Mighty Old Bones (6 page)

A
t my house, the car’s headlights moved across my front lawn and porch in an arc, highlighting leaves and other debris that flew past in the weird, stormy green atmosphere. With my plastic shopping bags looped around my wrists, I ran for the shelter of my porch.

I’d no more touched the first step before the skies emptied and rain fell down even harder as if from great vats. To my relief, Homer shot past me, up the steps to the door. In his eyes, I could see that the thunder boom terrified him but, courageous boy that he was, he stood his ground at the screen, then shook himself from his head all the way down to the tip of his tail, spraying water in all directions. As soon as I opened the door, I dropped the bags. The light switch didn’t work. The electricity was out.

I grabbed several towels from the linen closet. I wiped one across my face and eyes and rubbed it quickly across my head. “All right, then,” I said as I reached into a drawer for a flashlight. “Into the basement with you.” I stuck the flashlight in my pocket, the towels under my arm, and found candles and matches. We hurried down the basement steps as the thunder seemed to roll straight across the shingles of the roof.

Once the candles were lit, I dried Homer off as best I could and told him to stay. I returned upstairs to get his water and food bowl then made another trip to pick up something to read. I found the bag that contained my book purchases and the day’s mail. The windows rattled furiously around me in the front room. I returned quickly through the darkened hallway and kitchen and to the den at the back of the house.

Outside of the bay window, I could see all had turned gray in the torrent. The flowering bushes that border my rose beds whipped violently about in the wind. So much rain fell at such speed that it sounded as if a train roared past. Lightning flashed through the large multipaned window and illuminated an old cardboard box I’d brought out and put on the floor. I walked to it, hesitated, and gave in with a sigh, carrying it downstairs.

Homer explored the basement, checking the perimeter with a cursory first look to be sure nothing dangerous lurked in the shadows. His second sweep was a closer inspection of all box corners, the hot water heater, and the other various cast-off articles of my previous life. Since moving, I’d found no use for them, though I was hesitant to get rid of the past so completely just yet.

I set the cardboard box next to the lit candles. I’d placed them on the desk my late husband, the Colonel, had used in his office for many years. From beside it, I pulled an old but not quite antique end table from out of the shadows by the basement wall to the couch.

On the far side of the room, constant hard sprays of rain buffeted the outside door and its glass panes. Steps led down to it from the backyard. At the bottom of the steps, a drain in the concrete kept the area just outside the door from flooding, thank goodness. I aimed the flashlight beam toward the door to be sure no water came inside underneath it.

A loud crack of thunder splintered the relative quiet. Homer bolted for a corner to hide under a dinette table. As the rumble subsided, his bravery returned. He slid out and trotted quickly to my side.

“There, there, dear. Thunder scares me as well. But we’re all right. Here, come sit with me a while.” I threw an old blanket over the sofa for him. I sat down and patted the cushion beside me, arranging a chenille throw over my knees. Homer obliged and jumped up. More thunder boomed, like distant tanks rolling and crashing into one another.

Directly in front of me across the room sat the box with what felt like an expectant attitude. Silly. I stared. Though it and the desk were in the dark, I saw it clearly. It didn’t dance or wink or send sparkles in the air like something from a Disney movie in order to draw my attention, though none of those things would have surprised me. I’ve witnessed more bizarre occurrences than that in this house. Still, it wasn’t ordinary. Just as the new books I bought that day possessed an unusual quality, so did this bent and crumpled cardboard box that sported a tomato sauce logo on the side.

It glowed in the shadows with a slightly gold aura, not a metallic one but more of a creamy golden color. I brought it to the couch. Homer hopped down for a thorough sniff around the edges of the box. His old master had inscribed it with “#2” in bold red marker. I wondered what memories the box and its smells brought back to Homer. Once satisfied, he jumped up on the couch to settle next to me again.

The #2 box is one of many I inherited from Cal Prewitt. I keep them stacked in an extra room. No furniture there, only boxes. They contain information about Cal’s land in the form of notebooks and scribblings on many loose papers compiled throughout his life.

Each box contains notes on one important aspect of the forest, according to Cal, all things I should know about and could find by using the crude maps he drew and included. He numbered each box according to importance. The first one, which I went through not long after my arrival in Tullulah, provided a treasure hunt of sorts, one that led to a more beautiful place than I ever imagined I might find here.

I had hesitated in the subsequent weeks to begin exploration of the next box. For all the joy brought by box #1, events related to it had turned to tragedy. I consoled myself with my daily walks since then, immersing myself in the forest and its everyday wonders. Now, as those bad memories began to fade a bit and life returned to normal, my curiosity about the remaining boxes returned as well.

Cal originally ranked this box as one of lower importance. He changed his mind somewhere along the way, using a black marker that almost obliterated the “#8” underneath. He moved it up to the number two spot before he died, printing with bold red strokes and question marks on the box’s side.

It rattled a bit as I moved it. I unfolded the cardboard flaps to peer into the musty interior. On top, a large used mailing envelope contained loose papers and photographs. I set the envelope aside, for below it, I saw a sheet of yellow legal paper covered with Cal’s familiar scrawl. I smiled at its loops and trailing letters. How I missed him. As I read the words, they became his slow, scratchy drawl in my mind, spoken as clearly as if he were there with me.

“This in here may be more than I thought it was at first,” he began. “Inside are some pictures I want you to look at and a map of how to find the place. Take Homer, he knows the way. I go there quite a bit, to ponder on it. There’s some books in here, more on the shelves with general things about Indian writing, but these in here are ones with the closest markings.

“There’s rocks and cave walls with old writing on them similar to this all over the woods. So me and Daddy and Granddaddy always figured this was just more of the same. The last few years though, I’ve realized that may not be so. Not sure. Have a look yourself.

“What I’m thinking is it is the work of some sister tribe to the Cherokee or Creek or maybe one we don’t know about—so many different ones came through here since this was good hunting grounds. There’s not too much to go on in books I’ve been able to get ahold of, but you might have better luck. With the trouble we’re having now, I’ve gone and put some brush and limbs around the place to be sure nobody would find it. But the map has got clear directions so you won’t have no problems finding it.”

The map was next, a crude but clear diagram drawn on the back of a paper grocery sack. In the bottom of the box, the contents that had rattled together were not as interesting as I had hoped. In fact, on first glance, they were rather disappointing. I set the two small objects side by side on the table.

The first was a large arrowhead. I didn’t know much about arrowheads, only that there were many types and that they were easily found here in the hills that surround the Tennessee Valley. In this area, numerous tribes shared hunting grounds over the centuries. What little knowledge I had of arrowheads in general made me believe that, no matter how much I researched, little if anything conclusive might ever be known about this specimen, other than a general time period in which it was most likely made or used.

The second object wasn’t so ordinary as the previous one. It puzzled me. I had no idea what its use might be, only what it looked like. It was a stick. When I centered it in the flashlight’s beam and turned it this way and that, it became more intriguing. Some sort of cutting device had shaped it. The cutter had used a planing motion to make four flat sides so that it looked something like a squared dowel rod. Each side measured probably an inch wide, with the whole stick about four inches long.

Then I saw something interesting. On two sides, faint markings had been carved that could barely be seen or felt, symbols of some type. Cal’s library had several books about native symbology used to mark trails in the forest or to leave as messages. Some are found in artwork in rock carvings. I could use one of his books for comparisons. Perhaps if there were a match or two, I could ascertain the stick’s meaning or use.

I ran my finger over the strange symbols. A little shiver went up my spine as I imagined many other hands doing likewise, probably the reason they were worn almost invisible. This was something I could dig into, something to research. The arrowhead, though ordinary looking, might also yield up some information.

I leafed through the dozen or so sheets of loose paper in the used manila envelope. Cal’s notes were nearly illegible. Even those I could read were hard to understand. I put them down and turned my attention to the photographs.

“Drat,” I said. Homer raised his head. “Sorry, dear. Didn’t mean to shout.” He blinked his acceptance of my apology. “It’s just that these are no better than the trinkets.” Homer touched his nose to the photo as if he might make sense of it if only he could get close enough to see it more clearly.

“You see? Cal has gone to great lengths to provide us with pictures of bushes. Ah, here we have dirt. And another nondescript bush. What a lovely close-up of a rock. And here…”

I stopped. The next shot showed a rock with markings. At least, I thought they were. The shadows and light in the photo could be fooling my eyes. But why else would he have taken the picture? I glanced through the few remaining photos but none were any better.

“In that case, my dear friend,” I said as I lay my hand over Homer’s head and scratched, “we shall have to have a look ourselves, eh?” He seemed to smile, his mouth open and a happy look in his eyes, probably thinking of Cal.

I kept reading the jumbled, incoherent notes. In one of the notebooks, Cal said that the arrowhead and the stick were found in an old bowl. This is why he kept them, he said, because their placement seemed to indicate an importance or a relationship he had yet to figure out. Another small thin object had been present at one time but had eroded to nothing more than a rusty ridge at the bottom of the bowl. The bowl itself had broken. Cal had discarded the broken bits. He said the bowl had no special markings as some of his other native keepsakes did. My heart sank. How I wished he had kept the pieces. There might have been something helpful there.

I sighed. Next to having those bits, it would’ve been nice if any other information could have been passed down as to the exact location of the bowl when it was found. I didn’t blame Cal, of course, for putting the objects in the box this way. They probably had been long removed from their original places. Cal and his forebears did the best they could, with no knowledge of how digs worked, of the importance of preserving what they found.

Even so, Cal may have inadvertently left me something useful as to the bowl’s original location. In the box, a number of older black-and-white photographs with dates on them as far back as 1955 showed a half-buried object that might be the bowl in question. I couldn’t tell in such bad lighting and without my magnifying glass. With any luck, that was why Cal included these particular photos. And, with quite a bit more luck, I would actually be able to find this place if I could decipher Cal’s scrawls that passed for a map.

In the photos, it looked to me as if water erosion had caused a furrow to form at the side of the rock overhang that contained carvings. Water must have run down the little gully, then it appeared to have caused a wide circular indention in front of the rock that would have flooded and become a pond whenever it rained. Over many years, the water must have washed the soil and underlying rock away, perhaps six inches or so into the earth, as best I could tell from the picture. That might account for the sudden appearance of the bowl in that spot.

I picked up Cal’s letter once again. Bless him. He said he believed I might have a special expertise in these particular objects. Wishful thinking on his part, I’m afraid. It’s unlikely I would know anything at all concerning any native subject that Cal himself wouldn’t have known much better.

I’d been so involved in these new puzzles, I forgot I was in the basement. The storm had given way to a much lighter pattering of rain against the high windows. I decided to go upstairs for a look.

Homer jumped down from the couch when I gathered the chenille throw and stood. I put it in the box then put the box on my hip, got the flashlight, and blew out the candles.

Upstairs, Homer and I ventured out to the porch. The winds and rain had all but stopped, and left a nice evening breeze, wet and fresh, as well as a dramatic drop in the temperature. Now true fall was in the air with the coolness usually associated with October weather. Just as Phoebe had told me some weeks ago, it would be summer in Tullulah until Halloween. She was only a few days off.

Homer and I made a circuit of the yard with my flashlight in the near darkness. Leaves and small branches covered the property. I half-expected to see large broken limbs hanging down from the trees in the yard. What a relief that none had been struck.

We crunched over the fallen twigs and branches, circling the entire house. I saw no damage, thankfully, to the roof or gutters. The rockers on the porch lay overturned, along with the geranium pots and the small table they usually sat on. Once I was satisfied that no telephone wires were down nearby or within sight on the road, we went back inside. Tomorrow we would walk through the woods across the road for further inspections.