Lingering Echoes

by Angie Smibert

  Then Ash headed to the last row. Trees grew just beyond the grave markers. One was a weeping willow, dripping with gold leaves. Another was a scraggly gray tree that was already bare. It was a hawthorne, Bone realized.

  Kiawah and Kitty Hawk, her uncle’s hounds, were already there, flanking either side of one grave. Corolla raced to greet them.

  WILLOW REED PHILLIPS

  B. JANUARY 6, 1901 D. MARCH 16, 1936

  Mama.

  Bone hadn’t visited her grave as long as she could remember. Daddy didn’t go. Not even on Decoration Day, when the whole community spruced up the cemetery.

  Uncle Ash laid the flowers across her grave.

  Bone shifted from foot to foot, unsure what to do. She watched her uncle neaten up the grave, tossing the old dried-up flowers off into the woods. The dogs stretched out in the cool green grass behind the headstones.

  “Daddy says she’s not there,” Bone finally managed to say. The tree bearing her name rustled in the breeze. Uncle Ash didn’t seem to notice.

  “Nope, she ain’t,” he said. “But graveyards—like funerals—are more for the living than the dead.” He struck a light off a neighboring headstone and lit his Lucky Strike. The stone said, HAWTHORNE REED SR. Papaw. Between him and Mama was a small plaque in the ground that read ELDER HAWTHORNE. He’d been barely born when he died.

  Bone had seen Papaw whittling the wood and dreaming of baby Elder when she’d touched a toy truck he’d made.

  “Gives you a quiet place to come and think about folks you’ve lost and such. Sometimes you just need to talk.” Uncle Ash took a long drag off his cigarette.

  Bone didn’t need a separate place to think about Mama, especially with the yellow sweater always nudging her along. Like now. Running her finger over the sleeve, she could see Mama coming to lay wildflowers on Papaw’s grave. She plucked out one lone flower and placed it on Elder’s grave with a kiss. Mama’s sorrow was like a deep river current pulling her under. Bone plunged her hands into her dungaree pockets to avoid touching the sweater—or anything around her.

  She told Uncle Ash what she’d seen. “Why did she put a flower on Elder’s grave? She never knew him.”

  Uncle Ash ran his fingers through his hair before answering. “She lost a child before you, honey. It never made it to getting born, though. So she’d talk to Elder, at least until you came along.”

  Bone had always wanted a brother or sister, but Daddy had never talked about it. He was good at not talking about things.

  “What do you talk to Mama about?” Bone asked.

  He motioned for both of them to sit down next to the grave. Bone felt funny doing that, but she picked a spot between Elder and Mama.

  Uncle Ash sank down to the grass with his back against the side of Papaw’s headstone. “Well, lately, I been talking to her about how to help you with your Gift,” he said. “Like she’d done me.”

  He’d told her about this before. Mama helped him figure out how to really use his Gift, even after he got home from the war. But he hadn’t been real specific.

  “How exactly did she do that?” Bone could feel the cool earth creeping up into her bones. She hesitated before she wrapped the sweater around her. This time, she caught a flash of Mama holding a baby, holding her. This time joy flowed through Mama, with just an undercurrent of sadness. Sometimes she couldn’t brush aside what the sweater wanted to show her—nor did she want to. Bone buttoned it up to her throat.

  “When I was a boy, not too much older than you, Willow talked old Doc Smith, the vet from Radford, into letting me work for him. It was mostly shoveling manure and holding down calves for shots. But Willow told me to practice on animals he’d already diagnosed.”

  Bone had seen her uncle’s Gift in action many times. He could lay his hand on a dog or horse and see exactly what ailed it. “How did that help?”

  “I could see what was going on inside the animal, but I didn’t know what it all meant. Couldn’t tell a gallbladder from a hole in the ground. And sometimes I’d get lost in all those innards, especially if a couple things were wrong. So if the doc said the horse had the strangles, I knew to focus on the windpipe. I learned what that kind of infection looked like.” Uncle Ash thankfully did not describe in detail exactly what equine distemper did to a poor horse’s insides. The strangles was a pretty darn descriptive name anyways.

  “Willow done the same thing with the traveling nurse, helping her with her rounds and such. And Mother had Grandma Daisy to teach her. She didn’t have the Gift, but she knew everything about herbs.”

  Mamaw could touch a plant and see exactly what it could do in the body. Great-grandma Daisy could tell her what something meant, like chamomile tea being good for colic. So could her books. Mama, Ash, and Mamaw each had someone like that to help them figure out what they were seeing—and what to do with it.

  “But neither me nor Mother can figure out how we might could help you with your Gift.”

  Bone nodded. Her Gift wasn’t quite the same as theirs. She didn’t need a book to tell her what was happening when that deer got shot with the arrowhead or when Tiny Sherman got beat by those white men. “I know what I’m seeing, most of the time, leastways.” Mamaw had tried to help Bone by giving her Papaw’s baseball cap. It had good memories in it, and she really didn’t mind seeing those. Other things—like people getting hurt and dying—she did mind seeing. A lot.

  “What can I help you with, Bone?” Uncle Ash took her hand in his.

  Bone could see in his eyes how much he wanted, even needed, to help her like Mama had helped him. The real problem was that Bone didn’t know what good her Gift was.

  “My Gift is useless!” Bone blurted out. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  Uncle Ash sat back. One of the hounds raised his head and looked at her through sleepy eyes for a moment, before letting it thunk back onto the grass.

  “Sorry, Kiawah,” Bone murmured to the dog.

  Uncle Ash lit another Lucky before saying anything. “Forever Girl, I do not know the answer to that very important question. I didn’t have to think hard about what to do with my Gift. Neither did Mama or Willow or even Junior.” He took a long drag on his cigarette and let out a lopsided smoke ring. “Perhaps the more you work with your Gift, and open yourself up to it, the more obvious it’ll be what the Gift wants you to do.”

  “What it wants me to do?” Bone asked. She wasn’t sure she liked this answer one bit.

  “I’m not sure how to explain this.” Uncle Ash took another puff and ran his fingers through his hair. “When I touch an animal, I try to be real quiet and ask—in my mind—what the body is trying to tell me. And my Gift leads me to what’s wrong. But I got to be ready to do it—and respectful of the animal and my Gift, too. Does that make sense?”

  Bone nodded. “Like I did with Mama’s sweater.” When she finally decided to read her mother’s sweater to find out what really happened, Bone asked it to reveal its secrets. And she had to be ready to hear them. Hugging the sweater now, she caught flashes of many memories. There was a lot of happy and sad in this ordinary pile of yarn. “What if there’s a lot of things wrong with an animal? Does asking help you find the most important one?”

  “I suppose so. Like I said, it’s easy to get lost in your Gift.” He stubbed the cigarette out on his boot and put the remains in his shirt pocket. “Do you see a lot of things happening all at once in an object?”

  “Sometimes,” Bone replied. The sweater kept sending her memories from any old time in her mama’s life. “It’s hard to tell the when or order of things.”

  “Maybe we work on that.” Uncle Ash lit yet another Lucky Strike. “Willow would know exactly what to do. She was smart that way.” He leaned back against Papaw’s tombstone and breathed out three perfect smoke rings.

  “But she’s not here,” Bone said quietly. She knew why, thanks to her Gift. She’d died saving Aunt Mattie, of all people. A shard of coal burned in her gut. Maybe egging the rectory wasn’t s
uch a bad idea after all. Bone saw a flash. Mama was whispering something to Aunt Mattie as she slept. Bone jerked away her hands and wrapped her arms around her knees to avoid touching the butter-yellow sweater. Uncle Ash raised an eyebrow at her but didn’t say anything.

  They sat for a long moment in the grass, listening to their own thoughts. Bone tried to imagine if Mama were still here. Would she and Bone cook together like Aunt Mattie and Ruby? Would they read together? Would Bone ride along with Mama on her calls? Bone fingered her sleeve, and the sweater showed her a four-year-old Bone toddling after Mama, trying to carry her nursing bag up the stairs. She remembered that, vaguely. But what about now? Would she and Mama listen to the radio and plot the course of the war together on her National Geographic map? Would Daddy have even gone if Mama were still here? Bone doubted it.

  Wait, is the sweater following my thoughts? Is that why it prods me with memories from time to time?

  A train whistle blew, jolting Bone back to the here and now. And Will and the jelly jar. She glanced over to see if he was still with his daddy. He was—and he was screwing the lid back on.

  “Uncle Ash?” Bone hugged her knees tight.

  “Hmm?”

  “You ever hear of an object that had a Gift of its own?”

  Uncle Ash stubbed out his Lucky Strike on his boot. “What do you mean?”

  “It can do something, maybe has a special power. Like the sack in that story Soldier Jack.” In it, Jack does a kindness for an old man, who then gives him a sack with the power to catch anything.

  “‘Wickety-whack, get in my sack?’” Uncle Ash raised an eyebrow again as he said this. It was part of the story. It was what Jack had to say to trap something in the sack. He captured a turkey, a couple of robbers, and even Death himself in that bag.

  Bone nodded. “But with a real object.”

  “Like what?” Uncle Ash sat up straighter.

  “A jar.” She glanced in Will’s direction again. He was gone.

  Uncle Ash followed her gaze and nodded. Then he thought on it as he lit another cigarette and took a long drag. “Well, when I was in France, I heard of relics that folks thought could heal. Holy objects. But I always thought that was more on the believer than the object. Folks want to believe things.” He took another puff. “I also heard of stories—just stories, mind you—of haunted objects. Like that mirror over in Radford at the Ingles House. A lady haunts it. But that’s just a campfire story.”

  “I like them if they ain’t true.” Bone shivered. It was getting a bit airish out. “What did the mirror do?” She leaned in, unable to resist a good story.

  Uncle Ash smiled as he pulled himself to his feet. He reached a hand down to Bone. “Come on, dogs,” he commanded, and they sprung up and raced ahead of him. “I’ll tell you on the way to the truck.” They stepped their way gingerly back to the path and down toward the front gates, Ash talking as they walked. “Well, some folks say this woman was passing by the mirror when a lightning bolt struck right outside. The flash seared her image into the silver—kindly like a photograph. When she died years later, her ghost was seen in the mirror. Now I’ve been to that house, and I didn’t see anything in that mirror—other than my own ugly mug.”

  Still, that was definitely an object Bone did not want to touch.

  They walked through what was left of the cemetery gates. The men had left the stone pillars behind. The graveyard looked exposed and naked without the big iron gates. Bone marveled again at the thought of the Whitaker brothers getting them off their hinges and carting them away. The pale yellow pickup truck was parked in the patch of gravel down below. The dogs wrestled in the grass nearby.

  Bone rested her hand on the warm hood of the battered old truck. She’d touched it a thousand times before, but this time she saw a long stretch of beach unfolding in front of her. Uncle Ash was at the wheel, the dogs hanging their heads out the windows. The air tasted crisp and salty. The low murmur of a Christmas carol played on the radio. She felt a happy, peaceful feeling, like she was free and nothing hung over her, like she could breathe.

  Uncle Ash eyed her as she stood, hand on the truck.

  “So that’s where you go before Christmas!” Bone couldn’t help grinning.

  He laughed and whistled for the dogs—all named after beaches in the Carolinas—to clamber into the back of the truck. Kiawah and Kitty Hawk leapt into the rusting bed. Corolla hopped up into the cab.

  “Let that be our little secret, Bone.” Uncle Ash stopped, his hand on the open door, and looked at Bone peculiarly. “But that does give me an idea.” He motioned for her to slide in.

  When she did, Corolla plopped his butt in her lap. Bone hugged the little dog. He smelled like Ivory soap and biscuits and fallen leaves.

  Uncle Ash took one last look at the graveyard before getting in. “Thank you, Sis. Why didn’t I think of that?” He checked the mirror before backing the truck out of the cemetery.

  This time Bone raised an eyebrow at him.

  7

  BONE SWIRLED HER oatmeal around with a spoon, in no real hurry to get to school. She was thinking about people’s secrets—Will’s, Uncle Ash’s, Mama’s—when Uncle Ash slid the letter in front of her.

  “Maybe this’ll perk up your appetite,” he said. “Just picked it up at the store.” The Scott Brothers’ store also served as the post office. Uncle Ash handed Mrs. Price the rest of the mail, and poured himself a cup of coffee.

  The postmark said Ft. Benning, Georgia, and the handwriting was Daddy’s. Bone tore the envelope open.

  Dear Bone,

  You might not hear from me for a few weeks. Don’t worry none, though. We’re just on the move. Can’t say where I am or where we’re going. Just wanted to tell you how much I love you. A bushel and a peck, as my mother used to say. I hope Junior, Ash, and Mamaw are looking out for you. I’m awful sorry about putting you with Mattie. I blame myself. Grief can make a body do crazy things. Don’t be angry with her.

  Love,

  Daddy

  Bone wasn’t sure if Daddy meant him or Mattie doing the crazy things. Maybe he meant both. After Mama died, he threw their mattress down the steps at their old house—and slept on the floor in Bone’s room for days. She’d wake up sometimes when he’d lay a hand on her forehead in the middle of the night. Just see if you’re warm, he’d say. Bone realized now what he was doing. He was scared she might get the influenza, too.

  “Why the frown, Forever Girl?” Uncle Ash sat down with a black cup of coffee.

  “Daddy says they’re moving out but he can’t say where.” She showed Uncle Ash the letter.

  “Loose lips—” Uncle Ash started to say but quickly took an extra-long drink of coffee. “I mean he’s got to be careful. Might be Nazi spies steaming open our mail.”

  Uncle Ash was trying to make her laugh, but Bone had seen the posters, too, hanging down at the Scott Brothers’ store. Loose Lips Might Sink Ships. A boat was going under amid a cloud of black smoke. Just like Uncle Henry’s ship had. Just like Daddy’s might.

  “So what are you all planning for Halloween?” Uncle Ash asked. “Got a costume for the carnival yet?”

  “Didn’t you hear?” Mrs. Price topped off his coffee. “The carnival’s been canceled.”

  Bone pushed away from the table, tucking the letter into her schoolbooks. “I’d better get to school.”

  “Mattie?” She heard Uncle Ash ask Mrs. Price as she headed out the door.

  Bone took off running toward school, not even waiting for Ruby. The leaves crunched under her feet. What would she do if something happened to Daddy? She shoved down a thought. If Mama were here, she wouldn’t have to worry. Daddy probably wouldn’t have even left. She wouldn’t have let him.

  Mattie. Some folks said Uncle Henry joined up on account of Aunt Mattie. She drove him away with her spiteful ways. Bone could understand why Ruby blamed her mother for everything.

  Bone fumed over this throughout math, geography, and history.

  A
t lunch, Jake and Clay slipped into the bench beside Bone, flanking her. Jake rolled two hard-boiled eggs out onto the picnic table, cracking their shells. He passed Clay one. They both started peeling theirs methodically.

  “I sure hate to waste a good egg,” Jake said, picking off a piece of shell.

  “I know, but it’d be for a good cause.” Clay flicked a shard into the grass.

  Bone held up her hand. She could see what they were doing. A blind man would. “I do not want to hear about egging the parsonage.” The boys were pushing it. And Bone hated being wheedled into doing something—even if she was coming around to their cause. She wasn’t quite there yet.

  The boys shut up but kept peeling their eggs.

  Bone unwrapped her sandwich. Peeking under the slice of white bread, she crinkled up her nose. Spam. She took a tentative bite. The meat was an odd mix of salty and mushy. Not terrible, but not country ham or fried bologna.

  Jake shoved the entire egg in his mouth, almost gagging himself.

  Bone tried hard not to giggle. She failed. The boys were deviling her into a better mood.

  “We could use soap,” Clay said as he admired his own cleanly picked egg.

  “No, definitely eggs,” Ruby said as she sat down. “Rotten ones.”

  “Yup, eggs,” Jake said, about choking on his again until Bone slapped him on the back. He spit pieces of yolk across the picnic table.

  Bone looked away, suddenly glad for the canned lunch meat in front of her. She might not ever eat another hard-boiled egg again. “You know what they’re talking about, right?” Bone asked her cousin.

  “The whole seventh grade does. Probably the whole school does. And I’m still in. Are you?” The glint of anger almost twinkled in Ruby’s eyes. “If you’re my friend, you’ll do this, too.” She said it in a quiet, flat voice that sounded exactly like her mother’s.