”

“Damn,” Aaron breathed, swallowing a good portion of the rum-laced coffee in his cup.

“Damn, yes,” I agreed, “but at the end of the day, all I’ve succeeded in doing is exchanging one subjugation for another. Ana Lagori, herself, is a narcotic.”

“Have you considered,” returned Aaron, “just walking away?”

I released a pent up breath and shifted my leg over the arm of the chair. “Up until very recently, I was determined to do just that. Now, it’s become too…intricate.”

Aaron gazed meditatively into the sallow haze of tobacco smoke and floating dust particles settling over the cluttered corners of the office room.

“Because of affection,” he concluded finally.

“Affection,” I replied, “passion, desire, need. All of the poetics are there, Aaron, but the underlying composition of the whole experience feels dark and repressed. God as my witness, I really do believe I love this woman, but the deeper I go, the more complex things become. I feel my way through the hours of the day, like some phantom, directed only by an invisible force. I experience, I am aware, but that is all. No yesterday. No tomorrow. At night, I sleep the sleep of the dead. This morning, the simple decision to come here and speak with you has been the first assurance I’ve had of some separation of will.”

“What will you do now?” asked Aaron, sucking in a dense cloud of cigarette smoke. His expression was contemplative, disturbed somehow. I couldn’t fault him. I had made my confession as desperate sinner to priest, if only in part, and the reasons for seeking him out as a confidante to the complexities of my relationship with Ana Lagori fell away as I realized, perhaps, what I actually sought was redemption.

“Go back,” I replied solemnly. “Pray she doesn’t slit my throat while I sleep.” I tapped the red pack of Marlboros on the desk. “Mind if I take one of these?”

“Help yourself,” Aaron offered, sliding the pack closer.

I lit the filtered cylinder and slid the butane lighter back across the desk. Stifling the initial light-headed fog on the first inhalation, I again swung my leg over the arm of the chair. “I’ve asked myself,” I remarked contemplatively, “on several occasions, actually, out of all the romantic interludes I have known, where will Ana fit? Where will I fit?”

“And what did you answer?” asked Aaron.

“I have no idea,” I replied honestly.

“No,” agreed Aaron,“I wouldn't have any idea either.”

After several moments of private reflection, I asked: “Do you know any reason why the sheriff would be here looking around?”

“He came up a few days ago,” Aaron answered. “But he does that sometimes. Why?”

“No reason,” I replied. “Jemmy Isaak had it in his head I was dead, though.”

“Odd,” said Aaron.

“I thought it was odd, too,” I concurred. "Although, I'm certain old Fitch would be delighted, were it true."

Aaron sat back, laughed and blew smoke rings in the air. “The summer solstice is two days away.”

“Ana did mention it,” I replied, inhaling a final breath of nicotine before crushing the stained filter in the over-filled ashtray.

“Women seem to put greater stock in such things,” said Aaron. He swallowed a rather significant mouthful of the rum and coffee blend, his expression unreadable. “Women and old country folk.”





~*~