Bill Pronzini: Night Freight

He finished his beer and his cigarette, got up, went into Fran's sewing room. The five thousand he'd held out of the poker game take was in his pocket—money he felt he was entitled to because his expenses ran high sometimes, and they had to eat, they had to live. He put the roll into her sewing cabinet, where he always put whatever money he made as Bob Prince. She'd spend it when she had to, parcel it out, but she'd never mention it to him or anyone else. She'd told Sheila once that he had a sales job, he got paid in cash a lot, that was why he was away from home for such long periods of time.

When he walked back into the kitchen she was at the sink, peeling potatoes. He went over and touched her shoulder, kissed the top of her head. She didn't look at him; stood there stiffly until he moved away from her. But she'd be all right in a day or two. She'd be fine until the next time Bob Prince made the right kind of connection.

He wished it didn't have to be this way. He wished he could roll back the clock three years, do things differently, take the gray out of her hair and the pain out of her eyes. But he couldn't. It was just too late.

You had to play the cards you were dealt, no matter how lousy they were. The only thing that made it tolerable was that sometimes, on certain hands, you could find ways to stack the damned deck.

The central pharmacological ingredient in this story is completely factual, as is the once-upon-a-time use to which it is put here. When I first came across the information in a book on old-time druggists and their wares, I knew it would be perfect for a piece of fiction, but I couldn't seem to come up with the right format. I carried the notion around in the back of my mind for years, until I was asked to contribute to an anthology of medical horror stories, Diagnosis: Terminal, edited by F. Paul Wilson. Then the creative juices finally began to bubble. Of all the tales in these pages, the dark parable of the "Angel of Mercy" ranks at or very near the top of my personal favorites.

Angel of Mercy

Her name was Mercy.

Born with a second name, yes, like everyone else, but it had been so long since she'd used it she could scarce remember what it was. Scarce remember so many things about her youth, long faded now—except for Father, of course. It seemed, sometimes, that she had never had a youth at all. That she'd spent her whole life on the road, first with Caleb and then with Elias, jouncing from place to place in the big black traveling wagon, always moving, drifting, never settling anywhere. Birth to death, with her small deft hands working tirelessly and her eyes asquint in smoky lamplight and her head aswirl with medicines, mixtures, measurements, what was best for this ailment, what was the proper dosage for that one.

Miss Mercy. Father had been the first to call her that, in his little apothecary shop in . . . what was the name of the town where she'd been born? Lester? No, Dexter. Dexter, Pennsylvania. "A druggist is an angel of mercy," he said to her when she was ten or eleven. "Your name comes from my belief in that, child. Mercy. Miss Mercy. And wouldn't you like to be an angel of mercy one day, too?"

"Oh yes, Father, yes! Will you show me how?"

And he had shown her, with great patience, because he had no sons and because he bore no prejudice against his daughter or the daughter of any man. He had shown her carefully and well for five or six or seven years, until Mr. President Lincoln declared war against the Confederate States of America and Father went away to bring his mercy to sick and wounded Union soldiers on far-off battlefields. But there was no mercy for him. On one of those battlefields, a place called Antietam, he was himself mortally wounded by cannon fire.

As soon as she received word of his death, she knew what she must do. She had no siblings, and Mother had died years before; Father's legacy was all that was left. And it seemed as though the next thing she knew, she was sitting on the high seat of the big black traveling wagon, alone in the beginning, then with Caleb and then Elias to drive the team of horses, bringing her mercy to those in need. Death to birth, birth to death—it was her true calling. Father would have been proud. He would have understood and he would have been so proud.

Miss Mercy. If it had been necessary to paint a name on the side of the wagon, that was the name she would have chosen. Just that and nothing more. It was what Caleb had called her, too, from their very first meeting in . . . Saint Louis, hadn't it been? Young and strong and restless—there driving the wagon one day, gone the next and never seen again. And Miss Mercy was the only name Elias wrote on his pad of white paper when the need arose, the name he would have spoken aloud if he hadn't been born deaf and dumb. She had chanced upon him down South somewhere. Georgia, perhaps—he was an emancipated slave from the state of Georgia. Chanced upon him, befriended him, and they had been together ever since. Twenty years? Thirty? Dear Elias. She couldn't have traveled so long and so far, or done so much, if it were not for him.

In all the long years, how many miles had they traveled together? Countless number. North and east in the spring and summer, south and west in the fall and winter. Ohio, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, Montana, Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas . . . maybe all the states and territories there were. Civilization and wilderness frontier. Ranches, farms, settlements. Towns that had no druggist, towns that had druggists with short supplies or too little understanding of their craft. Cities, now and then, to replenish medicines that could not be gotten elsewhere. Saint Louis and . . . Chicago? Yes, Chicago. Oh, she could scarce remember them all.

And everywhere they went, the people came. The needy people with their aches and pains, ills and ailments, troubles and sorrows. First to marvel at her skill with mortar and pestle and her vast pharmacopoeial knowledge; at the cabinets and tight-fitted shelves Elias had built to hold the myriad glass bottles filled with liquids in all the colors of the rainbow, and below the shelves the rows upon rows of drawers containing ground and powdered drugs, herbs and barks, pastilles and pills. And then to buy what they needed: cough syrups, liniments, worm cures, liver medicines, stomach bitters, blood purifiers. And so much more: two-grain quinine tablets, Bateman's drops, castor oil, Epsom salts and Rochelle salts and Seidlitz powders, paregorics and rheumatism tonics, bottles of Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound and Ford's Laxative Compound and Dr. Williams's Pink Pills for Pale People. And, too, in private, with their hands and eyes nervous and their voices low, embarrassed, sometimes ashamed: potency elixirs and aphrodisiacs, emmenagogues and contraceptives, Apiol Compound for suppressed and painful menstruation, fluid extract of kava-kava or emulsion of copaiba for gonorrhea, blue ointment for crab lice.

Mostly they came during the daylight hours, but now and then someone would come rapping on the wagon's door after nightfall. And once in a long while, in the deep dark lonesome night—

"Oh, Miss Mercy, I need help. Can you find it in your heart to help me?"

"What is your trouble, my dear?"

"I've been a fool, such a fool. A man . . . I was too friendly with him and now I'm caught."

"You're certain you're with child?"

"Oh yes. There's no mistake."

"He won't marry you?"

"He can't. He's already married. Oh, I'm such a fool. Please, will you help me?"

"There, now, you mustn't cry. I'll help you."

"You'll give me something? Truly?"

"Truly."

"Apiol Compound? I've heard that it's rich enough in mucilage to bring on—"

"No, not that. Something more certain."