Mighty Old Bones (3 page)

“And then,” she said, “he stuck his arms right in between us and plopped his hands smack on top of Jane’s purse.”

A collective gasp of astonishment came up from the roomful of ladies. “Right down the street? At the Pig?” they said in various high pitches.

“Yes, ma’am, he sure did.”

“I can’t believe it,” Bonita said.

“Believe it, sister. We were attacked in broad daylight right here in Tullulah.”

Various mutterings of shock and disapproval followed. The manicurist in the far corner released her patron’s hand. “What did y’all do?”

Phoebe moved slightly but, feeling the resistant tug of Bonita’s comb, she sat still. To compensate, she spoke in a louder voice, moving her head as much as she could, left and right, to make eye contact with her audience. She pointed to me. “That one right there got him and got him good. Jane put the hai karate on him.”

The resultant murmurs coincided with Bonita’s release of Phoebe’s hair. Phoebe hopped up out of the styling chair. With a flip of both arms, she flung aside her plastic cape and began to demonstrate.

“She sure did. She done like this here, ‘Eeee-yah!’”

Her hands cut through the air with fast movements in a way I’d never before seen and certainly had not done myself. She scissored her hands, the edges out straight, and paused, as if frozen, in a stance she must have copied from one of the martial arts videos of which she has become so fond lately.

“He looked shocked but only for a split second before he started fighting back, like this.” She moved from her stiff pose into a series of jabs with her fists. “What kind of a boy would fight a little old lady? No offense, Jane.”

“None taken,” I said. “But actually, he didn’t really ‘fight’ in exactly that way.” No one paid any mind to me, nor would I have done, with the much more entertaining spectacle Phoebe enthusiastically provided.

“And then Jane did like this, ‘Ooo-waaah!’” Phoebe accompanied her remark with a supposed grab of the wrist and twist of the arm to her invisible attacker. “Right into his breadbasket. He doubled over and then she karate-chopped him on his neck with a
ka-whap, ka-whap
down on both sides, one right after the other one.” This she portrayed with quick slices downward, another embellishment of the truth. I had done nothing of the sort.

Phoebe stood looking at the floor, her fingers splayed, her hands and feet apart in a gesture one might see on a Broadway stage, or after the death of a Shakespearean character. I half expected a soliloquy.

“Phoebe,” Bonita said, “you’re dripping water everywhere. Here, sit back down.”

“And there he lay,” Phoebe continued, still staring downward, before coming out of her thespian reverie. She looked up. “He looked like he was going to be napping for some time. I thought he was out cold. Which is why we all relaxed and weren’t paying close enough attention. One minute he was still as could be, and the next he jumped up and took off, running like a streak of lightning.”

She swiped the wet strands of hair that had flopped down over her forehead to either side of her face. At last, she complied with Bonita’s request, let her cape fall back into place, and stepped up once again into her chair.

Laughter and applause broke out, with the ladies’ heads nodding in their towels and pink curlers. They seemed to be directing their approval at me as well as Phoebe, for they smiled and spoke kind words, congratulating me on the attempt to stop our thief.

In that, I had failed. He got away with my purse, after all. I didn’t look forward to renewing my driver’s license and getting a new credit card. Still, I was thankful neither Phoebe nor I were hurt. It could’ve been much worse. At the time, I thought that was the end of it but it was, in fact, the beginning, a relatively harmless event that presaged more dangerous ones to come.

T
here are people in this world who are attracted to nuts.

Jane Thistle is one of them. I don’t mean she
is
one of the nuts. She’s as sane and smart as all get out. What I mean is, she likes folks who are not altogether right in the head better than those who are normal.

I would be the one exception. You couldn’t find a more normal person than I am. But other than me, she goes for the weirdos. I can prove it. Her only other close friend here so far was Cal Prewitt, the local hermit, and he was the weirdest person who ever lived in these parts.

Cal’s dead now. He owned all the woods next to Jane’s house out there in the sticks. That’s how they got to be friends, because he was as much of a nature freak as Jane is. He turned out to be all right, but still, that boy was mighty strange sometimes.

Whenever I introduce Jane to an ordinary person, she’s always polite and friendly. But when we happen upon one of Tullulah’s basket cases and I can’t steer her away, Jane goes beyond polite. She gets extremely interested in whatever strange obsession is rattling around in the other person’s head.

It embarrassed me at first. I thought she did it to make me feel better, like she wanted me to know she loved Tullulah no matter how many crazy people lived here. Later, I realized that’s not it. She honestly likes them all. She would stand all day long and listen to them tell one wild story after another.

After we got our hair fixed at the Beauty Barn, I asked Jane if she would mind if I stopped at the bookstore before going home. They get magazines in earlier than other places in town. It was about time for one of my monthly favorites to come in, one with recipes, so I hoped to get it before I started baking that day.

But back to the nuts. What I was saying was, when we left the Barn, we went over to the square. From where I parked, we had to walk past Ted’s Barber Shop where two benches sit outside. Old geezers in their overalls congregate there on the weekdays, usually in the mornings. Their wives won’t let them laze around their houses, so they come downtown to do it.

They’re the kind of guys you say hi and wave to while you run past. Jane wasn’t having any of that. I tried to pull her on along with me. She stood her ground like a stubborn old mule. The harder you pull on mules, the deeper they dig in. Seven of the old guys sat there that day, and every one had a silly story or joke to tell. Not a single one of them has a lick of sense. Jane stood there laughing and nodding and generally egging them on.

She did the funniest thing. I still don’t understand it. She walked down the row of them, talking to each one, shaking their hands as she went. When she got to the last one, I thought I’d finally be able to drag her on to the bookstore but doggone if she didn’t keep talking. She stuck her hand out, straight into the middle of nothing, at the end of the bench where nobody was sitting. It shocked me so, I’m not sure I understood what she said, but part of it was something like, “Oh, dear. You are, aren’t you?”

“Jane, honey.” I said it real gentle because, honestly, my first thought was that she had done flipped her wig from what happened with that thieving boy. Like she was having a delayed reaction. So I said, “Look, we need to run on and get you inside out of this heat. It’ll be nice and cool in the bookstore. Okay?”

She stared at me a half-second, still looking a little frazzled. Then she closed her eyes and smiled. “Yes. Good idea.” And then she was back to her normal self. For a little while.

McGaughey’s Books sits on the corner of Main and Third. It’s the prettiest store on the whole square. Bill and Cathy McGaughey fixed it up on the outside to look like one of those fancy Irish pubs you see on calendars. They painted the front a deep forest green with white and black trim, and their name runs across the top in giant gold letters. Very classy.

It’s the only bookstore in Tullulah. The population here, about nine thousand, isn’t enough to attract one of those big super chain stores like in the Shoals or Birmingham. It would be nice to have one, but we don’t really need it. Cathy can order anything I want if it’s not already on the shelves. She hardly ever has to do that. She and Bill have that building stuffed with books. A special kids’ room, the magazines, and all the travel, history, and other nonfiction books are on the ground level. The second floor is all fiction.

Besides the books, she keeps a line of homemade items, like local honey and jellies, on display along with other fancy specialty gifts, crystal doodads and the like. On the other side of the store, three small tables are for having a cup of coffee or tea and visiting with friends, or you can take your coffee cup over to the fireplace and sit in one of the overstuffed chairs around it that are so comfortable for reading. I like the chocolate fudge cake. Jane always gets a plain croissant. It’s a nice place to rest after a hard day of shopping to get your blood sugar levels back up.

When Jane and I came through the door, Cathy stood up from behind the counter. “Well, hi, ladies,” she said. “How you?” Her hair used to be blond in her younger days. She used to be thinner, too, but didn’t we all? Me, especially. Cathy’s lilac silk blouse complemented her skin tone. She still looked young, though she must be near fifty now. She took her glasses off and let them hang on their chain around her neck.

“We’re fine,” I said. “Those old men on the bench tried to bore us to death but we escaped.”

“Good,” she said, giving me an earnest look. “The
Southern Living
s aren’t here yet.”

“Well, rats.”

“But I do have some other things I want you to look at.” She turned around to a bookshelf behind the counter, ran her finger over the backs of several books, looking for something. “Here we go. I set a few back for you. Ones like we talked about. Action or with guns or both. Have a look.” Cathy, and a lot of other people in town, knew about my new interest in guns. Since Jane moved to town, she has been my inspiration as far as self-defense. Because of her influence, I bought two guns, a handgun and a rifle. They’re the first I’ve ever owned.

I caught my breath as Cathy fanned the new books out. “Oohwee. Jane, would you look at all of them.”

“Oh, there’s a lot more than that,” Cathy said. “I picked these so you could see which kind you like the best. Then we can order more. All of these have had good reviews. Now, this one is about a former Marine who works security for celebrities in Hollywood. He has a little bit of a mental problem.”

“In Hollywood? You gotta be kidding.” I took my reading glasses out of my purse to get a better look.

“No, for real,” Cathy said. “And this one here is about an international female spy who shoots for hire, kills people all over the globe. She was a fashion model before the government recruited her. She’s got an eating disorder from all that killing affecting her mind. Plus bad arches from wearing high heels so many years on the runway.”

“Excuse me,” Jane said. “I think I’ll browse.” She headed to nonfiction.

Cathy told her about some new nature books that came in and where they were and then turned back to me. “And this one is about an ex-SWAT team guy who is working undercover in a bakery in New Jersey. I’ve read it. It’s really good.” The cover had a gun barrel sticking out between a platter of cannoli and a wedding cake.
Sniper in the Pastry: A Dirk Striker Action Thriller.

“Hmm. Has he got a problem, too?”

“Yeah. He’s allergic to yeast. Bad. It’s got a lot of suspense, what with all the sneezing and itching and white flour floating around in the air all the time. His eyes water so it affects his aim when he has to shoot.”

I flipped it over to the back cover. The
Chicago Tribune
said, “Action-packed…629 pages of pure adrenaline.” The
New York Times
called it “Riveting…a masterpiece of a thriller.”

“Pretty impressive,” I said. I looked at the last few pages. “Hey, and it’s got recipes in the back. I want that one for sure.”

Six more paperbacks fanned out next to Dirk Striker. I looked from one to the other but just couldn’t decide. “I’ll take them. All of them.”

Cathy smiled and started ringing those books up quicker than a jackrabbit on hot asphalt. While she did that, I looked through the greeting cards and picked out a few. You can never have enough get well or sympathy cards in the house.

Meanwhile, I noticed Jane’s face scrunched up funny, looking at a particular book on the shelf. She reached out slowly, like she was afraid of it or thought it would electrocute her or something. She touched it, kept her hand on it a while, and then finally pulled the book out.

“You find some?” I said. When she raised her head to look at me, her expression changed.

“I think so,” she said, all smiles. “Yes.”

She didn’t fool me. She was doing the same thing she did outside before, acting like everything was all right when it wasn’t. She proved I was right with the very next thing she did. She took two other books off the shelves without even looking at their titles. One was up high, and the other she had to stoop to get off the bottom shelf. She slung them in her arm, still not looking at what she picked out, and met me at the counter.

I didn’t say anything. I played along, figuring I’d eventually be let in on whatever the deal was. Meanwhile, she wanted to hurry on and run some errands so she could get home to the sticks and go bond with the forest. Again. You’d think she would’ve had her fill of that by now, after being here for weeks. I believe she was actually getting worse. I had plans of my own that involved bonding, with a pillow and a down comforter while being unconscious. A little nap never hurt anybody, especially me after being mugged at my very own Pig.

T
hroughout my adventures with Phoebe that morning, my mind kept returning to the footprint and the blood in the woods. My stomach knotted each time. The forest’s well-being is the most important thing in my life. I’m obsessed with it. Now I had to think of the next logical action to deal with my uninvited guest.

After leaving the bookstore, Phoebe and I returned to her house. I didn’t stay. I had other stops to make before going home. All the while, as I drove from one to another, I found myself giving quick glances to the passenger seat. On it sat the bag that contained the three books I had bought. They were a problem. Or rather, part of a larger problem.

Not for the first time in recent weeks, I feared my usually logical mind was going soft, perhaps influenced too much by the unique qualities of either Tullulah or the forest or both. I don’t mean the beauty of the place or other physical attributes. I’m talking about another aspect, one that became apparent the first time I visited the area some years ago, one that is a bit hard to believe.

A peculiar talent I had as a child, you see, has come back to me here. I experience it nowhere else, only when I am near Tullulah and its woods. They possess a certain magic, I can think of no better word to explain, that grants me an odd ability. I see, and sometimes hear, people who are not there. That is, they are there. I see them. It’s only that no one else does.

It happened that day as Phoebe and I walked along the square together toward the bookstore. We came upon a familiar sight, one seen the world round in every community. Old men sat upon benches at the hub of the town’s activity that, at that time of day, was in front of the square’s barbershop.

The men filled two benches that looked like church pews under the shop’s awnings. All wore overalls. All had rough weathered skin from a lifetime of outdoor work. Most sipped from mugs of steaming coffee while they listened to their friends’ various opinions on the day’s coming weather. They nodded jovially as we approached, though Phoebe paid them no mind.

A man who must have been in his eighties leaned forward from his seat on an outstretched cane and said, “Excuse me, ma’am, aren’t you Mrs. Thistle? The lady who bought the Hardwick place?”

“I am indeed. Jane Thistle. How do you do,” I said.

Each man introduced himself as I walked by, all quite friendly. Most remarked on my British accent, though it is hardly noticeable as such anymore, I am told, after over forty years of living with an American husband. Phoebe fidgeted impatiently, so I moved more quickly down the line. I enjoyed a few pleasantries with the seventh gentleman and turned to shake hands with the eighth. It was only when I reached out my hand that I realized there was something different about him.

He shimmered. One moment he looked as real as could be, and the next his entire figure wavered a bit, like a television image distorted and blinking off for a half-instant, then back on again.

Silence fell over the men on the benches until the seventh man spoke. “We lost one. Recently. Gilbert Entrikin.” Down the line, the older man with the cane said, “We’ve been leaving his regular seat there open. In case the old codger ever wants to haunt us.”

Laughter erupted and broke the solemn mood. Mr. Entrikin, the one I could see but apparently wasn’t there or, I should say, wasn’t alive, looked more amused than them all. He held his belly as he shook. A low chuckle came from deep inside him and grew to full-throated laughter. His eyes squinted shut and his cheeks looked as rosy as if he were in perfect health. I suppose he was, now that he no longer had an earthly body with its aches and ailments to bother him.

I couldn’t help myself. His laughter was contagious. I grinned and laughed along with the eight of them. Until I caught sight of Phoebe.

She looked at me as if I were daft. Her expression changed to concern. With a gentle tug, she pulled me away toward the bookstore. As I said my good-byes, I trotted along to keep up with her but turned when one of the old men called to me.

“Wait,” Mr. Entrikin said. “Somebody’s got a message for you.” He shimmered, leaned his head to the side as if straining to hear. “He says to get the blue ones.” He shrugged his shoulders and looked puzzled.

“Who? Blue what?” A glance at Phoebe told me I should say no more.

He shrugged again. “It’s Cal, I think. Not sure. I’m still new at this.” Mr. Entrikin suddenly gave me a wide smile and a hearty laugh. He waved before turning his attention back to his friends’ conversation.

Phoebe stared. I remember wondering at that moment how I would explain this time.

We carried on into the store, and it was there I understood Mr. Entrikin’s message. While I browsed through the nonfiction section, Phoebe stood at the counter with the bookshop’s owner. A few volumes interested me enough to take them down and leaf through them. I continued along, looking for nothing in particular. When I turned a corner, I stopped short. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I immediately knew I would be buying precisely three books, all with a most obvious and extraordinary quality.

They glowed. The books emitted some sort of energy, mild though it was, in the form of color. A two-or three-inch thick blue translucence wrapped each of the books and pulsed, something like a force field in a science-fiction movie.

In my short time in Tullulah, such occurrences have happened with more frequency. I’m not sure if it is the town, the forest, or my house that causes this. I only know that the longer I live here, the more these abilities increase.

When I was a child, I often talked to people while I was out playing in the fields around my grandparents’ farm in Wales. This worried my grandparents as it became clear that the people I encountered and described to them were former neighbors, all long dead.

The problem disappeared when I grew older. However, it came back to me upon my arrival in Tullulah. As time has passed, this new phenomenon of seeing auras seems to have added itself to my repertoire. At least, I suppose they are proper auras. Being an amateur, I’m not certain it is the same type of color that New Age aficionados see around people and objects. I only know that I see something there.

I’ve learned from other experiences that those things I see in colors have some importance to whatever my present situation might be. Usually, a small thing. I’ve come to think of it as a phenomenon somewhere between instinct and premonition, an extension of my thoughts that somehow manifests in color. At least, that’s my present theory. Who knows what might lie ahead as I spend more time in this place?

It began with seeing what I believe are ghosts nearby when I first moved here. As time has passed, what I see has become clearer and, with this peculiarity, more colorful.

Around the house, I sometimes see spots of various colors. At first, I found I couldn’t see them except in special photographs, ones taken by Riley Gardner, a young man in the area who fancies himself a ghost hunter. Later, I could see them with the help of a pair of Russian-made infrared binoculars from my former part-time work. Since then, somehow, my eyesight gradually adjusted to see several locations within the house, at varying times and without aid, where colored pockets of air hung around areas of, perhaps, supernatural importance.

As to my new books, they were behaving properly inside their bag in the car. No glowing blue spilling out. I turned left and parked in the post office’s lot. Short gusts of strong wind sent leaves flying past and pushed me along toward the doors for my final errand.

My mailbox was quite full. I subscribe to various archaeological, science, and history journals, and noted happily that several had come that day. I would have plenty to read by candlelight if the power went out.

The wind whipped around me as I returned to my car. I could see darker clouds at the edge of town coming this way. To the east, blue skies and sunshine prevailed but not for long.

I worried about Phoebe. She doesn’t have a basement. Mine is large and quite comfortable. I decided to make a last stop at her house, to see if she wanted to stay with me, in case a tornado did come into the area.