He smiled complacently. “Ah! Perhaps you don’t see things as I do!”
CHAPTER TEN
ELIZABETH, preoccupied with thoughts of the murder and its aftermath, did not stop to look at the plants along the trail. She might have noticed a coiled snake or a clump of poison oak, if her foot had been about to land on either, but otherwise she was oblivious to her surroundings. Not the right frame of mind in which to visit the Wise Woman of the Woods, she thought, but she was going anyway. When she mentioned to Milo that someone should tell Comfrey about Alex, it had suddenly occurred to her that Amelanchier was an elderly woman living alone in the woods. She should know about the danger. Elizabeth decided that she would feel better knowing that Amelanchier was all right; and perhaps the Wise Woman would have some bit of advice to comfort her.
Amelanchier was outside her cabin, talking to some visitors. Not wanting to interrupt, Elizabeth stayed hidden in a clump of laurels and listened to the consultation.
“Don’t forget what I told you about drinking sassafras tea,” Amelanchier was saying to a tall woman wearing a sundress. “Beets and asparagus’ll do you good too.”
The woman was nodding, absorbed in the lecture, while her husband, a red-faced man in doubleknit trousers and a pink polo shirt, was circling the two of them with his camera. “Ann, move your shoulder a little to the right,” he commanded. “The light’s not right.”
Amelanchier looked him over carefully and turned back to the woman. “Now, you mind what I told you about brewing your bitters from them herbs I give you.”
“Yes. Yes. I’ve written it down,” the woman assured her.
“All right,” said Amelanchier doubtfully. “But don’t you use no city water, and don’t cook it up in no aluminum pan, neither.”
“Copper?” asked the woman anxiously.
Amelanchier was scornful. “Copper’s for moonshine,” she declared. “You want to use enamel or stainless steel.”
“I will! I will!” the woman promised.
“How much do we owe you?” asked the man, lowering his camera.
“You got four bags of bitters, and two gallon jugs of it already made up. That’ll be seven dollars.”
The man smiled. “Do you have change for a twenty?”
Amelanchier hesitated. “Take it on,” she said, waving him away. “You can pay me when you’ve got it.”
The woman started to protest, but her husband led her down the path, smirking at having got something for nothing.
Elizabeth glared at them from the laurel bush. They acted as if Amelanchier were an exhibit in a zoo, she thought angrily. “Why did you let that awful man get away with that?” she demanded, marching out from her hiding place.
Amelanchier shook her head. “I didn’t hardly like to charge her. She was buying the medicine for him, and you could see he wasn’t going to take it.”
“What was the matter with him?” asked Elizabeth. He had seemed healthy enough.
“Did you look at his hands? That’s the best way to tell.” She shook her head, dismissing the tourist couple from her thoughts. She turned back to Elizabeth with a happy smile. “You’re looking a little peaky yourself, gal. What’s been going on down there?”
Elizabeth told her, omitting only the details of Alex’s personal problems with his wife and Mary Clare. “I came up to see if you were all right,” she added.
“Shoot far,” snorted Amelanchier, easing herself onto a wooden bench on the porch. “I’ve lived by myself in these woods for a coon’s age. Don’t you worry about me. But I’m sorry to hear about your boss. He seemed like a nice enough fella.”
“He was. Milo-that’s his assistant-is pretty broken up about it.” Elizabeth looked up hopefully. “I don’t suppose you have anything for grief?”
Amelanchier shrugged. “Just a handful of rocks.”
“Rocks?”
“Yep. You take a handful of rocks and put them in a jar. Then once a week, you take one tiny pebble out of the jar and throw it away. When the jar is empty, why, you’ll just about be over your grief.”
Elizabeth digested the instructions. “I see,” she said at last. “You mean that it just takes time.”
“That’s right. Time alone will do if you’re short on rocks.” She closed her eyes for a while, and her face relaxed from its usual smile into creases of age. “A-lord,” she sighed. “I reckon I could use some bitters myself. How ’bout you?”
Elizabeth looked doubtful. Anything called “bitters” could not be very pleasant to drink, she thought. “What’s in it?”
Amelanchier heaved herself off the bench and over to an old icebox beside the banister. She took two paper cups from a stack on top of it and poured dark brown liquid from a gallon milk jug into each. “Take a sip of that.”
In the interests of science, thought Elizabeth. Taking a deep breath, she tasted it and was surprised to find that it was not bitter at all. “It’s a little like root beer,” she said wonderingly.
“That’s the sassafras root bark,” nodded Amelanchier. “You taste that, and the honey, which makes it sweet. There’s other things in there, too, but I don’t reckon your tongue told you that.”
“Like what?” asked Elizabeth, holding her cup out for another helping.
“Comfrey and yarrow,” said Amelanchier. “They’re my favorites. And there’s spikenard and Solomon seal and great blue lobelia, and about ten other things.”
“It’s really very good.”
“Better for you than that old sody pop.”
“What is it supposed to do?”
“Whatever you need done,” Amelanchier declared. “Once you get the bad foods out of your system, the bitters will clean you out and keep you healthy.”
Elizabeth was impressed. She wondered if the Appalachian studies department would consider a master’s thesis on Amelanchier’s brand of folk medicine. “How did you learn this?”
Amelanchier smiled. “Why, hit’s Indian medicine. Old as the hills, but I don’t reckon it’ll do much for the poor in spirit, which is how I judge you to be right now.”
Elizabeth sighed. “It’s been awful,” she admitted. “I’ve been trying not to worry about it, though.”
“No, it’s best to take things as they come,” Amelanchier agreed. “Like they say in that old hymn: ‘Farther along, we’ll know all about it.’ ”
“I guess we will,” said Elizabeth, taking the literal meaning. “The sheriff has been up here investigating. Or maybe not the sheriff himself, but some of his men. Of course, Victor claims to know it all now.”
“Victor?”
“The one I told you about who is allergic to everything. He’s full of himself today because he was out in the woods last night, and apparently he saw something. Of course he is keeping it to himself. By the way, remember that ginseng cure you gave me for him? He wouldn’t try it.”
Amelanchier nodded. “Some folks won’t. They’re afraid you’re trying to trick ’em. My gran’daddy used to say that believing nothing is just as foolish as believing everything.”
“I wish I knew what to believe about Milo,” sighed Elizabeth, still absorbed in her own troubles. “Ever since we got here, he has been so edgy, and now I can’t talk to him at all. I know he’s upset about Alex, but for heaven’s sake, I didn’t do it!”
Amelanchier reached under the bench and pulled out a paper bag. “If you’re going to sit there a-twisting your hands like that, you might as well snap beans.” She set the bag between them on the bench and handed Elizabeth a wooden bowl for her lap. “You know how, don’t you?”
“Oh, sure,” said Elizabeth, smiling at the memory of her Grandmother MacPherson, who wouldn’t allow a frozen vegetable past her front door. “When we visited Granny’s, this used to be my job.” Deftly she stringed and separated a bean sheath, dropping the pieces into the bowl. Soon the snapping became a steady rhythm punctuating the flow of conversation.