Bone's Gift

by Angie Smibert

  “Let’s take these boxes to your room, Junior.” Ash scooped up the box he’d set down. Junior grabbed the guitar from Will, and the brothers headed upstairs.

  Bone slipped into her old seat at the kitchen table. Mamaw poured a cup of peanut soup for Bone and set a glass of milk and a piece of spoon bread in front of her. The smells flooded her memory. She could see her mother serving this exact meal whenever she was sick.

  “Eat,” Mamaw told her with a remembering smile. “You need something on your stomach.”

  Got a present for you, Will scrawled out on a scrap of paper. He dug in his pocket for a pad of paper with a little pencil tied onto it. It was like the ones she’d given him.

  Very funny, she scribbled back.

  Her uncles’ boots clamored down the stairs, and the screen door slammed as they headed out for more boxes.

  “They’re like a herd of elephants.” Mamaw shook her head. “As you probably figured out, Junior is moving into your daddy’s room until he gets back.”

  Bone sipped the nutty, buttery soup, and it warmed her down to her toes. Having Uncle Junior around would almost be like having Daddy back, almost like having things the way they were. Almost.

  I want to stay here, if you don’t mind, Bone wrote out and handed it to Mamaw.

  She nodded. “I’ll be here every day to check on you.”

  Uncle Ash burst into the kitchen. “Mama, there’s an army man knocking on Amarantha’s door.”

  “Oh lord.” Mamaw sprang to her feet.

  “Junior run up there to see.” Ash held the door open for his mother.

  As she moved past, Mamaw laid a hand on Bone’s shoulder. “You two stay here.”

  What does it mean, Bone was busy writing out.

  “It’s your Uncle Henry,” Uncle Ash answered.

  The door banged shut, leaving Will and Bone in their silence.

  Bone was thankful Will didn’t leave. He turned on the radio in the boardinghouse parlor. She heated up the dregs of the coffee for him and cut him a slice of apple pie. The newsman broke into Fibber McGee and Molly to announce that an American troop transport ship had been sunk in the North Atlantic by the Germans. Roughly two hundred soldiers and sailors lost their lives.

  Maybe the preacher survived, Will wrote.

  Bone pulled out Daddy’s map and studied the North Atlantic.

  It was vast and deep.

  An hour or so later, Ash and Junior returned. Bone looked from one uncle to the other. Uncle Junior sank into the leather chair by the fireplace. Uncle Ash shook his head wearily before collapsing on the sofa in the parlor.

  Uncle Henry had not survived.

  Bone’s heart quietly broke for Ruby—and perhaps even a little for Aunt Mattie.

  31

  THAT EVENING, Bone lay in bed unable to sleep. So many things kept rolling around in her mind. She couldn’t quite put them all together. The sweater still hung on the closet door, waiting for Bone. Her mother had been nursing Aunt Mattie—and covered her up with that sweater when her sister was dying. But she didn’t—and Willow did. Bone could understand Aunt Mattie a little better now. Mattie loved her sister, but she knew she could heal. She hated it. And she feared it, too. Had Mama tried to heal Mattie? Is that what killed her? What happened in those few hours?

  Only the ordinary butter-yellow sweater knew.

  Bone groaned. There was nothing for it. She had to see what it was, but she was still afraid. What if those moments were even more awful than the dinner bucket or the arrowhead or Tiny’s ball cap? These ordinary objects bore witness to the lives unfolding and dissolving in front of them, and if the moment was charged enough, the object took it all in like a silver plate in a photograph. But she was the only one who could see it.

  How had she not seen this awful thing before? Then Bone remembered what her Mamaw had said about her Gift. The plants would show her something new when she studied on them. Their secrets were always revealing themselves, if only she asked them to.

  Her own Gift was more complicated. Plants didn’t have as many secrets as ordinary objects. They were more like people. Some wore their sadness and pain right on the surface, their jagged edges sharp to the touch. Others clothed themselves in love and happiness. Yet, the ghosts of sadness and pain might hide deep within them. The deeper ghosts revealed themselves if Bone asked, if Bone was ready.

  Bone had to ask. Bone had to know. Bone was ready. And it was for her to find out, she decided. This was her Gift. What had Uncle Ash said earlier? You ask that sweater of yours. It saw everything.

  Bone slipped out of bed and stood before the closet door. She laid her trembling fingers on the sweater once more and dove into the river of images.

  The happy, familiar times hit her first. Her mother tending her arm when Bone fell out of the tree. Her mother singing “You Are My Sunshine,” rocking baby Bone to sleep.

  Then she saw her father proposing to her mother in his army uniform. He wasn’t much older than Will, and her mother couldn’t have been that much older either. Bone had forgotten how lovely she was. Tall and lithe and freckled. This soft object had witnessed nearly all the important moments of her mother’s life.

  Bone wanted to linger there in this little eddy of happiness. She could feel the cool currents of sadness underneath, but the happy was stronger in this place.

  Bone pushed out into the current.

  She saw her mother sitting on the bank of the creek, watching her sister run away from her. Willow Reed picked up a rock and sliced her own hand open. She held her hand over the cut and closed her eyes. The wound didn’t heal.

  Bone dove deeper.

  She saw her mother in Aunt Queenie’s house. A young Tiny Sherman moaned on the kitchen table. Uncle Ash and another man held him down. Mama yanked his arm straight, and Tiny screamed. She splinted up the arm and gave him a tincture for the pain. The men carried Tiny into the bedroom. Bone’s mother sat by his bed. When no one was looking, she held her hands over the worst of the breaks. The bones knitted together. Tiny stirred, and Mama went home with her brother—and slept for a day and a half.

  Bone swam farther.

  Mama was sitting by someone in the bed. It was her sister Mattie, feverish and still. Mama coughed as she laid her hand on her sister’s forehead and closed her eyes. Bone could feel her mother’s Gift. She was searching for the disease in her sister’s body, and she saw it burning up Mattie’s veins. But there was more. Bone could feel Willow willing the sickness to go away.

  It did. But only from Aunt Mattie. Her mother had already caught the influenza—and couldn’t heal herself.

  Mattie’s eyes flickered open and she spoke. Mama took off her sweater, beads of sweat forming on her flushed face. “You’ll be fine now, Mattie,” Willow said. “Sleep.” She laid the butter-yellow sweater over her sister like a blanket and tucked her in.

  Bone felt the tug of the story; it wasn’t over, though she didn’t want to know the rest.

  Mama slumped in the chair beside her sister.

  Mattie awoke later to find herself covered by the sweater—and her sister dead in the chair, in that empty spot in her room, where Willow Reed Phillips had closed her eyes for the last time. Uncle Ash was sitting on the floor beside her, weeping. Aunt Mattie screamed at him for being useless. For not being able to heal like Willow. For not being able to fix their sister.

  No wonder Mattie hated the sweater. Bone could almost forgive her aunt. Almost.

  Her heart broke into tiny pieces for Uncle Ash.

  Bone wiped her eyes on the sweater. Aunt Mattie had been right. Not about the devil. About her mother’s Gift killing her. Mama could heal. She healed Mattie. But the healing had made her weak, too weak to fight off the influenza. She couldn’t heal herself, and Uncle Ash couldn’t heal her either. It wasn’t his Gift. Aunt Mattie still blamed him, though. Blamed him, Willow, and all the Gifts for what happened. Daddy and Mamaw were right, too. Willow simply caught the influenza from someone she’d nursed. It
took her real quick. Many people, including Mattie and Mr. Childress’s wife and Opal’s little sister, came down with it. Mama had tended them all, but she’d only healed one of them.

  Her sister.

  And Aunt Mattie hated everybody and everything for it.

  Bone felt drained herself, but she wasn’t ready to sleep. Not yet. She scrambled to find some paper and a pencil in her room. When she did, she stared at the whiteness and didn’t know where to begin. So she wrote down everything.

  Someone else needed to hear the story.

  32

  “I FIGURED IT OUT,” Bone croaked as she handed the paper to Uncle Ash.

  He and Corolla had brought her a tray of fried bologna sandwiches—with mustard just like she liked them—and a Nehi. “You missed breakfast.”

  The little dog hopped up on the bed and eyed the plate expectantly. Bone grabbed the grape soda, gratefully letting the cold drink slosh down her still-scratchy throat. She didn’t think she could stomach another mint tea.

  “You got your voice back, Forever Girl!” Uncle Ash shooed the dog off the bed and sat down in her place.

  Bone smiled. “Barely,” she whispered and pointed to the papers. She couldn’t say all that out loud, even if she had her full voice. “I asked the sweater.”

  The color drained right out of Uncle Ash’s face. “You did?” His voice was creaky now.

  Bone nodded.

  He swallowed hard as he read, and his hand began to shake a bit. Bone couldn’t watch. She tried a bite of her bologna, but she wasn’t hungry. She threw it to Corolla instead. The little dog gobbled it down. Uncle Ash didn’t even look up.

  Bone could see the story play out on his face. His eyes widened at the part about her mother healing her sister when they were young. “She never told me,” he whispered, hurt clear in his voice.

  His eyes closed when he got to the end. Finally, he spoke, “That was the day I saw the black dog outside Mattie’s. I went running in. Both of them looked asleep. I checked Mattie to make sure she was still breathing. Willow was curled up in the big old chair Mattie keeps by the bed. She had an angelic smile on her face, like she was dreaming of better days.” Uncle Ash’s voice caught. “Well, I guess she was.” A single tear rolled down his cheek. “I put my hand on her shoulder to wake her up. I was going to take her home, but she was ice to the touch. I lost it then and there. I don’t remember much after that. Next thing I know Junior is driving me and my truck up the mountain so we can tell Mother.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He fumbled with the pack of Luckies but didn’t take one out.

  Tears were welling up in Bone, for Uncle Ash and Aunt Mattie mostly. Mama had saved her sister, yet it had wrecked her and her brother both. But that wasn’t Mama’s fault.

  Bone inhaled the lingering lavender of her mama’s butter-yellow sweater. She’d found her mother deep in that pile of yarn—and deep inside herself, a river flowing through her like a gift.

  “Aw, Forever Girl, yours ain’t an easy Gift.” Uncle Ash cleared the way between them. He folded Bone in his arms, the sweater crushed against her. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  Bone cried a river. So did Uncle Ash.

  Corolla ate the fried bologna sandwiches, crusts and all.

  33

  A BANG CAME FROM THE KITCHEN. Bone found Mrs. Price putting a pound of flour and a pound of salt into a box.

  “Pounding for the Alberts,” Mrs. Price said, dry-eyed.

  According to the army man, Uncle Henry’s transport ship had been on its way to Greenland, a staging area for troops going to England. When the U-boat struck, Henry and three of the other chaplains gave up their life jackets so that others might be saved. The memorial service would be tomorrow at the church. Henry Albert was receiving a Silver Star posthumously. He had done his part.

  Bone’s father called from Fort Benning that morning. He couldn’t come home because they were fixing to ship out in a few days, but she was sure glad to hear his voice. Mamaw had written him about what happened. Bone wished Mamaw hadn’t. Daddy had enough to worry about, with the Nazis and all. “I’m awful sorry, Bone, I never thought …” His voice broke. “Of course, you can stay at the boardinghouse with Junior.”

  Bone hadn’t talked to Aunt Mattie since that night.

  Mrs. Price put a pound of navy beans into the box.

  “I’ll take it over,” Bone said, her voice back to normal.

  Mrs. Price hesitated. “You don’t have to, you know.”

  “I know.” Bone still wasn’t quite ready to forgive her aunt, but she was family. And there was Ruby. She’d just lost her daddy. “Let me get one thing.” Bone ran up the back stairs.

  On her dresser lay the butter-yellow sweater, the power of its story still radiating off it. Her mother had given it to her sister out of love in her dying moments. There was more love in the object than death, more happy than sad.

  Her mother was in there, and she still had the power to heal.

  Bone stuffed her mother’s sweater into the pounding box and walked through the drying mud and leaves to tell her aunt a story.

  Author’s Note: Story Sources

  I based Bone’s world on that of my grandparents during World War II. I never knew my grandfather, Richard Scott. He died a month or so before I was born. He and his brothers worked in the coal mines and minded their father’s company store in McCoy, Virginia, a tiny village by the New River. One of the mines in McCoy was called Big Vein and the other Great Valley. For the sake of this story, I simplified the geography a bit and perhaps took a few artistic liberties here and there. Some of my historical sources for the period include McCoy, Virginia Remembered, a privately published scrapbook put together by one of the local churches, and Appalachian Coal Mining Memories, a compilation of oral histories of miners collected by Radford University. (The latter includes two interviews with my grandfather’s youngest brother, Leo “Scotty” Scott, who was also a semipro baseball player.) Bone’s world existed until the 1950s when the mines petered out and closed.

  Bone’s world was also squarely in the Southern Appalachians (pronounced with a short a, as in “latch”). This area has a rich tradition of storytelling. The stories in this book—including several Jack tales, “Ashpet,” Ash’s devil dogs, and “Forever Boy”—are adapted from authentic Appalachian and Cherokee folktales. My sources include the Virginia Writers’ Project, the work of folklorist Richard Chase, a collection of Cherokee tales by Barbara Duncan, and Ferrum College’s AppLit site.

  From 1937 to 1942, the Virginia Writers’ Project collected stories and interviewed people throughout the state, including Southwestern Virginia. Part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration, the VWP put writers and teachers to work preserving history and traditions of both black and white Virginians. In 1943, VWP records were sent to the University of Virginia library, where they sat until the 1970s. Eventually, the stories were published in Virginia Folk Legends in the early 1990s.

  In the 1930s, Richard Chase collected Jack tales and other Appalachian folklore—including “Ashpet”—from residents in western North Carolina. Most American and English readers are probably familiar with “Jack and the Beanstalk.” In Appalachia, Jack had many, many other adventures. Chase published these stories in several volumes, including The Jack Tales and Grandfather Tales: American-English Folk Tales.

  Long before Bone’s (and my) ancestors settled in the Appalachians, they were the home of the Cherokee as well as many other Native American tribes. The Eastern band of the Cherokee remained in (or in some cases returned to) western North Carolina after the Trail of Tears. “Forever Boy” and other stories of the Little People were collected in Barbara Duncan’s The Origin of the Milky Way.

  One of my first sources for both Appalachian and Cherokee tales was Ferrum College’s AppLit (Applit.org) site. It’s a great resource for readers and teachers of Appalachian literature for children and young adults. Dr. Tina Hanlon has compiled a wonderful list of
literature, bibliographies, folktales, songs, poems, lesson plans, and so forth of the region. She also pointed me toward other sources, such as the Duncan book. Many thanks, Tina!

  And a special thanks to my local critique group, my agent, Susan Hawk, and my editor, Rebecca Davis, for believing in Bone.

  COMING MARCH 2019

  COMING MARCH 2020

  A Conversation with Angie Smibert

  Q: Is Big Vein based on a real place?

  A: Yes, the community of Big Vein is loosely based on McCoy, Virginia. It’s a tiny place where my mother grew up and where her parents (and several previous generations) lived. McCoy is just outside of Blacksburg along the New River. From the late nineteenth century until the 1950s, the main occupation in McCoy and in several surrounding communities was coal mining. My grandfather and his brothers all worked in the mines at one time or another. My great grandfather ran the company store, and later my grandfather ran the store, too.

  Q: Why did you call the mine and coal camp Big Vein?

  A: Actually, Big Vein was one of the two mines that Superior Anthracite operated in McCoy during the 1940s. The other was called Great Valley. I wanted to simplify Bone’s surroundings a bit, so I chose the most evocative sounding mine—and called the coal camp Big Vein, too.

  By the way, the real village of McCoy existed long before the coal mines. Therefore, the land wasn’t owned by the coal company—as it was in my book and in many other areas of Southwest Virginia and West Virginia. That’s another reason I changed the name.

  Q: How did you come up with the first names of many of your characters, like Ruby, Pearl, and Ash?

  A: The Little Jewels—Ruby, Pearl, Opal—have real names from my grandmother’s generation. In the early twentieth century, many parents named their little girls after jewels and flowers. My grandmothers’ names were Hazel and Lilly. And I actually have a great Aunt Ruby—who is still alive and kicking. My grandfather’s sisters were Iris and Violet. Their generation also included names like Jewell, Garnett, Opal, and Pearl. (Of course, there were plenty of Elizabeths, Susies, Ruths, and so forth!) For the Little Jewels, I loved the idea of miners and their wives naming their girls after precious stones that were, for the most part, dug from the earth.