The Bone Tree Read online

  Ms. Nolan timed it just right so she started serving right after the story was over. She had everything put together just perfect, all in their own little trays and bowls and platters and gravy decanters and pie dishes. She’d even made homemade ice cream for us that night, with some strawberries in it.

  Ms. Nolan gave thanks to the Lord, said a blessing, and we dug in.

  She asked us how our week had been, and asked me about what was going on when I mentioned Tom. He hadn’t been in school on Friday, and I was worried about him.

  “Tom the boy y’all walked home a couple weeks ago?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” I said.

  “And we walked him home last week too, Mom. He was having a real hard time.”

  “Really? Well, I’ll say a prayer for him.” She took dainty bites of her food. I watched her curiously, studied her motions, her face, the crow’s feet wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. Noticed a couple of hairs out of place, a few of them above her ears were going gray. “What’s he having a hard time with?” she asked.

  We didn’t respond at first. She looked up at us, from Bobby to me and back to her son again. Bobby looked at me, and he got that weird look on his face again, like he’d done in the tree house that day that Tom had been hiding up there and upset.

  “Ghosts,” I said.

  Ms. Nolan paused for a moment, raised her eyes to Bobby, who looked quickly back down at his plate, and then she looked over at me.

  “Honey,” she said to me gently, “people go one of two places when they die; the good place or the bad place. Ain’t no place in between.”

  I scooped in a mouthful of purple hull peas and thought for a moment while I chewed. I could tell she and Bobby had had this discussion before, and this was a line she’d drawn in the sand. There may not have been much room for negotiation, but I at least wanted to know why she thought what she did. Besides, we saw something that day we walked Tom home, even if Bobby had started to discount it as a shadow. And what about the tree? The Bone Tree?

  “We saw somethin’ though, Ms. Nolan,” I said. “We saw somethin’ when we were walking Tom home that time. Something shadowy and...it had eyes. Mean looking, scary eyes. And he said for sure he’s been seeing things in the middle of the night, coming right up to his window!” I took a bite. Bobby glanced at me sideways, then looked hopefully at his mom.

  “Kevin,” she said to me softly, “when a person dies, their soul goes to be immediately with the Lord. But then, after judgment, if they never accepted Jesus Christ, they go to a very bad place, where they suffer and spend eternity, separated from God by their sins.

  “Now, there are some folks who believe that our souls are ‘sleeping’ while we await the coming of the Lord in the final days, and that we’ll be judged when he returns.”

  I looked at her for moment, and my interest in the meal was fast outweighed by my interest in what Ms. Nolan was talking about. Sleeping souls?

  “Is it possible,” I asked, “that some souls, maybe, sleepwalk?”

  Her face was stern for a moment. A real conflict of emotion stirred there beneath the surface; she seemed sad, and upset, and maybe even a little angry, although not really with me.

  “Kevin,” she said after a moment of silence. She spoke quietly, patiently. “If your friend is seeing something in those woods or at his window at night, it’s not ghosts.”

  I looked at Bobby. He went back to eating his chicken.

  “Then what is it?”

  She looked at me, and tears began to fill her eyes. “Just eat your supper, Kevin. And don’t you worry about a thing. Jesus has got his eye on you children...he’ll protect you. Now eat up—the pies are gettin’ cold.”

  * * *

  We finished eating and had some pie with that awesome strawberry ice cream on top, then we all gathered in the living room and Ms. Nolan turned on the TV. She sat down and watched it with us. Bobby said they didn’t get to watch all that often; she thought it wasn’t good for a child to sit too long in front of something that didn’t require thinking. Plus, some of the stuff on TV she really didn’t like. We did get to watch The Incredible Hulk and The Six Million Dollar Man though. Ms. Nolan would watch with us for a while, make some funny faces, then kind of laugh a bit and go off on her own, just checking on us now and then.

  She went into the kitchen to clean up after supper. Usually Bobby would do the cleaning, but since I was over for the night he was off the hook. She left us to our own devices on the couch in the living room. It was a small room, but cozy the way Ms. Nolan had decorated. A picture of her and Mr. Nolan on their wedding day hung above a picture of some other folks in a really old black and white picture to one side of the window. Next to the door hung a cross-stitched embroidery that said “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Yellow curtains were pulled back on each side of the window, and the tail end of a cool gray dusk was giving way to the darkness of night.

  On the TV, Steve Austin was checking with Oscar on some important piece of information when Bobby said, “I talked to my mom about that ghost stuff before.”

  “I thought so,” I said. “I could tell you guys already had it out.”

  “She was mad,” he said softly. “I asked her if she thought Dad might be a ghost right now, waiting for Jesus to come back.”

  I didn’t say anything. I was watching the TV show, but was deeply focused on everything that Bobby was saying. He didn’t talk about his dad a whole lot, but I knew it bothered him and that he missed him. He hadn’t been gone long enough that Bobby had forgotten who he was or how cool it was to have him around.

  I thought about my own dad, working with me on models now and then, building stuff out back, helping me with math homework, trying to show me how to work on the car. I couldn’t really imagine him being gone, but when I tried a big lump welled up in my throat and my eyes filled with tears. I suddenly wanted to give Bobby a hug, but I didn’t.

  He was quiet for a minute. We were both staring with rapt attention at that TV, but both of us were thinking about ghosts.

  I asked her if she thought Dad might be a ghost right now, waiting for Jesus to come back.

  “What did she say?” I whispered.

  “Pretty much what she said tonight. That his soul was already with the Lord in Heaven.”

  I nodded. I recalled for a moment what she had said about Tom’s ghost problem, If your friend is seeing something in those woods or at his window at night, it’s not ghosts.

  I mentioned it again. “What do you think she meant?”

  “Evil spirits.”

  My eyes got wide. My guts clinched up for a second.

  “Demons?”

  “How are you boys doing in there?” Ms. Nolan called when a commercial came on. “Need any more pie and ice cream?”

  “No thanks, Momma,” Bobby said.

  “No thank you, Ms. Nolan.”

  “Okay...well, if you want any more there’s plenty left in here.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” we both said.

  When The Six Million Dollar Man was over Ms. Nolan turned off the TV and told us it was bedtime and we had to go back to Bobby’s room and get in our PJ’s. We both got ready for bed and she came in with us, said a brief prayer asking God to watch over and protect us, and she prayed for Tom, too. She rose from her knees, grabbed the worn out King James Bible that she’d carried in, and headed down a short hallway to her bedroom. She left us to set up the blankets and sleeping bags on the floor like we usually did.

  “You boys be good tonight okay, and go right to sleep,” she called from down the hall. “We’ll get up early and have some breakfast before church.”

  She went into her room and pushed the door almost all the way closed. Bobby took a look out into the hallway, saw her bedside light go on, and then situated the blankets and pillows for us to sleep on. Bobby’s bed was just fine, but he liked to sleep on the floor like we were camping whenever I came over. After his mom went to sleep, we’d bust out the flashlig
hts and issues of The Savage Sword of Conan that were hidden between the mattresses. Other boys always talked about Playboys and checking out naked girls. We’d both seen some of that stuff before—Javier brought a whole bag full of ‘em to school one time, and we hid out in the woods near the baseball field and checked them out. And yet, there was something extra taboo about that, especially for Bobby, who’d been raised the way he had. I was curious, but I stuck with Bobby. Barbaric adventures in the Hyborian Age were far more exciting to us in a way that we completely understood. Besides, some of those pictures in Savage Sword were pretty risqué.

  We lay on the floor, both of us quiet, listening to the sounds of Ms. Nolan down the hall as she changed and climbed into bed to read.

  I wondered what Bobby was thinking. Pondering his dad, maybe. Wondering.

  I kept thinking about Tom’s story earlier in the week. Bobby’s window was a few feet away. The curtains were pulled, and not much of a moon was left in the sky, but I kept glancing over from time to time, thinking about the shape. That thing that had appeared at Tom’s window.

  I was suddenly uncomfortable. My bladder was full. I sat up.

  “I’ve gotta use the bathroom,” I whispered.

  “Fine,” Bobby whispered back, “don’t gotta tell me about it.”

  I hopped up and padded through the door into the hallway. A small nightlight glowed in the bathroom, and Ms. Nolan’s door was open a crack, light pouring out into the hall that helped me see. I took careful steps in my bare feet, trying like hell not to make a noise. Course she’d hear the door close and the bathroom flush, but...

  She was crying.

  I paused at the threshold to the bathroom and listened. My heart beat loudly. I thought Ms. Nolan might hear, and I felt really bad suddenly for stopping and eavesdropping like this. I felt more uncomfortable than ever. Ms. Nolan was a nice lady, and she’d always taken good care of Bobby and me. I regretted ever having brought up the whole ghost thing at the table earlier. I stepped into the bathroom, but I didn’t close the door yet. I had to go really bad though, and was on the verge of doing the Tee-tee-dance like my dad used to call it when I was younger.

  “...oh Lord, God why did he have to go already? I miss his touch, his hand in mine, his smile—I know it’s better that he’s there with you now Lord, but...oh I just miss him so...please, Lord, I just...can’t—” and she broke off with a quiet sob, crying. She must have buried her face in the covers of the bed. “Oh, God... ” I heard her muffled groan.

  I had to go all the way into the bathroom, dancing, and close the door as lightly as possible. When I went pee it came out like a waterfall, echoing super loud in the cozy little, Ms. Nolan-ized bathroom. I knew she heard it. She had to hear it. But there wasn’t anything I could do to pee quieter, so I just had to let it go. To squeeze it off would have been suicide.

  They used well water, so the rule was “If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down.” When I was done, I just closed the lid and rinsed my hands in the sink. Then I shut off the bathroom light and stepped into the hall.

  The light had gone off in Ms. Nolan’s room, and though the door was still open a crack, I couldn’t hear anything but silence. She must have gone to bed.

  I crept back down the hallway to Bobby’s room. My eyes adjusted to the darkness by the time I got there, and the scant light from the window was enough to keep me from stepping on Bobby on my way back to my sleeping bag.

  I paused for a moment.

  Something caught my eye beyond the window.

  I looked again, a chill in my blood. The hair on the back of my neck prickled, and the skin on the back of my skull crawled as if with a million spiders.

  “What?” Bobby whispered.

  “Shhh.” I hissed.

  “There’s nothing out there—just the trees and wind.”

  Still, he was quiet for a minute too, maybe not so sure about that.

  I watched. A tree branch swayed in the wind. But that’s all.

  After a few minutes Bobby broke out the flashlight and the Conan books. We stayed up almost all night and fell asleep just before the break of dawn.

  CHAPTER 6

  Monday morning at school was pretty normal as far as days go. There was the usual craziness in the gymnasium in the mornings for those of us who got there early. We’d play a game or two of dodgeball, and from time to time we’d join in a game of marbles or cards, or some of the guys, like Leon and Scott and Brian, would sit in the corner and play D&D. Bobby and I always wanted to play, but those guys insisted we had to learn the rules first, and we needed to read the Player’s Handbook. Wasn’t no way Bobby’s mom would let him read something like the Player’s Handbook. But we had already set the plan in motion to pool some of our comics money, talk my mom into taking me up into Dallas one weekend when she’d go to the mall for a shopping trip and try to bring one back. Then we’d read it up in the tree house.

  Just before the bell was ready to ring we saw Eddie Milken standing with a group of smaller kids near the doors that led into the cafeteria. He towered over a lot of them. He was 13 and had flunked the third grade, so he got held back a year. Bobby and I and some others suspected he was a few cards short of a full deck. Rumor was his daddy was a Lictor for the KKK. Further rumor suggested that Eddie had already joined and been present when some of the Klan took Mace Kelly for a ride behind a pickup at the end of a rope and left his raw meat corpse in the front yard of the white girl he’d been caught sleepin’ with last summer.

  The girls mostly thought Eddie was repulsive, but some of the misguided boys in school, with drunks or wife beaters for dads, thought he was a sage. He introduced them to nudie magazines. He sneaked a bottle of whiskey to school one time and got a bunch of them—Rich and Nathan and Javie—drunk, along with one of the girls who had a reputation, Kelly Willoughby. Word got around that they all kissed and she let them touch her boobs. Bobby and I talked about it and decided it was probably true.

  So the regular group that worshipped Eddie was over there by the doors that led to the cafeteria. They were all talking in hushed, urgent tones about something. Bobby headed on over, slinging his book bag over his shoulder. I followed along.

  “...dead, I’m telling you. They found his mom skinned alive...like she was ripped up by some monster or something...a pile of her skin was laying in the hallway, and then his dad was on the couch, all torn open with his guts hanging out—”

  My eyes came open suddenly at the mention of Dad on the couch.

  “What are you talkin’ about?” I asked.

  Everyone turned and looked at me.

  Eddie gave me a sneer. He nodded. “What’s up, Burkett?” He said to me. He always called everybody except his pals by their last name. He held me in a particular kind of contempt. I suppose you can guess why. “What’s up, banjo lips?”

  “What’s going on?” Bobby said. The slur bounced off him like he was bulletproof. He had a certain tone about him that day. A tone that said he didn’t give a damn what Eddie’s bigot dad was, and go ahead and tell him what was up so we could go on our way.

  Eddie nodded at me like he usually did. “Tom Plecker and his family were killed this weekend—all of ‘em.”

  “What?” I practically yelled it. Everyone within shouting distance suddenly became quiet.

  “That’s right, Ric,” Eddie said. I guessed “Ric” was some term pulled from his vast lexicon of racial slurs. “Whole family’s dead. Javie’s spic dad’s a sheriff’s deputy and he saw the whole thing.”

  Javie nodded. “Si, he was there. He got a call and went out there—something happened. They’re all dead.” He spoke with a thick Hispanic accent, and he was convinced that what his dad said was true. “I heard him talking to my madre.”

  Dead? Tom dead? His whole family dead?

  It hit me like a ton of bricks, and Bobby was about as shocked as I was. I almost passed out, almost fainted or something I guess, because he had to reach over and help me stay
standing up.

  “You okay, Burkett?” Eddie said. He elbowed Rich and they all laughed, making it pretty clear he didn’t give a damn if I was okay or not.

  But, no, I thought. I wasn’t okay at all.

  * * *

  By the time word got around the backwoods all the parents were in an uproar. Nobody quite knew what had happened, and while the sheriff didn’t want anyone to be alarmed, he did recommend keeping a closer eye on the kids until they learned more.

  Bobby and I didn’t get to go out to the tree house for a while. We stayed in and played Atari and went through my dad’s records. He had some oldies and some newer rock; Grand Funk Railroad, Canned Heat, Steppenwolf, stuff like that. But the record we listened to the most was Thin Lizzy’s Fighting.

  I remember the first time Bobby and I were digging through the stacks of LPs in my dad’s entertainment center that previous summer. We were checking stuff out and making two piles, the crap we didn’t ever want to listen to, and the stuff we thought looked interesting. When we came to the cover of Fighting, Bobby caught his breath and said, “Hey, what’s this?”

  The cover image was one of Phil Lynott, Brian Downey, Scott Gorham, and Brian Robertson on some lackluster brick street corner. What caught Bobby’s eye was Phil Lynott—black, tall, proud, standing there next to those three long-haired white hippies with his chest out like he and his buddies were ready to kick some ass. The moment we listened to it, the moment that needle made its little scritching sound as it found the grooves and the sounds of “Rosalie” filled the living room, we were hooked like rock n’ roll junkies.

  Bobby’s favorite song was “Fighting My Way Back,” and so on the second day of captivity following the Plecker family murders, we put on Thin Lizzy and cranked up Dad’s record player. For drumsticks, I used a couple of those fat pencils on stacks of couch pillows. I became Brian Downey, drumming madman extraordinaire. Bobby had a tennis racket that he used to transform into bass-maestro Phil Lynott. We proceeded to rock the house as soon as the opening guitar riffs of that song vibrated the air of the living room like electricity in a packed arena.