Lingering Echoes

by Angie Smibert

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Ruby said, taking the egg from Bone’s hand. She rifled it at the front door. The egg splatted against the wood. Ruby fired another and then another. She painted the crisp white door and siding in yellow. Bone handed her more eggs; so did the boys.

  “She’s a regular Cy Young,” Clay whispered in appreciation.

  Ruby hurled those eggs with astounding ferocity and accuracy. She hit the door five times as well as the front window with the gold star. Once.

  Jake handed her the last of the eggs. By then, the tears were streaming down Ruby’s face.

  The front door swung open. “What in the blue blazes is going on …” Aunt Mattie had a shotgun in her hand.

  Splat. Ruby hit her mama square in the face with the last egg.

  The boys dove down behind the bushes. Jake pulled Bone down, too.

  “Remind me to pick her next time we play ball,” Jake said. Clay stifled a laugh. Bone peered around the bush to see what was happening. “Get down here!” she called to Ruby. “She’s got a gun!”

  “Oh, it ain’t loaded!” Ruby said loudly. She scooped up a rock and threw it at the window, like she was aiming for the gold star. The glass shattered. “Daddy didn’t allow shot in the house.”

  “Ruby Louise Albert!” Mattie dropped the shotgun. It wasn’t loaded. Her mouth gaped open. Then she closed it into a hard line. “Did that cousin of yours put you up to this?”

  “Bone?” Ruby closed the distance between her and her mother as she talked. “She wouldn’t even throw one egg! And you pert near killed her!” Ruby scooped up another rock. “You brought this on yourself. You killed everyone’s fun. And you killed Daddy.” She threw the rock; it went sailing through the broken window. “You drove him away!”

  Bone stood up. She couldn’t believe the words coming out of Ruby’s mouth.

  “Damn,” Clay said. The boys rose to their feet, too.

  Aunt Mattie was as white as a ghost. And silent. Ruby kept yelling and throwing things. Mattie stood there and took it.

  Lights flickered on up and down the road, and sleepy folks stood on their porches—then quickly went back inside. The boys and the Little Jewels slunk off to their own houses.

  Bone couldn’t look away, let alone move. She watched. Ruby let it all out, all that hurt and fear and rage she’d been keeping bottled up inside since she stopped talking to Aunt Mattie. And even before that. When Bone had touched the gold star, she could feel Ruby holding back, keeping a lid on her feelings. The lid wasn’t on too tight, though. The anger and pain leaked out in little ways, in little fights, but never saying what she really felt deep down. Now, it all flowed out, a furious river of words.

  “I wish it’d been you instead of Daddy,” Ruby spit out. She was standing right in Mattie’s face. Then she crumpled to the ground, the hot air and fury gone out of her. Ruby started crying. Mattie swayed there.

  Bone started toward Ruby, but Aunt Mattie reached down and tenderly pulled Ruby to her feet. Bone stopped as Mattie wrapped her arms around Ruby, rocking her back and forth.

  “I didn’t mean it, Mama,” Ruby sniffled.

  “I know,” Mattie murmured. They both stood and cried a bit, holding each other tightly, before they made their way back into the house.

  Bone felt a hollow burning ache watching them.

  Mamaw had said jars are like people, keeping things bottled up. And things went bad if you didn’t let them out. Is that why Will doesn’t talk? Is he mad at his father for dying?

  Yes and no, Bone reckoned. It was more complicated than that. Will’s voice was in that jar.

  Bone thought on it as she walked back toward the boardinghouse. If he broke the jar, he’d free his voice. Bone was sure of it. He needed to hurl that thing and smash it into bits, just like Ruby had shattered that window.

  Only, he’d never do that. He was obsessed with that dad-blame jar.

  Bone sank onto the back steps in the dark. The yard was still and quiet, and everyone in the house was long in bed. Not even a cricket chirped.

  Would it work if she broke the jelly jar?

  She had a niggling feeling it wouldn’t.

  Bone closed her eyes and asked her Gift what to do. The images she’d seen when she touched the jar came flooding back. The darkness. The jar glowing like a lantern. Mr. Kincaid’s dying hand wrapped around it. Will’s daddy poured all his longing and love into that jar—for Will. It was his jar and his to break.

  Will had to get angry, really angry, like Ruby did. Only, Bone had never seen Will get mad. He was always as cool as the river on a hot summer’s day.

  She’d have to do something pretty low to make him erupt.

  19

  COME SUNDAY, MRS. PRICE sent Bone on to church alone. Nobody mentioned the egging incident. Mattie and Ruby both sat puffy-eyed in their usual spots. The 4-H Club had collected a truckload of tin cans, which Uncle Ash was running over to the ballpark. Uncle Junior was fixing the parsonage window during the service.

  Bone slipped a note into Will’s pocket after church. Meet me at the cemetery. Bring it.

  Bone sat on the stone bench by William A. Kincaid Sr.’s grave. And she waited. She wondered what she’d learn if she touched the headstones. Probably just something about the man who carved them. Finally, Will trudged up the path. He warily handed her the jar.

  She had to be sure of a few things first. Closing her eyes, she opened the jar and felt its stories spill out. The train, the dogs, Charlie McCarthy, and a few others she hadn’t heard before. And there it was. One very small voice telling a knock-knock joke.

  How did you get in the jar? she asked.

  A small Will in his Sunday best sat with his daddy’s mining gear. Adult voices murmured in the background. The dinner bucket was dented. Will pried off the lid and found the jelly jar. He unscrewed the jar. His father’s voice lilted out, saying he loved Will. Will whispered a joke back to his father. His voice was as full of longing as his daddy’s: longing to have his father home, longing to be like him. He screwed the jar lid on tight—right before his mother snatched it out of his hands. Bone screwed the lid back on tight, too.

  Will Sr. had poured all of his hopes and wishes into the jar. He would’ve chosen to stay with Will, if he could.

  Unlike Mama.

  Bone pushed the thought aside and focused on the jar again. One more thing.

  Does Will need to be the one to break you?

  She knew the answer, but she needed to be sure.

  She saw young Will again, pouring his five-year-old love and grief into the jar and sealing it up tight. Then she saw new images. An older Will kneeled at the graveside opening the jar again and again. He was reliving that moment of his father’s death every time he opened the jar. Neither the jar nor Will was letting it out for good. Will had to be the one who set it all free.

  Will tugged gently at her sweater. He’d sat down beside her while she’d communed with the jar again.

  “Will, you need to break this jar,” Bone told him.

  Will looked stricken. He tried to snatch the jar away from her. She wouldn’t let him. She stood on the bench with the jar over her head. He still could’ve easily gotten it from her. Instead, he wrote something out.

  I can’t. It’s all I have of Daddy. His voice.

  He’d spent hours on end listening to that voice.

  “Your daddy wanted so many things for you!” she said. “He’d want you to have your voice back!”

  Will shook his head.

  I’ d lose his.

  Bone sighed. She’d really hoped she wouldn’t have to do this. What if it didn’t work? What if it did? What if he wouldn’t break it? Foller your own lights. They—and her Gift—were telling her this was the only way.

  Bone took a deep, deep breath. “What else was on your list? Baseball. Trains. My stories?” She unscrewed the lid, and even as the sounds played out, she started in on a story, “Fill, Bowl, Fill.”

  “Once there was a …”
/>   Will staggered back as he realized what she was doing.

  Then he dove for the jar.

  Bone shielded it with her body while she screwed the lid back on. She mouthed the words “the end” as she handed the jar to Will. She jumped off the bench, backing away, and stood on the path.

  Fury mounted in Will’s eyes as he glowered wordlessly at her and the jar. He stalked back and forth in front of his father’s grave, blazing at her and then his father, a silent argument with himself building up inside.

  Will kicked over the bench. Puffs of dirt rose around it.

  Then he whipped around and smashed the jar against the tombstone.

  The sounds of the jar, including her story, rose through the air around him like ghost lights and flitted off into the woods. There they echoed among the trees, the baying dogs chasing the rest up the mountain into the shadows.

  “How could you?” Will hollered, his voice raspy from long silence. “You had no right!”

  He spewed long-unused words at her. Bone took it. He’d obviously learned some new ones down in the mines. But she took it.

  Then he turned to the headstone. “How could you?” he raged. He yelled at his father for leaving them, for leaving Mama to scrub floors, for him having to leave school. Will’s voice was much deeper than Bone had expected. He went on until he ran out of words. For now. He collapsed on the ground beside her.

  “Feel better?” Bone asked.

  “Yes,” Will said, resting his head in his hands. He looked as tired as he had after that first day mining. “Give me a minute,” he added. Then he mimed that he’d clean up the glass. Will would have to get used to talking again.

  Bone nodded. She wrapped the butter-yellow sweater around herself and turned toward the back row of the cemetery.

  She had a bone to pick with Mama.

  Bone stepped over the rows of Scotts and Prices to her mother’s grave. She stood there for a long moment, not knowing where to begin and even feeling a bit stupid. Yet that white-hot ember burned in her gut. She glanced back at Will. He was talking—out loud—to his father. When she looked at her mother’s grave, Daddy’s words kept coming back to her. She’s not there.

  But that was the problem. “You’re not here,” she said aloud. She said it again and again, a little louder each time until she burst right open. “Daddy’s run off to the war, and he left me with Aunt Mattie,” she hollered. “Even if he didn’t get himself drafted, he’d’a joined up. He’s off saving the world instead of being here with me. And you chose to save Mattie instead of being here with me.” Bone could feel hot tears, rising over the dam inside her. The pressure, spilling, bursting through. She fought it down. “And all I got was this stupid thing!” Bone yanked at the sleeve of her mother’s butter-yellow sweater. As soon as she touched it, though, she saw her mother laying the sweater over Mattie. Mama poured all her love and longing into it. All this love was for her sister? The one who’d caused her death? Mama chose Mattie, not her.

  But then Mama whispered, “For Bone. Give this to Bone.” She sank back into the chair and slipped away.

  The fire went right out of Bone. She didn’t fight back the tears this time. Mama had loved her as much as Will’s daddy loved him. She didn’t know why she’d doubted it. She hugged herself in the sweater. The butter-yellow yarn was as full of love and longing as the jelly jar.

  Mama loved her.

  She dropped to her knees. Tears flooded out as she cried a river that almost quenched that ember burning inside her. Almost.

  At last, Bone wiped her eyes on Mama’s butter-yellow sweater.

  And it took it.

  20

  BONE BRUSHED THE dirt off her knees and dried her eyes on Mama’s butter-yellow sweater.

  She made her way back to the path. There, Uncle Ash was helping Will right the bench. Corolla lifted his leg against it when they were done.

  “I swear, dog.” Uncle Ash shook his head. “You all right, Forever Girl?”

  Bone shrugged and wiped her nose on her sleeve. She ached like a wrung-out dishrag, but her insides no longer burned.

  “Y’all been up here a while.” Uncle Ash put an arm around her. “Mama sent me to find you.”

  He walked Bone and Will back to the boardinghouse.

  Will stayed silent. She guessed he wasn’t ready yet to speak to someone else, even if it was only Uncle Ash. To her surprise, the boardinghouse was full of people. Mamaw and Mrs. Price had organized a belated Halloween party.

  The parlor smelled of apple cider and pumpkin pies. The dining table was laden with pie, cookies, homemade candies, and punch. Apples bobbed in a tub of water in the corner.

  Ruby entered carrying a tray of candy apples. “Mama sends her regrets, but she had to run over to Radford this afternoon. She got a job!” Ruby beamed. “She’s looking at an apartment for us.”

  Uncle Junior brought in pumpkins for carving. Mamaw handed Bone a purple candy she’d made. It tasted of elderberry and honey.

  All the kids from school were there. Clay and Jake were dressed like skeletons. Others were dressed like cowboys, ghosts, and clowns—whatever they could create at the last minute from old clothes or sheets. Mrs. Price handed Bone a witch’s hat and cape she’d made out of burlap and dyed black. Hester Prynne rubbed up against Bone as she donned them.

  After the pumpkin carving and bobbing for apples, the boys called to her to tell a story.

  “Not too scary, though,” Clay said as he pulled his little sister, Cecilia, onto his lap. “How about that Stingy Jack one again?”

  Bone settled on a slightly different version this time. A good storyteller never told a story the same way twice, Uncle Ash always said. She whispered something to Will, and he went to stand by the light switch. She gathered up her props—one of the Jack o’lanterns, a candle, and a book of matches—and turned Uncle Junior’s chair by the hearth to face the audience as they all settled down on the rug.

  “Once there was an old boy named Jack, and he loved to play tricks on folks.” Bone winked at Clay as she plopped into the big chair. “People called him Stingy Jack on account of how miserly he was.

  “One day, Stingy Jack run across this old man lying on the ground outside his cabin. Jack took him home and fed him. Only it turned out to be the devil in disguise. And he wanted Jack’s soul.” Bone explained how Jack tricked the devil into turning into a coin and then not taking his soul. This time. Ten years later he came back. “Now Jack said he’d go with the devil if he fetched him an apple from that tree. The devil climbed up the apple tree, but Jack quick-like carved crosses in the trunk of the tree, trapping the devil once again. This time he agreed to never collect Jack’s soul if he’d just let him down.”

  One of the little kids laughed with delight.

  “When Jack died, though, Saint Peter didn’t want him. And when Jack went down to the other place, the devil said a bargain was a bargain. He didn’t want him there anyways.”

  Bone paused for effect.

  “So what was Jack supposed to do?” Clay’s little sister asked.

  “That’s what he asked the devil,” Bone answered. “‘It’s so cold and dark out,’ Jack said.”

  Will flipped the lights off, and the young ones screeched and giggled.

  Bone struck a match and lit the small candle in her hand. “‘Since you did me a kindness, feeding me and taking me into your house, I’ll do you one in return,’ the devil said. Then he nipped off to the fires of damnation and fetched Jack an ember. He tossed it to him. ‘To light your way.’”

  Bone put the candle in the Jack o’lantern. Its orange light flickered in the darkness.

  “Jack scooped up the ember and carved out a pumpkin to carry the light in.” She picked up the Jack o’lantern and made it bob around the room, to more squeals and giggles. “And ever since, Jack has roamed the earth carrying that light in a pumpkin. People see the light from his lantern bobbing around in the woods and out in graveyards, especially around Halloween. Sometimes
people follow the light, getting terribly lost in the mountains. So we light our own lanterns and leave out treats to scare away Jack …”

  Bone handed the Jack o’lantern to Will, and he said the words “the end.”

  The crowd gasped.

  Author’s Note: Story Sources

  Like Bone, I love Halloween and its stories. In Lingering Echoes, Bone delights in telling the tale of “Stingy Jack.” It’s an origin story for the custom of carving Jack o’lanterns as well as for legends of mysterious lights that lead people astray. In my research—and I do not claim to be an expert in folklore—I found this tale in popular sources, such as on the History Channel, in newspaper and magazine stories, and on storytelling/Appalachian blogs. All claim “Stingy Jack” is an Irish folktale. (I have no reason to doubt this, but I don’t have a scholarly source for this story.)

  The Irish folktale is very similar to the Appalachian story “Wicked John and the Devil.” Folklorist Richard Chase collected this story and published it in Grandfather Tales. Both the Irish and Appalachian versions involve a wicked man who tricks the devil and ends up roaming the earth with a burning lump of coal—in a carved turnip or pumpkin. Chase actually changed the protagonist’s name from Jack to John to avoid confusion with the younger, non-wicked Jack of the Jack Tales. The differences between the Irish and American versions lie mainly in the methods Jack uses to trick Satan into not taking his soul. “Wicked John and the Devil” is also a bit more convoluted, complicating the plot with three wishes and several dim-witted sons of the devil. It’s a great story, but I chose to use the Irish version for simplicity’s sake! You can read more about the Appalachian version and its sources on Ferrum College’s Appalachian Literature site (http://www2.ferrum.edu/applit/).

  By the way, the haunted mirror that Uncle Ash mentions is a local ghost story. In Radford, Virginia, La Riviere mansion—also called Ingles Castle—is supposedly haunted by a lady in the mirror. The mansion—a Queen Anne structure that does look like a castle—was built in 1892 by William Ingles. A family friend, Anne McClanahan Bass (aka Aunt Nannie), was standing by a mirror in the parlor when lightning struck nearby. Like a photograph, the mirror captured her likeness. (Mirrors have silver nitrate in them, and that substance was actually used in photography at the time.) After her death, Aunt Nannie’s presence was reportedly felt in the castle.