The Witch of Red Boiling Springs

There was once an old woman who lived in the hills of Middle Tennessee, just outside of a town called Red Boiling Springs.

She was, as you will have guessed immediately, a witch.

 The town had grown up around a group of sulfur springs in the mid 1800s, reached a height of bustling summer business in the 20s, and died the death of a failed tourist destination just a few decades after that.

Whereas thousands of people used to swarm in to ‘take the waters’, now three lone Jeffersonian-style hotels sat quietly in the square, and residents dug freshwater wells alongside the old sulfur ones to escape the stench and pipe corrosion. The pervasive, hereditary superstition of the people of Red Boiling outlasted the belief in sulfur that had brought their ancestors to the area in the first place. The town and surrounding area now kept a steady population of about 9,000.

                It was large enough to support a decently sized high school, was close to a Walmart, and had an active and complex political life, for so small a place. The Mayor was a man named Dooley, who was among perhaps a dozen total residents with a Masters degree; he was also widely recognized as the most magnetic person in 50 miles. Men seemed almost afraid to resist his charm; groups of women in public places could be observed, reacting with waves of physical agitation as he passed by. In his mid thirties, he’d won the Mayoral campaign by a strange landslide—voter stats in the last municipal election had shown 82% of the residents participating; among women, the percentage was 93%. Previously, these numbers had hovered between 50 and 60 percent.

                Dooley had done well by the town, addressing the primary concerns of citizens, handling the tiny local press, and signing pointless proclamations to commemorate little pet projects from the Health Department and the Board of Education. In the five years since he’d signed on, his universal appeal had only strengthened; it seemed that a certain level of trust had been built over time, to augment his political charisma. A visiting lawyer from out of town was heard to remark that if he’d only had a few other material opportunities—better education, perhaps—he might have become President. The locals passed this statement amongst themselves with great respect.

The witch of Red Boiling Springs lived within a fifteen-minute drive of the dead hotel district and Main Street. The house she lived in was a hundred years old, almost exactly; it was a log cabin with plenty of tree cover, and the mood of the place lent credit to her reputation.

                She took money for health remedies, and sometimes labeled them “potions;” this is what actually started people calling her The Witch, although it had been a delicious local story for much longer than that. No one even remembered her Christian name.

                 One Tuesday morning in the spring, there came a knock at her door. This was not unusual; the log cabin was the perfect place to do business from, because of its aura of age, mystery, and seclusion, and because the woman was no longer able to move around as she used to. She’d even hired a local girl to help with gathering herbs.

She was used to the locals driving out in person for their elixirs; they came at all hours. When the knock came, she arose from her fireside seat and trudged over to answer it, calling “Come and enter,” her signature greeting. The somewhat repetitive phrase had a nice witch-like aspect, she thought.

The woman who stood outside was young and pretty. Her figure was straight, her hair of medium length and recently colored a domestic brown, and her face was discreetly made up. She smiled brightly and said, “Ms. Fuqua? Are you Doris Fuqua?” She seemed determined to be casual, though she shifted constantly and unconsciously from one foot to the other.

Doris pulled in a quick breath through her old chest. “I am the witch of Red Boiling,” she said. She wasn’t ready to be shaken off the course so unexpectedly. She’d had the witch voice ready and everything; it was jarring to hear the old name now.

“I know—“ said the woman, smiling and looking at the porch ceiling and nodding like she understood but she wanted the joke put aside for just a moment. “I know, but your name is Doris. Right? My mother used to know you as a girl; she helped in the garden. Do you remember Rebecca?”

Dorris nodded. “I do, dear.” She’d caught her bearings then and opened the door wide enough to be inviting. “Now come in; it’s too wet.”

The woman came in and creaked the door shut behind her, looking slowly and smoothly around the whole cabin as she did so. The walls had not been changed in a hundred years, and the light came only from the fire and a candle on the counter. There was running water, but only just. A few wooden articles of furniture stood around the area that was designated as a living room, and a wooden table with three chairs stood in the kitchen. One lone couch, dating into the 60s, divided the two spaces.

“Well, what seems to be your trouble?” the witch said, moving to her little stove, using the water she’d already boiled for herself to pour two cups of tea.

“Oh, no trouble, Ms. Fuqua,” the woman said, a little condescendingly.

“You can call me witch,” said the witch. “I’d prefer it, actually.”

“But you wouldn’t mind if I call you your real name,” said the woman. “I’m only here to say hello. My mother liked you very much.”

“I’d rather not the other name,” said the witch, a little shortly. “And, anyway, I don’t know your real name.”

“It’s Mrs.—“ she stopped, just a hair of a second. “It’s Anne.”

“Sit, please-won’t-you,” said the witch. She set a brewing cup in front of Anne and sat down with another in her hands. There was silence for a about five seconds, but it felt much longer for the young woman, and she began to shift the balls of her feet up and down under the table.

“You are troubled, and it is about love,” the woman said. “I don’t do love potions.”

Anne started, and laughed, feeling that she was in some kind of stage production. No one said things like this without a touch of irony. Then she looked at the woman and fell silent again, smiling.

“You are married, and it is about love,” said the witch, more slowly. “You are not married long. Your mother was unlucky in love too; did not your father leave? And others.”

This steady little speech caught the young woman more and more by surprise, the confident grin left her face and she was very quiet for half a minute after it was over, looking at the witch.

“My mother said you were special,” she said then. “She said that she started to wonder about you before you ever became a witch for people. She said you healed her dog once, and that you told her the future. And she said that you weren’t trying to be a witch; you just did things and they worked. Of course I knew that she was telling stories for fun, like we all do.” But words were said with a little harsh edge to them; she’d been made to feel vulnerable, and also she wasn’t ready to ask the witch for that kind of help until she’d made it clear she didn’t believe in witches.

 “It’s fun, that the kids get to make up stories about stuff like this,” she laughed then, and pulled her tea up for a sip. “We don’t get much excitement out here. I know my mother liked to pretend.”

“Your mother was always unhappy with her job and her men,” said the witch, simply.

Anne looked at her for another long moment. “Yes,” she said.

“You are unhappy,” said the witch.

“You really shouldn’t tell people that you can actually cure things,” Anne, standing up with her tea, tossing her hair. “Some of them are really serious or they wouldn’t pay you. Some of them it’s just fun, I know. But not everyone. I’m just saying you should make sure you maintain integrity in the whole thing…” she paused for a broken second, and finished brightly “so you can continue!”

The witch didn’t answer, so she added, “It really is a great little spot of tourism for the county, too; I mean, what you do is really a good thing for us, I think. You just have to be careful about it. I’m sure you know all this.”

“What do you need?” said the witch then.

“I don’t know why you keep saying that.”

“You do.”

“Goodness,” a last laugh, “maybe you should tell me what it is?”

“You are married to the most loved and respected man in the county. He’s rich too. He’s powerful, at least in the county, and he’s smart; they say he’s smart. Good looking and pretty young. There were dozens of girls who came in here and asked me to make him want them, a few years ago. There were old women too who came in and cried in this room about him. There were men who came in and asked me to make them like him in this or that way. They would use his name and ask for only his looks or only his charm or only his academic ability; they never could get it out but that’s what they were asking for. A few asked me to help them kill him. Some of them asked me to help them get the business sense that would make him partner with them or support this venture or that.

“Then there have been people who just came in looking for drugs. Most of them have nothing to do with him, but lots of them moan, after they talk for hours about their misery and their wasted lives and their bad luck, they say ‘why caint I uv been Dooley? Or why duz it always have to happen for men lak Dooley?’ the women say ‘if I wuz any good, if I hadn’t been screwed over, I coulda got a man lak the Mayor.’ And you’re his wife.”

“I am,” choked Anne, trying still to sip her tea.

“So what is it? You want me to make him stop going with another woman?”

“No! He isn’t.”

“You want me to help you, so you can talk better and learn and read so you can interest him with conversation?”

“What? No.”

“You want me to help him to slow down his appetites a little, or to speed yours up, so that he is not nagging you all the time? Or to make you more sexy to excite him?”

“No, it’s nothing—“

The witch’s eyebrows drew in together at the word nothing.

“—like that.” Anne amended.

“So? What?”

“Well, witch,” Anne halfway laughed, exasperated and in disbelief to be asking, “I want you to make a potion that will make me love my husband!” A small tear stood in the corner of her eye.

The witch’s shoulder straightened, slowly.

“You want me to—but you don’t now?”

“I want you to give me whatever you have,” said Anne heedlessly, her voice shaking, “give it to me, that will make me love my grasping, manipulative, duplicitous, false-intellectual husband! I want to love him when he is making his speeches, and when he comes home and eats my dinners, and when he is at church next to me in the pew, and when others look at him and adore him, I want to be just the closest of his admirers. I want to love him as he writes those dumb-ass proclamations in the office, and when he leads the public meetings, and when he heaves himself on top of me in our bed. I want to love him!” Her voice was coming out in little splinters by this time, and it was not hatred, or even anger, but sorrow and remorse that came out of her.

“My child!” Doris could say no more.

“I must love him,” said Anne, her face wet.

The witch stood up slowly and went to the large cupboard that stood against the wall. She pulled a bottle and brought it out.

“Usually I do child’s stuff,” said the witch, quietly, setting it on the table. “I tell people fortunes like a TV lady, I give out oils to help someone’s immune system or witch hazel for someone’s chest.

“This is not for play. This,” and she looked seriously in the other woman’s eyes, “will change your mind. You will be blind now. You will not be able see as you did before—you will not… discern. You will be blind to any of the faults of the person we direct it towards. And it will only work for one. Wouldn’t you rather love your children this way? Lots of people do, some naturally.”

“I don’t have children,” sobbed Anne, insignificantly.  “I must love him.”

The witch was silent for a moment. She stood, finally, wrapped the bottle in a plastic Walmart bag, wrapped a brown paper sack around that, wrote out directions, tucked them in, wrote out a receipt, and placed it all in front of the younger woman.

Anne paid, smiled politely again, said how good it was to meet her mother’s friend. At the last, she even tried to laugh conspiratorially at the little jokey, kitschy, superstitious thing that the two of them had been involved in together. The witch would not smile.

Finally, Anne backed her way out of the door, made a little sound at the rain, and ran to her car—a brand new skinny sedan.

Days later, the Mayor and his wife were seen frolicking together at a lunch table in town. A waitress remarked bitterly how very lovely, how very lucky, the Mayor’s wife was. Indeed, within a few months, most of the people in town had noted the extreme prosperity that seemed to have settled on her, as if it had not been there already when she married HIM. Some folks, they thought to themselves, were simply destined for ease and glory.

 Many of the women in town began to request the Anne Dooley haircut at the hairdressers.