A Widow's Curse Read online

  “In a somewhat more historical context, possibly,” I said, “but you rarely hear it in the twenty-first century.”

  I moved to the oil lamp that was set on the railing by the steps and took the coin out of the envelope Shultz had handed me. I happened to pull it out on the side that contained the ornate capital letter B. It was very intricate, almost like the first letter of an illuminated medieval manuscript. There was a tiny hole in the coin at the top of the B, worn and almost closed by time, as if someone had worn it as a necklace long ago.

  It was about size of an old silver dollar; I rolled it over in my fingers. The other side did indeed show a man, presumably a saint, bending over a well. The well was bubbling up, and on the horizon you could dimly see scores of people traveling toward the well, some on crutches, some in bandages, others being carried. It wasn’t just any well. I was almost certain I recognized the image.

  “Oh my God,” I whispered.

  Shultz sat up. Andrews turned my way.

  “I’ll have to go back to one of the books I was looking at earlier today,” I began, “and maybe look at this thing under a magnifying glass—but I think this is an image of Saint Elian.”

  “Who?” Andrews stood.

  “Saint Elian,” Shultz said absently, as if he were somehow my translator.

  “He was Welsh,” I told Andrews. “And the well in this image—it’s based on an actual place, a real well, in Wales. Let me think.”

  “This is amazing,” Shultz leaned forward. “You really are the guy. One look and you know.”

  “I don’t know,” I insisted. “And, as I was saying, I did some research this afternoon, or I wouldn’t have remembered this story at all. It’s really something of a coincidence.”

  “But—,” Shultz began.

  “Shh,” Andrews told Shultz. “Let him remember the Saint Elian story.”

  I took in a breath.

  “I wouldn’t know anything about this at all, really, except for my old mentor, Dr. Bishop. He was fanatical about Welsh stories.”

  “God, there’s a story: Dr. Bishop,” Andrews whispered to Shultz.

  “Shh,” Shultz said, his tone only a little mocking, “let him remember the Saint Elian story.”

  “I think it was in the fifth century,” I began slowly, “that Saint Elian was traveling the hills of Wales, above the coast where Colwyn Bay is today. He was very tired, thirsty, but there were no settlements around. He was a man of great faith. He prayed to God for the barest of necessities: a warm night and some fresh water. As his prayer ascended to heaven, a pure spring bubbled up from the ground at his feet. Elian thanked God, and the night turned soft. The saint drank, spent the night there, and then moved on, but the well remained and soon became famous for its powers.”

  “Like Lourdes,” Andrews interrupted.

  Crickets, tree frogs, bats were all beginning to sing.

  “Not exactly.” I stared down at the coin. “The power of Elian’s Well was used for darker purposes. Most people went to the well to make curses on someone who had offended them. It was a booming business, in fact, by the seventeenth century. People would pay large sums to the keeper of the well, a priest or a monk in charge of the water, to curse other people. Then, of course, the keeper of the well would let it be known to the curse victim that he had been done in, and he’d go to the well himself to ask the monk to remove the curse.”

  “Which he would happily do for a larger fee,” Shultz guessed.

  “Exactly,” I confirmed.

  “Maybe this coin was minted,” Andrews said excitedly, “by some clever Welsh entrepreneur for people to use in curse payments or curse removals!”

  “You said it was a real place,” Shultz whispered. “Is this well still there, in Wales?”

  “Sort of,” I said, slowly remembering. “The well was filled in, or at least covered over, during the nineteenth century. Apparently, the cursing got out of hand.”

  “So this coin is, you think, Welsh?” Shultz asked, sipping more brandy.

  “I couldn’t say for certain,” I told him, “but silver was the primary incentive for expanding the Welsh mining industry in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I seem to remember something about the mines in Wales producing a significant amount.”

  “Of silver?” Shultz set down his glass.

  “That’s right.” I flipped the coin over again and stared down at the B. Why did it seem to be telling me something?

  Shultz stood up.

  “This is great!” he said a little too loudly. “Scary mountain cabin, silver coin from Wales, magic curse water—and it’s almost autumn. I got a valuable objet d’art, a cracking mystery, and two new friends. Am I the luckiest son of a bitch in the world or not?”

  Shultz bent over to pick up his glass, immediately hit his elbow against the arm of the rocking chair, knocked it sideways. He dropped his glass, took an uncertain step backward, and tumbled down hard on his side.

  Andrews exploded with laughter, and even Shultz himself saw the humor in the moment—to his enormous credit.

  “I’m going to need lots more of that brandy.” He grinned up at me, rubbing his sore elbow.

  Looking back on things, of course, we were witnessing the dark beginning of something wicked coming our way.

  You can cover a well if you want to, but the water doesn’t disappear—it just goes somewhere else, underground.

  Three

  The next morning, with somewhat clearer heads, we began our investigation in earnest. We’d slept in. The sun was tall, higher than the pines. The kitchen was bright and the scent of fresh whole coffee beans filled the room. We all arose at around the same time. And when we did, we seemed to want to plunge into the riddle right away—but each in his own way, as if we were some sort of odd, circus-based research team.

  I’d been the first up, setting the espresso machine and yawning. Andrews had come bounding down next, wanting to know when breakfast would be ready. Shultz was last up, brow wrinkled and wincing—apple brandy had obviously taken its toll on the man.

  I was in black T-shirt and jeans once more; Andrews, barefoot, had donned a bowling shirt and baggy shorts; Shultz had dressed up: slacks, polo shirt, penny loafers.

  I’d found a few slim books on Welsh folk motifs and stories in my bookcases. In one, we found the tale of Saint Elian, some pictures of the well as it existed in 1945, the publication date of the book. I had remembered most of the story correctly, though the book, called Ruined Wales, had strong anti-Catholic sentiments that clouded the tale for me.

  For several hours, the three of us sat in my kitchen, strong slanting light pounding the wooden tabletop and darker wooden floor, reading silently, sipping espresso.

  “Here’s something,” Andrews mumbled.

  He had opted for a volume of Welsh history.

  “It says here,” Andrews went on sleepily, not looking up from his book, “that metal mining in what used to be the county of Cardiganshire dates to the Middle Bronze Age.”

  “How long ago is that?” Shultz asked me.

  “About four thousand years,” I said.

  “It was copper first,” Andrews droned on, “and archaeologists have discovered some mining evidence as far back as the Roman occupation.”

  “We’re not really looking for a history of mining,” I began.

  “‘Silver,’” Andrews continued, reading from the book, “‘greatly expanded the mining industry in the seventeenth century. So much so that in 1637 a mint was established at Aberystwyth to coin locally mined silver and was active into the 1640s and the First English Civil War.’” He looked up. “Then it goes on about something called the ‘Mines Royal Acts’ and how the whole silver thing was over by the late 1800s.”

  I set down my book.

  “A mint in Aberystwyth,” I repeated. “Nice work, Andrews.”

  “You mean you think—,” Shultz began.

  “It just sets up the possibility that the coin was minted there,” I inter
rupted. “I think there are probably collectors or museum people who could tell us right away if we’re on the right path.”

  “I brought my laptop,” Andrews yawned, closing his book. “I’ll make inquiries.”

  “Don’t be too specific,” I said quickly.

  “And don’t say that you have this coin,” Shultz added.

  Andrews leaned forward, eyes clearer.

  “I’m not an idiot,” he intoned. “I just dress that way.”

  “I was just reading about the gold mines in Dahlonega,” Shultz said, leaning back in his chair, holding up a brochure that had been stuck in one of my books. “Turns out there was a mint there between 1838 and 1861. They had all kinds of gold, which was the main reason the Cherokee were forced out. The name of the city comes from the Cherokee word talonega, which literally means ‘golden.’”

  “Could that be anything?” Andrews turned to me. “Maybe the coin isn’t Welsh after all. Maybe it was minted there, and that’s the reason someone in Blue Mountain would have it.”

  “No.” Shultz consulted his pamphlet. “Says here they only minted gold coins, and only in four specific denominations. They closed the whole thing down after the Civil War, so apparently the coins are quite prized today.”

  “So where are we?” Andrews sniffed.

  “Didn’t someone mention breakfast awhile back?” Shultz prompted.

  “Miss Etta’s?” I suggested.

  I had not completed the upward inflection of the question before Andrews was on his feet.

  “You’re not going to believe this place,” he gushed to Shultz. “I could live there.”

  “You could die there if you eat the way Andrews does,” I warned Shultz.

  “What kind of food is it?” Shultz seemed a bit nervous. “Is this going to be a hog jowls and rutabagas place? I can’t eat that stuff.”

  Andrews was already out the front door.

  I glanced at my watch.

  “Well, it won’t be breakfast,” I called after him. “Not at this hour.”

  Miss Etta’s place was crowded when we arrived, only a little after 11:00 A.M. Few tourists had ventured near the place; every face inside was familiar to me. The storefront facade still had a hint here and there of the gold-leaf lettering that had once said HORTON’s PHARMACY—though Dr. Horton had died in 1927. Toward the end of the Great Depression in the Georgia mountains, Miss Etta, then a married girl in her early teens, opened up her eatery. A hand-painted sign still hung behind the cash register, once having informed the people in Blue Mountain that they could have GOOD FOOD FOR A NICKEL.

  The price had gone up steadily since 1943, and Miss Etta’s no-account husband had long since run off. She’d had the marriage annulled, kept the diner, and become as much of a fixture in our town as the ancient trees around the courthouse or the strange high rock outcropping called the Devil’s Hearth, which you could barely see from her establishment in the winter months—and then only if you had a window seat and knew where to look.

  Without trying at all, Miss Etta had become an old woman, and her food had been perfected over the course of six decades, fired in the culinary ovens of the gods, until miraculous alchemy had arrived in her linoleum kitchen. Simple boiled squash and onions had achieved a golden color, a sublime texture, and a flavor unmatched in the five-star temples of Paris. Fried okra had a crunch, a saltiness, and an independent character that ensured it would stand up to any conversation it might have with yellow squash. Catfish, always fresh-caught by local boys, was utterly without a hint of the oil in which it had been fried, tasting like sifted sunlight on transparent mountain streams. Each bite of every dish was so much more than food: It was an experience of pristine nature, the touch of an angel’s hand, a hint of the original garden that fed us all before the fall from grace. And all for six dollars, including sales tax.

  I opened the door and let Andrews and Shultz go ahead of me. Everyone in the place gave invading strangers the once-over, but when I stepped in behind them, most people nodded. Everything was all right: The strangers were with that odd Devilin boy.

  The inside of the place was nothing special. A startlingly eclectic assemblage of tables and chairs cluttered the room; an old counter left over from the pharmacy’s soda fountain lent a few extra spaces for sitting. Walls were covered, haphazardly, with sixty years’ worth of taxidermied fish, children’s drawings, and photos of smiling faces that now lived only in memories. The floor was worn, the lights were too bright, and the crowd was noisy. It was heaven.

  “Now the trick here,” Andrews explained to Shultz, “is to take the biggest plate you can find and get as much variety on your plate as possible.”

  Shultz was at sea.

  “You have to get your own plate.” I pointed to a stack of mismatched plates beside the cash register at the far end of the long yellow counter. “You take it back into the kitchen and dish up the food yourself from anything and everything on the stove. You can fill your plate as much as you want, balance the cornbread on top. It’s one price for everything. You come back for the sweet tea, but you can’t go back for seconds of anything.”

  Shultz nodded, eyes darting here and there, as if he were in a foreign country, struggling to assimilate the strange customs of the natives. He watched Andrews and copied him exactly.

  Miss Etta was, as usual, dozing in a ladder-back rocking chair behind the cash register. Her perennial cardigan sweater and shin-length dress were customarily brown. Her hair was in a bun, but a good deal of the hair had come loose and made a sort of gray haze around her head—almost like a halo.

  The kitchen was stifling, but the air was rich, flavored with cooked onions, sage, sweet roasting corn husks. The ceiling was barely six feet high, the walls were black with smoke; the floor actually had ruts in the wood where thousands and thousands had walked before.

  Shultz put everything on his plate exactly as Andrews did, and the two of them had created a culinary sculpture, topped with a golden triangle of cornbread, that threatened to capsize with every step they took.

  I took the road less traveled. With a conveniently placed oven mitt, I fetched an ear of corn from the oven. It had been roasted in its husk and was hot even through the mitt. I carefully peeled back the husk and tore away most of the corn silk, burning my fingers a little, and threw the husk into a paper bag already filled with a dozen others.

  Next: greens. Miss Etta used a combination of greens, the exact description of which was a secret she would one day carry to her grave. She swore, when forced to talk about it at all, that most of the leaves were turnip greens, but some might be wild greens she gathered from the fields around her house. The result, whatever the ingredients, was a dish unlike anything anywhere else on earth. The flavors were a balance of sweet and salty, sharp and soft, rich and clean. I put them in a bowl, because the liquid in which they were cooked was to be soaked up with cornbread, which was, in fact, the reason God invented cornbread at all.

  Finally, I turned to the catfish. Huge filets sat on a rack, crisp, dry, their color that of sunbeams in deep woods. Beside them, Miss Etta had made her concession to incessant public outcry: a white porcelain bowl filled with tartar sauce, another insulted by catsup. I eschewed both as a minister would a sinner, and made straight for the cornbread.

  Andrews and Shultz had found a wobbly table in the corner and were already eating when I emerged from the kitchen. Andrews’s fork was moving almost faster than the eye could see.

  I made my way toward them, but I was momentarily stopped by a sudden crack of thunder. Everyone in the place jumped. The sky was still bright, the clouds were high and white, and the temperature was creeping toward the mideighties.

  “What was that?” Shultz managed to say between bites when I sat down.

  “Autumnal weather up here,” I explained, setting down my plate, “can be unnerving, especially this time of year. I’ve been in this very diner before when the air went from a balmy eighty-one degrees to a sprinkling of snow in t
he time it took for me to eat my lunch.”

  “No.” Shultz rejected my reportage. “You exaggerate.”

  “I do not,” I insisted.

  “It can happen.” Andrews took a single breath to support me, then returned to his more noble work destroying mashed potatoes.

  “It’s going to snow?” Shultz peered out the window at the sky.

  “Not necessarily,” I told him, staring down at my catfish. “But something’s going to happen.”

  We finished the rest of our meal in relative silence, each of us reluctant to spend valuable eating time in idle conversation.

  By the time our plates were empty, the sky was black. Half the crowd had cleared out, most talking about the weather as they left.

  Shultz had pushed his plate away from him on the table, the ancient ceremonial gesture of gustatory satisfaction, and was leaning back in his bentwood chair.

  “Well, boys,” he said grandly, “I have to tell you that I love this place.”

  “I told you the food was amazing.” Andrews wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

  “No, I don’t mean just this diner.” Shultz waved his hand in the direction of the street. “I mean the whole shebang. The cabin, the town, the hills—love it all.”

  “Don’t hear the word shebang in these parts a lot,” Andrews teased, amused. “You’re not from around here.”

  “Look who’s talking, Ivanhoe,” Shultz countered.

  “Ivanhoe? Seriously?” Andrews’s eyes were bright. “That’s what you went with?”

  “It was the first Limey thing that came to mind. I hated reading it in high school.” Shultz shrugged. “As it happens, I was born on a farm in Iowa. So while my accent may be a little different from the folks in these parts, the background is a whole lot more similar than you might think.”

  “Not many farmers get rich in Georgia,” I said thinly. “You’re clearly of a wealthy family.”

  “Well, you’ve got me there,” he admitted. “Dad didn’t make much money farming. But he was kind of a lucky man, as I think I’ve mentioned. He invented a sort of artificial pig testicle. And, as it turns out, there was actually a demand! Who knew?”