Fennel Balm

Lucinda obediently crooked two fingers into a billow of her mother’s dress, seizing the edge of a patch and pinching it, hard. She would have preferred to toy with a lock of the never-cut black hair, fanned out as it was across her mother’s slim hips, the edges swaying in the breeze to tickle Lucinda’s small, bare wrists and test her resolve. Lucinda had overheard other ladies call the hair “indian” in hushed tones that were envious and clannish in more or less equal amounts. As far as she knew, her grandfather had claimed no Indian ancestry since they’d begun the mountain circuit.

Her mother rapped on the cabin door a second time, harder, and they heard a low groan within, followed by heavy footfalls. Her mother pushed open the medicine bag again to peer at the chaos of bottles and stoppers with some distaste. When the door opened, Lucinda was the first to see the occupant, a blocky creature leading with a snaggletooth scowl, and vaguely feminine features on a body that otherwise seemed better suited to a coal miner.

“Are you Fennel?” The creature’s thick hands clutched the door frame for support, or perhaps to leverage an attack. Fennel blanched, but quickly recovered. “Yes. Yes, I’m Bertram Welk’s daughter. You are Mrs. Helen Dugan?”

The woman’s breathing was as slow and deliberate as their cow’s had been when she lay down in the shade after a full day of eating grass along the highway. Lucinda almost didn’t see her slowly nod in the affirmative.

“He told me you’ve been a good customer of ours in the past. We haven’t been through this county in a while, but we’re looking up some of our customers – like yourself – to see if you were interested in restocking some simple remedies.”

Mrs. Helen Dugan continued to breathe impassively and audibly, and Lucinda sensed her mother’s nervousness through the free strands of hair that had joined the dress folds between Lucinda’s small fingers.

“Mrs. Dugan, how are you feeling?” Fennel’s voice changed its pitch, and her overall pitch changed, too. “If you aren’t feeling your best, I might be able to help.”

There was a long silence, and Mrs. Dugan’s dark eyes flickered down to Lucinda, chilling her tiny fidgets into stasis. “Little girl, I bought a lotta your daddy’s tonics and elixirs, once upon a time. Some of ‘em did us good. More of ‘em didn’t.”

Fennel swallowed, but held her ground.

“Truth is, I’d still buy a bottle of Turlington’s from you, if you had one, but now it’s just me and my youngest boys here, and ain’t none of ‘em working.”
Lucinda felt her mother’s longer fingers curl about her fingers, the patch, the hair, and found herself inched forward, incrementally closer to Mrs. Dugan’s gaze. “I do have a bottle of Turlington’s, Mrs. Dugan.” Fennel’s voice was huskier and more resolute. “I’d be willing to discount it.”

Mrs. Dugan’s face seemed troubled, but Fennel pressed forward. “One dollar and it’s yours, Mrs. Dugan. My father won’t be happy that I let it go for so little, but he can appreciate meeting a good customer like yourself halfway.”

“I couldn’t possibly – it’s too much.”

“It’s a one dollar investment. You need to stay strong for your family, to keep going when the wind goes out of their sails. Turlington’s Balsam of Life can be your secret helper when you don’t have anywhere else to turn.”

The woman wavered, and lurched backward, disappearing into the darkness of the cabin. Fennel sagged slightly. Lucinda started to ask her a question and was quickly hushed.

Mrs. Dugan returned gritting her crooked teeth, and handed over a silver dollar. It disappeared into Fennel’s medicine bag, replacing the fancy bottle that Fennel carefully pressed into the mountain woman’s large hands.

“It’s good stuff,” Fennel said wearily, “You can stretch it out by-”

The door closed, and Lucinda’s mother sighed and led them off the porch. They walked back down the dirt path that had taken them the better part of the afternoon to climb.

They’d scarcely descended below the view of the cabin when they spied four young men climbing on a collision course. Two were shirtless, and raw red from exposure to the sun. One held a long stick from which a pair of rabbits swung to and fro, and the other three carried large jugs. The rabbit-stick bearer pleaded for one of his jug bearing fellows to exchange a jug for a stick, just for a little while.

The foursome hadn’t noticed the mother or child yet, but Lucinda felt her mother stiffen, and reach into the bag. Fennel wafted contents of one bottle under her nose and quaffed another, then slipped them back into her bag just as the stick bearer laid eyes on them.

All laughter and talk ceased, and the four young men slowed down dramatically and instinctively separated, so that Fennel and Lucinda would have to walk between them. Lucinda could feel this gaze, too, and she determined that its implication were far worse then Helen Dugan’s.

Fennel’s rapid sniffing started when they were only a few yards from the start of the gantlet, followed almost immediately by dry heaves. Then she fell to one knee, dragging her little girl and bag down with her, and vomited on the road. Clutched tight against her mother’s slim hip, Lucinda squirmed to get away from the foul odor that made her own stomach lurch and twist. She was aware of the young men backing up and taking a wider route around them, muttering under their breaths and recoiling further when Fennel raised her suddenly puffy face and bloody nose for their inspection.

Lucinda’s mother retched a few more times after they’d moved on, but only a little water came up this time, and she blotted her mouth with a rag and breathed deep until the fits subsided. They began to walk again, slower than before, as Fennel’s stomach continued to protest.

“Mama?” Lucinda asked.

“What is it, Lucy?

Lucinda had a lot of questions, like why would Fennel make herself sick on purpose when she saw those men, and why was she so sad whenever she sold a bottle to someone who clearly wanted it, and why had they left Pop-Pop in that hotel bed a week ago instead of preparing a bowl of stew on a tray for him to wake up to in the early afternoon?

“What are we going to do after we sell all of pop-pop’s old medicines?”

Fennel gently removed her hair from her daughter’s fist.

“I’ll get a new plan, Lucy.”