Bill Pronzini - Night Freight

"Oh, Miss Mercy, you're true to your name. You're an angel of mercy."

And again, as always, she and Elias would be back on roads good and bad, empty and well traveled. Another town, another state—here, there, no pattern to their travels, going wherever the roads took them. Never lingering anywhere for more than a day or two, except when storm or flood or accident (and once, an Indian attack) stranded them. And as always the people would come, first to marvel and then to buy: morphine, digitalis, belladonna in carefully measured doses, Dover's powder, petroleum jelly, spirits of camphor and spirits of ammonia, bone liniment and witch hazel, citrate of magnesia, blackberry balsam, oil of sassafras, throat lozenges and eye demulcents, pile remedies and asthma cures, compounds for ailments of kidney and bladder and digestive tract.

And then again, in one of their stopping places, in the deep dark lonesome night—

"Miss Mercy, you don't know what your kindness means to me."

"I do know, child. I do."

"Such a burden, such an awful burden—"

"Yes, but yours will soon be lifted."

"Just one bottle of this liquid will see to that?"

"Just one. Then you'll have no more to fear."

"It smells so sweet. What does it contain?"

"Dried sclerotia of ergot, bark of slippery elm, apiol, and gum arabic?"

"Will it taste bad?"

"No, my dear. I've mixed it with syrup."

"And I'm to take the whole bottle at once?"

"Yes. But only at the time of month I tell you. And then you must immediately dispose of the bottle where no one can ever find it. Will you promise?"

"Yes, Miss Mercy. Oh yes."

"And you must tell no one I helped you. Not even your dearest friend. Will you promise?"

"I promise. I'll never tell a soul, not a living soul."

And again, as always, she and Elias would be away at the break of dawn, when dew lay soft on the grasses and mist coated the land. And sitting beside him on the high seat, remembering the poor girl who had come in the night, she would ask herself once more, as she had so many times, what Father would have said if he'd known of the mixture of ergot and slippery elm, apiol and gum arabic. Would he still think of her as an angel of mercy? Or would he hate her for betraying a sacred trust? And the answer would be as it always was: No, he could never hate her; she must have no real doubt of that. He would understand that her only aim was to bring peace to those poor foolish girls. Peace and succor in their time of need. He would understand.

And she would stop fretting then, reassured of Father's absent pride, and soon that day would end and a new one would be born. And there would be new roads, new settlements and towns, new needs to serve—so many needs to serve.

And one day she saw that it was fall again, the leaves turning crimson and gold—time to turn south and west. But first there was another town, a little town with a name like many others, in a state that might have been Kansas or perhaps Nebraska. And late that night, as Miss Mercy sat weary but strong at her mixing table, her hands busy with mortar and pestle while the lamplight flickered bright, a rapping came soft and urgent on the wagon's door.

Her name was Verity.

Names and faces meant little to Miss Mercy; there were too many to remember even for a minute. But this girl was different somehow. The name lingered, and so she knew would the face. Thin, not pretty, pale hair peeking out from under her bonnet—older than most of the ones who came alone in the night. Older, sadder, but no wiser.

Miss Mercy invited her in, invited her to sit. Verity perched primly on the stool, hands together in her lap, mouth tight-pinched at the corners. She showed no nervousness, no fear or embarrassment. Determined was the word that came to Miss Mercy's mind.

Without preamble Verity said, "I understand you're willing to help girls in trouble."

"What sort of trouble, my dear?"

"The sort that comes to foolish and unmarried girls."

"You're with child?"

Verity nodded. "I come from Riverbrook, Iowa. Do you recall the town, Miss Mercy?"

"Riverbrook? Iowa? There are so many places . . ."

"You were there four months ago. In June. The second week of June."

"The second week of June. Well. If you say I was, my dear, then of course I was."

"A girl named Grace came to see you then. Grace Potter. Do you remember her?"

"So many come to me," Miss Mercy said. "My memory isn't what it once was . . ."

"So many girls in trouble, you mean?"

"Sometimes. In the night, as you've come."

"And as Grace came."

"If you say so. As Grace came."

"You gave her something to abort her fetus. I'd like you to give me the same . . . medicine."

"If I do, will you promise to take it only at the time of month I tell you?"

"Yes."

"Will you promise to dispose of the bottle immediately after ingestion, where no one can ever find it?"

"Yes."

"And will you promise to tell no one that I helped you? Not even your dearest friend?"

"Yes."

"Then you shall have what you need."

Miss Mercy picked up her lamp, carried it to one of Elias's cabinets. When she handed the small brown unlabeled bottle to Verity, the girl removed its cork and sniffed the neck. Then Verity poured a drop onto her finger, touched her tongue to it.

"It tastes odd," she said.

"No odder than sweetened castor oil. I've mixed the compound with cherry syrup."

"Compound. What sort of compound?"

"Dried scierotia of ergot, bark of slippery elm, apiol—"

"My God! All those blended together?"

"Yes, my dear. Why do you look so shocked?"

"Ergot contracts the womb, tightens it even more. So do dried slippery elm and apiol. All mixed together and taken in a large dose at the wrong time of month . . . cramps, paralysis, death in agony. This liquid is pure poison to a pregnant woman!"

"No, you mustn't think that—"

"I do think it," Verity said, "because it's true." She had risen to her feet and was pointing a tremulous finger at Miss Mercy. "I've studied medicine. I work in Riverbrook as a nurse and midwife."

"Nurse? Midwife? But then—"

"Then I'm not with child? No, Miss Mercy, I'm not. The truth is, I have been three months searching for you, ever since I discovered a bottle exactly like this one that Grace Potter failed to dispose of I thought you guilty of no more than deadly quackery before tonight, but now I know different. You deliberately murdered my sister."

"Murdered?" Now it was Miss Mercy who was shocked. "Oh no, my dear. No. I brought her mercy."

"You brought her death!"

"Mercy. Your sister, all of them—only mercy."

"All of them? How many others besides Grace?"

"Does the number truly matter?"

"Does it truly—! How many, Miss Mercy?"

"I can't say. So many miles, so many places . . ."

" How many? "

"Thirty? Forty? Fifty? I can scarce remember them all . . ."

"Dear sweet Lord! You poisoned as many as fifty pregnant girls?"

"Unmarried girls. Poor foolish girls," Miss Mercy said gently. "There are worse things than death, oh much worse."

"What could be worse than suffering the tortures of hell before the soul is finally released?"

"Enduring the tortures of hell for years, decades, a lifetime. Isn't a few hours of pain and then peace, eternal peace, preferable to lasting torment?"

"How can you believe that bearing a child out of wedlock is so wicked—?"

"No," Miss Mercy said, "the lasting torment is in knowing, seeing the child they've brought into the world. Bastard child, child of sin. Don't you see? God punishes the unwed mother. The wages of sin is death, but God's vengeance on the living is far more terrible. I saved your sister from that. I brought her and all the others mercy from that ."