“Unlike the traveling charlatans you good people have doubtless encountered before, I do not claim that my wondrous tonic cures every ailment, every time. Only most ailments, most of the time. I have records of hundreds of exhaustively documented cases from across this great country and from the Continent itself in which the elixir has proved itself time and time again. I speak only the truth when I say that it can add to your life, actually make you live longer.”
“How much longer?” wondered a woman in the front row on whose cheeks the blush of youth had grown stale.
“A year per bottle, madam. One year of life, of good and vigorous and healthy existence, for each bottle you ingest according to instructions. One dollar for three hundred sixty-four days of continued subsistence on this good green earth. Is that not worth a little sweat of the brow?”
“A dollar a bottle’s too high,” said a farmer angrily. “At them rates we can’t afford to try it.”
Dr. Mohet Ramses smiled compassionately. “Ah, my good sir, all things are granted freely in heaven, but in this world, sad it is to say, nothing comes without cost. You should not think that you can’t afford to purchase the Elixir of the Pharaohs but rather that you can’t not afford to buy it.”
Near the front a middle-aged lady looked at her husband. She hadn’t been feeling well lately, had if the truth be known been in fact doing poorly. A dollar was a lot of money, but… if it did only a tenth of what the doctor claimed…
She struggled with her purse and dug out a handful of coins, holding them up toward the wagon. “I’ll buy a bottle, Doctor. What have I got to lose?”
“A dollar,” her husband muttered under his breath.
She glared at him. “See if I give you any, William.”
Dr. Ramses’s smile widened as he exchanged brimming black bottles for coins. When one well-dressed citizen eagerly pressed a quarter eagle into the erstwhile physician’s perfumed palm, he positively beamed.
Bit by bit the crowd thinned, clutching the precious bottles tightly to shirt or bodice. Eventually there was but a single old woman left. She was so small and insignificant, Dr. Ramses hardly noticed her as he contentedly tallied his take for the day. Time it was to move on. Other towns waited just over the horizon; other needful communities beckoned. All needed his services; all doted on his presentation as eagerly as they did on his marvelous solution.
The elixir really was a wondrous concoction, he knew. Versatile as well, depending as it did for the bulk of its constituency on whatever creek he happened to cut across whenever his stock was running low.
He very rarely had trouble because, unlike that of so many traveling snake-oil salesmen, his pitch was different. Contrary to the rest of his silver-tongued brethren, he promised not merely cures but hope. For when his purchasers passed on, it was invariably with the conviction that the Elixir of the Pharaohs had truly extended their lives. He smiled to himself. A difficult assertion to disprove when the principal complainants against him were all dead.
Only then did he notice the woman. His initial reaction was to ignore her, but he hesitated. She had remained throughout his talk and remained still after all the others had departed. Her dress was simple patched homespun, and the bonnet she wore to shield herself from the sun was fraying. No fine Irish lace decorated the hem of her dress; no clever tatting softened the edge of her cuffs. Still, he owed it to her to repeat the offer one last time. Mohet Ramses was nothing if not magnanimous.
He knelt on the platform. “Can l be of assistance, madam?”
The woman hesitated. On her face could be seen the aftereffects of a long lonely life of hard work and toil. It was clear she was not used to speaking to anyone more educated than the town schoolmaster or the local parson. Her expression was a mournful mix of hope and despair. She managed a hesitant reply.
“It ain’t fer me, Doctor, sir. It’s Emmitt. My husband.”
Doctor Ramses smiled tolerantly. “So I assumed, madam.”
“He’s in the wagon, Doctor.” She pointed, and Ramses noted a gutted buckboard and team tied to a rail outside the nearby general store. “Emmitt, he’s gettin’ on to still be herdin’, but he just tells me to shut up… he don’t mean nothin’ by it… and gits on with his work.
“It happened yesterday. Got the last of our twenty head in the corral; time to market ’em, don’t you know, and that cursed old nag of his spooked. Still don’t know what done it, but Emmitt, he went a-flyin’. Panicked the cattle, one kicked him, and, well, I’d be beholden if you’d come an’ see for yourself, Doctor.”
Ramses hesitated. It really was time to pack up the store and get a move on. There was invariably some local who would ignore the finely printed instructions and chug an entire bottle of the noxious brew in hopes of quickly curing some bumptious black eye, or constipation, or some other mundane ill, only to have his hopes dashed. Whereupon, fierce of eye and palpitating of heart, he would set out in search of the good doctor’s whereabouts. As a purely prophylactic measure, Ramses historically had found it prudent not to linger in the vicinity of prior sales.
As the streets were presently devoid of any more potential customers, however, this was an internal debate easily resolved.
“Tell me, madam, do you have a dollar?”
She nodded slowly. “’Bout all I do have right now, sir. See, when the cattle git sold, that’s the only time all year Emmitt and me have any real money. I was goin’ to pay the regular doctor with it, but he don’t come to town but once a week, and this bein’ Friday, I don’t expect him for another four days.” She sniffed, and the leathery skin twitched. “My man’s a tough one, but he took that kick right hard.” She rubbed the back of one hand under her nose. “I ain’t sure he can last another four days.”
Dr. Ramses reached down to take the woman’s hand comfortingly in his own. “Fear not, good woman. Your husband is about to receive a dose of the most efficacious medication known to nineteenth-century man. Lead the way, and I shall accompany you.”
“God bless you, Doctor!”
“There, now,” he said as he hopped off the back of the floridly painted wagon, “control yourself, madam. It is only my Hippocritical duty I am doing.”
He winced at the sight of the battered, lanky old man lying in the rear of the wagon. He lay on his back atop a dirty, bloodied quilt, a feather pillow jammed beneath his head. His eyes were closed, and his thin brown hair had long since passed retreating to the region above the temples. Several veins had ruptured in his nose, which reminded Ramses of a map he’d once sold that purported to depict in some detail the delta of the Mississippi.
A crude bandage had slipped from the left side of the old man’s head. A glance revealed that the force of the blow he had received had caved in the bone. Dried blood had run and caked everywhere: on the pillow, on his weathered skull, on the floor of the buckboard. His mouth hung half-open, and his sallow chest heaved with pained reluctance. As they looked on, the aged unfortunate raised a trembling hand toward the woman. It fell back, and Ramses had to fight to maintain the smile on his face. Turning away from the disagreeable scene, he held out to the anxious woman a small black bottle.
“One dollar, madam. One dollar to extend your husband’s life. A worthy trifle, I am sure you will agree.”
She fumbled with her purse, and Ramses, eager to be away from this rustic municipality, waited impatiently while she counted out the money in pennies and nickels. Only when the count had reached one hundred U.S. cents did he pass to her the precious container. She accepted it with trembling fingers.