October 2021 | Skeletons

Skeleton closet

Skeleton key

Give it a twist

And set one free

Skeleton boy

Skeleton girl

Rattle a hand

Or give it a twirl

Till the rug

To fertile soil

All six feet

Forever loyal

Skeleton closet

Skeleton key

Turns into a

Family

Bone of my bone

Skeleton home

Dance until

The catacomb

Clothespins and I, we’ve been through it. Hanging sheets in the backyard when the summers were longer. Slapping opal on a rusty 1K to soften the scene. Always keeping the tortilla chips safe.

It’s a lot of personality for a wire and popsicle sticks. Anything can have a mouth or a set of eyes. But watch that clothespin clench its little jaw, eager to secure your things till you get back. The stuff of Pixar movies.

Relax that little jaw into a smile. But honestly, hard to tell if it’s smiling or what. A little pterodactyl skull.

Dear skeletons, 

1. Please stop stealing the jack-o-lanterns off my porch to stick on your heads and prance about the neighborhood in. If you wanted to distinguish yourself, you should have thought of that before becoming skeletons.

2. It's really unnerving when you pop out from behind random bushes when I'm on an evening jog. If it isn't you, please tell all your friends to stop. I know YOU all might not understand this, but my heart rate is already high enough while I'm exercising, and I sincerely don't need your help in increasing it.

3. WHY are you all smiling constantly? Do you REALLY have that much to be happy about? 

4. My dog is not nasty or aggressive. It's her natural instinct to chew bones, so don't come whining to me about her being a "biter."

5. It might be fun for you to gather in the godforsaken middle of the night and play each other's bones like a marimba, but some of us actually have eyes to close and sleep to get, and all that rattling is preventing what could've been a peaceful night's rest.

6. What is WITH the way you slink around all the time? I think I can speak for everyone when I say it is starting to creep us out.

Sincerely,

A concerned human

It had been a year since the last run.  

A lot happens in a year. 

Hope my legs still remember how. One false move and you’re under and you don’t come up. Like Jonesy on Richardson. Jonesy was never coming up. 

“We need the extra men, you see Mike,” the crew boss had explained. “Can’t run the whole thing with only twenty poles. Just can’t do it.” 

“Sure.” 

“You game for it?” 

“Sure.” 

“I’ll be up in the morning to start. Have everything yarded or we’ll never catch Courser.” 

Mike cut a notch in the base of a thick pine. There was an empty thud when the ax hit the bark on the first two swings, then a satisfying thwack when it sunk into the meat of the wood on the third. Need to bring this ax to Freddy at lunch. He never finished that story about Montreal last time. Maybe when I get done with this run I’ll take the train up to Montreal. Damn, it’s been a while since I ran the river.   

At lunch he brought the ax to Freddy. The whetstone sang over the blade. 

“Always better when the crew boss is gone,” said Mike.  

“Mm-hm.”

“It’s not that he’s bad. Not one bit. He’s a decent guy. It’s just easier without him always looking over your shoulder.”

“Mm-hm.” 

“You know what I mean, right?”

“Sure. Can’t get a good rhythm.” 

Mike smiled. That was it. Freddy always knew how to put it. Rhythm. That was exactly it. There was a rhythm in the woods, a rhythm with the ax and the sweat and the momentum of each swing and the teams swooshing up the hill with the scoot and the chain clanging in the staple all the way down to the landing. Freddy knew how to say things. 

“You know, Mike, someday you should just get yourself a whetstone and let me be.” 

“I’d hate to leave you without a job.” 

The whetstone rang. 

“Hear anything about Courser?” asked Mike. 

Freddy set the ax blade in his lap. “Not good. They’ve cleared the back side of the grange. Mack says they got the whole thing yarded already. Going to run it tomorrow or the day after.” He turned the blade over in his hand, feeling the edge with the tough skin of his thumb.

“They got all that yarded in two days?”  

Freddy shrugged. Mike looked down at his boots, glistening with melting snow. Damn Courser. 

“Here you go.” Freddy held the ax out. 

“Thanks.” 

“Hey, Mike.” 

“Yeah?” 

“If you run it”– Freddy looked up at the hill and squinted –“Mack is saying its higher than usual. His crew lost two guys last week at Seven-Mile.” Freddy put his hands on his knees. “Just keep your head on straight, alright?”  

At dinner that night, Mike went over the run in his head. Out of the landing there’s Hunt’s Bend. Nothing crazy, but a lot of flow going through there this time of year. Then there’s the long flat section with nothing to do. Might as well just walk it. Hop off and take the shore. Then, after you get into the gorge, there’s the rapids underneath that old fishing camp. I remember Phil or someone – who was that? – talking about fishing out of that camp. I should go up there. That’d be nice. Probably got some nice views. Maybe after the run. Anyway – after the gorge you’ve got Battiston’s Point to get around. Then you’re good for a while. Until Seven-Mile –  

“Hey Mikey,” said another man. “You gonna be at Lander’s with us tomorrow night?” 

Mike shrugged. “Why not?”

The other man squinted at him. “What’s up with you?” 

Mike took his time swallowing. “Thinking about trying that old fishing camp above the gorge tomorrow. Never been up there.” 

“Sure,” said the other man. “Hell, that’d be real nice.” The man squinted at Mike again. “You sure you’re ok? Seems like”– His face suddenly lit and relaxed. “Oh, I know what it is. You’re thinking about a girl, aren’t you? That’s what it is. I knew it. Guys always do that before the run.” He pointed a forefinger at Mike and smiled. “But I get it. The run does that.”

Mike shrugged. He wasn’t thinking about a girl. He was thinking about the two dead men from Mack’s crew at the bottom of the river under Seven-Mile Bridge. Skeletons, withering and drifting in the pull of the dark water. They were looking up at him and their eye sockets moved with his gaze as he tried to look away. 

“Yeah, you got me Sam,” he said. “You guessed it.” 

“I knew it,” said Sam. “But you listen to me – cut it out. It won’t do you any good before the run. You know that.” 

“Yeah.” Mike turned back to his plate and the dead men looked at him again. 

Sam offered a cigar. 

“Sure, thanks.” 

“These are good ones, you know.” 

“From where?”

“Chicago.”

“Really?”

“Yup. Jack says they’re the best ones. Straight from Cuba.”

“I don’t trust Jack.”

“Not my problem.”

Mike puffed on the cigar. It was good. 

“Ever been to Cuba?” 

Mike shook his head. 

“You’re an odd one, you know that, Mikey?”

“Really?” 

“It’s cause you’re always hanging around Freddy.”

Mike raised his eyebrows.

“Freddy’s a peach.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“The boss is a peach.”

Mike choked on his cigar. 

“I’m serious,” said Sam, laughing. “You’re joking but I’m serious.” Sam poured beer from a pitcher on the table into his glass. The foam boiled over the golden liquid. “He doesn’t beat around the bush. Gets to the point. I like that. It’s one of my values, you know.” 

“Values?”

“Yup. Gotta have values in life, right?” Sam leaned across the table. 

Mike shrugged. 

“Go to hell.” Sam scowled.  

“Oh, come on. I didn’t even say anything.”

Sam glared.  

“Relax. Come on, relax. Just take it easy and drink your beer. I like this cigar, OK? It’s good. Real good.”

Sam jammed a cigar between his lips and puffed on it. Mike watched him decompress with each puff like a teakettle in reverse. 

“Didn’t mean any harm, Sam. You have a lot of values, you know.” 

“So what if I do?” 

“So nothing. No harm to me.” He poured himself beer. He didn’t want beer. He wanted wine, but there was no wine. There was no wine in the whole North Country. But wine would be good. Wine with a cigar. There had been wine in Prague. Prague, where he had sat in the dingy third-story apartment and sipped cheap wine and watched tourists strolling down to the river to eat at the little restaurant on the wharf. 

“You like the cigar, huh?” asked Sam. He leaned on his elbows on the table. 

Mike nodded. “Would be great with some whiskey.”

. . . 

“Did you hear about Jonesy last week?”

“Let’s not talk about that.”

“Alright.” Sam looked around. The mess hall was empty. 

Sam pushed himself off the table and went out into the cold. Mike stayed in the mess hall and thought about Prague. Mack’s dead men watched him through their eye sockets from under the bridge. 

They had the logs afloat by eight o’clock the next morning. Mike let the other runners get out on the float first to see how much jumping they were going to be doing. It wasn’t that bad. The float was tight. I’ve seen worse. He stepped out onto the water. 

  They slid past the logging camp. The men moved across the float easily, sometimes stepping onto dry land and hopping back on a few minutes later. Jams happened often and they had plenty to do. Hunt’s Bend came and went with no surprises. The float stayed tight. Then they were in the long slow section where the water slid heavy and dark toward the gorge. A loon dove in front of them and the sun rose in the sky. 

One of the men pointed toward the shore. “Freddy’s there! On the bank!”

They moved across the float in unison. A car was parked on the riverbank. Freddy was sitting on the snow with two large bags. Sam, rushing, lost his balance and plunged a leg into the river. 

They sat on the sunny bank and ate sandwiches and watched the logs slide by like a glacier on glass. The loon resurfaced in front of them.

“Water nice and warm, eh Sam?”  

“Boiling,” said Sam. 

“Sandwiches are nice, Freddy. Real nice,” said Mike. Murmurs of approval. The loon dove.  

“Some whiskey’d be nice right about now,” said Sam. He must be thinking about it after our conversation last night, thought Mike. 

“Not before the gorge,” said Freddy. 

“True.”

The loon resurfaced.

“You boys seeing that loon?” said Freddy. 

“Anyone hear from the mill?” asked Sam. 

“Nope,” said Mike.

“We won’t, will we?”

“Why would we?”

“I guess.” 

“No use thinking about it.”

“True.”

“Think about whiskey.”

“You and your whiskey.”

“Another sandwich?” asked Freddy. 

“I’m good, thanks,” said Mike. 

“You know what, Sam?” said Freddy. “You ought to join the Anti-Prohibition League. You’d be a stump preacher. Preacher for hard liquor.” 

“And I’d be a great one, too,” said Sam. 

“My old man was a preacher,” said Mike. 

“What kind?” asked Freddy. 

“What do you mean, what kind?”

“Was he a good one?”

“I thought so.”

“Fire n’ brimstone?”

“More philosopher-type.” 

“I bet he was a good one.” Freddy smiled and leaned back on his elbows. 

Mike shrugged. “After he died the whole thing went to pieces.” And as he said the word “died,” he saw Mack’s dead men under the bridge, floating pale flesh framing their bones. The loon surfaced a few yards in front of him and now—quickly—the dead men rose toward him through the water. He shook his head and focused on the loon’s red eyes. Maybe this is what those war novels talk about. The man who is going to die is the one who constantly thinks about dying. Can’t keep thinking like this. They’re dead and you’re on the float and that’s the way it is. 

The other men were walking back out onto the float. Mike stood up. “You coming?” he asked Sam. 

“In a bit. Gotta dry my pant leg off.” 

“You’re just going to get wet again.” 

“True.”

“So–”

“It’s the principle of the thing.” 

Mike laughed. “Values yesterday, principles today.” 

The float entered the gorge an hour later. Mike looked up and saw the old fishing camp perched on top of the ledge. The rock wall was high. He looked upriver and saw Sam working out a jam in an eddy at the top of the gorge. His pant leg was soaked. This was a stupid idea, thought Mike. Running the river like this before the drop. Damn Courser. Damn the crew boss. Damn the river.

After the gorge it was slow for a few hours. The afternoon sun waned and Mike shivered as the trees cast a cold shadow over the river. Damn this cold. And those trees. It wasn’t this cold in Prague. 

He heard the bridge before he saw it. 

A mist appeared at the bend and he heard the flow planing down through the timbers. Freddy stood on the bridge peering upriver through the mist. Mike felt his legs quiver. Not now. Not now, of all times. My legs were fine all day. Not now. The flow became a roar. For a second, Mike thought it was smaller than usual. It dropped off earlier than he remembered and the dip seemed shallow. His legs steadied. 

The float neared the bridge. He tried to locate the pylons under the timbers and realized they were underwater. He saw Freddy, ashen-faced, sprint toward the far shore, jump off the road, and rummage frantically in the undergrowth. He emerged with one of the long jam-poles from last spring, ran down to the water’s edge, and motioned for Mike to work his way toward the bank. Mike glanced at the flow and knew he wouldn’t make it across in time. He shook his head. They looked at each other as Mike slid toward the bridge.

He pictured the barges on the Vltava, silent and graceful, gliding their way through Prague’s watery center. Damn Prague. Now the flow appeared in front of him and it was bigger than he had ever seen it before, savage, streaking under the bridge, furious, deep and dark and glassy and thick. The logs began to bind underneath him, crunching and grinding on the pylons, jerking up and down as the layers of timber multiplied below the water’s surface. Damn the crew boss. He instinctively reached out for a bridge post, but he was too far away. Were they there? Are they here? Damn Courser. 

The mist closed around him and for an eternal moment he hovered over the drop. He saw the ghastly, dead shape of the wooden pylon leer up out of the terrifying darkness, empty and menacing, like a tombstone. Under the water, they were there – it was far too deep to see them, right? Cigars and whiskey and Prague can go to hell. The logs behind him bound with vicious speed and whipped up so that their ends pointed at the sky. Somewhere under the water there was a jam. Mack wouldn’t have left them, or would he? Left them there, under the bridge, the pylon as their eulogy— Logs screeched against the ledge, piling with furious, pounding speed against the bridge posts. They can see me, even if I can’t see them. Damn the river. Looking at me, through me, skeleton eyes through me. Values today, principles tomorrow. Mike shot under the bridge and a gaping space of black water opened up behind him, followed by a tremendous crack. Damn the bridge. Looking at me with their dead eyes, their dead pylon tombstone eyes. Dead men under a bridge, three dead men under a bridge. 

With a crash, the bridge gave way. 

As an advocate for abundant life and a protester of sterility, Mary, the only daughter of an only daughter, resolved to plant a garden on the first day of her twelfth year. April's soil held on to winter stiffly in Northern Indiana, but Mary worked loosely, buoyantly, vigorously. The late morning sunshine that beamed across the rolling fields to the blooming apple trees seemed to light them from within and ignited Mary too—sweat soaking through her cotton floral dress—the one she insisted on wearing despite knowing her hands would pay for the dirt later with raw chaps from boiling water and carbolic soap.

Evelyn used to do the wash with Mary, but now Evelyn's hands were more stiff than the barely-thawed soil. She used to speak more too—used to bring Mary with her to her memories.

"You know, you might think we work hard because we don't have the fancy washer-machines do all our clothes, but when I grew up we had to be willing to give generously from our bodies for every single thing we wanted in return. Once, when I was only seven years old, I had popping corn at a cousin's house. I told my mother I wanted some, and she told me to pick the corn myself. So I went to a neighbor's and he said if I picked enough corn for three barrels I could have my own basket for popping corn. I gave myself cuts all over my hands and arms for almost a week pickin’ every day for that popping corn. I learned all about how to pull back the husks and tie up the ears and hang ‘em from a tree for weeks to dry out the kernels in the sun. I had to build my own little fence using sharp sticks I rammed into the ground to keep the deer from eating it. Then, when it was finally ready to try, I got a severe burn from the oil I tried to pop it in. Hardly any of it popped. Turns out the type of corn farmer Cooper grows isn't good for popping. Yes, we gave a lot for everything, and sometimes we hardly got anything back."

But Evelyn lost the flow of her speech along with the fluidity of her hands, and now she went to her memories alone.

Mary dug all morning in the spot she predetermined would be most beautiful—partly fenced in by a decomposing stone wall, already squarely reminiscent of a garden. She dug intending to free all the soil from the tangled weeds and scatter the wildflower seeds her father gave her for her birthday. She dug with her imagination brimming in wonderful colors bursting to life about her in the impending summer air. She dug while Evelyn watched with hollow eyes from the window. She dug further and further into the ground, struggling to uproot a small dead bush, its brittle tendrils deeply embedded in the earth. She dug until she found something that stopped her flat.

Evelyn's skin was pinched back in some places by her long and ruffled dress, sagged everywhere else, and sank into the dusty chair where she always sat. She had carried her bones around for eight-nine years and had no one left to shelter them but her dead daughter’s husband. Here in his purchased gilded country manor she rocked her muscles back and forth, and she held her organs tightly in with crossed arms. Her only remaining blood burst through the door and said,

“Granny, I think I found a skeleton.”

And in the scene that followed, Mary shifted from energetic bouncing to rapid breathing to tear-filled eyes to shaky speech and sweaty palms because she did not know how to feel, and Evelyn was not giving any clues. Evelyn stolidly said that yes, it was quite possible that she had dug up old bones. Mary frantically wiped her dirty hands on her dress and asked Evelyn to come look.

The overgrown and now overturned corner of the yard was riddled with haphazardly dug holes—some up to several feet deep. The perfectly pinned back and brilliantly white tuft on Evelyn’s head glowed luminescent in the sun. Her starched dress shuffled slightly in the breeze. It was the only thing that about her that moved while Mary said, 

“Here, see, I just kept finding these at first,” she held several chips of fairly decomposed wood, “but then I found this,” and she pointed in the nearest hole at an unmistakably human skull surrounded by dirt, roots, and more decaying wood, resting near a series of ivory shafts that could have once been a rib cage.

The human statue standing in Mary’s garden did not even widen her eyes, but stared staunchly into the vacant sockets for a long moment. Then, after paying her respects with a low nod, Evelyn shuffled back to the spot she always sat.

A disturbed Mary set aside her garden ventures, not wanting to be left alone with the uninhabited form that reeked of expiration, and headed to her room to read. Her eyes still blazed with sun and adjusted slowly to the shadowy interior of the house. She crept by Evelyn with uncharacteristic sensitivity. Everything in this old house smelled rich, dank, and cognizant, as if the wood and wallpaper soaked up people's memories along with the carbon dioxide they breathed. 

Mary had never seen a ghost—not before that very night—but she sensed them intuitively. The spirits of the servants rushed past her when she climbed up the constricted back staircase. The spirits of the children with their wooden toys played on the floor in the sunlight while she read on the window seat. And the spirits of three generations of mothers were still trying in all their hard-working ways to make this place a home with the imprint of all the cleaning, caring and upkeep that had preserved it thus far.

But the ghosts that were most real to Mary were the ones that came alive again through the breath of Evelyn's stories. 

"Before my brother died, we would always find some way to watch the sunset. Our favorite spot was by the old oak and after one particularly golden sunset, Jimmy found a kitten wandering around out there in the twilight. We always had cats around on account of how much my mother hated mice, but this one—Miss Louise—quickly became my favorite. Miss Louise had gray soft fur, so fluffy you could bury your hand in it. Then after Jimmy got sick and left us, I tried to take Miss Louise with me to the old oak, but she ran away and left us too."

Miss Louise had never lived in this house, but Mary felt as if Evelyn had brought her ghost here with her, and sometimes heard a phantasmal mew that couldn’t be explained by any other fashion. They didn’t keep cats. The young girl was roused from chapter three of Nancy's Mysterious Letter by the sound of her father's rumbly Cadillac. She watched his short curly head followed by his squat yet agile frame exit the vehicle, then ran downstairs to tell him about her morning discovery. He was all curiosity about the newfound inhabitant and the lines in his face danced animatedly.

“Did you see any headstones? Are there other graves? This house is real old, kiddo. Even older than your granny. It was built before the civil war. There could be more graves, a whole family cemetery! Fascinating. Let's go look.” 

His bright eyes scoured Mary’s garden. He jumped dynamically from one corner to another, examining everything with occasional exclamations of, "This could be something!" and "We could learn a lot of history about the folks here before us."

“Who used to live here, daddy?”

“A family in a lot of trouble with money.”

“If they were poor, why was their house so big?”

“You see all these fields?” He gestured to the brown surrounding stalks, “Used to be farmed. And those rows of trees where we pick the apples? Those were orchards. Farming used to give folks money. Then it stopped.” 

“Then you bought the house from them? Because drug stores still give people money?”

“I bought the house long after they sold all this land. Used to be that folks who didn't have land didn't have nothin'. Eventually, though, these folks couldn't even keep the house. Did you see this, Kiddo? This stone, stuck in the ground." It was flat, gray, and green. What once might have been an inscription was now a series of inscrutable indentations that blended in with the rest of the deterioration. They found several others like it that Mary had overlooked in her eagerness to bear flowers. She began to ponder before she even decided if she wanted to, images of mysterious farming family ancestors floating before her—breathing and laughing, soaking in the sunshine, chomping on apples—now resting reticent beneath her brown saddle shoes. As the sun threatened to settle, Mary and her father retreated inside the house. 

An ornate candelabra supped with them that night, a special guest for Mary’s birthday. When the lamb chops had disappeared, the gravy had been licked clean off the plate, and all the canned peas were finally choked down one by one, Mary wanted to know if she could go back out and bury the bones she had dug up.

“Wait ‘till morning, kiddo, it’s getting dark out. We’ll do it together, okay? And you don’t want to miss out on the butterscotch pudding, do you?” 

Mary’s father then crept up the stairs to his bedroom to retrieve her birthday surprise. He presented her with an excited little ball of flaming orange fur who was ready to lick her with a sandpaper tongue. Mary squealed with delight and donned her new kitten Tulip. 

And what with the pudding, a good sit on a fuzzy rug while The Falcon played on the radio, and chasing Tulip for a snuggle while she frolicked about, Mary all but forgot her garden and its occupants. All but the uneasy feeling that something was not quite right, something fascinating but disturbing, intriguing but cold, was lurking with her through the evening.

That night as she lay tucked under a heavy quilt Mary asked her father,

“Why didn’t granny say anything when I showed her the skeleton? I mean, she seemed...”

“Unaffected?"

"Yeah."

Her father sighed, and the line between his brows deepened.

"Death was always very near when Granny was growing up. People birthed death more than they birthed life. I guess she just got used to it, while it seems very unusual, even gruesome to us.”

When Mary tried to sleep, her mind was not obedient to her tired body. Her eyes would not keep shut. And were her ears playing tricks on her? She thought she heard an eerie song howling alongside the wind. Without waiting for her courage to wither with the imminent detonation of her imagination, she tiptoed across the creaky wood floor to peel back the lacey curtain, unprepared for the macabre spectacle awaiting her eyes.

Fixed in her garden, a specter with a wispy long dress and wispier long hair bent crookedly in the moonlight, clutching bones to her breast and wailing raucously like a newborn child.

Several months later, Evelyn stared out the window at Mary’s project. She and her father had put back the graveyard as best as they could and cleaned up the overgrown parts around the headstones. Mary used her seeds to put wildflowers along the edges, and Evelyn’s eyes glowed with a tiny spark of forgotten interest in the strengthening sprouts of life generated amongst the decay as the orange tabby lay purring in her lap.