The Last Bone Seer 

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE 

The harsh sunlight glints off the hammer looped through Dad’s belt loop, one last stab of light before we enter the small, gloomy chapel. And I wonder, again: Why did Dad bring a hammer to my great-grandmother’s funeral?

And it hits me: The hammer is a stand-in for Mom. I almost snort out loud. The perfect metaphor—lean, chiseled, cold, smashing lives instead of nails.

Dad hadn’t even removed the orange sales sticker from the clawed head.

The heavy oak doors close behind us, the air inside the chapel is stifling, ripe with the sickly-sweet fumes coming, I assume, from my deceased great-grandmother. Hundreds of buzzing flies batter themselves against the large stained-glass window above the door. They, too, want out of this stuffy church filled with the odor of death. It doesn’t help that my little brother Jack, who’s nine and is pressed between Dad and me as we make our way down the center aisle, is hotter than a Weber grill.

This is my first funeral. I spent the interminable car ride from Chicago preparing for this moment. I can’t help but wonder why we’re here? None of us ever met her. I press my glasses back up my nose, flick my auburn bangs out of my face. Because of the heat, the rest of my hair is tied into a messy knot high off my neck. Sweat drips between my shoulder blades.

Dad has totally pitted out his dark gray Armani suit. And it’s not just because it’s hot outside. I’ve never seen Dad this uptight before. Ever since he got the registered letter from my great-grandmother’s attorney informing him of her death—and demanding our presence at her funeral on Manitoulin Island in Ontario—Dad, the stoic orthopedic surgeon, has acted crazy. I take in again the hammer clanking against his thigh like a gunslinger’s gun, only partially hidden under his unbuttoned suit jacket.

Does he think he’ll have to do some last-minute repairs on the casket? The man has done an amazing job repairing his splintered family—and the ligaments and bones of devastated athletes—but he can’t even hang a picture straight.

I scan the dozen men and women seated in pews, rigid and silent as though professional mourners paid to attend. They’re ancient. A few of them appear to be asleep.

The three of us reach my great-grandmother’s coffin, which rests on a church truck draped in royal blue fabric near the altar. The casket is plain and unembellished. But it looks sturdy, built for eternity. The white flowers surrounding it are wilted, however, as if leftovers from the last funeral. I lean over, sniff Jack’s brown curly hair—his shampoo smells like bubblegum—and whisper, “How are you doing?”

“Good, Skye.” He scratches his nose with Dr. Doom, his favorite Marvel figurine that never leaves his hand.

The candles on either end of the casket flicker, throwing fitful shadows over the small body laid out inside. My heartbeat quickens as I peer over the edge. I’ve never seen a dead person before. To my relief, my great-grandmother is dressed in a tailored khaki-colored suit, black flats, her hands folded across her chest. Military ribbons adorn her collar. Her white, cropped hair is brushed back. The skin on her face is gray, wrinkled, cheeks sunken in, her expression composed. No garish make-up, thank God.

Okay. Nothing scary here. I let some of the air out of my lungs, the tension in my forehead relaxing, as I take in the framed photograph of my great-grandmother propped in front of the casket. The caption reads:

Charlotte Shaw Carver,

Born to This Life June 10, 1918

Born to a New Life, July 2, 2018

I inhale sharply. My great-grandmother lived to be a hundred-years-old? During our long car ride from Chicago this morning, Dad told me she’d been a career Army nurse stationed all over the world earning the rank of lieutenant colonel. She had one daughter, my mother’s mother, who died when Mom was very young. Dad never mentioned a husband.

I study the black-and-white photograph of a strong-chinned, angular woman with determined eyes and pursed lips, as though she just reamed out the photographer. Her military uniform enhanced her tough-as-nails demeanor, a woman to be reckoned with. Beneath the dates I read, “I lived in the heart of Death,” and gooseflesh ripples down my arms. Dad also said that Charlotte died alone, in a bus station in Duluth seated on a wooden bench, a suitcase tucked under her feet. Where had she been going? I hate to think of her slumped over, life draining out with no one there to hold her hand.

No family does that, Mom.

From the second-story alcove, the organist pounds out the hymn Amazing Grace. I sing the words to myself, “I once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.”

No, I don’t see. And if anybody should see, it’s me, with my genetically defective—but highly superior eyes—that allow me to see things I’d rather not. They’re under control, for now. I turn my attention back to Jack.

We make quite a pair. He’s been blind since birth, while I see way too much.

I know he’s waiting for me to give him the play-by-play. “Great-grandmother Charlotte looks like she was an awesome woman, Jack. She’s dressed in a military uniform, has a lot of medals on her lapels.”

And then, from out of nowhere, I feel a surge of anger. Mom should be here. This is her grandmother. My cheeks grow hot, just what I need in this stifling Death room. I wonder what excuse Mom gave Dad to explain her absence. “I’m too busy riding bicycles next to a barge on the Rhone River with my Hollywood dentist boyfriend.”

And right on cue, the tag in the seam of my white blouse, which I’d pilfered from her closet—Dad hasn’t had the stomach to clean her stuff out yet—jabs me again. I squirm away from the label as I used to squirm away from Mom’s firm grip. I’d been forced to ransack Mom’s left-behinds not having a suitable funeral outfit in my own closet. It was all I could do to shimmy into one of her black, A-line skirts, way too short on me. The boots on my feet are all mine, however, brown, ankle-high, zipper cowboy boots with pink and turquoise flowers. Mom would have hated them.

Which is why I wear them.

Jack peers into the casket, his chin resting on the edge, and holds out his hand expectantly. I don’t hesitate. I know what he wants and guide his fingers to Charlotte’s face. His expression remains placid as his fingers feel touch see.

Dad watches Jack, a look of such utter sadness—but also pride—at my brother’s fearlessness.

Just then, three plump, black flies land on the edge of the casket. My brother’s hand shoots out. Smack! His aim is deadly accurate, three tiny carcasses to add to the death toll. I tousle his hair and whisper, “Good shot!”

Jack wipes his hand on his suit pants, adding fly guts to the orange, cheese Doodle smears he acquired during the long car ride here. Even worse, I have no idea where his fly victims ended up. I hate to think of great-grandmother Charlotte in her pristine military uniform entering eternity with fly entrails on her lapels.

Startled by a tap on my shoulder, I spin part-way around as a stooped old man in a dark suit thrusts a cream-colored envelope at me. He mouths the words, “From him.”

Him? Or hymn?

Dad twists toward us, the hammer clinking against his belt buckle, his thick brows knotted.

“Read it, please,” the old man says, nudging the letter into my hand, then retreats with a bow back into the shadows.

In the flickering candlelight, I see my name on the envelope Skye Stewart Dirksen typed in old-fashioned newspaper font. And underneath, a pen-and-ink sketch of a canoe paddle with a feathered cap, which I take to be some kind of club logo or insignia. Dad peers at the letter, a sheen of sweat coating his face. For a second, I think he’s going to snatch it from my hand, so I clutch it tight to my chest. From him?

Clearly, I can’t read the letter this second. I curl away from Dad tuck the envelope into my skirt pocket, then say through gritted teeth, “We paid our respects. Can we get out of here now, Dad?”

“Not yet.” His voice sounds like a growl. “I have to get something.” He leans over Charlotte, his index finger probing underneath her folded hands, digging, then digging some more. He grunts in frustration. My mouth goes dry because now he’s bending her pinky back, and I hear a tiny pop. Jack hears it, too, the back of his head ramming me in the gut.

Dad freezes, his face knotted in horror, Charlotte’s thin white finger pointing in the wrong direction—at him.

I nudge Dad hard and whisper, “What are you doing?”

“What was that noise, Skye?” Jack asks.

I’m so shocked at Dad—he’s a doctor, for God’s sake—I can’t answer my brother.

Then I groan as the luminous white membrane I’ve been dreading slides over my hazel-colored eyes, a tidal wave I can’t stop.

Thanks, Dad. I was mentally prepared for this funeral, was handling everything just fine—until you broke the corpse’s finger! I couldn’t possibly have anticipated that.

These episodes never end well for me. My visual defect makes me look especially hideous because my eyes film over like I’ve inserted white marbles into my sockets. I pray the minister doesn’t see me. He’d probably insist on an exorcism.

It only happens when I get too excited. Or angry. Or upset. So, I work hard at feeling nothing at all. And when it happens at my high school West Side Prep, I pretend I’m having a seizure.

My bizarre birth defect is a form of x-ray vision, which allows me to see under skin, through organs, and into the murky world of bones. Seeing under skin is a creepy power, one I’ve spent most of my seventeen years suppressing. I’m not Superwoman. I can’t see through concrete walls or metal hulls on ships. But I can see through the white, fibrous periosteum, the outside layer of a bone, into the juicy, swirling world of blood vessels, nerves, and bone marrow. And I don’t see shadowy negative radiographs in black and white. I see a teeming red stew, flowing marrow with chunks of tomato and cauliflower. The spongy material at the end of a long bone looks like honeycomb crawling with just-hatched bees; bones themselves are rigatoni pasta. So, you can see why I do everything in my power to not look.

Too late now, I think, as I gaze through Charlotte’s withered skin, through dried ribbons of muscle and tendon into the bones of her hand.

“Are you doing it, Skye?” Jack asks, his voice distant, thready.

I squeeze his shoulder in affirmation.

As you can imagine, my ‘affliction’ has made me morbidly interested in skeletons. As soon as I was old enough to understand I wasn’t going to outgrow this defect, I spent hours scanning anatomy charts, in all sizes and shapes, from mouse to man. I learned, for example, that the vertebrae in a turtle are fused with its ribs and shell, that only the neck and tail move freely. I learned that the skull of a puffin is full of holes to lessen its weight and improve its balance while flying. Which is useless information in downtown Chicago.

The complex skeletal structure of the human hand is especially fascinating, the thumb controlled by nine separate muscles, some anchored to bones within the hand itself, while others snake into the arm. The wrist is a chaotic, floating cluster of bones that makes no sense, flimsy and haphazard.

The bones in Charlotte’s hand look fossilized, like the black-and-white radiograph images I studied, the finger joints shadowed and pitted, and twisted with arthritis. She’s clenching a delicate gold chain, a necklace, in her left fist. And yes, her pinky is broken, as is the metacarpal bone beneath it.

Good job, Dad. Doesn’t that saying—Do no harm—apply to you?

I glance at Dad, still staring at the accusatory finger. A blob of sweat drips off his forehead onto the dead woman’s chest, leaving a dark splotch over her heart.

This poor woman will be a mess by the time the Dirksen family is finished with her.

I glance over my shoulder at the minister. His eyes are glued to the floor, hands folded behind his back. The mourners all appear to be napping. Or stoned. We could stand my great-grandmother on her head, and they wouldn’t notice. But Dad also seems to be using his broad frame to intentionally block their view.  And although time seems to have stopped, I’m pretty sure only a few minutes have passed since we entered the chapel.

I whisper to Dad, “Did Charlotte want us to have that necklace?”

The color has drained from his face. “Yes. It’s for you. I… I was hoping…” His voice trails off and his shoulders slump.

If she’d wanted me to have the necklace, why hadn’t she sent it with the certified letter we’d received a few days ago? Is this why we came all this way? There better be a ginormous diamond attached to the gold chain.

“I’ll get it,” I hiss.

“Get what, Skye?” Jack asks. His unseeing eyes tremble in their sockets, glistening brown marbles floating in bowls of milk. I sweep the brown bangs from his sticky forehead. “Your great-grandmother left me a piece of jewelry. It’s stuck on her finger. I’m going to get it.”

Dad withdraws his hand like a kid caught shoplifting.

I pivot Jack toward Dad, who grips my brother’s shoulders. Jack is like one of the pilings under the Navy Pier—he holds everything up. Dad’s eyes never leave my face. He’s dealt with enough of my white marble eye episodes not to be squeamish.

Chewing my lip, preparing myself for the feel of cold, clammy flesh, I reach out and touch the top of Charlotte’s withered hand. Surprise! It’s cold. But then my finger seems to stick, and I feel a jolt. Something. A connection I can’t define. And for a second, her skin feels surprisingly warm, pliable to the touch, as though she were alive just a moment ago. The tips of my fingers tingle. I hold my breath, aware only that the buzzing flies, smashing against the stained-glass window increase their frenetic pace. Then Charlotte’s eyelids flutter open, revealing filmy white eyes matching mine exactly. I twitch so violently my glasses fly off. 

But instead of being terrified, a profound sense of relief washes over me, a loosening of my always-clenched gut. Someone else had this bizarre defect. And my great-grandmother managed to live with it a hundred years, putting my seventeen years to shame. I lose myself in her gaze and feel comforted. I think about the letter in my pocket. Maybe I’ll finally understand why I was cursed with these hideous eyes that have cost me dearly. I hold my breath, afraid to move, not wanting to break this connection and hoping—oddly enough—that I don’t disappoint her.

A faint, feathery voice wafts through the air, so weak, I strain to hear it over the buzzing of the flies. Her withered lips do not move. “To you, Skye, I hand over the cursed bone of the dead man, Augustus Drummond.”

Cursed bone?  I grimace.

Jack squeaks, Dr. Doom trembling next to his ear. Dad’s brows knit together, his worried gaze moving from me to Jack and back again.

Then Charlotte’s hand unfurls like a white clematis in the morning sun—with one bent petal—exposing a dented, oval-shaped locket attached to a gold chain.

Maybe the diamond is inside the locket.

“Take the bone,” the voice says.

Visions of someone plopping a bloody femur wrapped in newspaper on the kitchen table, like in an old mobster movie, flash before me. Or maybe it will be delivered by UPS in a brown box, a neatly wrapped fibula packed in dry ice. I’m not signing for that package! Then it dawns on me.

There’s a bone in the locket? Ugh. It must belong to a mouse.

I curl my fingers around the locket, pull my hand back, the gold chain in my palm glimmering in the candlelight, my hand warming as though touching a glowing ember.

The feathery whisper continues. “I carried this bone for eighty-five years. It’s your burden now. You are the last Bone Seer. You must decide if he has earned the right to die, or not.”

You’ve got to be kidding me.

*This is a work in progress, with hopes of being published soon.

 TRIPP CREEK

CHAPTER ONE

Nan Clarke

Tripp Creek thundered between its banks. I’d never heard it this angry before. I pulled my blue rain slicker tight to my body and snugged the hood over my head to protect me from the spray. Over the last few weeks, heavy downpours added to the spring thaw and turned the tranquil creek into a raging torrent, which gnawed away at the narrow spit of land separating us from it. Just yesterday, Dad, my little sister Ellie, and I shored up the foundation of our small house, Dad pressing down on the heavy prybar while Ellie and I shimmed the gaps with slate. I hurried down the stairs, dodging Mom’s army of whirligigs guarding the path. She’d tamped them into columns like tiny, mismatched soldiers—a woodpecker pecking a post, a man rowing a boat, a cowboy on a bucking bronco—each of them holding fast to their piece of land. Their spinning windmill arms urged me to hurry. I just couldn’t tell if they were telling me to run ahead or turn back.

Above, the early morning skies glimmered a murky gray. The sun had peeked at this dreary day and said the hell with it.

Seated in my battered Camry, my lifeline to college and my job, I prayed she’d start. The car was as sick of this wintry weather as I was. The engine turned right over. The defroster was another story, so as I waited for the windshield to clear, I watched Mom in the kitchen window. From the way her head bobbed, she was chatting away to Ellie, who was cramming for a math test. Dad was already at work less than a mile away hunched over his levers and gauges at the quarry’s rock crusher station, his double-sized lunchbox—packed with love by Mom—tucked under his stool.

Just then, I felt a tremor, like a shiver coursing through my body. If I hadn’t been seated in my car, I might have missed it. I braced my hands on the steering wheel. I’d grown up with blasting day at the quarry. The timed explosions were powerful enough to shimmy Mom’s prized Elvis Presley figurines—displayed on glass shelves in the living room—over the edge. Instead of gluing them down, Mom placed a fluffy rug under them to soften their landing.

I’d never gotten used to the tremors and walked gingerly for hours afterward as though the ground might crack open in front of me. 

I put my car in gear and drove slowly down the single-lane road that curved around our development, O’Halloran Circle, peering through the grapefruit-sized hole the defroster created. A sudden gust of wind jostled the pines overhead, their branches scraping like fingernails along the roof of my car. Tiny shards of ice clattered on the hood, an eerie, tinkling sound. A dozen dump trucks were already queued behind the wire fence that separated our development from Hufcut Quarry. Their frazzled headlights glowed like exploded moons.

I was taking the weather way too personally. Blasting day didn’t help.

Another gust of wind rocked my car and a large branch landed in the road ahead of me. I braked, my shoulders slumping in exasperation. “I’m already running late,” I moaned into the steering wheel. Krista, my lab partner, and best friend was going to kill me. I’d promised to hit Dunkin’ Donuts, bring coffee and Everything bagels to our early morning study session. I graduated from high school in just over two months and had a ton of work to finish. I threw open my car door.

And heard a loud squeal. I punched buttons, silencing the radio, the defroster, and the wipers, and cocked my head. There it was again, another frightened bleat. Someone, or something, had fallen into Tripp Creek. I pulled my car hard onto the shoulder, shoved my phone into my pocket, and hurried out of my car. Pushing my way through a prickly hedge, I ignored the wet branches smacking my face and snatching at my hair. Following the sound, I ran another hundred yards to the rusty metal footbridge spanning the creek. The narrow bridge was elevated, but the creek still flung buckets of water over the deck, which swayed under the pressure. Another cry ripped the air. I raced onto the bridge, stopped mid-way, and leaned over the railing. Swiping the spray from my eyes, I peered down into the swirling, frothy brown water. At first, I didn’t see anything. 

Then something caught my eye on the right bank, an odd shape, and I gasped out loud. A horse lay on its side in the creek, submerged up to its front legs in water, and almost indistinguishable from the mud swallowing it. It raised its head and coughed, a wet, defeated sound, then collapsed back into the water. I fumbled for my phone, praying I had service. My fingers were clumsy, and, in my panic, I had to press the unlock button three times. Then I dropped the phone, which, thank God, landed sideways across the bridge’s metal grating.

I hit emergency, the dial lighted up, and the phone vibrated in my hand. I was afraid to leave the footbridge, afraid I’d lose the signal. The trees’ branches, although empty of leaves, formed a tight tunnel over me. The dispatcher came right on. I shouted my location and told them through chattering teeth, that a horse was drowning in the creek.

I slid my phone into my pocket, ran to the far side of the footbridge, plunged down the bank toward the horse. I only paused a second to yank my blonde braid free from a tree root where it snagged. I crouched over the horse’s white, speckled head. My hands scrabbled for something to hold onto—the horse’s dirty white mane, the rounded jawbones. I managed to lift its nose out of the clay. “You’ll be all right, you’ll be all right,” I whispered.

The animal stared at me through one glazed brown eye and let out another weak snort. Gunk sprayed from her nostrils.

I couldn’t believe the Tripp was doing this to me again.

I hated feeling so powerless. I should do something, run to Mrs. Adams’s farm. Her pasture fences butted up to the creek on this side of the Tripp. This was probably one of her horses. I started to rise, but the horse, as if sensing abandonment, rotated her shoulders and kicked out one of her front legs. I ducked as a flash of metal—the horse’s hoof—whizzed by my head. I slid further into the creek and was now pinned under the horse. Desperate for something to hold onto, I swiveled around, managed to wrap my left elbow around a tree root. I tugged on it. It felt strong, anchored to the bank.

 I held the horse’s head in the crook of my other arm. I’d just finished a First Responder course at my high school. Still, the anatomical charts I memorized were for humans, not horses. None of the classes covered equine vital signs. But even I could tell that her respirations were labored, and her sunken eyes indicated she was severely in shock. I forced myself to breathe slowly. I didn’t want the horse picking up on my fear. I dug with my feet until I hit something firm and braced myself. The water lapped at my hips. My back ached from supporting so much weight and my left arm was going numb. I cocked my head, desperate to hear sirens. But the roaring creek drowned out all sound, even silenced the quarry, its busy service road just beyond the knoll in front of me. I had grown up listening to the quarry’s daily static, the persistent beep of back-up alarms, clanging tailgates, grinding gears, the sound of boulders dumped down chutes.

Now it seemed the horse and I were the last survivors on Earth.

More minutes ticked by before a man’s voice punched the air above me, words I didn’t understand at first. “86-6 on scene,” he said. Then more jumbled words, something about Adams Farm and Tripp Creek. I cranked my head up, saw a tall, muscular, dark-haired young man standing in the middle of the footbridge. Wearing the green Hufcut Quarry uniform and yellow hardhat, he clutched a pager in his gloved hand. His sudden appearance was so startling, for a second, I thought he’d parachuted through the trees. He stripped off his hardhat, which was when I recognized him, and swallowed hard.

Blake Hufcut was my rescuer?

A bitter taste flooded my mouth. Blake was an arrogant jerk. And his uncle owned the quarry which was threatening to bulldoze our home on O’Halloran Circle as part of an expansion. The few remaining residents in our development had been fighting the quarry and the zoning board for months.

From the footbridge, Blake’s dark eyes locked with mine. He called down, “Hold on! The fire trucks are almost here.” He spoke into his pager, then scanned the creek, his face as chiseled as the rocks his uncle blasted from the hillsides.

And then it happened again, another muffled blast of dynamite, followed by a tremor. The horse kicked out. I flinched and the root I’d been clutching broke. With a gush of mud, I slid further under the horse. I craned my neck and spit out the creek water slapping at my face. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to keep the horse’s head up, but my arms were numb.

The world went dark, wet, and cold.

“You’re all right. I’ve got you!” Someone—Blake—shouted in my ear. Strong hands grabbed me under my armpits, hauled me partway up the bank. My legs were still pinned. I blinked mud from my eyes and gasped for air. The horse’s head was still on my belly, my fists clutching thick hanks of dirty mane.

I didn’t let go of her. I felt a flush of pride.

Blake leaned over me, his thick, muscular thighs tight around my hips. “I’ve got you.” He swiped water from my face and mouth. “Can you breathe okay?”

“Yeah,” I mumbled through numb lips. “We have to keep the horse’s nose out of the water!”

“The horse is okay. What’s your name?”

“Nan. Nan Clarke. I live on O’Halloran Circle.”

“I’m Blake. I’m in the fire company.” His thick arms pinched my armpits.

I was a little hurt he didn’t recognize me. I’d only served him dozens of ham and cheese sandwiches at the Convenience Mart, where I worked after school. I even knew how much cream he liked in his coffee—two squirts.

“How long have you been down here?” he asked.  

“Twenty minutes, maybe.”

Blake tightened his grip. And suddenly, exhaustion, cold, and something else—gratitude that I was no longer alone—overwhelmed me. I sank back into his arms. His chest felt as solid as a rock wall.

“Hufcut, catch the rope!” a fireman shouted down a minute later, and one end of coiled rope landed beside us. Blake forced it under my arms, knotted it quickly into a big noose.

“Okay, she’s tied. Anchor her!” Blake called over his shoulder, and the rope went taut.

Two firemen kneeled beside us. They made an odd pair, one massive and blond with a baby face and ruddy red cheeks, the other small, dark, and wiry.

“How do you want to handle this, Blake?” the big fireman asked, his blue eyes crinkled with worry as he gazed at me.

“We have to secure the horse before we move Nan, Matt,” Blake answered.

Matt leaped to his feet. Within seconds, more ropes appeared. Firemen looped one around the horse’s neck, making an informal halter, and used another to tie the horse’s front legs together. They tossed the ends back up the bank to be secured.

Blake called over his shoulder. “Somebody go to the quarry, get me a long metal rod and some PVC pipe from the equipment shed. The guard at the front gate can tell you where to go. Hurry up!” To the men in the creek, he shouted, “On my count, pull the rope attached to Nan.”

In all the jostling, my slicker hood fell over my face, blinding me, and panic squeezed my throat.

“Hold on!” I recognized Matt’s voice. Someone brushed my hood back.

“Thank you.” I smiled gratefully up at Matt, his yellow fire glove still poised near my face. He smiled back.

“Everybody ready?” Blake shouted. Matt and Rick grunted their response.

Matt used his broad back to shift the horse, while Rick pulled my arms and Blake rolled sideways. My legs slid free with an awkward sucking sound. I sprawled on the steeply pitched bank, finally free of the creek and the horse. A woman wearing a red EMT coat leaned over me, prodding my body. “Does anything hurt?” Her eyes were kind beneath grey, Brillo-pad hair sticking out from under her red helmet.

“I’m fine.” I jiggled my legs to prove it, then twisted my head around her, my gaze riveted on the horse. Its nose was inches above the waterline. When it dipped, I launched forward, shedding the ropes from my arms. “Keep the nose out!” I shouted fiercely, grabbing onto the rope halter. I dug my elbows into the mud.

Blake placed his gloved hands over mine. “Nan, you’ve got to let go.”

“You guys almost let her drown!”

Blake’s dark brows furrowed. “Let go.” Then his thick fingers pried at mine, one at a time. “Matt,” he said over his shoulder. “Carry her up the bank.”

Matt swooped down, arms extended, and with an apologetic shrug slung me over his shoulder like a bag of horse feed. He clambered up the steep bank and deposited me gently. “Sorry, hope I didn’t hurt you,” he mumbled, flushing scarlet above his jaw-line beard.

I noticed that one of his ears was trapped outside his helmet, sticking out like a pluerotus ostreatus, one of those edible oyster mushrooms that grow out of dead trees.

“I’m okay.” I straightened my cockeyed rain slicker and swiped at the clay dripping from my jeans. “Thanks for the lift.”

He chuckled, a deep rumbling sound behind his ribs, then turned and slid back down the bank to the horse.

*This is a work in progress, with hopes of being published soon.

CJ Boots, As Is

CHAPTER ONE

I back out of the locker room and aim my flip-flops at the door with the exit sign. This is a big mistake. There’s still time to escape before my new teammates spot me. My knees are shaking, which is ridiculous. I’m a field hockey player, or at least I was. I swallow hard and grasp the silver letter charms dangling from a chain around my neck, four mismatched letters spelling the words ‘As Is,’ a phrase I learned from Dad in the antiques business. It means ‘buyer beware, item damaged.’ My pounding heart slows. The letters don’t match, aren’t the same size or style, but I appreciate the imperfection, this flawed, physical meme parading across my chest. I haven’t taken the necklace off in ten months, not since my brother died.   

Attending Sevenoaks Academy is my kick start, I remind myself, although I had some second thoughts when Dad dropped me off this morning. The eight-hundred-acre campus nestled in Connecticut’s northwestern hills seemed to spring up out of nowhere looking just like Hogwarts. Without the magic. The letters on my necklace bite into my palm and sweat coats my upper lip. I edge toward the trash can in the lobby in case I hurl. I shouldn’t have eaten Dad’s Blue Egg Special this morning. The bacon is sizzling all over again in my gut.    

Shit, the team captain just spotted me. Too late to change my mind now.   

I step through the doorway, my eyes glued on Mace Plimpton strolling toward me, my new teammates parting before her like she’s a float in her own victory parade. Her green-and-white practice uniform is pristine, no sweat, no grass stains. I crank up my head to take all five-feet-eleven inches in. Her knotted blonde hair, flopping back and forth on top of her head like a stunned buff Orpington adds an additional three inches to her height. She flashes a fake smile. That same smile adorned the effusive “Welcome to the Oaks” text and selfie she sent me two weeks earlier. “From the Field Hockey Team!” she exclaimed. Except the pic was just her grinning face and no one else on the team.   

I consider hocking a loogie right here in the locker room. Isn’t that how I’m supposed to act? I’m the local yokel, the Elverson Hills-billy, the Four-Heifer. My former teammates at the public school warned me those were the names I’d be called at Sevenoaks behind my back. I can jog home in forty minutes. There’s still plenty of time for me to trap and skin a squirrel for lunch. I tell myself to smile at Mace and walk toward her, but my feet are rooted like a burr plant covered in bristles.   

“Welcome to Sevenoaks, Caroline.” Mace finally speaks. It was worth the wait, her voice low, thick, and throaty like she just swallowed the gunk at the bottom of a bottle of Kombucha tea. Her eyes land on my flip-flops and her lips prune. I do have a gnarly big toenail, purplish-black, cock-eyed, impossible to miss. It’s an old friend, a symbol of happier times. I slammed my toe against the turf scoring the most important goal of my life. Only to have that life take a brutal smackdown that left me hanging by a thread like my nail.  

Mace’s critical brown eyes spring back up, take in my ponytail pulled tight, every strand slicked back the way I like it. I’m an athlete, not a cheerleader. It’s part of my game face—my ‘tude—that tells opponents just because I’m short, don’t think you can tread on me.     

“Coming to Sevenoaks must be a big change for you, Caroline, from public school.” Her tone said, pubic school. “Coach Rouse asked me to help you through this transition.” Like I’m changing my gender or something. There’s that fake smile again. Coach Rouse must think I’ve never used indoor plumbing. The same Coach Rouse—the Crypt Master, I call him, and assistant field hockey coach and admissions counselor—who sent me a letter six weeks ago out of the blue offering me an academic scholarship. He said I’d caught his eye at a College Contact Showcase two summers ago.   

I force my face muscles to relax. I can’t afford to alienate the captain before I’ve met the rest of the team. It’s suck-up-or-sink time.  

“That’s nice of you, Mace. I’m good right now, thanks. I can’t wait to meet the team.” I shimmy my shoulders in fake anticipation.  

“And they can’t wait to meet you.” Her face prunes, like I’m roadkill they’ll be forced to dribble around. Then she arches her overly tweezed eyebrows and peers down her nose saying, “Coach Rouse has made it clear what’s expected of you?”

I frown, crinkle my nose. “Umm, yeah. To help the team win a New England Championship.” Why do I feel as though I should put a question mark after that statement?

“Yes, and…” like she’s coaxing a reluctant toddler to eat Brussel sprouts.

I panic. The Championship is the goal. “The team has a winning—no, an undefeated—season?”

“Yes, and…”

I throw out my hands. If I’d eaten a Brussel sprout, now is when I’d spit it at her.

Her eyes narrow down to icy little slits. “You back me up and make me look good. Clear?”

My stomach flips mini cartwheels. I also notice there’s no one standing within earshot of us. Some of our teammates might object. “Okay,” I respond hesitantly.

I’ll sort this out in practice later. Maybe I’m misunderstanding her.

“Good. I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.” Her tone becomes brusque. “Our first practice is at 9:30. Lunch is at noon. Second practice from two to five. Make sure you put on sunscreen. You look like you fry in the sun. At five o’clock,” she swipes her hands together, “you can go home.”

Just like that. The Four-Heifer dismissed.  

I get it. Coach Rouse made my status clear during my interview. I’m a senior day student, the only nonboarder on the team, bussed in and out every day like a prisoner on a work detail. Dad and I met Coach Rouse at his home office, a gray-shingled house with a dock on the Housatonic River just off Cantrell Lane, the main campus road. Coach Rouse, tall, thin, stern, gray-skinned, and splotchy like his shingles, was a big talker, said he could make my dream of full-ride, Division One happen. Those were words I wanted to hear.   

So, here I am. My new start. So why do I feel dirty, my armpit sweat glands working OT?

Mace spins and trots away. I finally relax my grip on my necklace and pull out my cellphone, text three words to my boyfriend Durf. “Ugh. Save me!”   

I imagine my Durf’s tanned, freckled face, his curly, untamable brown hair, his muscled shoulders rippling under his T-shirt as he perches on the tailgate of his white Durfee Feed Store delivery truck. His boot tongues flap open beneath his jeans because he never ties the upper laces. He’ll slide off his leather work gloves, swipe at the sweat on his nose, and grin—exposing straight white teeth—as he reads my text.   

I try not to think about our goodbye kiss last night, and of course, fail. My knees wobble for all the right reasons as I feel Durf’s arms around me again, his skin smelling of sweet-feed, hay, and the barbecued ribs we ate for dinner. He kissed me as though it would have to last twenty-four days, not twenty-four hours. Durf is afraid some rich Sevenoaks snot will steal my heart. Pete Durfee, Durf for short, needn’t worry. No one at this school could make a hay wagon, an old horse blanket, and a Yeti cooler filled with White Claws seem as glamorous as a yacht.   

Durf texts me right back. “On my way, riding four-wheeler. Jump on. Not slowing down for you, girl.”    

I smile, put my phone away as another teammate springs up in front of me, a lopsided grin on her angular face. “Hi, C.J. Welcome to Sevenoaks. I’m Annie McQueen.” Annie is small and wiry like me, but the resemblance ends there. Where I have a heart-shaped face, round cheeks, brown eyes, and dark brows, she has bleached white hair cut very short with a pink stripe, and brilliant light blue eyes. Her face is angular with prominent cheekbones, and I wonder when she broke her nose, the aquiline bridge having a pronounced sideways V. It makes her look tough. “It’s nice to meet you. Coach Rouse sent your game video around. You’re good! We really need you on the team.”   

I like Annie already. And some of my unease melts away.  

She grabs my arm and drags me into the bright, green-and-white-tiled locker room. The pungent odor of disinfectant makes my eyes water. She elbows a path through our teammates, jabs both index fingers into her mouth, and whistles a sharp, piercing blast. “Listen up, everybody. This is C.J. Boots!”   

I loosen my jaw, twiddle my fingers, and plaster on my best fake smile as my new teammates whirl around me.   

“Welcome to Sevenoaks!” several say, tapping me on the back. Most seem friendly.

*This is a work in progress, with hopes of being published soon.

 Hay in My Bra

CHAPTER ONE: WILLY THE ROVING LAWN ORNAMENT

Before her fourth birthday, my daughter Nell caught the dreaded “Horse Bug” and began pestering me about riding. I put her off for a year with all sorts of excuses. We had no tack, no riding clothes, no barn, no time, no money, and big news, no horse. I bought her Breyer horses by the herd, hoping that miniature plastic ponies would suffice. They did stall her for a few months. She propped books on the floor creating miniature stables all over her room, cut out tiny felt saddle pads, braided tiny horse manes and tales, and galloped her horses over popsicle stick jumps. Smart parenting, I thought, as the fire in her belly now seemed a controlled burn.

Then I made the biggest mistake of my life: I let her sit on a real horse named Willy, an old grey, handsome Arabian owned by friends. Willy had endured hordes of novice riders in Dutchess County, New York and he must have sensed, from her very first sitting, that Nell was a natural, and since she only weighed fifty pounds, not a bad gig. Horses were in Nell’s blood, a virulent virus that could not be suppressed, an inevitable fact I blame on my older sisters, all accomplished equestrians. They infected my daughter with the Horse Bug. I rode as a kid but decided, early on, that a tennis racquet was a better companion than a horse: it didn’t require food, straw, water, or a barn. It didn’t need to be groomed, and cleaning up after it didn’t require a wheelbarrow.

But you’ve never had to say no to Nell’s enormous blue eyes. And you just knew, when you saw her astride the handsome, grey speckled Willy, it was meant to be.

Within three months, Willy was leased. We rented stall space at Hahn’s Farm a half-mile away and Nell’s equine education began. The accommodations at Hahn’s were crude—there was a boulder in the floor of Willy’s stall the size of a humpback whale— but there were several other horses there and lots of riders coming and going. Nell took her first official riding lesson on Tibby, a tiny Shetland pony no bigger than a German Shepherd with a thick, scruffy mane. I noted this date because it was the first of hundreds of precipitous dips in my checking account. Tibby was a permanent resident at Hahn’s Farm. The grouchy but knowledgeable stable manager, Penny, was her first instructor. Nell started out doing lead-line on Tibby, but soon progressed not only to riding Willy, but to handling her own reins.

Within a year and $100,000 later, we moved Willy out of his ramshackle accommodations to a brand new, sturdily constructed two-stall barn with eight acres of prime pasture, a heated tack room, and an expansive second story hayloft. Willy hated it. Because he could see, but not graze next to, his former horse friends down the valley. For days after we brought him up, he paced up and down the fence line, whinnying piteously. I frantically made some calls, trying to locate a companion, learned of two abandoned horses. With the manager of a local stable, I went to meet them. One of the horses was named Oreo, a huge black draft horse mix with a lopsided white blaze down his nose. Oreo was as sweet as he was wide. His companion was an old pony, blind, sick, and a rack of bones, who needed to be euthanized. Oreo came home with us. He and Willy were instant friends.

Willy, the grey Arabian was the proverbial bomb-proof horse except for one issue: he didn’t like camera flashes. I learned that the hard way. I learned everything about horses the hard way, or I called my sisters and asked for their advice, which was controversial at best, since those experts had wildly divergent opinions on every aspect of horse care. I tacked up Willy and walked him down into the yard so that Joe, then eight years old, could go on his first horse ride. Joe reluctantly climbed on board and had just taken the reins when I stepped back to shoot a photograph. The day was overcast. The flash was blinding; I saw sunspots for days. All four of Willy’s feet levitated off the ground and Joe started sliding sideways, his legs clamping in panic around Willy’s belly. If I hadn’t yanked him off, he would have hung on like a baby baboon to its mother. Willy bolted across the gravel driveway straight up the hill to Oreo at the barn. That was the first and last time Joe ever sat on a horse.

Nell and I took Willy and Oreo on many trail rides. We always sang to them, our favorites from The Sound of Music. Willy was always steadfast and dependable, Oreo not so much. I even had trouble getting the bit into his mouth, and when I pulled back on the reins, he’d crow hop like a cat on water. He was a perfect gentleman until I got on his back. I couldn’t figure him out. I even asked one of my sisters, Mandy, to ride him for me. She watched us tack up. Looking at me as though I had grain for brains,  she said, “You know, Em, that bit is upside down.” How was I supposed to know? In all the riding I’d done in my youth, the bits were flat bars. “The little bump is supposed to fit snugly in the roof of Oreo’s mouth,” her look telling me she wondered how I managed to get this far in life, “not dig into his tongue.” I apologized to Oreo while Mandy re-set the bit. We led the horse to our small riding ring and my sister got on his back. The big black horse actually looked graceful. And grateful, as he shot me several surly glances.

Oreo and Willy lived happily together for two years. My favorite vision is of them grazing down in the lower pasture, the big black horse next to the small white horse, with several birds resting on Oreo’s rump. In all the years we’ve had horses, I’ve never seen it again. There was something about Oreo’s backside that attracted small grey birds, usually two or three at a time, sunning themselves, enjoying the view from their equine cruise ship. I was continually scraping bird poop off his back.

The most colossal mistake any horse owner can make is neglecting to close a gate or a stall door. Of course, over many years, we were all to do that many times. Horses are observant, and opportunistic. And very, very fast, even fat, old ones. It was February, a thick blanket of snow covered the fields, when two horses zipped by the house at fifty miles an hour, white and black tails whipping in the wind, thundering hooves spraying snow. Neither horse was wearing a halter. Another big mistake. After calling myself the biggest idiot on earth, I loaded a bucket with grain and slung two halters over my shoulder, trudged through snowdrifts, working up a good sweat, finally reaching the two horses who had stopped on the plowed driveway, nibbling on the little bits of grass along the edge. I cajoled and pleaded with Willy. He was the senior citizen, supposed to have more common sense than his younger, dumber companion. Willy eyed the grain bucket, his ears pricking back and forth. Oreo trotted further down the driveway. I cursed him under my breath. For a moment, Willy stood his ground, let me get within ten feet. I held out the bucket, jiggled the contents. “Yummy grain!” I said, as if Willy hadn’t already figured that out. I tried to keep the strain out of my voice. I eased his halter off my shoulder. He took one giant step toward me. Gotcha! I thought and threw the grain bucket aside as I lunged with the halter. I didn’t even try to get the nose band on him, just hoped to lasso him around the neck.

He bolted down the driveway, taking Oreo, and most of my right arm with him. Nell has scolded me many times thereafter, “Mom, you’ve got to learn to let go.” That message still hasn’t sunk in. Meanwhile, my Brittany Spaniel, Scamper wolfed down most of the grain. I collected the few dribbles she left. Beulah, her sister, tied to the barn door, cried out in lonely misery, wondering why she’d been so cruelly abandoned and was missing all the fun as Scamper and I scampered down the driveway after the horses. We have a long driveway, almost a half-mile. It wasn’t nearly long enough as the escapees, snorting happily, sailed across the small country road at the bottom. Again, I edged closer to Willy, pleading with him, reminding him of all the good times he’d had at our farm, the brand-new barn, the lack of boulders in his sleeping compartment. Again, I approached. Slowly. Got you, sucker, I thought, then Oreo bolted again. Willy, with a wistful smile and a flick of his tail that caught me in the face, followed.

I was SOL. Ended up calling the road superintendent in our town. He was a member of the local fire department with me. Turned out he had some crews nearby that helped me corral the horses on the dam behind our pond. With four annoyed humans approaching, wielding rakes and shovels like an outraged mob from both ends of the dam, the horses knew the first (of many) Great Escapes was over.

Nell quickly switched from grooming Barbies to grooming Willy, buffing him to a high sheen, only to have him go right out to the gravel ring and roll, prodigiously. I remember one brisk spring morning, Nell and I were brushing Willy out in the paddock, using shedding blades in a stiff wind, the white hair whipped around us like snowflakes, sticking to our mouths. “Ptooey!” we both said, laughing. Mounds of hair blew through the fence into the barn. It looked like an animal had fought a terrific, and losing battle in there. In the fall, after the leaves had fallen, we would find birds’ nests woven with Willy’s white hair, around and around, a true safety net.

In the mornings, especially when Willy and Oreo were locked in their stalls because of the frigid temperatures, Willy always nickered when we walked in, anxious for his grain topped with carrots and a scoop of thyroid powder. Oreo was usually lying down. It always startled me to see such a large animal down on the ground, shavings stuck to the side of his face and tangled in his mane. With a lot of heavy moaning, he’d heave himself up, his legs pushing his bedding against the stall wall, shake off clouds of dust and shavings, and let loose a few satisfying, melodious farts.

Old Squitoes, the grey-and-white tabby cat, often joined us in the barn. He liked to lie down with Beulah and Scamper, our Brittany Spaniels, or roll in the stones, exposing his fat belly to the sun. He loved to be brushed, with big horse brushes, the harder the better. The skin rumpling made him drool.

Nell soon outgrew Willy and it was clear, due to his increasing grouchiness under saddle, that he was getting too old to be ridden. However, Willy was a lifer. When I bought him, I promised our friends he would live out his life at our farm. But in a vain attempt to keep ahead of the fast-growing and fast-learning Nell, I had two new horses moving in. As much as I hated to, I had to give Oreo up. But by then we’d also discovered why he was so balky under English saddle: he was trained for western pleasure. He hadn’t been trained to a bit, but to a hackamore and neck reining. We found him a nice family who promised to make him the next Trigger. 

As the years passed, I allowed Willy to roam free because he’d worn his teeth to nubs and was no longer able to chop and grind hay. He would end up twisting the hay into long, stringy cigars which he had to spit out. Supplemental grain, chopped alfalfa and beet pulp helped, but he was losing weight. We were lucky his last winter that we had very little snow. Acres of open fields were available to graze. When it did snow, Michael would plow swaths for him. He never wandered far from his two new friends, Riker and Blue. At night, I would stand on the hillside and call out to my roving lawn ornament, “Willy! Come on boy!” I’d stop and listen. Within a few seconds I would hear the der-rump, der-rump, der-rump of Willy’s thundering hooves as he galloped to me. It was a breathtaking sight when that beautiful white creature with his long, undulating mane, tail streaming behind him, emerged from the dark in front of me like a glorious, round-bellied ghost. Even in his advanced age he was a graceful, powerful animal.

Willy’s free-grazing wasn’t without incident, however. On a foggy night, Michael loaded several kids, including Nell, into the back of our Durango so that they could buy ice cream cones at the local Stewarts Shoppe. I had just gone up to the barn. Willy must have heard me rattle the grain cans because he trotted across the driveway just as Michael backed the Durango out of the garage. I heard a terrific thump then Nell wailing from inside the car, “Daddy, you hit Willy! You hit Willy!” Willy bolted up to the barn followed by a hysterical Nell. We checked Willy over. He was upset by the encounter, but had no scrapes or cuts. The silver Durango did not fare so well. There was a perfect orb-shaped imprint of Willy’s round belly in the rear tailgate. We never got it fixed. We liked it. We had the car for years, and always thought of Willy every time we fought to open the tailgate.

 *This is a work in progress, with hopes of being published soon.