Bones and Drones

by K A Goodsell

  “Mom.” I looked her square in the eyes. “Please, just stop. I’m fine. He texted me late last night.”

  Her eyes darted to my phone on the table and then back at me.

  “Okay.” She picked up her napkin and dabbed at the corner of her mouth. “So you’re not together?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “So, you’re not dating anyone. Case closed,” my father repeated, trying to appear saddened by the news but allowing a smile to creep onto his face. “That’s a shame.”

  “Just tell me something that will make me feel better,” I mutter into my arms, burying my face.

  “You will be in the newspaper for your SAT scores. They were at the top of your class!” My mother seemed ecstatic. Yet she didn’t really know how many hours I’d put into prepping for those exams, the amount of peer mentoring, and the classes I took to make sure I could get ahead in my math studies, since they had been only average.

  I held up two fingers in Nat’s direction. It was our silent way of saying, “I’ll bet you two dollars.” We do this every time we know my parents will talk about hanging something new on the walls.

  “I must find another frame and a place in the hallway! It’s so exciting!”

  Cha-ching.

  I folded my arms again under my face.

  “Mom,” I exhaled. “I just want to eat some pancakes and then go out to Center Cemetery.”

  Nat must have read my thoughts and plopped a pancake in front of me from the green plate. He nodded at me as if to explain that he understood why I would need liquor at 9:30 in the morning.

  I stared at my pancake, tracing the outline and realizing it kind of looked like a cloud, which was oddly soothing. I continued to stare into the cloud-like pancake until someone announced breakfast was over minutes later when Mitzy ate a pancake off the green plate and immediately spit into everyone’s food across the table. Good times, but I was done here.

  “I’ll be outside visiting the quieter members of our family.”

  Outside calmed me down almost immediately.

  “Okay, Sarah, I’ll be hanging with you for about an hour, and then I’m going to demolish this bagel with herb cream cheese because I didn’t get to eat too many pancakes today.”

  I always declared the timeframe for my visits just in case the cemetery’s inhabitants wished to reach out or rise from the dead—I’d need time to get the heck out of there or at least prepare myself. Sure, the percentage of that happening was zero. (Unless I was the naïve protagonist of a horror film without realizing it. I’ll follow up later on if so.)

  Still, while I wasn’t against any ghostly figures visiting, it just wasn’t my forte. “I’m sure you were striking before going into the ground; I’m just not so sure how you would look coming out of the ground.” I coughed. “No offense.”

  Although, I noted, the learned nuances of visits from the dead would be an unusual commentary to address in my first anthropological project at Yale University. I’d call it: “Fact: ghosts exist, and they miss cake.”

  Man, I would miss eating sweets when I died. Especially the blueberry pies from Moose Tracks Pie Shop. They make the best crust—slightly chewy, but not raw. I always told non-residents of Pine Grove to visit our small town’s dessert staple.

  “Do you miss baked goods, Sarah?”

  I stepped carefully over the short, ornate iron fence and stopped at the corner of the cemetery. The fence was easily masked by the night’s darkness (or daylight’s shadows) or if just you weren’t paying attention to where you were going.

  The overgrown grass peeking out around scattered gravestones produced an involuntary twinge in my lip, and I sigh.

  I slipped a pair of teal headphones from around my neck and placed them over my ears before retrieving my phone from my back pocket. Scrolling through my playlists, I looked for one called “Life.” It was a mixture of old guitar recordings my father created when he was my age and a few of my favorite songs from his vinyl collection. Pressing play on the first song, my shoulders felt less heavy and I could sigh easier.

  As I looked down at my Converse while I walked towards Sarah’s plot, I noticed life surfacing and awakening as the sun rose. Slugs and worms emerged atop dirt piles, some clinging onto small rocks and others squirming at the sunshine’s contact with their delicate exterior. They were beautiful creatures that fed off the people who called this home, a morbid image though it was.

  One of those picnic morsels could be Sarah.

  I reached out to touch the top left corner of Sarah’s gravestone and was immediately comforted by the frosty sensation on my fingertips. I curled my entire hand to the stone, my palm resting around the side, which oddly fit perfectly in my grasp.

  These weren’t just tombstones; they were like family. And some of them were family.

  That was why the uncut grass around the edges of the Center Cemetery upset me. The area was becoming overrun with weeds and purple flowers that cropped up seemingly out of nowhere. I had an awful sweet spot for those flowers, though I had no idea what type they were. They were beautiful invaders, specifically when they were bright violet. But once they matured into their “seed form,” which was still pretty, they spread a little too much—like bunnies.

  One section of the cemetery grew no flowers. It merely got loads of lanky, spongy grass, and it had once been my favorite spot to read and rest in the shade admiring the beauty among death. Until two weeks ago.

  The ridge that divided the cemetery and the railroad tracks had given way when we had a weeklong, torrential downpour that eroded the hillside.

  During this biblical event, with more rainfall in a twenty-four-hour period than Pine Grove had ever recorded, one of the oldest oak trees in our town, which was in the corner of Center Cemetery, had shifted.

  It hadn’t fallen. It hadn’t even lost more leaves than expected in October. It had just moved about ten inches to the right. Nat, the horticulturist and caretaker for all the cemeteries in Pine Grove, confirmed this precise calculation. He also owned the burial company that my mother’s funeral business used for placing bodies in the ground.

  Nat’s slogan, “We help the community by getting rid of the community,” only lasted two days—and unfortunately about 200 business cards, twenty T-shirts, and a water bottle or two.

  During the cleanup of the “Great Move” as Nat named it (he’s clearly a contemporary Shakespeare), to our astonishment we had unearthed a skull.

  A human skull—not some leftover Halloween decoration, as our Mayor had hoped it would be after my father alerted him of what they found. As disturbing as it had been to dig up someone’s remains, it presumably would be much more of an unbelievable find if it weren’t in a cemetery. It’s common since gravesites can shift over time as the ground settles or as roots implant themselves through a wooden coffin, but this was rare in our town. We’re reserved, with the occasional gossip flare-up, but this was causing quiet conversation. That’s the worst kind.

  With Nat’s ever-observant mental catalog of foliage, he calculated that this skull had to be at least 200 years old due to the age of the tree and the way the skull was embedded throughout its roots. The skull was most likely near the surface of the ground versus at least eight feet below, where a traditional grave would be, which was odd.

  The other oddity was that there was no grave plot or marked site within ten feet of the area and no documentation of there ever being one, other than one of our family’s cats that had died when I was a child.

  Which resulted in a red flag.

  The skull, not the cat.

  An investigation led by my father proved that Nat was correct about the age of the tree and the skull, and we had a “John Doe” on our hands as the hair follicles that were still adhered to the skull matched no DNA recorded in Pine Grove history, including Grimes family samples.

  We were lucky that my great-times-three grandfather had been aloof as the local funeral director when the town was established in the 1
800s. He’d handled everything from “dealing with” death with the resident physician to handling the funerals, “taking care” of the body for burial, and later even digging the hole with a shovel. My father still owned his original diagram on the measurements for the “perfect” grave. It welcomed all guests into our home from its place in the entryway. Not weird at all.

  I characterized my ancestor as creepy, though, because he retained a log with locks of hair from each corpse that passed through his funeral home, AKA the Grimes family samples. He had a mania with the theory that people would rise from the dead, and this way the town could figure out who was decomposing in front of them—and (in his mind) waiting to devour their flesh. I bet that was where I got my compulsion to announce myself when I entered cemeteries.

  Yet even though he was ridiculed for cataloging such a serial killer-esque collection, over the years it had helped to solve many mysteries—even some crimes—and my mother still carried the task out in the same funeral home he built.

  Unfortunately, this time his samples weren’t helping with John Doe.

  During the walk from my house, my burlap saddlebag had opened itself. If this bag could talk, I was sure among its questions would be, “Why do you have so much gum?” and “Why is there a human skull in here?”

  Gently, I lifted John Doe out of the worn interior and placed him on top of Sarah’s gravestone. I balanced him to make sure he wouldn’t roll off and looked up at the oak tree. It would be awkward if he fell to the ground. Heads rolled in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, not in mine. Not today, at least.

  The oak tree didn’t look any different despite having unveiled such a secret. Its leaves were still falling as it swayed in the breeze, yet it had just spit up a nameless town elder. It would be impossible to presume that John Doe was from another town, as no one ever came to Pine Grove when he was estimated to be alive. It was non-wealthy, wasn’t established on maps, and had too many wild boars running around being labeled civilized while John Doe lived. There weren’t many people, either. It wasn’t like many towns and cities were now, dense and overpopulated.

  He was kind of like Sarah, though. He’d died young, around nineteen based on the measurements of his skull, and I knew little about him, just like when I came across Sarah for the first time. At least when I met Sarah, I knew her name, her birth date and death date, and that she was married. Plus, I didn’t meet her body parts, just her headstone. We weren’t that close.

  Unlike John Doe. I’d literally gotten into his head, yet I knew almost nothing about him.

  He could have been married, he could have had kids, he could have been a farmer, he could have been murdered…

  “I hope you weren’t murdered. That’d be a really shitty way to go.” I watched a leaf fall off the oak tree and land near its roots.

  I froze, startled by leaves whirling by my feet, thinking it was some sort of sign. I shouldn’t tempt the dead; they may show up one of these days.

  The small bundle of leaves blew away from Sarah’s headstone and I sprawled out on my red plaid blanket with its stains from forgotten sandwiches, splotches of red wine from my parents when they were dating in college, and rips near the edges from getting caught on twigs in the cemeteries.

  John Doe stared back at me as I turned over to lie flat on my back. As the second song on my playlist began, I sighed in relief to know he was resting securely and wouldn’t land on my kneecaps soon. I was also sighing with frustration I couldn’t place who he is—well, who he was.

  Unlike the oak tree, though, bones cannot hide anything. They tell the story of a person’s life or death based upon their size, their breaks, and their healings, all of which were once the layers of a person who were formed beneath.

  It was a strange gift of mine to see those layers and re-create a person’s facial features out of clay, quickly and precisely. My parents discovered this weird talent when I was six and instead of forming a pile of poop in Play-Doh, I created a face with eyelids, defined cheekbones and even ears concave enough to have earwax get stuck in them. Ever since, if my father had a John Doe case, I was on duty.

  Yet for the last week, I could not for the life of me picture John’s face.

  That I couldn’t put a face to a skull (Step One), instead of a name to a face (Step Two) was driving me nut-burgers. Too many historical questions were choking up my creative mojo. Why was he not buried properly? Where was the rest of his body? How had he died? Why had he died so young?

  Huh? Come on, you can tell me.

  I’d done countless hours of research through the historical society, archives, ancestry websites and family documents. I’d even purchased a journal off eBay that had been one of the ledgers for the local hardware store/pharmacy, Meeker’s, which still stood in the town center.

  But nothing pointed to John Doe.

  Everyone was accounted for. There was no mysterious gentleman who stumbled upon Pine Grove, no person unnamed, no new relative who came to live with a family member. Nothing.

  That was why John Doe was under my skin along with a skeletal system just like his.

  Who are you?

  I adjusted my line of vision to the magnificent designs carved into Sarah’s gravestone. Sarah had been one of the first ten people to die in Pine Grove, as many people weren’t of age to pass yet when the town was established. It meant that gravestone carvers could take their time to create a person’s burial piece, most of which were detailed and intricate—commitment at its purest, as they could take days to weeks to create.

  I stood to bring John Doe onto the blanket with me. Though he was well-balanced on Sarah’s headstone, it still made me uneasy. One good wind gust could knock him over, tumbling him to another demise.

  “I assumed I’d find you here.”

  I jumped, resulting in a loss of my balance, and fell to the dirt outside of my blanket. If I had landed on a hardwood floor, you would have felt the floor shudder. I’m not the skinniest girl in the world—my relatives had hips, and I embraced them—and I created a solid thud.

  I peered at my palms, now a dingy shade of brown.

  Raimy, my best friend since the first grade, squinted through her vintage men’s sunglasses. “Son of a mother trucker, sorry,” she said and rushed over offering her help to get me up. “I didn’t mean to freak you out. Was just trying to make a dramatic entrance.”

  A few things you should know about Raimy (and one thing to know about me: I have a thing for lists. You can thank my mother.):

  1. She never swore but instead used fun ways around it. I’d only ever heard her say a swear word once, and that was when she dropped her keys into the lake when we were kayaking. She then flipped our kayak when she threw her paddle. We both ended up soggy and sad after that.

  2. She would evidently make a good assassin, as I hadn’t heard her coming up behind me moments ago. Mental note: I needed to be more aware of my surroundings.

  3. She was more brilliant than she let on. She wanted to become a writer, primarily a journalist, and she’d started writing the obituaries for Pine Grove when my mother realized she had a talent (there my mother goes again, finding people’s sweet spots and draining the fun out of their hobby by making it a job instead).

  “Well, good morning to you, too.”

  “Your mom told me you were out here, and then I caught sight of your bright orange T-shirt under your jean jacket. Who wears shorts with black tights in the fall? Can’t miss that.”

  The shirt was from Grimes Funeral Home’s Eco-Day. We’d all worn the neon color as we planted trees in various locations throughout town and collected the money in aspirations to plant a tree for every individual who had died in the last five years. We’d done it, all three hundred and twenty-eight. Each tree had a small plaque at its base donated by a local shop or family. I never wore the shirt out in society, though, as the slogan, “We’re all Eco-friendly!” is printed on it. Meaning we all are biodegradable. Few people were amused when my mother had to continue explaining wha
t it meant. It was Nat’s fault—he’d made it up per usual.

  I leaned forward as I grabbed her outstretched hand. “Thank you.” I slapped some dirt off my hands by whacking them against my tights. I hoped they weren’t ripped anywhere. “I thought we would meet over at the White Manor Inn later this morning after breakfast?”

  “We still are, but your mom called me and asked me to come over. Said it was urgent.”

  Raimy almost never came to the cemetery. She wasn’t a huge fan of spooky things and always said she felt as if she was being watched there. In her defense, most people thought that way. Even her parents weren’t didn’t enjoy visiting the cemetery. They owned the property directly across the street and diagonally from my parents’ property, and they had the oldest cemetery on the outskirts of their land. But that was about a mile walk from where the majority of the buildings on their property were.

  I rolled my eyes. “My mother thinks everything is an emergency.” I finished dusting off my tights as best as I could and looked up at her, puzzled. “Unless… did someone die?”

  “You say that like it’s inconvenient to you.” Raimy laughed, pulling out her phone from her back pocket.

  “No,” I folded my arms across my chest, pulling my jacket closer to my chest. “I just didn’t hear about it this morning on my way out to check the mail, and usually I do. If someone dies, it’s like overdrive time for my mother.”

  “Then what’s going on?” Raimy asked. She tucked her dark hair behind her ear, exposing her whimsical earrings.

  “No idea.” I shrugged, and Raimy took out her phone, checking the screen. “I texted you earlier when I woke up. Didn’t see that you texted me late last night. Was working on John Doe.”

  Something caught my eye as it reflected in the sunlight. I noticed a pin on the left sleeve of her bomber jacket. It was a Pride and Prejudice special-edition pin sold at Ted’s Movies and Games last year.