The Elixir

Of all the tasks her new sister-in-law, Ell, had assigned, the eggshells were the most difficult. The hens laid eggs with thin brown shells with a greenish cast. Annie suggested the fatty mash her mother had favored, stove drippings in the feed, nothing that would cost anything, to thicken the shells. And her sister-in-law said she appreciated the ingenuity. She supposed that’s what came from living wherever Annie had been for so long, but on the farm there was a different kind of thinking now and if she watched and listened long enough she’d learn.

One thing Annie understood immediately was that her presence strained the economy of the household. But what else could Ben do but take her in? She heard her brother out in the yard near the pipe pergola he was constructing telling Ell once more that he couldn’t have made a different choice. They were speaking outside for a private conversation because Ben was mostly deaf, but he still had a bit of hearing in the left ear. So Ell stood there shouting close to his face though her tone was practical and considerate. She’d give Annie two months past her delivery, then she would need to find work or another home. Ell was being generous, Annie thought, and she was grateful for the kindness.

Still the eggshells stuck to the sink and mingled with the oatmeal scraps in the trap and made a glue, and she’d used up the paper towel roll chasing it all out. When Ell came into the kitchen and saw her clutching the cardboard tube, she sighed and said, I’ll take that. It’s useful. And Annie understood. She herself was not.

Annie left the kitchen and wandered out toward Ben. She knew not to disturb his work, but she floated near him and caught his eye and he smiled at her with such sweetness it slowed her steps. Some thought that Ben was backward in his mind, and she supposed in some measure it was true. He’d gone to special schools when they were growing up and then no school at all. By the time Annie was in kindergarten, Ben was learning, slowly, what he could do on the farm. Their father never beat him, which was an exception in the household.

Now their father was a stump of his old self. He’d fallen under the tractor in ’42 right after Annie left home. Lost the use of one leg and one arm and half his wits to boot, their mother wrote. It mowed the temper right out him, said their mother in a letter begging Annie to come home and try again. And then she died. As if relaxing the need to evade her husband after all that time had stilled her heart. Annie came home for the funeral and then disappeared for good. Gypsy girl, said Ben when she turned up again all these years later. He was so happy to see her. She knew that.

Ell and Annie had already brought their father his breakfast. After the wedding, Ell had the old chicken coop fitted out with a bathroom, flush toilet included, and a wood-burning stove. A rocking chair porch right off the new front door, like it had always been a little tiny house. She spared no expense, she’d told Annie. And their father seemed to like it. He had his big brass bed under the eaves. And a television next to the wood stove. He sat in the easy chair that had been reupholstered in something that could be scrubbed clean, because even with his usable arm he was a sloppy eater. He liked to sit in his easy chair and eat the hot donuts Ell made and watch her bend and stretch pulling the sheets up on his bed, tucking them in. She sniffed and gave him a knowing look over her shoulder, and he smiled and then turned to Annie, like she was the snake in their happy grass, and said, Who in hell? Who in their right mind?

And Ell said, Now Papa, using her special voice, the soothing voice that Ben would never hear. She’s company. You be sweet to our wandering gal.

Ell needed to make the point, Annie understood. She didn’t want Annie getting any thoughts in her head about family and letting her baby grow up here.

On most mornings, Annie would collect the eggs, help make the breakfast, then Ell would carry a tray out to their father, come back after a half hour or so, and supervise the important cleaning of the kitchen. So much happened here now: the sausage making and the jams and jellies, the putting up of vegetables. And Ell was a bit of a self-made apothecary. She’d invented an elixir that cured a list of ailments. She brewed it in the basement, away from prying eyes. But up in the kitchen the jars were boiled and sealed. Every day, jars were boxed and stacked. The first Saturday of the month, she’d set up a stand by the post office and after an hour, all her goods were sold.

Annie knew just from the smell the central part of Ell’s secret recipe was the grain alcohol naturally needed to preserve the herbs and barks. That it was an elixir for those suffering from rheumatism, migraine, women’s troubles, rabies, dropsy, and heart, for starters, any manner of skin rash or chest congestion, marital problems or blood ailments, and that its medicinal value trumped even for those who had taken the pledge explained some of its popularity. The town doctor didn’t care. Nothing but a bit of old parsley and pine bark, he said. That’s my guess. No harm done and quite possibly some good. And Ell took that to be an endorsement. That most of her customers spent Saturday afternoons half-conscious was considered part of the cure.

Annie was five months gone when she arrived at the farm and seven and a half when she started to feel the fluttering pain down low in her belly. It was like something hot and vicious was threading itself through a big vein that traveled from just under her heart to the place where the baby nestled so quiet now. She waited for the tossing and turning that would come. She kept to herself about the needle of pain until one day she was carrying a tray of jars and nearly fell over, shocked by the sting within her.

Put them down. Right now, said Ell. Loud and practical like she was speaking to Ben. Now sit yourself there, and she pointed to the chair by the door. A gathering spot for things going outside. Clear those tools, she said. Sit down so I can see you.

Well, you’re nearly blue, said Ell. Look at me. Look me right in the eye.

Annie glanced up, but she was tracking the slithering pain inside. She knew from town gossip that Ell had tried three times to have a baby and each pregnancy had ended abruptly. This was understood as Ben’s deficit. A magnificent woman, said the doctor. A cruel irony, he said, and most agreed, though thought he was being a bit poetic. Others thought he was talking about Ell like she was a prize animal needlessly wasted. And now her predicament was considered historical and set. So she made remedies instead and ran an admirable farm with two men who scarcely made up one between them. That the seasonal hands were frightened of her was just as it should be. Can’t be too kind and keep things going if you’re a woman. Everyone takes advantage given the chance.

Annie tried to calm the baby deep inside as if the baby was upset by her pain, and maybe that was true. Hush now, she thought. Hi-dee-ho, and she didn’t really know she’d closed her eyes until Ell was saying in her loud Ben voice: Take a drink of this but drink it slow.

Annie looked at her. Ell’s face in the shadow in the kitchen that had once been her mother’s looked tender. Like she was ready, as her mother had always been, to nurse a problem away, no matter where it came from. The source isn’t my concern, said her mother. You are. So matter of fact. So good. That Annie had still run away and not even fifteen had caused her mother unnecessary heartache, she knew. But in every letter her mother wrote she began by saying: Sweet girl, I understand.

Ell was holding out a cup and saying in her loud patient voice: Don’t let this baby tell you what to do. Take a slow long sip, hold it in your mouth, then swallow. Then do it again.

Annie felt her mouth burning and the fumes like tar on a hot day soaking up into her brain and melting it. Ell kept the cup in front of her until it was drained, then she helped her by one arm, gently, as if Annie were their addled father, to the little storeroom off the kitchen she’d cleared out for Annie’s cot.

All afternoon and into the evening Annie’s body shivered and burned half-dreaming. At midnight she started giving birth and that woke her up.

Please, please, she cried out when she could speak. Call the doctor. But when Ell finally came, sad and slow, she said the doctor couldn’t be reached, but there was nothing to worry about. She’d be right back.

Annie tried not to shout out when the pain surged though only Ell could hear her. It was already curbing when Ell pulled up a stool beside her and offered more elixir.

Just water? said Annie. Please, please, I’m so thirsty.

This right here is all you need, said Ell, and in the dark room Annie saw kindness and took the cup.

When she woke up, the daylight filled the window but scarcely lit the room. There was an early spring rain, and Annie could hear Ell shouting to Ben in the kitchen about a double workload. He shouldn’t think for one minute this would be the situation for long. And Ben shouted that he understood all that. Annie had always been a good strong girl, and as soon as she was healed—

Don’t talk to me about healing, shouted Ell. And the baby mewed in a dresser drawer on the floor. Annie looked down and saw her son in full for the first time. His sealed eyes, his scalp bright red, as if only a moment ago he’d made his way from her. She bent down out of the bed and felt the shock of pain between her legs, a wet howl of pain, but she kept going, holding her breath until her hand could reach his mottled belly. Hi-dee-ho, she whispered. Hi-dee-ho. And she touched his perfect waxy skin.

Ell was right. It took a very long while for Annie to heal from what the doctor said after the fact had been a serious life-threatening situation of the womb. She still wasn’t out of danger. And the baby was named Roger for their father one day when Annie was sleeping. And when she awoke she couldn’t unstick it. The pastor had stopped in and that was that. Baby Roger was even slower to find his strength. Born early, said the doctor, and to a sickly mother at that.

Ell was eager to offer herself—despite the inconvenience­—­to feed baby Roger, to take him out into the fresh air and off to the chicken coop to visit his grandfather. She even took him swaddled in an egg basket and sat him on the sales table in front of the post office from the first Saturday morning after he was born. She wore a thick covering apron and a pleased open smile. When her customers peaked in at the tiny face poking out from his new crocheted baby cap and said, My, oh my, Ell sighed and nodded. And when asked his opinion of all this, the doctor shrugged and said something about God’s mysterious ways.

But when Ell moved baby Roger up to her room to sleep at night, Annie began to pine and falter. The doctor prescribed a strict diet of blood fortifiers, something to put some color in her cheeks. And Ell gave her the first-made sausages each week. And plenty of her elixir, which the doctor hadn’t commented on one way or the other.

Spring finally came in full. The wisteria bloomed outside Annie’s window and the lilac buds darkened before the burst. Her window was open to the possible breeze and she heard her father crying out, yelling curses. She sat up to try to catch the words.

Bastard, rat, weasel, freak, forked menace, creepy-crawling slug. Just a howling, hideous maw. Annie couldn’t find the sense. The kitchen was quiet, and she put on a robe and pulled herself upright to her feet. Slut. Scum. Demon filth. Why, the sweat from my cock could do better.

Baby Roger was nowhere in the kitchen and Annie was frightened. His dresser drawer with its little nest of blankets was on the chair by the door. Outside the farmyard went still.

There’d been talk in town about what might happen to the farm after the old man died. Though Ell was capable as a subsistence farmer she wasn’t an owner, and long ago, the old man had disinherited Ben on principle, and Annie never had any kind of standing. Everyone understood that. So the farm would revert to the town, and there were exciting things that could happen then on all that fertile land. Nearly everyone had a plan. Some smart planting techniques could be tried. New ways to increase production and cut out the usual pests. But best of all, a livestock-processing plant, erected on the stream, away from the town center, would keep all that work local and bring in a wider revenue base than ever before. The town would burst into its rightful rebirth and leave the ranks of the withering behind.

Now, listen, all this progress is inevitable, Ell said to the old man. We can be mowed right down, or we can take matters into our own hands and ride high.

She’d been saying this for a while on a regular basis. Sometimes she would sit on the mussed soured sheets and part her legs and talk about the mighty tax write-off of a meat plant and all the best cuts sure to land first on their table. And if the old man closed his eyes she’d whisper about the one thing that tractor never found, thank the good lord. And he would hop across the room, not bother with any crutch or cane and give her the business she was begging for before Ben or any other busybody came popping in to the chicken coop looking for wisdom or sympathy.

But now he said Ell was trying to trick him, calling the puling scrap of a baby his seed. I may be slow, and I may be lame, but I’m not Ben, and don’t think you can weasel me.

Now, Annie could hear her father call out for her to be his witness. She knew this sound in his voice. Her mother would always meet her halfway in the kitchen garden and say, Go slow, angel, and don’t say too much. God’s hand right there on your shoulder.

So she’d wind down her gait, lift one heavy foot after another until she was finally in the barn, poor Ben with his head trapped as usual between the stall boards and their father all tired out, saying, Give me your hand, gal. He’d grip her hard and wipe whatever mess was on his palm down the front of her dress like it was a bib she wore for him and his needs. Then he’d walk out of the barn, leaving the door open so she could see to jimmy Ben’s head out from between the timbers and help him back into his clothes.

He wasn’t born stupid, the doctor said. But he was brought up that way, and it amounts to the same thing. By the time he was five, he couldn’t hear the sound of his own name. Except when Annie said, Ben, honey, I’m going to untangle you now and when I do we’re going someplace nice. Usually to the creek to bathe. But when she was ready to leave for good, he didn’t want to go. She begged him, but he said he’d only weigh her down, and he gave her the money he stole for her bus fare.

Her first day home, she tucked it right back into his pocket. Daddy can’t catch you now, she said, smiling in a private way only Ben knew. He could see her smile and returned it, but the hearing he’d once reserved just for her had worn away.

In the kitchen, Annie saw the remains of the breakfast tray Ell had concocted for the old man. Green eggshells clogged the sink, and the batter dripped all down the stove front for the donuts dipped in fresh strawberry jam. The acid smell of the elixir, made hot and freshly spiced like a cider the way he liked it. All this Ell had gathered on a tray and maybe slipped the baby under her arm on the way out and kicked open the screen door.

The old man sat on the chicken coop porch behind a stand of lilac yelling like his pants were on fire. Annie pulled her robe tighter and held the door frame, then the porch post, then imagined a rope in the yard pulling her across, as if her mother were there, holding the other end, saying: There you go, sweet girl, nothing you can’t do when you try. And this brought her before Ell and her father and the baby stuck sideways into the crux of his lap.

Now, Daddy, she said. Ell made a nice breakfast I see.

Look what just slimed in, he said, scratching at the back of his neck with his good arm, squeezing the baby in close with his good leg.

Annie pulled on the invisible rope and brought herself up onto the porch. And said something quiet about the lilac, how it burst to life first right here on this spot. Ell said that was always her intention. Put the best things here for the old man. That he’d have the best of everything and first of all. And her father thought about that. And Annie leaned down and put a hand into her father’s lap and under the baby’s lolling head.

Let me take this old trouble pot out of your way, and like a magician, she plucked him up and away and across her heart and halfway back to the kitchen, while she saw her mother lift her head out of the garden patch. All on the same breath.

She heard Ell say behind her that Annie had lost her own baby and she’d be moving on soon. Annie was grieving, and Ell let her play with baby Roger now and then just to ease the ache. But Annie would be going and then things would go back to normal. Ell promised.

In the kitchen, Annie tucked the baby into the dresser drawer and brought all the little blankets up around his tiny legs. Hi-dee-ho, she sang. Hi-dee-ho. And she looked about for a bit of strawberry jam to dip her finger and give him a special treat. Ell was right again. She would be going soon. As soon as she could rely on her own two legs to carry them, she and baby Roger would leave. Ben had already given her back the bus money.

Annie bent into the icebox for the jam and found it just as the screen door slammed.

What do you need? asked Ell. You didn’t get enough to eat?

Plenty, said Annie with a smile as she straightened back up, feeling the pulls inside her as if she’d been remade with staples and pins too big for her. More than enough, she said.

Ell put down the tray on the table next to baby Roger in his dresser drawer. Annie held on to the icebox now, waiting for the pain to rest, then she’d walk. Ell opened the thermos on the tray and looked inside. The old man liked the elixir boiling hot. It worked fastest that way, and one day Ell promised, his crushed leg and withered arm would be brand-new. She looked into the big all-day thermos and steam covered her face.

He says with the warm weather he wants it cool, Ell said. He thinks all that means is I pour this here into a pitcher with ice, but once I boil it, the chemistry only works hot, not cold and that’s it. I have to start over fresh. Can’t waste it, and she poured the thermos over baby Roger in a quick splash.

Such a shriek, even Ben came running, a shrieking scream. And Annie shocked still only found her sense when Ben opened the door and took the ice from the freezer bin and put it into the drawer, around baby Roger, not on him or he would die of the pain.

Ben carried the drawer out to the truck and Annie crawled inside and together they went to the doctor, who was napping but saw them in his shirtsleeves and did all he could for Roger, all anyone could have, he said, given the case. He let Annie stay on as long as she wanted even if it meant spending the night. Eventually Ben told Annie he’d be needed back at the farm by now, and that was the last time she saw him.

All night and late into the next morning Annie lay on the leather couch in the doctor’s private office, baby Roger’s dresser drawer tidy and dry with new cotton dish towels stacked like a mattress borrowed from the doctor’s wife. And him so tiny and so still. Hi-dee-ho, she said to herself, and her mother answered deep in her mind. Sweet girl. And maybe offered her a different kind of rope? She couldn’t quite tell. The doctor’s office was full of opportunity.

Outside the door, the doctor talked about the perils of old-­fashioned farming and the ways of the past. When the processing plant comes and the all-new technologies, I’ll be out of a job. This is the sort of accident my father saw every day.

Now no one wanted the doctor out of work, and they promised he’d still be useful no matter how prosperous the town grew to be. There’d still be your garden-variety illnesses. You wait and see.

As if to prove it, only a few weeks later old Roger passed away in his sleep of something very ordinary, like heart. But on the day after the accident, early that very next morning, while Annie lay on the doctor’s leather couch, old Roger appeared in town for the first time in ages wearing a black suit and a long face. He held himself barely upright by a crutch fashioned from a hoe. Those who saw him drag himself out of the car and onto the sidewalk understood he was taking the elixir for his troubles. His head bobbed, and he had the aroma of a man heading for a long restorative nap. His lawyer greeted him right at the door and assisted him inside. Ell sat in the car in her black mourning dress with a bit of green lace scaling the very edge of her collar. Pretty arm swinging out the window, waiting for old Roger to finish up his legal business, tidy up that will. He’d finally come to his senses about who was family and who wasn’t. Then he’d hobble back down to ride home with her and take in the glory of the spring day. By September, Ell would break ground on her new processing plant by the stream. She’d divert her seasonal workers from the fields, and although they were unskilled at building they’d get the general idea.

A day or two more on the doctor’s sofa and Annie was finally able to walk. The doctor’s wife lent her the clothes she needed. Things worn after her own babies were born but they didn’t fit anymore. Between patients, the doctor drove Annie to the bus station three towns away and waited with her until it was time to board.

You need me to get any kind of message out to the farm?

She shook her head.

Well, at least you always have a place to come home to, he said. That’s a blessing for you.

She nodded.

You’ll feel like yourself again soon enough. And she nodded once more, knowing he meant kindness but of a very narrow sort.

On the bus, she found a seat away from the restless eyes of the bus driver in the mirror and the stink of the diesel in the far back. Midway, she sat across from an old lady in a large gray wig with a carton of Lucky Strikes balanced on her lap, carefully, like they were breakable.

Would you like one? she said to Annie in a friendly voice. I’d have to open up the carton.

Don’t you bother, Annie said. But thank you.

Heading someplace nice?

I think I need to sleep now, said Annie. She still slept most of the time and wished she could figure out a way to stay that way for good.

You go to visit the lady in front of the P.O. with the tonic? You look like you’ve had a cure.

Annie kept her eyes closed.

I’ve heard all about her. She’s famous. Ell-son. Ellison.

Just Ell.

Short.

I know, said Annie, feeling the surge of sleep begin behind her eyes and pour into her lungs and her belly. Like the liquid pouring over baby Roger and putting him down. She felt her body sink against the thick upholstery. The doctor’s wife’s big dress loose and itchy. She’d leave it behind next place.

If I had your youth, I’d stay awake. See what’s coming next. The old lady swung the carton around like a lasso that could grab all that good youth away. Not like me, she said and did some fiddling with her wig. You put one good foot in front of the other and just see what you see.

And Annie opened her eyes to stare now. She waited. As if the woman might just take off the disguise. As if her mother might reveal herself fully and explain to her, at long last, the meaning of all that had happened and its place in a plan that a shoulder-holding, blessing-giving God might consider fruitful or even possible in his universe. Her mother would finally explain and Annie waited, eyes open, listening for every word.

But the woman’s eyes blinked wide in return and rolled in a sudden panic. She pounded hard on her own sternum. The carton of cigarettes flew up out of her hands and Annie called out to the bus driver: Pull over!

She took the woman’s hand in her own. Hey now, she said. Hey now. And she felt herself pour right down into the woman’s fingertips and disappear. Her mother was nowhere anymore. She knew that. Annie watched for the woman’s breath to find its thread and strengthen and when it did, she said, There it is. You’ve got it now.

After A.P.C.