Potion

FICTION Potion Katie Letcher LyIe It doesn't bother Nona Lavender that she can neither read nor write. Also she doesn't care a hoot if her husband Charlie thinks country people are dumb; he doesn't believe in magic either, which shows what he knows. Because he married her, didn't he? Took her right to the judge in Roanoke and married her proper, in a white lace dress she got at a yard sale for eight dollars, not a thing wrong with it, and she made him spend the weekend at the Peaks of Otter. It all happened because of magic. It irritates her, though, that Charlie doesn't like for her to talk to the people who come in the store. They're just kids. All they want with her is some stuff to make them go out of their minds. Everyone around her knows she knows about those things, and it's easy money. Nona figures, when she thinks about those hippies, that if she was that dirty and that bored she'd probably go looking for some kind of potion or medicine herself. As she had once. Charlie will sometimes sidle over and stare angrily at the boys, trying to make them go away. He's only jealous because he's over seventy and she isn't even thirty yet. The kids come looking for the South Peak Commune or Blue Hills Island, going loony on the scenery of the mountains; they ask her the way to Natural Bridge and Natural Chimneys, and sometimes they want to know about the Beale treasure, which she knows is a hoax, a silly story. She doesn't tell them that. Sometimes, it is true, one of the boys will look at her passionately, dropping his eyelids, raising an eyebrow, flaring his nostrils slightly. But they have no money, they come and go in battered buses shaped like loaves of bread and all painted up, or in pickup trucks that look as ifthey won't go ten feet more, and have Grateful Dead stickers on the windows . But they talk, and it makes the time pass while she gets down Katie Letcher LyIe, who lives in Lexington, Virginia, is the author of nine books. Her article "Selim the Algerine" appeared in the Summer 1991 issue o/Appalachian Heritage. 17 whatever it is they want: cigarettes, beans, charcoal, Merita bread, lunch meats, and enough beer every summer to keep the Maury River at flood level. When some bearded city boy comes in, usually with some smiling long-haired girl, looking especially for Nona, he always spends money, so she figures Charlie has no grouse coming. She tells them vaguely where to find dream mushrooms, and some roots she knows about, cohosh and goldenseal, and she sort of makes up stories about the curative power of bee balm and such, just whatever comes to her. Mainly she sends them over to see old Louise Fireball. Nona has never been able to bring herself to apologize to Louise, but she sends her a lot of customers, all summer long, every year, and hopes that is good enough. If Charlie sometimes gets jealous, that doesn't strike her as all bad. He's easy to handle. She hears Charlie's chair in the middle of the store creak and cry. "Ira!" he calls. "Did you unload that coffee yet?" Her son Ira nods without replying. Nona smiles at how strong and solemn the child is for only eight years old. Little, though. Ira is a dead ringer for Charlie. Oh, she knows what Charlie thinks, but she doesn't care about that either. She knows Charlie thinks her Ira is better than his Jubil, and it shames him and he doesn't understand how that can be. Nona decided a long time ago that it was better to let it alone, so she isn't telling anyone anything. She leans back and closes her eyes, and flaps her skirt to get a breeze to her legs. It was almost ten years ago now that Charlie had first come out to her house in that rackety old Chevrolet of his, to ask her to...