***
Later at Emma McCain’s small cabin, I stood on the porch with her. She was a granny woman, passing her home tonics and potions and protective stones to the hillfolk up here for as long as I could remember. After I gave her some magazines, she told me to wait while she fetched something. When she came back out, she passed me a small stone, smooth like black ice. “Fer your protection,” she said. “Gave your mama one of ’em lodestones long ago.”
I turned the stone over in my glove and inspected it.
“That one came from the belly of a white deer two winters ago.” She pointed to a tall cross post over by the shed where a gutted deer carcass hung. “I keep a close eye out when I’m dressin’ ’em.”
“Much obliged, Mrs. McCain. Looks like you got yourself a lot of good meat coming from that one.”
“Early Brighton brung it over after I tended to his ailin’ son.”
I jiggled the stone in my hand. I’d seen a few of the ghost deer over in the Cumberland Forest. The rare albinos were a sight. Folk knew that the lodestones found in unusual critters were special, magical even. I heard the tales of some finding them in the head of the colorful arrow darter, knee of a groundhog, and other creatures. Papa had found one in the belly of a snapping turtle he’d dressed for Mama’s soup.
Folk here were funny about their traditions, the signs that called to them, the customs they practiced. I recalled thumbing through one of the Pack Horse librarians’ scrapbooks and reading Emma’s tips and hearing about others. Remembered a few boys sporting raccoon peckers on leather ropes around their necks after a hunt, believing the bone would be an amulet to excite a girl after the granny witch suggested it to a boy who had failed to attract any females.
There were girls who claimed tucking a four-leaf clover inside their undergarments would bring a rich courter. And hadn’t Retta slept with the eyestones under her eyelids after Emma gave her several. The healer had promised the BB-sized stones would draw out any foreign substance found in the eyes and give her stronger vision.
Another of Emma’s practices instructed midwives to put pepper under women’s noses during labor to speed up the childbirth. Bathing the newborn in greasy bathwater prevents illness their first year. And there was the recipe from the ol’ granny witch for babies suffering the summer complaint. Emma McCain had written: To cure the intestinal disease, mash up crawling wood louse and steep them in hot water for a tea for the child to drink. She believed nails taken from a hanging gallows and used in a town bench were to protect the menfolk from meeting violent deaths. The granny witch warned that sneezing prior to seven brought unfriendly company before eleven.
And didn’t I know to wear my dead parents’ woven locks that Papa had braided into a mourning ring close to my heart for my own protection and to honor my first parents’ deaths by keeping a part of them living. I pressed on the small, coarse lump resting beneath my clothing, their lives snug near my heart.
Mrs. McCain said, “Folks don’t ’preciate the ol’ healing ways like they used to, now that them newfangled frontier nurses come into our hills to push on them city-slick medicines.”
I grimaced, remembering how Retta didn’t want the granny woman’s herbs or tonics on her deathbed, instead called out for the city-slick. I knew it rubbed the ol’ woman wrong, losing her customers to the city nurses, and all I could do was nod my head and listen.
Emma’s great-granddaughter walked into the yard with her rooster trailing.
“Can’t get that chil’ to stay put since her parents and grandparents passed,” Mrs. McCain commented. “Wrenna, come here.”
I’d heard their truck had gone over a cliff a few years back.
“Always roaming ’round with Tommie there. Tried to make her wear a special lodestone, but she weren’t having none of it and tossed it out into the yard. Ol’ Tommie gobbled it down.” She gazed fondly at Wrenna, a sadness sweeping into her old eyes. “Reckon the chil’s got all the protection she needs with ol’ Tommie boy carrying ’round the good energies of the stone and guarding her like he does. He even roosts on her bedpost at night, keeping watch.”