Bone's Gift

by Angie Smibert

  8

  AFTER CHURCH, Bone wouldn’t sit still. Will lounged on the boardinghouse steps like he hadn’t seen the sun in a month of Sundays. Bone popped up every five minutes to see if Uncle Ash was coming already. They were waiting for Miss Spencer to change out of her church clothes. Will got out his notebook and scribbled, He’ll get here when he gets here. Uncle Ash did run on his own time.

  “I’m worried Daddy will get here before Uncle Ash,” Bone confessed.

  Will raised an eyebrow at her.

  She plopped down beside him. “I arranged for Uncle Junior to take Daddy fishing this morning.” Uncle Junior hadn’t been as hard to convince as Bone had imagined.

  Will scribbled out one word: Why?

  Bone didn’t even look at the paper. “Because,” Bone began slowly, “Daddy said not to take Miss Spencer across the river.”

  Will held up the question again.

  Bone shrugged. “I got no idea. He’s always let me visit over there whenever I wanted.” It was another mystery she wasn’t sure she wanted to solve.

  The screen door creaked open, and Miss Spencer emerged with a small tan knapsack slung over one shoulder. “Is it far?” she asked.

  “It’s a fair piece.” Bone slathered on a folksy accent for Miss Spencer. “I expect Uncle Ash will be here directly.” She popped up again to check the road.

  Will leaned back against the twenty-pound sack of coffee they were taking to Mamaw and closed his eyes.

  Earlier, Bone had so many questions she wanted to ask Miss Spencer about her work, but none would come to mind now. All Bone could think about was the Gift—and her daddy coming up the road.

  The putter of an engine and the crunch of tires on gravel put Bone out of her misery. Her first favorite uncle and his familiar pale yellow pickup were coming toward them. She didn’t have to see the back to know it was filled with dogs.

  And sure enough, a few minutes later, the yellow truck pulled up beside them on the grass. Uncle Ash’s fox terrier, Corolla, hung her head out the driver’s-side window, and Kiawah and Kitty Hawk stood with their front paws on the side rails of the truck bed, their tails thunking against the metal. Uncle Ash named his dogs after the places he’d found them.

  “Ya’ll need a lift?” he asked in his easy way. He crushed a cigarette on his side mirror and put it in his shirt pocket. Then he shooed the fox terrier off his lap, as he stepped out of the cab of the ’28 Chevy that had seen many better days.

  Uncle Ash shook Will’s hand, as he always did, and jerked a thumb toward the back of the truck.

  Bone hugged her first favorite uncle. His flannel shirt smelled of peppermint sticks, Lucky Strikes, and dog. Not a bad combination. “I thought you’d never get here.” She slid onto the faded bench seat of the Chevy.

  The fox terrier skittered up after her.

  “Corolla, back of the truck, girl,” Ash commanded as he held the passenger door open for Miss Spencer. The dog dutifully hopped out and up into the bed of the truck, where she proceeded to make herself at home in Will’s lap. “I’m Ash Reed, by the way, and you must be Miss Spencer.”

  “Come on,” Bone urged, peering down the road.

  “Hold your water, Bone.” Uncle Ash lit another Lucky Strike and eased into the driver’s seat. “Junior took Bay all the way up to Parrott to fish. Your daddy won’t see us coming or going.” He whispered the last part.

  Will always said Ash reminded him of some weary Civil War general after the fighting was all said and done. Uncle Ash was tall and thin, like most of the Reeds. His salt-and-pepper beard was neatly trimmed, and he wore his hair longer than most men in Big Vein. They were all clean-shaven, and their hair was slicked back with a dab of Brylcreem come Saturday night. And Uncle Ash got this faraway look in his eyes sometimes like he was listening for cannon roar.

  He slid the rear window open and told Will and the dogs to hold on. He whipped the truck around on the gravel road and headed back toward the river.

  “So how’s my Forever Girl today?” Uncle Ash finally asked.

  “Forever Girl? There’s got to be a tale that goes with a name like that,” Miss Spencer told him.

  Bone loved this nickname—and the story that went with it. “Care to do the honors, niece?” Uncle Ash asked.

  Bone didn’t need to be asked twice. “Forever Boy was this young Cherokee feller who refused to grow up,” she began. “He wanted to wander the woods and play games. Finally his mother laid down the law. He had to work the fields and hunt, get married, and take care of his family. His mother was going to send him to live with his uncle, who would teach him everything he needed to know to be a man.”

  Miss Spencer got out her pad and pen from her satchel.

  “Did you know the Cherokees were a matriarchy?” Bone asked her. “So a man’s heirs were his sister’s children, not his own.”

  Miss Spencer admitted she didn’t know that.

  Uncle Ash laughed. “In case it wasn’t clear, Bone is my sister’s child.”

  “Oh, I got that.” Miss Spencer smiled.

  “Well, old Forever Boy couldn’t stomach settling down,” Bone continued loudly. “So he decided to run off on his own. However, he was soon lost and starving out in the woods. The Little People found him and invited Forever Boy to live with them. So he never did have to grow up at all.”

  “Little People?” Miss Spencer asked.

  “The Cherokee called them Nunnehi. The Catawba and other tribes have another name for them. I forget,” Uncle Ash answered. The truck slowed to a stop at the ferry landing on the river.

  “The Little People were here long before any big people,” Bone added. “Forever Boy is probably still out there—”

  “We’re crossing the river on that?” Miss Spencer interrupted, incredulous.

  Ash Reed chuckled. “Y’all get out and tie ’er up.”

  Will hopped down from the bed of the truck, followed by the dogs. Bone scrambled out to help. Mr. Goodwin, the ferryman, had seen them coming down the road and had started across the river toward them. The ferry was no more than a floating platform pulled across the river by a winch. Goodwin’s ferry was big enough for one car or a horse and wagon. Larger loads, like delivery trucks, needed to drive down ten miles or so to a bridge to cross. Most folks rode the ferry and walked to wherever they were going.

  Miss Spencer eyed the bobbing platform dubiously as it pulled into the little dock. “I see why your grandmother doesn’t like to cross the river.”

  Mr. Goodwin snorted and exchanged a look with Bone. “It’s not my ferry that Mother Reed don’t like.” He threw her a bowline.

  “Hey, Mr. Goodwin.” Bone wrapped the line around the post and jumped the small gap between the dock and ferry.

  Will did the same with the other line. Uncle Ash threw the truck in gear and inched the old Chevy onto the moving platform. Once the truck was on, Will unwrapped the ropes and threw them back to Mr. Goodwin. Will stepped easily over the now larger gap between the dock and ferry, followed by the dogs. Miss Spencer still stood feet planted firmly on the dock until Will reached his hand across to help her on board.

  Mr. Goodwin flipped the switch on the winch motor, and the ferry jerked into motion toward the Dry Branch side of the river.

  The deck of the tiny ferry bobbed gently under their feet as it was pulled across the current.

  “Uncle Ash?”

  “Hmm?” he answered, tearing himself away from telling Miss Spencer about the two sides.

  “Do you think Forever Boy was wrong to run off to live with the Little People?”

  Uncle Ash took a long drag on his cigarette before answering. “I think ole Forever Boy needed to at least try living among the Big People for a spell before he escaped to the woods.”

  Mr. Goodwin spat his chaw over the side of the rail.

  Bone wasn’t entirely convinced by Uncle Ash’s answer, but it did seem like a fair one. Still, she’d have done the same as Forever Boy.

  Soon the fer
ry ground to a stop on the Dry Branch side, and Mr. Goodwin handed Will the bowline again.

  Once on shore, Miss Spencer stopped to look back across the New River at the coal camp carved into the hollow. Bone tried to look with Miss Spencer’s eyes. Dingy white houses crowded together along the road going up the hill to the mine. And at the top a black gash of coal spilled out of the earth among some even dingier-looking buildings.

  The yellow truck crawled off the ferry, and everyone, dogs and people both, piled back into the Chevy. The harmonies and mandolin pickings of “Unclouded Day” filled the cab of the truck:

  “… where no storm clouds rise

  Oh they tell me of an unclouded day …”

  “Peppermint?” Uncle Ash asked, handing one to Bone. “Will?” He passed one over his shoulder and through the window. “Do not let Corolla have any,” he added. “She’ll gorge herself like a tick if you let her.”

  Uncle Ash turned the music down to a low burble.

  “Bone, why do you think Forever Boy chose to live with the Little People?” he asked, earnestly.

  Miss Spencer was scratching away in her notebook, no doubt writing down the exploits of Forever Boy and the Little People.

  “Maybe he was afraid of things changing,” Bone finally said.

  “Aw, Forever Girl.” Uncle Ash put his arm around her. “That’s just part of growing up.”

  That’s exactly what Forever Boy was afraid of. Things change. People leave. All when everything was perfectly good before. Almost everything.

  9

  THE LITTLE YELLOW TRUCK strained up the windy road, a wall of Virginia Pines on either side. Uncle Ash crooned along with the radio while Bone and Miss Spencer harmonized. Miss Spencer stopped singing as the truck passed over the little stone bridge and into sunlight of the clearing that was the Reed “yard.”

  Uncle Ash elbowed Bone as he slowed the truck down to a crawl.

  “It’s like The Secret Garden,” Miss Spencer said softly. “Or Swiss Family Robinson.”

  On one side of the gravel road bloomed a field of flowers and, on the other, herbs and winter vegetables, like dark leafy kale, greened the earth. A stone path cut through the flowers to a small cabin. At one time several families of Reeds and Phillips lived on this land, but most moved down to the mine years ago. This was the only cabin left.

  “What a sweet little cottage,” Miss Spencer said.

  “Oh, that’s Mama’s office,” Ash replied as he drove past it. “We live up there.” He pointed to the grove of oaks at the top of the hill.

  Miss Spencer peered through the windshield at the trees for a moment. She stole a glance at Ash, and then stuck her head out the truck window, not unlike one of Uncle Ash’s dogs, and gawped at the five enormous oak trees they were approaching.

  “That’s …” She ducked her head in the window.

  Bone and Ash laughed. He turned off the engine, and the dogs piled out of the truck as it gave one last shudder.

  “I think the word you’re searching for is—,” Ash began.

  “Impressive,” Miss Spencer interrupted him.

  “I was going to say tree house,” Ash replied. He put out another cigarette on the mirror before climbing out of the cab.

  The Reed house hung between four ancient trees. The fifth one served more to block the view of the house from the road. A curved sloping walkway took you up in the air ten or twelve feet to a porch that wrapped around the house. Everything was held in place by timber and stone columns cleverly hid among the trees. And a stone chimney made from river rock anchored the far side of the house to the earth. To Bone, it’d always looked like a giant hand had set the house down between the trees.

  “Ash!” A man came running from the dark green truck parked by the small springhouse around the back of the house. He was a Harless from down Parrott way. “It’s Ellie. She’s bad.”

  Uncle Ash sprinted over to the bed of the man’s truck, with Bone and Will on his heels. In the back, Mamaw sat in her usual crisp white shirt and trousers, holding the head of a large bloodhound in her lap. The dog was breathing heavy and whimpering as it lay there.

  Mamaw stroked the dog’s ear. “Ash is here, Ellie. He’ll see what’s wrong.”

  Uncle Ash didn’t waste any time. He eased himself up into the truck bed and ran his hand over the dog’s chest and belly. He closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment. Bone had seen him do this many times before. He was counting breaths or taking a pulse or considering what to do. Bone wasn’t exactly sure which. His eyes flashed open. “She’s got the bloat, Pete. But her stomach ain’t twisted yet.”

  “Can you save her?” the man asked.

  “We’ll give ’er a try.” Ash jumped down from the tailgate. “Mother, have you got some of that rubber tubing left from your, um, medicinal brewing?”

  “Yes, there should be some hanging by the sink down yonder.” Mamaw pointed toward her cabin.

  “Bone, go fetch a long piece of hose and a bucket. Will, you help Mother and me move Ellie.” Uncle Ash rolled up his sleeves as he barked out orders. Only at times like this could Bone imagine he was once an army sergeant.

  “What can I do?” Miss Spencer asked.

  Bone raced down the stone path through the herb garden to the little cabin where her grandmother prepared her healing potions and tinctures. She inhaled the scent of rosemary and sage as she ran. Inside the back door was a little kitchen that looked more like a mad scientist’s lab in the movies. Or maybe a moonshiner’s. Jars and vials dried in the sink. The cabinets were filled with dried herbs, powders, and concoctions, neatly arranged and labeled. An intricate setup of flasks and bottles and copper vessels sat on the counter, all connected with rubber tubing. And, sure enough, several lengths of the same rubber hoses hung over the sink. Bone grabbed the longest one, ran out the door, and then shot back in for the bucket that was under the sink.

  When she got up the hill, Uncle Ash had moved the ailing dog so that her head hung over the tailgate of the truck. Will and Miss Spencer held the dog while the owner paced back and forth. Uncle Ash took the tubing from Bone and cut a piece of it the length of the dog. Mamaw disappeared into the springhouse with the bucket.

  Uncle Ash handed Bone one end of the hose. “Keep it level with the dog’s mouth—and away from your feet.”

  He gently threaded the tube into the dog’s mouth. Ellie was so far gone that she barely even whimpered as Ash worked the tube down her throat.

  “Uncle Ash, what’s this supposed to do?” Bone fed her uncle more tubing as he guided it toward Ellie’s stomach.

  “You’ll see. I hope.” Ash stroked the dog’s belly. “Okay, this is the last little bit. Better stand clear, Bone.”

  The warning came about two seconds too late. A mighty belch of air erupted from the dog’s mouth. Water and bits of food poured out and around the tube, splashing both Bone’s and Ash’s boots. And it kept coming. Ellie had had a huge breakfast.

  Ash flushed out Ellie’s stomach with water. By then the dog was fighting it, and Mr. Harless jumped in to hold her still.

  “Always a good sign.” Ash grinned at the relieved owner.

  Soon Ellie the bloodhound was sleeping comfortably—thanks to one of Mamaw’s drafts—in the back of Mr. Harless’s truck. Uncle Ash told him not to feed Ellie for a day or so and to get her to the vet in Radford as soon as he could, but she should be all right. Mr. Harless promised to replace the carburetor in Ash’s truck and see what other work it needed. And to get Mamaw some new hoses next time he was at the hardware store.

  Ash rinsed his boots off under the pump and motioned for Bone to do the same.

  “That was quite …” Miss Spencer trailed off again.

  Mr. Harless’s truck bounced gently down the road.

  “Impressive?” Ash supplied, with a grin. He lit another cigarette.

  Miss Spencer laughed in spite of herself. “Where did you learn to do that?” she asked.

  “Oh, Uncle Ash just has a way wit
h animals,” Bone replied automatically as she stuck the kibble-encrusted toe of her left boot under the stream of water. It’s what she usually said when folks asked about how her uncle, who had no formal schooling whatsoever, knew what was wrong with any animal. Bone stopped as she felt her uncle and grandmother looking at her. Miss Spencer was busy washing her hands.

  “Bone, honey, why don’t you help me down in my office?” Mamaw asked. It wasn’t really a question. “Ash and Will can show Miss Spencer around, and then we’ll have some cake.”

  Ash was leading Miss Spencer back to the house as they shared a cigarette. And Mamaw was already halfway to the cabin. She did not dally. Bone had no trouble imagining Acacia Reed in the army. In another life, perhaps.

  Will gave Bone one of his meaningful looks.

  This was Bone’s chance to ask Mamaw about her mother and the Gift.

  10

  THIS TIME, Bone breathed in the scents of the herb garden more deeply. Among the rosemary and sage, she could detect hints of mint and lavender and damp earth and green grass, all the smells that reminded her of her grandmother—and her mother. Her mama, with Bone at her side, had spent many long summer afternoons helping Mamaw plant and weed and pick the herbs. They even helped her collect wild medicinals and mosses from the woods around the house. And during the winter, Mamaw tended her plants in the little greenhouse one of her customers had built for her years ago out of old windows.

  Mamaw had a way with plants like Uncle Ash had a way with animals. Or so folks said, and Bone had always believed that. But now, as she’d been watching Ash touch that dog, it struck her as familiar. It looked awful much like he’d closed his eyes and could see what was wrong. Bone stopped dead amidst the drying coneflowers on the back porch. He saw something in the animal—like she did in ordinary objects.

  Bone pushed the screen door open slowly, feeling a little dizzy from the revelation. Was this the Gift? Was this what Will meant about there being different ones?