Bone's Gift

by Angie Smibert

  “Maybe there’s something wrong with you. Uncle Junior got out of the first war on account of his flat feet. I heard a story about this man jumping off his barn to make his arches fall. Or we could hide you in Flat Woods. Whenever the government comes looking—”

  “Whoa, Bone, honey.” Her father laughed. “I don’t want to get out of it. I want to do my duty.”

  “But …” Bone dug deep for some other reason, any reason to make her daddy stay.

  “But nothing,” he said firmly. “There’s some bad people out there who need to be stopped. I don’t like leaving you, but I have to do my part.”

  Bone searched her father’s gray-green eyes. He was going, and no amount of talking on her part was going to change that. The fight went right out of her.

  She pulled the covers over her head. “You can’t leave me, too,” she choked out. Her mother was gone. Will was going down in the mines. And now, the worst of the worst, her father was going off to war and maybe to get himself killed. The tears came in earnest. Daddy peeled the covers off her, wrapped his arms around Bone, and let her cry.

  When she was cried out, Daddy disappeared for a moment and then returned with a butter-yellow cardigan. Bone recognized it instantly. It had been Mama’s.

  He pressed it into her hands. “It’s yours now, Bone. Your mother would’ve wanted you to have it.”

  The sweater tingled against her fingertips. Warmth flooded through Bone like one of Mamaw’s teas. She almost dropped the sweater. Instead, she held it to her cheek, shut her eyes, and breathed deep.

  She was five or six, and her mama had on this same sweater, the sleeves pushed up to the elbows. Her fingers probed Bone’s arm where she’d fallen on it while climbing a tree at Mamaw’s. She closed her eyes as if consulting something in her head. “Nothing broken, little monkey. A little ice and one of Mamaw’s willow bark tinctures should make it feel all better.” Bone could smell the lavender as her mother leaned in close to kiss her forehead.

  Not every object told a bad story.

  Bone opened her eyes. “Daddy, did Mother have a Gift?”

  Something warred across her father’s face then. It went from soft and fatherly to sharp and angry and back in a few heartbeats. Daddy finally said, with a catch in his voice, “She had two. One was a gift for people. Sick people. She would have been a wonderful nurse.”

  “What was the other?” Bone asked. He wasn’t getting off the hook that easy.

  Her father fought back a smile. “You, silly.” He winked. “Your mother left me the best gift of all. She left me you.”

  Bone couldn’t help tearing up a little bit again. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know.” Her father rose and kissed her on the top of the head. “Now you go to sleep. We both got big days tomorrow.” He closed the door gently.

  Bone pulled the butter-yellow sweater over her like a blanket. The soft strains of her mother crooning “You Are My Sunshine” lulled her to sleep.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, Bone dreamed she was drowning. Unable to catch her breath, she fought through layers of buttery yellow yarn. And when she broke through to the surface, Aunt Mattie’s face was peering down at her.

  Bone woke in a sweat and pushed the sweater to the floor.

  4

  IN THE MORNING, Bone crept down the back steps of the boardinghouse. She was wearing her favorite blue flannel shirt and dungarees. As she sat on the bottom step to slip on her boots, she could hear the radio playing in the dining room. More news of battles overseas. Bone was determined not to think about her daddy going off to war. At least not today.

  “Where do you think you’re going, young lady?” Mrs. Price asked. She stood in the kitchen door, her arms crossed, waiting for Bone. “Your daddy said you were to wear one of your new dresses to school today.” Mrs. Price waved her spatula toward the top of the stairs.

  Bone stomped back up to her room. Three cotton print dresses that she’d been ignoring since Mrs. Price hemmed them on Sunday hung on the closet door. Her father had made a particular point of Bone dressing like a young lady this last year of school at Big Vein Elementary. Next year, she’d be off to high school in town twenty miles away, and she might as well get used to it now, seeing as the big school had a dress code, her father reasoned. So he’d traded Mrs. Price a couple loads of kindling and a few bags of Mamaw Reed’s special woman’s tea for several dresses.

  Mrs. Price was a wizard with her Singer sewing machine and a hundred-pound feed sack. The boardinghouse owed much of its decor to the King Arthur Flour Company. For as long as Bone could remember, feed and flour sacks were made out of pretty cotton prints that all the ladies used for fabric. That hadn’t changed since rationing for the war started back in May. The curtains in Bone’s room were made from border sack. It was a special flour or sugar sack with a pretty border just for making curtains or towels. This one was white with morning glories and a blue scalloped edge. The dish towels and valances in the kitchen had big red roses on them courtesy of the Southern Sugar Company. And the doll Mrs. Price had given her when Bone and her daddy first moved into the boardinghouse had been cut out of the preprinted pattern off a sack of salt. That was before Mrs. Price realized Bone didn’t have time or patience for dolls.

  The dresses hanging in front of her now were made out of the nicer patterns. One was blue and green plaid. Another was pink with white dogwoods on it. The last one was light blue with little daisies. Mrs. Price had draped the butter-yellow cardigan over this one and lined up a pair of saddle shoes and white socks underneath it.

  “You’d better shake a tail feather, young lady,” Mrs. Price called from the bottom of the stairs.

  Bone sighed as loudly as she dared and kicked off her trusty boots, knocking over her stack of National Geographics by the bed. She stripped off her clothes and left them in a pile where she stood. Pulling the light blue dress over her head, she poked her arms through the yellow sweater. It still smelled of lavender and talcum powder, with a hint of mothball. Mama’s sweater hung big on Bone’s shoulders as she gazed at herself in the mirror.

  She looked downright respectable. And maybe even a bit like her mother.

  At least I don’t match the curtains.

  “Bone!”

  “Coming!” She slipped on her socks and shoes before dashing down the stairs.

  “Much better.” Mrs. Price pulled Bone’s hair into a ponytail. She handed Bone an egg biscuit wrapped in wax paper and a sack lunch that smelled like fried chicken. “You better hurry. No dillydallying along the way.”

  Bone raced down the back steps and off across the dusty yard to the road.

  The mining camp school was a quarter mile away. Bone ran along the gravel past the Webbs’ house and the Linkouses’ and a few other weather-beaten company houses. She slowed to a walk as she came to the Alberts’ place next to the church. The parsonage always gleamed; from afar, it was a speck of bright white clapboard, brighter than the church even, amongst the dull gray of the company houses. The lace of the front curtain parted for a moment, long enough for Bone to see Aunt Mattie scowl at her, and then it snapped shut again.

  The school bell rang, and Bone started running up the road again.

  She creaked open the heavy door of the upper-grade class of the two-room school as Miss Johnson was taking roll.

  “Pearl Linkous? Opal McCoy? Laurel Phillips?”

  “Here.” Bone eyed the room.

  The fifth and sixth graders stared at her as she made her way toward the back two rows where the seventh graders sat. There were a lot of empty seats there. No Will. He was older than Bone but had been left behind—twice—on account of not speaking. No Bonnie Dillon. She’d moved away when her mother got a job in an ammunition plant. Her father had been killed somewhere in the Pacific.

  Still Bone hesitated, not sure where she fit anymore. She’d always sat with Will. Ruby was flanked snugly by Opal and Pearl, and they’d put their bags on the seats around them. The three o
f them snickered as Bone stood there at the end of their row.

  “Psst.” Jake Lilly motioned to a desk in front of him and Clay Whitaker.

  Bone gratefully slid into the seat, but not before checking that Jake hadn’t kicked the folding seat back up. It was a classic boy move to watch the girl fall on her keister.

  “Not this time,” Jake whispered. “Wouldn’t want to give them little jewels the satisfaction.” He nodded toward Ruby and her friends, and the way he said “little jewels” was anything but precious.

  “Little Jewels,” Bone whispered, more to herself than Jake. “I like that.” That nickname just might stick.

  Miss Johnson talked about the geography of the war and how they’d be studying England and France and Italy. This time last year Pearl Harbor hadn’t happened and the war seemed so far away. Now it was “our fight,” as Bone’s daddy liked to say.

  Miss Johnson started writing out European capitals on the chalkboard. As the chalk scratched across the black slate, Ruby passed notes to Opal and Pearl—and Robert Matthews, the mine operator’s son. He was always saying his father was going to send him away to school. Every year Robbie Matthews was right back there in the rows at Big Vein Elementary.

  It had been him and the Little Jewels who’d been with Ruby yesterday at the river. Robbie had grabbed Bone’s overalls off the tree limb. Bone stared at the back of his pointy head. Did he put the note in her pocket? They’d never said more than two words to each other, at least since she’d thrashed him in first grade for picking on Will. What would Robbie Matthews know about her mother? Not a thing. Bone shook her head and turned her eyes back to the board.

  The morning wore on like a sermon on a hot day. Miss Johnson informed the seventh graders that they’d be writing reports on one of the capitals on the board. Bone found her mind wandering to the London of A Tale of Two Cities, the Paris of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and the Rome of her National Geographics. And to Will, now of Big Vein. It felt as far away as those cities on the board.

  Clay Whitaker poked her awake with a sharpened pencil in time for lunch.

  “Damn, Bone. You look like a girl.” Jake grinned as he and Clay plopped into the seats next to her at the picnic table. It was still warm enough for them to eat their sack lunches outside. Jake unwrapped several pieces of fried chicken from a sheet of greasy wax paper. Clay pulled out a couple jelly biscuits from his pockets. Without a word, Jake passed Clay a drumstick.

  Bone knew their stories. Clay’s father, Chuck, worked down the mines with Daddy—and now Will. The Whitakers had six kids, and all their names started with a C. Jake’s father was the outside man at Big Vein. He ran the tipple and worked the machinery. Jake only had two baby sisters. Bone often wondered what it would be like to have even one brother or sister.

  Bone smoothed out the wrinkles in her new dress. She had to admit this was a pretty one, with the little flowers all over it.

  “Maybe we should call you Bone Meal,” said a voice over Bone’s shoulder. Ruby stood there in her store-bought Sears and Roebuck dress flanked by Pearl and Opal. The Little Jewels. Bone would have to tell Will that one. “At least that’s something useful,” Ruby sneered. Pearl and Opal dutifully giggled.

  “I’d rather be useful than a Little Jewel,” Bone snapped back. The boys laughed.

  Bone and Ruby might be cousins, but they’d never been too friendly. Her daddy would make Bone play with Ruby at family gatherings, but it never ended well. Bone pulled down the sleeves of her butter-yellow sweater and breathed in her mother’s lavender.

  “Well, I’ll take Bone’s company, whether she was dressed in a feed sack or overalls or a tractor tire, over yours any day.” Jake licked the remains of fried chicken from his fingers as he talked.

  At that, Ruby glared at Bone and turned on her heel, leading her followers back to their table. Bone could tell this wasn’t over by a long shot.

  “You know, Bone, you never did tell us that story about them mules and that outhouse.” Clay shook a nearly picked clean drumstick in her direction.

  A slow smile came to Bone’s lips, and she launched into her tale. “There was this boy named Jack. His daddy sent him to borrow a mule from the mean ole man up the road. Folks said he’d cheated a band of Gypsies to get that mule. Those Gypsies warned him she’d be his undoing. The old man laughed and run them off with a shotgun.”

  A couple of fifth graders, who were always together, lingered by the big tree next to their table, listening. Jake elbowed Clay to make room, which he did grudgingly. Several sixth graders at the next table pretended not to listen.

  Bone didn’t miss a beat. “Jack knocked on the miser’s door and asked real nice to borrow the mule. He even offered to give the old man one of the pups from their best hunting dog. He ran Jack off with his shotgun.”

  One of the sixth-grade boys bit into an apple with a satisfying crunch. “Shush,” a girl whispered as she quietly unwrapped the wax paper around her egg salad sandwich and then handed him half. “Go on, Bone.”

  “Yeah, what did Jack do?” one of the sixth graders asked.

  “Well, Jack hatched a plan to get even. He waited until the old man went to his johnny house. Then he hitched the mule up to it and smacked her on the backside. And sure enough, that mule pulled the outhouse—and its occupant—clear over to the next county.”

  Bone’s audience all laughed. Maybe this year wouldn’t be so bad. She shared Mrs. Price’s preacher cookies with everyone as Ruby glared at her from the far picnic table. Not so bad at all.

  5

  MISS JOHNSON TUCKED A STRAY PIECE of hair behind her ear and proceeded to scratch a triangle on the chalkboard. She labeled each side and then turned to the class. “If this is a right triangle and side A is two inches and side B is three inches, how long is side C?”

  Bone stared at her paper, hoping Miss Johnson wouldn’t call on her. Most of the seventh grade did the same. Robbie Matthews was the only one who ever tried to answer the math questions, and he was scribbling away in his composition book.

  A voice said dreamily, “3.464 …” The voice trailed off. It was Ruby. And she hadn’t even written anything down. Ruby usually kept silent in class these days. Now she was studiously avoiding looking at anyone. It was like she hadn’t meant to say the answer out loud.

  Miss Johnson looked pleased. Robbie Matthews did not.

  “She didn’t raise her hand, Miss Johnson.” Robbie had a distinct whine in his voice.

  The Little Jewels glared at Ruby, and Jake snickered at some comment Clay had whispered to him.

  “Ruby is absolutely right,” Miss Johnson said loudly, and the class quieted. “Would you like to share how you arrived at the number, Miss Albert?”

  Ruby cringed. She managed to say something about the squares of the sides equaling the square of the long side, all the while clutching something in her right hand.

  Robbie muttered, “Lucky guess.”

  “She did not guess,” Bone said a little more loudly than she intended. She wanted to shut Robbie up, not broadcast it to the front row. The fifth and sixth graders were now staring at her.

  Ruby whipped around to hush Bone and dropped the thing she’d been clutching. It skidded toward Bone’s feet. Ruby was flushed with anger now, but Miss Johnson was showing the class how to solve the equation Ruby had done in her head.

  Bone glanced down. The thing was an arrowhead, and she knew exactly where it came from.

  They’d found it at the end of July. After her father’s birthday dinner, Bone and Ruby had been walking along the river. Daddy had insisted, like always, that they try to get along. Bone had picked up the arrowhead and started to spin a tale about a brave young warrior girl who’d saved her tribe. Started to. When she wrapped her hand around the sharp edges of the stone tip, images roiled through her like a dam bursting. She saw a young native man, not much older than Will, loose the arrow into a buck with a stand of antlers. Pain ripped through her as the deer stumbled and staggered into the
water to escape the hunter. The buck was swept out into the current; he struggled for a bit, the fear overwhelming the pain in Bone’s head. She could feel herself being pulled under, too. And then the buck’s head dipped below the water.

  “The deer drowned,” Bone gasped. She dropped the arrowhead and backed away from it.

  “What in the Sam Hill are you babbling about?”

  “The story was in—” Bone pointed at the arrowhead lying between them. “It.”

  She told Ruby what she’d seen. Bone had had vague hunches about things when she touched some objects, like the time she just knew a school book had belonged to Mama. That was nothing like this.

  Bone had felt the deer die.

  She’d shivered, even though it was about a hundred degrees out.

  Ruby stared at her peculiarly for another moment and then stooped to pick up the arrowhead herself. She turned it over in her palm, squeezing the arrowhead tight in her hand. She closed her eyes even tighter, like she was concentrating real hard. Could Ruby see the story, too? Bone held her breath as she watched her cousin’s face.

  After a second or two, her eyes opened—and then narrowed into slits as she glared at Bone. Ruby stood up straight. “You’re such a liar, Bone Phillips,” she practically spat the words in Bone’s face.

  She took a step back. “Am not!” She’d seen what she’d seen. She didn’t know why, but she’d seen it.

  “Then you must be crazy! There’s nothing in this stupid rock.” Ruby shoved it in her pocket, turned on her heel, and marched back toward the boardinghouse.

  Ruby slammed the front door, leaving Bone standing alone in the yard, her thoughts and fears swirling around her, fixing to drown her. Was she crazy? Was she seeing ghosts? Daddy would say that was superstitious nonsense. Would anybody believe her? Seeing as crazy folks got sent to lunatic asylums, Bone decided then and there she best keep the stories she saw in objects to herself—or at least to just herself and Will.