Mighty Old Bones (10 page)

O
n occasion, I keep two little boys who live down the street overnight. Jason is eight and his little brother, Mark, is five. Their poor mother died a couple of years ago. Several of the ladies on Meadowlark and also some at church take turns looking after them. This gives their daddy a break. It’s good for me, too. I like the little young’uns.

“Easy, easy!” I said when they clambered up the steps like stampeding cattle. They are rambunctious, just like all boys, but otherwise good and as cute as they can be.

First, while supper finished cooking, I got their measurements for the Halloween outfits I was going to make for them. Bundles of energy, both of them. With that done, I got them out of my hair for a few minutes by sending them to wash their hands good. All this time, Rowdy was right there with them, whatever they were doing.

“Now, you boys listen. Do not touch that dog any more until after supper. You’ve washed your hands, now I want you to eat without dog germs all over you.”

I made sure they had good vegetables and not too much bread or sweets. If I hadn’t, or if I kept Cokes in the house, they would be bouncing off the walls all night. That would not work. I needed them to settle down, not keep me up all night.

They helped me after we finished eating by clearing off the table and putting the dishes in the sink. I covered the leftovers and stuck them in the fridge.

“Now, y’all bring your pajamas while I run your bathwater down here.” Rowdy watched me get the water going and then decided the boys must be doing something more fun, so he ran off up the stairs after them. I was glad. It is nerve-wracking to have little beady eyes on you.

I got the boys’ towels out and ready, and poured in a little bit of bubble bath. I went over to the sink and opened the doors under it. I keep a basket of toys under there for whenever they come to stay with me.

As I stacked them on the bathtub ledge, the boys came stomping down the stairs. It is hard to believe two little boys could cause that much racket. Squealing and hollering came from the door as they roughhoused, panting out of breath and hitting and pushing each other.

“Beat you,” Jason said to his little brother, while blocking the door with both arms. The younger one squirmed around and underneath. He took a run at the bathtub and jumped in, shoes and all, shooting up bubble bath foam like a torpedo had hit.

“Beat you,” Mark said while Jason screeched like a monkey or some other wild jungle animal. Jason was about to jump in, too, but I caught him in time and said, “No, sir, you are not. Mark, get out of there and take those clothes off.” He was just about to splash one foot out but I said, “Wait a minute. Second thought, stay in there and do it. I am not going to have you make an even bigger mess.”

I turned to Jason. “You two are going to scrub down without tearing up this place. Now, I mean it. Don’t let me hear you all ripping everything apart while I’m doing the dishes.”

While I was at the sink, I looked out the window into my backyard. It was dark already, which would take a little getting used to, but after all, October was about over and fall was upon us. Before I knew it, Halloween would be here and gone, and it would be time to start thinking about Thanksgiving.

First things first. I thought about what I needed to do that night to stay on schedule. I would get the material for the boys’ costumes, cut them out, and get them pinned where I could baste them together while we watched TV.

Speaking of the boys, I noticed it had gotten mighty quiet in the house. No battle cries or sounds of motorboats crashing and splashing. I rinsed off the last casserole dish quickly and stuck it in the drying rack. While I walked toward the bathroom, I dried my hands on the dish towel I had stuck in my apron waistband. I stood outside the door, which I’d left open a tad since Rowdy had gone in there with them. I listened but couldn’t hear anything. I tapped on the door. “What’s going on in there? Are you boys about done?”

I pushed the door open a few more inches and peeped inside. Three swooshes of water and foam shot up out of the tub. Water dripped down three plastered heads of hair. All three had guilty looks in their eyes. I put my hands on my hips.

Jason looked shamefaced. “Rowdy wanted to scuba dive, too,” he said in their defense.

“Goodness gracious. Have you done any washing at all or has it been all playing so far?”

They didn’t answer in words. The fact that they immediately grabbed their washcloths and started scrubbing told me I was right. “Well, finish up now and get dressed. And dry Lloyd Bridges off real good because I don’t want wet paw prints all over my house. Hurry on up, now. We have some work to do before we can treat ourselves and watch that movie you want to see on TV tonight.”

I left them to it. I straightened up everything in the kitchen just right and stood back to see if I’d missed anything. I walked over to the back door and made sure it was locked and the chain was fixed. I twirled the miniblind rod to close the slats on the door’s window and then lowered the one over the sink. I clicked on the light over the stovetop, gave the room one last look and cut off the overhead light.

As I passed the bathroom door, I hollered out, “Hurry up and come on in the living room when you finish.” They didn’t know it but that was a test. I’ve been training them to clean up after themselves, what little I can, only seeing them every week or two. Usually, I remind them to pick things up and put them away. This time, I was going to see if they did it without being told to.

I went on through to the small bedroom downstairs that I use as a sewing room. From the closet, where I keep all the fabric I pick up on sale or get for special projects, I took down the pieces I’d bought for the boys’ costumes. On the way out, I grabbed my sewing box that has most everything I need in it.

The boys and Rowdy were just coming out as I passed. “Whoop. Wait right there,” I said. I set down all the stuff in my arms on the dining room table. “Now, let’s see how you did. Well, well. Not bad. Not bad at all.” The towels had been hung up to dry. The toys were put away. The floor had a few spots of water near the bathmat, but nothing to fuss about.

“Good job, guys. Y’all go on in the living room. Don’t cut on the TV yet. Get your Sunday school lessons out and settle down on the couch while I blow-dry Rowdy so he won’t get a cold.” I set the hair dryer on the lowest setting. I hate to say it, but his hair looked even worse than it had the last time I tried to fix it. I knew right then I needed some professional help.

Rowdy, all fluffy, dry, and proud of himself, led the way to the couch where Jason and Mark had their lesson books in their laps. I got the little one started first. His lessons mostly involved coloring pictures of Bible people. Jason, the eight-year-old, was the age to start looking up verses with his lessons. So once I got Mark settled with his colors at the coffee table and explained about Jonah and the whale, I helped Jason get started on finding his verses.

The time went by fast. I cut and sewed on their costumes while they worked. I have to admit, when the little munchkins aren’t bouncing off the ceiling, it’s like having angels in the house. Of all the good things in my life, this is the best, to sit and just be with them. I don’t have any grandchildren of my own. My first baby was stillborn. I wanted to die myself and would have if Ronald hadn’t been so good to me. I thought I’d never be happy again. But, a few years later, we had a beautiful daughter, Shannon, and she made everything all right. We had her for twenty-two wonderful years. She was killed in a car accident in Tuscaloosa where she was working after getting her degree at the university. Ronald never got over it. He started having heart problems right after that, and just kept getting worse. I sure miss them both. Not a day goes by that I don’t send a special prayer up to them in heaven because I know they’re there.

“Miz Phoebe.” Jason put a finger down on a verse and held his Bible out to me so I could read it. “I don’t get the last question. What does this mean?”

“Turning the other cheek? It means if somebody slaps you on one side of your face, rather than slapping them back, you turn where they can slap you again, except on the other side.”

He looked confused. “Is that why Daddy tells us not to fight?”

“Yes, I imagine it is.” Jason set the Bible down and began writing out his answer in his book. “Because it is not right to fight,” I said. “It is always better to be nice and never hurt anybody. Okay, are you finished, too, Mark? That looks great. Let’s put your books back in your satchels so we won’t lose them.”

Jason handed me his lesson and said, “Not even if they hurt you first?”

“That’s right. Not even then. When you turn the other cheek, you stop the violence right then and there, see. Otherwise, it just keeps going on and on. So we never hurt anybody and we live in harmony and peace with all our brothers around the world who are also God’s children. The Bible says so. Now,” I said as I clapped my hands together, “I believe that good movie is fixing to start.”

Mark hopped up onto the couch next to Jason and both of them sang “Yay!” and bounced up and down on the cushions. I turned on the TV. “All right, then. Let’s see who Mr. Schwarzenegger is going to blow to kingdom come for the good old U. S. of A. tonight.”

T
he coroner and Detective Waters had been quite sure the bones Phoebe and I found were not recent ones, and therefore not those of someone missing or perhaps killed and hidden in recent times. I tended to agree, given their brittle, stained look and the proximity of the carved symbols in the rock overhang. Also, carefully placed rocks near the grave may have indicated an ancient burial.

I had seen many graves of all sorts imaginable in my day at archaeological digs, particularly in what I considered “my” part of the world, the border country of England and Wales. That’s where I grew up. My father was a photographer in Bath, my mother’s family came from a little village near Gwent in southeast Wales. It is an area full of cairns, which are rock burial mounds that dot the landscape. Many other rock monuments, smaller versions of Stonehenge and Avebury, are also scattered about, and had been my favorite place to play as a child when I would visit my grandparents. The stones, particularly the standing circles, fascinated me. I spent many a late evening among them, contemplating the sunset, in cold weather or warm, feeling their rough exteriors, wondering how many other children had done the same through the ages.

It had been quite a day. I walked out to my front yard where I could see the sun dipping behind the distant buildings of downtown Tullulah. Homer trotted toward me. He stopped, sat, looked up into my face as if to say, what shall we do now?

“Dear boy. How lucky I am to have such a willing accomplice, no matter the adventure.” I sighed. “Well then, I have a small thought that seems to be taking the form of a plan.”

We went inside for a cup of tea. I decided to re-house the contents of Cal’s box #2 into more suitable, and cleaner, quarters. I took it into the kitchen. All Cal’s paperwork I placed on the counter in two stacks, notes and maps. The two odd objects he’d seen fit to include, I lined up on the kitchen table alongside the tiny glass flower, the better to ponder them all under the circle of yellow light from the low-hanging ceiling lamp. The box was marginally fit for recycle. The objects were old, damaged by time and elements, their origins unknown, their possible importance inexplicable.

They brought old times to mind and more thoughts of my old friend Michael. From among saved archaeological magazines, I found an issue in which he was featured some years ago. I kept it for the photos of him, of course, though I never realized that was the reason before, not until now.

I kept it to remember his joyous look as he held up a find for the camera against a backdrop of lapis blue sky, and another as he bent upon his work with a delicate brush to gently sweep away dirt from something possibly unimportant, possibly a treasure. Either way, he smiled as if digging in the dirt was the happiest of jobs.

A glance at the magazine’s date told me it had been over five years since we last talked. I could hardly believe it had been so long. I’d phoned him after the article came out. Much had happened in those five years as the Colonel’s health declined, and I suppose I was so wrapped up in keeping him comfortable that all other things were pushed aside.

On a whim, I turned on my laptop and surfed the Web for mentions of Michael’s work.

“Good heavens!” I hadn’t expected anything so dramatic. In the third column, the article said, “Dr. Hay recently foiled thieves who attempted to steal a collection of precious relics from the university anthropology department. Dr. Hay suffered a mild concussion but returned to work immediately. The thieves are still at large. Thanks to his quick actions, the majority of artifacts remain on display. One item was taken, an eighteenth-century silver box from the bequest of Louis Welch, generous benefactor to the university for many years.”

Poor dear. In the photo, only a small bandage above his left eye gave a hint of his bad experience. He had the same smile, the same twinkle of mischief in his eyes, with a good deal more wrinkles around them since I’d seen him last.

I rose from my chair to get my address book, with the hope that Michael’s number hadn’t changed. As it happened, I was in luck.

“Jane, my dear, how lovely to hear your voice,” he said, his own voice perhaps a bit more gravelly than before, but otherwise with the same lightness of heart. We spent the first few minutes catching up with one another’s lives. Among the chitchat, he told me his wife, Lillian, a brilliant researcher whom I had become quite fond of when we worked in Arizona, had succumbed to cancer two years earlier.

I didn’t know what to say other than, “I’m sorry,” the old standby that does nothing much to relieve either party. In any case, Michael, never one to dwell on what one cannot change nor sad events in the past, asked to hear of Tullulah’s attraction. His astonishment when I told him where I moved didn’t surprise me. But if I could convince him to assist me with the burial site, he would soon understand.

“Of course I want to come. Silly girl. Who needs rest when there are wonders to be unearthed? Interesting. I’ve never worked on a dig in the southeast. How could I pass up the chance? Particularly when no bureaucrats would be looking over my shoulder or fussing over budgets.”

He phoned back within the hour with his travel arrangements. This pleased me no end. It made me feel he really did want to come, not just out of obligation or for a favor. I agreed to meet him at the airport in Huntsville the following day. Funny, but as soon as I hung up the phone, my first thought was not of cooking or cleaning in preparation but of Phoebe and her assuredly pointed interest in what might be the most handsome man she or I had ever known.

With that arranged, Homer and I rounded the side of the house, across the wide stretch of back lawn to the small shed that held my gardening supplies and other various tools. The door hinges creaked against the aged wood planks.

Though it was waning, there was enough daylight to see inside without aid of the flashlight I brought. I could have found what I wanted by feel, if need be. I took down my old leatherwork belt, hanging on a nail near the door. Once I coaxed Homer away from the many interesting smells around the shed floor, I latched the door behind us.

Rather than take the car, I felt like a night roam. We set off, crossing Anisidi Road and heading back toward the bones.

Once under the tree canopy, I reached into my belt for the flashlight. So long as I could see Homer blazing the trail, I had no worries usually, but with so many branches having fallen during the storm, I thought it best to play it safe. Homer knew these woods much better than I, having walked them all his life with Cal, his previous human. Homer, however, could see well enough to avoid tripping. The quiet enveloped us. I can’t tell you the joy of complete freedom I felt, something few people experience these days it would seem, to be able to walk alone in the night, with no intrusive noises of loud humans, away from the fear of evil men whose only occupation is causing pain to others.

We came to the burial site easily. I removed the tarp and set it aside to gaze over the remains. Now that we were in the open on the high overlook, the last of the day’s sunlight shone on the promontory and on the trees behind us in their autumn array, creating a moving yellow-orange glow around the clearing. It was as if a cinematographer had chosen a gel that perfectly accentuated the scenery’s undulations, shrouding it with mystery. I glanced beyond the gravesite and to the right where the rock overhang’s engravings were barely discernable.

They were covered for the most part by the brush that Cal had placed in front of the rock. He had done a good job, though certainly he was overly cautious. He had frightened off all locals who had attempted to enter his land. This particular spot would have been extremely difficult for anyone to happen upon, even if they had gotten past Cal and his partner, Homer, undetected.

Cal’s respect for his ancestors would have made him be extra careful, however, and I understood that. I wondered for a moment if he would have wanted any sort of excavation, were he still alive and showing me this spot himself. It was hard to say. That was a subject of some debate between us. He had been adamantly against any sort of digging for scientific study. His people, he would say, deserved to rest in peace, not to be taken apart. I told him that respectful re-burial was part of the process. He seemed to waver at times, wanting, I think, to share the beauty of his land and also to contribute to knowledge of ancient times and ways.

I hadn’t expected to come so quickly to such a decision myself. I’d thought I would have time to explore fully and then consider everything with much care. But here, with the storm’s sudden intervention, I was presented with the first of what surely might be many such difficult situations. I moved to where Cal had stuck brush around the rock carvings. Only a few tugs and the brush camouflage pulled free. Once the entire area, approximately four feet across, was cleared, I flattened the leaves and branches into a makeshift pillow and sat upon it, facing the carvings, to meditate upon them.

At first, I concentrated on the textures of rock and crevice, imagined how a knife made of sharpened chert or limestone cut into the hard surface. Perhaps the writer tried many types of arrowhead edges before the one that cut best was used to finish the sentence. For it was, it appeared to me, something like a eulogy carved into a natural tombstone.

I let the figures run together as I scanned them left to right, over and over. It would be such a lovely adventure to hunt each down in Cal’s books. I had barely scratched the surface in studying them. I gave a slow perusal of them once more and closed my eyes to see how many I could remember.

I managed four in the correct order, jumbled a few others. Once more, I slowly studied the lines in the dusk. Something about them struck a familiar chord. I didn’t know why. With eyes shut, I imagined them again, lingering on each image rather than hurriedly trying to remember the next. I willed them to turn, as if three-dimensional, in the soft yellow-orange glow of the sunset against a backdrop of black.

One by one, the symbols paraded before me as I contemplated the wonder of their making, of the person buried here, of those who mourned. Again, a familiarity tugged at my memory. My thoughts drifted to the surrounding area, of forest and beyond to the low mountains in the east, to my dear little town. Yes, I realized, I thought of it as mine now, even after such a short time of living here. It had been in my heart, in my dreams for many years before I even knew it existed.

My mental movie traveled back from the town toward the forest again, with trees and plants moving past me as if I watched from a car window. The camera’s eye stopped at me, slowing, examining, first myself as I sat, then Homer a few feet away, then sped up once again as it careened deeper into woods, circling and returning. It hovered just in front of me over the rock where a swirl of blue mist settled in a roughly cylindrical shape and slowly spread across the breadth of the rock.

It sparkled there with an indefinable movement in its center. It rose a few inches above the rock and, emulating my previous mental exercise with the symbols, it turned for me, slowly, as if it too were three-dimensional, as if it were showing off, smiling perhaps, joyful, beautiful, very old. Though I was aware this was merely a sort of hallucination or dream state, it felt as if I were witnessing a real object. No, not an object, a being. Not exactly that, either. A personality made of earth and rock.

While this fancy played, another train of thought moved along another path, like a soundtrack accompanying film. It didn’t move through the forest, but through time, backward, passing swiftly to before my arrival, before my house was built, before the arrivals of tribe after tribe who passed, camped, and lived here. Such beautiful feelings swept over me as I watched each era pass by. Yet even as they warmed me, a growing sense of dread crept in.

Much goodness has been in this place, kind people filling the air and soil with their purity and goodwill. Even so, evil found its way here. I remembered reading about the death of a young child, found murdered over eighty years earlier near my property.

Suddenly, the blue swirling image stopped turning and I heard, felt, a great
whump,
a mixture of pressure and sound that reverberated through the forest as if a great bass drum had been struck.

With a jolt, I opened my eyes. I sat in complete darkness. The sound had not been only in my imagination. All night noises stopped abruptly as birds, insects, all living things within the forest listened, waited, to consider the intrusive and possibly dangerous sound. Something rustled to my left then Homer pressed his muzzle against my hand. I patted his head, let my hand drape over his solid back.

As my eyes adjusted to our surroundings again, I blinked, trying to understand what was in front of us. The sun was well set, but the carved symbols were visible through a light blue mist or aura that illuminated the entire rock surface, above and below to the ground. It stretched across to enclose the circle of ground where the bones lay exposed and a large area around them on the forest floor. Homer and I sat perhaps an hour or more longer, just watching the sky, the flood of light from an almost full moon, listening to the woods’ night song.

That night I dreamt of black stars, burnt into a sky that was in relief, suggesting a great void rather than a universe full of wonders. Charred trunks of trees stuck up like the jagged edges of serrated knives, across an expanse of dead ashes that was once fertile land. All burned. No birds or animals moved about on the barren landscape, only a cold relentless wind.