The Honey Witch

Chapter II





A slow-moving cloud passed over the crescent moon and a single flash of heat lightning lit the forest trees. I sat up in bed with a jolt. For a fleeting moment, I imagined that earlier opossum now looming on the elm branch outside the window, still staring intently through those fathomless eyes. With another flash of muted electricity, the creature disappeared. In a moment of singular unease, I shut the window and closed the faded curtains.

I awoke at mid-morning to feel the sun’s solid warmth through the thin cotton drapery, and to cringe at the ceaseless cacophony of nearby wrens.

“Hey you, Yankee Doctor!” summoned a small voice from just beyond the glass frame. I reached over and raised the window, squinting at the full onslaught of light beaming through the screen-less opening. I soon focused on Jemmy Isaak, the boy with the perennial smile and slightly magnified eyes behind the lenses of gray wire-rim glasses. Jemmy took hold of the windowsill, jumping repeatedly up and down in an abortive effort to hoist himself on the ledge.

“Whatcha doin’, Yankee Doctor?” asked Jemmy. “I had toast with jam. Grammy Nana made it from the strawberry patch before we was even out of bed. You want some?”

“Perhaps another time, Jemmy,” I told him. “But I would like coffee. Why don’t I meet you out front?”

“Ok, Yankee Doctor,” Jemmy agreed. I could hear the child’s scurrying footsteps, against the tangled brush, along the base of the outside wall.

I pulled on a pair of loose khakis and emptied a pitcher of cool water into a bowl. While I pondered the length of battery power left in the shaver, Jemmy Isaak waited dutifully outside on the front step, softly humming to himself and greeting the intermittent passerby with a piercing, "Good Morning!" When I opened the front door, buttoning my shirt, Jemmy jumped to his feet.

“Good morning!” the boy chirped. “Whatcha doin’ today? You walk with Jesus? Grammy Nana wants to know. Where ya gonna go? You goin’ up to the woods? You gonna see Possum Witch?”

Though still slightly unfocused, I was nevertheless stunned. “Possum Witch?”

“Yeah,” said Jemmy. “That’s what I call her leastways. Grammy Nana too. Possum said I could.”

“That’s nice, Jemmy,” I returned sluggishly. “You want to walk to Pennock’s with me? I need that coffee.”

Jemmy smiled broadly and trotted alongside. A child of eight, he was notably thin-boned, with a sandy mop of home cut hair.

“Do you know what she calls me?” asked Jemmy.

“Who?” Both Jemmy’s chattering enthusiasm and the curious declaration of "Possum Witch," without sufficient caffeine, were too much to decipher.

“Possum Witch!” Jemmy exclaimed.

“What does she call you, then, Jemmy?"

“Mud poke.”

“Mud poke?”

“It’s a magical boy,” Jemmy instructed. “I’m a magical boy.”

“I see,” I replied.

"Were you a mud poke when you was a boy, Yankee Doctor?" asked Jemmy quite seriously.

“You can call me Ethan, if you’d like,” I smiled drowsily. “But no, I wasn’t a magical boy.”

“Too bad,” said Jemmy. He seemed to consider this for a moment and then asked: “Did you ever meet a mud poke before you met me?”

“I must say you are the first mud poke I’ve ever come across, Jemmy,” I confessed.

***

“Would you like a doughnut to go with that coffee, Dr. Broughton?” inquired the lanky Sam Pennock, from behind the counter inside his sorely outdated mercantile. “Made fresh by the wife this morning.”

“I’ll take two,” I replied, handing one to Jemmy, who accepted with a grinning: “Thanks, Yankee Doctor!”

I thumbed through the stack of days old newspapers set next to the register, and absently slid the coffee and pastry money across the dull linoleum of the counter-top.

“Any recent papers in, Mr. Pennock?”

“Not too many folks read the paper hereabouts,” said Sam. “Except Westmore. He does. I can send someone down the mountain, if you like.”

I set an extra quarter on the counter. “I’ll take an old one. I might find something I missed.”

At the door, Jemmy confronted a strawberry blond woman pushing a child's antique wicker carriage. I had seen the young woman before, but only at a distance, and idly noted how quietly removed she and her carriage seemed to be.

“Good morning, Miss Clara,” bleated Jemmy as the dusty bell over the door rattled. “How’s Miss Molly Lynn this morning?”

“Just real fine, Jemmy Joseph,” smiled Clara softly. She straightened the ruffled bonnet, attentively, on the doll inside the fraying carriage. The doll, introduced as Molly Lynn, was immaculately clothed in a bright satin dress. Skillfully manicured curls framed a porcelain face, scrubbed so clean the flesh tone paint was slowly wearing away.

“And who’s your pretty friend, Jemmy Joseph?” she asked, her eyes brightly curious, her complexion clear. I noted her hair was swept back and tied with a blue ribbon. The dress she wore was a plain floral cotton print and straight out of Depression era fashion, which didn’t seem unusual for most of the community’s women.

“This here is the Yankee Doctor,” said Jemmy. “The one I told you and Miss Molly Lynn about. The one who came to see Possum.”

“Ethan Broughton,” I clarified, extending my hand. I noted how frail and cool her hand felt against my own. Through the deceiving brightness in her pale blue eyes, one could not immediately detect some disconnected place in her mind.

“Ever so pleased to meet you, Mr. Ethan,” replied Clara. “You must come and visit one of these warm afternoons, for some minty iced tea. I make a real fine rhubarb pie.”

“The best,” echoed Sam Pennock, washing out a cup.

“Yes, I’ll have to do that,” I agreed, holding the door, “thank you.” I stepped outside to the weather-worn porch and sat on the steps with the week old newspaper and well-brewed mug of Pennock’s coffee.

Jemmy Isaak balanced himself against the porch railing and peered over my shoulders.

“Will you read me the funnies?”

“Which one?” I inquired.

“Charlie Brown and Lucy!” returned Jemmy.

“Well, let’s see what we have, then.” I turned the pages. Even having read last week’s news, I hadn’t read the comic strips. Then again, I rarely did. “Ah, here we have it,” I said, sipping the coffee intermittently, as I narrated the gang's anecdote of the day.

“Jemmy,” I finally inquired, my thoughts clearing with the rush of caffeine, “why do you call the woman in the woods, Possum?”

“’Cuz she looks like a possum!” replied Jemmy brightly. He swung himself around the top of the railing when Clara stepped outside the mercantile door. She shyly refused any assistance offered and set the buggy gently on the ground, straightening the ruffles on the bonnet as she had when she arrived. I noticed the doll now held a penny lollipop in it’s molded hands.

“You remember that rhubarb pie now, Mr. Ethan,” Clara reminded in departing, “and that cooling mint tea as well. It gets plenty warm up in these hills in the middle of the day.”

I nodded appreciatively and, with a sad note of curiosity, watched as she dreamily walked away; pushing the carriage with the inanimate Molly Lynn tucked safely within.

I finished the last of the coffee and turned to retrieve another mug from inside, when Jemmy suddenly asked: “Yankee Doctor?”

“Yes, Jemmy?”

“What’s it mean to be crazy?”

“It means someone is not quite right.”

“Like Miss Clara?”

“Possibly.”

“If you’re crazy,” said Jemmy reflectively, “I don’t know as Possum can help you.”

“I don’t know if she can either,” I replied and went inside for a second mug of Pennock’s exceedingly strong black coffee.

By mid-afternoon, I swung the strap of my canvas bag over my shoulder and walked up the well-worn footpath, to make my introduction to the woman little Jemmy Isaak had so blithely referred to as Possum Witch.





~*~