Mighty Old Bones (15 page)

I set the teapot and china beside her sink. Across the room, the counter she indicated held dozens of Mason jars filled with jams and jellies. I chose two and thanked her.

“We can go out this way,” she said and waved a hand toward the kitchen door at the back. When I pushed open the light screen without a sound and stepped into the yard, Phoebe’s head jerked in my direction.

I had caught her with her hands up and inside the rock’s opening again. After a moment of surprise, she adopted an air of nonchalance. She brought one arm down, set that hand on her hip, and left the other as it was, resting in the opening. She patted it a few times before swinging her arm down, whistling softly as she walked toward us. She brushed her palms together several times, then against the sides of her pants.

I handed her a jar. “A gift from Ruby Alice.”

“Oh, boy. Peach. Thank you.”

On leaving, we thanked Ruby Alice for the tea and our gifts. She closed Phoebe’s door and leaned into the driver’s side window. “Tell Reese to come up for supper if he wants to. You two take care. I’ll see you before long,” she said with an enigmatic smile, waving and then turning toward the house.

I almost laughed. I’d seen no sign of any mental illness, as Phoebe’d warned. She was perfectly lovely. As we eased down the driveway, however, I caught a glimpse of her in the door’s rearview mirror. She reached behind a chair on her porch to retrieve a round object. I squinted. It was a football helmet. To my dismay, she put it on before walking slowly inside the house. I didn’t think it was the sort of thing Phoebe would be interested in, so I neglected to mention it.

We did not turn right, the way we had come. Instead, Phoebe turned the wheel left so that we headed deeper into the mountain’s woods.

Ahead I could see the long black roof of a house, and upon getting closer, could see the rest of it, a white clapboard ranch style that sat between two hills.

Along the way, we passed small hand-painted signs stuck on the side of the road. These appeared more frequently, in the manner of the old Burma Shave signs. “Welcome to Bible Gardens…,” “Jesus is just around the corner…,” “So please drive slow…”

The gravel track we followed curved between the front of the house and a side plot of land with tall hedges and an entrance. Beyond it, I could see many flowers in fall colors as well as a number of bushes that flowered in spring and summer. An arched gateway painted bright red opened directly into what looked like a maze of small hedges.

Between the house and the large garden area, a thin man wearing a baseball cap stood at a makeshift table made of an old door across two sawhorses. He worked with a small chisel and hammer, standing over a block of wood held between two clamps. He never looked up at Phoebe’s car as we rode down into the little valley, but kept at his work, smiling gaily as he sang in a loud voice.

By the time we parked, he had finished his song, yet his lips still moved in speech, all the while smiling, apparently finding himself an amusing conversationalist. He set down his tools and came around his makeshift worktable to take note of his visitors.

“Hey there, Phoebe. Ma’am,” he said to me with a tip of his cap. “Y’all out sightseeing today?” He held out his arms and walked toward the extra lot as if to herd us there.

“We sure are. Jane, this is Reese Evans. Jane here is new in town, Reese. I thought she might like to see your project…thing.” Phoebe waved her hands toward the lot’s hedge entrance.

This produced an even wider smile from Reese, who began nodding his head. “I’m so glad to meet you, Jane. Go right through that gap. It’s all in there.”

Phoebe had told me nothing about what lay beyond the hedge. However, I appreciated her control in not saying we were here because she thought I’d like to meet someone she considered strange.

To my discredit, I must admit I expected to see something along the line of old tires made into birdbaths or other amalgamations of cast-off items one frequently thinks of in relation to rural Southern yard ornaments. What was actually there couldn’t have been more startling.

Once past the hedge gap, a lovely water garden of lily pads and willow trees filled the area between where we stood and a high stone wall. It was approximately fifty yards away and looked quite old. Stretched along the lot’s entire length in front of the wall, an earthwork sloped gently down, upon which I beheld a familiar and beloved sight.

“Jerusalem,” I said. My heart gave a little leap. It was a place of dreams, one I’d longed to visit and, once finally there, a walking dream every day I was privileged to be in its glorious streets. I’d dreamt of my future there, where the Colonel and I had been so happy. No sight in its alleyways was unremarkable, no vista on the surrounding countryside seen without its own dreams of the past. All of time came together there so that there was no division in then, now, or tomorrow.

“That was quick,” Phoebe said.

“It could be nothing else.” The buildings in the city panorama, made with textured plasters of varying gray, yellow, and white tints, reflected light and cast shadows down winding streets and alleys. Their proportions looked so realistic, it was as if real buildings had been shrunk, not created in miniature. The sight of the rock of the dome, here made with a half-globe of gold, perhaps formerly a Christmas ornament but none the less majestic, sent a thrill through me. “I’ve been too long away. I must go back soon. What astonishing work, Mr. Evans.” I walked slowly past the scale model of the entire city, memories flashing as I traced some of the familiar routes I’d once taken.

“You’ve been there?” Phoebe said with excitement. “To the Holy Land in person?”

“Oh, yes. Many times. The Colonel and I lived there a while. In fact, in this area here. In a small apartment.”

“You never mentioned it. I’d have brought you here sooner.”

Reese seemed pleased with my reaction. “It’s a work in progress, of course. Always something new to do.”

“Have you visited often?” I said. “The detail is quite good. You must have spent quite a lot of time there as well.”

He shook his head. “No, ma’am. Never been. Always wanted to. I do everything from pictures, that’s all.”

I couldn’t have been more astonished. There were market stalls, ones I’d visited, in such detail and in perfect relation to their neighborhoods that I could hardly believe Reese had never been in them himself. The entire city wasn’t complete in every respect. In many sectors, he merely had whitewashed squares and rectangles to represent buildings, yet those he had worked on so far showed exquisite craftsmanship.

His smile grew wider. “I’m working on this part right now.” He walked around to the end where a small table sat. Upon it were various implements and glass bottles filled with mixtures of what looked like paint. Spills of greens and white and black blotched the old metal tabletop. A wooden crate on the ground held small bits of glass, metals, and what appeared to be ceramic. Broken dishes, perhaps.

Reese walked along slowly in front of other displays, speaking in a rich, lilting tone about his other interest. We passed a miniature Rome, where he reached into the tiny Hippodrome to retrieve a fallen orange maple leaf from its center. “I do something little, usually, and then I get interested in what’s around it. Or I do another place. Depends on what I find.”

At each section, similar crates to the one I saw at the miniature Jerusalem sat nearby. I noticed the small pieces inside them were similar. China, broken plates or cups possibly, some looked like broken glass vases. Other bits of wire and metal, rope lengths, all sorts of sundries.

When Reese had walked farther on, Phoebe leaned into my ear and whispered, “People bring him all that junk there and he uses it to build stuff.”

“So I see. He does a remarkable job.”

“Yeah, pretty good, huh? Got the hands for fine work. His mama was the best seamstress around here in her time, so he gets his hands from her.”

We approached a beautiful scene of sculpted hills and valleys that sloped down to a shore. Upon the water rested a wooden ship, meticulously made from tiny sticks and string.

“Look,” I said to Phoebe, “its hull even sits a bit below the water. Very realistic.”

“He does those ships in bottles, too, don’t you, Reese? And makes toy boats that he sells at the flea market.”

“I like to stay busy.” He raised an arm to direct us around the end of the rock wall.

We strolled past other exhibits, most inspired by Biblical themes or particular prophets and other Biblical figures, but also a few battle scenes with Roman gladiators and English soldiers from various time periods.

Just as with Ruby Alice, Reese himself had exhibited no signs of “weirdness” as of yet. This appeared to be another example of Phoebe letting her imagination get the best of her.

“Oh. I almost forgot. I brought you a little gift,” Phoebe said as she opened her purse. She took out a small brown paper bag and handed it to him. “I didn’t have any use for these and I thought you might.”

He turned the bag to pour its contents in his hand, then looked at his palm, filled with glistening bits of glass, buttons, and other trinkets.

“Now be careful with that broken glass in there. That dark green. It was an old Avon bottle.”

He thanked her profusely, as if she’d given him a sack of gold nuggets. A childlike glow came over his face. He chose a particular translucent bit of glass and turned it round and round. He gave a throaty laugh. “So you’ve found me, have you? Let’s get you settled in your place then.”

He turned but continued talking, so we followed him to an old barn. We didn’t go inside, only watched as he moved boxes and searched the lower area. I craned my neck, not sure what I searched for as I remembered Dad’s words. The barn’s walls held farm utensils on hooks, many of which were unfamiliar. In the darkness at the rear of the barn, I could make out a sled and other recreational items hung on the wall, along with what looked like half a globe, only much larger, with tattered black material flapping in the breeze from the open doors.

“Good to see y’all,” Reese said. “Stay as long as you like. There’s a lot more to look at down yonder.” He indicated the Bible Gardens displays on the other side of the pond. And then off he went, almost at a trot, clutching the bag Phoebe had given him in one hand and his new treasure of broken glass in the other.

Phoebe gave me an unblinking stare, an “I told you he was crazy” look, but I didn’t comprehend it. I found him to be a lovely gentle soul. Phoebe, on the other hand, had already made her feelings about him clear.

“Let’s go, Jane. He’s gone.” On the way to the car, we walked the length of his yard, passing a workshop that looked much newer than the barn.

“See? What did I tell you? Wacko.”

“He was perfectly charming. Not ‘wacko’ at all.”

“I knew you’d say that. He wasn’t so bad today. When he shuts off like that, though, there’s no telling what’s going on in that mind of his. For all we know, he could be one of those serial killers. Going around chopping people’s heads off and burying them in the woods.”

“Really, Phoebe. He was a dear.”

“Whatever. Just don’t turn your back on him.”

We rode in silence a while, Phoebe humming along with the radio. I watched the passing hilly scenery. “Phoebe, if your Aunt Woo-Woo and Reese disturb you, why do you visit them? I know you did this today for me, and thank you again, but from the conversations, it seems you come out often.”

Phoebe sighed. She shrugged.

“Jane. You and I are real friends, right? Real friends who have been in the trenches together.”

I raised my eyebrows and nodded while I tried not to laugh. Our trench service together lasted all of an hour, perhaps one one-hundredth of the time she had spent since then re-telling the event to all she encountered.

“So, you know I wouldn’t tell you stories.”

“Of course not, dear. I trust you implicitly.”

She sighed again. “Okay. I come out here for the same reason a lot of other folks around here do.” She paused, weighing her words. “Because it makes things happen. Kind of. Good things happen, I mean.” She turned her head toward me to see how I took this startling news from a confirmed skeptic.

“You’re saying it brings you good luck.”

“Yes. Like that. People who are sick or maybe there’s somebody being mean to them, and they go see Aunt Woo-Woo and Reese, and the kids get well and the mean people go away. Which I know you’re probably thinking is a load of bull hockey, and we’re just a bunch of ignorant hicks who believe in superstitious things. But we’re not ignorant hicks. At least, if we are, it’s not because of that. But I’m telling you what is the truth. There’s something about those two. It’s a proven fact. You believe me?”

“Certainly.” I did believe her. However, I wasn’t sure I could confide in her as she did in me. I didn’t know how to tell her I had my own confirmation. The line she draws between what constitutes the supernatural and what doesn’t has been difficult for me to pinpoint.

I knew she was right about the luck. I knew it because I could see it. It shone over their houses and the trees on their property. I had witnessed the same sight in my own woods for the first time on the day Phoebe and I were in our “war.” The same arcs of golden strands in the air around us then were here in great number and moved like comets over Ruby Alice’s and Reese’s land.

Perhaps these brought the good luck somehow, something Ruby Alice and Reese could direct to others. Maybe simply living in this place allowed the two of them to absorb some magical quality, akin to the manner that my own land apparently granted me my special new abilities.

Magic, however, was most definitely not part of Phoebe’s belief system. I ventured a question on the subject. “Phoebe, are you ever afraid of this? Of something that happens that can’t be explained?”

“Oh, I can explain it,” she said with a confidence that left no room for doubt. “It’s a small-scale version of those virgin miracles.”

Her answer perplexed me. I thought a moment but couldn’t make the connection. “I don’t understand. Like the birth of Jesus?”