Weeds in Bloom Read Free Page B

sunshine, fingers extended, like a classroom of young children raising eager hands.
    Climbing made the day seem hotter. One of the few summer boilers that stretched field corn, maddened dogs, and could rile up the women in the kitchens who were baking—or worse, canning.
    As I hiked, my shirt had become a wash of uphill sweat because of the steep of the pitch. A bug was biting me. Using my free hand, I swatted at it, and possible missed. My other hand toted an unbleached muslin cloth, softer than a Sunday morning due to its countless surrenders to a sudsy brown bar of homemade lye soap in the command of Mama’s red knuckles. Inside the napkin rode a dozen baking-powder biscuits, still oven warm, and a small jar of mustard pickles that had been freckled with our homegrown dill.
    Gifts for my great-great-aunt. Aunt Ida Peck was reputed to be one hundred and ten years old. Some claimed older.
    Alive, but didn’t talk anymore.
    She really didn’t have to. Because near to everyone in the county talked about her, told storiesabout her adventures, and even whispered about some of her long-gone social activities. Rumor held that a century ago, in 1838, this particular Ida Peck had actual cocked back a musket hammer to full click and, without aiming or sighting along the barrel, shot, wounded, and killed a drunken half-crazed Saint Francis Indian by the name of Three Crows.
    At the time, she was only nine.
    Others said eight.
    All I knew was this: that even now, in spite of Aunt Ida’s being well beyond a hundred, nobody ever considered molesting her with as much as a blink of bother. And that included the lowest types you could mention: tax assessors, revenue men, and judges. In her day, all of our Peck clan boasted, Aunt Ida knew how to still the very best whiskey out of sweet corn, water, and maple sugar. One swig would keep a lumberjack warm all winter, up until the middle of May.
    A few tongues wagged, remembering a time in her life she’d served in a county jail. Not long, but long enough. A friendly sheriff slid open the bars to her cell and returned her to liberty. This was fair. Because Ida had been imprisoned over a very trivial matter. Nothing serious.
    All she’d done was shoot a lawyer.
    By that, she earned respect. Even the localmountain clans, some of which were close to human (others less so)—the Yaws, the Swintons, the Korjacks—allowed that Aunt Ida held her ground. She also was known, and trusted, for holding her tongue whenever she’d been requested to patch up some unlucky buck’s gunshot wound. Or stitch a knife gash.
    If your prize coonhound poked his fooly nose into a porcupine, Aunt Ida could easy the dog down to quiet and coax out every quill with a pair of pliers. Snip and pull.
    She’d shot and skinned the last timber wolf to be spotted in northern Vermont and hung his hide on her front door.
    Her only door.
    Aunt Ida could needlepoint an entire Bible verse—“Jesus wept”—on a penny button, butcher a hog (tame or wild), dig up cure-all root (ginseng), and for people fixing to sink a well she could locate an underground vein of water by using a divining rod of laurel wood.
    Some swore it was willow.
    About half a century before I got spawned, General Ulysses S. Grant came hunting in Vermont. It was told to me that Grant personally visited her unpainted house and sipped her special remedy, sassafras tea, supposedly to ease the distress of short temper and long bottles.
    There was, however, another reason for General Grant’s visit to Vermont: Ida Peck knew horses.
    She could walk up to a strange gelding or mare, hold its head, smell its breath, study its eyes and teeth, and then determine if the particular animal was sound or sorry. Closing her eyes, she’d discover a spavin with a few gentle rubs of a hand. General Grant wanted Aunt Ida to help select mounts for the United States Cavalry.
    She refused the job, stating that the Civil War had been one awesome mistake, Lincoln’s disaster,