Lingering Echoes

by Angie Smibert

  Uncle Ash stopped in his tracks.

  Mamaw didn’t say anything.

  “I’ve heard plenty of stories about haunted objects,” Ash finally said. “But all the ones about miners are usually friendly. The ghost of a dead miner is looking out after his buddies—or his son. If you believe in that kind of thing.” Ash looked to his mother. “Mama, you’re awfully quiet.”

  She took a long drink of coffee before she spoke. “I don’t hold with the idea of haunted objects. A jar, you say?” She picked up one of the jars she’d just filled and peered at it before setting it down again. “I’ve heard of jars being used for spells and such. You put some herbs and liquid—water, vinegar, or honey—into the jar and then say some words. Honey is supposed to make someone sweet on you, for instance. In fact, I’ve sold plenty of herbs that were probably used for that kind of witchery.” She took another long drink of coffee. “It’s all bunk. Just like haints.”

  “What is it then?” Bone asked, exasperated. She set the pop bottle down on the table a little harder than she’d intended. She was glad it wasn’t a haint or a spell, but what did that leave?

  Mamaw leaned in. “Strong emotions leave memories on objects; that’s what you read with your Gift.”

  Bone nodded. It wasn’t just what happened to the object she saw—but what happened to the person or animal it touched. That’s what lingered after they were gone. They left imprints for her to see.

  “My potions and herbs aren’t any good just sitting on the shelf bottled up. You got to let ’em out and use them. You keep ’em in the jar too long, they’re not good anymore. Or worse, they turn into poison. Maybe objects is like people. They can bottle up all that emotion that’s best let out or it festers. Maybe a strong enough emotion can transform an object, give it some kind of power.”

  “William was trapped,” Uncle Ash said. His voice was ragged around the edges. He took a deep breath as he stroked the dog tags around his neck. “Being trapped under all that earth, expecting to die, is a powerful dark feeling. If anything could transform an object, that could.” He tucked his dog tags back in his shirt. He fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette.

  Uncle Ash had been trapped in a collapsed tunnel during the last war, the so-called War to End all Wars. He didn’t talk about it much.

  “You lived through that,” Bone said with a shiver. She’d seen just a few seconds of what Mr. Kincaid experienced. If that was what Uncle Ash had lived through for days, he was so much incredibly stronger than folks gave him credit for.

  “I did, Forever Girl,” Ash said quietly. “We had a bit more breathing space than William and Scotty had.”

  Mamaw rose from her stool and laid a hand on Uncle Ash’s shoulder. Then she went back to the stove to pour herself another cup of coffee.

  Both Uncle Ash and Mr. Kincaid had gone through something so awful Bone couldn’t imagine it. And Mr. Kincaid had died. Still, she couldn’t figure how that experience could give an ordinary object that power. What emotion could he have put into the jar to make it catch sounds like the radio and the dogs barking?

  “Forever Girl, you do have a peculiar Gift,” Uncle Ash said after he’d lit his smoke. “Come on, Bone, I’ll run you home.” He motioned toward the door. He was obviously done talking about this, but he paused on the threshold. “By the way, Mama, I need something for Mr. Childress’s dogs. I saw them before I picked Bone up.” He shook his head like something had stumped him. “Maybe some raw honey would do the trick.”

  “What was wrong with them?” Bone asked. They’d seemed just fine when Bone and Will had seen them in Flat Woods last Sunday.

  “Darned if I know,” Ash said as he held the door for Mamaw and Corolla. “They lost their voices, and I couldn’t see a thing wrong with them.”

  Bone gasped. Mamaw turned on her heel and looked at Bone. Mr. Childress’s dogs’ voices had been one of the sounds they’d captured in the jar. That jar did more than record sounds. It stole them!

  “Oh no,” Bone said. She told them about her and Will’s experiments.

  “You best tell Will to keep a lid on that jar of his until you get to the bottom of this.” Mamaw pointed the honey bottle in Bone’s direction.

  “Me?”

  Mamaw nodded.

  This was Bone’s Gift, and she had to figure out how to use it.

  14

  HONEY BOTTLE STILL in hand, Mamaw studied Bone a few seconds and then asked, “Why don’t you stay to supper?” She did not wait for Bone to answer. “Ash, run up to the house and call Mrs. Price.”

  The house was only about a few hundred feet away—and one story up from the cabin. The main Reed house was a magnificent, four-bedroom tree house astride four large oaks. Family legend was that Great-great-granddaddy Rowan built it before the Civil War. Bone adored the place.

  “Sure thing,” Uncle Ash said. He whistled and Corolla followed him out the door.

  “Bone, fetch me that ledger off that shelf over yonder.” She pointed to the high shelf over the dried teas and tinctures. “It’s the big skinny book with the tree on the front.”

  Mamaw poured honey into her coffee and stirred it. Bone could hear the spoon slowly clinking against the cup like a ticking clock as she shooed Sassafras off the chair in the corner. She dragged it over to the shelf and hopped onto it. The ledger was wedged between one of Mamaw’s books on plants and a Gray’s Anatomy. That had been one of Mama’s nursing books. Bone grabbed the skinny book by the spine—and the room began to turn a little. She saw Mamaw writing in the book—and many other women of all ages doing the same. Bone clutched the back of the chair to steady herself.

  Mamaw was at her elbow in a flash. “Sorry, honey, I should’ve warned you. My mind was elsewhere.” She steered Bone to the table. “What did you see?”

  Bone slid onto the stool, still holding on to the ledger. The eddies of time swirled around her. Closing her eyes, she asked the images to calm themselves. They obliged. Then she could see each of the women more clearly. One was Great-grandma Daisy. Another was her mother. Or maybe her grandmother. This book had passed through so many generations of Reed women. “Nothing bad. Just a lot of strong-minded women owned this over the years.” Bone was rather pleased she’d managed to control the book’s powerful memories, even if just a little bit.

  Laughing, Mamaw retrieved her cup of coffee and sat down next to Bone. “Yes, this is the family book. One woman from each generation keeps track of everyone’s Gift. Someday, it’ll be yours,” she added matter-of-factly.

  “Me?” Bone ran her finger across the tree etched in the fading leather. Closing her eyes, she could see bits and pieces of the women’s stories. One was a water witch. Another could sense the weather. Several worked with herbs. What do you want to show me? One sketched an object she held in her hand. “Someone else had my Gift!” Her eyes popped open.

  “Yours is a rare one.” Mamaw nodded. “It took me a while to find it. But yes, two others had it. I marked the page.” She pointed to the tiny red ribbon poking out near the beginning of the book.

  Bone eagerly flipped the pages open to the spot. The handwriting was incredibly tiny and tidy. Bone could just make out the date at the top: July 31, 1822. Touching the ink, she could see a young woman with long brown hair in an old-timey dress sitting at this same table, only with an oil lamp. She had a cat, too. The entry said, Tested Olivia today. She didn’t appear to have a Gift for animals, plants, weather, or even water. I almost despaired until she touched her deceased grandfather’s pocket watch. Olivia described his death back in Scotland in vivid detail, details I’ d never divulged to anyone living.

  “She’s talking about your Great-great-grandmother Olivia.” Mamaw flipped the pages to where the handwriting changed into a beautiful, flowing script with many little illustrations, mostly of objects. “She used her Gift to read objects folks brought her.”

  “Why would people do that?” Bone gingerly touched a drawing of a rocking horse. She saw a wiry blond woman touching
the real rocking horse as she sketched it. Next to the drawing she’d written: Mrs. Lobelia Smith’s son died of cholera on their journey to Virginia from England, March 9, 1834. Deep sadness radiated off the ink itself.

  “To find out something about the owner. Maybe it was a grandfather they never met. A loved one who passed. Or a husband they thought was cheating on them. One fella was even looking for lost treasure.” Mamaw tapped an entry marked December 8, 1842. Next to it was a sketch of a treasure map, complete with a big X at the foot of a mountain.

  “Really?” Bone squinted as she tried to make out the writing. If she had her druthers, that’s the only kind of object she’d touch. “The map was an utter fraud,” she read aloud. “Dang.”

  “Her youngest daughter, Hazel, had the same Gift, too.” Mamaw pointed farther down the page. “She moved to Cincinnati with her husband—and opened an antiques store.”

  “Oh.” Bone tried not to sound disappointed, but she was. She couldn’t see herself appraising antiques or snooping on affairs or reading dead children’s toys for grieving mothers. Finding treasures, yes, but there probably wasn’t much call to look for buried gold or silver even now.

  “Not everyone puts their Gift to the best use. Your Great-uncle Oakley used his weather sense to scam farmers out west into paying him to make it rain.” Mamaw closed up the book and kissed Bone on the forehead. “It’s up to you to figure out what to do with yours.” She scooped up the ledger. “But do be careful with that damn jar.”

  Mamaw put the ledger back up on the shelf between the botany and anatomy books. The shelf also held Uncle Ash’s veterinary books and a few others. If only she had gotten one of those Gifts, Bone thought. She loved animals, too. Plants maybe not so much. It wasn’t fair, though. Mamaw caught Bone staring up at the spines. “Give me a hand with this mess.” She waved her in the direction of the elderberries.

  Bone helped Mamaw clean up the press and put away the new jars of elderberry syrup on the shelves. Mamaw hummed while each of them thought their own thoughts. Bone was mostly thinking about how in the world she’d make the best use of her Gift. It was a stumper, as Uncle Ash might say.

  “How’s Ruby?” Mamaw finally asked as she rinsed out the big pot and handed it to Bone to dry.

  Bone searched for a good word. “Prickly,” she finally said.

  Mamaw chuckled.

  “Why can’t they stay here?” Bone asked. If something happened to Daddy, she would want to come here. “Why do they need to go to Radford?”

  “Oh, I offered!” Mamaw ran water through the rubber tubing as she talked. “We could easily build them their own cabin if they wanted. They could help with the garden and the foraging and such.” Mamaw hung up the tubing to dry on the pegs over the sink. “But your Aunt Mattie wouldn’t hear of it.”

  Bone wasn’t surprised. She couldn’t really imagine Mattie living here, even when she was little.

  “And I don’t blame her. She’s always wanted to get out of the country.” Mamaw rubbed some minty-smelling ointment into her hands. Bone handed her the dishtowel. “She thought Henry was her ticket out of Big Vein—but he loved it here. She wanted him to get a church in Roanoke or even Richmond.”

  “What will they do?” Bone recalled the scene Ruby had made over them moving to Radford.

  “I expect they’ll take Fern and Richard’s offer. He can get Mattie on at the powder plant.”

  “But Ruby doesn’t want to go. And she’s so angry with Mattie.”

  “She’s grieving her daddy. Both of them are. They’ll work things out. Eventually.”

  “What can I do, Mamaw?”

  “Just be Ruby’s friend.”

  Bone thought long and hard about that as she cleaned the press. Ruby had been Bone’s friend when it really counted. She tried to stop Mattie from drowning Bone. Ruby had gone for help. And afterward Ruby had sat beside Bone in the rain by the river waiting for the ferry that would never come. The least Bone could do, she figured, was stand beside Ruby when she pulled a prank. Bone knew it was more than that, but it was all she could think to do.

  “In that case, can I have some eggs?” Bone asked her grandmother.

  “Of course,” Mamaw said. “Do I want to know why?”

  “Not really,” Bone replied. “It’s for Halloween, and it’ll make Ruby feel better. I hope.”

  Uncle Ash poked his head in the back door. “Called Lydia, and I got us some trout.” He crooked his head toward the area behind the cabin. “Caught them this morning before I made my calls.”

  “I’ll run up to the chicken coop while you help Ash,” Mamaw told Bone.

  He’d gotten the fire going in the fire pit, a wide ring of bricks dug into the dirt, with a wire grill over part of it. A big cast-iron skillet heated up on one end of the grill. The copper pot for apple butter churning sat off to one side. Wooden chairs ringed the pit. Bone had always loved roasting marshmallows and weenies over this fire with the whole family.

  Bone plopped down by the flat counter stone, as she called it. It was just a big flat rock topped with a butcher block. Uncle Ash already had all the fixings for a feast laid out on the block. He cleaned the trout and stuffed them with wild sorrel before laying them gently across the grill. Bone peeled and chopped the potatoes and other vegetables. Mamaw appeared carrying a small basket of eggs and a stick of butter. As she handed the eggs to Bone, Uncle Ash raised an eyebrow. She threw the potatoes, vegetables, mushrooms, and some butter into the skillet. They popped and sizzled, releasing a peppery, woody aroma.

  The dogs sprawled in the grass. Overhead, as the stars had begun to peek out, Bone almost sighed. “Tell us a scary story, Uncle Ash,” she asked.

  “Why don’t you tell me one?” he countered as he carefully flipped the trout over on the fire.

  He didn’t have to ask Bone twice, but she had to think a moment. He knew all the stories she did, mostly because he’d told them to her. Then Bone remembered a Jack ma lantern story Miss Spencer had collected. It wasn’t very long. “There once was this fella who was a-coming home on a real dark and foggy night. He got lost right quick. The fog was as thick as peanut butter. He crept along slowly, thinking he was still on the path, but soon he was lost in the woods. Then he spotted a light. He thought it was a neighbor’s lantern in the window, so he followed it. Only it never got any closer. He kept walking and walking—plumb right into the swamp, never to be seen again. The light turned out to be a Jack ma lantern.”

  “He forgot to turn his pockets inside out to keep from being led astray.” Uncle Ash slid a piece of crispy trout onto Bone’s plate.

  “That’s hogwash.” Mamaw snorted as she passed Bone a big slice of corn bread. “What’s wrong, honey?”

  Bone had felt the color draining out of her as she finished her story. It was exactly like the dream she’d been having about Daddy. She hoped that he’d turned out his pockets.

  15

  BONE SUPPRESSED AN enormous yawn the next morning in class. Uncle Ash had gotten her home way past bedtime. Now, Miss Johnson was going on and on about the history of Germany.

  Then the mine whistle blew.

  It was deep and shrill and cut through everyone in the school, in the whole camp.

  Will. Uncle Junior. Bone’s mouth went dry. She looked back at Jake and Clay, but they’d already taken off running. Clay’s dad was down in the mines, and Jake’s was the outside man.

  Miss Johnson didn’t have to say anything. She opened the door, and everyone else followed her out. Miss Austin was leading the little ones. Outside, adults were walking and running up the road toward the mine.

  Uncle Ash pulled up with Mamaw in the passenger seat. Bone, followed a second or two later by Ruby, piled in the back with the dogs, and they peeled up the road. It was a very short yet bumpy trip.

  Everyone gathered a distance outside the mine entrance, giving the miners room to work. Ash walked swiftly, cutting his way through the crowd while Mamaw steered Bone and Ruby in his wake. When they got
to the front, Bone could see Jake’s dad running the mantrip. He gave Jake and Clay a quick hug and shooed them back to the crowd. They found Bone.

  “Daddy says it was a cave-in,” Jake said between breaths. “Two trapped but they’re digging them out.”

  Clay didn’t say a word. He just stared at the mine entrance. Jake put an arm around him.

  Mr. Whitaker must be one of them.

  Jake nodded his head over toward the mantrip. Marvin Linkous stood there, covered in black with a dusting of ashy powder. He looked like a ghost of himself. He was staring at the mine entrance just like Clay.

  Garvin must be the other one.

  That meant Uncle Junior and Will were digging them out. A handful of other miners reassured their families. They’d wait around to relieve those doing the digging now.

  Bone relaxed, yet felt immediately ashamed. She was relieved it wasn’t Junior or Will trapped, but she felt bad about Mr. Whitaker and Garvin. And Marvin was all by himself with no one to comfort him as he waited for word on his twin brother.

  Mrs. Linkous pushed her way through the crowd and wrapped Marvin in a tearful hug. Mrs. Kincaid followed her. Marvin made it clear he wasn’t going anywhere until Garvin came up. Then he obviously was telling them both what happened. Marvin made digging motions and pointed off in the distance. Will’s mother caught Mrs. Linkous’s arm to steady her.

  Finally, the mantrip jerked into motion, and two ash-and coal-covered figures emerged, one helping the other as he cradled his left arm. The Linkouses and Mrs. Kincaid ran to them. Garvin yelped as his mother squeezed him. Will kissed his mother and headed straight to Clay.

  “Daddy?” Clay asked, searching Will’s eyes for some clue.

  Will dug out his pad, and a pocketful of dirt and ash fell out instead. He mimed digging.

  “Clay!” Mrs. Whitaker called as she pushed through the crowd with three little ones in tow.