Mighty Old Bones (16 page)

“No, I mean all those virgin statues crying and bleeding and their faces appearing to people. That kind of thing. The days of miracles are over, but we still have signs.”

“I see,” I said, though I didn’t.

“You don’t believe me.”

“It’s not that. I do believe you. It’s just that you’ve shown a slight aversion to any sort of supernatural phenomenon before.”

She shrugged. “Whatever this is, it works. So therefore it is real and not supernatural at all. Reese and Aunt Woo-Woo might be nuts, but they’re not doing actual magic stuff. Here’s what I think. It’s because the Lord gives them special blessings, you know, to make up for their low brain wattage. And then it’s too much for what little brains they’ve got, so it spills over onto other people. Simple law of nature. They can’t hold it all in and it seeps into anybody who comes in contact with them. So don’t be surprised when something happens to us.”

I gave her a mock incredulous look.

She winked at me and laughed and then said, “We’ll see.”

J
ane and I decided to ride over to the library. I had been telling her all about the haunted house. I wanted to check on the progress of the Trail of Terror props and make sure the kitchen had all the utensils I would need for the refreshments. I hoped seeing it all would get Jane excited about it. She was going to be perfect for the special part Grace and I had in mind for her.

The Trail of Terror is what everybody looks forward to every year. Grace comes up with some good gags for the kids. We both enjoy acting like fools in our spooky get-ups and they all seem to get a kick out of it.

Let me tell you, there’s nothing more fun in this world than scaring the living grape juice out of a little kid. Now, mind you, we don’t get the little bitty ones upset. Well, not too much anyway. We save all the real good stuff for a select few who make upsetting other people, like their parents and teachers, into an art in real life. Yes sir, buddy, we get those young hellions good. Jane looked a little shocked when I told her this.

“I thought you loved children,” she said.

“I do. Even the mean ones. They want to be scared, Jane, or they wouldn’t beg their mamas and daddies to pay their way in. We don’t hurt them, for goodness sake. We just play fun tricks on them. Then once they get their hearts out of their throats, they laugh about it.”

Come to think of it, it’s pretty fun to play tricks on little old ladies, too. One night the week before, I had a small trick ready for Jane. I got the coffeepot started and walked to the refrigerator.

“And now, for dessert, a rare delicacy,” I said, all innocent. I had been careful to not let Jane see in the refrigerator since she got there. I couldn’t wait to see her jump out of her skin.

I carefully pulled a plate off the top rack and said, “Okay, close your eyes.” When she did, I set the plate in front of her. “Surprise!”

She opened her eyes and stared. She sat real still. She looked up at me with a deadpan expression on her face.

“It’s a brain. How wonderful. I’ve never seen one so appetizing.” She picked up her fork and knife like she was about to dig in.

“You didn’t even blink. You’re one tough old broad, you know that?”

She couldn’t hold back any longer and laughed out loud like she was a kid herself. “Why, thank you dear. You’re quite the stalwart yourself. I take it this is for the haunted house.”

I nodded. “I got the mold from the Archie McPhee catalog, the one where they sell all kinds of weird novelties. I got some big squishy eyeballs from them, too. When I turned the page and saw that plastic brain mold, I knew I had to have it. I’ve made several brains so far. I’m experimenting with the color. This one looks the most natural. I mixed lemon Jell-O and vanilla pudding this time.”

“You’ve seen a good many before, eh?”

“No, of course not. Why? Does the color look wrong to you?”

“I thought they were closer to gray.” She opened her mouth and took a breath, but then changed her mind and didn’t say anything.

“Hmm. Well, I’ll keep working on it. Maybe if I put some chocolate syrup in there it would look gray.”

Jane turned the plate around and studied the jiggly concoction from other angles. “It’s actually quite nice. Just as it is. Well done.”

When we turned into my neighborhood, we talked about all the Halloween decorations we passed. It’s about like Christmastime. A few people have those huge blow-up air balloons of things like Frankenstein or witches. Most have smaller things, like strings of orange lights in their bushes and carved pumpkins, but even those give the neighborhood a festive look.

“Isn’t that funny,” I said. “Look over there. What has Junie Reed got fixed in front of her door?”

Junie is one to go all out decorating, no matter what time of year it is. She’s big on making something new for the different seasons. She had a Halloween-collage wreath hanging on her screen door and had little fake jack-o’-lanterns set a few feet apart inside the screened-in porch.

“The lighted sacks that line the walkway? I like those.”

I slowed to a stop by Junie’s driveway. “No. Right there in the middle of the air. How did she do that? I don’t see any wires.”

“Nor do I,” Jane said. “Is it moving?”

We both stared. “It looks like it’s floating,” I said.

“Perhaps it’s a reflection?”

“Maybe. I can’t tell where it might be reflecting from though. I’ll ask her the next time I see her. Right now, we’ve got to get to the house. I don’t want to miss my show. Hey, you know what? I saw another funny thing there the other day. That candle is right where I saw that dog.”

“What dog?”

“The big white one. It was standing in front of the door, big as a Shetland pony, and howling like the end of time.”

Jane gasped. Her hand came up to cover her mouth.

“What is it?” I said.

She didn’t answer right away. She turned all the way around in her seat as we drove by, not taking her eyes off the candle. “Its flame is blue,” she mumbled. Her voice sounded so weak, I almost didn’t understand what she said. I sure didn’t understand why the color mattered.

E
ven though I know how to fix hair just about as well as a beautician, my expertise did not extend to fixing the hairball’s fur. Its texture is not easy to work with, let me tell you, because I tried everything I had in my bathroom pantry to make Rowdy look presentable. So, even though I hated to spend the money, Rowdy had to go to the doggie groomer.

Sissy Breedlove, who runs Smoochie Poochie on the town square, worked Rowdy in the very day I called. It kind of made me feel bad when she said I could come anytime since I’ve always thought it was a pretty foolish business. That wasn’t right of me. Sissy is a good person and is just like everyone else, trying to make an honest living to take care of her family.

I figured her having an empty schedule must mean she doesn’t get much call for dog pampering here in Tullulah. We’re not like those fancy big city people who treat their pets like children and sometimes better. A dog is a dog. The silliness of getting all kissy with a slobbering fuzz ball is for the birds, something people around here have better sense than to do. We just don’t throw money away, like for painting dog’s toenails or stupid antlers to put on their heads at Christmas.

Rowdy’s hair needed help in a bad way, though. Since I couldn’t get it to act right or look decent I decided to take him to an expert just this once. With any luck, Corene would be back before long to take the rug rat away so I wouldn’t have to have him detangled again. I couldn’t wait. I’ll say this for Rowdy, he didn’t whimper or act crazy a bit in the car.

When I pushed through the door, it surprised me that three other customers were in there. Ginger Taggart, who cleans my teeth over at Dr. Chandler’s office, had a puppy under her arm at the cash register. Another customer was Betty from the drugstore. She stood by a table where a young fellow was holding up her dog’s ears, discussing what kind of cut it needed.

“Hey, Betty,” I said. “How are you and your Porkie-poo doing today?”

“Not Porkie-poo, silly. Yorkie-poo.”

“Oh,” I said but nothing else as I eyed that poor thing’s fat belly. There’s times when the facts aren’t necessarily the same as the truth.

The third person was Delilah Newberry. Delilah stood on the other side of the room, twirling a rack of silly-looking dog clothes. She waved at me so I walked to her. She had her sunglasses on top of her head and two more pairs of glasses hanging on a long gold chain around her neck. She works for the newspaper, so she needs different strengths to read that tiny print.

“Phoebe, what are you doing here? I didn’t think you were a dog person.” She took one pair of glasses and held it up to her eyes to read the price of a leather biker vest.

“I’m not.” Rowdy had his head stuck out the top of his wicker basket. He was doing his pitiful wet-eyed look. Delilah reached over and rubbed between his ears while making baby noises that had Rowdy blinking and licking his lips. Little spurts of whimpers, along with Delilah’s
goo goo gaga schweetie bitty boo boo
nonsense, just about made me barf.

She straightened up, pushed her thick white hair behind her ears and said, “So what kind of trouble have you been getting up to? How’s your new friend out at the Hardwick place?”

The Hardwicks were the old Tullulah family who built Jane’s house and lived in it for several generations. “She’s fine. We haven’t been in any trouble lately, unless you count the mugging at the Pig or finding those old Indian bones at her place after the storm.” I told Delilah all about both. She looked pretty interested, enough to stop that baby talk with Rowdy.

Sissy finished up with her customer and joined us. Delilah said, “I have to get back to work. I’m still thinking about what I want. I’ll come back later, okay?” And off she went with her eyeglasses and chains rattling up and down as she trotted out the door.

Sissy turned her attention to Rowdy. She took one look at him and said, “Were you trying to make braids?”

“Well, it wouldn’t stay down. It kept sticking up no matter how much I tried to comb it.”

Her eyebrows wrinkled up as she studied Rowdy, lifting a knot of hair here and there while walking slowly around him. When she got to his face again, she took his jaw in her hand, looked him straight in the eye and said, “Don’t you worry. You’re going to look like a million bucks here in a minute.”

She stroked the ratty hair on his head and touched the end of her nose to his, like the Eskimos kiss. I pulled back, thinking about Rowdy’s wet little nostrils and how I’d hate to breathe in cooties like that on purpose. I guess that’s one of the pitfalls of needing a silly pet around all the time. Luckily, I’m perfectly self-sufficient in that department.

“So, do you want any kind of special cut?”

“No. Just regular. Make him look as normal as possible. No frou-frou stuff since he’s a boy. And nothing expensive since he’ll be leaving soon.”

I heard a screech outside. Delilah’s car jerked at the curb but stopped quick to let a car go by. Her tires squealed again when she pulled out in the street. I wondered what she was in an all-fired hurry for, going from lolly-gagging to speeding like a stock car racer all of a sudden.

A
fter our trip to see Phoebe’s relatives, I spent the rest of the day at the bones site with Michael. He caught up on his sleep while I was out that morning. It didn’t surprise me that he had found his way to the site and started working before I returned. With all his tools spread around him and several small areas cordoned off with string, he looked up as I walked toward him and grinned, happy in his element.

We decided to celebrate the end of our first official day in the field together by going out for dinner. Phoebe suggested several restaurants some miles away in a larger city, but I wanted Michael to experience Tullulah’s special cuisine.

We settled on a little place on the edge of town, the Catfish Corral, Home of the World’s Best Hushpuppies, as its neon sign proclaimed. They were certainly the best I had ever tasted, light and crisp and deliciously seasoned. We each ordered the house special, Cats and Dogs, catfish filets cut into planks then battered and fried with a special dipping sauce, and hushpuppies, with a side order of coleslaw and choice of fresh vegetables.

The meals arrived quickly. Michael and I were both ravenous from the excitement of the day’s work, so we set into our dishes with hardly a word spoken between us for some time. The owner and chef, Jack Quick, made his rounds of the tables to make sure his customers were happy and full. “Fish and chips, Southern style,” Mr. Quick told us in an exaggerated accent. “Dessert is included in the price. Homemade orange rolls. My grandmother’s recipe.” When we sat back to let things settle, coffee arrived, along with the dessert rolls from which emanated a most heavenly aroma.

Michael’s face positively glowed. He tapped his lips with his napkin and sighed. “My dear Jane. What a day. And what a glorious end to it.” He reached both hands across the table to hold mine.

“You must be exhausted,” I said.

He laughed. “Yes. And much work to do tomorrow, as well. A bit of a rest is certainly in order for the old man.”

“We’ll make it an early night then. Unless you want another dessert.”

“Heaven’s no!” he said with a smile. “Not tonight. But I wouldn’t object to visiting again while I’m in town.”

Once home, Michael was anxious to look over the photos we took at the site, just for a few minutes before he turned in. He downloaded them from our cameras into his laptop computer in the den. We put it on my writing desk underneath the green shade of the banker’s light there. Homer, who had come inside with us for a visit, took up his usual spot on the rug by the fireplace.

Michael set about highlighting photos on the computer screen with a bright yellow square around various areas of interest. He drew small rectangles around spots that lay several feet away from the skeletal remains. “The soil discolorations,” I said as I looked over his shoulder.

“Yes,” he said. “It pleases me to see you can still read my mind after so many years.” He tapped away and quickly became absorbed in his work.

When we took the photos, he had snapped a shot and looked to me with one of his old meaningful looks. I knew he meant me to note it but not mention it.

Now he clicked through four pictures and reversed through them again slowly. They all showed different aspects of small darkened spots in the dirt. He brought a finger up to hover over a particular close-up. “This is the photo I hoped you wouldn’t react to, Jane. I thought it best to wait. Until we were alone.”

Just over his fingertip, two of the rectangular discolorations met to form a perfect right angle. “Some sort of structure once there, eh? Covering the body?”

He nodded thoughtfully. “And in these,” he said as he clicked on photos that showed the other side of the small pit, “that are still partly covered by a root, it appears likely we have the opposite corner underneath. The size of it, you see. That’s the worry. Too large to be a coffin. Too proportional to the body to likely be a preexisting structure.” He shrugged. “Or not.”

We looked at other photos of the darker spots and various angles of the skeleton for a while.

“It bothers you,” I said.

“Yes. Something isn’t right,” he said softly.

I waited, watching him as he concentrated.

“The thing is, we have a man who, we presume for the moment, lived sometime in the 1800s, Dr. Norwood guesses, when Scottish and Irish settlers moved in numbers into the area. We know many natives still lived here as well for most of that time and certainly long before. Yet this idea of a structure, built expressly for burial, is not traditional for any of those peoples of that time to my knowledge. And I admit my knowledge here is quite limited. I could call someone about it.”

“No,” I said. “Please. I don’t want anyone who is not directly involved to know about the site. Not yet. All right?”

“As you wish. It may be we will find exactly this sort of thing in limited cases when we research. Still, other smaller things, or I suppose rather the whole of it, to my eye at first glance, doesn’t quite fit together properly.” He rubbed his fingers over his chin, clearly puzzled.

“Michael, it’s the first day. You’re weary from travel and from work. Everything will come together, just as it always does, with a little time and a little digging. And a little well-deserved rest.”

He smiled and gave me a hug before going upstairs to bed. Homer rose from his place by the fire and into a stretch. He trotted to the kitchen, took a few bites from his food bowl, and went to the kitchen door, where he sat, waiting for me to let him out for his evening rounds.

Before I turned in for the night, I wanted to look through the books I inherited from Cal. Specifically, I needed to find what information I could on tree “scars,” as Dad Burn had called them on the phone. He told me Cal thought it important I read about them, and that I would find references among his book collection. Somewhere. I looked over the stuffed bookcase that contained Cal’s books on native lore. Next to it, another stuffed bookcase held his many volumes on animal and plant life of the forest. Too many. This would call for tea.

First, I decided to look through the books I’d bought at McGaughey’s. They were of no use whatsoever, whether they had a blue glow or not, as they covered such disparate subjects as building walls, the discovery of America, and the history of Wales. It was silly of me to buy them without even looking at the titles. None had anything about trees or lightning strikes.

About an hour into the search, I came across a booklet, cheaply made and without a hint of scholarly attention, which listed native superstitions that involved lightning. A couple of items looked promising. One legend said it was unlucky for a person to touch a tree where it had been struck. Another said only a medicine man could touch the lightning scars without causing an adverse effect to himself. He could say a blessing over the wood to take away any bad luck or potential harm should another person touch it.

In addition, a tradition among some Cherokee was that the medicine man could take splinters or strips of the burned bark and make paint from the blackened wood. With this, he would paint the faces of young men competing in sports, so the strength of the powerful lightning bolt might transfer to the athletes and give them an edge to win.

I spent awhile longer looking through books on legends, but found nothing more that might relate. Was the thought of this scar and the special qualities the paint might possess what captured Mr. Graybear’s interest at the dig site? Did he think he could sneak in again and cut out the bark to sell for profit?

I looked at the clock. It was still early enough. I rummaged around my desk, pushing Michael’s things aside. I found my notebook under a stack of his notes and found the McWhorters’ phone number inside. I wanted to see if their tribe happened to have a medicine man I could borrow.

“We sure do,” Grant said. “The best there is, if I do say so myself.”

“Wonderful. I’d like to have him come out to the site, if that would be all right.”

He chuckled. “Ours is a medicine woman. I’m sure she would be interested. Let me see when she can come and I’ll be back in touch, okay?”

I thanked him and hung up the phone with a sigh. The excitement of the past few days was catching up with me. I turned the banker’s lamp off and walked upstairs, more than ready for a good night’s rest.

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
,
HOMER WAITED FOR ME
outside the back porch’s screen door as he always does, precisely at the appointed time for our early run. I believe we returned more quickly than usual, due to the autumn chill in the air, rather than the presence of a guest in the house. Once I’d finished my tai chi routine, I walked around to the front of the house to retrieve the morning paper.

With care, I moved about in the kitchen, trying to be quiet as I made a pot of coffee. Homer, patient though he was, looked concerned as he wondered, I’m sure, why I wasn’t cooking up his egg and ham treat on schedule.

“Not long, dear,” I whispered. I poured a cup of coffee and set the newspaper on the table for a leisurely read before Michael came down for his breakfast. I suddenly became more fully awake on seeing that the story that took up the entire top fold of the paper stood out in bright yellow. I moaned and squinted my eyes shut. “It’s a bit early in the morning for that, isn’t it?” I said, though I wasn’t sure whom I imagined I was addressing. With a sigh, I drank some coffee and read the article.

The headline read: “Brody Reed Found in Forest.” A large photo showed crime scene workers marking off an area of woods with tape. A park ranger and Detective Waters stood among the crew, away from the center of the action where photographers worked.

How sad to read of the old guide’s death. The article gave no details of how he died, only that his body was found in Bankhead Forest near a certain tree. Apparently, the reporter found it unnecessary to elaborate on what the yellow Bear Poplar was or its precise location. I would ask Phoebe.

This reminded me of the candle. When we drove by the Reeds’ home and saw the floating candlestick with a blue flame, something stirred within me. The feeling was strange and familiar at the same time. A memory lurked there that didn’t come out from hiding until Phoebe mentioned the white dog.

When I was a child of about six, while visiting my grandparents in Wales, my great-grandmother Annie was still alive. One night, after everyone had gone to bed, we heard her screaming. We rushed to her room to see what was the matter. She stood at the window, as white and ghostly in person as her reflection in the glass, pointing out into the night.

There near the road, we saw a white dog. We had no streetlamps there but could see the white shape easily under a bright moon. It moved slowly and steadily toward our door, occasionally stopping to sit and howl then moving again, closer and closer, until it sat before the front door.

Great-grandmother Annie wasn’t the only one scared half to death. The looks on my grandparents’ faces also disturbed me. I was sent back to bed while the three of them stayed awake the whole of the night. Much later I learned they saw it as a terrible omen that someone in the house was about to die. They thought the dog had come for Annie, and that if they stayed awake and alert, nothing would happen.

They were right. Annie survived the night and the dog disappeared. She laughed and sang through the house the next day. That night, I happened to look outside from my upstairs window. A small light I hadn’t noticed before seemed to hover in the yard before the front door. When I asked Grandfather what it was, he had a look himself. He started and went rushing to Annie’s bed. She lay there smiling, having passed away peacefully in her sleep. The corpse candle, one with a blue flame, was said to appear at the door of a house where death had come.

With a sigh, I turned the newspaper over below the fold. The photo took me by surprise, so much that I gave out a startled cry. Homer jerked his head up. He was on his feet and beside me in seconds.

“It’s all right, love,” I said to soothe him. “Just a bit shocked, that’s all.”

To my astonishment, the photo was of my house. I recognized it as one previously used by the paper when Phoebe and I had our bit of notoriety some weeks earlier. Its accompanying article’s title read “Bones Found on Old Prewitt Land” in large bold print. Beneath it, the reporter, Delilah Newberry, told of the discovery occurring after the recent storm. She knew lightning hit the tree. She knew the resulting hole exposed the skeleton. It was a relief to see no mention whatsoever of where the skeleton might be on my land. She did say that the coroner and police department visited the scene. She also noted that a friend of the land’s present owner, yours truly, was called in for his archaeological expertise.

I wondered why the reporter hadn’t talked to me. Not that I wished to discuss the matter and might even have refused to do so had she called. Of course, my telephone isn’t terribly reliable, so she may have tried. Her information must have come from the police department, through the ordinary report that would’ve been filed. Grant and Carol, the couple from the tribe, didn’t seem the sort to talk with the media, though they may have made their call to the state historical commission. They, in turn, may have notified the Indian Affairs Council that the bones were most likely those of a Caucasian. Reports by the coroner and the forensic anthropologist would be done, certainly, but it seemed most unlikely to me that any of those offices would have received or filed reports available to the media so quickly.

That left only three others beside myself who had been to the site. Michael had hardly been out of my sight since his arrival. The young Mr. Graybear could possibly be the source if he wasn’t presently detained in jail. No, if he were the informer, he would have given the reporter a more native activist slant and made himself the center of his story. As I read the article again, my feelings became stronger that all the above scenarios were unlikely to have been the case. In my heart, I knew the real culprit. As I said earlier, I would need to have a word with Phoebe.