Chapter 15
Lula
Boone sighs, cheeks flushed from the last of the whiskey. “All right, mean little thing. What game you want to play, since everything’s gotta be your way?”
“Hmm,” I think aloud. “There was a game we played on the expedition.” I get up and rush to my suitcase, where I’ve kept my large field notebook.
It’s leather bound with pressed flowers and all my observations from the expedition inside.
In the back is a loose parchment we’d used as a makeshift planchette board—the words yes and no in opposite corners, all the letters of the alphabet in between.
I place it at the center of the table before shutting the notebook and setting it aside.
“Does anyone have a coin?” I ask.
“This one of them games where you steal my penny?” Boone says, rustling through his pocket, tongue poking from the corner of his mouth. He’s unfairly handsome tonight, the way some men can be when they’re loosened, bright-eyed and grinning from drink.
“If it were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you, now would I? No, this is called planchette.”
He sets a penny on the paper with a dramatic sigh. “If you say so.”
I rest my finger on it. “Go ahead, both of you put a finger on the penny.”
“Ain’t enough room,” Boone snaps.
“Not your whole finger, you buffoon,” I poke.
“Easy for you to say with them tiny doll hands you got,” he says, resting a calloused fingertip at the copper edge. “What kinda game is this anyhow?”
“We ask the spirits of the great beyond a question, and they communicate through—”
Before I can even finish my sentence, Okee leans back. “I’m out.”
“Truly?”
“That’s divination. I’m not about to invite spirits into this cabin and neither will you.”
I laugh, so startled by the very serious concern etched in this burly man’s expression at the thought of communing with the dead that my voice goes up an octave. “You’re scared.”
“You’re damn right I am.”
Then I remember what he said about mission school and being raised strictly within his father’s religion.
Boone laughs so hard he nearly falls out of his chair. Okee’s arms are calmly crossed as he leans back, stone-faced.
“Scared of haints? If they was real, you reckon they’d be here with the likes of us, spellin’ words for sport?
Only spirits I’m concerned with come in a jug.
” He chuckles to himself. “And the only jugs I'm concerned with is that splendid pair you’re hidin’ under that bodice.
” He leans forward as if to press his face against my bosom, but stops shy of actually touching me, then shakes his face and blubbers wickedly. The fool.
Okee drags a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes. “Boone,” he says, soft. So soft it’s strangely tender. He shoots me an apologetic look.
“You’re obscene,” I say to Boone, shoving against his arm.
He looks pleased with himself when he says, “I ain’t never seen Okee scared of nothin’. Except”—He darts a look at me and smirks—“maybe this little general here.”
“General?” I repeat.
Boone’s grin widens before he throws a playful salute. “Marches in and starts givin’ orders. ‘Quit swingin’ around.’ ‘Button your coat.’ Next she’ll have us standin’ inspection.”
I feel my mouth twitch despite myself. “If I were a general, you’d be in irons for insubordination.”
“Told you. Everything’s gotta be your way. That’s the problem with you educated folk,” Boone says, wagging his head like he’s sorrowful for me and Okee both. “Always thinkin’ there’s a right way to breathe.”
“There is,” Okee murmurs. “Through your nose. Quietly.”
Boone makes an offended sound and sits back, but his eyes stay bright with mischief.
He taps the paper with a knuckle. “All right then. We do it your way, wild, since you know so much. You ask your spirits a question. I’ll take full responsibility if a dead bastard climbs out of the wall and starts causin’ trouble. ”
“Fine then,” I say, turning to Boone. “Would you care to partake in a game of planchette?”
Boone offers another a lazy salute and sets the tip of his middle finger on the penny, his hand a map of veins and sinews.
I start. “Are there any spirits present who wish to make themselves known?”
The candlelight flickers. Okee sits back with his arms crossed, shaking his head.
Boone and I hover over the penny, our fingertips barely grazing it.
Boone’s eyes are rimmed red, his usual sleepy expression gone heavier with whiskey.
In the unsteady light, I can scarcely tell whether his eyes are open at all, until he grins and the dimple in his cheek catches the candle glow.
The penny begins to move. It glides slow and certain to the left, toward the word yes, still written in Mary’s neat hand.
Boone perks up at once. “Ope, we hooked us a haint, y’all,” he announces, far too loudly.
“Shhh,” Okee says. “Mercy, this cabin is too small for you to be shouting.” He casts Boone a long, dry look. “And I doubt very much any spirit you communicate with would appreciate being likened to a mackerel.”
I clear my throat. “Can you tell us if the men who left those tracks outside mean to harm us?” It slips sideways swiftly.
YES →
We stare at it a moment. Boone cracks his knuckles and loosens his shoulders.
“All right, spirit,” he slurs. “If you’re real and ain’t just us sittin’ here playin’ with our own fingers—answer me this.” He pauses, eyes flicking to mine with that dangerous glint. “What do you figure we ought to do now that we’re snowed in, gettin’ on each other’s nerves?”
Okee raises an eyebrow as the penny glides—smooth, quick, no hesitation.
F →
U →
The penny stops, and I announce it aloud as I scribble the first letter down, then the second. Our fingertips touch, resting on the coin. It immediately slides down.
C →
It’s only then that the shape of it settles into sense. I pause, pen hovering, then let out a short breath.
“Oh, honestly,” I say.
“Boone,” Okee scolds. Boone’s already laughing—head thrown back, booming, chair creaking under him. “What’s the matter?” he says. “Let’s see what the spirit’s fixin’ to say.”
I feel the heat rise in my cheeks. The half word sits there on the paper like a child’s prank, bold and foolish. I lift my finger away from the penny.
Boone leans forward, eyes bright. “Come on now, little general. Don’t quit. Haint’s got somethin’ to say.”
“Come on. Don’t spoil the fun. Ask something true.”
“Fine,” he says, finger poised on the edge of the penny. Okee watches intently for a man who has chosen not to participate. “Oh, spirits and haints of the afterlife, where we headin’ after all this?”
The cabin goes still.
The penny does not move at first.
Boone huffs softly. “See?”
Then, slow as a thought changing its mind, it drifts up and to the left.
G →
I wet the tip of my pencil and write it down. The stove clicks and candles flicker as the penny moves slowly from letter to letter.
E →
M →
I →
N →
I →
The penny stops and my blood chills. “That isn’t funny.”
“What ain’t funny?” Boone asks, his grin slipping.
Okee glances down at the page. “Gemini,” he reads, with no particular alarm.
Boone squints at the letters. “Huh. I’m flattered you think I could spell that, but that must’a been your doin’.”
That is all the notice either of them gives it, and for some reason that makes it worse. To them it is only a word. A notion of twinned things, of pairs. To me it is a place. An address heavy with memories, not all of them kind.
Mother moved west and founded another—a new Gemini in Fort Gibson, near enough to our route that I had considered a visit, though I had not yet decided if I could bear it.
Boone asked where we are headed after all this, meaning the road, the next camp, whatever rough future waits for the three of us before we return to our lives. But the board did not answer him. It answered me.
I pull my hand back from the penny as if it has turned hot.
Yet even as I do, a worse thought comes creeping in after the first: what if no spirit moved it at all?
What if I had done it myself, some buried piece of me nudging the thing toward what I was too cowardly to look at in daylight?
As if my heart has taken this opportunity to push me toward a decision while my mind is numbed with drink.
I pick up the page, tuck it into my notebook, then run my thumb once along the spine. I clear my throat. “I think that’s enough amusement for now.”
Okee nods, as if he’s been waiting for someone to say it.
Boone tilts his head. “You sure?”
“Yes.” I smile, easy, the way you do when you mean to end a conversation without souring it. I stand, gathering my notebook to my chest. The room feels warmer than it did a moment ago, or perhaps I’ve only noticed it now.
I cross the cabin in quick steps, skirts brushing the boards, and grasp the ladder rungs.
Sleep does not come easy.
The wind pushes at the cabin all night, and I lie awake, Gemini sitting behind my eyes no matter how I turn.
Why that word? Twins. Pairs. Something so simple, and yet strange that Boone and Okee carried the constellation with them for their own reasons. Two halves of something I do not fully understand.
I tell myself that it is a coincidence. It must be. A word is only a word, and men are only men, and I have had too much whiskey and too little sleep.
The penny moved because we pushed it, because Boone wanted a laugh, because I had already been thinking of Fort Gibson and would not admit it.
Still, I do not sleep until near morning. When I finally wake, the sun is high and bright. Boone and Okee are gone, probably making their rounds. The ache of the whiskey rattling in my head settles last night’s fright. I must have pushed that penny myself.