Precious Bones

by Mika Ashley-Hollinger

  “Melba, I just never know what Nolay will bring home next. And I hear you have a new gas stove. I would love to see it.”

  “Y’all get out and come inside for a spell. I’m just finishing up some jars of guava jelly.”

  Me and Mama followed Miss Melba toward the house while Nolay showed Mr. Cotton and Little Man all the wonders of the Champion.

  Inside, the house smelled of old wood and sweet, ripe guavas. A huge wooden table sat in the middle of the room. On one side of the room was Mr. Cotton and Miss Melba’s bed; on the other side were three beds where Little Man and his two older brothers, Earl and Ethan, slept. Above the wooden table, hanging from the high ceiling on a long wire, dangled a single lightbulb.

  Me and Little Man had spent more nights than I could count curled up on the floor in a thick pile of quilts and feather pillows. In the dim room, we would lie in our beds and listen to the soothing voice of Miss Melba as she read from the Bible, or to Mr. Cotton telling stories of his childhood in the swamps when they were wild and untamed.

  At the far end of the house, the kitchen area consisted of a long, rough-hewn countertop, a deep sink with a hand water pump, and an assortment of pots, pans, and cast-iron skillets hanging along the wall. By the open door, where the hulking wood-burning stove once stood, sat a shiny white enamel gas stove.

  Mama stood in front of it with her hands on her hips. “Melba, this is so beautiful, and it must be a treat for you not to have to haul firewood anymore.”

  A light flush of pink crept up between the brown freckles on Miss Melba’s face. She ran her hand gently across the stove’s glossy surface. “I sure am proud to have this. It has been a pure luxury not having to chop and tote firewood. The good Lord provides all we need and more.” Mama and Miss Melba gazed at the white enamel stove as though it were a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

  As the two women stood admiring the new stove, I asked, “Mama, can I go out and see if Little Man can come for a ride with us?”

  “Of course you can.”

  Outside, the Champion’s hood was open like a giant mouth. Nolay stood on one side; Mr. Cotton, Little Man, Earl, and Ethan were on the other side admiring the powerful engine.

  As I walked up, I heard Mr. Cotton telling Nolay, “Yesterday Jakey Toms stopped by. Said Sheriff LeRoy hired him and his hound dogs to go lookin’ for that Yankee’s body.”

  Nolay said, “Sure don’t make sense why that man would have been out there.”

  Mr. Cotton shook his head. “Wadn’t they the same ones that came out your way and y’all had a little run-in with?”

  “If it was the same two, me and Bones saw ’em the next day out on back of my property with the Reems brothers.”

  “The Reems? What was those scallywags doin’ out on your property?”

  “No idea, but I can pretty much guarantee they wadn’t up to much good.”

  I looked up at Mr. Cotton and said, “Can Little Man come for a ride with us? We’ll bring him back shortly.”

  “I think that would be all right,” Mr. Cotton said. “Ethan and Earl can help me with the chickens.” He placed a thick-callused hand on my head. “Bones, I haven’t seen you around for a while. How’s all them critters of yours? You still got that raccoon?”

  “Yes, sir, but just like you said, she’s starting to try to run away at night. I tried to get Nolay to build a cage for her, but he said if she wants to go back to the wild it’s her choice.”

  “Well, that’s right, she is a wild creature and you don’t want to go cagin’ something up. I told you when I gave ’er to you that she’d steal your heart and run away with it.” He reached into his top shirt pocket, pulled out a packet of loose tobacco, and began spilling it into a sheer rolling paper cradled between his index finger and thumb. “And how’s that old pig of yours? That dang thing still sleeping in bed with you?”

  “Yes, sir, often as she can.”

  “I swear, Bones, you got such a way with animals, I think you could take a durn ol’ panther and turn it into a house cat.”

  “I’d sure like to try that. If you ever run across a baby one, you bring it to me.”

  He placed the perfectly round white cylinder of tobacco in his mouth, lit it, inhaled deeply, and released a thick thread of smoke into the air. “I’ll sure keep that in mind.”

  Nolay looked at me and said, “Bones, you best go get your mama before she talks till dark.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Nolay and Mama settled in the front seat and me and Little Man jumped in the back. Nolay pulled out from Little Man’s house, turned right, and headed for the Last Chance and U.S. 1. The Champion’s powerful engine purred loudly, its heavy body hunkered low on the hard-topped marl road. A dirty-yellow smoke signal of dust followed along behind us.

  At the Last Chance, Nolay idled the engine for a minute. Several men came out front to have a look at what the commotion was. Peckerhead Willy glared in our direction and spat out a long stream of tobacco juice. Me and Little Man waved both our hands at Mr. Speed. He slowly raised one hand in recognition.

  Nolay waited so everyone could take in the sight before he maneuvered the Champion out onto the blacktop. He hit the gas pedal, and the huge tires squealed out over the hot pavement. The Champion, with all its power and wonder, roared down the highway.

  We drove all the way to Melbourne and back. Along the way, if Nolay saw anyone standing outside, he would blow the horn and me and Little Man would wave our hands high in the air.

  Mama shook her head and said, “Nolay, you are making us a spectacle.”

  Nolay grinned. “We ain’t a spectacle, just a sight to behold.”

  “Well, I’m sure the sight of you riding around in this car will have plenty of tongues wagging.”

  “Let ’em wag.”

  By the time we drove back to Little Man’s house, the sun and wind had painted our skin a light crimson. Little Man got out of the car and said, “I sure do thank ya, Mr. Nolay. That was a pure pleasure.”

  As we drove away, I twisted around in the backseat and watched Little Man in his yard, a huge grin across his freckled face, his bird’s-nest hair spread out in all directions. We waved to each other until the Champion separated us from sight.

  The Champion would take us to places we had never been, and to some places I never wanted to go.

  That evening during supper, Nolay announced, “What y’all think about us taking the Champion and going for a ride down to the Tamiami Trail and visit Cat Island?”

  I started to jump up and down and talk so fast I could hardly understand myself. “Holee, can I bring Nippy with me, can I bring my guns, how long are we gonna stay?”

  “Now, slow down, Bones, we’re just going for the day. I think we best leave all the critters here. They got enough of ’em down there already.”

  Immediately, Mama started fretting about what to take out to the island. “I just put up some stewed tomatoes, and there’s snap beans and okra in the garden. Bones, you come out and help me get some stuff from the garden.”

  “Hold on, Lori, it’s too dark to be going out to the garden. You don’t need to go running around like a chicken with its head cut off. We’re just going for the day.”

  “I will not go see family without showing some appreciation.”

  The next morning, as the first rays of a new day peeked over the horizon, me and Nolay loaded three croker sacks full of Mama’s appreciation into the trunk of the Champion.

  Nolay put the top down, I slipped in between him and Mama, and we started the nearly three-hour trip toward the great Everglades. I snuggled close to Mama and asked, “Nolay, tell me the story about when you were a little boy and lived on Cat Island.”

  “Bones, I told you that story how many times already?”

  “I know, but just tell me one more time. Please? Every time I hear it I learn something new.”

  “Okay, one more time. Let me see, now.”

  Nolay took a deep breath and glanced at me. “No
w, you know it ain’t an island at all. It’s called that ’cause that’s where all the Indian side of my family, the Cat clan lives, pretty much set apart from the rest of the county. My grandmother, Lily Cat, was a beautiful Indian woman, but she was also headstrong, and went and married a white man. Back then, same as now, that was not looked upon kindly, but she did it anyways. The two of them was working down in the Lake Okeechobee area when the hurricane of ’28 came blowing through and overflowed them flimsy dikes the Yankees had built. Both of ’em died in that. They had one son, and that was my daddy, your granddaddy. He was raised in the village by my grandmother’s people, the Cat clan.”

  “And then what happened?”

  Nolay glanced out over the glassy brown waters of the Indian River as if to find missing pieces of the story. “Well, he married a beautiful Indian woman. My mama was from the Seminole tribe.” Nolay quickly looked down at me. “That’s how I got my name. We lived in the village until I was about your age. Then they decided to move up here to the old family land in Micco. Money was pretty scarce back in those days, so my daddy went and took on an extra job in Key West. The state of Florida was building a bridge to connect all the Florida Keys. He was down there working on building that dang bridge when the hurricane of ’35 hit. He didn’t make it out alive.

  “The house that me and my mama was living in got blown clear down. What’s left of it is sittin’ right next to our house now. That’s when the two of us moved back down to Cat Island. It wadn’t six months after that my mama got sick and died. I still think she died of a broken heart.”

  Nolay drove along in silence for a few minutes, then continued. “I’m a long way from being pure Indian, but my family, the Cat clan, raised me just like I was one of ’em. I wadn’t ever treated different. I’m proud of every drop of Miccosukee that I got running through my veins.”

  Nolay glanced back out at the river. “Couple years after, when I was about eighteen, I come back up here to Micco and, along with some help from my uncles Bob and Tom, built a sturdy little block house on that very piece of property. And that’s were we live now. I pretty much lived between the two places till I was about twenty.” Nolay looked at me and said, “Hurricanes have been pretty hard on our family, took out a bunch of us.”

  “Reverend Jenkins says a hurricane is the raft of God,” I said. “Or something like that. Anyway, when God gets mad at us, he sends down his raft from heaven.”

  A little smile tugged at the corner of Nolay’s mouth. “So ol’ Preacher Jenkins told you God has a raft big enough to put a hurricane on.”

  “Well, it’s something like a raft. What is it, Mama?”

  “I think you mean to say the wrath of God,” she said, smiling at Nolay.

  “Yeah, that’s what it is; anyway, God gets mad when we do bad things.”

  Nolay continued, “Well, Bones, I don’t think it has anything to do with God. I think it’s nature, the spirit of Earth. When man starts trying to mess with nature and change it around for his own good, then nature comes in and shows ’em who the real boss is. If it hadn’t been for men thinking they were more powerful than nature, that they could change it around any way they wanted to, then none of my family or any of those thousands of other people would have been there and none of ’em would have died.”

  “What happened after you left Cat Island and built our house?”

  “Now see, you already know that story, too.”

  “I know, but you can’t stop at the best part.”

  Nolay winked at me. “Well, one winter I was earning some extra money picking oranges up in the Ocala area when I made friends with one of the other pickers. He was from Georgia and asked me if I wanted to catch a ride with him and go up to Georgia and see his family’s farm. And that’s when I met the prettiest little green-eyed woman I had ever seen in my life. One look into those eyes and she cast a spell on me. I was a goner.”

  “Mama, did you really do that?”

  “I guess you could say we put a spell on each other,” Mama said. “It wasn’t long after we met that, against my daddy’s wishes, we ran away and got married. Then along came you, and I think you know the rest of the story.”

  Nolay said, “Well, there was a little spell in there when World War II started and I was gone for a little over a year. I was one of the lucky ones. I got drafted when the war was pretty close to ending. I wanted you and your mama to go up and stay in Georgia with Big Mama and Grandpa.” He shook his head and let out a little laugh. “But your mama wouldn’t hear of leaving our house and land. The two of you stayed right there.”

  Mama cut in with, “But you can see that everything turned out fine. I could not bear to leave behind our home that we had worked so hard on. All our neighbors pitched in when Nolay was gone, and we all helped each other out. It wasn’t a good time, but we all took care of each other.”

  Nolay slowed the Champion down as we came up behind a car towing a cumbersome house trailer. He shook his head. “Them things are a nuisance. They remind me of wagon trains. Come down here and park wherever they want. They shouldn’t be allowed on the road. Or on the land, either.”

  Mama said, “Nolay, I don’t think the state of Florida is going to let you put up a gate to keep out people or trailers. People come down here to enjoy the weather.”

  “Maybe some of ’em do. But you mark my words, Lori, them wagon trains are going to be the ruin of this place. They shouldn’t be allowed.” Nolay glanced at me. “Bones, I see some mighty sleepy eyes. Why don’t you lay your head down in your mama’s lap and get some rest? We’ll be there soon enough, and you’ll be running wild with all the kids.”

  I curled up between my parents, and the steady hum of the Champion’s engine and its big tires singing on the pavement soon lulled me to sleep. The next thing I knew, Mama’s hand was gently shaking me. “Wake up, Bones, we’re here.”

  As Nolay pulled into the small village, I sat up and looked out the window. Like oblong birdhouses, several palmetto-thatched dwellings called chickees sat in a horseshoe formation on raised platforms. A thin gray thread of smoke drifted up from the cook chickee that sat in the middle of the village. Before the car stopped rolling, we were surrounded by an array of giggling Indian children and yapping dogs.

  I recognized Nolay’s uncle Bob Cat as he walked toward us. His face was an older version of Nolay’s. His eyes sat in his round face like shiny brown marbles, instead of Nolay’s crystal-blue; his wavy black hair hung nearly to his shoulders. Over a pair of dungarees, he wore the traditional multicolored shirt of the Miccosukee and Seminole Indians.

  He flashed the same dazzling smile as Nolay and said, “Well, gol-durn, look what the cat done drug in. Now, that is one dang fancy vehicle you are driving. We were just talking about you the other night, and here you show up. Y’all get on out. Tom is up with Blind Spot right now. She’ll be mighty happy to see you folks.”

  Soon as I stepped out of the truck I was surrounded by a group of brown-cookie-faced Indian kids all speaking at the same time.

  “Hey, Bones, my dog just had a litter of puppies, you want one?”

  “We got a pet skunk, come see it.”

  “I’m learning how to sew.”

  Uncle Bob Cat waved a hand in the air and said, “You kids hush up, you gotta talk one at a time. Bones cain’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  Nolay got out of the car and opened the trunk. He handed the croker sacks to some of the older boys and said, “Y’all take these up to the cook chickee.”

  One of the girls grabbed my hand and said, “Bones, come on and meet Two-Stripes, our pet skunk.”

  Before I could be pulled away, Nolay intervened. “Bones, you come and pay your respects to Blind Spot, then you got the rest of the day to go wild.”

  We walked with Uncle Bob Cat through the small village. As we passed some of the chickees, women dressed in long rainbow-colored skirts and blouses came to the open doors. They waved shyly and called out, “Hey, Yoo.” Nolay an
d his family were being welcomed back home.

  We stopped in front of one of the chickees. Tom Cat, Uncle Bob Cat’s brother, came to the open door. He slapped the side of his leg and let out a little hoot. “Y’all come on in.” He looked back inside the chickee and said something in the singsong Native language.

  Inside the chickee, the rich smell of smoke mingled with the mustiness of dried leaves. Slender fingers of sunlight filtered through the palmetto thatching and danced across the floor. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I saw a small woman nestled against the wall on a pile of colorful blankets. In a voice as soft as falling rain, she said, “Hey, Yoo, my family, it is good to feel you again.” She lifted her frail arms, like two small, shriveled tree limbs. “Come close so I can touch you.”

  Her moon-shaped face was as brown and wrinkled as a crumpled-up paper bag. Two small holes the color of clouds sat where her eyes should have been. A halo of thick silver hair twisted around the top of her head. Thick strands of blue and green beads draped around her thin neck. Old and frail, Blind Spot, Nolay’s great-grandmother, my great-great-grandmother, sat on her pile of blankets, as elegant as a queen.

  Nolay walked over, slowly bent down, and pressed his nose against Blind Spot’s wrinkled cheek. Her small, graceful hands ran over his face and hair. “You are still handsome, Grandson. Do you remain as rascally as a raccoon?” A small smile spread across her ancient face. “You still wear the smell of metal toys.”

  Nolay smiled. “Grandma, it’s good to see you again. I never could fool you. You must be smellin’ that new car I got.”

  “It is all over you.”

  “I’ll be happy to take you for a ride.”

  “Thank you, Grandson, but I am happy just to use my legs.”

  Mama walked over, squatted down, and hugged Blind Spot’s frail body.

  She placed a delicate hand on Mama’s face and said, “Honey Girl, good for you to be here. And how are you doing with this rascal grandson of mine?”

  “It’s good to see you again, Grandma,” Mama said.