Lingering Echoes

by Angie Smibert

  Bone stood between the two stone posts that had once held the gates. They didn’t seem like hardly enough to keep the spirits in, if there were such a thing, or grave robbers out. She took a deep breath and peered into the cemetery with her flashlight. Every ghost story she’d ever heard was running through her head. And some of them happened at night in a graveyard. Like the one about the ghost horse and rider galloping up the road and into the cemetery, where they disappeared without a sound or hoofprint.

  A twig snapped.

  Bone gulped hard and flashed the light around her. Nothing.

  “They’re just stories,” she told herself as she stepped into the graveyard.

  A light flickered in the woods. Then Bone heard the rumble of a mine truck rounding the bend in the road. Headlights.

  As she picked her way up the path, she could see a figure sitting on the bench. Bone clicked off her light. She heard the sounds of the baseball game, the train, the dogs, the crickets, and the radio. In the darkness, they flitted around Will’s head like dim fireflies. Then she heard a child’s high voice followed by a man’s raspy, low one. Bone couldn’t tell what it said. Will closed the jar and opened it again. The sounds flew around him again and again as Bone crept closer, straining to hear. Each time Will leaned in toward the end to hear the man’s words.

  Was that his father? Was that child Will? She felt like an intruder on a very private and unearthly conversation.

  Bone backed noiselessly out of the cemetery. She definitely needed to talk to Mamaw about this.

  13

  THE FADED YELLOW pickup truck was waiting for Bone after school. Uncle Ash held the door open for her with a flourish. “Your chariot awaits, Forever Girl.”

  Bone clambered up into the truck. When Uncle Ash threw it in gear, glass rattled around in the back as the truck bumped down the road toward the river.

  “I had calls to make in Big Vein,” Uncle Ash said absently, his mind a million miles away. He shook it off. “One of them was a stumper. How was school?”

  “Boring—as usual. Particularly the math lesson,” Bone replied. Corolla snuggled into her lap.

  Uncle Ash chuckled. “Get the schooling while you can. India, I mean Miss Spencer, says you could easily go to college with your brains, maybe become a professor like her someday.”

  “Really?” Bone had thoroughly enjoyed helping Miss Spencer collect stories at the beginning of the school year. So had Uncle Ash.

  The truck pulled up to the ferry crossing.

  Mr. Goodwin, who operated the ferry, had seen them coming down the road. He was halfway across the river.

  “How ’bout another type of lesson?” Ash asked. “Fetch that little book out of the glove box.”

  Bone undid the flap. Underneath the pack of smokes and paper sack of peppermint was a thin, faded brown book. Bone couldn’t recall seeing Uncle Ash doing much reading—except for the newspaper and maybe a few textbooks on animals. Bone picked up the little book gingerly. It fell open to a spot marked by a letter. Bone recognized Miss Spencer’s neat handwriting on the envelope—and the return address said Swannanoa Hall, Hollins College, Roanoke, Virginia. Bone touched the envelope and almost blushed.

  “What do you see?” Uncle Ash asked, his eyes still on the road.

  She saw Miss Spencer sitting at a wooden desk, surrounded by shelves and shelves of books and old objects, writing away. Occasionally, she’d glance at another letter, this one with Uncle Ash’s chicken scratch on it. A pleasant, warm feeling radiated off the pages like an old sweater.

  “She really likes you,” Bone said with a grin.

  “What?” Uncle Ash looked at her—and then a deep blush colored his face. “Dang it! I forgot that was in there.”

  Bone offered him the envelope, which he snatched up and stuffed into his shirt pocket.

  “She does?” he asked, a little smile replacing the blush. “Back to the book. What’s it telling you?”

  “Uh-huh,” Bone replied. She held the book quietly. What is your secret?

  She didn’t see much at first. She could tell the book was Ash’s. She turned it over in her hands. Its spine was cracked, and a tiny ribbon attached to the book marked his place. The cover said The Poems of John McCrae. Poems? Bone looked at Uncle Ash. He merely raised an eyebrow.

  Bone closed her eyes and asked again. She could see her uncle stretched out in the back of the truck, his boots on the tailgate, dogs sprawled around him. The warm breeze tasted of salt. Waves crashed against the beach. There were other sounds she couldn’t quite make out. And Uncle Ash was reading the book aloud to himself. She felt a mixture of sadness and peace as the waves and the words drowned out the other sounds. She could hear them more clearly now. Guns, explosions, and screams.

  “In Flanders Fields …,” Uncle Ash started to recite from memory.

  Mr. Goodwin rapped on the hood of the car.

  Bone dropped the book.

  Uncle Ash hopped out and grabbed the bowline to tie off the ferry. “Keep reading,” he hollered at Bone.

  She did not want to hear the other sounds again.

  Instead, she stuffed the book back into the glove box. She and the dogs knew the drill. They climbed out of the car and onto the rickety little ferry. It was only big enough for one car and a couple people. Uncle Ash drove the truck onto the bobbing platform. Then Mr. Goodwin untied the bowline again and threw the lever, sending the ferry lurching back toward the other shore. Mr. Goodwin nodded to Bone, accepted a cigarette from Uncle Ash, and then stood at the bow of his ferry. The winch motor ground its gears loudly as it pulled the ferry across the water.

  Bone and her uncle leaned against the warm hood of the truck. In a hushed voice, she told him what she’d seen—but not what she’d heard. Mr. Goodwin couldn’t hear them over the groaning motor, but she didn’t want to take a chance. “Why poetry?” she asked in a normal voice.

  “John McCrae was a surgeon in my battalion during the Great War. He wrote the poem about Flanders Fields after he saw his friend die.” Ash took a long drag on his cigarette and then blew an imperfect smoke ring.

  “I didn’t see any of that,” Bone whispered.

  “Oh, I got the book after the war,” Ash said quickly. “I wouldn’t give you anything that had actually been in the war,” he added quietly. He shook his head and tucked his dog tags back into his flannel shirt. “The poem captured something about the war, something only a body who’d been there might see.”

  “You read that when you hear the guns in your head,” Bone told him. And the screaming.

  Uncle Ash practically spun around to look at her. “What? You could see …” He leaned back against the truck again. “Oh, Forever Girl, you do have quite a Gift!”

  Bone had to agree. She was surprised, too, at how much she’d seen—and heard. When the Gift first came on, back in the summer, she’d only been able to experience the truly awful or truly wonderful memories in an object. Now, those powerful memories were surprising her less and less. She hadn’t even had to use Uncle Ash’s gloves. And she was seeing quieter memories, like Uncle Ash reading poetry.

  The ferry bumped into the Dry Branch side of the river. Uncle Ash handed her a peppermint stick as they climbed back into the truck and waved their goodbyes to Mr. Goodwin. Bone held the faded little book in her hand one more time. This time she could see a younger Ash, maybe in his twenties, unwrapping a plain brown package, postmarked Chicago. Inside was a shining new book—and no note.

  “Someone sent it to you!”

  “Can you see who?” Ash asked.

  She shook her head. Many hands had touched it from wherever it was published to Chicago and then through the mail. None of them really cared for the book, though, not like Ash. Bone had a feeling whoever sent the book never actually touched it.

  “Nuts, I was hoping you could!” Instead of another Lucky, Uncle Ash stuck a stick of candy in his mouth.

  They drove up the road to Reed Mountain, each thinking their own thoughts and
relishing the restorative wonders of Red Bird peppermint.

  Once they’d gotten to the Reed place, Uncle Ash dropped Bone off in front of Mamaw’s “office,” as she liked to call it. It was a little cabin down below the main house where she made her herbal medicines. Most of the flowers, herbs, and vegetables were gone from the gardens that surrounded the cabin. The earth was neatly turned over, waiting for next spring. Only the squash, pumpkins, and dark leafy greens were left. The hay across the way was baled. The trees behind the cabin were ablaze with oranges and reds, except for the dark greens of the Virginia pines. The breeze smelled of woodsmoke, hay, and a hint of compost. Bone missed the lavenders and rosemaries of summer.

  Inside the cabin, though, it smelled like jam. Bone drank in the aroma. The cabin was one large open room with several workbenches. Mamaw’s office always reminded Bone of a mad scientist’s lab from the movies. Tubes, drying racks, and other contraptions filled every surface. The walls were lined with shelves, each packed with jars, bottles, and little paper sacks. Bundles of drying herbs hung from the rafters. A large table sat in the center. Across the room, Mamaw stood over the woodstove stirring a pot and humming. Her calico cat, Sassafras, was curled up in the chair by the stove.

  “You’re just in time to help me make the elderberry syrup.” She nodded to the closest workbench.

  Bone knew the drill. This workbench had the jars, strainers, cheesecloth, and a contraption for squeezing the juice out of the berries and herbs. “Can I work the press?”

  “I was hoping you would.” Mamaw carried the pot over to the bench. “My grip is not what it was.”

  Bone spun open the top of the homemade press and lined the bottom with the cheesecloth. She pulled a rubber hose over the spigot on the bottom and placed a jar underneath. She put a strainer over the top. Maneuvering the pot over the open press, Mamaw poured in the burbling mixture of cooked elderberries, cloves, cinnamon, and garlic. The pungent steam filled the room with a sweet and spicy aroma.

  “Smells glorious, doesn’t it?” She set the pot down and grabbed the strainer, which caught all the bits of the herbs. She inhaled. “Smells like fall to me.”

  “Smells like pie,” Bone replied. Every year Mamaw made pints of elderberry syrup as well as jam and tinctures. This was Mamaw’s busy season, preserving the fruits of her gardens and making them into herbal medicines—and food, but mostly medicine. She and Uncle Ash also foraged for wild plants and mushrooms on their many acres of forest. The drying racks were full of berries, flowers, roots, and leaves. Out back, Bone knew she’d find more of the same.

  “Like harvesttime.” Mamaw hummed as she lined up clean jars in a neat row. “Bet you didn’t know Halloween started as a harvest festival.”

  Bone did. Mamaw told her that every time they did this. Back in Scotland and Ireland, in the old days, they celebrated the end of the lighter half of the year and the beginning of the dark half on October 31.

  Bone got up on a stool and cranked the press closed—and kept cranking. The warm juice trickled down through the hose and into the jar, filling it halfway with dark purple liquid. Mamaw replaced the jars as Bone cranked.

  “So what’s on your mind?” Mamaw asked.

  Bone kept cranking. Finally she said, “I’m worried about Will.”

  Mamaw slid another jar under the hose. “Really? I thought that boy could take care of himself better than anyone.”

  “Do you remember when he stopped talking?” Bone put her weight into turning the handle.

  “Yes, it was right after his daddy died. Sarah brought him to me and Willow after she took him to the doctor in Roanoke.” Mamaw put another jar under the hose.

  Bone stopped cranking. “Mama saw him?” She wiped her forehead on her sweater sleeve. For a second, she saw Mama touching a boy’s throat in this very room. Mama shook her head.

  “Yes, she didn’t see anything wrong with him—physically.”

  Bone started cranking again. If nothing was wrong, did Will just choose not to talk? No good comes from talking. Or was it the jar? It had to be the jar.

  “That doctor in Roanoke said it was all in his head—on account of losing his daddy. I always figured he’d talk when he was good and ready.” Mamaw squeezed the last bit of elderberry juice out of the hose and motioned for Bone to stop. “Okay, that’s all there is—for this batch.” She filled each jar the rest of the way with honey. It was from the hive she kept out in the woods. Then she stirred each jar before putting on a lid. She handed Bone a spoonful from the final jar. “My mama always said a spoonful a day of this keeps the doctor away.”

  Bone licked the sweet berry mixture clean. It had a tang to it that made the berries all the sweeter. “You should make hard candy out of this.”

  “That’s certainly an idea.” Mamaw stood and stretched her back. “There’s gonna be a shortage of candy come Halloween, I fear. But some would rather I make wine out of this berry. Hmmm, I could use some of the honey …” Mamaw started humming as she thought.

  The back door swung open, and Corolla raced in, followed by Uncle Ash carrying a box full of mason jars. They were filled with a clear liquid. And they’d rattled in the back of the truck all the way up the mountain.

  “Mr. Childress paid me in ’shine.” He grinned as he set the box down on the counter. “This should pay him up and then some. His son-in-law Ronny said he’ll try to distill you some more before he ships out.”

  Mamaw examined the jars and motioned for Ash to put them by the sink. Bone knew exactly what was in them. Mamaw and Ash didn’t drink more than a beer or two at a baseball game, but she needed alcohol to make tinctures. And folks often paid their bills—for either Mamaw’s or Uncle Ash’s services—in trade.

  “We might have to set up Hawthorne’s old still again,” Mamaw said with a shake of her head.

  “Ronny’s missus is wondering if you had something stronger than the chamomile tea for sleeping. She’s working nights over at the powder plant and can’t get to sleep during daylight.”

  “Bone, honey, fetch some valerian off the shelf. We can make her a tincture of that.”

  The herbs were arranged alphabetically in jars and packets along the front wall. Bone had almost forgotten just how many jars Mamaw had. She ran her finger along a shelf. None of the jars pulled at her like Will’s did. Bone only got flashes of Mamaw doing exactly what she was doing now: intently and lovingly filling the jars, grinding herbs in the old coffee grinder, filling little bottles with tinctures, all the while humming to herself. Sometimes Mama or Bone or Uncle Ash were helping her, but mostly her only company was a long line of calico cats: Sassafras, Buttercup, Poppy, and ones born long before Bone. All of them were no doubt named after flowers or herbs. There was a lot of happy in these jars.

  Bone found the valerian jar. She didn’t open it because she knew it smelled like old socks, old socks that had been rotting in the rain for years.

  “Have you asked her yet?” Uncle Ash asked Bone in a whisper when she returned to the counter. “About Will’s …”

  Bone shook her head. “I’m getting there,” she whispered back.

  “Ask me what?” Mamaw said from the stove. “You know I ain’t deaf yet.”

  “You got better hearing than most teenagers, Mama,” Ash said.

  Bone put the valerian jar on the bench.

  “Well?” Mamaw looked her square in the eye. Bone couldn’t get out of asking it.

  “Can an object have a Gift of its own?” Bone watched Mamaw for a reaction.

  Mamaw motioned for Bone to pull up a stool. Uncle Ash poured himself and Mamaw a cup of coffee. She always kept a pot going on the woodstove when she worked. “There’s a pop in the icebox for Bone,” Mamaw told him and he dutifully fetched it—and a piece of carrot cake for them all to share. She waited until everyone was seated around the bench with a cup and the slice of cake to reply. “What do you mean, honey, about an object with a Gift?” Mamaw always took her questions seriously.

  “Lik
e it has a power to do something.” Bone sipped her grape Nehi.

  “What is the object exactly?” Mamaw stirred honey into her coffee without taking her eyes off Bone.

  “A jelly jar. But I’m afraid to touch the thing.” Bone stared at the valerian jar. “It pulls at me,” Bone whispered.

  “You’re right not to touch it then.” Mamaw took Bone’s hand. “You got to foller your own lights, especially when it comes to your Gift.”

  Her own lights were telling Bone not to mess with the jelly jar.

  “Do you think it’s like that mirror I told you about?” Uncle Ash asked. “That’s just a story.” He cut off a piece of the cake and pushed it toward Bone.

  Bone shrugged. She couldn’t put it into words, and it frustrated her to no end.

  “What Gift does this object have?” Mamaw asked, sipping her coffee.

  “It catches sounds.”

  Mamaw about spit out her coffee.

  Uncle Ash let out a low whistle and got up to pace a bit. “Will had a jelly jar at the cemetery the other day.”

  Bone nodded. “He got it with his daddy’s dinner bucket,” she admitted. She felt bad for telling on him, but she felt better, too. Will was acting stranger and stranger about the blame jar. “Uncle Junior said Mr. Kincaid died with the jar in his hand.” Junior would no doubt tell Mamaw that Bone had been asking about Mr. Kincaid’s death.