The Story of Bones

by Donna Cousins

  Uncle Stash became my best champion. He set aside a table and chair in the shop where I could study in peace. He also gave me two new number 2 pencils.

  “The average pencil can draw a line thirty-five miles long,” he informed me.

  “Really? Did someone do that?”

  “Someone must have, or we wouldn’t know, would we?” His tone suggested I wasn’t as smart as he had previously thought. “Pencils can also write underwater.”

  “That would be easier to prove.”

  “Yes, it would. And be sure to use the same pencils you study with to take the exam because they’ll remember the correct answers. That’s Chinese.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. I eyed him. “I’ve been meaning to tell you something.”

  “What?”

  “Osprey meat tastes like the bottom of a garbage pail.”

  “It does?”

  “Yes.”

  On the morning of the test, I woke up half dead. I had a headache that felt like an invasion of brain termites, and my throat was raw, as if the termites had already been there and chewed their way north. I stumbled out of bed and into the clothes I had laid out the night before when I still felt okay. Sick? Today of all days?

  My pencils rested on the kitchen table alongside a spoon and a bowl of oatmeal that Zola had prepared and sprinkled with brown sugar. She and Baba sat at the table staring at me as though I was going off to war and wouldn’t be seen again for a long, long time. I did my best to act healthy so they wouldn’t try to keep me home. I managed to eat most of the oatmeal even though it tasted like dirt, and for once I had zero appetite. I smiled a little and jiggled my eyebrows meaningfully so I wouldn’t have to talk. I was pretty sure my voice had gone south.

  A duet of “good lucks” and “do your bests” accompanied me to the door.

  “Thanks,” I rasped, hurrying out before either of them could realize I clung to life’s ragged edge. Every step coincided with a hammer hitting my skull. My eyelids brought to mind sixty-grit sandpaper. I felt hot, cold, freaking haywire. But nothing was going to prevent me from taking the exam.

  The sun had barely cracked the horizon when I walked past Uncle Stash’s workshop. My uncle seldom came to work until later, yet the door to the shop stood wide-open. I noted this and kept going, fearful of being late. By then sheer momentum was allowing me to put one foot in front of the other. The complication of turning in a new direction seemed beyond my resources. I gripped the number 2 pencils as though they were lifesaving amulets. They felt slick in my palm.

  Then, not with conscious intent but because I couldn’t help myself, my feet changed direction. I turned around and retraced my steps. My woolly head prickled with questions. What if something was amiss? What if Stash was in trouble? How could I fail to check and, at the very least, close the door myself?

  I was in a feverish stupor as I lurched down the path to the workshop. The door stood open. At the threshold I came to an abrupt halt because a person rushing out almost ran into me. “Skinner?” I croaked.

  He straightened and stepped back as if called to attention by a superior officer. Sliding one hand behind his hip, he managed to look stern and put-upon at the same time. “Your uncle should not leave the door open. I went in to see if everything was okay.”

  “What?” I stared at him. My head felt ready to explode.

  “To make sure everything was okay,” he repeated, louder, enunciating to underscore my obvious mental deficiency.

  “Including that cash you took?”

  “What cash?” With the one arm available to him, he tried to shove me out of the way.

  I had the presence of mind to notice I had grown nearly as tall as him. I grabbed the arm tucked behind his back and pulled it forward. He wound up, getting ready to slug me. A wave of dizziness tilted the ground beneath my feet, and in one mighty contraction, I booted the contents of my stomach onto his T-shirt, shoes, and the fist clutching a thick roll of bills.

  His fingers sprang open so fast that they might as well have held burning coals. While I got another, wretched look at my breakfast, Skinner dropped the money to the ground. He unleashed an impressive string of expletives as he swiped at the pungent mess running down his shirt. Then he did a little dance, shifting his weight back and forth as he tried to knock the slime from his sneakers. But he succeeded only in smearing dust into the lumpy crud caked between the laces.

  When he looked up at me, his face displayed such revulsion that you would think I was the one caught in a criminal act, with stolen cash in my hand. “You’re disgusting.”

  “You stole from Uncle Stash.”

  “You can’t prove anything, Sawdust-for-Brains. And you don’t know squat.”

  “You’re a loser, Skinner. That much I know.”

  “You don’t know squat.”

  He shoved me aside and walked away, cursing. As I watched him go, I wiped my mouth on the hem of my shirt. My pencils remained miraculously clean and shiny. Except for the outermost bill, the roll of cash was in good shape too, scattered over dry land rather than in the puddle of worse-for-wear oatmeal. I returned the money to the metal box on the shelf and hurried out, pulling the door closed behind me. I was quite sure Skinner wouldn’t be back anytime soon.

  The vomiting must have released something nasty because I felt a little better then. It didn’t hurt that I had given Skinner a good going-over. “Trying to help,” he had said. Did he really think I would believe that? He had to be the dimmest bulb I had ever known. Also the meanest and most destructive. I was learning that the connections between stupidity and malice were tangled and dense. Exhibit A: Skinner.

  When I started out again, the sun produced a dazzle that hurt my eyes. What time was it? The test would begin on the stroke of the hour, no exceptions. Panic squeezed my heaving chest.

  I stepped up the pace until tortured breathing brought me to a halt. Gasping, I bent over, braced my hands on my knees, and sucked in air. I vowed that if Skinner had made me late for the exam, I would track him down and barf on him all over again. No, I would do worse. Murderous thoughts coursed through my mind. I gave them full rein until my breathing finally settled. Then, gripping the number 2 pencils, I made my way forward again, teetering and clenched with worry.

  I skidded into the classroom at the very last moment, just before the proctor closed the door. I was sweaty and rank. In my ravaged shirt I must have appeared an unlikely candidate for a bright future. The proctor slid his eyes over me. I tried not to speak or wheeze. With as much dignity as I could muster, I squared my shoulders, croaked my name, and held up the shiny new pencils to prove I was an actual test-taker and not a rotter who had lost his way after a ruinous night at Captain Biggie’s.

  The proctor consulted a list and, frowning, waved me toward an empty desk. A minute later he gave some instructions and said, “Begin.”

  6

  AUNT LETTY BROUGHT HOMEMADE ICE cream. Zola baked a chocolate cake. Baba poured coffee into mugs for Uncle Stash and Mr. Kitwick, the honored guest if you didn’t count me. We were celebrating my tenth-grade graduation and the Junior Secondary Certificate I had earned with highest honors.

  My father had invited Mr. Kitwick as a special surprise. When my school principal appeared on our doorstep, I stood up so fast I knocked over my chair. At first I thought he had come to inform me it was all a mistake—that I hadn’t graduated or passed the exam after all. I barely took a breath until he shook my hand and said, “Congratulations, Bonesy.” His long, thin fingers bunched in mine like a bundle of twigs. “You’ve made a good start down your path to the future.”

  The dirt lane to Uncle Stash’s workshop came to mind before I took in the real significance of his words. I would understand his meaning better in the years ahead, when my path would split into forks that snaked farther away from the shop down the road. For now, my new occupation as Uncle St
ash’s apprentice led only a short distance to a place I already knew, yet I was giddy with anticipation. I felt my world expanding beyond the chokehold of the blighted field behind our house. Compared to an endless struggle for yield from the flinty earth, making fine and useful things out of wood seemed like a glorious occupation. Uncle Stash said my wages would grow along with my skill. Soon I would earn enough to support my family. I was a full-fledged, certified junior adult, heady with possibility and the admiration of everyone around me.

  Baba gave me a leather carpenter’s belt he had made from a kudu hide that he’d tanned himself. There were pockets for nails and loops to hold tools. When he handed the belt to me, he shook my hand, man to man, something he had never done before. “I’m proud of you,” he said. I must have looked startled because then he let go and wrapped me in our normal hug.

  Zola’s gift was a bracelet of bright red lucky bean seeds she had strung on a fine black cord. “For luck in love and work,” she said, tying the ends around my wrist. At least ten strands of lucky bean seeds circled her slender neck.

  “Then you must be very lucky,” I said, teasing.

  She blushed while pretending to ignore me. “Don’t let Hannie chew on them.”

  I stood eye-to-eye with Zola now and would soon grow even taller. My voice frequently betrayed me with sudden squeaks and boomlets. My wrists poked sticklike from my longest sleeves, and my feet were as big as Baba’s. He had given me a razor and a lesson in shaving, although the hairs on my chin were still nearly invisible.

  “I’m going to miss you telling me to study and make something of myself,” I said with a smile, in a lighthearted way.

  “You’re fifteen,” she replied, as though my age were a repulsive disease. “You have a long, long way to go.” Her words flew out like darts, without regard for my feelings or our distinguished guest.

  Stung, I felt heat rise in my cheeks.

  Baba turned sharply to her, but his words came out gentle. “Learning is lifelong for all of us, Zola. Your mother didn’t go as far in school as either of you, but she always read and learned new things.”

  “Mama had a big vocabulary,” I added in a too-bright voice.

  “Mama, Mama,” Hannie echoed, smiling broadly. We had recovered from the flu or whatever we’d had. Baba still coughed a little, but Hannie looked as fit and plump as a peach. Chocolate frosting circled her mouth. The mess on her face gave Zola reason to turn away from a conversation that seemed to annoy her.

  She moistened a towel and applied quick, efficient swipes that pushed Hannie’s head right and left. Zola’s features were slack with … what? The tedium of a chore she had performed a thousand times? Watching her, I was struck by a new awareness—a vision of my sister’s vulnerable, well-defended core. What surprised me was the unhappiness I saw there. She was not just unhappy today, about me, but with herself and her life. Circumstance had pinned her to a small, unchosen world of domestic duty. Who was encouraging her with a range of alternatives or a ticket to a bright future?

  I felt a flare of shame for the success I had achieved at her expense. Of course she cultivated resentment as I started making my escape from the narrow life into which we had both been born. I was heady with my new status, eager to bid farewell to the remains of an unpromising childhood. Yet I felt powerless to make things better for her.

  “I really like the bracelet, Zo,” I said. It was all I could think to say.

  Mr. Kitwick cleared his throat. He had brought a bag and had kept it stowed under his chair. Now he reached down and removed a parcel wrapped in paper and string. “For you,” he said with a little bow, handing it to me.

  Even though the gift was most certainly a book, the formality of the presentation and the way he had saved it until last lent a certain drama to the opening. I wondered what he expected me to study now. Everyone watched as I fumbled with the string. There would be no ignoring this book, whatever it was. I wondered if Mr. Kitwick planned to track me down and quiz me on the contents.

  The volume that emerged from the wrapping was like nothing I had ever seen. The cover was made of smooth, burnished leather, so fine to the touch that I wanted to simply cradle it in my hands. I turned it over and saw that both the front and back were blank. No title, no author. Puzzled, I fanned open the thick, cream-colored pages and was startled to find the inside as blank as the cover.

  “It’s a journal, Bonesy,” Mr. Kitwick explained, “where you can write whatever you wish.”

  “Me?” Defacing those immaculate pages seemed unthinkable. “Uh, what should I write?”

  He sat back and made a nest of his folded hands. “Your thoughts, ideas, something you learned. Lists, drawings, doodles. Anything you want.”

  “Are you going to read it?”

  He laughed, a throaty chuckle. “No. And no one else should either, unless you want them to. The journal is just for you.”

  Just for me? I touched the leather, as smooth as a baby’s skin, and tried to imagine a thought worthy of expressing between those fine covers. My mind went as blank as the book in my lap. “Well, thank you.”

  “A cockroach can live for a week without its head,” Uncle Stash said. “Write that down.”

  “Hey, this is just for me.”

  “It’s something you learned, isn’t it? How about this: the average ear of corn has eight hundred kernels, sixteen rows. Write that down.”

  “How about you stop talking?” Baba said. “You’re not his boss today.”

  “That’s right, Stash. Tomorrow morning will come soon enough.” Aunt Letty stood and started collecting plates. When she got to me, she winked and said, “Better get a good night’s sleep.”

  * * *

  Not surprisingly, my first job as Stash’s apprentice was to build a cash drawer that locked.

  When I had told my uncle about Skinner’s failed attempt at thievery, the day after it happened, he had tried to look stern but ended up laughing so heartily that sawdust shook from his overalls. “I guess we don’t need to report Skinner to the authorities. A bath in puke is punishment enough.”

  “I heard he got pretty sick too.”

  “Hard not to when you’re covered in it. We’ll keep an eye on him and use his, um, visit as a warning to improve our security.”

  I remember how he had rubbed his graying head and admitted, “I might have left the door unlocked, now that I think about it—maybe ajar, for air—and then gone out the back way. From now on we’ll both be more careful. That’s a pretty good result right there.”

  I supposed it was, though I wouldn’t have minded seeing Skinner locked up. At least Stash realized he had left the shop open without my having to point out the absence of damage to the door frame or any other sign of forced entry. It made sense Skinner would take advantage of an easy situation rather than execute a full-scale break-in. He was opportunistic to the core, a stinking hyena.

  My uncle could be absentminded, but he proved an excellent and patient teacher. I appreciated this right away on the first day of my apprenticeship, because building a drawer was far more complicated than I had expected.

  “A drawer is not merely a box without a lid,” he said, reading my mind. “It receives more punishment than any other furniture part. We yank it open, slam it shut. Yank it open, slam it shut.” He demonstrated this with arm movements resembling punches. “So a drawer must be sturdy and tight, not too heavy, and easy to slide open and closed. The wood can expand and contract. If you don’t allow for that, the drawer will stick. The dovetails at the corners can be finicky to fit. The runners have to be cleanly set into dadoes and the kicker properly mounted to prevent the drawer from tipping down as it is opened.”

  “What’s a dado?”

  “A slot cut to receive a board. That’s carpentry. In architecture a dado is the bottom of an interior wall.”

  My tenth-grade certificate hung a
bove the workbench in a handsome, Stash-crafted wood frame. I couldn’t help thinking that a tenth-grade certificate wasn’t very useful at present. My admiration for my uncle, who had learned so much on his own, grew with every passing day. Through the drawer project alone, he introduced me to joinery, fastenings, and runner systems and taught me how to use a miter saw, router, and dovetail jig. Equally important, he taught me the importance of precision.

  “Measure twice, cut once,” he said so often that I came to anticipate the words and blurt them out before he did.

  We set the drawer into a frame attached to the legs and underside of the workbench. Stash showed me how to add a plunger lock with two keys, one for him and one for me. The key to the cash drawer was the first one I had ever been responsible for. I threaded it onto a cord from Zola’s beading basket and wore it like a necklace under my shirt.

  When we transferred the money from the metal box to its new, more secure location, I opened and closed the drawer several times, proud of the snug fit and smooth glide. The drawer pull that I had made from a scrap of mahogany and sanded to a silky sheen felt solid and fine against my fingertips. The scent of cut wood wafting up from the drawer’s interior seemed particularly fresh and workmanlike—a stark contrast to the dingy, crumpled cash we placed inside.

  For a time, Uncle Stash made me the drawer specialist, starting with a single, center drawer in a simple desk and moving on to chests with three, four, or six drawers with flush, polished fronts. Soon he taught me to make chairs to go with the desks, bed frames to match the chests, and night stands to pair with the bed frames. He posted advertisements in several newspapers, and before long we were selling bedroom sets to a furniture store in a distant city. The store called them “suites” and sent a lorry as big as an elephant. The truck proved too wide for our lane, so the driver, a man of great weight named Chiddy, parked in the flats where our village gave way to bushveld and walked to the workroom. He used an ancient, squeaking dolly to push the pieces back to the truck one by one, past the neighbors, the shops, and Captain Biggie’s.