When the Bones Sing

Chapter Seven

Seven

Late that afternoon, Lo and I crawl out of my closet and we agree to meet up tomorrow so we can make a plan. Before he leaves, I take the scissors from my desk drawer and cut the bottom skeleton key off the dangling yellow yarn that hangs above my air conditioner. “Here,” I tell him. “Something to protect you when we can’t be together. If anything scares you, you take out that key and think about me. Okay? And I’ll be right there with you.”

I don’t believe the keys are magic, but Lo does, and he needs something to hang on to. Something to make him brave.

“Thanks,” he tells me, and he smiles as he slips the skeleton key with the little loop of yellow yarn into his pocket for safe keeping.

Then Lo heads back up to his place and I crank the window air conditioner as high as it will go and burrow into bed under Nana’s quilts. My bones ache and my head is spinning, but exhaustion finally gets the best of me and I drift off to sleep.

When I wake up, my mama is on my mind. I figure I must’ve been dreaming about her, because that feeling of wanting her is stronger than it’s been in a long time. But I can’t remember the dream, so she’s lost to me again.

The clock says it’s three thirty in the morning. I’ve slept all evening, straight through dinner, and late into the night.

I slip out of bed and tiptoe down the stairs for something to eat. A bowl of cereal, maybe—or a ham sandwich—but before I make it into the kitchen, I notice that the front door is open, and I hear the rhythmic creaking of Nana’s rocking chair coming from out on the porch. She’s singing to herself, soft and low under her breath, and I stop at the screen door to listen for a minute. It’s a melody that reminds me of the way bones sing sometimes. Mournful and deep. Aching.

Almost familiar.

I will tell you a story of a pretty white rose,

It is true but oh how sad,

Of a poor young woman whose heart was pure as gold,

But cruel she was treated by her lad.

She was found one morning in a cold, cold stream,

Where he threw his love there to drown,

With that rose between her teeth, as if she seemed to say,

I want to wear this rose in my crown.

“That’s pretty,” I say, and Nana turns to reach for me, almost like she already knew I was there. She’s been brushing out her silver hair, and it sparkles like Christmas tree tinsel in the light of a pale slip of moon pinned to the dark sky.

“Come on out, Dovie girl. Sit with me a spell.”

I push open the screen door and ease it closed behind me, so it doesn’t wake up Daddy with its banging. “What are you doing out here?” I ask her.

“Lookin’ at the stars and listenin’ to the wind in the trees.” I move to sit on the steps in front of her chair and she pulls her brush through my tangled hair, just like she used to do when I was little. “Havin’ church, I guess.” She tugs her old gray robe tighter around her shoulders. “What’re you doing awake at this hour?”

“I had a dream, I think.” Phantom is snoring on the top step, and I reach down to scratch him behind the ears. He doesn’t even bother to wake up and see who’s messing with him. “Guess it woke me up.”

“Dreamin’ about your mama?” Nana asks, and I wonder how she guessed it. Sometimes I’d swear she can read my mind.

“I think so,” I tell her, and she nods.

“I dream about Lucy nearly every time I close my eyes. Some of them dreams are nice.” She hesitates. “And some of ’em ain’t.” Nana’s staring out at those crepe myrtles glowing bright pink against the dark. Last thing Mama did before she left us on our own was to plant a row of them at the edge of our property, right along Mud Street. This time of year, our yard is the prettiest one in Lucifer’s Creek, the little blue house almost hidden behind an explosion of fuchsia blooms. It’s a beautiful fence of flowers that separates us from the rest of the town, and a colorful metaphor for the other things that divide us from our neighbors. “Guess I’ll always see her face when I close my eyes,” Nana goes on. “I imagine you will, too.”

I picture myself as old as Nana, wrinkled skin and beautiful hair the color of mountain frost, still dreaming about my lost mother.

“That song you were singin’. I think maybe I’ve heard it before.”

“My mama used to sing it when I was a girl up on the home place.” Nana laughs a little. “I don’t know why. It’s not very nice, is it?”

It makes me think of Lo’s mama, Claire. How my mama found her best friend face down in Lucifer’s Creek, white rose petals floating around her body like pearls scattered from the string of a broken necklace.

An accident. Springtime and the creek was running high.

Fast.

The bank where she was standing must’ve given way. That’s what everybody figured.

“Is it a true song?”

Nana thinks for a second before she answers my question. “I expect it might be.” She’s still brushing my hair in long, slow strokes, and I lean over to put my head on her knee. “A lot of those old ballads tell about somethin’ true, or at least partly true. That’s the mountain way of rememberin’ things.”

I feel a little uneasy when I think about what Lo said earlier about Ozarks ghosts. Some stories get told ’cause they’re true, Dovie.

When Nana speaks again her voice is thick with an old sorrow. “Pearl would know. She was always the keeper of the old stories.”

It’s quiet for a few long minutes. There’s only the buzzing insects and the creak creak creak of Nana’s rocker. The rustling of a possum digging around the roots of Mama’s crepe myrtles.

Time slows down and the universe melts and shrinks until there’s nothing but our front porch, and all I know is the feeling of Nana’s brush moving through my hair, patiently working out the tangles.

I wish she could do her magic down inside me, where I always feel so knotted up and tender.

“What’s ailin’ Lowan, sugar?” she asks me eventually. “He’s sufferin’, ain’t he?”

I guess it’s the moon and the cicadas that urge me to tell her the truth, because the words tumble out of my mouth before I can think better of it. “He says he’s seein’ spirits. Bad ones.” I’m suddenly chilly in my shorts and tank top, and I pull my knees up to hug them to my chest. “Says they’re after him.”

Nana sighs long and low behind me, and her brush stills. “That why he left?” I nod against Nana’s knee and she sighs again. “I figured it was somethin’ like that. Anybody can tell the boy’s haunted.”

I look up at her surprised. “You believe in ghosts?”

“Course I do, girl. Cain’t hardly grow up in these hills without believing in ghosts.” Nana lowers her voice and leans toward my ear, like we’re two best friends whispering secrets at a slumber party. “Even seen one once.” Her brush is moving through my hair again. “But there are a hundred different ways a soul can be haunted, and ghosts ain’t the worst of it. Not by no means.”

She reaches up to touch a little silver cross that always hangs around her neck, even though I’ve never known her to set foot inside a church.

“He thinks the hikers are after him,” I tell her. “The dead ones.” I stare out toward Mud Street, deserted and still on the other side of all those pink flowers. The whole world must be asleep except Nana and me. “He says they follow him everywhere. Watch him all the time. Talk to him, even.”

“Be patient with him, Dovie.” Nana’s voice floats into my ears, soft and gentle as fog off the creek. Mournful as the call of a loon. “It’s a terrible thing to be haunted.”

“Why him, though?” It doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense. “Why would Lowan be haunted by the dead hikers?”

“You’re asking the wrong thing, sugar pie.” Nana’s stopped brushing my hair, but I feel her hand resting on my head. “Don’t wonder why the boy’s so haunted by them poor souls. What you oughta be wonderin’ about is why the rest of us ain’t.” She leans back in her chair and starts rocking again. “What’s wrong with folks here? Why ain’t we bothered about all them bodies? That’s the thing that keeps me up nights like this.”

It’s a good question, when you put it that way.

Off in the distance, a jagged streak of light splits the sky in two. I wait, but no thunder comes.

“Heat lightnin’,” Nana says. “Pretty to look at, but it won’t bring us no rain.” We keep our eyes trained on the strip of sky above the hills, and the blinding flash comes again. “Pearl used to say Lightnin’ and Thunder was twin brothers, so when you see the lightnin’ bolt by himself like that, it ain’t no good. Means Thunder got himself lost somewhere and poor Lightnin’ had to go out huntin’ him.”

I don’t say anything, and Nana gives my head a little tap with one bony finger.

“Why does Lowan think those poor spirits are pesterin’ him?” she asks me.

“He says they want his help.” It sounds so ridiculous when I say it out loud. “He figures if we can find out what’s happening to the hikers—if we can put a stop to the killing—maybe he won’t see them anymore.”

“You don’t believe that?” she asks, and I shrug.

“I don’t believe in ghosts.”

Nana clicks her tongue. “You don’t believe in much, girl, and it makes me sad. You wasn’t brought up that way.”

A memory comes creeping on the night wind. It curls around me like a shawl. It’s a decision spell, Dovie Bird. I’m sitting on my mother’s lap in a pool of moonlight while she sorts pebbles of different sizes into two tiny piles. For when you have to choose a hard thing . She lights a candle and sprinkles salt crystals onto both rock piles. A wick and a lick. Help me pick. Her words make me giggle, and I reach out with a chubby fist to grab a stone from one of the piles and lick the salt from it with a grin. I picked, Mama . My mother squeezes me tight. But then her smile fades and she leans down to blow out the flickering candle. I guess you did, baby.

A few days later, she was gone. So I guess I decided for all of us.

“Magic isn’t real,” I say. That’s something I know for certain, no matter how much hill blood is pumping through my veins.

“Some things have to be believed to be seen, Dovie.” Nana reaches into the pocket of her robe and pulls out a newspaper clipping folded in half. Before she hands it to me, she opens it up and presses it flat on her lap. “I saved this for you,” she tells me. “Clipped it from the Democrat-Gazette a few weeks back. Thought you might want it.”

I take the paper and hold it so the moonlight hits it. A boy a few years older than I am stares up at me with sleepy eyes the same color as the milky blue water that flows in Lucifer’s Creek. He’s posed at the edge of a lake, wearing a red hiking vest and jeans. His blond hair blows in the wind, and he’s grinning in a way that makes me think being content probably comes easy to him.

I know who it has to be, even before I see the headline.

RILEY ALDEN STILL MISSING IN OZARK MOUNTAINS

“He’s not missing anymore,” I say. “I found him.”

“That you did. I thought you might want to see his face.”

There will be another article tomorrow, I’m sure. Or the next day. Smaller than this one. Maybe on page three or four. It’ll announce that Riley Alden’s body was found, but there won’t be any details.

It won’t say where.

Or by who.

But it’ll mention the dangers inherent in hiking a wild trail like the AAT. The writer will hint that Riley Alden was inexperienced. Or careless. That it’s a tragedy, but he got himself killed. That’s all there is to it.

Riley Alden will barely be a blip on anyone’s radar.

Nobody talks about it outright, but we all know how things work in these hills. There are big weed operations up here. Multi-million-dollar fields. Have been for decades. Now the meth labs have moved in, too. The growers and the lab rats keep to themselves, but their big bosses have friends in very important places. Newspapers. The state police. Congress, even. Their buddies do a real good job of making sure the missing hikers don’t get too much media attention and that the deaths barely make the papers at all. Last thing they need is people swarming these woods looking for clues.

Ira does his part, too. He’s a one-man public relations firm for Lucifer’s Creek. Always winking and grinning and pouring the good liquor. Smoothing things over. Charming up the right people.

“Thanks,” I say, and I fold the photo up and stick it in my pocket.

Nana announces that she better get to bed. Her old bones are stiff from sitting so long in the night air. She leans down to kiss me on the head and ask me if I’m coming in, but I tell her I’m gonna sit up for a while yet.

Nana’s eyes search the dark corners of our yard. “I know it’s a hard thing to hear, but I imagine Lowan’s right. He ain’t gonna know peace until we figure out what darkness is walkin’ our hills. I don’t expect any of us will.” She pushes herself to her feet with a little groan. “And maybe we don’t deserve to.”

I tell her goodnight, and Nana heads on in. I’m left alone on our sagging porch steps, picking at the flaking white paint and rolling her words around and around in my brain.

Three or four times, I pull that newspaper picture back out of my pocket to study it. Over in Tulsa, there’s a family missing the boy who’s staring back up at me.

They’ll always want to know how he ended up in that shallow grave with mountain violets for his funeral flowers. Years and years from now, they’ll still be falling asleep dreaming about what might’ve happened to him.

Waking up in a cold sweat wondering.

The idea of that makes me angry.

I know what it feels like to live with questions, and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody.

It hits me that Nana’s right. Lo isn’t the only one I have a responsibility to.

I owe it to Riley to try and figure out what happened to him.

I owe it to all of them.

I sit there until the sky starts to turn pink, just staring at Riley’s face and wondering why it’s taken me this long to get good and pissed. Because someone is turning our hills into their own personal burying ground, and I’m getting awful tired of cleaning up the mess.