grace beneath the pines
Aug 11, 2017 14:56:23 GMT -5
via mobile
Nathan Saniti, The Anarchist, and 1 more like this
Post by Grimm on Aug 11, 2017 14:56:23 GMT -5
”Life is too short to be afraid of nothing, and I will show you.”
---------
“Phinehas!”
“Back from a far-traveled journey!”
Phinehas Dillinger steps over the threshold into The Owl & Eel, holding the Battle Bowl out in front of him. Those in the tavern greet him with a smattering of applause, a chorus of ‘Huzzah’s’, all mixed with a rousing round of For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow. It’s as if they’ve forgotten where they are, and who he is. That perhaps that creak on the stairs, that flash of shadow on the porch, that whiff of breath on the back of the neck isn’t the same Hangtown Horror standing in front of them right now. Then again, to their minds, creepy ol’ Phinehas Dillinger isn’t the same figure lending his massive pewter bowl to an offering of wassail on the house.
Wassail, you say? In August? Yes, what of it? We are in Hangtown, after all.
Phinehas sets the bowl on the counter and the bartender commences mixing. Bottles of Mandrake’s Old Peculiar, several generous pours of brandy, a handful of cinnamon sticks and cloves, vigorous grindings of ginger and nutmeg, and a few Gallow’s Dancer heirloom apples cored and chopped and dropped in the bowl. The bartender stirs with a stained wooden spoon and begins ladling out mugs. Those present mill about the bar waiting their turn.
“Give us a story, Phinehas.”
“Yes, tell us again of how you won that bowl!”
He shoots the crowd a grim blue leer.
“I don’t…well, okay.”
Phinehas regales them, in excruciating detail (as in, exceedingly painful for those who had been in his crosshairs), the beatings he distributed to the current World Champion. And Alexa Black. And Alyce Starchylde. And Non Compos Mentis. And Sicko. Some received more of a portion than did others that night, but beatings they were, none the less.
The Lord of Misrule has a rapt audience. Sure, there are the sounds of mugs on tabletops and the occasional cough or clearing of throats, but for the most part it is only the murmur of an evening in town wafting on a breeze from the river through the open windows and Phinehas’s astonishing tale.
But even as they listen and concoct their own visions of a ginger-bearded dervish whirling around the ring, several heads turn towards the door all of a sudden. Phinehas stops in mid-sentence (“I punched him in his stupid face…”) but does not turn in kind. The others look on as Ruth takes a step inside, her hands in fists at her sides.
"Phinehas."
A breath.
“It’s Granny.”
---------
Brother and sister step into the hut during the dog days of summer, yet a fire burns low in the fireplace on the other side of the room. Burning low next to Granny in her chair. Phinehas pauses to cast about at the old familiar wood and stone. The papers and books scattered on the table. The mason jars and carved boxes. He then moves across the poplar floor and kneels at Granny’s side.
She sits there buried under quilts. She looks so small, so weak, bundled up there as she is. Her eyes glisten under heavy lids and her chapped lips move, but just barely. Those thin wrinkled hands knead the blankets.
“She’s helped herself to her spirits,” says Ruth.
Apple peels hang from twine to dry along with all the herbs Granny has gathered for her wondrous deeds. Witch hazel, lavender, rosemary, sage, and all the rest. But even so, Phinehas picks up a smell underneath it all. He leans in and sniffs. Her breath. Her insides. It’s the smell of sickness. The smell of…no, Phinehas does not acknowledge it. He covers Granny’s hand with his own.
“I take it the matches in the bottle trick didn’t work.”
Ruth moves behind him and rests her own hand on his shoulder.
“No, and my poultice isn’t potent enough. It’s embedded too deep. That’s why she asked for you.”
“For me.”
“This is who we are, Phinehas. I heal…”
“And bewitch.”
“I heal. You maim. Among other things.”
A glance up at his sister then Phinehas moves the quilts. He lifts Granny’s smock just enough to expose a dark patch of skin among her ribs. He palpates the area with his fingers.
Phinehas can be gentle when he wishes.
“After a certain age the only thing that continues to grow in the human body is…”
Ruth squeezes his shoulder. “I know what continues to grow.”
Phinehas leans closer and squints. “You think you know yourself. You’ve managed to master the very elements around you, and then your body betrays you.” He tilts his head and exhales
Ruth removes her hand and moves to stand in front of Granny. She crosses her arms. “Well, she is Hangtown’s sin-eater. The devil’s tipped his hat in every direction around here. It was just a matter of time before it manifested itself in something like this.”
---------
SINEATER: One who absolves the poison from those with a wavering faith. The snakes and the strychnine. Takes on the blasphemies, lusts, anger, and covetousness of others. Offers protection from the Evil Eye.
May also serve to pardon sins of a more unexpected nature – pride, general hostility to one’s fellow man, self-abuse, pomposity, bombastic tendencies, excessive ambition, and poor personal hygiene (cleanliness is next to godliness, after all).
see also: hedge witch; granny medicine; wise woman; crone
---------
“I know. Such foulness in this amount would lead to contamination in any body…be it our physical husk or, say, an organization.”
Ruth sighs. “No, Phinehas.”
“I’m just saying the arithmetic is similar. Ford himself would agree…”
“No. Don’t you sully this with talk of business. Sometimes a conversation is just a conversation. A moment is just a moment.”
Phinehas pulls a knife from a pocket.
No, not a knife. His knife.
He unleashes the blade and holds it in the embers. The gruesome bits smolder and burn away. He touches it to his tongue, and, satisfied, sets to the task before him. Methodically slices through the epidermis, dermis, and all the subcutaneous tissues therein. Phinehas whips out a blue and white paisley handkerchief from his back pocket. He wipes his forehead before dabbing the blood around the incision – the thick, black, viscous blood of the ill. He makes small cuts with a steady hand. A skilled hand, perhaps, well versed in…what, exactly?
Never the less.
Granny tenses. The muttering quickens, eye lids flutter, and her fingers massage the quilt as she continues her own work off elsewhere.
Content with his efforts, Phinehas moves aside. Ruth steps in and takes up the handkerchief. She dips it in a mortar in which she has already prepared her poultice of wasp nest tatters, ginseng, clay, creek water, and spit from the deepest part of her.
Hope is to depend on others, and so, yes, they have hope in this moment.
Ruth places the handkerchief over the incision. Waits, then hands the bundle to Phinehas. He unwraps it.
“And cancer is just cancer,” he says as he holds it up to the firelight. The accused hangs there small and black, like a rotten acorn. A concentrated mass of wickedness, shame, and desire.
Phinehas squeezes it, then opens his hand to reveal a pile of black powder in his palm. He tosses it into the fireplace where it flares and is swept up the chimney.
Brother and sister stand over Granny. A long exhale and she slumps. Lips and eye lids still, she falls into a sleep of one with a clear conscience. The sleep of the content.
Rest in peace, and rise in power.
---------
“Phinehas!”
“Back from a far-traveled journey!”
Phinehas Dillinger steps over the threshold into The Owl & Eel, holding the Battle Bowl out in front of him. Those in the tavern greet him with a smattering of applause, a chorus of ‘Huzzah’s’, all mixed with a rousing round of For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow. It’s as if they’ve forgotten where they are, and who he is. That perhaps that creak on the stairs, that flash of shadow on the porch, that whiff of breath on the back of the neck isn’t the same Hangtown Horror standing in front of them right now. Then again, to their minds, creepy ol’ Phinehas Dillinger isn’t the same figure lending his massive pewter bowl to an offering of wassail on the house.
Wassail, you say? In August? Yes, what of it? We are in Hangtown, after all.
Phinehas sets the bowl on the counter and the bartender commences mixing. Bottles of Mandrake’s Old Peculiar, several generous pours of brandy, a handful of cinnamon sticks and cloves, vigorous grindings of ginger and nutmeg, and a few Gallow’s Dancer heirloom apples cored and chopped and dropped in the bowl. The bartender stirs with a stained wooden spoon and begins ladling out mugs. Those present mill about the bar waiting their turn.
“Give us a story, Phinehas.”
“Yes, tell us again of how you won that bowl!”
He shoots the crowd a grim blue leer.
“I don’t…well, okay.”
Phinehas regales them, in excruciating detail (as in, exceedingly painful for those who had been in his crosshairs), the beatings he distributed to the current World Champion. And Alexa Black. And Alyce Starchylde. And Non Compos Mentis. And Sicko. Some received more of a portion than did others that night, but beatings they were, none the less.
The Lord of Misrule has a rapt audience. Sure, there are the sounds of mugs on tabletops and the occasional cough or clearing of throats, but for the most part it is only the murmur of an evening in town wafting on a breeze from the river through the open windows and Phinehas’s astonishing tale.
But even as they listen and concoct their own visions of a ginger-bearded dervish whirling around the ring, several heads turn towards the door all of a sudden. Phinehas stops in mid-sentence (“I punched him in his stupid face…”) but does not turn in kind. The others look on as Ruth takes a step inside, her hands in fists at her sides.
"Phinehas."
A breath.
“It’s Granny.”
---------
Brother and sister step into the hut during the dog days of summer, yet a fire burns low in the fireplace on the other side of the room. Burning low next to Granny in her chair. Phinehas pauses to cast about at the old familiar wood and stone. The papers and books scattered on the table. The mason jars and carved boxes. He then moves across the poplar floor and kneels at Granny’s side.
She sits there buried under quilts. She looks so small, so weak, bundled up there as she is. Her eyes glisten under heavy lids and her chapped lips move, but just barely. Those thin wrinkled hands knead the blankets.
“She’s helped herself to her spirits,” says Ruth.
Apple peels hang from twine to dry along with all the herbs Granny has gathered for her wondrous deeds. Witch hazel, lavender, rosemary, sage, and all the rest. But even so, Phinehas picks up a smell underneath it all. He leans in and sniffs. Her breath. Her insides. It’s the smell of sickness. The smell of…no, Phinehas does not acknowledge it. He covers Granny’s hand with his own.
“I take it the matches in the bottle trick didn’t work.”
Ruth moves behind him and rests her own hand on his shoulder.
“No, and my poultice isn’t potent enough. It’s embedded too deep. That’s why she asked for you.”
“For me.”
“This is who we are, Phinehas. I heal…”
“And bewitch.”
“I heal. You maim. Among other things.”
A glance up at his sister then Phinehas moves the quilts. He lifts Granny’s smock just enough to expose a dark patch of skin among her ribs. He palpates the area with his fingers.
Phinehas can be gentle when he wishes.
“After a certain age the only thing that continues to grow in the human body is…”
Ruth squeezes his shoulder. “I know what continues to grow.”
Phinehas leans closer and squints. “You think you know yourself. You’ve managed to master the very elements around you, and then your body betrays you.” He tilts his head and exhales
Ruth removes her hand and moves to stand in front of Granny. She crosses her arms. “Well, she is Hangtown’s sin-eater. The devil’s tipped his hat in every direction around here. It was just a matter of time before it manifested itself in something like this.”
---------
SINEATER: One who absolves the poison from those with a wavering faith. The snakes and the strychnine. Takes on the blasphemies, lusts, anger, and covetousness of others. Offers protection from the Evil Eye.
May also serve to pardon sins of a more unexpected nature – pride, general hostility to one’s fellow man, self-abuse, pomposity, bombastic tendencies, excessive ambition, and poor personal hygiene (cleanliness is next to godliness, after all).
see also: hedge witch; granny medicine; wise woman; crone
---------
“I know. Such foulness in this amount would lead to contamination in any body…be it our physical husk or, say, an organization.”
Ruth sighs. “No, Phinehas.”
“I’m just saying the arithmetic is similar. Ford himself would agree…”
“No. Don’t you sully this with talk of business. Sometimes a conversation is just a conversation. A moment is just a moment.”
Phinehas pulls a knife from a pocket.
No, not a knife. His knife.
He unleashes the blade and holds it in the embers. The gruesome bits smolder and burn away. He touches it to his tongue, and, satisfied, sets to the task before him. Methodically slices through the epidermis, dermis, and all the subcutaneous tissues therein. Phinehas whips out a blue and white paisley handkerchief from his back pocket. He wipes his forehead before dabbing the blood around the incision – the thick, black, viscous blood of the ill. He makes small cuts with a steady hand. A skilled hand, perhaps, well versed in…what, exactly?
Never the less.
Granny tenses. The muttering quickens, eye lids flutter, and her fingers massage the quilt as she continues her own work off elsewhere.
Content with his efforts, Phinehas moves aside. Ruth steps in and takes up the handkerchief. She dips it in a mortar in which she has already prepared her poultice of wasp nest tatters, ginseng, clay, creek water, and spit from the deepest part of her.
Hope is to depend on others, and so, yes, they have hope in this moment.
Ruth places the handkerchief over the incision. Waits, then hands the bundle to Phinehas. He unwraps it.
“And cancer is just cancer,” he says as he holds it up to the firelight. The accused hangs there small and black, like a rotten acorn. A concentrated mass of wickedness, shame, and desire.
Phinehas squeezes it, then opens his hand to reveal a pile of black powder in his palm. He tosses it into the fireplace where it flares and is swept up the chimney.
Brother and sister stand over Granny. A long exhale and she slumps. Lips and eye lids still, she falls into a sleep of one with a clear conscience. The sleep of the content.
Rest in peace, and rise in power.
