Precious Bones (5 page)

“Yes, sir, can I bring Nippy with me?” I always enjoyed summer break because I got to spend a lot more time with Nolay than during schooltime.

“I guess, but you gotta keep her on a leash. That dang coon is overcurious.”

When we pulled up to the Fish House, a small group of men were milling around by the entrance to the docks. Ironhead saw us drive up and walked over to the truck. He was a young man with a body shaped like a beer keg. His thick arms and legs jutted straight out, as if he didn’t have any elbows or knees. His head sat directly on his shoulders with no visible neck. Sometimes when a ray of sunshine crossed his red hair just right, it looked like his head was a blazing fire.

Ironhead leaned one hand on the side of the truck and
said, “I tell you what, hit’s been a-rainin’ bullfrogs. I been meanin’ to come out y’all’s house and see if y’all done floated away.”

“You’re sure right about that; it’s been a dang wet week. But it’s a good thing, ’cause the swamps always need a healthy dose of summer rain.”

Ironhead let out a little sniffling grunt, signaling he had some important news to tell us. He considered himself a verbal newspaper in our community. “The sheriff stopped by here this morning and tolt us he was looking for a missin’ Yankee man. Sheriff said the Yankee man’s partner reported him missin’ yesterday. His partner said the two of ’em was out by the Reems place, where it butts up against your swamp, and they got separated. Durn strange if you ask me.”

Before Nolay could answer, Ironhead took a couple more sniffles and continued, “Two fellas come nosing around two, three days ago. Well, hit was one of them. You seen anything out your way?”

“I reckon a couple of fellas stopped by our place, but I didn’t pay much attention.”

I was just ready to open my mouth when Nolay’s eyes turned in my direction and put a lock on my lips. I don’t know why he didn’t mention seeing those Yankee men a second time.

Nolay set up a time with Ironhead to go net fishing the following week, and we headed back home.

On the ride back I looked over at Nolay and the words tumbled out of my mouth. “Nolay, don’t you remember them two Yankees that come out to our house? You scared ’em so bad, they broke their car getting out of the driveway.”

“Yeah, I remember them two fellas, but I don’t know if it’s the same two Ironhead is talking about. There’s more than a couple of Yankees nosing around these days.”

I could see by the way Nolay cocked his chin a little to one side that he was through talking. But I was certain it was the same ones Ironhead was talking about, because they were the only Yankees I had seen around here.

When we pulled up to our driveway, I saw my best friend, Little Man, standing by the front door. He had a croker sack slung over one shoulder and a four-prong gig over the other. He was a full year older than me, and I couldn’t remember ever not having Little Man as my best friend. We sat together every day on the school bus; we shared our food, our thoughts, and our feelings about what a waste of time school was.

Little Man and his family were our closest neighbors; they lived about two miles away. Nolay and Little Man’s daddy, Mr. Cotton, grew up together. Mr. Cotton was called Cotton because he had a headful of hair as white as a cotton ball. Nolay said Mr. Cotton was one of the best durn hunters in the entire county. And Little Man had a talent for worm fiddling. He could wiggle a stick in the ground and worms would just come dancing up to the top.

Little Man was a big boy, nearly as big as his older twin brothers, Earl and Ethan. They were six years older than him and had just graduated from school. His real name was Irvin, but only his mama ever called him that. His soft, doe-brown eyes were placed wide apart in his round face, which, like his entire body, was a mass of freckles. When he was curious about something, he had a way of scrunching up his face so a perfect question mark wiggled up right between his eyes. No matter how much grease he slapped on his wheat-colored hair, it sat on his head like a bird’s nest.

I got out of the truck and walked up to him. “Hey, Little Man.”

“Howdy, Bones, I’m goin’ giggin’ down at the river. You wanna come along?”

“Sure I do.”

He held up the croker sack and said, “I got something for your mama.”

“Come on inside. She’s most likely in the kitchen.”

Little Man walked in, set the croker sack on the kitchen table, and said, “Mornin’, Miss Lori. This here is a mess of fresh-picked mustard greens and butter beans.”

“Why, thank you, Little Man, and how’s your family doing?”

“Everyone’s fine. Pa’s grinding up a load of sugarcane, said to tell you he’d have a batch of sorghum syrup by the end of the week.”

I broke into the conversation. “Mama, Little Man is going fish gigging down at the river. Can I go with him, please, Mama?”

“I don’t see why not, just be careful and be home by noon dinnertime.”

“We will, Mama, and with some fresh fish to fry.”

Nolay had helped me make my fish gig, and I was mighty proud of it. The four-foot wooden shaft was made out of a straight cypress branch. Together we had scraped and polished it to a smooth finish. At the end Nolay had attached a four-pronged metal spear. It was in perfect balance for spearing fish, crabs, and frogs. I grabbed my gig and we headed down our driveway for the two-mile hike to the Indian River.

As we walked barefoot along the sandy road, I told Little Man the news. “Did you hear about that Yankee man that’s gone missing?”

“I ain’t heard about that. What happened?”

“Just this morning Ironhead told me and Nolay that the sheriff stopped by the Fish House and told them that a Yankee man had gone missing yesterday.”

Little Man shook his head. “That don’t make sense. How does someone go missin’?”

“I don’t know. But Ironhead said that two of them were out on the Reemses’ land, close by our swamp, and they got separated. And you know what else? I think that Yankee man came out to our house just last week.”

“You sure?”

“Course I’m sure. It was a couple of days after that big storm blew in. There was two of ’em. But Nolay got a gun and chased ’em off our land.”

“Mr. Nolay chased some Yankees off his land with a gun?”

“Yep. He didn’t shoot directly at ’em or anything. But he sure scared ’em good.”

Little Man shook his head again. “Mr. Nolay sure is something. But it just don’t make sense why Yankees that don’t know nothin’ about the swamps would be out there.”

I nodded in agreement. “You’re right about that, it don’t make sense. And you want to know something else? We saw those same two Yankees out on our property with the Reems brothers the very next day.”

“What were they doin’ out there with the Reemses?”

“I don’t know. But Nolay sure did get upset with them. And he chased them off again, only this time he didn’t shoot at them. And you want to know something else? I think I ran into Soap Sally out there.”

“Soap Sally? Bones, you know there ain’t no such thing. That’s just an old swamp legend.”

“Well, I’m not so sure. I mean, if legends ain’t real, how do they get started in the first place?”

“I ain’t sure about that. I’ve heard stories about Sally all my life, but I ain’t never seen her.”

“Have you ever smelled her?” I asked. “Because I think I have. A couple of times out by the swamp’s edge I’ve smelled something musky like old dried-out lye soap or wet rags.”

“Come to think of it, I have smelled something like that. But that could just about be anything in the swamps. There’s always something dying or decaying out there.”

We strolled over the railroad tracks, passed by the Last Chance General Store, and came to the two-lane paved highway, U.S. 1. I looked back at the Last Chance storefront and
saw Mr. Speed sitting on his bench. I waved, and he slowly raised his hand in return.

We crossed over the highway and found our usual path down the bank of the Indian River. As we walked along the shoreline, swarms of fiddler crabs scuttled sideways across the sand, looking for a hole to duck into. They brandished their one large claw high in the air like a small sword. Hermit crabs dressed in every imaginable manner of shell marched together as one colony toward the water’s edge.

The riverbank was pocked with large holes where land crabs lived. Several of them sat defiantly at the front of their holes. Perched on long spindly legs, they pointed their purple and orange claws in the air and clapped them together in a threatening gesture. That fearsome display was just show. If you touched one with a stick, it would fall apart.

As Little Man and I walked along the riverbank, I thought of the day about a year ago when I found a croker sack washed up on the sand. Inside a burlap bag, bunched together like soggy black socks, were the bodies of five tiny puppies. They were so young, their eyes were still sealed shut. Four were dead, but one wiggled with signs of life. I took him home, and me and Mama nursed him with a baby bottle. We named him Mr. Jones and watched as that soggy little sock grew a magnificent glossy black coat. His pensive eyes sat in his head like two golden coins. Mr. Jones was a mixture of so many things we couldn’t tell for certain what he was. One thing for sure, he was a true and loyal friend.

We silently waded into the brackish water, soft, warm sand squishing up between our toes. Beds of turtle grass moved
gently in the current, revealing small fish, river shrimp, and snails.

Little Man looked in my direction and said, “Bones, you look out for stingrays. Watch for two bumps in the sand. That’ll be their eyes. We don’t need no accidents happening.”

“You tell me that every time.”

“Well, sometimes I just got to repeat myself, that’s all.”

It was low tide, and the sharp edges of huge beds of oysters, sleeping through the summer months, peeked out above the water’s surface. A couple of glossy ibis waded in the shallows, their strong curved beaks shoveling through the mud in search of worms and bugs.

Further out, a blue heron stood like a statue on one leg, its long neck arched and ready to strike at passing fish. A small family of grebes floated out in deeper water, a couple of babies catching a ride on their mama’s back.

Little Man pointed to a spot that rippled on top of the water’s flat surface. “There’s a big school of mullet feedin’. You go around that side, and I’ll take this side.” We silently waded out to the school. We raised our gigs like Indian spears and plunged them into the water. We were each rewarded with a fat mullet wiggling at the end of the sharp prongs.

After a couple of hours Little Man held up our croker sack and said, “This here is enough mullet for the day, plus we got a couple of blue crabs. Best we be heading back.”

We climbed back up the riverbank, crossed over U.S. 1, and headed for the Last Chance General Store. As we got nearer, sure enough, Mr. Speed was still sitting out there. He wore a clean pair of blue overalls and, perched sideways on his
head, the green baseball cap that me and Little Man gave him last Christmas.

He was the only child of Mr. Ball and Miss Evelyn, who owned and operated the Last Chance. The pride and joy of his mama and daddy, when World War II broke out in 1942, he did his patriotic duty and enlisted in the army on his eighteenth birthday.

Shipped overseas to a place whose name no one could pronounce, he returned home two years later with half his head a shiny mass of scars and half his mind filled with fascinating information. Every morning one of his parents made sure he was comfortable on his bench, where he spent the day seeing things that no one else could and sharing his wealth of information with all who would listen.

Being that I was only three years old when Mr. Speed joined the army, I don’t remember knowing him before that. But I will never forget the first time I met him. I was five years old and had gone to the Last Chance with Mama. When we walked around to the front entrance of the store I stopped dead in my tracks upon seeing a strange man with scars covering half his bald head sitting on the front bench. Mama reached over and took hold of my hand. She leaned down and quietly said, “Bones, there’s nothing to be afraid of, he’s a very nice man. He just met with a bad accident. Let’s go over and say good morning to Mr. Speed. I’ll introduce you to him.”

I figured as long as Mama had ahold of my hand and she wasn’t scared, it would be all right. We walked up to the
bench, and Mr. Speed slowly turned his head in our direction. Mama said, “Good morning, Mr. Speed, I’m glad to see you back home. You remember my husband, Nolay? I want to introduce you to our daughter, Bones.”

Mr. Speed looked directly at me. His eyes were brown speckled with gold. It was like looking into two glasses of cool sweet tea. A thin, lopsided smile spread halfway across his face. He said, “Bones. Good name. Bones.”

The way he said my name brought an instant smile to my face. Whatever fear I had felt before flew away like leaves in a breeze. “Thank you, sir, and I like your name, too.”

Mama looked at me and said, “Bones, if you want, you can sit out here and visit with Mr. Speed while I go get a few things inside.”

Sounded like a good idea to me, because I sure was curious to get to know this new neighbor. I walked over and climbed up on the bench beside Mr. Speed. We didn’t say to much to each other that first day, we just sat and enjoyed each other’s company. From that day on he was one of my best friends.

“Good mornin’, Mr. Speed,” Little Man and I said in unison.

“We been down to the river,” Little Man continued. “You want me to bring you an RC Cola?” Mr. Speed bobbed his head in affirmation as he continued to stare out into nothing.

Inside, with the soft light of the store, I recognized the silhouette of Mr. Ball behind the counter. He was a small, bald-headed man who resembled a turtle and moved at about the same pace, but he was kindhearted and never turned
a customer away. Nearly everyone in the community had a running tab at the store. Being that the Last Chance had the only telephone within a ten-mile radius, Mr. Ball was known to take messages from friends and family and pass them on.

I caught a glimpse of Mr. Speed’s mama, Miss Evelyn, sitting at her desk in a small room at the back of the store.