Every Bone a Prayer

by Ashley Blooms

  The pavement ended not long after Dolly’s house, and the four-wheeler dipped, wobbled, roared on over the dirt and gravel. There were oil wells further in the holler so a company maintained the roads. Beyond that, the roads had once belonged to a logging company, but had fallen out of use. The deeper they went, the more bumpy and rutted the ground became, the thicker and closer the trees grew, the greener Misty’s view of the world until there were only leaves and branches and faint speckles of dark-blue sky.

  Dolly’s children, Sam and Charlene, sat on their own four-wheeler by the road ahead. Misty waved to them, and Charlene waved back as Sam revved the engine and pulled in front of Jamie and Penny. A cloud of dust swelled in front of them and Jerry pressed his nose into his shoulder to keep from breathing it in, but he still coughed and Misty patted his back gently.

  The voices of everything around her were louder now. The trees and the bugs, the raccoons and ground squirrels and opossums, the flat tire that someone had left behind, its rusted rim glinting in the last rays of sunlight—all of them shared their names and spoke to one another. They were louder here than anywhere Misty had been, so far from the presence of humans, so comfortable with themselves. They regarded Misty and her cousins with curiosity and a lace of fear, and they delighted at the sound of Misty’s voice as she shared a fragment of her name. It unfurled easily at first, but then came the memories of Caroline in the woods and then the brown glass bottle in William’s hand and the press of his lips against hers. She pulled away. Her name ended and the sound of the world fell flat.

  Misty didn’t want to bring those thoughts here. She wasn’t willing to wonder if the garden was still angry at her or if she would ever learn the sound of her family’s names. It was better to close her eyes and let the wind whip through her hair, to shiver and rumble with the rev of the engine, to feel Jerry’s shirt flapping against her chest and hear her cousins shout and holler as they drove through a narrow creek, the water splashing Misty’s bare calves.

  The air grew colder under the trees and the shadows thicker. The sun was just a faint red bleed above the highest ridge, and the light that fell on their path was yellowed and stormy. A few smaller roads branched here and there, but what they’d once led to had long disappeared—old logging sites, empty shacks, or paths that simply ended with no explanation. Some people dumped their trash here, and there were rusted truck shells and mattress springs that shot out of the tall grass like strange new flowers. Aunt Dolly always told them to be careful when they went riding. There was no way to be sure what they might find in the hills, or who, like they could go so deep that they might turn back time itself and ride themselves too far from the reach of their mothers.

  It seemed almost possible as the road curved ahead and they started up a long hill. Jerry turned the headlights on and the new light only made the shadows darker, made the trees seem doubled, tripled, their branches trembling overhead.

  Jerry was more cautious than his brother or their cousin Sam. Jamie drove on the side of the road, blasted through fields of wildflowers with Penny screeching behind him, her hands held out to catch the blooms between her fingers until she held a bouquet above her head triumphantly. Sam swerved as Penny let go of the flowers so Charlene might catch them. Charlene tied the Queen Anne’s lace around the rack of Sam’s four-wheeler, the thin white blooms shaking in the wind.

  But Jerry held back. He was easy on the bumps in the road, choosing the smoothest path for him and Misty. Part of her wished that she’d beaten Penny onto Jamie’s four-wheeler instead, especially when he did doughnuts in a wide spot in the road, kicking up clouds of dust that Jerry sped ahead to avoid.

  “That looks fun,” Misty yelled.

  Jerry glanced back at her once, but she wasn’t sure that he’d heard her until he cut sharply to the left, leading them along a road that ran parallel to the one they had been on. Sam and Jamie kept going below. Penny looked back at Misty through the trees, her hands held up in the air in question, but Jerry barreled ahead until Penny and the others were eaten up by the trees.

  * * *

  They drove so quick and so far that Misty began to wonder where they were going. Every minute they spent between the trees plunged them closer to nightfall. The air grew cold, and Misty wrapped her arms around her cousin’s waist to shield herself from the worst of the wind.

  Jerry stopped the four-wheeler in the middle of the road. He pointed the wheels toward the trees and left the headlights on so two dirty yellow beams cut through the darkness. He stepped off the four-wheeler and helped Misty do the same.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “I come here sometimes when I need to get away from Jamie and Mom. It’s a good spot to think.” He led her through the trees, holding up branches so she could sneak beneath them, warning her away from the briars, the gnarled roots of trees, the poison oak.

  “I’ve never told anybody about this spot before,” Jerry said. “Not even Jamie knows where it leads. You can get turned around pretty quick if you don’t know exactly what to look for, but I found it by accident once.” He stopped just ahead of Misty and held out his arm. “Just don’t go past here, all right?”

  Misty understood why when she stepped up to Jerry’s arm. One more step and there would be no ground beneath her. The mountain suddenly dropped away, angled so steeply that not even grass grew on its side. Only the tangled, skinny roots of a few brave trees stuck out here and there, jutting beside sharp stones. Kudzu had begun to creep along its bottom, its vines like bony fingers digging into the earth. It would cover the whole mountain soon. Misty stared at the drop so long that she almost didn’t notice what was below it.

  Her trailer.

  Her bottom.

  She was looking at them from a new angle. This mountain ran along the side of the road that ran parallel to the creek she played in, and it took her a moment to reorient herself. Everything looked like doll furniture from above, like she could reach out and rearrange them any way that she wished. All it would take is the tip of her finger to nudge her trailer closer to the creek, one flick of her wrist to change the shape of the water, to make it wind around her yard like a moat that no one might cross.

  William’s trailer was there and Earl’s and the garden, too. The green glass man glowed yellow-orange around his edges.

  There were no lights on in her trailer and her mother’s car was missing from the driveway. It looked so lonely. So small and empty.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” Jerry said. “I almost fell the first time I came out here. Didn’t expect it to end so sudden, but then I saw you down there.” He pointed toward Misty’s backyard. “Or at least I think it was you. Walking around after dark.” He lifted an eyebrow at Misty and she smiled. “People think Jamie and Penny have all the fun, but that’s because they don’t watch us close enough. They don’t always see us. Sometimes it’s nice to be unnoticed. You can get away with a lot more if no one suspects you.”

  “Sometimes,” Misty said.

  “This is the closest I’ve come to that statue,” Jerry said. “I tried drawing it from up here, but it never came out right. I always ended up drawing scribbles and swirls. It was weird. I can almost see why everybody is acting so strange about it.”

  “Mom is.” Misty almost told Jerry about the green light on the wall and the way her mother’s face looked as she hunted it, but it felt like a secret, like something she shouldn’t tell.

  “She’s got a lot on her mind right now,” Jerry said. “I know separating from your dad wasn’t easy for her, but I think it was the best thing for now. Mom says they’ll work everything out and be back together before long. The preacher has them going on dates and doing all kinds of exercises and stuff. They’re trying.”

  Misty’s hands grew cold. She looked up at Jerry, but he was looking beyond the trees, his eyes caught on the shimmer of the green glass man. She wanted to ask him questions, to ask wher
e her father was, and what he meant by exercises from the preacher, but the only word she could think of was separated.

  The word was like walking through a spider’s web. It clung to her. It wrapped her up.

  Separated.

  “We should probably get back,” Jerry said. “But you can come back here when you’re bigger. If I share this spot with anybody, it ought to be you.”

  He squeezed Misty’s shoulder before he turned back and walked through the trees. Misty followed him without really looking and climbed onto the back of his four-wheeler without really feeling the engine. She rested her cheek between his shoulder blades and held on tight as Jerry raced through the dark, but all she could think, all she could feel, was that word, over and over again like a song stuck inside her head.

  Separated.

  Fifteen

  “Well, well,” Sam said as Misty walked into Jamie’s bedroom. “Look who finally decided to join us.”

  “We was about to start a search party,” Penny said.

  “She means a celebration party.” Jamie walked into the room carrying a bag of chips. “Where’d y’all go anyway?”

  “Around.” Jerry winked at Misty. “Where’s Charlene?”

  Sam shrugged. “Jem walked her home. She doesn’t like spending the night away yet.”

  Penny rolled her eyes but Misty nodded. She’d felt the same way as Charlene when she was eight, and still felt it now, sometimes.

  Unlike Misty and Penny, Jerry and Jamie had bedrooms of their own. They were all crowded now into Jamie’s room, which had a bed and a dresser and a recliner that he’d found by the side of the road. Jamie was the only one brave enough to sit in it since Jem swore up and down that the chair had a dark past and Jerry swore that it had mold growing underneath it. But Jamie loved the recliner where he sat sideways, his long legs draped over one arm.

  Penny lay on the floor with a pillow propped under her arms and Sam sat beside her. Sam was the oldest of all of them. His life had always seemed far away from Misty’s because of their age difference until last summer when Sam showed up at Misty’s house in the middle of the night. He’d left Dolly’s and refused to go back or to tell Misty’s mother what happened. Sam slept in Misty’s room that night, and it was only after everyone else was asleep that Sam told Misty and Penny the truth. Sam had gotten into a fight with Dolly over something, and he wasn’t sure if he could ever go home again.

  “Why not?” Penny had asked.

  “I told her something about me that she didn’t like.” Sam had been sitting with his knees curled to his chest on Misty’s bed. Misty went over and sat beside him, offered Sam one of her favorite stuffed animals to hug.

  “What’d you tell her?” Misty asked.

  “I told her to call me Sam instead of Samantha. I know everybody thinks I’m a girl, but I’m not. That’s not me.”

  “Oh,” Misty said.

  Penny leaned on her arm and squinted across the dark. “Well, I reckon you ought to know who you are. I’m going to bed.” Then she rolled over and pulled the covers over her head.

  Sam laughed. “What do you think, Little Bit?”

  “Well,” Misty said, “I guess I agree with Penny.”

  “There’s a first.”

  Misty smiled. She bounced her legs back and forth against the bed frame until Sam reached over and poked her on the arm.

  “Is something wrong?” Sam asked.

  “It’s just…right now there’s more girl cousins than boy cousins. And if you’re not a girl cousin anymore, then that means we’re even.”

  “What about Charlene?”

  “Oh,” Misty said, “I forgot about Charlene.”

  Sam laughed. “Anyway, I’m still on your side even if I’m a boy.”

  Misty smiled. “All right then. You mind if I sleep with you? Penny snores like an old man.”

  “Sure.”

  Sam rolled over onto his side and Misty fit herself behind him, slotting her knees behind Sam’s knees and burrowing her forehead against Sam’s back. Misty had worried, for a moment, if it was okay to hug a boy this way, but Sam still smelled like mint and cigarettes and still talked in his sleep so it seemed like nothing else ought to change, either. Ever since then, Misty had made a point to stop calling her cousin Samantha and called him Sam instead.

  Misty sat on Sam’s other side as he shuffled a deck of cards. His fingers were quick, but the cards were wider and shinier than Misty had ever seen. The backs were brightly colored—purple and gold and red—and they shone under the light. They must have been what Jamie had been carrying in the plastic bag.

  “Can you go any slower?” Jamie said. “I didn’t go all the way to Hell-for-Certain for a bunch of black magic for nothing. I swear that Lady Baker is a witch.”

  “I told you,” Sam said.

  “Yeah, but I figured you was full of shit, like usual.”

  Sam laughed. “Now you’ll learn to take me serious. Do you have your question ready? You got to ask the cards a question before I cast them.”

  “I got it all right.” Jamie slid from the recliner to the floor. “I want to know if Sherry’s going to break up with me this weekend. I think she’s cheating on me. She’s been wearing this new eye shadow.”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “Not everything a girl does is about you. You know that, right?”

  Jamie sighed. “I’m being serious here. I like Sherry. I thought about giving her one of Mom’s old rings. You know, like a promise.”

  “You sure got Mommy’s crooked nose,” Jerry said, “but I forget you got her heart sometimes, too.”

  “Shut up,” Jamie said, but there was no heat behind it.

  “All right,” Sam said. “We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

  Sam shuffled the cards just like Misty’s father did, except Sam looked at the deck while he did it. Misty’s father had always looked at the person across from him, like he didn’t even need to see the cards to manipulate them, and she’d always thought it was the most impressive thing a person could do. Her father had tried to teach Misty to play poker once, but she kept putting the cards in the wrong order, matching them by color instead of suit until he laughed and they’d made up a game of their own instead.

  She hadn’t thought of that in a long time, but now the memory pressed against her chest. It seemed like that would never happen again. Like she’d never see her father again, never know her family whole. Everything she wanted, she wanted because of them. Without her mom and dad together, there seemed to be no point in finding out where the statue came from or waiting for the garden to teach her how to talk to people. All the people she wanted to talk to would be gone and she’d be alone and none of it would matter.

  Jem walked into the room just as Sam started laying down the cards. Everyone stopped. Jem carried a large plastic mixing bowl in her arms. She scraped off a spoonful of dark batter and popped it into her mouth as she stepped between Jerry and Penny until she stood over the cards.

  Sam looked up at Jem and said quietly, “Don’t tell Mom.”

  Jem hummed a little note. “And just what is this that I’m not seeing right now?”

  “We’re casting cards,” Sam said. “Jamie has a question.”

  She looked down at the cards and then at her son. “Just don’t go asking for what you ain’t ready to receive.” She handed the bowl to Penny and walked back across the room. She said, “Brownies’ll be done in ten minutes,” as she shut the door.

  Penny looked after Jem for a long moment before she turned back to everyone else. “Having Jem for a mom must be nice. If our mom came in and seen this, she would freak out.”

  Jerry snorted. “Yeah, Mom don’t have much room to stand on when it comes to stuff like this. There ain’t much she hasn’t tried before.”

  “Or done a lot better than us,” Sam added.

 
“But she ain’t all roses,” Jamie said. “Last week the water got cut off when I was in the middle of the shower because she used the bill money to buy some secondhand silk. She said it had a story that needed telling, and I told her I had a headful of suds to show DCFS for my negligence case.”

  Sam laughed. “She’s always forgetting something.”

  “Like me,” Jamie said, “at school when I was in third grade. She left me there for four hours once. I thought I was going to have to take to the woods and survive on moss and beetles.”

  “If only,” Jerry said. “The point is, Pen, that everybody has problems.”

  “And none of them are bigger than my problem with Sherry,” Jamie said, “so hurry up and lay them cards down, Sam. I ain’t got all night.”

  Sam cast the three-card spread in quick succession, then flipped the first card up. The image was vibrant and violent. A church steeple stood in the center, its white brick ending in a point of light. A comet streaked toward it through the sky, and dark clouds roiled all around. An orange shadow flickered near the bottom like flames were slowly consuming it. But the worst part was the woman who tumbled from an open window, her hair concealing her features so she might have been anyone. Misty shifted a little further from the cards.

  “Well, this ain’t the best sign in the world,” Sam said. “The Steeple is about upheaval. See, it’s supposed to be something solid, right? The church. A foundation unmoving. But that’s not the case. It’s being consumed here. So you might have thought things were going well, but your relationship is about to undergo some sudden changes.”

  “I knew it.” Jamie tossed his head back. “I knew it.”

  “Hang on, now, the cards ain’t done.” Sam rubbed his fingers across the back of the second card. “Contact is important. The cards have all kinds of things to say, and not everything is just in the image. It’s in the feeling.” Sam flipped the card over and sighed.