Old Bones: A Collection of Short Stories (10 page)

“What time is it?” she asked.

He wound the watch by its stem. “Don’t know.
Damn thing stopped.”

She looked at the door. “Do you think it will
ever be our turn?”

“Someday,” he said and closed the watch’s
cover. “It’s just a matter of time.”

#

A
Buzzing of Bees

SOME WOMEN HAVE voices like angels. And Angela was
the perfect name for the angel following him.

Brian listened to the gentle cadence of her
voice, smiling and feeling warm and love-struck wonderful.

“Did you remember to bring your new camera?”
she asked.

Brian pushed hanging branches away from his
face. This part of the woods on Myers Ridge was thick with
broadleaf and coniferous trees, and infested with thorny blackberry
and raspberry bushes. These barbed sentries were deep in cover,
away from hungry predators and ambitious and adventurous gardeners
with spades and pruning shears. But few people trespassed here on
his land. The terrain was rough and steep in many places and
challenging to walk over. Thick and thorny underbrush, stinging
nettle, and rattlesnakes were common threats, including branches
falling from trees infected by disease and acid rain attacking
their roots.

Overall, it was a miserable place in the
summer for anyone who ventured off the large deer trail they were
on. And he had no intention of leaving the trail and risk not being
with Angela.

“I did,” he said, answering her question.
“It’s in my pack.”

He was glad to have the heavy pack on his
back again. Hiking always cleared his mind and made his lungs and
legs stronger. Plus, it almost always brought Angela to him.

“I’m glad you came along today,” he said.

“I’m glad, too,” Angela said.

He glanced back at her and liked what he saw.
Her one-piece calico dress looked old-fashioned in its simple,
baggy design, but it made her look like a woman. The same with her
long, flowing red hair. Not short and tomboyish like so many of
women’s’ hairstyles today

“What time is it?” she asked him before he
returned his attention to the deer path.

“Almost four o’clock,” he said without
looking at his watch.

“I wish it were earlier,” she said. “I don’t
want the day to end. You make everything better just by letting me
be with you.”

He cleared his throat, feeling awkward for
the first time today. He smiled and remembered the same feeling
when he was young and uncertain. “You make me feel new and alive,”
he told her. “What’s even more amazing is that someone like you
could be in love with me.”

“You’re a wonderful guy. Don’t sell yourself
short.”

“My ex would disagree with that.” He stared
at the shadows flickering along the pathway from the sunlight
filtering through the treetops, and saw painful memories in them.
Some of them grew before his eyes and he was certain he didn’t want
to see them again. He looked away at the clearing ahead and was
glad to know the memories would not follow him there. But a few
pressed their way between him and Angela anyway and lurked behind
him like overgrown thieves wanting to rob him of his happiness.

He refused to look back until Angela asked:
“Is that why you burned all your paintings of her?”

“I had to let go. It was the only way to heal
from the heartbreak and all those drunken nights of pity
dates.”

“Your portraits are very good,” she said. “I
like the one you’re doing of me.”

He smiled. “Has someone been in my
studio?”

“I hope you don’t mind. It’s the only place
indoors I’m able to go … for now.”

Brian’s smile became a grin. The memories
left him and Angela hurried to decrease the distance between her
and Brian. When she was close enough to touch him without reaching
out, she said, “When you take my picture this time, I want you to
stand next to me.”

“Can I hold your hand?”

“Yes. Please. I love you.”

Like every time before, Brian choked up when
he tried to voice his love for her. Still, as his legs began to
feel rubbery, he managed not to trip along the rutted trail that
wound past scrub and fewer and smaller trees. Soon they would come
to the clearing that had been a pasture when his grandfather owned
the land. Brian thought of the pink and blue boulders that Grandpa
Eric had dug from the ground and used as fencing for his bulls
before he installed the electric fence. One of those rocks would
make a good place to take Angela’s photo before her time to
leave.

They passed the place where Grandpa’s barn
had been. The structure had collapsed years ago, its timber now
covered with field grass and hidden from sight by spruce, maple,
ash, and poplar trees. He listened to Angela’s voice while she
continued to talk. John again. She was reliving the phone call.

He glanced back at her when they entered the
clearing and midafternoon sunshine. Her one-piece baggy calico
dress billowed at her hips before a breeze pressed the material
against her body, revealing her pleasant figure underneath. Brian
looked away, but not before he saw her fiddle with her fingers,
especially the one where a diamond engagement ring occupied it.

“After leaving the hospital, I thought I was
strong enough to deal with it,” she said, “but after a few lonely
nights at home, I began to fall to pieces. I called mother but she
wouldn’t return any of my calls. We were never that close and I
think she blamed me.

“So, I began sleeping during the days and
drinking at night to help along the grieving, but the booze never
stayed down, so I was miserably somewhere between sober and
hung-over and sick to the stomach for a while until last Sunday
when I got a call from John. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t coming
home after all that happened to me.”

Brian said nothing. He barely heard the words
she spoke. He had heard them so many times before.

“I’m glad you found me when you did,” she
said. “It’s good to be connected to people who care about me.”

Brian led her to one of the rocks where
sunlight brightened its salmon colored surface. Not too far in the
distance, he heard the sound of bees buzzing. Angela’s time was
short.

He took off his pack, took out the brand-new
camera, and positioned it to face another pink rock. He set the
timer and led her to the rock.

“Say cheese,” he said as he held her hand and
smiled at the camera.

She kissed him on the cheek as the camera’s
timer activated its shutter.

“I don’t want to go,” she said, her lips
brushing his cheek.

The buzzing grew louder.

She brushed tears from her own cheeks.

He turned, took her in his arms and kissed
her on the mouth.

Would she remember this tomorrow? Some days
were like starting over.

He let his kiss linger on her lips before he
released her. The buzzing sounded like a windy roar now.

He felt a faraway anger coming to him from
the past and waited to see if it would make him cry. It did.

He felt electricity crawl across his skin.
Angela’s body—her dress, too—turned silvery blue like a distant
foggy sky. For a moment, she was there. Then she wasn’t.

The buzzing stopped.

Brian fetched his camera, returned it to his
pack, and started back toward home, embracing tomorrow and aching
to see Angela again.

#

A
Sinister Blast from the Past

INSIDE THIS COLD and sterile environment, I am a
prisoner of time, a prisoner of fate, a prisoner to the cruel
circumstances that have left me unable to communicate to the people
around me. They pass me and I go unnoticed by them. Without a name
I am nobody. Without a voice I am nothing more than a silent pet
that must be fed and bathed and taken care of. Unable to move I am
less than that.

Before it happened, it was supposed to be a
viewing of a corpse, nothing more. But my journey had somehow
strayed me from the straight and narrow and drove me into a
nightmare of mystery and horror. If the road had been on a cliff, I
would have been wise to have driven over the edge, plunge into a
fiery death to awaken from the madness that grips my mind, and be
free of the diabolical dance going on around me.

Instead, I waltz with ghosts. Trapped upon a
dance floor that extends beyond my periphery, I exist disturbed and
confused between the dancers I knew long ago; I’m out of time, out
of step, anxious of the cold hand of death most certainly ready to
tap me on the shoulder to let me know I’ve danced my last dance.
How terrible to have to die here so far away from Carrie and my
children, among these haunting phantoms that chill my blood and
shrink my soul.

Now I, unable to move or speak, find that I
must share with someone my tale of macabre circumstances before
this evil dance carries me away, for surely it has to end. Thus, I
pray for salvation, to return to my proper self and time, to go
home to that place of familiarity that enveloped me for years like
a comfortable blanket, serene and heavenly and exalting, and
elevated to a beautiful shrine I never knew could be missed this
much. But I fear I shall never see it again.

Unable to communicate, I send out these
thoughts, and hope that someone may hear my tale upon the winds,
and don’t consider me insane. Yet, insanity is where I find myself.
How could anyone believe what I am about to reveal?

It began when my Uncle John died ten days
ago. He was more of a father than an uncle. He and Aunt Zela raised
me after my parents died when I was four. My older cousins Judy and
Donald became like sister and brother, and when Judy called with
the heartbreaking news, the two of us wept while we remembered John
Foster’s inexhaustible kindness.

That evening without Carrie at my side (she
was in Pittsburgh at an art show), I left my woodsy ranch home on
the outskirts of New Cambridge and drove to Uncle John’s funeral in
nearby Ridgewood. I felt alone without my wife and constant
companion next to me.

(My dearest Carrie, I miss her dearly. We
married the year she graduated from New Cambridge University. I was
twenty and she had just turned twenty-three. The wedding ceremony
turned out better than how we had rehearsed it. Even the cake
turned out just right. Although Aunt Zela lamented that I had
married too young, that my destiny was college and a profession as
a teacher, she shared my happiness anyway when I became a writer
for the New Cambridge Gazette. She and Uncle John ended up loving
Carrie and the children dearly.)

During the drive to Uncle John’s funeral in
Ridgewood, I realized that I had forgotten my wallet. I considered
turning around but a sudden storm came on and dropped rain and hail
on me south of the little town where the surrounding woods are
thick with pines and the road too narrow to do a U-turn.

The rain and hail burst through the canopy of
trees, and brisk winds and sheets of rainfall caused me to pull
over and wait for visibility to return. My cell phone searched for
a signal while I sat alone inside my cramped Toyota Camry parked
dangerously along the highway.

A few yards behind me, a naked tree that had
lost its bark and branches long ago toppled and splintered onto the
road. Then, as I looked through the turrets of rain striking the
sunroof and flowing down my windshield, I saw bolts of lightning
strike beyond Myers Creek to my right. Suddenly, a whistling bolt
of lightning struck the hood of my car and rocked it like a boat
taking a large wake to the stern. My ears popped and a deafening
ringing filled my head. My hands tingled and felt like they had
been too close to a raging fire. I stuck my fingers in my mouth to
relieve the burn. When the ringing stopped and the burning in my
fingers had subsided, the storm was gone.

I got out and inspected a large scorch mark
across the hood of my car where the lightning had turned portions
of the metallic blue color to an ashy gray. Nothing I couldn’t fix
I reasoned as I got back in. As I looked in my rearview mirror
before driving off, something seemed amiss. By the time I had
driven another mile, I realized the tree that had crashed onto the
road had not been there when I pulled away.

A headache knifed at my eyes and the evening
skylight seemed especially bright when I entered Ridgewood. I put
away all thoughts about what could have happened to the tree as I
made my way to the funeral home. When I arrived, no one was there,
so I tried calling Aunt Zela, but my phone still searched for a
signal. I left downtown Ridgewood and drove east to Uncle John and
Aunt Zela’s house—the place where I grew up. As I turned on
Hamilton Street and approached the house, a thin teenage boy darted
out in front of my car. I stopped quick enough not to hit him and
he was athletic enough to dodge the speeding white Mustang coming
at him in the other lane. He turned and looked at me and I stared
dumbly into a face I hadn’t seen for a long, long time.

A girl around the same age and a boy no older
than seven came across the street next. They passed in front of the
car and I watched my cousins Judy and Donald catch up to the boy—a
boy that I had been in another time. Then I saw Uncle John come to
the driveway, climb into his old, red ’66 Chevy pickup truck, back
out onto the street and drive past me.

I don’t remember how long I sat there on my
old street with the engine of my yet-to-be-built car running and my
mind locked in disbelief. I turned on the radio to distract me and
keep me from thinking. The Pittsburgh Pirates were playing the
Cincinnati Reds and the announcer’s voice sent chills through my
numb body. It was a familiar voice, one I had listened to on many
summers while growing up on this very block.

I yelled at the radio, told it that what I
heard wasn’t real. It was all I could think to do. Then I changed
stations. Many played anti-war songs, and Watergate was still a hot
topic on the news. I slid a New Age CD into the CD player and drove
madly away, but the strangeness in Ridgewood remained. I saw late
1960 and early 1970 classic cars everywhere, even some from the
1950s. The streets were agleam with its insane road show. Their
Pennsylvania license plates looked plain—authentic yellow and blue
like the ones nailed to the wall inside my garage back home, not
like the colorful and fancy wildlife one fastened to the back of my
small, aerodynamic-designed Toyota.