by N. E. Bode
Fern was thinking back. She was trying to remember that first car ride in the old jalopy with Marty disguised as Mary Curtain. What had the Bone said when she asked him about transforming into a bird then a dog? Maybe, just maybe, if our lives depended on it, we could have some great sparkling moment…. What if the Bone didn’t get away? What if he was still right here? What if he transformed into the chair? The ropes?
But this musing didn’t last long. The Miser was convulsing. His body was rattling into some new shape. He was growing leathery, scaled. His shoulders broadened. He stood hunched on two large clawed feet, his forearms shrank, hung as two claws at his chest. Muscled, vicious, hulking. The Miser was now a dinosaur. Fern didn’t have perfect knowledge of dinosaurs. An oviraptor? She knew some random facts about meat eaters, T. rex. She’d read about paleontologists. She stood in the dinosaur’s looming shadow. He was no longer distracted by the mouse. He walked toward her, roaring now, his thick nails clicking. He clawed the air.
The mouse was darting around nervously. The Great Realdo didn’t seem to know what to do. Fern thought as hard as she could. What had she read about oviraptors? Something, something about the males…they protected their eggs! That was it. Once they were thought to steal eggs, but someone had discovered that they weren’t thieves, they were proud fathers.
“Egg!” Fern yelled to the mouse. “Become an oviraptor’s egg!”
The mouse scurried to a spot on the ground between Fern and the dinosaur. It trembled and then bloated to the size and shape of a huge speckled egg. The Miser, despite himself, turned his gaze on the egg. He snatched it up in his front claws and took it to the far end of the room, where he curled around it lovingly. In moments, he was fast asleep.
Fern jumped up and began shuffling through the stacks of old things—warped golf shoes, rusted flour sifters and sugar canisters—as fast as she could. “Bone?” she said. “Bone?”
Fern felt frantic. She accidentally knocked over an old trombone, which hit a stack of slippery records. One jostled the record player, flipping a switch. The old thing hummed. Its arm popped up and the needle moved over to the record. It all happened so fast that Fern couldn’t get to it in time. The record started up: “Sweet, sweet, my sweet darling angel, where have you gone, where have you gone?”
But it wasn’t anyone famous singing—it wasn’t Elvis or a Beatle or anything—it was the Bone’s voice. Fern would recognize it anywhere.
4
THE GREAT REALDO
ANNE OF GREEN GABLES NEVER HAD TO DEAL with such a mess. Neither did Heidi with her grandpa in Norway or wherever.
Fern’s father was a record spinning on an old turntable in an old gas station. Her father’s greatest enemy was a dinosaur asleep on the floor a few feet away. Her father’s greatest hero of all time was a big speckled egg in the dinosaur’s clutch. She was worried about an army of fairies and if they had succeeded in mailing an enormous collection of letters. And the people she’d always thought were her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Drudger, were locked up in their house where they were under the impression that they were monkeys. And Howard, her swapped brother of sorts, was trying to decode her mother’s diary, in vain. Fern’s mother had been a very talented Anybody. Fern’s mother was still dead.
Fern needed help. Luckily, Fern thought, my grandmother is in her truck right out front.
She ran to the parking area in front of the old gas station, still clutching the book and her diary. Her grandmother wasn’t there. In the cab of the truck sat the stray hobbit and Mary Curtain and Marty. Mary rolled the window down a few inches. “Is it safe?”
“I was bowling a good game, too!” Marty pouted. “I had three strikes already. Did I mention it was the championships?”
“Stay here,” Fern said.
Her grandmother was missing. This didn’t surprise Fern, not really. She knew that she had to figure this out on her own.
Fern walked back into the garage. The Miser was still asleep, but his dinosaur teeth were shrinking, his claws were plumping into pink fingers. Slowly, slowly, he was turning back into the Miser. The egg was snug tight to his belly. The record was still turning, the Bone’s sweet, warbly voice crooning away about lost love.
Now, how would Fern get the Bone to be the Bone again? She thought again of Marty in the old jalopy, talking about how the Bone once became a four-legged, furry almost-dog. Marty had said he was lucky he didn’t get stuck that way. It took all the concentration Eliza and Marty had to get him back. And the Bone had mentioned that third ingredient, the one he’d lost. But wasn’t he getting better and better? Wasn’t he improving now that Fern was helping him? He’d mastered not only Mr. Bibb’s nose, but also the mustache and an occasionally genuine admiration for encyclopedias. She listened to the song, the “sweet, sweet,” the “my darling angel, where have you gone?” She thought of the Bone and his misty eyes and how much he’d loved Fern’s mother, and her love for him must have seemed like it had disappeared when she died.
Could the ingredient be love? Fern loved the Bone. She truly did.
She placed both hands on the record player. She thought about the Bone—soft, sweet, with gentle eyes. She closed her eyes and thought about how much she loved him. He was her father, her wonderful, sweet father. She knew this absolutely, deep in her heart. She felt an electrical energy, a revving motor, like an engine catching and purring to life. The record player lost its hard edges. It grew warm. Fern watched it quake and twist, blushing with the green of the Bone’s shirt. And then his face bloomed, a popping open of arms and legs. The Bone.
He grabbed Fern and hugged her. “Fern! I knew you’d find me! I knew you would!” He pulled away and looked at her, just taking her in. “Fern, my girl.” And he hugged her again. Fern wrapped her arms around him too. It was the first time they’d hugged each other, and the Bone started crying. It was like something in him broke and tears came streaming down his face. “I love you, Fern! My darling daughter! I love you!”
“I love you, too,” she said, and she knew it was true because love was the ingredient that had brought him back. They hugged and hugged until the Bone looked around, as if realizing where he was for the first time. “The Great Realdo came as a butterfly at first,” Fern explained. “Just like you told me he would.”
“Where is he?”
Fern took the Bone by the hand and showed him the Miser. His skin was still leather, his snout long and tough. “There,” Fern said, pointing to the egg. “That’s the Great Realdo. It’s really him!”
Just then the egg rolled out of the Miser’s hands. It wobbled toward Fern and the Bone, then stopped. It quivered twice, and then its shell started to crack as if there were a tiny baby dinosaur inside, pushing to get out. But there was no sharp egg tooth. No, there was a nose, two big wet-looking eyes, and then an orthopedic shoe. And pop! In one enormous heap—Mrs. Appleplum. Dorathea Gretel. Fern’s grandmother.
“You? Is it you?” Fern asked.
“You can’t be the Great Realdo!” the Bone said.
“Yes,” Fern said. “Yes, she can!” Fern remembered the story that the Bone had told her—the butterfly sitting on his shoulder as Eliza appeared at her bedroom window that night years ago. And her grandmother had told her that, too. She’d said, “Eliza was soon there—her face flushed and bright.” And something had seemed off to Fern when she heard her grandmother say that. It was like her grandmother had seen her daughter, too, in the window—and she had! She had! She’d been sitting on the Bone’s shoulder all along. She didn’t want her daughter to go, but she knew she’d chosen love. The Bone needed to find the ladder, and so Fern’s grandmother made sure he did.
There was something else, too. “Dorathea Gretel. It’s a strange name,” Fern said. She looked at the Bone. “Don’t you think?” The Bone stared at her blankly. Fern was thinking back to the little slips of paper she’d arranged and rearranged as a child on her desk, the slips of paper that had started out as snow. “If you switch the letters around…,
” Fern said.
“The Great Realdo!” said the Bone.
Fern’s grandmother winked one beautiful, big eye.
Fern and the Bone couldn’t help it: they both winked back.
5
THE END OR JUST THE BEGINNING
I’VE HEARD STORYTELLERS SAY THAT SOMETIMES they feel like magicians. They can make things appear and disappear with poofs and smoke, and have some old guy playing the organ to make things seem spookier. But I don’t feel like a magician. I feel more like a rabbit nervously pooping in the magician’s tight satin top hat or, worse, a rumple-winged dove shoved up some narrow sleeve. I’m hoping someone will pull me out of this tale so my ears can flop open or so my feathers can flap back into place, and then I can see what’s really going on around me, blinking into some spotlight. (My dear old writing teacher would never have admitted to such fears, but, let’s be honest, despite all of his big awards and his “begin at the beginning” and his “be true to the story,” he’s a big drafty windbag, and I’ve got to forge on alone, as we all must do at some point in our lives.)
You see, I think I know you pretty well. You’re right on top of everything, every little detail. And you want to know this: if the missing ingredient was love, then how was it that the Miser, so loveless, became such an expert Anybody?
I can only give my theory, and here’s a tip: When grown-ups say they’ve got a theory, it means they really don’t know and are about to make something up to suit themselves. So here goes—the letters. The Miser had to write the letters because he really was, deep down, from the day he was born into this world, a good person. But rejection and loss, these are difficult to bear, and I hope you don’t learn that the hard way. I suppose, though, that the hard way may be the only way to really learn it. I mean, you can watch after-school specials dealing with tough topics, but they don’t ever really cut the mustard.
When Eliza ran off with the Bone, the Miser lost his love and his best friend. Instead of getting over it, he let it consume him, turn him into a different kind of person altogether. (Remember how he signed all his letters? Of course you do.) He still had love, but he couldn’t show it anymore. Now I’m no psychologist who’s going to sort through the Miser’s mental closet and try to rehang his pants so the pleats stay creased, but maybe he was afraid of more rejection. So he wrote the letters but couldn’t send them. He was hoarding love, in a way. He was storing it up by not giving it to anyone. Like those people who stack their basements with canned corn, bottled water, and flashlights, thinking the end of the world is coming, the Miser had built up a surplus, a little arsenal of love.
Now, the Miser was finally back in his room in bed, and weak from all of that transforming. Mary Curtain was also at the house. She called her husband, Emil, and told him to take the muffins out of the oven. He said he didn’t know how to work an oven. She said, “Well, I’m needed here, Emil. I’m a nurse, you know, and someone is ill. You’ll just have to learn how to work the oven.”
And she became an efficient steam engine of energy. She took the Miser’s temperature. She applied cool compresses. She made him some tea and toast. The house of books was surprising to her, but she moved through it efficiently. It was a long time since she’d been a nurse, but it felt good to be a true woman of science again, one with a mission.
While Nurse Curtain was downstairs concocting her remedies (and Marty was back for the last round of his bowling tournament, which they won because of the rallying power of his team who, in the big game, with a man down and under pressure, stepped up their game, despite the odds—a heartwarming story of bowling and determination), Fern thought this might be a good time to break it to the Miser that the letters had been mailed—they had, you know. The fairies had done very good work and Fern had shaken them all back into their book, where they remain quite happy, according to my research.
Fern and the Bone went to the Miser’s room. He was lying in bed, completely limp. Every once in a while his eyes would open. It was the first time Fern had ever really seen his eyes. They’d always been covered up by Mr. Haiserblaitherness’s eyebrows. They were pretty green eyes with soft black lashes.
“Miser,” Fern said softly. “Michael?”
He looked up at her and nodded.
“I have something to tell you,” Fern said. “We mailed all of your letters.”
“They were all stamped and ready to go,” the Bone added. “We figured you meant to send them on…right?”
The Miser moaned. “No,” he said. “No, no.” He tried to reach out to the Bone, as if to strangle him, but he didn’t have the strength. He flopped back onto his bed. He stared at the ceiling. “Hmm,” he said. “I’m feeling…”
“What?” Fern asked.
“Well, that might explain why I’m feeling…”
“What is it?” the Bone said.
“I’m feeling more like myself,” he said. And then he sighed, smiled and fell back to sleep.
The letters were bouncing around in a sack in the back of a mail jeep that had crisscrossed its route and was now on its way back to the post office. The letters would soon fly off in different directions. They would be popped into mailboxes and dropped through mail slots. In the weeks to come, visitors would show up at Dorathea’s door, one after the other, to see the Miser, although some would call him Michael and others Chatbox, a childhood nickname. The spies showed up, one here and one there, weepy, clutching sweet, elegant letters filled with thanks and kindness. His sister Imogene would come and the grocer, now her husband. When the Miser’s mother would arrive, Nurse Curtain would hand him over to her. Nurse Curtain would make sure that the hobbits were all very healthy and drinking only in moderation, and she would be ready to go home again where she would teach Emil the workings of the house and start to apply for some nursing jobs. The Miser’s mother would tend to the Miser with tea and mineral salts. She would scold him for not sending the letters earlier, but, too, she would shower him with hugs and kisses. She would call him Snook’ems. His father was a great help around the house, because he was so ridiculously strong. He still would eat a nail or two, but only for reasons of nostalgia, not for show. All the while, letters for the Miser poured in, hundreds of them. Flowers. Telegrams. His letters had been beautiful and loving, after all, and they inspired people. The Miser took all of the affection in. He let it fatten his heart with love till it was a plump muscle pounding happily in his chest.
But would he ever forgive the Bone for stealing Eliza’s heart? This is hard to say. His letters to the Bone arrived at Fern’s grandmother’s house. Like on many of the other envelopes, somebody had written “return to sender.” They must have figured the Bone was gone for good. Maybe it was the neighbor lady who didn’t like the rooster man or one of the clog-dancing Bartons. In any case, the letters showed up, and the Bone read them. Here is an example:
Dear Bone,
Today is the kind of summer day when the three of us used to laze around sipping sodas, trying to turn into bullfrogs. I miss those days, Bone. I can’t help but think: How could you? You know how hard I take things. It’s been years and still you make me boil. I feel like I could burst into flames. I never used to be so flammable. But as you know, I haven’t been myself,
M.
The Bone would walk into a room. The Miser would turn away. Many times, the Bone would say, “Look, I’m sorry.” But the Miser couldn’t ever quite respond, not quite. His head would sag. He’d shake it woefully, but he couldn’t say it was okay, over, old business, forgiven. And Fern felt sad about this, because, like her mother, she had failed to bring these two friends back together. She’d gotten close, so close….
But I’m getting ahead of myself. None of this had happened yet. The Bone was in the kitchen, making dinner, while his mother-in-law read to him from a chair at the table. They’d made a deal. He and Fern were welcome to stay there as long as they wanted, but the Bone would take over the house, the yard, all the work and, in exchange, she would read to him—ever
y darn classic she could get her hands on. And she could get her hands on a heck of a lot. Right now she was reading him a book about an Indian who lived in a cupboard, and it made the Bone open each of the cabinets very slowly and carefully, afraid an arrow might be slung in his direction. It was a different kind of house to read a book in.
Fern was up in the bedroom, alone. She was happy to be alone for the moment. She put her diary back in her bag but she held on to The Art of Being Anybody. She would need to visit Howard again soon to get her mother’s diary back. Now that she knew it was hypnotized and not in code, she would have to take a different approach with it. She would have the summer, at least, but she knew it would come to an end. And would Howard and Fern be swapped back again? Would they return to their old lives for the school year, and then switch next summer and maybe on weekends now and then? Would it be okay to be back with the Drudgers? Wouldn’t they be a little different after all of this too? Wouldn’t they have to be, after spending the summer as monkeys? Fern could settle into her own room with its quiet lichen and her own library of books growing, growing up the walls. Her butterfly collection—it would have new meaning now that she’d seen her grandmother take shape as one. Everything would have new meaning. For example, she would know who the bird watching her on the limb outside her window was now, and she could invite that bird in. Or would Howard stay in her room? Would she stay here, with her grandmother reading to the Bone, the Miser recovering in his room, writing letters again hour after hour? Would Fern transplant her lichen, letting it grow on the slippery rocks by the pond in the painting of the goldfish and lily pads? Her lichen would like it there. And she could begin to study The Art of Being Anybody by Oglethorp Henceforthtowith.
