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Witnessing - Part Four

By Jennifer S. Davis

Who drives hours to a motel in Macon for a miracle cancer cure? Only someone so desperate that she turns to her husband's new girlfriend for a ride. But Cecilia and Rose checked in as they were told, and waited for Mr. Meekle to arrive. Good thing the motell was attached to a liquor store.

Rose is awakened by a soft rapping, and by the time she opens her eyes and sits up, Cecilia is wobbling at the door beside a wizened man wearing blue-jean overalls and a Braves cap. His face is blank and stoic, a look Rose associates with country farmers who have plenty of land and little money. He seems to be close to a hundred.

"You the one?" he says to Cecilia, who nods yes, closing the door behind him.

He tips his cap, offers his hand, palm up. In spite of his age, his hand is steady. "Might as well get the unpleasant part over and done with." Cecilia snatches her handbag off the bed, fumbles with her wallet, then places a stack of bills in his hand. He shoves the bills into the front pocket of his overalls.

In comparison to the front-desk clerk, Mr. Meekle is absolutely agile. He glides straight to the closet and hauls out a small wooden platform, which he places in front of the dresser.

He looks at Rose, says, "You can stay, but not a peep out of you. I need absolute quiet to connect." He roles up the sleeves to his flannel shirt, revealing arms covered in purplish bruises and cuts, the ancient, scabrous arms of the old. Immediately, the mood in the room is somber.

"So your body rebels against you," Mr. Meekle says to Cecilia.

"Yes," Cecilia sighs.

"Did you bring your current medication?"

Cecilia nods, then pulls seven or so bottles from her purse, lines them up neatly on the dresser, and steps unevenly onto the crude wooden platform.

Mr. Meekle tells her to relax, then allows his hands to tremble over her body like a divining rod, never touching, just humming across skin. They stop on her belly.

"Here," he says.

"Yes."

He lingers there for a long time, his hands pulsating in odd, tiny jerks, then moves them down her legs, than back up, past her belly, stopping over the crown of her skull, Cecilia's body careening to and fro from booze or the power of his hands.

"And here," he says.

"Yes," Cecilia whispers. "There, too."

Mr. Meekle grabs one of Cecilia's prescription bottles, places it in her right hand and tells her he's going to test her. He lifts her left arm until it extends straight from her body as if she were about to salute. How much Neurontin does this body need? he asks aloud. This is so the body can hear, he explains. He tugs her arm in a short, curt movement, her entire frame caving in toward him as he counts each pull, "one, two, three," until her arm hangs at her side. "That means take three of these," he says, taking the bottle from her and replacing it with another.

The whole process takes almost two hours. Both Mr. Meekle and Cecilia hang limp at the end, as if they've endured a bout of lovemaking. Sweat pours down his face, drops catching on the tip of his hawkish nose. Cecilia is wide-eyed and silent, her beauty stark.

Rose watches all of this from her perch on the bed, fascinated and embarrassed at the same time. She's never been witness to such peculiar despair.

"Is there hope?" Cecilia asks.

Mr. Meekle plucks a handkerchief from his pocket, dabs at his forehead, then proceeds to tell Cecilia a tale about a local woman a few years back, a savagely sick woman with months of dying ahead of her, who had the good sense to know when to throw in the towel. She gathered her family around her, said her goodbyes, then prayed herself straight to heaven on her own terms. The onlookers claimed to see her spirit gather itself above her, leaving the terrible failing body, and ascending up up up. Rose envisions a woman lying in her bed, her family grieving and praying around her, then swoosh, the shadow of her flies into the heavens, waving the whole way like from a pageant float.

"She took control of the situation," he says. "Sometimes, release is the only healing left. Do you understand what I'm saying?" He pull a zip-lock bag filled with dark green leaves from his pocket, says that it's potent, to be careful of how much she uses, then slaps it in on the dresser, telling her to make a tea out of it for pain. Then he's gone.