Bone's Gift

by Angie Smibert

  Inside Mamaw had set a pot of water on the woodstove and was chucking a small log into its belly. Bone rinsed out the rubber hoses and placed them in the water without Mamaw saying a word. They needed to be “de-dogified” so Mamaw could use them to distill the essential oils she sold or bartered with folks. Or perhaps irrigate the plants in the greenhouse. Someone had built a clever little machine that pumped water from the springhouse to the greenhouse.

  Mamaw cleared a spot at the table and shooed Sassafras, one of her favorite calicoes, off her chair. Like her children, she named them all after the plants she loved. “Help me clean these burdock for a minute, Bone.” In the center of the table was a wooden bowl of the long brown roots with the green tops still on them.

  “You know Ash isn’t just good with animals, don’t you?” Mamaw asked finally.

  She did now. Bone nodded as she plucked the sticky heart-shaped leaves from the useful part of the plant. She set the roots back in the bowl for Mamaw to peel.

  Mamaw closed her eyes and wrapped her fingers around a slender root in her hand. “This plant can clean out the blood, reduce swelling, thin a cough, strengthen the liver, and soothe the bowels. You know how I know that?” Her grandmother peeked an eye open at Bone.

  “Your mother taught you?” Bone knew there was more to it than that. Great-grandma Daisy had been good with plants, too, but nowhere near as good as her daughter.

  “She did. A person can certainly know things without it being their Gift.” She put a special emphasis on that last word.

  “What do you mean by Gift exactly?” Bone asked. Lots of people talked about gifts, like having a gift for throwing a baseball or baking a flaky pie crust.

  “Certain folks in our family have special Gifts, Bone.” Mamaw leveled the burdock root at her. “I can see what a plant will do to a human body.” She closed her eyes again. “This one makes more fluid flow through the blood vessels and carry the bad stuff with it.” She described how she saw the fluid rising in the blood and passing through the kidneys.

  “Were you always able to see that?” Bone tried but didn’t feel anything from the root in her hand.

  “No, the Gift comes on about your age. It might come on gradual or all of a sudden. When I was twelve, Mama and me were out picking moss and ginseng up here in the woods. My fingers brushed across a leaf of deadly nightshade, and I about had a convulsion.” Mamaw shook off the memory. “After that I’d have funny feelings about certain plants when I touched them. Some would make me sick or itch—or want to pee.” She held up the burdock root. “But then I started seeing more of the story. And I had to practice and teach myself what everything I was seeing meant. Even now, after all these years, I can handle an herb I’ve been using for twenty years, and all of a sudden see another thing it does.”

  Mamaw expertly peeled and shaved the root into a neat little pile. She’d dry this batch of burdock out for tea, Bone knew.

  Mamaw explained that one reason she had this cabin built was so she could have the quiet to meditate on the different plants, write down all their uses in all their forms, and study books on how bodies might use them. All so she could understand what her Gift was showing her.

  Bone glanced up at the bookshelf that ran above the sideboard behind her grandmother. Gray’s Anatomy. Chemistry. Biology. Bone had always thought these were her mother’s nursing school books.

  “Ash done the same with animals,” Mamaw said. His Gift showed him what was wrong, she explained, but that wasn’t always enough to help the dog or horse. When he was young, he read every book he could get his hands on and picked the brain of every farmer and vet hereabouts. And then he learned a lot in the army handling and taking care of messenger dogs in the trenches.

  Uncle Ash didn’t like to talk about his time in the Great War. He’d been buried alive when a shell collapsed a tunnel he was in. And that’s why Ash Reed never, ever went down in the mines again.

  “Your mother had the same Gift, only with people.” Mamaw hesitated, like there was something else she wanted to say, but a sadness welled up in her eyes. “That’s why she wanted to be a nurse.” She fell quiet.

  Bone’s mother had attended one year of nursing school in Charlottesville. “Why did she quit?”

  “We didn’t have the money after the crash.” Mamaw explained that was the year the stock market crashed, and the banks started failing. “Besides, she met your daddy, and you were born the next year.” Mamaw smiled. “She wouldn’t have traded that for a nursing degree. And she didn’t need to.”

  Her mother had called on sick folks and seen people here in Mamaw’s office on a Sunday afternoon. Then she’d drag herself back home and collapse in bed until morning. Daddy would always make Bone scrambled eggs for supper. It was the only thing he knew how to cook.

  Ruby’s note vexed Bone as she plucked more burdock thistles. The Gift killed your mother. How? Her grandmother was watching her, waiting for her to say something. Show her, she could hear Will thinking. The note almost twitched in her pocket. She wanted to ask Mamaw about it more than anything. Except she was afraid of the answer. What if the Gift had killed her mother? What if it could kill her? Or Mamaw? Or Ash? Bone couldn’t stand losing anybody else.

  “Fetch me one of those objects from the sideboard.” Mamaw waved a burdock root behind her.

  On the skinny side table sat a dented pocket watch, a doll, a locket, a toy truck, and a coin. “Which one?” Bone asked. She didn’t know why her grandmother would have any of these things, except maybe the coin. Maybe folks had traded them in payment for Mamaw’s services.

  “Any one you feel strongly about.” Mamaw chipped away at the burdock root.

  Bone hesitated, her hand hovering over those objects, feeling the energy they put off. This was a test, and her grandmother already knew what her Gift was. Bone let out a deep breath and reached for the wooden toy truck.

  It had the warmest feeling. Bone closed her eyes as she wrapped her fingers around it. The images splashed over her like a warm bath. Uncle Junior … no, it was a young Papaw Reed, Hawthorne Senior, was whittling this piece of wood. He was smoking his pipe as the sun was setting; the breeze smelled like tobacco and honeysuckle. A young and very pregnant Mamaw sat beside him on the tree house porch, overlooking the valley. Papaw placed the finished toy in an empty crib. The toy radiated happiness and sadness all mixed together. The excitement and expectation of a child—and the loss of one.

  Bone understood. “I didn’t know.” She turned to face her grandmother.

  “Yes, Hawthorne made that for our first child. He was so convinced it was going to be a boy. And it was. We called him Elder, but he didn’t live long enough to play with this truck.”

  “So that’s why I only saw you and Papaw. He was very happy in the making of it. I can feel him being sad, too, but the happy was stronger. It came through first.”

  “I’m glad to know that, Laurel. He waited until Junior was born to make another truck. He didn’t want to jinx it again.”

  Mamaw took the wooden truck gently from Bone’s hands and placed it back on the sideboard. “Now why don’t you tell me more about your Gift?”

  Bone relented. She told her grandmother about the arrowhead and about Will’s dinner bucket.

  “Yes, I heard about that.”

  Of course, Uncle Junior had seen the look on her face when she touched the bucket.

  “Does Junior have a Gift?” Bone had never considered the oldest Reed sibling as having something special about him, at least not like Ash or Mamaw.

  “He’s got a nose for coal.”

  “What about Aunt Mattie?”

  Mamaw laughed. “If she has one, she never has let on. Or she hasn’t been put in the situation where her Gift might show itself. Junior didn’t think he had one at all until he went down in the mines. Sometimes it skips a generation or even a whole branch of the family tree.”

  Had the Gift skipped Ruby, too?

  “But Ash and Willow—and you, Laurel
.” Her grandmother pointed a freshly peeled burdock root at her. “You all take after me. We got the stronger Gifts.”

  “Why did you never tell me about the Gifts before?”

  “Your daddy made us promise.” Mamaw tossed the root into the bowl. “He don’t hold with anything he can’t see or feel hisself. But you need to know.” She took Bone’s hand as she said this.

  “Did Mama’s Gift kill her?” Bone whispered.

  Mamaw was silent. She looked at Bone like she’d said something in another language. “What?” she finally managed to say.

  Bone swallowed hard. “Ruby …” Bone couldn’t say it. She fumbled for the note in her pocket and handed it to her grandmother.

  Mamaw smoothed out the paper carefully and read the words. Her face went a shade whiter. She stared at the words for a long moment.

  “Ruby gave you this?” Mamaw shook her head sadly. “That poor child. Amarantha is filling her head up with nonsense and bile. What else did she say?”

  “That the Gifts come from the devil.”

  “Child, you know better than that.” Mamaw reached into her pocket and came out with a match. She struck it on the brick of the fireplace and lit the end of the paper. Flame curled the paper like a black ribbon, and Mamaw let the ashes fall onto the hearth.

  Bone felt oddly better not to be carrying around that note.

  Mamaw lifted Bone’s chin with long, calloused fingers. “Your mama died of the flu. Period.” She kissed Bone on the forehead. “Now help me clean up.”

  Mamaw filled the bowl with the burdock shavings and set it on the sink to dry. Bone chucked the burdock greens into the compost bucket by the door.

  “So the Gift can’t hurt me?” Bone asked as they headed out the back door.

  Her grandmother wrapped her in a quick hug. By then they were standing on the porch, looking over the garden. “Now we better get back up to the house and see if those boys left us some cake.”

  As they walked up the path, Bone realized Mamaw hadn’t exactly answered her question.

  11

  MAMAW, STRAIGHT AS A POPLAR SAPLING, strode up the long curving walkway to the house. Bone followed more slowly, still trying to wrap her brain around what her grandmother had told her.

  “Shh.” Miss Spencer pressed her finger to her lips and nodded toward Uncle Ash. They were both sitting in the rocking chairs on the veranda overlooking the valley. His boots resting on the oak railing, Uncle Ash was sound asleep.

  Bone crept by them to where Will was peering through her grandfather’s spyglass. He held it so she could see a hawk’s nest in a tree on the next ridge.

  “Wake up!” Mamaw kicked Ash’s chair. “You need to eat something.” She was carrying a tray of tea and cakes. Bone scrambled to help her, handing everyone a slice and a cup.

  Her uncle’s boots slid off the railing and onto the wooden porch with a thud. “I’m up. Damn. I did not mean to fall asleep on you, Miss Spencer.” He ran his fingers through his hair and yawned.

  Mamaw hugged her extra hard before Bone left.

  On the way home, Bone sat in the back of the truck with Will and the big dogs.

  Did you show her the note? Will asked. His scrap of paper fluttered away as Kiawah crawled across both their laps and laid her head on Will’s leg; the Catahoula’s blue marbled eyes looked up at him in utter adoration as he scratched her belly. The liver-and-white pointer, Kitty Hawk, had already stretched out at their feet.

  Bone nodded. Will gave her a look that clearly said “Well?” She grabbed his notepad and pencil and printed her answer, using Kiawah’s rump as her desk. Mamaw burned up the note.

  Will’s eyes widened.

  Quietly, Bone told him what Mamaw had said about the Gifts and her mother. Uncle Ash and Miss Spencer were too busy laughing and talking amongst themselves to hear them, but Bone still whispered.

  So did the Gift kill your mama? Will asked.

  “I don’t know.” She patted the sleeping Catahoula on the rump. The dog snored softly in reply.

  As the truck bumped down the mountain, Bone mulled over what she’d learned about the Gifts. She wanted to ask Uncle Ash about his, but not in front of Miss Spencer. Did his Gift drain him if he used it too much? Is that what happened to her mother? She’d been awfully tired whenever she came home from calling on folks or seeing them at Mamaw’s. But a little sleep and Daddy’s scrambled eggs always put her right. Maybe some of those folks might know something. Maybe they could tell her something about her mother’s gift that Mamaw didn’t know—or wouldn’t tell her. And maybe she had a way of finding out.

  Bone shifted out from under Kiawah’s weight and slid open the window to the cab. “Uncle Ash? Can you drive Miss Spencer and me to call on folks? You know, for stories?”

  Uncle Ash raised an amused eyebrow at her. “I do have calls of my own to make.”

  Bone looked to Miss Spencer for support.

  “I’d pay for gas,” she offered. Corolla was curled up asleep in Miss Spencer’s lap. “I wouldn’t want it to be a hardship for you,” she added with a smile.

  Uncle Ash chuckled. “I’ve been flanked. And it’s not particularly a hardship.” He glanced at Miss Spencer.

  “Thanks.” Bone slid the window closed again and settled down next to Will and the dogs.

  He started to write something on his pad, but Bone stopped him.

  “Mama’s old patients might know something about her Gift,” Bone whispered. She didn’t know what exactly they might know, but it felt good to have a plan.

  Will nodded as she ticked off a few names. Then he mimed a bow drawn across a fiddle.

  “Mr. Childress.”

  Kitty Hawk raised her drowsy head briefly and then laid it back down with a thunk.

  “I should of thought of him,” Bone whispered. He was Will’s great-uncle. The older gentleman was a great storyteller, and he and his wife had been regulars of Mama’s. “Good boy,” she teased Will.

  He shook his head and leaned back against the truck cab, closing his eyes.

  That evening Bone fell asleep to the clack of Miss Spencer’s typewriter deep into the night.

  12

  ON THE PORCH of the Scott Brothers’ store, Bone pressed the cold bottle of Nehi Miss Spencer had bought her to her lips. School had dragged on forever, and Miss Spencer was champing at the bit to call on everyone around Big Vein to get their stories. Uncle Ash had run over to Radford that afternoon, so Bone was going to introduce Miss Spencer around to folks within walking distance—ending up with Mr. Childress. Bone mapped out the route in her head as cool sugary goodness trickled down her throat.

  “John Scott, what kind of establishment are you running?”

  Bone froze mid-swig. The unmistakable voice echoed inside the store, and seconds later Aunt Mattie came charging out.

  “I expect my orders filled correctly,” she hollered over her shoulder—and then promptly steamrollered smack into Bone, knocking her on her butt and showering her in grape soda.

  Bone glared up at her aunt.

  Aunt Mattie merely raised an eyebrow. Miss Spencer pulled Bone to her feet.

  “That’s one less abomination we’ll have to burn.” Aunt Mattie peered down at the dress. She turned on Miss Spencer and looked her up and down. “Well, bless your heart, maybe we can add your outfit to the pyre, too, dear.” She smiled her thin little smile.

  Miss Spencer wore sensible slacks and a jacket.

  “I’d like to see you try,” she replied. “Dear.” She returned the smile.

  Aunt Mattie stormed off. Most folks in Big Vein kowtowed to her. Bone grinned.

  “This will need a good long soak.” Miss Spencer fussed over the purple stain all down Bone’s front. “Who was that?”

  “That was my aunt.”

  This time Miss Spencer raised her eyebrow.

  They stopped at the boardinghouse, and Bone changed into her yellow sweater and dungarees. She and Miss Spencer called on a few folks along the main road, who w
ere happy to share stories. The only thing Bone learned, however, was that her plan was not as simple as she’d thought. It had sounded easy-peasy in her head. But now she wasn’t so sure. How, when everyone is talking about haints and bears, did you casually work in a question about your dead mother and her Gift? Plus Miss Spencer was hanging on every word and writing it down in ink in her little notebook.

  Finally they got to Mr. Childress’s cabin. Every afternoon, come end of first shift, he was always sitting on his porch, rain or shine, watching the men straggle home after a day in the mines. He and Miss Spencer and he sat in the rocking chairs sipping sweet tea while Bone settled on a milk crate between them. Mr. Childress’s dogs lay about her on the porch, their feet twitching in their sleep, dreaming of chasing squirrels and raccoons through the hills.

  “You ever hear the one about Ashpet, Miss Spencer?” Mr. Childress asked.

  She got out her notebook.

  “Once there was this woman who had two daughters. And they had them a hired girl they treated awful. They even made her sleep in the ashes by the fire.”

  Bone shifted on the milk crate. Ashpet was not her favorite story. The girl had to get herself rescued by a prince, but at least the woman and daughters got their comeuppance at the end.

  Miss Spencer scribbled away as Mr. Childress told how the hired girl was kind to the old witch woman up on the mountain. Bone was only half listening. She still couldn’t figure how to steer the conversation around to her mother. She’d have to bide her time and hope the talk went her way. Bone fidgeted on the milk crate. She was not good at biding anybody’s time.

  When the story was over, Mr. Childress asked Bone to fetch him his fiddle. She sprang into action.

  “It’s over the fireplace,” he called.

  Bone navigated through the rapidly darkening shack. The company put widowers and single men in the smallest company houses, the ones with one room and a tiny kitchen tacked on the backside. Uncle Junior’s house was identical to this one. Just like Junior, Mr. Childress’s daughters were grown and married. Bone made straight for the empty fireplace and felt above the mantel for the battered instrument.