"You come a long way to see me."
Minnow nodded without turning, and then slowly moved on his heels to face the doctor. Before he was all the way around Dr. Crow was walking at him, brushing past in long strides. He had on a faded black suit with a gray undershirt and a hat with a circular black brim. Glasses with purple lenses hid his eyes.
Dr. Crow stepped to his door, made a few moves with his hands around the jamb, and then used a small key on a hidden lock. He opened the door but hesitated before entering the darkness inside.
"You came all this way. So aren't you coming in?"
Minnow nodded, but Dr. Crow was already in his shack, faded from the sunlight like a ghost.
Minnow felt the money in his pocket and heaved in a great breath. He thought about his mother and his father back home. The sun was at its apex, risen from the hot morning to blaze down like a torch over the Lowcountry. Midday had come and now slowly diminished, and his mother would wonder why he'd taken so long on Bay Street. Maybe she'd even consider looking for him, leaving his father's side.
He entered the shack and had room to stand only because of its neatness. It was dark and dusty, with only a crack of a window up at the top of the wall that faced the river. Dr. Crow sat in a chair in one corner, with his back to a set of great tall shelves that spanned the wall and reached to the ceiling. A little coal stove with a pipe poked out the side wall, before which Minnow saw a short table, a stool, and a cupboard. The place smelled like desiccated wood. Like an ancient relic pulled from the dry earth.
Dr. Crow sat there with an unlit cigarette in his hand. He held an unstruck match in the other, and he stayed frozen, looking at Minnow.
"You a brave one to come in here. They tell you about me?"
"A few sailors told me the way."
"But that's not who sent you."
"No sir."
"But who sent you told you not to tell."
"I'm not supposed to."
"You supposed to talk to crazy negroes like me?"
"I talk to who I like to talk to. Nobody's out. Not at first, at least."
"Your daddy know that?"
"My father's sick and wouldn't care."
"I know he sick."
"Yessir."
"And you need medicine."
"Yessir."
Dr. Crow struck the match against his shoe and lit the skinny cigarette. He pursed his brown, wrinkled lips and inhaled. The match's sulfur burned Minnow's nose, but the cigarette gave a soothingly pungent vanilla aroma.
"Who told you I had it?" Dr. Crow asked.
"I told him I wouldn't say."
"A man at the pharmacy. In town."
Minnow looked out the door, then back at Dr. Crow.
"On Bay Street?" Dr. Crow asked.
Minnow stayed still.
Dr. Crow blew a stream of smoke out of his mouth. His lips opened, and he laughed. The dry, loud laugh filled the shack. It turned into a cackle that trailed off into a sigh.
"He make you pay for it?"
"No one in town had the medicine."
"I mean to find me. He take your money?"
"Some of it. But I have more."
Minnow dug his fingers into his pocket, but Dr. Crow held his own spidery hand out before Minnow could get the billfold. The palm was light brown, fingers like brown bones, the cigarette pinched between two long digits. The smoke from the tip curled in semicircles before disappearing into the shadows at the ceiling of the shack.
"Don't get no money out in here. I won't take it."
"Please."
Minnow pulled the billfold out and produced the prescription and the quarters. He held the prescription in his hand. It slipped from his fingers and Dr. Crow shot his other hand out, snatching it from the air. He put the cigarette in his mouth and unfolded the sheet.
Minnow held the quarters out in the palm of his hand.
"I have this. It's for the medicine. Please." He looked at the shelf behind Dr. Crow. The vials and canisters did not look like the ones in Ander's. Some seemed handmade: leather pouches clasped with snaps, little glass jars pasted with faded brown labels. Cans half-rusted. One had a label of a knight and said "St. John The Conqueror." Scented tapers, burned stubs, candles cased in tall glasses. Little clay shapes and lumps of stone sat in lines.
"Do you have it?"
Dr. Crow took a final pull from the cigarette and dropped it on the dirt floor. He stepped on it with his shoe. He nodded.
"I don't want your money."
"It's as good as any."
Dr. Crow looked up from the prescription. He refolded it without looking down again and set the paper next to him on the low table.
"Have a seat, boy," he said, and moved to the open door. He closed it and the place fell into darkness. Minnow did not move. A gull squawked outside and men made noises at the docks. Faded shapes showed as his eyes adjusted to the dim light from the crack overhead.
"Have a seat," he repeated.
Dr. Crow lit another match and the flame burned hot and bright for a moment, illuminating the room in gold. A mask hung on the wall, made of a horseshoe crab shell, painted in strange colors and patterns. Dr. Crow lit a candle and then pointed at the stool.
Minnow sat down and clasped his fingers tight around his coins.
Dr. Crow moved across the room to the cabinet and opened a drawer. He took out a stack of paper and then sat down in his chair. The wax melted on the candle and the wick burned brighter. Dr. Crow was still only a shadow, with the flickering light reflected in his purple glasses.
"You see this?" he asked, and held up the paper. Only it wasn't paper. It was money, in a loose bundle. Minnow swallowed and nodded.
"You seen this much?"
Minnow shook his head.
"It's more than your daddy makes in years."
Dr. Crow slipped a dollar from the stack and held it over the candle. The heat of the flame drafted the edge up and then it caught, burning a strange blue color in the dark room. Smoke peeled off as it burned, and the bill curled upward toward the steady, bony hand. Dr. Crow held it until only the smoldering edge remained, and then he let it drop to the floor. He put the stack of money on the low table and turned to Minnow.
"Now what you want to do with them quarters?"
"Please. I can give you the money and anything else I have. I can do anything you need."
Dr. Crow laughed again, the same laugh that started low and then rose into a sharp cackle that seemed sharper with the door closed.
"What can you do that I can't have done for me by someone who don't come without permission?"
Minnow sucked his bottom lip between his teeth and stared at the candle flames.
"I'm from town. I know it back and forth, sir. I know the Island too."
"Oh, you know the Island."
"I know some of it."
"You know some of it."
Minnow nodded.
"I fish out there. My father took me hunting near Frogmore once."
Dr. Crow tilted