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Good Medicine

Liz Betz

    Arlene is about to unlock the entry of Three Monkey Antiques when she notices a truck parked beside a cluster of vehicles further down Burdock’s main street. The street, like the rest of the town, is gray with winter debris while the sky overhead is undecided about the sun. For a day in May, it is chillier than it has to be. Arlene shivers, as foul smoke from her brother Sid’s cigarette adds to her discomfort. They watch the driver of the truck enter the café.
    “It seems early for the coffee group,” Arlene says.
    Her brother shrugs. “Yeah. Didn’t know the café would be open.”
    Across the street, a man, the drug store owner, comes out of the post office. After a second, he waves in Arlene’s direction and she nods in return. It is a simple exchange but after last night’s council meeting, a welcome one. Maybe she did have good medicine, as Sid called it. Or the man is sorry for his questions. Arlene isn’t setting up a half-way house. Sid has served his sentence and he’s come back home. He isn’t about to murder anyone.
    The lock unlatches on her third try and the siblings enter the building where much of the space is piled high with knick knackery. Even the air is crowded with dust from another era. Arlene has sorted and displayed but her efforts have made little difference. But now Sid is here to help.
    Work can be good medicine too and this is real work. Sid will mind the stores (the antique shop and the adjoining pizza outlet and movie rental). She will keep the village moving forward. A smile flits over her face as she realizes that she is promoting both nostalgia (at the antique store) and visionary thinking (as mayor of Burdock). Two opposites that she can handle if she’s flexible. That reminds her of something she wants to make a habit of.
    She rolls her head in a complete circle then reverses the direction. Her neck stretches and crackles but she doesn’t hear it. Her thoughts return to the council meeting. Opposites and opposition are nothing new but an audience is. Certainly the meetings are open to the public but this is a first. Two men sit with their arms crossed, silent and frowning. And a third man, a stranger, takes notes after he is told no microphones are allowed. Is he media?
    Arlene thought they might question her, and she plans a defense. She will make a positive difference. As evidence, soon there will be a new highway sign. Welcome Home to Burdock. It isn’t unanimous but after 43 years of Burdock – You are in Wheat Country, a change is overdue.
    Arlene catches sight, again, of the man who challenged her at the council meeting as he walks past his pharmacy. He’s not opening up; he’s going for a coffee. No point in seeing evil in that simple act, but Arlene, girded for battle, senses an omen. People go for coffee all the time, she tells herself, but the seed of doubt sprouts a bitter leaf. How long before anyone asks Sid to come for coffee?
    “Where do we begin today?” Sid asks as he navigates through the stockpiles of antiques. He heads to the back of the building.
    “Fuck, there’s a shit load of stuff,” he mutters.
    Arlene bristles, not ready to civilize Sid’s words despite wanting to, but also because the mess makes her feel guilty. She has been too busy. But it is what she wanted, for when they moved off the farm and retired, Ed 65 and her 59, she almost went bonkers.
    Ed gently suggests she open an antique store, maybe with the idea that it would clean out their own home. The old bank is a good building for it. They buy it and Arlene fills it. Then the second store comes up for sale, and then the election for mayor and Arlene jumps into it all.
    It’s her time, she tells people, but she finds time isn’t as flexible as it once was. The mayor duties, which hadn’t seemed like much from the outside, take a huge amount of time. And so does the antique store and her second business, A Pizza and a Movie. Luckily a short passageway connects the two building to allow one person to look after both. One person like Sid, who needs to adjust to the outside world.
    Arlene trails after her brother. Sid will adjust. She quells her own doubts. Just look at him, walking like a free man. However, inside the antique store isn’t where a person actually could walk free. Neither is Burdock been free from their welcome, despite the newly decreed town slogan.
    Sid stops in the doorway to the innermost room. “You know what? I think I could set up a cot and sleep here.”
    Arlene looks in. The towering cartons block access to a cluttered room.
    “Even if it were empty, this room is too small,” Arlene states. The voice of the mayor, her husband calls it now.
    “I’m used to less room than this,” Sid says.
    Arlene sees his point. He hasn’t seen this much space or stuff for thirteen years.
    “Don’t,” she says.
    “Don’t what? Talk about my cell?”
    “This is your fresh start.” She gives Sid a look that warns him not to argue. He needs a fresh start. What else has he, if he doesn’t get that?
    Sid picks a spatula up with his mitten shaped hands, bumpy from poorly set bones. Arlene unclips a ornate hair pin and then fastens down a wisp of white hair; the action hides any pity that reaches her face.
    “You don’t want to hear about my sweet little corner in the penal system?” He cocks his head slightly and with a grin empty of real pleasure and several teeth adds, “You don’t know what you’re missing.”
    What’s missing is a lot of things, Arlene thinks. Purpose. Thirteen years. A big chunk of knowing each other. Like what’s with the shirt? Arlene winces; red flames reach over purple and blue waves in an unlikely riot of colored silk. The shirt doesn’t disguise his hard thinness. It doesn’t help him fit into the Burdock scene. It looks like something only an ex-con could wear. Arlene remembers a white shirt with a little tie and how the three year old Sid proclaimed that ‘he was her date’ as he got into every one of her senior prom pictures. She isn’t about to dress him now.
    “Why can’t you just stay with Ed and me?”
    “Three’s a crowd, don’t you think?”
    “You know you’re absolutely welcome.” She means this but under it is a whisper in her mind. If Sid stays with her, her home is a halfway house. Just as the pharmacist says at the council meeting. His accusation opens her up and by the middle of the night, she dreamt of mobs and torches. This morning she shook it off. She is, after all, not one to let fears grip her in daylight. She’s a Swede and she’s right and she is like a pit bull in a lot of ways. She lists these strengths like bricks in a fortress. She is the mayor too.
    When she runs for mayor her husband tells her, be a person first. Politics shouldn’t rule her life. Then Sid, when he learns of her election, tells her that she needs good medicine. That’s how Indian war parties were formed, he told her. A warrior with good medicine would have followers, but not absolute power. Leadership then relied on personality and character and the choice of followers to give respect.
    What a perfect description of leadership! Sid’s words sort it out for Arlene. Families are their own sort of medicine.
    Does Sid remember that too? Arlene wonders. Sid clears his throat.
    “Listen Arlene, you’ve been great, but I need to be on my own.” Sid grins. “Besides which, if I’m here I can eat all the pizzas I want.”
    Arlene smiles. “That’ll get old fast. But it’s good if the cook likes his own food.”
    The pizzas are prepackaged completely ready for the oven. Sid only has to cook and box them for the customers. With his hands, it is the only option. At least Sid is showing some initiative. This is his first request since he’s been out. Up to now, he never says yes or no to anything. It’s like he’s still behind bars. Fresh starts are shadowed by his past.
    Arlene will help as much as she can. She takes a deep breath and massages her eyebrow, then her upper lip, her chin and finally the base of each finger. It’s one of her stress release tools, she explains to Sid. Then she faces the clutter.
    “We can talk about the room later. Right now, let’s get these pictures sorted. We can open these up; maybe there’s something good behind the crappy calendar pictures.” She picks one picture out of a box filled with them. It frames autumn trees, impossibly golden in tone. Arlene puts it on a table. Sid continues to look into the room.
    “Come on Sid, we’ve got an hour before we open Pizza and a Movie. Let’s see how much we can clear away. Get the toolkit, will you?”
    Sid slowly returns with tools, window spray and several cloths.
    “This one’s good, just a copy. But still. William Kureleck.” Arlene dusts the frame. Pictured is a haystack in the center of a snowy field. To the left is a man working behind a horse, maybe shoveling manure off the sled, on the right a couple of kids play in the snow. And these cows are eating the haystack and right in the hay, almost as an afterthought, is the Virgin and Baby Jesus.
    Sid looks over her shoulder and she hands the picture to him. He reads the title.
    “Nativity 1965. We Find All Kinds of Excuses.” Then squinting closer he finds more words handwritten in pen close to the picture’s bottom edge. “People work and play without regard to the salvation of their eternal souls.”
    “Freaky, eh? I wouldn’t want it but there are customers that will.” Arlene turns to another picture but Sid hesitates. Finally he puts the print aside and they work. Some pictures are set aside and others are dismantled for their frames. The hour passes. Then they set aside their work in the antique store and prepare to open the doors of Pizza and a Movie. Sid empties the movie deposit box while Arlene unlocks the second set of doors. She props the Customer Coffee Free sign in the window and flicks on the neon open sign.
    Arlene decides to go to the cafe. The real seat of power is not the village office. She washes her hands and while in the bathroom, she does her quickest de-stress routine: a sniff of her aromatherapy followed by an exaggerated yawn. She goes out onto the street that remains under a heavy sky.
    There are even more vehicles now parked near the cafe. This can’t be a coincidence, but Arlene firmly tells herself not to be alarmed.
    She passes two empty old store buildings. She will suggest that they be replaced by a playground or park when the time is right. Whenever that will be. By the time she approaches the cafe her thoughts return strangely to the title of the Kureleck print. ‘We Find All Kinds of Excuses.’
    As Arlene steps through the café door, the buzz of voices drops to a silence. Before she understands, she is met by a woman headed to the street. Dorothy! She looks different than she does on T.V. in her news reports. Plus she rarely visits her hometown. Is she doing a story here? Arlene remembers the note-taking stranger at the council meeting. Someone from Dorothy’s team?
    As the gurgle of a coffee maker, then a lowered voice or two begins to fill the unusual silence, Dorothy grasps Arlene’s hand.
    “Arlene. So good to see you. Can we talk? In private?”
    Arlene swallows, as the memory of her brother’s arrest returns to her. Panic and disbelief. She felt it then and feels it now.
    “We can go back to my stores. Sid is making coffee at the Pizza and a Movie,” Dorothy is silent as they walk down the street. The illustrated sign hanging over Arlene’s antique store commands her attention. Three wise monkeys clasp their hands over ears, eyes or mouth. The symbolic message says if we hear, see, or speak no evil, we ourselves shall be spared evil.
    But evil is not so easily deterred.
    Dorothy had been in the same grade as Sid, and other than that Arlene wouldn’t know her, with the 15 years in age between them. Even so, it is obvious Dorothy has something to impart. Arlene reins herself to trust in good medicine.
    They enter the store where Sid pours coffee for Dorothy. She tells him she is glad to see him in Burdock.
    “I’m actually moving back, too.” Dorothy smiles at their reaction. Sid recovers first.
    “Not much news out this way.” He says.
    “I’ve decided to do something different.” Dorothy says. “Afghanistan was pretty tough, not that what I went through holds a candle to the soldiers, but I’m shifting gears. I want to find ideas for documentaries.”
    “What about small communities, like Burdock with shrinking populations that must change to thrive? A documentary about the effort and the opportunities and how it can all go sideways.” Arlene said with a glance at Sid.
    It is on the tip of her tongue to mention miscarriages of justice but Dorothy knows Sid’s story herself. Just as Arlene knows of Dorothy’s son and his light slap of a sentence. The Young Offenders Act didn’t erase home town knowledge.
    “Things certainly go sideways.” Dorothy says.
    There is a moment where no one speaks. Arlene should ask what is happening at the café.
    “The people at the café have themselves in a lather.” Dorothy’s words come in a rush.
    Arlene takes a deep breath, and then gives herself a full-body shake, like she is a rag doll. Dorothy looks surprised.
    “It works for stress.” Arlene explains before she asks what she has to.
    “It’s a not in my back yard type of thing.” Dorothy says.
    Sid interrupts. “Oh, let me guess. Something has disturbed Burdock. Something like an ex-con among them.”
    “Yes. That’s one part of it. The other is my son Michael. He’s not a bad kid, but he’s been in trouble. They’re worried that he’ll influence others. So, I know that you worked hard on this, but they are starting with the sign. They don’t want it to say ‘Welcome Home to Burdock’.”
    Dorothy lets this register as she watches Arlene’s face. Then she adds, “Their reason is that I wouldn’t want to come back and Sid wouldn’t be here either except for the sign change.”
    “That’s just ridiculous...” Arlene sputters and then asks. “So what do they think the sign should read? - Welcome home but only if 100% of the citizenry like you?”
    “But only if you don’t disturb us in any way,” Dorothy says without humor.
    “They believe that the sign is a problem. How is welcome home a problem?” Arlene asks.
    “If I hadn’t been in the back booth and heard it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.” Dorothy never looks this distressed on television. “I thought Burdock was the place for me and Michael. It’s just a sign out on the highway, but it tipped my decision and now ... I was so naîve. They even have a lawyer!”
    “The best slogan might be, ‘we try to get along.’” Arlene sounds wistful.
    “Humph!” Sid clears his throat. “I know a slogan that fits. We found it this morning.”
    Sid crosses into the antique store to bring back the picture.
    “We Find All Kinds of Excuses. Excuses like a troubled teenager who will ruin the community. Or an ex-con who will kill again.”
    “Again?! You’re innocent.” Dorothy’s defense of Sid causes a grateful warmth to spread inside Arlene.
    “I’m convicted though. That’s what this ingrown place knows and that’s all they know.”
    Arlene sees truth on Sid’s face. And Dorothy cannot argue. Now Arlene is convinced that things will not change. The knowledge settles over her like a lead blanket.
    She shakes herself, letting her body loll and wobble and go limp. Surprisingly, Dorothy joins her and after watching the two women for a half-minute Sid does the same. They flop their arms and roll their heads and a strangled chuckle escapes Arlene.
    What should she do now? Proclaim a village ordinance that everyone do a rag doll shake every day? How funny! She lets loose until she realizes her laughter must look like hysterics. She sobers. She’s tried. And the gathering at the café, they’ve tried too. To protect themselves from fears and failures, even if it means the village will die.
    “We should go to the meeting, I think.” Arlene says.
    Slow nods mean they are with her. Good. This is where it starts. Arlene lifts up the picture.
    “I’m giving them this. And then, unless something changes my mind, I’m....”
    She is sure of her heart.
    “I’m not their leader.”
    They start their journey, past empty buildings, over cracked sidewalks, a group of three. Arlene looks up. There is no end to the gloom and no reason to think another day might open with sunshine. But they have good medicine. And that would be welcome somewhere. Arlene knows this.



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