IdaBelle blinked rapidly a few times. “Yes, but she already told you. You didn’t listen.”
“Told me what?”
“The rice water. She told you to use the rice water, and to make the children, in particular, drink it.”
“This isn’t for a child. It’s a baby. She’s six weeks old. She probably needs more than rice water, I’d think.”
“Do you have more than rice water?” IdaBelle sweetly asked.
Tucker shook his head. “No. That’s what I’m asking. What else can we give her?”
IdaBelle laughed. “And I’m telling you… Aunt Neva said rice water! If that’s all you have, it’s better than nothing.”
Neva’s head popped up behind IdaBelle. “If she will take the rice water, you might save her. If she can keep that down, you can give her chamomile tea, later,” she said in a raspy voice.
“Thank you. Thank you so much…” Tucker answered. He turned to leave and then turned back and hugged IdaBelle, so overwhelmed to have some hope once again. He reached out to hug Neva, but Neva stepped backward, into the house, and disappeared, whispering to IdaBelle as she walked away.
IdaBelle bit her lip, and then repeated the message. “Aunt Neva said it might be too late, Tucker. All you can do is try… but go now. Try to get the rice water into the baby as soon as possible.”
Tucker took off at a fast walk toward home.
Jake turned to follow Tucker, expecting Grayson to go with them. Grayson instead went to the end of the line, and stood with his hands in his pockets. “I’m going to see what she has to say about this tooth,” he said. The swelling was getting worse in his face.
“Next!” IdaBelle said again. “And don’t forget, Aunt Neva is taking trade. Does everyone have something?”
One woman muttered under her breath, “I’ll be back.” She walked away empty-handed.
The woman behind her—the one with the husband who snored—held a roll of toilet paper, IdaBelle waved her in, but then noticed Grayson standing quietly at the back of the line, his left cheek puffy. She held up her hand, palm out to stop her from approaching. “If you don’t mind, he looks like he has an emergency.” She pointed at Grayson. “Sir, come on up.”
“I’m not old enough to be a sir to you…” Grayson mumbled grumpily and made his way up the steps to the front door, passing IdaBelle as she held it wide open for him.
He stepped in and looked around. The entry of the house was very dim, most of the curtains and blinds closed in the large formal den. The room was empty.
IdaBelle pointed to the kitchen, where plenty of light shone, streaming out the doorway. He made his way in there, expecting to see some sort of round table with a ruffly tablecloth, and a gypsy-ish woman sitting behind a crystal ball or a cauldron. But at this point, he didn’t care.
He’d put up with any sort of voodoo to make this tooth stop hurting.
But the kitchen was just a normal kitchen, albeit a little higher-end than most. Stainless steel appliances shone under the light streaming through the windows. The counters were granite and the backsplash a tumbled marble.
Everything looked completely normal.
Neva sat at a large, fancy table, an array of herbs and oils spread out in front of her. Behind her, a china cabinet held hundreds more bottles of the same on two shelves, and on the lower shelves were jar after jar lined up corner to corner. He eyeballed the jars, looking for blood or chicken parts, but he was disappointed. Nothing there but homegrown foods.
He couldn’t help but be a bit impressed. Looked like Neva was a bit of a prepper.
Neva waved him into a chair beside her and leaned forward, looking at his swollen cheek. “You have a bad tooth,” she said.
Grayson nodded.
No shit, he thought.
She grabbed a small flashlight and stood up, stepping into his personal space which put her nearly between his legs. “Open up.”
Grayson cringed at her close proximity… not because she was so awful to look at, but because Olivia wasn’t there. He couldn’t help but feel guilty even when he wasn’t—which was all the time—due to his wife’s suspicious and jealous nature.
Any woman standing between his legs was not something she’d approve of. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t drop-dead beautiful or even a tiny bit pretty. Eighteen to eighty… blind, crippled or crazy… didn’t matter to Olivia; she was jealous of them all.
But this one in particular wore a low-cut flowery blouse that clearly showed her cleavage; bending over would give him a full view. There was nothing for it, though. He obediently opened his mouth, but tightly closed his eyes—just in case Olivia somehow found her way there and walked through the door.
Neva leaned down to take a look. She stood up. “Yep. Bad tooth.”
“I know that. What can I do to fix it?” Grayson snapped.
“Can’t fix it. Too far gone. I smell infection. It needs pulled.”
Grayson flinched and rubbed his jaw. “I’d like to keep it if I could… anything else I can do?”
“What do you have to trade?” Neva asked.
Grayson sighed. “I don’t live here and I didn’t bring anything. Jake is my brother-in-law. He lives here. I’ll walk over to his house and bring something back. What do you want?”
Neva moved a few bottles around. “That tooth needs pulled. But you can try this Clove Oil—a few drops mixed with the coconut oil.” She slid two bottles toward Grayson. “That might help numb it awhile.”
She pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “Do you have any Advil liquid-gel caps?”
Grayson shook his head. “I’ve got some pain reliever, but not that. And it hasn’t helped anyway. I’ve been swallowing them like candy.”
She opened a bottle and poured six liquid-gel capsules into her hand. “Don’t swallow them. Open the gel cap and pour the liquid right onto your tooth. That might help, too. But you have infection and that’s the biggest problem. You need to get the infection out. Do you have antibiotics?”
“Not really,” Grayson fudged. He was holding out partly for Puck, who didn’t seem to need them—yet—and partly for just in case there was another person even more hurt or sick later. The cayenne pepper he’d used on Puck had some antibiotic properties and Puck was healthy. He may not need them at all. But someone else might; someone worse off than Grayson.
She put her hands on her ample hips. “If you have them, you need to use them. Infection can kill you. But you’re the boss of you, and you seem a bit stubborn, so…”
She turned to a basket of vegetables and plucked out a bulb of garlic and put it next to the two bottles.
“Apply freshly extracted garlic juice, or make a garlic paste, and put it around the tooth for five minutes, then rinse it out with water. You can also add garlic juice into a cup of water and gargle with it a few times a day. Add as much garlic into your food as you can. It will combat the infection and strengthen your immune system. You have a garden, yes?”
Grayson nodded.
“Then I hope you have more garlic.”
“What order do I do this in?”
“Do the garlic first, several times a day to work out the infection. Rinse it out, then use the clove oil. If that doesn’t help the pain, use the Advil.”
She pushed the two bottles, the garlic, and the Advil toward Grayson. “Bring me any dried gravy mix you have—at least six packs—or a bottle of Soy Sauce, or three rolls of toilet paper, or… chocolate. You be fair to me, okay?”
Grayson nodded in agreement, hoping like hell Jake had any of this at his house to trade. He stood up to leave.