Healers (6 page)

The woman stared at Eva for a moment, then a smile spread over her face. “An
honest
healer! Hah, I never thought I’d see the like!” She turned and shuffled slowly away.

That night for dinner they sold the left over black beans from the night before. They’d chopped the rest of the roast pork into the beans and it had made the beans into a rich and wonderful meal. To their dismay, this night they sold out early. They had thought sales would be light like they had been the first night in Denton’s Crossing, but apparently the caravaners didn’t want to go out every night. Henry Roper confided that prices in towns were usually higher than Eva’s. Besides, few of the taverns provided anything that could compare to Eva’s cooking.

Their sales of toffee and moonshine hadn’t been good enough to think they could make a living at it. Roper’s comment suggested they might want to sell something more substantial from their stall as a lunch. After some thought, Eva put more beans on to simmer all night over the coals. Then they started baking bread and cookies.

For breakfast in the morning, they sold scrambled eggs, bacon, and slabs of warm buttered bread. They also sold hard-boiled eggs the caravaners could take with them to the market for lunch. They’d cooked a
lot
of bacon, and they chopped the leftovers into the spicy beans that had simmered overnight.

Shortly before noon, their stall started selling beans with bacon and a warm slab of bread. Butter could be had on the side. Kazy tasted a sample of the beans and they were wonderful. She thought sales would be good.

Word spread around the market and soon people crowded to the Hyllises’ stall for lunch. Caravaners formed a line early, eager to get some of the spicy black beans that had sold out so quickly the night before. The presence of the line told customers from Denton’s Crossing that the food at the booth was special. Once again they sold out of food long before they ran out of customers.

When business slowed down, Eva and Daum went into town to look for equipment that would let them cook larger quantities so they could keep up with demand.

Though the large number of customers resulted in a number of queries about healing, no one actually requested a diagnosis or a treatment. Daussie was the one horrified now. She turned to Tarc, “Are we just going to be cooks and distillers?!”

Tarc frowned at her, “Sales are good! It looks like we’re going to be able to support ourselves! How can you find a bleak side to such good news?”

Daussie’s expression drooped, “I want to be a healer… not a
cook
.”

Kazy said, “Most people think of cooking as a more respectable profession than healing. I’d count the passing of your healing business as no big loss.”

Quietly Daussie said, “That’s because most healers can’t actually heal anyone.”

***

In the morning, they fried large quantities of bacon, frying chopped potatoes in the grease from it. Customers could have potatoes, potatoes and bacon, or potatoes and bacon with eggs scrambled into it. Slabs of warm buttered bread were available too and some of their customers just ate the bread. Again large quantities of leftover bacon went into beans which had simmered overnight. This time they had two large pots of beans and many more loaves of bread to sell for lunch at the market.

Tarc had purchased a bag of small apples in the town, so Eva made caramel to dip them in. The caramel apples sold well all day and once again, the beans and bread were a huge hit for lunch.

But, no one came for healing.

In the morning the Hyllises rose early to cook breakfast because Norton had decided the caravan would move on. They’d picked up a small number of fellow travelers who wished to accompany the caravan for protection against brigands. To hear Norton speak of it, they usually had a few fellow travelers because traveling the road in small groups could be fairly dangerous.

The Hyllises’ collapsible stove had been set off to one side to cool and the girls were serving food off the little trailer while Tarc helped his parents pack up for the road. An older man appeared beside the trailer. He wasn’t in the food line, but Kazy turned to him and lifted an eyebrow anyhow.

He said, “I hear tell the cook wagon in this caravan claims to have an honest healer woman with them. Is it you guys she’s with?”

Kazy only nodded.

“Where is she?”

Kazy pointed over at Eva, industriously packing up their kitchen supplies. The man shuffled slowly that way. It seemed to Kazy the man walked as if it hurt to go faster. She wondered why he wasn’t using a crutch.

When the man arrived at Eva’s side, he stopped and leaned against their wagon, looking as tired as if he’d walked a long way.

“Yes?” Eva asked.

“Lindy Jones thinks you’re an honest healer. Says you claim you can make leg pain better.”

Eva nodded, “Some kinds of leg pain. It depends on what the cause is.”

“Well, all I know is I can’t walk very far before my legs start killing me. It’s getting worse and worse.”

Eva looked at him speculatively, “That
might
be something we can help. Would you let me examine you?”

The man frowned, “Examine?”

“Yes. Look at your legs. Have you show us where they hurt.”

“You ain’t just got a potion for leg pain?”

Eva frowned at him, “No, different problems require different treatments. We have to see what’s wrong before we’ll know whether it’s something we can treat.”

“We? I thought
you
were the healer?”

“Well, yes, but my son and daughter help me.”

The old man scratched his chin, then said, “Sure, have a look. But don’t do any funny stuff, then tell me I owe you a lot of money without me saying it’s okay.”

Eva smiled at him, “Okay, have a seat here while I get my son and daughter.” She waved him to one of the boxes they packed their supplies in and said, “It’d be helpful if you took off your shoes and socks and rolled up your pant legs.”

The line of people still waiting to be served breakfast was short, so Eva asked Kazy if she could manage it while Daussie helped Eva. Nervously, Kazy said, “Are you going far away?”

Eva said, “Just over to see if we can treat that man over there.” She pointed to the older fellow sitting on a box beside the wagon.

Kazy looked relieved, “Oh, sure, I’ll be fine.”

Tarc stepped over when Eva called him. She knelt and picked up the man’s foot, noticing it was virtually hairless. Putting her fingers on the pulse point on top of his foot, she said, “Your name sir?”

The man said, “Albert.”

Eva smiled up at him, “Well Mr. Albert, do your legs hurt when you’re not walking?”

The man shook his head.

“And where do they hurt?”

“Here,” the man said squeezing his calf. “They ache somethin’ terrible after I walk a ways.”

Eva glanced up at her children, hoping to see understanding in their eyes, but they both looked puzzled. She said, “Tarc,” she pointed with her chin, “move that box over here behind Mr. Albert so he can lie back.” She stood up and turned her eyes on Albert, “We’re just going to go talk about you over by the wagon so I can teach my children what to look for in a case like yours.”

The man looked up at her suspiciously, “Talk to them
here
where I can hear you. I want to learn as well,” he smiled wolfishly, “I
especially
want to listen to you tell them how to separate me from my coin.”

It’d been a long time since Eva’d had such a suspicious patient.
Well,
she thought to herself,
that’s if you don’t count Ms. Prichard’s husband. He wasn’t very trusting. Gaining people’s trust out here on the road’s going to be a lot more difficult than it was back in Walterston.
Taking a deep breath she smiled at the man, then turned to Tarc and Daussie. “Before you try to examine Mr. Albert, what do you think the most
likely
diagnosis is?”

Tarc and Daussie looked at one another, puzzlement evident on their faces. Daussie turned to her mother and said, “Arthritis?”

“Arthritis is a joint problem, so it should hurt
in
the joint instead of halfway between the knee and the ankle. But it could be. Sometimes people feel pain farther down the limb than where the pain’s actually coming from. Shoulder pain’s sometimes felt in the middle of the arm and hip pain can be felt in the thigh or even down in the knee. But another thing that argues against arthritis is that it goes away when he rests. Arthritic joints keep hurting for a while after they’re irritated.”

Daussie frowned, “Did you feel a pulse? I saw your fingers on it.”

Eva smiled at her daughter, “No, I didn’t. Does that fit arthritis?”

Daussie shrugged, “Not arthritis, but if he has poor blood flow to his muscles they’d hurt when they’re exercised.”

Eva smiled even more broadly, “
Yes
! And notice he doesn’t have any hair on his feet, or really much below his knees. People with hardening of the arteries and poor blood flow to their legs seem to lose the hair on their feet. What he’s telling you is actually very typical for someone with poor arterial flow, or what the ancients called ‘claudication,’ in their legs. They can’t walk very far without terrible aching pains in their calves.”

Albert said, “Hey, you’re talking about me like I’m just some piece of meat here.”

Eva grinned at him, “You
told
me to do it. Now lie down so we can check the pulses at your groin.”

Albert settled back suspiciously, “What’s my groin?”

“The front of your hip,” Eva said, pointing to her own groin. “That’s where the big artery to your leg goes and one of the common places it gets blocked up.” She looked at Daussie and raised an eyebrow as she continued, “Or, the blood flow can get blocked in the aorta, or farther down in leg.”

“You’re going to feel the front of my hip?!” Albert said obviously uncomfortable about how close that was to his crotch.

“Yep,” Eva said kneeling down on his left and waving Daussie and Tarc to kneel down on his right side. She tugged down a little on his belt and put her fingers on his lower abdomen on her side, nodding to Tarc and Daussie to do the same on their side.

Albert started to rise up, saying, “Hey now!

Eva pushed him back down saying, “Hold still, this will only take a second.” She hadn’t pulled his pants down far enough to actually feel his pulse, but she hadn’t needed to anyway. She sent her ghost in to check his aorta and femoral arteries, hoping Tarc and Daussie had understood her earlier and were doing the same. A moment later, she looked up and said, “I was right Mr. Albert. You have a lot of crud called ‘plaque’ blocking your arteries.” She chewed her lip for a moment, then continued, “We can’t get it all out but we have a way to take some of it out. If you want we could open up the worst spot here in your upper left thigh. If you felt like it helped you, we could work on some of the other places.”

His eyes wide, Albert said, “Even if you’re right, there’s no way you’re cuttin’ into my arteries!”

Eva tilted her head and looked at him as if considering what to say next. After a moment, she said, “We have a way to do it. No cutting. If you want, we’ll just do that bad spot in your left leg and we won’t charge you for it. If you feel like it helps you, you can pay us to do some of the other places the next time we come through town.”

Albert looked suspiciously at her, then said, “How did you know my left leg was the worst?”

She grinned, “That’s our business.”

He studied them through narrowed eyes. This went on for long enough that eventually, Eva said, “We’ve got to pack up so we can leave with the caravan. If you decide you want us to do it, holler out. Right now, you’ll need to get up off our boxes, because we need to put them in our wagon.”

Albert stood watching in what looked like skeptical indecision until the Hyllises had finished packing. Finally, with the guards moving out onto the road and the caravaners just beginning to pull out, he stepped over and said, “Okay.”

“Okay what?” Eva said looking a little irritated.

“Go ahead and try it in my left leg. I guess if you ain’t charging me I got nothing to lose.”

Eva rolled her eyes and said, “
I’ve
got to lead my team,” she said, patting the lead mule of the team that pulled their wagon. “You lie down on that big log over there and Tarc and Daussie will be over in a minute to do your treatment.”

His eyes widened, “
You’re
not going to do it?! Some wet behind the ears kids are going to do my treatment?!”

Tugging the horse forward, Eva said, “You waited too damn long, Mr. Albert. But don’t worry, Daussie’s the best we’ve got at clearing crud out of things. If it helps you, you can look us up the next time we come through and we’ll treat some of those other bad spots you’ve got.”

Kazy didn’t realize what was happening when Eva called Daussie up to talk to her. Then Daussie and Tarc untied the two riding horses from the wagon led them toward that man they’d been talking to. The caravan pulled out onto the road. Feeling agitated by Daussie’s absence, Kazy trotted up beside Eva and said, “Where’s Daussie going?!”

Eva glanced back at them, “They’re going to treat that man. They’ll catch back up to us pretty soon. That’s why they took the horses.”

“Can I go with them?” Kazy asked eagerly.

Eva frowned as she watched Kazy nervously darting glances back at Daussie. “You don’t like to be away from Daussie for very long, do you?”

“No!” Kazy said fidgeting as if she had to go to the bathroom and glancing back at Daussie again. “Can I go?”

“You’ll have to ride back double with Daussie…”

“Okay!” Kazy said turning and running back after Daussie without waiting for more permission.

When Kazy arrived beside Daussie, Tarc’s brilliant blue eyes turned to focus on her curiously, but Daussie didn’t even seem to notice. She’d gotten used to her shadow. They had the man laid out on top of a big log. Tarc stood on the man’s right. He had rolled up a large leaf and was holding it against the man’s left thigh. Daussie stood on the man’s left. She bent closer to the leaf Tarc held, though her hands rested on the log beneath the man. Her eyes closed, she frowned as if in concentration. Kazy had the definite impression she was doing
something
, but of course she couldn’t know Daussie was teleporting small pieces of atherosclerotic plaque out of the man’s femoral artery and into the hollow inside the leaf.

Daussie stayed bent over the man’s leg until the end of the caravan pulled out, moved down the road and was about to disappear around the first bend. Kazy began to feel nervous. If people were afraid to travel the road without the protection of the caravan, what were the three of them going to be doing on the road alone?

Finally Daussie’s eyes opened and she looked around. To Tarc she said, “I did a couple of spots above and below the bad one.”

Tarc turned to the patient. “Okay, we’re done. Hope it helps.”

The man frowned up at them, then said, “This’s bullshit! You didn’t do nothin’!” He snorted, “I’m sure as hell glad I didn’t pay you con artists for bowin’ your heads and prayin’ over me!” He swung his legs off the log, stood and started walking back to town.

Daussie reached up to rub her temples as if she had a headache.

Tarc frowned at her, “Not feeling so good?”

She shook her head, “A little headache. I think I tried to do it too fast.”

Tarc dropped the leaf he’d been holding and said, “Kazy, why don’t you get up on the bay, then I’ll help Daussie up behind you. You can guide Daussie’s horse.”

Kazy stared wide eyed at the big leaf. It had unrolled itself and the middle of it was smeared with what looked like bits of bloody fat.

Seeing where her eyes were pointed, Tarc kicked some dirt over it, then said, “Can I help you mount?”

Shuddering at the thought of a man touching her, Kazy shook her head and scrambled up onto the log. “Can you lead the horse over here? It’ll be easier for Daussie to mount off the log too.”

A few minutes later they were riding after the caravan. Apprehensively, Kazy tried to watch both sides of the road ahead of them, expecting highwaymen to pop out and attack them at any moment. She felt somewhat comforted by Daussie’s arms which reached around Kazy to hold onto the saddle horn. Seeking further reassurance she said, “Aren’t you worried about robbers?”

Daussie grunted and said, “Tarc’s here, he’ll protect us.”