Bone Gap (2 page)

They weren't even trying.

He said, “Listen, Derek, if you thought that—”

“Are you messing with me?”

“No, I'm—”

“He's Derek,” the boy said, pointing to another boy. “I'm Frank. And you're Roadkill.”

The Rude boys suddenly forgot about the stuff they had to do, because they took their time and gave it their all, their knuckles almost as hard as their boots. And though Finn was tall, his arms and legs ropey with farm muscle, the Rudes were wider and stronger, and there were about four and a half too many of them.

When they were done, the boys gathered around and peered down at Finn, sprawled on the cracked asphalt. “You know,” said one of them, “anytime Sean wants some real brothers, we could make room for him.”

If Finn's teeth hadn't felt so loose in his head, he might have laughed again. Everybody loved Sean, even the Rudes. When someone needed help, Sean was the guy who showed up, sirens blaring, arms pumping, black bag swinging in his big capable hands, sharp eyes taking it all in. And though Sean sometimes had to ask questions, he never asked too many, and never the wrong ones.

But it was more than that. The people of Bone Gap loved Sean because of Roza. Because Sean loved Roza.

Above Finn, somebody muttered something about being
hungry. Somebody else said, “Shut it.” Somebody's cell phone pinged. Somebody nudged Finn with his foot as if Finn were a possum. Only pretending to be dead.

He wanted to shout so that everyone could hear:
I loved her, too.
And it was true. But it had done none of them any good.

Finn spat the blood from his mouth. “I'll tell my brother you said hello.”

The boys left and Finn was alone. After a bit, he decided that he should get up, just in case Old Charlie Valentine picked today to take his ancient Cadillac for a spin. He hauled himself up and off the road, fished his backpack from the field. He wouldn't leave his test prep books behind; even used, they cost a fortune. Sean would kill him.

No, that wasn't right. His brother would drive Finn back to where he'd lost the books. He might even help Finn buy new ones and put them in a brand-new backpack they couldn't afford. And somehow, that would be worse.

He hobbled the rest of the way home. Finn and his brother didn't have as much as some, but they had more than others, including a peeling white house, a matching garage, and a red barn permanently slanted to the left. Finn let himself into the house and dumped his backpack on his bed. Then he rinsed his face and inspected his wounds. (Split eyebrow and split lip. Mangled nose.) He pulled a small box off the bathroom shelf and rooted around for a bandage. The box, which had belonged to his
mother, was gilded, jeweled, and far too fancy for bandages and swabs, but Sean said the jewels were fake and the box not worth a damn anyway, so they might as well use it for something. Finn shoved the box back on the shelf and slapped a bandage on the split eyebrow, which was stubbornly weeping blood. Then he went outside to the garden.

Calamity Jane, Finn's tiny striped cat, slunk under the fence and twirled around his legs. Her belly was swollen with the kittens she'd have in just a few days.

“Don't look now,” he said to her, “but there's a mouse behind you and he's got a crossbow.”

She mewled and made another run around his ankles. Her name wasn't a compliment so much as a joke; as a mouser, she was a calamity. Sean said they would let her have one litter and see if her kittens could earn their keep even if she couldn't.

Calamity followed Finn as he weeded and watered their puny half acre of new vegetables—asparagus, kale, onion, beans, carrots, spinach, beets, broccoli, tomatoes. Sean and Finn were raised in a farm town; they were no strangers to growing food. But Roza, Roza had magic in her fingers. Because of what Roza had taught them, Finn and his brother could eat what they grew and still have some to sell at the farmers' market. With all the warm weather, the plants should have been thriving. Yet the vegetables seemed sad, strangely wilted. He pulled limp leaves and filled the holes left by squirrels and rabbits. As he did, he told Calamity, “You know, you could help with the squirrels
and rabbits.” In response, Calamity head-butted his leg, turned toward the house, and meowed.

“What?” he said, brushing the dirt from his hands. She head-butted him again and stuffed herself under the gate, which couldn't have been easy considering the load she was carrying. She looked back to see if Finn was behind her.

“All right, I'm coming.” He got to his feet, stopping only to clutch at his bruised ribs, and then trailed the cat to the back of the house. She trotted right by the door to the kitchen and kept going until she sat in front of another door. The door to the apartment. Roza's rooms.

Finn said, “She's not here. Nothing is here.”

Calamity meowed again, twirling in frantic circles in front of the door. While his brother was on shift, Finn would sometimes get the spare key from the kitchen, unlock the door, and sit in Roza's tidy apartment, inhaling the faint scents of mint and vanilla, leafing through the books, admiring the framed sketch of a pair of clasped hands on the nightstand, lifting the little flowerpots on the sill—all the things she'd left behind. He would imagine that she was coming back any minute, and would be surprised or maybe even annoyed to find him sitting in her old flowered chair by the window. He would say to her, “Where have you been?” And she would say in her deep, accented voice, “It matters why?” Finn would speak for himself and for Sean: “If you're back, it doesn't matter at all.”

Now the door was unlocked. Though he knew what he
would find, or what he wouldn't, Finn once again pushed open the door. Calamity shot past him into the empty apartment, sniffed. She let out a howl like the wail of a coyote, the sound more of a punch than anything the Rudes could ever manage.

It was too much. The whole day, the whole sleepless spring. Finn left the door open to the breeze and the dirt and the frantic, inconsolable cat and stomp-limped to the ramshackle blue house across the street. He had just raised his hand to knock when the front door flew wide. The man standing in the doorway had long gray hair. A long gray beard. He looked like the wizard from the Lord of the Rings, except for the T-shirt that said
BORN TO BE WILD
.

“So, what ran you down?” Charlie Valentine said. “A herd of cattle?”

“You could say that.”

Charlie pointed at the jeans ripped in both knees, the white shirt so stained with blood and dirt it would have to be tossed. “If I know what's what, you're going to be pissing red. Better get Sean to look you over.”

“Sean isn't home. He's never home.”

“I'm not either,” said Charlie. “I was on my way to a date.”

“Sorry,” said Finn, not sorry.

“Eh, no need. She's already mad at me anyway. Women are always mad about something. Did I ever tell you about the time I was traveling alone across this beautiful country of ours and met a beautiful woman with flaming hair? Her name was
Esmeralda. Empira. Empusa. Something with an
E
. I thought we'd had a fine time of it, the two of us, until I woke up and found her trying to gnaw off my arm. Had teeth as sharp as a shark's, that one.”

“Sure,” said Finn, following Charlie into the house. He had no idea why he kept coming here when the old man was so full of shit.

“It's the dairy farming, you know,” said Charlie over his shoulder.

“What?” said Finn. “What is?”

“The Rudes. They have all those cows. Cows will kick the crap out of you if you don't get up to milk 'em early enough. And that awful smell alone would make anyone itch for a fight.”

Finn didn't mention how cows were okay if you knew how to handle them and how Charlie's living room stank with all the chickens wandering around inside. Maybe the old man noticed it, too, because he opened a window and pointed to a nearby pasture.

“There's a fine-looking horse right there. Did I ever tell you that I spent some time on a horse farm?”

“You mentioned it,” said Finn, though Charlie had told him a million times, and would tell him a million more. Charlie Valentine's grandfather or granduncle or whoever once had a stableful of huge draft horses called Belgians. The horses were used to drag ice that was cut from the lake in winter. People put the ice in deep pits and covered it with sawdust. Then, in the
summer, the ice was sold to the iceman. In the fall, the horses were leased out to loggers. Everyone had heard these stories, because Charlie Valentine had been in Bone Gap longer than anyone else could remember, before Bone Gap was Bone Gap, as Charlie would say.

“Now they're doing that again,” said Charlie Valentine. “Using horses instead of trucks to move the lumber. Saw it on the TV. Calling it ‘green logging.' Can you believe that?”

Finn folded his arms across his chest, then winced as a bolt of pain rocketed around his torso. “Sounds like a good idea.”

“Of course it's a good idea!” said Charlie Valentine. “That's why they should never have stopped doing it! People forget everything that's important. Like how you have to talk to your animals. They'll listen if you just talk to them. We used to ride bareback. Didn't need any fancy saddles or anything.” He eyed Finn with suspicion. “You're not taking riding lessons, are you?”

“No.”

“Good,” said Charlie. “The way you learn to ride is by riding.”

“I know how to ride.”

“You don't have a saddle, do you?”

“I don't have a
horse
.”

Charlie Valentine thrust his top dentures from his mouth and sucked them back in again, his favorite gesture of disapproval. “So, how many eggs, then?”

“A dozen.”

“Any particular color?”

“Surprise me.”

Charlie Valentine had ordered his chickens thinking they were a special breed that laid blue eggs. The chickens
had
laid blue eggs, but they also laid pink and green and brown eggs, too, like every day was Easter. He was going to ask for his money back until he discovered that people driving through town on their way back up to the city would pay a fortune for a dozen Easter-colored eggs. But Charlie charged the locals a fair price, and charged the brothers even less. He said Finn and Sean were his favorites. And they had been, Finn guessed, until Roza.

Finn said, “Sean cleaned out Roza's apartment. It's like she was never there at all.”

Charlie scooped up the nearest chicken and sat in the only chair in the room. “Valentine's not my real name.”

“I know,” said Finn.

“I'm not going to tell you my real name, so don't even ask.”

Finn tried not to show his impatience. “I won't.”

Charlie stroked the golden chicken into a trance. “Do you know how I got the name Valentine?”

“Your great love for mankind.”

“Who told you?”

“Everybody.”

“Who told you
first
?”

“Sean.”

“Sean is a smart young man.” Charlie leaned sideways and
rooted around in a large basket sitting by his chair. He counted out a dozen eggs, which he set gently in a cardboard carton. “A good man. Gave up a lot when your mom left.”

“I
know
.”

“Not so easy to please, though,” said Charlie Valentine.

Finn sighed loudly enough to reinjure his ribs. This was not what he came for. But then, he didn't know what he'd come for. What could Charlie say that he hadn't already said? What could anyone say? Two months ago, Roza had been kidnapped. Finn was the only witness. Nobody believed his story. Not Charlie. Not Jonas Apple, the part-time police chief. Not even his own brother, who found it easier to pretend Roza had never existed.

Charlie Valentine said, “My old man was a bit like Sean. When I was young, I used to try to figure out the one thing that would make him proud of me. Or at least make him smile once in a while.”

Finn said, “I figured out that much.”

“They all looked for her. Your brother, Jonas, everyone. They hung those sketches in every town from here to Saint Louis. They called up to the cops in Chicago. There was no man matching the description you gave.”

Finn knew what Charlie meant. He meant that Finn hadn't seen what he thought he'd seen. “Roza wouldn't have left us.”

Even a man named Valentine had his limits. “Sean's right. She was a fine girl, but now she's gone. It's time to stop mooning.”
Charlie Valentine handed Finn the carton of Easter eggs. “Go out and find a chick of your own.”

Finn went back to his house and stood under a hot shower, even though it stung the cuts on his face and washed off his bandage. He dried off, pulled on fresh clothes—or the freshest ones he could find in the pile on his floor—and headed for the kitchen. He put up a pot of water to boil and rummaged in the cabinet for a box of spaghetti and a jar of sauce. Since Roza, they'd been back to eating a lot of things that came in boxes and jars.

Sean got home just as the water was beginning to boil. He stood in the doorway, nearly filling it to the top. Then he stepped inside, moved to the sink to wash his hands. He didn't even look at Finn when he said, “Rudes?”

Finn cracked the spaghetti in half and jammed it into the pot with a wooden spoon. “They say hi.”

Sean said, “You're going to need stitches in that eyebrow.”

“I don't want stitches,” said Finn.

“Didn't ask you what you wanted,” said Sean. “I'll fix you up after we eat.”

Finn said the only thing he could: “Okay.” He got a couple of pops out of the fridge and plunked them on the table. Ten minutes later, the pasta was cooked and the sauce hot in the pan. Five minutes after that, they were done eating. Finn washed the dishes, Sean dried. Then Sean motioned him to sit back down while he got his bag.