The Honey Witch

Chapter VIII





I spent the following three days in what I imagined to be an unspoken truce with Ana Lagori, gathering bloodroot from the damp bogs near the creek and piling moss in my arms, which she lifted in pallets from rotting logs on the hillside. I marvelled when she charmed the honeycomb from the bees, and cut the early thistle and greening nettle without a slip in rhythm. She shared hidden places where the ginseng waited seven years for harvest, and inspected the first clusters of herbs that would be harvested come late summer and early autumn: the mullein, the wild bergamot, the second year burdock.

She evaded discussion beyond her purpose, but one morning while gathering spring strawberries, I was compelled to delve more deeply:

“What is it with this Reverend Fitch?”

“Fool,” she replied tersely.

“What happened with Clem and Merilee’s child?”

“Cured.”

“Do you know anything about the snake incident in 1935?" I asked. "Any story which may have been handed down regarding a hiker bit by a venomous snake?”

"Your grandfather."

"Yes."

“Spared down by the Cutler, so you say.”

“Do you have any knowledge about a local antidote which may have actually spared him?"

“Knowledge is as knowledge does.”

“I see," I replied. "I’ll put it this way, then: Do you have any knowledge of a plant known as blue poke?”

“Do you?”

“Not specifically, no.”

“No?”

“No.”

“It seems I have forgotten my knife, Ethan Broughton," Ana stated. "I need some lichen cut from that old Ash over there.”

I bloodied my index finger with my own penknife while scraping her lichen from the bark, and she pressed her lips against the oozing cut.

“You’re not going to tell me, are you?” I remarked, while she salved the minor injury with the juice of a wild strawberry and deftly utilized a sticky spider’s web as a bandage.

“I told you once before: you forget to understand the question in seeking your answer.”

“By this you mean what…exactly?”

“How can a man ask a question by day when he is fearful of the night?”

“And you think I am fearful of the night?”

“We are not through picking berries.”

And when the evenings came, we parted at the oaks bordering her homestead. I returned, without answers, to the quiet of the rented cabin, notebooks, games of chess with Aaron Westmore and an increasing number of tranquilizers each night.

On a morning of steady precipitation, I was awakened from a particularly buried sleep by the sound of scratching against the windowpane next to my bed.

Reverend Fitch stood sullenly on the other side of the glass, the rim of his hat drooping like a tattered awning beneath the torrent of rainwater.

A sense of morbid curiosity compelled a motivation to actually open the window and face the grizzly parson, who gripped the lapel of his drenched coat with quaking hands. The old black Labrador sat wet and shivering at his booted feet.

“Yes?” I inquired bleakly. “What is it?”

“I know ‘bout the plant what grows yonder in those woods,” said Fitch. “I can take you there.”

Suspicious, I asked as to which plant he referred.

“Blue poke,” he returned plainly. He nodded toward the forested hillside. “Up there. I know where it grows.”

I felt a rush of anticipation, despite the chemical fog swirling in my head. “Go to the front,” I instructed. I dressed sluggishly and opened the door to the waiting Fitch and his dog. “Come in. Bring the dog, too. It’s all right. Come in.” I pulled out a chair from the table. Fitch sat down and I reached for the khaki army surplus jacket carelessly slung over the opposite chair. “I need to get some coffee. Can I bring you some?”

“If it’d be no trouble,” he said, “that’d be right Christian.”

I told him to dry off and I’d return in ten minutes. I purchased a half a dozen plain doughnuts, which I stuffed in a sack underneath my jacket, and two mugs of steaming coffee that Mrs. Pennock covered with aluminum foil. I found Fitch and his dog in the same position I had left them in. I split the bag of pastry between the three of us.

“Right Christian of you, sir,” repeated Fitch, raising the mug in a toast of gratitude. He then warmed his hands over the humid vapor rising from the hot liquid.

“Ok, now,” I said, pulling around a chair and straddling it from behind, “what do you have to tell me about the plant and why?”

Fitch leaned closer and in a conspiratorial tone, said: “I know where it grows.”

“And how do you know?” I asked.

“I know,” he assured me. “I seen.”

“How do you know it‘s the plant I’m interested in?” I questioned.

“Blue poke,” said Fitch, “only grows in the hollow of dead oaks. I seen the witches gather it for years up there in the hills.”

I remained skeptical. “What witches,” I stated rather plaintively. I thought about Jesse Lee Isaak’s description. At the time, I assessed it to be only a local term with no real meaning, and certainly not one he literally believed. Now, I wasn’t quite certain.

“The same ones that’ve been livin’ up in these hills since before the State’s War,” he stated, as though I already ought to know. I thought deeper into Jesse Lee’s remarks. Things were not as they seemed, as I suspected many times since the beginning, and I did not wish to misjudge any obscurities rising to the surface now.

Still guarded, I said: “So, you’ve seen these witches, as you call them, gather this blue poke from the dead oaks. How do you know it is, in fact, the blue poke and not some other plant?”

“I know,” he stated soberly and held up his hand where I could clearly see a deep scar across the palm. “I cut this here on an ax blade.”

I took his hand and examined the jagged mark. I guessed it to be several years old.

“I seen the old granny right on down to the witch, Ana, take from the stumps, and from the dead roots below,” Fitch went on to say. “When I cut this here hand up in those woods, I ran to them hollow oaks and squeezed the flowers of the poke, and this purple blood comes out like a snot. I rubbed it on the cut, over and over, and the bleeding stops and gets all gummy. I stitched it up with a needle and fish wire.”

I could clearly see he told the truth as he knew it. The wound had clearly been stitched with a primitive skill.

“So, you’re saying the bleeding stopped long enough for you to stitch this without cauterizing it?” I asked.

“Yep,” he said. “And it stayed stopped. So, you want me to show you now?”

I released his hand. “Why? Why do you want to show me? Aren’t you a bit concerned over what your witch might do?”

“I ain’t afraid of no Evangeline,” he stated brusquely, taking a long, continuous gulp of his coffee. He then nodded his head toward the door. “I’ll show you where it grows.”

I sat back. I had to think. Any possible agenda must be weighed. This was a man who threatened to spill my intestines on the dirt, but that he held some vendetta against Ana Lagori, there was little doubt.

“I ain’t gonna kill you, if that’s your fear,” he said.

Perhaps I was far too inquisitive and perhaps old Fitch would spill my guts for it, but I agreed to follow the deposed reverend into the forest and see for myself if the plant, this fabled blue poke, should actually exit.

The rain tapered to a steady mist the deeper the old man and I hiked under the leafy, damp umbrella of thick forest. I judged a good mile or more had been passed before reaching a moist, foggy clearing. Fitch walked up to the brittle column of decaying bark at the center of the grassy expanse.

He slapped the tall, hollowed out stump and gripped the dried, scarred surface.

“This here’s one,” he declared.

With a curious pressure of an almost ominous apprehension, I stepped closer and inspected the wide split in the dead wood Fitch stood beside. I parted a stringy, dank moss that curtained the interior cavern and discovered a cluster of exotic botanical, choked with striking cerulean florets, each resembling the bloom of the wild lady slipper.

The plant appeared to absorb nutrients from the wet moss growing inside the decomposing trunk. The thick, twisting stem was sectioned and spongy, with an orchid-like leaf structure. At the rotting floor of the stump, the young plants grew in patches, the infant pods immature. On closer inspection, I could see how the stem climbed its way through the cavity of the tree’s remains, attaching itself to the wet moss draping the inside wall. An obvious shade dweller, the plant seemed parasitic in nature. I snapped off a piece of the slightly sweet scented bloom. Breaking a portion of stem, I found the juice contrastingly glandular in odor.

With a nagging sense of trespass, I pulled a penknife from my pocket. I scraped the base of the vine, exposing a root attached to the decaying womb of the brittle, corrupted wood beneath the loose layer of moss.

Fitch looked on expectantly as I squeezed the blue sack of the flower, releasing a purplish adhesive over my fingertips.

“That nectar sticks the wound together,” Fitch pointed excitedly. “The devil’s poke, sure as your born.”

“Why devil?” I inquired with some distraction, examining the gummy substance closely. The odor emanating from the brief dissection was nauseating.

“Only the witches know of it, that’s why,” explained Fitch. “Else, why don’t nobody else know of it?” He grimaced. “Stinks, don’t it.”

“It’s nothing to do with any devil,” I replied incisively. “It’s just a plant...although a remarkable one.”

The liquid had begun a transformation, adhering to the skin and forming a warm bonding matter.

“No, sir,” Fitch argued vehemently, “it be the devil’s elixir. I followed them witches up here when the granny and mother was still alive. They collect it when the moon is full!”

“Better to see, I imagine,” I noted offhand, slicing a thin sliver of flesh from my thumb. I pressed the liquid onto the cut.

Fitch hovered closer. “Say, whatcha doin’ there, Yank?”

The liquid adhered to the surface wound and clotted the blood flow, with only a minimal amount of stinging discomfort.

“See?” said Fitch, bobbing his head like some child’s toy run amok. “What’d I tell ya? The devil’s poke!”

I withdrew one of several small plastic bags, with snap enclosures, routinely kept in the inside pocket of my jacket.

“Hardly,” I replied, “there’s a substance quite similar found in a South American tree. In Peru, actually.”

“There is?” Fitch asked curiously.

“Yes,” I said, placing the specimen carefully in the transparent bag and snapping it shut.

“The devil, he do work in mysterious ways,” Fitch’s concluded, shaking his head.

“Like God?” I asked negligently.

“Sure do,” he returned.

With a weary sigh, I rolled the plastic bag into a cylinder and stuffed it inside my jacket pocket.

“Now, you don’t know nothin’ ‘bout this,” warned Fitch. “Nothin’, ya hear?”

“And if Ana finds we’ve been here?” I asked, only half-curious as to the reply. I examined the area with one final overview.

Fitch shook his head. “Ain’t no way. Janie Connor went into her pains this mornin’. She’s with her.”

I smiled vaguely, feeling numb from the damp and distracted by an inexplicable sense of urgency. What I needed, was a lab technician; what I had, was a monomaniac in the middle of a wet, and covert, forest glade.

“I’m not going to tell anybody,” I assured him wearily.

“Ya got to do somethin’ for me now, Yank” he said.

I took the bag out of my pocket and inspected the contents once more under the muted gray light. “And what might that be, I wonder?”

“Ya got to get off the mountain,” he replied. “Ya got the poke, now ya got to leave.”

I glanced at him rather impatiently. “I need to find out one more thing,” I said, replacing the bag in my pocket. “There remains the question of my grandfather’s recovery here, over sixty years ago. I know you people like to hand down your stories. I know Ana has some idea. Even better, Jemmy Isaak’s grandmother. She just might be old enough to remember.”

“Who else knows the way of the devil’s medicine?” Fitch ground out. “It was the Evangeline! The old woman will tell you the same. You seen it now for yourself. Leave, if you want to go on living!”

The man now had my complete attention.

“What are you saying?”

Fitch’s expression distorted in something akin to agony. “Don’t you see? As long as you stay on this hill, the devil’s work won’t end! None of his work will end!”

I grasped his arm. “What won’t end? What are you talking about?”

“All of it!” he cried, flailing his free arm. “Here be only the work of the devil! They need new blood. Your granddaddy’s life weren’t spared without givin’ somethin’ back!”

“What do you know, old man?” I asked, shaking his arm.

“Nothin’ is given for nothin’!” he shouted, his breathing erratic. “Your granddaddy was a stranger up in these hills. He could’ve lived or died, for all anyone gave a lick about some Yank fool enough not t’look where he was steppin’. He promised the witch something!”

I released his arm with a jerk. “How do we get out of here?”

“Through them trees,” he said, rubbing his arm fitfully. “You're not goin’ t’say nothin’ are ya? About the blue poke? You can’t say nothin’. You got even more to lose than I do.”

I turned to him, exasperated. “What do I lose?”

“She’ll snap your neck if she finds out,” Fitch warned. “Oh, she might wait awhile t’keep lookin’ at that handsome Yankee face of yours, but she’ll gitcha when you ain’t lookin’ for it. That’s the way of the Evangeline. Real quiet like.”

My patience depleted, I turned away and started walking in the direction he pointed toward.

Fitch gripped the back of my jacket. “Take a look, then, “ he begged, tugging the soggy sleeve. “Take a look, if ya think I talk crazy.”

I sighed miserably and followed the old man to a clump of brush. If there was to be any hope of not losing the return route, I’d best humor him.

“There,” Fitch pointed, parting the tangled branches. “That one found the blue poke and never lived to tell of it.”

I looked on him dubiously, but peered through the brush as instructed.

“Jesus Christ!”

Transfixed, I stared at the mossy contour of skeletal remains, partially submerged into the rot of sodden earth. The skull, undoubtedly human, was utterly twisted from the spinal chord; its’ gaping jaw frozen in some moment of sudden and horrific shock.

"This here was before my time,"said Fitch, "but I know it was the works of the Evangeline. They'll kill as well as heal if any threaten their secret ways."

I leaned closer to inspect the bone remnants. I heard Fitch’s anxious swallow behind my back. Had it not been for the moss molding its’ shape, the skeleton might have been only another indistinguishable formation on the forest floor. I eyed the area closely. As the Reverend had observed, these bones had most likely lain here long before he ever discovered them. It was a marvel the frame was still intact, with a forest full of wild animals.

“Leave before it happens to you!” he pleaded.

I backed away. “We need to get out of here,” I said. I pressed my fingers to my brow until I lost feeling in my hand, trying to gather the implications of what I had just seen. With Fitch stumbling close behind, I walked swiftly to the edge of the trees where we had entered.

“I got the curse of Dulcy, y’see,” he said breathlessly, trying to keep stride with my accelerated steps through the tall ferns and sapling brush. The forest appeared darker than on our way up to the profane landmark, where the dead oak stood and the secret blue poke fed. The rain was beginning to intensify, spilling through the thick canopy of saturating leaves overhead. I kept an unfaltering pace.

“The dog’s curse, why not?” I stated impatiently. I turned to him, walking backwards. “Are we going in the right direction?” I turned again and walked forward even faster, pushing aside stray, wet branches that slapped against my face and no doubt Fitch’s directly behind me.

“You’ll come to the cross path,” he said, “about a quarter mile ahead.”

I could hear the dog panting at our heels and heard old Fitch’s strenuous breaths in his efforts to keep step.

“You gonna leave now you got the poke?” he asked.

“I might just do that,” I replied evenly.

“But you won’t say nothin’, right?” he asked again. I could hear the hopeful anguish behind his repeated plea.

“I have no intention to speak of it,” I said.

“Not about the bones neither, right?”

“No.”

“I’m gonna trust you, Yank,” he said, “’cuz it’s all I can do. We gotta trust each other, right?”

“It would appear so, yes.”

“Follow straight down that way,” Fitch instructed when at last we reached the cross path. Without further word, I followed the trail toward the Four Corners, too relieved by my sense of deliverance from Fitch’s hell to absorb the full impact of what was experienced back in that forest gap.

I stepped onto the sodden grass of the Four Corners hamlet, feeling baptized under the now forgiving rain. Toying with the idea of a blistering hot coffee from Pennock’s, I spotted Jemmy Isaak stomping through a puddle with his red rubber boots.

“What the…” I frowned. “Jemmy, what are you doing out here?”

Jemmy peered up through the steamed lens of his glasses. “Looking for magic turtles!” he replied excitedly. He heaved a congested cough and jabbed his stick deeper into the mud.

“Magic turtles, my ass,” I chided under my breath and swept the child up on my shoulder. “Come on, I’m taking you home.”

“The turtles,” he coughed. “I know they’re in the mud.”

“You can look for turtles when it stops raining,” I told him and carried him to his mother’s door. I spotted Coobie at the windowpane inside, tracing circles in the fogged glass as I handed over Jilly’s youngest.

“See ya later, Yankee Doctor!” Jemmy called from the threshold, just as his mother pulled him back by the collar and waved with a rather helpless smile.

***

Scrutinizing the plant clipping more closely under the lighted lamp inside my cabin, I reflected on the medicinal latex of the Croton lechleri tree in Peru, pondering that bonding substance against the specimen I now held in my possession. Was this unknown plant merely possessed of a similar binding agent? or did it hold something more? Did this plant hold the capacity to accelerate healing, as the Croton Lechleri did not? or did it merely hold an equal property in a more simple and rare form? Doubtless, a study would be significant. I pressed the plastic bag holding the plant clipping in the pocket flap of my field notebook.

The rain fell continuously beyond the door screen and every now and again, a distant clap of thunder rolled across the hills. In exposing his secret, Fitch condemned his willing accomplice to carry it with him. I refused to accept the old wretch's demons; however, the specter of human remains did not fail to affect my sense of mortal well being. I set my scientific rationalization on the greater purpose, and spent the afternoon on the dry side of Pennock’s storefront window, engaged in yet another game of chess with Aaron Westmore.

In the early evening, I shut out the ghosts of Fitch and his witches with the consumption of five tranquilizers. Beyond the glass of the bedside window, the ripening moon, between dissolving clouds, silhouetted the room with spectral shades that accused of being one ataractic away from too many. I fell into a cadaverous sleep...the misty green clearing, the blue poke clinging and the twisted neck of the moss draped bones, the last conscious visions in my mind.

At precisely two-thirty in the morning, according to the travel clock on the bedside table, the pounding between the inside of my skull and the cabin door startled me into consciousness once again.





~*~