Fearful Symmetries (20 page)

Mrs. Oftshaw was best known for a liniment of her own concoction,
Mount Chary Galore
, that had no other curative property than to make you feel generally
right
and was suspected of being some part of the black lace mushrooms she gathered by the light of an orange moon. She was a strange, solitary old bat, who’d been around so long she was part of the landscape. She’d swoop into town out of the deep woods at the base of the looming mountain, swerving all over the asphalt in her rusted Pontiac. Even the young boys with new driver’s licenses and stupid with courage cleared the road when they saw her coming. Sheriff Bedlow wrote her a stack of tickets through the years, but he was not particularly fearless, and would only stick them under the busted windshield wiper when the car was parked and empty. She’d just crumple them in her boney hands and toss them in the dirt.

When she arrived in town, nobody ever came out to greet her, but eyes gazed from behind curtains or betwixt blinds. Those who relied on the Galore were watching, silently counting their nickels and dimes. She eased out of the front seat of that jalopy, and gave a little hop down to the ground. She was short and bent with age, but she had a quickness to her—bird-like. Her outfits were layered, mostly the same for either winter or summer, except in the snowy part of the year when she’d add an oversized sailor’s pea coat to the getup—blue leggings, a loose billowing dress, wooden shoes, and a voluminous kerchief draped around her head; a tunnel of fabric you had to peer into to see her pale, wrinkled face like some critter living in a hollow log.

If you got close enough, as I did when she came to deliver a jar of Galore to my poor Ma, you could catch a whiff of her scent, which was not old or ugly or rotten, but beautiful, like the smell of wisteria. Ma always served lavender tea with honey at the parlor table. Mrs. Oftshaw was partial to a jigger of Old Overholt in hers, and she kept a pint in the pocket of that pea coat when the weather got raw. They whispered back and forth for a time. When I asked my Ma what they talked about, she’d smile and say, “Men.” “Like Pa?” I asked. She sighed, shook her head and laughed. Just before leaving, the old lady always slipped a jar of Galore from her pocket and placed it next to the teacup, never asking for a cent.

On the 27
th
of every month, she came to town, the Pontiac’s trunk full of cardboard boxes, each holding six Ball jars of a bright green paste that smelled like, as Lardner Scott, Charyville’s Post Master, had described it, “A home permanent on the Devil’s ass hair.” Once liberally applied to the chest or the back of the neck the Galore had a way of easing you down, as if taking your hand and whispering, helping you to sit back into the comfy chair that, amazingly enough, at that moment, you would just be realizing was your life. For a woman who was much feared and much gossiped about, Lillian Oftshaw had a lot of customers—some steady as sunrise, some seasonal, some just passing through. The fact is, she never left town at the end of the month that those boxes in her trunk weren’t entirely empty.

On the other hand, during those liniment runs, her passenger seat was never empty, for she was accompanied each time by a large gray hog, nearly three hundred pounds, named Jundle, who sat upright, resting his spine against the seatback, crossing his short hind legs, the right over the left, and leaning his right front leg out the open window. I saw it with my own eyes. That remarkable creature sometimes smoked a fat roll-up of a cheroot, holding it in the split of his cloven hoof and every now and then bringing it up to his snout to take a long drag. Jundle got out of the car and accompanied her to each door step as she delivered the Galore and collected her cash. Once a couple of smart aleck kids thought they’d have some fun with the old lady and then make off with her velvet sack of quarters and dimes. Legs were swiftly broken, and as it’s told, those boys were lucky it wasn’t necks. Jundle was a jolly creature, but he had a serious side when it came to the wellbeing of Mrs. Oftshaw.

A jar of the Galore cost 50 cents, which, at the time, was a dear price. There were folks with steady income, who went for a jar of the green mystery every month, and there were others who had to use it sparingly, skimping on the application to achieve at least half-rightness half the time. Mote Kimber, a veteran of the Great War, who seen the fellows of his regiment mowed down like summer wheat at the Belleau Wood in France and when captured was tortured—a thin, white hot iron inserted into the opening of his pecker—slathered the Galore onto his bald noggin like he was painting a fence post. After a while the crown of his head had turned jade green, and he could be counted on at any hour after that of breakfast to usually be way past
right
. He was a bona fide war hero, though, and drew a nice pension for his courage. Before being taken by the enemy, he’d rescued three men who’d been wounded and pinned down. Mote would tell you himself that he bought two jars of Galore a month from Lillian. “Either that or kill myself,” he said and everybody knew he meant it.

There were a number of folks in town who used the liniment for medical purposes—gout, heartburn, bad back, aches and pains of the joints, the head, the heart. Even Dr. Shevin used it. When asked about its unscientific nature and reliance on back woods hoodoo, he smiled as if realizing his guilt, shrugged, and said, “When I get a crick in my neck, which I do often enough from a bad sleeping posture, just a dab of that Galore on the stiff patch and all’s well and then some. Now, if you’re asking me if I prescribe it for my patients, I’d have to give you an unequivocal ‘No.’ I’m a man of Science. I don’t suggest anyone else use it, but if they do . . .?” The discussion never went any further. There was no point. If the doctor had been laying it on like old Mote Kimber and was too
right
all the time, now that would have been a problem, but as it was, he used it like most everyone else—“Pro re nata,” as he said, which Post Master Scott translated for us as, “When the bullshit gets too thick.”

Old lady Oftshaw was mysterious, that’s for certain, but I wouldn’t say she was evil. There were a lot of folks who just couldn’t afford the Galore, and some of them were the ones that needed it most. My Ma was one of them. Ever since my daddy ran off on us, she had to work double shifts over at the chicken packing plant in Hartmere just to keep the house, put food on the table, and gas in the Chevy. And it wasn’t just me and her. There was Alice Jane and Pretty Please who also lived under our roof. They were the kids of the woman who daddy ran off with. Their mother simply abandoned them—something no wild animal would do. Instead of letting Sheriff Bedlow cart the kids away to an orphanage in Johnston, the county seat, my Ma asked him to leave them with her. I was there when she made her case. “No sense in having everybody suffer,” she said. “They’re just kids and they need to know a little love before they get too old.” The Sheriff, though short on courage, was long on heart, and he trusted her. He closed his eyes to the law, something that could never happen today, letting Alice Jane become my sort of sister and Pretty Please become my sort of brother.

I suspect you want to know something else about my daddy and why he left Ma, but I truly don’t know anything to tell. I was happy to see him go. He was a moody fellow. Quiet. Never did anything father-like with me that I can remember. Although I will say he did buy me a .22 rifle and taught me to shoot out in the prairie over by the creek on the way to Mount Chary. But it wasn’t like he did it to get closer to me, more like he was teaching me to take the garbage out to the curb or how to make coffee so he didn’t have to get up quite as early in the morning. Although she never said anything about him, I remember Ma’s eyes being red a lot and more than once a big yellow-blue bruise on her neck.

Mrs. Adler had no man at the time Daddy ran off with her, and Alice never had any stories about her Pa or photographs for that matter. The whole thing was a mystery I never got to the bottom of. If I’d asked my Ma, I know she’d have told me, but I came to avoid that question, afraid it might leave a wound, like a bullet from the .22.

I was fourteen the year our family declined by one and then grew by two. Alice Jane was the same age as me, but born in summer while I was born in winter. She had long hair braided into pigtails and a freckled face with sleepy green eyes. I thought she was nice, but I didn’t let on. She could throw a hard punch or climb a tree, beat me in a race. Her brother, Pretty Please, was “something of a enigma,” or at least that’s what I heard Post Master Scott whisper to Ma when she told him she’d taken on responsibility for the Adler children. We were at the counter and I was standing next to her while Alice and Pretty were standing over by the private mailboxes. Men of all kinds seemed to make my sort-of-siblings both shy and scared. “The girl’s cute enough, but that boy is . . . 
pe-culiar
,” said Scott. “He just looks a sight,” said my mother, “inside he’s true.”

I turned and looked at Pretty Please. He was fifteen, and not but an inch or two taller than me, but he had a big old head, full-moon pale and shorn close, looking like a peeled potato with beady eyes. He wore a pair of overalls with no shirt in summer. He seemed always busy, looking around, up and down and all over, rarely fixing on any one sight. Whenever somebody said anything to Ma about him, she’d nod and say, “He’s OK,” as if trying to convince herself. The only words he ever said were “Pretty please” in a kind of parrot voice. We didn’t know where he learned it from, but he seemed to have a vague sense of how to make use of it. Ma asked Alice Jane if he’d always been simple, and she just nodded and confided that their mother used to beat him with a hair brush. His real name, Alice told us, was Jelibai and Ma asked us to call him that but we didn’t.

The fact that my Ma took in the kids of the woman who ran off with my Pa was, even to me, downright odd, and to the rest of the town she was either touched by god or touched in the head. I think some thought she had nefarious purposes in mind, maybe to torture them in the place of the woman who stole her man? But in Charyville the rule was to keep your mouth shut and mind your own business. Things had to get really out of hand for someone to pipe up.

The first summer of our new family came, and Alice Jane and I were out of school, on the loose. Pretty Please didn’t go to school. The reason Principal Otis gave Ma for not letting him in was, “That poor boy is gone over the hill.” Pretty was delighted for us to be home every day, cause usually, when school was in session, he’d have to be by himself, locked up in the basement with my dog, Ghost, a mop-head with legs and a bark. Ma would make Pretty peanut butter sandwiches and he could listen to the radio or look at books or say “Pretty Please” to the dog a hundred times. He liked to draw and you shoulda seen his pictures—yow—people with scribbledy heads and no eyes.

There was a bathroom in the basement and it was cozy enough and lonely enough. Ma just didn’t want him getting to the burner of the stove, where he could leave the gas on and blow the place up or set himself on fire. But when
we
were on the loose, Pretty was on the loose. We all liked to be free and always had something to do from the time Ma left in the morning for work to when she came back at night and Alice Jane and me cooked her dinner. I could tell she was worried about us on our own, but I told her, “We’re not babies anymore. We can watch out for each other.” Her hand that held the cigarette shook a little, and Alice patted her back soft like Ma did for us at night as we went to sleep.

The summers were fine for fishing, fist fights, shooting guns, drinking pop, catching snakes, swimming the creek, riding bikes, playing baseball, bottling lightning bugs and watching the big moon rise. When on Sundays the minister spoke of Paradise all I had to compare it to was summer vacation.

Then on a bright morning in late July, the three of us were out early, and Alice Jane and I decided we would find the day’s adventure by just letting Pretty Please run up ahead of our bikes. We followed him wherever he went. It didn’t make any sense, and we all laughed, even Pretty, when he ran ten times in the same tight circle. We wound up traveling all the way to the edge of town to the red brick arches of the entrance to the church’s side garden. We went there a couple times a week in the early morning. There was a fountain and a bench within those walls. Tears issued from the eyes of a sculpted woman. The water trickled down, plashing from level to level quieter than a whisper. The aroma of the roses was almost too much.

One bright morning, following that scent without hesitation, Pretty walked right in there. Alice Jane and I left our bikes on the sidewalk and followed. We found him standing still as a store manikin, staring up at Minister Sauter, who stood over him looking annoyed. When the preacher saw us enter the garden, his expression quickly changed to a smile. He took a seat on a bench by the fountain and motioned for us to sit down as well. We did. Alice and I were on either side of the Minister, and Pretty, watching ripples in the water, slumped on the bench next to his sister.

Sauter said, “How’d you kids like to make some money?”

“Whatta we gotta do?” asked Alice.

“Well, I want you to ride out to the woods beneath the mountain, and find that old woman Oftshaw’s house.”

“Pardon,” I said, “but she’s an old witch, ain’t she? My Ma says she’s got spells.”

Alice smacked herself in the forehead for my ignorance.

The Minister laughed. “The old lady’s a Christian, I think,” he said.

“How much money?” asked Alice.

“Let’s see,” said Sauter. “I want you to go out there and I want you to watch what she does. I want you to remember it and then come back and tell me. I’ll give each of you twenty cents.”

“Easy,” said Alice Jane. I nodded.

Pretty Please said, “Pretty please.”

“One thing, though,” said the Minister. “You can’t let her see you watchin’ her.”

“That’s spying,” said Alice.

“It would be,” said Sauter, “but I’m gonna make you all deputy angels before you go. As a deputy angel, you can do my bidding and not get in trouble with the law or God. The Lord has put his trust in me and so must you.”