Bone's Gift

by Angie Smibert

The dinner bucket was like Daddy’s and everyone else’s. Bone had a vague memory of helping her mother pack Daddy’s lunch. Bone would pour water in the bottom compartment, then tamp on the inner lid so Mama could pack biscuits and ham and little jars of jelly or apple butter on top of it. She always packed an extra biscuit or two. Then she set the little tray down on top so she could put a piece of cake or pie on it. While everything was still warm, she clamped the lid down tight.

  The bucket carried everything a man needed. That’s what Daddy always said. Now Mrs. Price packed his bucket.

  Bone reached for the lid, but pulled back quick. Will’s father had had the bucket with him when he died.

  Bone stepped away from the counter.

  “Bone?” Uncle Junior asked her. “You okay?”

  She nodded, snapping the mining light onto the cap. She needed a story, and it needed to be a whopper. Bone adjusted the light and grabbed Will’s new pickaxe from him. “You heard the one about Jack and the Cyclops?”

  Uncle Junior shook his head.

  “Jack was trapped in this deep, dark cave with a hungry one-eyed giant.” Bone clicked on the light on the miner’s cap. “Only the big fella couldn’t see real good in the dark of the cave. But he could smell that boy Jack crouching amongst his sheep. So the Cyclops groped his way toward the flock.” Bone groped her way past the canned peas and work boots. She crouched down, pickaxe in hand. “Jack leapt up and—wham. He stuck his pickaxe plumb in the monster’s eyeball.”

  Uncle Junior and Mr. McCoy laughed.

  “Jack ran all the way home,” Bone concluded.

  Will lifted the pickaxe out of her hands. He tilted his head toward the counter and showed her the few coins he had in his pocket.

  Bone knew what he was saying. This is all I got.

  “Mr. Scott.” Bone went up the counter. Leaning across it, still wearing the lamp, she lowered her voice. “Will’s a little worried about how he’s going to pay for all this.”

  Mr. Scott and the rest of the men in the store howled.

  “Don’t you worry none, son,” Mr. Scott reassured Will. “It gets taken out of your paycheck. It all does.” He proceeded to wrap up everything in brown paper, tying the parcels off with the same string he used for meat orders.

  “You belong to the company now,” Mr. McCoy called after Will as he hugged the packages to his chest and walked out of the store.

  Bone calculated he might belong to the Superior Anthracite Company for quite a while.

  After they stepped out on the porch of the commissary, Will’s arms loaded down with parcels, Uncle Junior hollered, “Son, you’ll want this.” He came through the screen door carrying Will’s dinner bucket.

  Will shifted some packages so he could reach for the pail, but before Bone knew it, Uncle Junior was thrusting the bucket into her hands.

  As soon as she laid her fingers on the metal, it all went dark inside her head. She could hear the moaning of timbers giving way and the rumble of rock collapsing around her. Big Vein had swallowed up Will’s daddy in black dust and rock. Light and warmth drained out of Bone.

  Will grabbed the bucket from her frozen hands, dropping his packages all over the porch.

  “Bone, honey, you all right?” asked Uncle Junior. He looked from her to Will and back.

  Bone blinked hard and nodded, her jaws clamped down. She couldn’t speak, at least until she got that awfulness out of her head.

  “Have you been to see your mamaw lately?” her uncle asked with a peculiar look on his face.

  Bone scooped up Will’s parcels and stacked them back in his arms. She avoided looking him in the eye. He’d told her to go see Mamaw, too, after that first time she’d seen a story. Mamaw could fix most bodily ailments with the right herb. But this wasn’t like she had the whooping cough or some such. Bone was seeing things, and she was scared. Maybe it would go away, Bone had told Will back then. Obviously, it hadn’t.

  Bone pecked her second favorite uncle on the cheek before he could ask any more questions and set off down the road.

  She heard the older man slap Will on the back again. “Well, Mr. Kincaid, you best get your gear home. I’ll see you down in the mines. Evening, Bone.”

  She stole a glance in her uncle’s direction. He was headed toward the river.

  Will caught up to Bone. He set down his packages and the bucket. He tore off a piece of the wrapping paper and scribbled out a note.

  He pressed it into her right hand.

  Bone shrugged and shoved the note in her pocket without reading it. Then she pulled it out again right quick.

  “What the heck?” she exclaimed.

  She held up two scraps of paper. A ragged slip of brown butcher paper—the note he’d given her—and a folded piece of cream paper.

  She unfolded the other paper and held it taut for him to see. The words were written in black block letters. THE GIFT KILLED YOUR MOTHER.

  “Did you write this?” Bone measured out her words as carefully as the letters were written. He had slipped notes in her pockets in the past to remind her of things. Study for the math test. Get more hyssop tea for my mother. Tell your daddy I’d like a job.

  No. Will shook his head hard for good measure.

  She knew he didn’t. He’d never say anything like this. “What does it mean?”

  Will shrugged.

  The darkness of the mine pulled at her. And Will, he was standing there, surrounded by all of his gear, ready to follow his daddy down there. And now some so-and-so was trying to tell her that her mama was killed, too. Everyone knew she died of the influenza.

  Bone clenched the note in her fist and took off running toward Flat Woods.

  And Will let her be.

  Bone pelted down the gravel road past rows of little gray clapboard houses, past the boardinghouse, until she came to where there was only the inviting green of the trees that ran along the river. The forest was called Flat Woods because the land was flat, as flat as it got, there by the New River. The deeper you went in Flat Woods the hillier it became as the trees stretched up the side of the mountain past the mines. Folks hunted and trapped up that way. Bone stayed to the flats. It was dark and cool. The thick green leaves overhead let through dapples of sunlight. The woods were quiet except for the distant chugging of a train, the whirring of cicadas, and the barking of dogs up by the mines. The train whistle should blow soon as the Virginian came into camp.

  The running warmed her and cleared the unwanted stories from her mind. For now.

  Bone slowed to a walk as she came to the foxholes. During the Civil War, some of the local men had dug these holes to hide in. In the mountains, most people thought the War between the States wasn’t their fight. During the day, when the Rebel press-gangs were out looking for new recruits, the men would lie in these holes like shallow graves, covered with leaves and branches. At night, they’d go home to tend the crops and animals and see their families.

  Bone stretched out in one of the holes. It was barely big enough for her. It must have been quite a squeeze for a full-grown man eighty-some years ago. Above her the trees towered, and the lush green blotted out the sky. Now she could hear the rush of the river. The hole smelled like the last days of summer, of dirt and grass.

  Bone uncrumpled the creamy square of paper she’d found in her pocket. The square had been carefully torn from a bigger sheet, leaving a fuzzy edge along one side. It was nice paper, much nicer than the scraps Will used. It was definitely not his chicken scratch. Each letter had been printed like it’d been typed, only bigger. The paper looked familiar, but Bone couldn’t quite place it.

  THE GIFT KILLED YOUR MOTHER. She read the words over and over again.

  What was the Gift? Is that what she felt when she touched things? And how could it have killed her mother?

  Bone had seen Mama’s obituary many times. Daddy had taped it to the back of a picture he had on his dresser. He said it was hard to believe sometimes that she was gone. Bone liked looking at the picture on
the other side, the one of her mother holding her as a baby. Bone sometimes forgot what Mama looked like. Bone was only six at the time, but she remembered Daddy waking her up that night like it was yesterday. He sat on the edge of her bed for the longest time before he could say anything. When he did, he could barely get it out. Your mother is gone.

  It wasn’t Mama’s fault, her dying of the flu, yet sometimes Bone couldn’t help being mad at her mother for leaving her behind. But then she would feel even worse for feeling that way. It wasn’t fair to Mama. So Bone pushed her anger away. Now some sneaky fool coward was stirring it all up with this stupid note. Bone wanted to rip it into little tiny pieces and forget about everything.

  She tore one edge and stopped. She couldn’t do it. The paper, the story behind it, tugged at her. What did it mean? She needed to know what happened to her mother.

  Bone balled up the note in her hand and pounded her fists in the dirt beside her. She let out a yell of frustration. She was answered by the lonesome wail of the Virginian as it wound its way around the river bend.

  She lay in the hole and stared up at the green canopy of leaves above her. A breeze rustled through the treetops, revealing chinks of blue sky.

  Bone ran her fingers through the dirt beside her. They brushed against something metal and round, a button or a coin. An image washed through her like a current pulling her toward the rapids. Bone saw a man running and heard a shot echo through the woods. She sat straight up in the hole, dropping the coin in the dirt.

  The smell of gunpowder lingered in her nostrils.

  If this was the Gift, Bone didn’t want it.

  3

  AFTER SUPPER THAT EVENING, Bone turned the coffee cup around the dish towel in her hand, still pondering the note.

  Mrs. Price cleared her throat. Four dinner plates, four saucers, and four sets of knives, forks, and spoons sat on the draining board, waiting for Bone. “At this rate, you might as well leave them out for breakfast.” Mrs. Price laughed.

  Bone didn’t say anything.

  “Worried about school?” Mrs. Price asked.

  Bone shrugged. Mrs. Price ran the boardinghouse Bone and her father lived in for the last six years. As much as she adored Mrs. P., Bone couldn’t talk to her about the note. She wasn’t even sure who she could talk to about it. Except Will, of course. Daddy didn’t like to talk about Mama. Neither did Uncle Ash. Maybe Will and Junior were right. Bone should talk to Mamaw.

  The knock came at the back door, like it did every evening.

  “Go ahead. I’ll finish up.” Mrs. Price smiled a knowing, adult smile.

  Bone pushed open the screen door and joined Will on the back steps. He was wearing his new miner’s cap. Will handed her one of his scraps of paper, torn from an envelope most likely. He carried all sorts of bits and pieces around in his pockets. Old grocery lists. Butcher paper. Candy wrappers. Any little thing to write on.

  Paper.

  “Hold on a sec.” Bone jumped up and ran back into the kitchen. She grabbed the parcel from the kitchen table and dashed back outside. “I forgot your present.”

  She shoved it into his hands. She’d wrapped it in the funny papers and tied it with string. Will grinned, and then switched on the miner’s light on his cap. He cut the string with a flick of his pocketknife, and the little notebooks spilled out. Bone had made him four small pads of paper out of old composition books. Each was about the size of a pack of cigarettes and had a stub of a pencil tied to it.

  “For down in the mines. One will fit in your overalls pocket,” Bone explained though she didn’t need to.

  Still smiling, Will scribbled out something on one of his new pads.

  Thanks. They’ll come in handy.

  He stuffed the extra notepads in his pockets. Then he pointed to the scrap he’d handed her earlier. She’d almost forgotten it was still in her hand.

  Bone smoothed it out and read it in the light of the miner’s lamp. His chicken scratch was unmistakable.

  What did you see when you touched Daddy’s dinner bucket?

  Bone read it again and then shook her head. She couldn’t tell him that, seeing as he was going down in the mine in a few hours. The thought sent a shiver through her, even though the evening was warm and muggy.

  That’s okay. You answered my question, he wrote on a new notepad.

  Bone knew full well what happened to Will’s daddy that day in the mine. Will had saved her from seeing more.

  He handed her another scrap.

  Did you figure out what your note meant?

  Bone shook her head again. She heard her own father’s voice in her mind. He was always saying that he didn’t believe in nothing he couldn’t see, taste, hear, or touch. Anything else was superstitious nonsense. But Bone couldn’t deny what she saw when she touched certain things.

  “Do you think my seeing things in objects is the Gift?” Bone asked.

  Will scribbled something out.

  Could be. Wasn’t your mama a nurse?

  “She had some training.” Bone wasn’t sure what he was getting at. Her mother had taken care of all the people around Big Vein when they were sick, but she’d never finished nursing school. At least that’s what Bone remembered. “Why?”

  Might be different Gifts. Your Uncle Ash is good with animals.

  Bone stared at Will’s face in the dim light. He was looking at her like he expected her to put it all together. Sometimes he was quicker to figure out things than she was, and she was feeling a few steps behind.

  “What difference does it make that he’s good with animals? And how could the Gift kill Mama?”

  Will shrugged. Maybe Mother Reed knows.

  Mother Reed was what folks called Bone’s grandmother. They went to her for all sorts of herbs and tinctures. To Bone, though, she was Mamaw. But she did know things.

  Bone shrugged.

  As she stared out into the yard, she could see the light from his lamp bob up and down. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to solve this mystery, though. She wanted it to stay summer. Forever.

  “Daddy will be mad if you run down your battery before work tomorrow,” Bone said, reminded of where he was headed in the morning.

  Will flicked the light off, and they sat in comfortable silence, thinking their own uncomfortable thoughts, until Mrs. Price called her in.

  “Be sure you bathe, young lady,” Mrs. Price told Bone as she trudged up the back steps. “You got school tomorrow.”

  As if she could forget. “Yes, ma’am.”

  After a speedy bath in the washroom they all shared, Bone padded through the hall in her pajamas. She paused by her daddy’s room. The radio was still playing down in the parlor, the murmur of voices telling her father—and Miss Johnson—the news of the war. Her father had been awfully preoccupied with it, even during dinner. He’d left the radio on despite Mrs. Price’s glares.

  Bone ducked into her father’s room. The picture was where it always was, front and center on his dresser. Mama sat on the porch of their old house holding a toddler. Holding Bone. The happy radiated off the black-and-white photograph. Bone touched the silver frame and felt a chord of sadness—and perhaps something bitterer—mixed in with the happy. She could see Daddy looking at this photo every morning. Yet the happy was stronger than the sad. Bone flipped over the frame and read the obituary taped to the backside. The fading print said that Willow Reed Phillips died on March 16, 1936, from a sudden illness. She was survived by a loving husband and young daughter. Bone wiped a smudge off the glass and placed the frame back on the dresser next to her father’s pocket watch and comb and a letter.

  It was lying open, and Bone could see the words Selective Service across the top. Her stomach dropped as she read the first line. Greetings. Having presented yourself to a local board … you are ordered to report to … The words started to swim on the page. Bone saw the word Army. And the date. September 21, 1942.

  Her daddy had gotten himself drafted.

  “Bone?” Her father st
ood in the doorway packing his pipe with tobacco and watching her. He tamped the tobacco down in the bowl of the pipe over and over again before he spoke. “Let’s get you ready for bed.” He shooed her into her own room next door.

  Neither of them said anything until he pulled back the quilt and motioned her to hop in.

  Bone slid under the covers and lay there for half a second. “That letter.” She sat up in bed. She wasn’t ready to let it go. “I didn’t mean to look.”

  Daddy lit his pipe. “I was going to tell you.” He took a deep pull and then let out a wisp of smoke. “I didn’t want to ruin your first day of school.”

  “Do you have to go?” Bone watched the smoke swirl above his head. She’d never thought the war would touch them.

  “It’s a draft, honey. I have to report in a fortnight.”

  “Report?” She knew what he meant, but all she could do was repeat his words, hoping they meant something else. “Where?” She had two weeks. Less than that now.

  “For the army. I’m hoping I’ll get assigned to my old unit, the First Battalion.” He sat down next to her. “I think they’re in Africa right now. It’ll be hot in the desert.” He pulled on his pipe as he talked. “But they might be in Italy by the time I get there.”

  Her father seemed to be relishing the thought of going off to war. And Africa or Italy might be pretty interesting, if it weren’t for the Nazis and their tanks. But he shouldn’t be happy about going to war—or leaving her.

  “Aren’t you too old?” Bone asked. He’d already fought one war, and that should be enough. She felt the tears coming.

  “Hey there, young lady.” Daddy got out his hankie and dabbed her tears away. “Now there’s a war on, they’re taking men up to the grand old age of forty-five. And I am far from that old.”

  Bone knew for a fact he was almost that old. He might have lied about his age to join up at the end of the Great War, but that cake Mrs. Price made him in July still had forty-one candles on it. That gave her an idea.

  “You lied about your age the first time. You could do it again.”

  Her father shook his head. “It don’t work like that, honey.”