"Beg pardon?" he said.
"I won't die!" she said, staring at the ceiling.
"That's what I always claimed," said her husband, and turned over to snore.
In the morning Mrs. Elmira Brown was up early and down to the library and then to the drugstore and back to the house where she was busy mixing all kinds of chemicals when her husband, Sam came home with an empty mail pouch at noon.
"Lunch's in the icebox." Elmira stirred a green-looking porridge in a large glass.
"Good Lord, what's that?" asked her husband. "Looks like a milk shake been left out in the sun for forty years. Got kind of a fungus on it."
"Fight magic with magic."
"You going to drink that?"
"Just before I go up into the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge for the big doings."
Samuel Brown sniffed the concoction. "Take my advice. Get up those steps first, then drink it. What's in it?"
"Snow from angels' wings, well, really menthol, to cool hell's fires that burn you, it says in this book I got at the library. The juice of a fresh grape off the vine, for thinking clear sweet thoughts in the face of dark visions, it says. Also red rhubarb, cream of tartar, white sugar, white of eggs, spring water and clover buds with the strength of the good earth in them. Oh, I could go on all day. It's here in the list, good against bad, white against black. I can't lose!"
"Oh, you'll win, all right," said her husband. "But will you know it?"
"Think good thoughts. I'm on my way to get Tom for my charm."
"Poor boy" said her husband. "Innocent, like you say, and about to be torn limb from limb, bargain-basement day at the Honeysuckle Lodge."
"Tom'll survive," said Elmira, and, taking the bubbling concoction with her, hid inside a Quaker Oats box with the lid on, went out the door without catching her dress or snagging her new ninety-eight-cent stockings. Realizing this, she was smug all the way to Tom's house where he waited for her in his white summer suit as she had instructed.
"Phew!" said Tom. "What you got in that box?"
"Destiny," said Elmira.
"I sure hope so," said Tom, walking about two paces ahead of her.
The Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge was full of ladies looking in each other's mirrors and tugging at their skirts and asking to be sure their slips weren't showing.
At one o'clock Mrs. Elmira Brown came up the steps with a boy in white clothes. He was holding his nose and screwing up one eye so he could only half see where he was going. Mrs. Brown looked at the crowd and then at the Quaker Oats box and opened the top and looked in and gasped, and put the top back on without drinking
any of that stuff in there. She moved inside the hall and with her moved a rustling as of taffeta, all the ladies whispering in a tide after her.
She sat down in back with Tom, and Tom looked more miserable than ever. The one eye he had open looked at the crowd of ladies and shut up for good. Sitting there, Elmira got the potion out and drank it slowly down.
At one-thirty, the president, Mrs. Goodwater, banged the gavel and all but two dozen of the ladies quit talking.
"Ladies," she called out over the summer sea of silks and laces, capped here and there with white or gray, "it's election time. But before we start, I believe Mrs. Elmira Brown, wife of our eminent graphologist--"
A titter ran through the room.
"What's graphologist?" Elmira elbowed Tom twice.
"I don't know," whispered Tom fiercely, eyes shut, feeling that elbow come out of darkness at him.
"--wife, as I say, of our eminent handwriting expert, Samuel Brown ... (more laughter) ... of the U.S. Postal Service," continued Mrs. Goodwater. "Mrs. Brown wants to give us some opinions. Mrs. Brown?"
Elmira stood up. Her chair fell over backward and snapped shut like a bear trap on itself. She jumped an inch off the floor and teetered on her heels, which gave off cracking sounds like they would fall to dust any moment. "I got plenty to say," she said, holding the empty Quaker Oats box in one hand with a Bible. She grabbed Tom with the other and plowed forward, hitting several people's elbows and muttering to them, "Watch what you're doing! Careful, you!" to reach the platform, turn, and knock a glass of water dripping over the table. She gave Mrs. Goodwater another bristly scowl when this happened and let her mop it up with a tiny handkerchief. Then with a secret look of triumph, Elmira drew forth the empty philter glass and held it up, displaying it for Mrs. Goodwater and whispering, "You know what was in this? It's inside me, now, lady. The charmed circle surrounds me. No knife can cleave, no hatchet break through."
The ladies, all talking, did not hear.