Bone Dance

by Martha Brooks

  “He’s actually my stepdad. My mom died a long time ago.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” she said with real sympathy.

  “Pop and I get along pretty good.”

  Her hands were now flat out behind her. She rested on them. Beneath her hands, beneath the earth, who knew what lay there.

  “Did you know my dad very well?” She turned her head, her wild eyes, to look him full in the face.

  “Not really.” His heart began to pump erratically. “We didn’t see him that much. He stuck to himself.”

  “I never got to meet him, my dad,” she said, looking away down the long grassy slopes.

  Lonny thought about Earl. About the last time he’d seen him alive, the tuneless whistle that had lingered long after the man himself had disappeared into the late afternoon in January. I have to tell her, he thought, I have to tell her about the LaFrenière land. About how unwelcoming it can be. About how my carelessness made it this way.

  “A lot of people have died here,” he said, and almost stopped, because it sounded naked and awful all out in the open like that. “This… where we’re sitting,” he continued, “is called Medicine Bluff. It was, is, a burial mound.”

  The breeze clattered through the poplar leaves and in shuddering whispers swept up and away. He pushed past the coldness that prickled at his skin. Squinted instead at the hot sun. Told her about Pop and him coming up here. Pop’s theory. The day he and Robert found the skull. How they flew with it back to Pop and Mom.

  He stopped right there. “I have to tell you this,” he explained. “I have to tell it to you because it’s important for you to know.”

  She sat, quietly composed. But she leaned in on him a little and looked straight ahead as if she were glimpsing some oncoming thing and didn’t know if it would be a blessing or a disaster. And he got right back to telling this perfect stranger his terrible story.

  He reached the part about the spade, coming back here… right down the side of the hill… there, at that spot where the grasses and wildflowers look the same as they did seven years ago… before they dug in there.

  He pushed away his feelings about what he and Robert had done. Giving her the facts. He got to the part where the bigger skeleton started to emerge and kept right on telling it, the arrowhead, the necklace, those human ribs… and he stopped. His skin felt colder still under the morning sunlight. He felt he should continue; he’d come this far. Felt as overwhelmed with nausea as he had that day. Felt like an eleven-year-old kid again.

  Then she did the oddest thing. She took his hand, cupped it between both of hers. He wanted to pull away. She hung on. She wouldn’t let him go. He thought about his mother’s cool fingers. Thought about her last dance with Pop. Thought that he couldn’t handle any more of this.

  “That’s it. That’s all there is to tell,” he said, feeling shame and fear and sadness wash at his heart in waves. “We buried it again. And the skull of the baby, or little kid, or whatever it was. And then we left.”

  She was still holding on to his hand. Maybe she was doing this to comfort him. The way somebody might come along and comfort a pathetic person they see crying at a bus station. He pulled his hand away.

  11

  When he’d appeared beside her, hunkered down in the grass, he’d seemed as if he was part of the hill. As if he had just sprung up out of it.

  She caught her breath out of the quiet and peaceful ordinariness of this one thing. Of seeing him suddenly there. Of seeing his pale jeans, his T-shirt, his boots with the little traces of scuffed silver on the toes and on the heels. The smell of his wet hair under the sun. The smell of the plants around them and of the warm earth. The smell of her own skin.

  And then his confession, spun out so close, she could sometimes feel his breath in her ear. She was starting to be aware of something else, too, a kind of vibration, a very dull drumming. Felt more than heard, it came from right beneath them, from right inside the earth. It grew. It heightened every single word he said.

  It was when Lonny stopped his confession, pulling away his hand, that she realized there was something else he wasn’t able to tell her. Some heavy sadness. She recognized its density. Felt it in her arms and legs. “It’s hard for you to be here,” she said at last.

  His head practically hung over his feet.

  “Kids do stuff. Probably anybody might have done the same thing.”

  He said, into his boots, “Probably?”

  “I’m not excusing it.”

  He raised his head, didn’t look at her, his profile framed by tall grass, little bushes.

  “I dreamed that my dad died,” she told him, and it came out as naturally as taking her next breath. “My grandpa, who was already dead, and another spirit came to me… in dreams. They were here. On this land. It was winter. Deep snow everywhere. That lake was frozen solid as rock. I’ve never been here before, but I know this place. I know it.”

  And now she really could feel them behind her, whispering. Grandpa and Old Raven Man, two old men. She actually thought she smelled licorice throat drops on Grandpa’s breath. As she told Lonny her dreams, she heard the swish, shuffle, swish of Old Raven Man’s moccasins. He’d never worn moccasins in her dreams. Just now, was that a flash of blue beading? His soft damp-skinned cheek laid against hers?

  She closed her eyes. Behind her lids she watched as Grandpa moved in front of Lonny. Gazed long and tenderly into his eyes. Placed a silvery hand, like a blessing, over his heart.

  Then the old men came together again, joining arms, dancing around them, around Medicine Bluff, rhythmically nodding their heads. Dancing, old bony shoulders touching. Dancing through the hot dusty grass with a swish, shuffle, swish.

  She could feel all around her, for the briefest of moments, a vast moving blanket tossing stars out into the cosmos. And a little part of her was flying out, too, like it wasn’t even her. Looking down, watching carefully, it was saying: So this is the one. This is the person Grandpa told me about. But how can he have buffalo medicine? she thought with this part of her mind. He is just as lonely and crazy and screwed up as me.

  12

  With a fierce and inescapable light, his own ghosts hovered in front of his imagination. He closed his eyes and instantly and vividly saw open mouths. Saw vapors solidify, like black storm clouds, and then take shape. The woman sat on the ground. Held the dead child in her arms. Wailing and sobbing, she buried her face in its limp body. Sticky dark blood came from the back of its lolling head, soaking into the sleeve of her pale leather dress. And all around them, chaos. Dust and shouting and horses and people dying.

  Terrified, he opened his eyes. “Let’s go, okay?”

  “Why?” she said. “What’s wrong? Did I say something…?”

  He struggled to his feet and looked at her, real and beautiful, a flesh-and-blood girl in the gathering morning light; and then he opened his mouth and said, “Alexandra, I’ve been keeping something that belongs to you. It’s something that I have to give you. Out of respect, you see. Because it’s yours.”

  13

  He hurried her down the hill. But when they got to the bottom, he slowly opened the passenger’s door of the truck, and then put his hand lightly on the small of her back.

  “Okay?” he said. “Just sit inside. This will only take a minute.”

  Then, sitting in the truck cab, with the windows rolled down and the sweet wind rolling in, he reached across her knees and opened the glove compartment and pulled something out. He sat back against the seat for a minute, face tense, eyes blinking, and then he turned to her.

  “I’ve had it a long time,” he said. “It’s from your dad.”

  She looked down at the letter he offered. She pushed the hair out of her eyes. An ordinary envelope. Her name scrawled on it with a cheap and leaky blue ballpoint. Her father’s undeniable hand. It shook her up to see it. Something from him.

  “But how did you get this?” she said, turning to him. “Where did it come from?”

&nbs
p; “I was supposed to mail it. He died about two weeks after he wrote it.”

  She frowned at him. Her mouth went suddenly dry. She felt her whole body begin to tremble.

  “How could I turn around and send you a letter from a dead man? And then I couldn’t throw it out either. I’ve just held on to it all this time. He said it was for your birthday.”

  “And you didn’t send it?”

  Eyelids lowered, he leaned against the door, running his thumb along the chrome handle.

  Astonishing. A fat letter. Nothing he’d ever written had been long. The letter that talked about the roses had been the longest. Contained the most words. And now here was Earl—her father, the shadow—grazing across her life with another letter. For her seventeenth birthday.

  She tried to get it open. Her hands shook too badly. She could feel Lonny looking at her, then abruptly away, out the truck window.

  He said, at last, still looking out, “Do you want me to leave?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

  “I’m sorry.” His hand was opening the door. “I don’t know what else to say. I’m very, very sorry.” And then he got out and left her alone.

  She waited until he had disappeared around the side of the cabin before she opened the envelope and carefully withdrew its contents. Unfolded the letter. Something fluttered into her lap. She picked it up. The hot wind lightly buffeted the truck. She looked down at a photograph. And into the face of her father.

  14

  Lonny sank down behind the cabin. Leaned back against the wood wall. Looked out over the lake. Closed his eyes and let the hot reedy-smelling wind press against him. Felt his limbs go heavy.

  Now he wished he had sent the letter. He wished with all his heart he could go back to that day when Earl had drunkenly entrusted it to him. He wished he had gotten into the truck, right then, and driven over the snowy roads to town. He wished it for her, and most of all he wished it for himself.

  But wishing won’t change things, he thought. It’s just a trick you play on yourself when you come up against something that makes you wake up inside your life.

  Shit, why is this happening to me? He looked helplessly around. There was no refuge. No refuge from ghosts or memories that crowded around him. No refuge from this tenderness, for her, that shook him and seized his heart.

  15

  When had the picture been taken? In it, her father was gray and skinny and weather-beaten. He wore one of those snap-button plaid shirts. And a wide belt with a thick Western buckle. He looked normal. Just kind of like a worn-out cowboy. No trace of madness in his eyes, no trace at all. He wasn’t smiling. He stared into the camera as if somebody had said, “Cheese,” and he’d been thinking, “Screw you.” From the look of him, that was probably something he thought a lot.

  There were many handwritten pages, seven in all, the words cramped up like patient lines of marching ants.

  Dear Alexandra Marie, So this is your seventeenth birthday. I never made it to any of your other birthdays, so I guess I’m a fool for thinking I might have made it to this one.

  Pardon me for being so frank. As they say, it’s the liquor talking. I guess it’s good for something. Liquor has been my way of life for so many years, I hardly know what to say to people when I’m sober.

  I’ve sure come to a different point in my life. It’s like I’m passing over into something different, and I don’t know exactly what it is yet. I feel as strange and restless as a sick old wolf. Like I need to hurry up and get my life in order.

  So, my baby girl, you’ll be a grown-up young woman by now. This means I am finally free to be frank. Just before you were born, your mother had said to me, “Earl, if you can’t handle the responsibility now, then when are you ever going to?” And I guess I figured she was right. She always did stand her ground like an angel with a mission, and I always admired her for that. I decided after a particularly bad drinking binge that I had to leave town.

  An alcoholic, she thought, with relief. My God, he wasn’t a madman—he was just a drunk! She sank farther down in the seat of the LaFrenières’ truck and continued reading:

  Maybe I was too ashamed and scared to see you again. And, in all honesty, maybe I knew in my own sorry heart that I would never have been able to give your young life anything but broken promises. Life is full of maybes, Alexandra, and it doesn’t always offer up second chances. And that is the sad truth.

  I bet you always wondered about your old man. Why I ran off on your beautiful mother like that. Truth is, Alexandra, after her, I never wanted to marry anybody else.

  Never be too scared or too proud to tell somebody you love them.

  I spent a lot of years running around being a cowboy. Went to every big-city and small-town rodeo from Alberta to Saskatchewan to Manitoba and down through the midwestern United States. Won a lot of prizes, played a lot of poker, chased a lot of women, drank a lot of bourbon and rye whiskey. I took pride in being an “outlaw,” as the song says. But then I stopped winning prizes. I started working on ranches, where I played a lot more poker, drank a lot more whiskey, and found one woman, in particular, who seemed to want to put up with me. Until she got sicker of me than I was of myself.

  And here’s the deal. Here’s what happened that changed my life. When I was working on a ranch near Lethbridge, I went into town one day and bought a lottery ticket. It came through for me. The night of the day I found out I’d won, I went out, dead sober, under the stars. I was naked except for a pair of shorts and my boots and a blanket. I went up to the top of a hill that used to be a vision-quest place for the Plains Indians. I sat up there like an old-time Indian. Wrapped up in my blanket. I sat there without food or water all night and all the next day and then for three more nights and days until the sun went down again.

  During that time I prayed to the Almighty to help make me sober and change my life around. To help me see a way to make good this second chance and not to just piss it all away again, pardon my French. I was hungry and cold and lonelier than a lonely man could ever be. Around the morning of the third day—I’d lost all track of time except for the stick scratchings I made in the dirt—I figured I couldn’t keep it up much longer. But I did.

  A very queer thing happened while I was up there. On the third night I started seeing things. I’d done some reading on the subject, and so I knew what I was seeing was based on actual history. I saw Indian people dressed in ghost shirts. They were ghost dancing all around me. I was in the middle of it. I was scared as hell but excited, too.

  Here’s a bit of information for you. Call it my measly contribution to your education. Anyway, did you know, Alexandra, that in 1890, before the Battle of Wounded Knee, the Indians had a prophet? A Paiute man by the name of Wovoka. Well, Wovoka had a vision. He told the people that if they danced to call up the spirits of their ancestors and the buffalo, their former life would be restored to them just as it was before the white man came. In fact, they believed the dance would make the white man disappear altogether.

  Well, in the middle of the night, in the middle of my waking dream, or whatever it was (I swear I was dead sober), I got up, a white man, and I started dancing with them. I never felt such joy before or since. And after it was over, and they all danced away in the morning mist, I watched the sun rise up over the horizon. And I felt like I was changed forever. Like I wasn’t who I was before.

  I laughed out loud up on that lonely hill. What a terrific, terrifying, wonderful thing. They’d got rid of one more white man by giving me the vision of an Indian. What a magnificent way to make their wish come true.

  I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that I reformed and started on a life of sobriety. But I did become a more clear-eyed drunk. I became a drunk with a vision. It was that vision that led me to buying up land and building a cabin on it and writing a will. I don’t want you ending up like your old man, always with your head in the clouds, never firmly planted in anything.

  I think that you would like this pla
ce I bought. I chose it a year before its former owner would actually sell it to me. If I don’t make it through this winter, will you tell him that we are all guardians of the land on this sacred planet? I never had the nerve to say such a thing to him in person. But I expect you are your mother’s daughter, with enough spine to tell anybody anything real that they need to hear.

  So I guess I’ll close. Like I said last time I wrote, always look the world straight in the eye. And I might also add, don’t take no crap from nobody. But if you’re anything like your mother, you probably don’t anyway.

  Wishing you all the best in the world, my girl. And sending you, probably too late, all of my love. From your father, Earl McKay.

  All of her life as she had known it just seemed to stop. All of his attention and all of his love directed at her—she could hardly believe it. She thought about her father up on that Alberta hill, dancing on the land with the spirits like it was a normal and perfectly healthy thing to do. Thought about his rapture. About the moment when his life turned. Thought with chilling ecstasy about Grandpa and Old Raven Man, dancing in her own vision, up on Medicine Bluff.

  And to think that she had almost missed getting this, the most important letter of all.

  16

  He watched her walk, in a terrible calm way, around the side of the cabin and come toward him. She held out Earl’s letter like a piece of evidence. And then she started in: “I can’t believe you did this. I can’t believe you didn’t send this letter to me. This was my father. He wrote it, and he wanted me to have it. I don’t care that he died, or if I was just some stranger you thought you didn’t have to do anything about. What did you think you were doing all this time, keeping something so important from me? I might have seen him if I’d gotten it in time. I might have been able, at least, to be with him when he died.