The Herb Gatherer's Disciple

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The Herb Gatherer's Disciple

Ruth Savage, the school psychologist, leaned back in her chair and studied the shrimpy

girl with the lantern jaw and unruly mop of dark hair on the far side of the desk. "Your grandmother died."

Laurel Evers dark eyes focused on the moss-colored tendrils of a spider plant whichreached almost to the floor. The teen, whose lips were frozen in a muted smile, affected an

outmoded, hippy look with baggy, mannish corduroys and a plaid, flannel shirt. "She wasn't theeasiest person to get along with."

Out in the hallway the bell clattered shrilly and a flurry of students scurried off to class."You weren't nearly so tactful, when your history teacher, Mr. Peterson, offered his

condolences," the school psychologist noted.The seventeen year-old didn't seem the least bit contrite. Rather, she sat with a vinegary

expression staring at her raggedy fingernails. ³I told him that granny was a scuzzy, two-bitwhore and the world would be a better place without her." The words carried no rancor. Laurel

was simply stating facts. Her paternal grandmother died. The woman wasn't particularlyhonorable and nobody mourned.

My granny was a scuzzy, two-bit whore... The crudeness of the remark was compounded by the fact that Laurel blurted it in front of the entire class, setting off a stink bomb of hoots,

jeers and bawdy encouragement. "Granny Evers had four husbands and cheated on all of them.She'd been arrested for shoplifting, driving an unregistered car, check and welfare fraud. Three

of her four sons committed crimes and went to prison." Before Doctor Savage could cobbletogether a response, a guttural sound resembling a vulgar epithet welled up in her throat. "At

least once a week, my father called her a scuzzy, two-bit whore front of the whole, goddamnfamily."

Ruth blanched. "And what did your grandmother do?"Laurel leered at the psychologist then averted her eyes. "Laughed like a freakin' hyena."

There was no hint of animosity in the girl's voice. That's just the way it was. The Evers clan waslike something out of the subcultural backwoods of Appalachia where family kept their own

counsel and filth-encrusted laundry was piled high as the treetops."Mr. Peterson¶s demanding a formal apology."

"I only told him the hard, cold truth.""What if he calls call your parents in for a conference?"

"Then I sure hope he's got medical coverage," The girl sniggered mirthlessly. "My dad's avicious brute. He¶s been arrested more times than you've got fingers and toes. Most recently he

did a six-month stint at the ACI lockup for manhandling my mother." Laurel cracked her knuckles and raised her eyes. "I ain¶t hanging around here any longer than I have to. I read a

book this winter and it gave me ideas."

Again, Ruth was struck by the girl's blasé tone."What book?"

"This one." She pulled a thin paperback from the backpack resting at her feet and handedit to the psychologist. T he Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett - Ruth lay the book

aside on the desk. "It¶s about a bunch of hayseeds from Maine," Laurel clarified."Okay."



"It's real nice up there. None of this," she waved her thin hands desperately trying toconjure up the mot juste, "fucking crap." Laurel pulled her chair closer and leaned forward over

the desk. "The locals live off the land« hunt, fish, pick wild berries through the summer. It's somuch nicer... like some modern-day Garden of Eden!"

"You see, I got this plan." Again, the girl reached down into her backpack and withdrew a

motorist's map of Maine, which she unfurled across the psychologist's desk. "My folks are dead broke, and I got no interest in college. This spring, I'll sneak down to the bus station inProvidence and buy a one-way ticket to Bangor« scrounge around for temporary lodging and

look for work." Laurel ran her forefinger deftly over the surface of the map. "If nothingmaterialized, I'll head further north to Millinocket, maybe cut across to Sugarloaf or Moosehead

Lake." She even talked of traveling further north to the chilly Allagash Wilderness sandwiched between New Brunswick and Quebec. It was a grand adventure ± Louis and Clark without the

benefit of Sakakawea. Ten minutes later, despite the psychologist's best efforts, there was notalking Laurel Evers out of her great escape. Once school was finished, the five-foot, black eyed

pixie was heading north, every logical, coherent, reasonable and prudent argument to thecontrary be damned!

Only now did Ruth crack open the glossy book cover and glance at the title page. "Thisnovel's over a hundred years old," the psychologist protested. "The rustic way of life you

described is all but gone now."Laurel thought a moment. "Maybe it's more a state of mind than a clump of wild

pennyroyal or scraggily firs."Realizing that they had drifted off-topic, Dr. Savage threw the book aside. "If you don't

apologize to Mr. Peterson," she repeated, "he'll call home and make a royal stink."Laurel screwed her face up in disgust. "And my father's liable to crack his ugly skull." A

morbidly-obese, freckle-faced girl stuck her head in the door with a note. Dr. Savage scribbled amessage and sent the girl on her way. "Okay, I'll apologize, but just this once." Laurel folded her

map with meticulous care and retreated to the threshold. "So what's my diagnosis?""I don't follow you," Dr. Savage replied.

"Adjustment counselors pick people's brains for a living. What's your verdict?"Rut Savage possessed a bad habit, bordering on fatal flaw: feeling threatened or out of

her element, the psychologist fell back on sardonic humor. The caustic tendency had cost her more than one friendship and alienated several teachers, who misconstrued her irreverent wit.

"Helene Deutsch 'as if' personality." Ruth blurted with clinical detachment. The petitegirl's eyebrows danced skyward and she jutted her lips in a questioning way. "A famous,

Freudian psychiatrist," Ruth clarified, "Helene Deutsch, once treated a woman who assumed themindset of people she only recently met or heard about." For the first time since arriving in the

psychologist's office, a look of vulnerability overspread the girl's limpid, brown eyes. "Needless-to-say, I'm pulling your leg," Dr. Savage continued affecting a gentler tone. "You¶re a sweet kid

going through a rough stint at home. I'm just trying to dissuade you from acting on an impulseand making a bad situation worse."

"But there really was such a person?""Yes, it became a landmark case," Ruth replied. "Pseudo-neurotic schizophrenia - it's just

another way of saying that someone, who appears relatively normal, is nuttier than a fruitcake."

* * * * *



After third period the same grotesquely overweight girl reappeared with another notefrom Mr. Peterson, the history teacher. Problem resolved. T hanks loads! Still later in the day,

Laurel Evers materialized in the psychologist's open doorway. ³About that whatchamacallit,weirdo condition you described earlier... were you pulling my leg?´

Dr. Savage, who was writing up a report, was broadsided by a wave of self-loathing.

"The psychiatric condition is real enough, but there's nothing 'as if' about you." Ruth came outfrom behind the desk and grabbed the girl by both wrists. "Helene Deutsch« it was aregrettable, dim-witted joke meant to drive home a point and nothing more."

Psueudo-neurotic schizophrenia. What Ruth neglected to mention, as Laurel vanisheddown the empty hallway, was a prevalent theory written up in several respected journals that Ms

Deutsch may herself have been just such an emotionally disingenuous anomaly. The bulk of the psychiatrist's research, if it could be described as such, reflected the woman's own emotional

inadequacies and frigid, 'as-if' tendencies. As Ruth was getting ready to leave the office, shespied a slim volume jutting out from under a stack of Stanford-Binet IQ tests. Slipping the Sarah

Orne Jewett book into her briefcase, she headed for the parking lot.

* * * * *

T he Country of the Pointed Firs chronicled the adventures of a backwoods matriarch,who concocted herbal remedies and let out rooms to earn enough money to support her rural,

subsistence-level existence. The old lady tramped about the rocky, Maine wilderness collectingwildflowers, stems and roots. She took a boat trip to visit with a reclusive, agoraphobic brother.

It was a hardscrabble existence in which people meandered about in horse-drawn wagons, fished,grew their own potato crops and made throat lozenges from locally-grown spearmint boiled in

metal cauldrons over the stove. Women braided floor mats from swamp-grown rushes, and evenfashioned sandals from those very same pliable plants. The Civil War was a recent memory not

some moldy, historical trivia and neighbors were more 'civil' or at least it seemed that way.Laurel Evers had a yen to go exploring - backwards to the tail end of the previous century

not forward into a mechanistic future. Reading a book by some quaint, nineteenth-century writer,the vulnerable girl went haywire, seizing upon the author's credo as a personal message of

salvation. When Laurel handed Ruth the dogeared paperback, she did so with both hands cuppedtogether, the way devout Catholics accepted the host during Holy Communion. Again, as she

smoothed the map of Maine across the psychologist's desk, it was with the veneration oneaccorded a sacred talisman.

Through the spring Ruth kept an eye out for Laurel Evers. She looked for her in the

school cafeteria during lunchtime, at holiday assemblies and in the bustling corridors. One day inlate May, she caught sight of a stumpy, dark-haired girl sitting in the bleachers over by the track

field. "I thought that was you." Ruth climbed to the topmost row and sat down. Far below on thefield, a sprinter knelt down in set position in the starting block. "No more problems with Mr.

Peterson?"Laurel shrugged and cracked a tepid smile. "He's a horse's ass."

"Still planning your great escape?""Second week in July« already bought my ticket."

Ruth felt a dusky misery descend on her heart. "Why so soon?"



Laurel leaned back on her elbows raising her pale face to the stingy, spring warmth."Around the holidays, my father beat up some rummy in a Central Falls barroom. He was on

parole for a previous offense, so the judge revoked bail and sent him back to prison. I want to belong gone before that jerk leaves lockup."

"I keep forgetting to give you this." Ruth handed the girl the Sarah Orne Jewett book. "If

you have trouble finding work in Bangor, there's a huge tourist industry along the coast. I'm sureyou could find a job in Old Orchard Beach or Booth Bay Harbor."On the track, the runner darted out of the starting block at lightning speed but pulled up

after thirty feet and went back to try again. Further up the field, a black youth was leapinghurdles. Laurel flipped T he Country of the Pointed Firs over in her hands and studied the cover

absently. "How did you like it?""At first," Ruth said, "I found the book a bit dry, but after a while the characters sort of

got under my skin."³Think there are any Elmira Todds still poking around in the backcountry?´

Elmira Todd wandered about the remote countryside collecting medicinal herbs ± bothwild and tame - that she boiled, chopped, grounded with a mortar and pestle for poultices, teas

and medicinal salves. The bulky, rheumatic woman favored yarrow, sweet-brier, balm, sage and borage. There was mint, wormwood and wild thyme that, when accidentally trod upon, made its

fragrant presence known. Ruth considered the question. The fictional Elmira Todd was longdead, just like the author who imagined her. But a few of her progeny were sure to be wandering

the back woods of Maine in search of the rare lobelia and elecampane for soothing syrups andelixirs. "You're sure to rub shoulders with one or another of her great grandchildren."

"I don't need much to be happy« just calm and quiet, that's all." A dogged wistfulnessoverspread the black eyes; a gritty obstinacy played out about the supple corners of the stunted

girl's lips. "I'll send a postcard once I'm settled.""Yes, I'd appreciate that."

Laurel Evers had been gone from the bleachers a good five minutes before Dr. Savagenoticed the wetness on her wrists and raised her glistening eyes to a perfectly sunny, spring day.

Back on the field the sprinter was rearranging his limbs in the starting block. The weight of his body resting on arched fingertips, the arms hung almost vertical, buttocks angled a good six

inches above the nape of the neck. It was a sublime balancing act.

The Herb Gatherer's Disciple

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