The Bone Tree

by Christopher Fulbright

  Then Eddie came along and ruined the whole damn thing.

  “You don’t want to dance with this nigger lover, do you, Wendy?”

  Eddie had been standing within earshot. We’d missed him coming out of the doors to the commons as everyone began to file outside for a few minutes before fifth period started. The sound of his voice and the cut of his words killed the magic moment like an axe to the head.

  “Wouldn’t you rather have a real man like me to teach you a few moves?” He pressed himself against her, wrapped his arm around her waist, and breathed in her womanly scent like a dozen flowers.

  I rose to my feet. My fists were clenched tight and my jaw was working up something good for my mouth to say when Wendy smacked Eddie and twirled out of his grip. Eddie’s buddies Nathan and Scott laughed like the sidekick thugs they were.

  “Maybe you can dance with his coon, too. I guess your momma could get in on the action. Y’all could have a real fuckin’ good time together.” Eddie looked down at Bobby. “Why don’t you bring your momma too, banjo lips? Maybe she’d appreciate a real man like me since your pickaninny daddy’s been dead—”

  A surge of fury exploded in Bobby. Before I realized that he’d even stood up, before I could say anything at all, Bobby’s fist smacked with an audible snap, firmly against Eddie Milken’s jaw, rocking his head to the side and sending him reeling to the ground.

  I’d seen Bobby take a lot of crap from bigots at school, and it never seemed to faze him. The words were just words and they went through him or around him or over him, and they seemed to make me madder than they made him. But it was an unspoken agreement between us that we didn’t acknowledge those people when they talked like that. Almost like they didn’t exist, and once we got home, to our personal little piece of the forest, they didn’t. We had our tree house and the creek and our houses, and everything we did together. But that day was the wrong day for Eddie Milken, and I really think it wasn’t the words that were aimed at him so much as it was his mom and dad—that no such backwoods fish slime should even speak of his parents, and such an offense invoked the fury of hell unleashed.

  Bobby leaped on top of Eddie and followed with a barrage of fists that broke open the bigger kid’s lips and started a fount of blood flowing from Eddie’s nose. It was like Bobby had turned into Black Lightning, and instead of fighting some inner-city drug pushers, he was scouring our small-town school of the blight of racism, starting at the top. I wondered if the lyrics to “Fighting My Way Back” rang in his head, Phil Lynott singing the anthem of his salvation as he beat Eddie Milken to a bloody pulp for about ten solid seconds that seemed to last a glorious minute or two, at least. Kids gathered around the battle and shouted unintelligible things, and I was yelling at the top of my lungs, “Kick his ass, Bobby! Kick that redneck shit nose’s ass!”

  But it was really just a moment before Eddie got his bearings. Despite what looked like a pretty severe beating that he’d taken, he just sat up using his superior strength and pushed Bobby to the ground.

  Eddie let loose with a string of curses and soundly pummeled Bobby Nolan like an adult might beat a ten-year-old girl. The sounds of his fists in Bobby’s ribs, smacking against his face, were painful to hear.

  I shouted “Nooooo!” and jumped into the middle of the ring of kids and planted a good solid kick right between Eddie Milken’s legs as he stood on his knees straddling my best friend. My shoe perfectly cupped his crotch and delivered a satisfyingly crushing blow to Eddie’s nuts. He howled and fell over, and next thing I knew, a fist—maybe Scott’s or Nathan’s—jarred the side of my head and an elbow smashed into my ear, and I was going down under a fighting mob.

  Chaos happened. Everyone was everywhere. It lasted an interminable period of time, enswirled as I was in the nightmare that had developed so suddenly, before I heard the sounds of adults, namely Principal Reddenhurst, yelling for everyone to cut it out and get inside.

  “Now!” he yelled. “Cut it out! Get offa there. Come on!”

  Principal Reddenhurst and Coach Valentine picked us all up by the scruffs of our necks and dragged us off each other, back into the cafeteria and down the long hall of doom that led to his office.

  * * *

  By the time my mother arrived in Principal Reddenhurst’s office, Mr. Milken had already shown up and had some choice words for the principal and said some of the ugliest things I’ve ever heard come out of a person’s mouth. He took his boy and pointed at Bobby and said he’d be pressing charges and see to it that he and his family got justice one way or the other.

  Coach Valentine, who was a pretty big man himself, had to remind Mr. Milken that everything would be handled with the parents, and not to go shooting his mouth off too much seeing as how this town still had a sheriff and folks who didn’t agree with his opinion. Mr. Milken, Lictor of the KKK (which we thereafter began to refer to as Lictor of The Balls) took his bloodied child home, face glowing red in fury.

  Bobby spent most of that time just looking at his shoes. The nurse cleaned him up, but he’d gotten as good a beating as he’d given. I’d even managed to get a couple scrapes and hits, but nothing like Bobby did. When my mom got there she made a fuss over both of us and was pretty furious, demanding to know why somebody hadn’t been there to prevent this from happening. Principal Reddenhurst pulled her aside and thought we couldn’t hear him when he told her that “the Nolan boy” started it, and maybe, he said in a quieter voice so that Coach Valentine wouldn’t hear, just maybe she shouldn’t let her son hang out with that colored boy.

  My mom’s face went about as red as Mr. Milken’s had been and she said, “Well, thank you very much for your suggestion, but I’ll decide what’s best for my son.” She reached down and urged me up.

  Bobby still hadn’t raised his head.

  My mom knelt in front of him and took his chin gently in her hand. I saw tears shimmering in his eyes, but he wouldn’t let them fall and must have exerted a mighty force to keep his chin from quivering.

  “Bobby, is your momma coming to get you?”

  He nodded, yes.

  “You be sure to tell her to call me when she gets home, okay?”

  Again the nod.

  She gave him a half-hug and placed her hand between my shoulders ushering me out the door. Leaving Bobby there by himself felt like leaving him behind for the enemy.

  CHAPTER 8

  Straight after we got home, Mom told me tersely to go inside and change and take a bath. All the way home I’d told her how it wasn’t Bobby’s fault, how Eddie finally crossed the line and got what he deserved, and she just nodded. As I soaked in the bath and realized just how many places I’d got hit as the water ebbed and rose at points of impact, I also realized that our plans for tonight’s camping trip were dead before they’d had a chance to get born. I didn’t know if I was truly relieved or not. Part of me was. Part of me said that going to the Bone Tree and burning it to the ground was the absolute wrong thing to do, if for no other reason than the rest of the forest—our houses and everything—could go up in blazes with it. And could we know for sure that it would end the haunting?

  No. But something told me that the Bone Tree was somehow the source. Every time I thought back to that trip with Tom in the woods, I remembered how the darkness gathered there, and that moaning we heard. Destroying that tree might not solve our problems, but it sure as heck seemed like the right thing to do, all things considered.

  I heard the phone ring as I was getting out of the bath. I guessed it was Bobby’s mom and I guessed right. I hurried to the end of the hall and eavesdropped on the conversation. Listened to Mom tell Ms. Nolan what had happened, recounting what I had told her in the car.

  “Marian,” my mom said, “if there’s anything I can do, just let me know. I know Bobby’s not a bad boy, and I feel just rotten that this all happened the way it did.”

  I could almost hear Ms. Nolan saying “Thank you, Miss Karen,” and how she’d be sure to call if she needed anythin
g.

  It was a somber evening. Dad got home and after getting the scoop from Mom asked how I was, and if Bobby was okay, but other than a few words about a reasonably uneventful day at work, he didn’t have much else to say at the supper table.

  I had a strange feeling inside that I couldn’t shake, and I guess Mom saying to Ms. Nolan that she “felt just rotten” about everything that happened, pretty much summed it up for me, too. I felt sick inside. Not even my mom’s meatloaf and potatoes with corn tasted quite right, and I chose to go to bed early and tried to read for a while but just couldn’t concentrate. Instead I turned on the radio and listened to the Rangers game. I didn’t pay so much attention to what was going on, but the sound of the ballpark and the crack of the ball on the bat and the AM sounds of the announcers’ voices were soothing and helped me calm down.

  I stared out my bedroom window as the sunset blazed in pink and orange streaks over the treed hills to the west. The sounds of the game drifted into the background, and I thought again about Wendy Hawkins and wondered if I’d be able to go to the dance.

  My bedroom door opened.

  Dad stood in the space between my room and the hallway.

  “Hey,” I said, propping myself up on my elbows. Part of me said I was in trouble. I had gotten a few spankings before, but this time he hadn’t seemed all that mad, so I didn’t know what was coming.

  It was a little strange to see him there. Ever since I was little it had been Mom’s job to put me to bed, and we rarely said a whole lot. Oh, we talked a little on weekends, but he had his projects, and I was busy with my kid stuff and really, truth be told, I didn’t see a whole lot of him. My dad worked hard. He spent a lot of time on the job site, some of that time in an air-conditioned project trailer that smelled like dirt, cigars, and fresh concrete, the rest of that time outside with a hardhat on, getting cooked by the Texas sun and making sure folks were doing stuff right. I never felt like he was an absentee dad or anything. I knew he was working to provide for us, and that’s all that mattered. That was a man’s duty—to work hard and provide for his family, and he expected that Mom had everything taken care of on the home front when he got home. I never resented any of that. It was the natural order of things. It felt right.

  So when he came to the door of my room, especially after the day I’d had, I knew something important was coming. Usually this time of the evening, he’d be on the couch in front of the TV smoking his pipe, or with an open book on his chest while he snored. He’d broken the routine to make an appearance here at bedtime.

  He stepped inside my room and looked around like it was a new place. He still had the remnant of an impression from the hard-hat band around his thinning hair, for which, whenever Mom playfully teased him about going bald, he told her to thank the Marine Corps and the four free trips they’d given him to Vietnam. He smelled like the job site because he hadn’t changed out of his work clothes yet. I wondered if Mom sent him in to talk to me, but then I decided that wasn’t fair. We didn’t talk a lot, but it wasn’t ever hard or weird when we did. Like I said, I understood his sense of duty. And I respected him. I knew if he was here in my room, it was because he felt like it was an important part of being my dad.

  “Look, Son...about the fight today. I just want to say that I think you did the right thing.”

  My eyebrows went up. I realized I was holding my breath a little bit (the fear that a spanking might be on the way hadn’t completely gone away) but this wasn’t what I’d expected.

  Dad came in and sat down at the end of my bed. I sat up and folded my legs, turning off the radio.

  “You know Bobby’s got it pretty rough down there with his mom.”

  I nodded.

  “You know he’s got a lot of responsibility—more than any kid your age has any right to have to shoulder, but sometimes it happens that way. And I’ll bet he feels that weight more than he lets on to you. Maybe he doesn’t even know how to explain it. But anyway, Bobby’s a good kid, and I don’t buy that principal’s line of bull that Bobby was out to start trouble. Everybody in town knows Milken’s kid has got a mouthful of devils, and one of ‘em gets out every time he opens it. If he got a beating today, he brought it on himself.”

  “He calls Bobby all kinds of names all the time.” The words came spilling out of my mouth, the same stuff I’d told Mom earlier, but now I had a sympathetic ear. “But he’s been, well...like you said, dealing with a lot lately, and when Eddie shot off about his mom and how his dad was dead, well, Bobby lost it. So, I guess when he started gettin’ the raw end of it, I just had to jump in.”

  I almost told him about the Bone Tree then. I should have said something about the shadow man. But something told me that was taking it too far. He would’ve chalked it up to overactive imaginations, to us being kids and trying to make excuses for something that already had a good reason for happening. At least, that’s how I thought back then.

  I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to ruin this moment, anyway. Because while we were talking about Bobby, it was really about us. About him teaching me about being a man. And I hungered for every moment like this, few and precious as they were.

  He patted my back lightly and squeezed my shoulder with his hard calloused hand, his rough skin skritching across the cotton fabric of my T-shirt.

  “I’m not sayin’ that fighting is the right way to solve your problems, Kevin. Probably the Milken kid would have gone off half-cocked and brought his garbage around another day. But there’s a time to take a stand, and you recognize it when it comes. And when it comes you’ve got to muster the courage for it, and you’ve got to stand in the line of fire, otherwise, when the moment is gone, you lose a part of yourself to the bad guys, and maybe worse, you lose respect for yourself. Then, next time you have to stand up for your friends or the things you believe in, you’re a little bit weaker, and before you know it, all you’ve got is defeat in your life, and the world runs you over.”

  Dad looked at me and met my eyes. I couldn’t help it but a few tears gathered in mine. I didn’t make any move to wipe them away.

  “Today, you recognized one of those times, and you stood in there and fought. I’m proud of you Son.”

  He patted my back again, and I didn’t know why at the time but I started to cry, and he pulled me into a rare hug. I wet his shirt with my tears. Maybe I was hurting for Bobby or maybe wishing that Dad and I had more times like these, but I cried deep from the guts for a couple minutes, and he held me. He said a few placating words to calm me down.

  Soon I was sniffing it off and thinking that I’d been a big sissy about the whole thing, but he smiled as he stood from the end of my bed. He went to the door. Beyond him in the hallway the end table lamp glowed in the living room, and I figured Mom was in there waiting for some kind of report.

  “Good night Son.” He turned off the light.

  “Good night Dad.”

  And then his dark silhouette disappeared into the living room.

  CHAPTER 9

  I slipped beneath the sheets and heard Mom and Dad’s voices, muffled and deliberately quiet beneath the television sounds of Sonny & Cher in the living room.

  Outside my window, purple hues of twilight were absorbed by charcoal shades of gray until darkness owned the night. A few distant stars shone above the trees. The forest was deep and foreboding, and I began to think of Bobby and his mother down there at the bottom of the hill, close to the cemetery. I said a small prayer for Bobby that he was okay, that he didn’t get in too much trouble, but most of all that the shadow man wouldn’t appear tonight.

  I closed my eyes and tried to think of something else. I tried to summon thoughts of Wendy’s legs, of Conan’s savage sword, of swimming in the creek, but none of it really hung on and just kept my tired mind busy when I should have been sleeping.

  I didn’t realize how long I’d been at it until the lamp in the living room went dark, and Mom and Dad went off to bed. I heard the creaking of their footsteps in the hall.
Mom peeked in on me, and I pretended to be asleep until I sensed that she was gone.

  I kept my eyes closed. At some point I drifted off.

  When I awoke again, the house had settled. I don’t know what time it was, but it seemed that a couple hours had passed. The stillness of deep night lurked in the hallway, and although I had to pee, I didn’t want to get up and go out there.

  I glanced at the window.

  The expanse of our front lawn was sparsely illuminated by starlight. Part of the drive was visible where it met Greathouse Road, and trees towered above it, creating a sable backdrop beyond which nothing else could be seen. Just as I was convincing myself that nothing was out there, something moved at the end of the driveway.

  Everything in me tensed. I crossed my legs. I grabbed the edge of the blankets and pulled them close up around my face. I was ready to cry out for Mom, or Dad, or both, but my voice fled along with my ability to move.

  I saw the shape again. Dark, definitely human in form. It neared the house.

  It was headed for my window.

  Oh my God it got Bobby and Ms. Nolan now it’s coming for us and Dad’s going to get gutted and Mom’s going have all her skin peeled off and oh sweet Jesus please if you ever heard me hear me now—

  The shape disappeared from my line of sight. It was close to the garage door, I figured. If it was still there at all.

  Taking shallow breaths, I crept from bed. I went to the window, crouching down so I couldn’t be seen from the outside by some demon looking to drink my soul.

  I knelt beneath my windowsill. I pressed my ear against the wall. I felt the residual heat of the day that had been absorbed by the bricks still radiating, but I didn’t hear a damn thing.

  I edged the top of my head above the sill and took a peek outside.