Fat & Bones

by Larissa Theule

  To Philip, whose love and support never falter —L.T.

  To those light of heart whose blood still pumps a good dose of mischief —A.D.

  Text copyright © 2014 by Larissa Theule

  Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Adam S. Doyle

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Carolrhoda Books

  A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  241 First Avenue North

  Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

  For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com.

  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 11/17.

  Typeface provided by Adobe Systems.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Theule, Larissa.

  Fat & Bones / by Larissa Theule ; illustrated by Adam S. Doyle.

  p. cm

  Summary: When a farmer dies, the decades-old feud between his son, Bones, and Fat, a fairy who lives in a tree on the farm, escalates, with surprising consequences for Bones’s mother and the farm animals.

  ISBN 978–1–4677–0825–8 (lib. bdg. : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978–1–4677–4623–6 (eBook)

  [1. Vendetta—Fiction. 2. Domestic animals—Fiction. 3. Fairies—Fiction. 4. Farm life—Fiction.] I. Doyle, Adam, 1975– illustrator. II. Title.

  PZ7.T3526Fat 2014

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013030364

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 – BP – 7/15/14

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-4623-6 (pdf)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-6588-6 (ePub)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-6586-2 (mobi)

  CONTENTS

  1. FAT AND BONES

  2. THE DANCE

  3. LEONARD GREY III

  4. THE DEAD MAN SONG

  5. JIMMY IN LOVE

  6. PETALS TO A POLLEN GUN

  7. WHAT THE SNEEZE SAID TO THE MOON

  Fat stood on the topmost branch of the tree, gazing in the direction of the farmhouse. Something had happened. He could feel it in the tips of his blue wings. The farmer’s wife had not yet made a trip to the pigpen, and already the afternoon sun had begun to lick the fields. A slight shiver passed through Fat. There would be a full moon tonight.

  Fat sniffed the air and smelled something putrid. Something else too. Something faint and pleasant, like new seedlings coming up from the dark earth.

  Change. That’s what the fairy smelled.

  Fat adjusted his belt. He had observed lately that Bald had grown stooped and weak. The old farmer would drop tools and could no longer carry heavy machinery. One time, a pig had broken loose from the pen and pushed Bald over so the old man’s crooked legs waved in the air.

  Lately, Bald’s son Bones had taken over the farm. Fat hated Bones, as Bones hated Fat. Although they’d never spoken to each other, their hatred had grown dense and deep, too thick and round not to roll over everything in its path. Nobody knew the reason why. Some said it was because Bones had shot BBs at Fat when Bones was younger, and Fat had responded by dumping a potion in Bones’s coffee that turned his hair into bramble. Or they might have hated each other because one wished for wings and the other wished to be tall. Whatever the reason, nothing would do but for their hatred to burn itself out.

  Fat sniffed again. Death. That was the change in the air.

  The door to the farmhouse opened. Bones carried out the body of his dead daddy and dumped it into a crude hole. He began to shovel dirt on top. When Bald was covered up, Bones dropped the shovel and turned to Fat’s tree, the only tree in the field. Bones grinned. It was the kind of grin that could make one’s stomach shrivel like a raisin. Bones had buried peace along with his daddy. Bones wanted war.

  Fat smiled. War would be a nice change of pace. To create a bit of disorder, a little chaos. Quite a welcome change, really. He went into his hole to plan.

  Back inside the farmhouse, Bones patted his weeping mother on the back. He himself felt no sorrow for the loss of his father; his heart was too small. “Don’t worry yourself, Ma. I’ll take care of you.”

  Bones had no idea how to take care of himself, let alone his mother. In fact, he only noticed her when she placed a plate of food in front of him. Even then, his acknowledgment of her came in the form of a hungry grunt.

  Mrs. Bald rocked harder in her chair, enormous tears tumbling down her cheeks.

  “Ma, please, get over it,” said Bones in as kind a voice as he could manage. “Pa’s dead. Dead is dead. No point crying about it.”

  Mrs. Bald wept louder.

  “C’mon, Ma.”

  Mrs. Bald’s tears began to soak her hair and clothes.

  “Ma, put a sock in it!” roared Bones. “I’m hungry. Fix me a pot of pig foot stew. That’ll set you right.”

  He grabbed his hat and charged through the front door, kicking aside the cat’s shiny red food dish on his way out. He had planned on waiting until the following day to chop down Fat’s tree, but Ma’s crying grated on his nerves. A good swing of the axe was just what Bones needed. A good swing of the axe would get rid of that wretched fairy, and all would be well.

  Hate has a habit of rendering its keepers blind. Which is why Fat did not look down to see Bones lumbering through the wheat toward his tree, never mind the axe in Bones’s hand. Nor did Bones look up to see Fat navigating the air currents above him.

  Bones reached the tree. Without stopping to plant his feet, he swung the axe, lost his balance, and fell to his knees. A strand of wheat whipped across his face. He growled and picked himself up. The next time, he stood firmly, his feet a stable distance apart. He swung the axe across his shoulder, gritted his teeth, and whack!

  A shriek of pain pierced his ears. The farmhouse cat had streaked in front of Bones precisely at the moment he swung the axe, and Bones had chopped off its tail. The cat howled and ran around and around the trunk. Four inches of severed grey tail hung from the tree, wedged into the cut made by the axe.

  First, his mother, now, the cat. “Stop crying!” yelled Bones. “It’s only a tail!”

  Bones decided to shut the cat up for good. Each time the cat circled the trunk, Bones swung his axe again, but each time, Bones missed. After a while, the trunk of the tree was riddled with axe marks. Bones was as far off from felling the tree as when he had arrived, though now his arms were nearly limp.

  When the cat grew dizzy and wobbled off into the wheat, Bones leaned on the axe handle and wiped his brow. He no longer had strength left to chop down the tree. He kicked at its trunk instead and broke three toes.

  Meanwhile, Fat flew through the open door of the farmhouse. Bones had forgotten to close the door on his way out, and Mrs. Bald, still weeping, was in no frame of mind to have closed the door herself.

  Fat hovered above the pot of pig foot stew on the stove. He held a bottle of Sunflower Skeleton Eraser in his hand. He would drop it in the soup. Then, when Bones ate his dinner, what a sight! Bones would turn into a blob of flesh on the floor—a rubbery rug—a boneless Bones!

  Fat swooped and dipped in front of Mrs. Bald’s face as she stood stirring the thick brown stew. She did not even blink. The woman couldn’t see him through her tears. Fat giggled and said, “Get ready, bonesy Bones.”

  He pulled and prodded at the stopper wedged in the bottle, but the stopper would not budge. He bit his lip, and sweat formed on the brow of his round head. He was concentrating so hard that he flew into the wall. He dipped and f
luttered, holding his head with one hand, the bottle with the other. The bottle slipped, dropping into the boiling stew with a delicate plop.

  “Aaaaah!” Fat squealed.

  Mrs. Bald raised her head. “Bones, is that you? I’ve made pig foot stew, my boy, just like you wanted. It was your father’s favorite too.” At that, she began to weep all the more.

  Fat did the first thing that came to mind. He dove headfirst into the stew. The mealy liquid grated against his skin. He struggled to remain clearheaded. He forced himself to open his eyes and scarcely avoided ramming into the pig foot itself. The foot brushed against his arm, squishy from the heat, and then floated away.

  Mrs. Bald’s wooden spoon came from behind and began stirring Fat around the pot. Nearly unconscious from holding his breath, Fat began to prepare for an undignified death as bits of vegetables and stew grit hit his face.

  Then, through the murk, he spotted an elegantly scrawled S and lunged for it. His hand closed around the bottle. With the last of his energy, Fat climbed up the wooden spoon, gasping for air once he broke the surface. His face red and his blood vessels nearly popping, he burst from the pot with a mighty schloop.

  “Bones? What are you up to? Wash up now, the stew’s nearly ready,” said Mrs. Bald, blowing her nose into her red-and-white checked apron.

  Fat freed the bottle stopper with his teeth and spat it out over his shoulder. He turned the bottle upside down and dumped the Sunflower Skeleton Eraser into the pot.

  Mrs. Bald smoothed her apron and picked up her wooden spoon. She stirred the stew once more and then lifted the spoon to her mouth for a taste test, licking it all over with her long pink tongue.

  “No!” cried Fat. He had not intended Sunflower Skeleton Eraser for Mrs. Bald. If Bones found his mother flattened on the floor by the stove, he might figure the stew was to blame and not take a bite.

  But it was too late.

  The cat streaked in from outside, trailing blood from what was left of its tail. Moments later, Bones entered, his axe slung over his shoulder.

  In less time than it took for Bones to hang up his hat, Mrs. Bald had dissolved into a mass of skin, fingernails, and hair, lying helpless on the floor. Only her eyeballs remained their original shape.

  “Ma?” said Bones, poking her with his finger. “How’d you get so flat?”

  Mrs. Bald looked from him to the pot on the stove.

  “Did you burn yourself flat?” asked Bones.

  Mrs. Bald’s eyeballs swiveled in their sockets.

  “Did you cry yourself flat?”

  Mrs. Bald wheezed.

  Fat chose this moment to take flight. But the stew had begun to congeal on his wings, and he moved slowly.

  Bones saw Fat floundering through the air. He looked at the pot on the stove. Though not usually a very clever man, he put two and two together.

  “You dirty rotten fairy!” He lunged. He reached. He grabbed. He missed.

  Although Fat would have preferred to squeeze out a triumphant cackle, all he could manage was a toadlike croak. The hardened stew had thrown off his navigation skills. After banging into the doorpost, then banging into the post again, he escaped into the night air.

  “I’ll skin you alive, you fat devil!” screamed Bones.

  The tailless cat sat on Mrs. Bald’s throat, licking her face.

  Mrs. Bald, lying helpless on the kitchen floor, was in danger of drowning in her own tears. She had cried the night through. Bones discovered this when he awoke the next morning and stepped from the bottom stair into an inch of water. He was not clever enough to think what to do with her. Even now, standing over her with his hands on his hips, he could think of only himself and his empty stomach.

  “Where’re my pancakes?” he said.

  Only then did Bones realize that if he did not stretch his mother out or hang her up somewhere, she would drown, and he would never eat again. Under the threat of starvation, Bones hoisted his mother over his shoulders and transferred her to the clotheslines outside. He secured her on the line with wooden pins.

  Bones’s stomach growled. He wanted pancakes. He wanted pancakes so badly that he went to the garage and got the tire pump. He stuck the nozzle into his mother’s mouth and held her lips close around it. Then he pumped. He pumped and pumped and pumped, but she did not inflate. Instead, she kept crying, her sobs shaking the clothesline on which she hung.

  Bones tossed the tire pump aside and turned toward Fat’s tree, his anger mounting as it never had before. He would catch that ugly varmint of a fairy even if he killed himself in the process.

  While Bones rubbed his empty belly and thought up ways to murder Fat, Fat soaked in a bubble bath. He had spent the night immersed in warm rainwater, plucking bits of hardened stew from his skin and wings. Every joint hurt. He had known he was getting old, but this morning he felt it keenly. Old and fat. He had drunk too many mugs of acorn juice in his youth, and he was paying for it now.

  A spasm in his stomach made him double over. He coughed and sputtered as the pain ebbed away. He was no quitter, though. He was no lightweight. “With war comes sacrifice,” he said. He pounded his chest with his fists and stretched his wings so that rainwater sprayed everywhere.

  As if by mutual agreement, Fat and Bones came face-to-face in the middle of the field. Bones had been racing toward the tree with a mind to stuff burning leaves in Fat’s hole. Fat had been flying as fast as he could toward the farmhouse, intent on contaminating the drinking water with Bluebell Blindness Inducer. Each man halted when he realized his enemy stood or, in Fat’s case, hovered in front of him. Being in such close proximity for the first time unnerved them both. Fat and Bones grew bashful. Bones shuffled his feet and even whistled a note. Fat flew in brief thrusts like a hummingbird.

  Bones thought he should make conversation. “My Ma’s flat,” he said.

  Not wanting to seem rude, Fat said, “Yes. She was supposed to be you. Or you were supposed to be her. Be flat, I mean.” Poised on the tip of a wheat stalk, he added, “There are marks on my tree.”

  “Yeah,” said Bones. “Cat kept me from chopping it down.”

  Things might have gone differently from that moment on if a strong wind had not lifted Fat from the wheat stalk and hurtled him into Bones’s face. There might have been peace. But broken noses tend not to make friends of enemies, so while both Bones and Fat dabbed at the blood trickling down from their nostrils, the outcome became clear—they would fight to the death.

  “I will shred your wings to pieces with a very tiny pitchfork!” screamed Bones.

  “If you had a very tiny pitchfork, I would shove it up your big nose into your very tiny brain!” screeched Fat.

  “Vermin!”

  “Lummox!”

  “Pip-squeak!”

  “Meathead!”

  Fat sliced through the air, shrieking toward Bones with the speed of a young fairy. He rammed into Bones’s head, denting the man’s skull. But as Fat tried to back up, to fly away, Bones’s bramble hair snagged the fairy’s wings. Thus bound, the two of them reeled across the field.

  “Lemmego!” cried Fat.

  “C-can’t see,” gagged Bones. The dent in his head had damaged his sight.

  Running and stumbling, spinning and falling, the two enemies crashed through the wheat, stomping down the slim golden reeds until not one strand remained. The field was destroyed.

  From the clotheslines, Mrs. Bald continued to weep. The sun could not dry her eyes fast enough to keep her sorrow from flowing.

  Exhausted, Bones finally fell to his knees before his hanging mother. His eyes crossed in confusion. Then he tipped over, crashing to the ground with his hands by his side. The force of the fall freed Fat’s wings, and the fairy stood up, pumping his short arms in the air as if he had conquered the world.

  The cat, licking up what it could of Mrs. Bald’s tears, turned toward him …

  Before she flattened like one of the pancakes her son loved so well, Mrs. Bald needed one special ingr
edient in order to make her famous pig foot stew.

  It was almost showtime.

  In another few minutes, the sun would descend low enough to transform the field of wheat into a brilliant golden backdrop, low enough to turn the top rail of the peeling fence into a stage, just low enough to lend a little glamour to the pen.

  Apple was the star of the show. She hopped up and down in the corner of her pen, loosening up. She needed to be limber, to be focused. She needed to meet the others’ expectations, their hunger to see beauty within their bleak surroundings. She would not let them down.

  Not today.

  Not ever.

  This was her dance.

  This was their dance.

  In the opposite corner of the pen, deep in the shadows, lay Esmeralda.

  Esmeralda did not possess Apple’s shiny hide or dexterity. She did not even possess four feet. She had four ankles but only one foot among them. Like the others in the pen, Esmeralda hobbled through the mud, pushing herself to the trough and back again. And like the others, she took loving care of her remaining foot, even decorating it with a bracelet of daisies. The flowers grew on the other side of the fence. She had stuck her snout between the railings to gather them, then wove them together using her teeth and spare ankles. This one remaining foot, garnished with white buds, was her pride and joy.

  Of all the pigs in the pen, only sweet, young Apple had four feet.

  Four lovely feet.

  Four pink, supple, enviable feet.

  Esmeralda wanted those feet.

  She at least didn’t want Apple to have those feet. She wanted so badly for Apple not to have those feet that her mouth had filled with bitterness and her head had begun to ache. It had ached for weeks now.

  Lucky for Esmeralda, not only was it nearly showtime—it was nearly dinnertime. And the dead farmer’s son would be wanting his pig foot stew.

  The musicians and singers began prepping for the performance. Neither troupe had very many members, but they had gathered tonight because they wanted to see Apple dance and because pen life provides limited options for social activities. Generally, what one pig does, the others do too.