The Romance of Certain Old Bones Read online

“The truth is, all of us were nervous even before last night,” Ebury said. “Duessler’s having nightmares, Ryan’s been sleepwalking again—”

  Jacob’s nerves prickled. “Again?”

  “He’s always done it, off and on,” Matheson explained. “I used to room with him. He’d sit up in bed in the middle of the night and talk in his sleep.”

  “What did he say?” Bosley asked.

  “Mostly he’d say, ’Go away, I can’t help you. I don’t know your mother.’ Things like that. It was real spooky.”

  “Ryan is spooky,” Ebury snorted.

  “He always was, kinda,” Matheson admitted. “I only roomed with him that one semester, and I think he’s had a room to himself since then. But any time there’s a big exam coming up or he’s under some strain, we’ll hear him walking the halls at night—”

  “Or catch him in the lavatory, talking to himself.”

  Matheson nodded. “But if you startle him he’ll wake up. He says he’s been a sleepwalker since he was a kid.”

  Bosley’s elbow nudged Jacob’s lightly, and Jacob realized he had his fork in a death-grip, his plate shaking in his clenched hand. He met Bosley’s quizzical gaze and forced himself to relax.

  “Well, we’ll be glad to have you spell us on the watch,” Jacob said. He told them they could take the first shift after sundown, and wake him at midnight.

  He was aware of Bosley’s eyes on him as the boys walked away, and Jacob went on eating, projecting outward calm, waiting for the inevitable.

  “What was that about Ryan sleepwalkin?” Bosley said after a moment. “That mean anything to you?”

  “Mm,” Jacob said, as if it had slipped his mind. “Naw, not about this. There was a fella in the army hospital used to do that. Used to scare the hell out of everybody. Acted like he was talkin to people who weren’t there. Worst part was, he’d call out names of men who’d just died, so one of the nurses decided he was seein their ghosts. She got this idea to hold a séance. Bunch of the young nurses and a few patients sittin round listenin for raps on the tabletop.”

  “They get an answer?” Bosley asked, with a faint smile.

  “They got mortared,” Jacob said flatly. “Cannonball went astray, blew up the nurses’ parlor a few days after they had their little spirit-roundup.”

  The smile fell off Bosley’s face. “Jesus. Sorry.” After a minute he said, “What about the fella who heard voices? He get blowd up with ‘em?”

  “No. He got moved the day before. Doctors said he had the melancholy, sent him to the asylum in Richmond.” Jacob got to his feet. “More coffee?” he offered, and Bosley handed up his cup with a look that held more than a little speculation.

  Jacob’s guts were quaking as he crossed to the chuckwagon. He’d been skating way too close to the truth with that story, and Bosley was too smart not to wonder. Men learnt things about one another when they worked side by side every day and slept in the same tent at night, which was why he hadn’t had a steady trail-partner for the last three years. An observant tent-mate might tally up the nightmares, the refusal to sleep in abandoned buildings, the tensing up whenever they passed a graveyard, and come to a dangerous conclusion or two.

  The face of his wife, Dorie, swam up in Jacob’s mind, but not as she had been in life. He remembered her as he’d last seen her, gray and drawn by the ravages of cholera, and he pushed the image down ruthlessly. It had been three years since he’d been fool enough to tell anybody about his curse, but those deaths had impressed upon him finally and for all that he had to carry this burden alone.

  He dumped his plate in the washpan, filled both tin cups with coffee, and carried them back to Bosley’s seat on the rocks. He was aware of eyes on him as he passed by, the Yalies whispering to each other, and he turned his head, nodded in a show of sociability while his cowpuncher’s eye automatically counted noses. All six of them present and not doing anything stupid for the moment, though their staring and chewing reminded him of wall-eyed calves.

  Jacob knew they found him eccentric, to prefer Bosley’s company over theirs. By age and education, he should have been Hope’s peer in the camp, and indeed the professor had made polite social overtures during their first few days on the road. But Hope had also made it clear the invitation was exclusionary, which put Jacob in an awkward position. He thought it bad manners to work with Bosley all day and then abandon him for Hope’s company at night—even if he had liked Hope, which he didn’t. And Hope was one of those people who couldn’t accept a mere civil acquaintance: either you were his friend or you weren’t.

  To Hope, being friends seemed to involve sitting in rapt agreement with his long-winded expositions about the world. Which was where Ryan sat now, beneath the awning of the professor’s tent.

  Jacob shook his head in disgust. He returned to Bosley’s side to find Stanley in his seat, hunkered like a little woodchuck over a plate of beans.

  “Where the hell’ve you been?” Jacob said as he passed over Bosley’s cup.

  “Around,” Stanley said, through a mouthful. He gripped his fork like a shovel, scraping and lifting with efficient speed. “Had to talk to the spirits.”

  Jacob and Bosley exchanged glances. “And what did the spirits say?” Bosley asked.

  “Storm coming. Lightning. Flood.”

  Jacob glanced automatically at the sky. It was true, thunderstorms could come up sudden on the prairie, and these rocky channels would not be a good place to get caught in a deluge. But the heavens were clear all the way to the horizon, and the few evening clouds were high and wispy.

  “Not for a couple days,” Stanley added. “But more people gonna die before that. The water-monster put bad medicine on Mister Ryan. Stuck a bone splinter in his heart.” He beckoned for Bosley’s untouched cup, and the latter passed it over. Stanley drained it at a gulp and wiped his arm on his sleeve. “That’s why he killed the other white man.”

  “How do you know that?” Jacob demanded.

  Stanley slid a thoughtful, almost pitying look up at him. “Same way you do. I see. I listen.” He said to Bosley, “My grandfather was Looks Ahead. You know that name?”

  “Heard of him. Crow medicine man,” Bosley explained to Jacob. “Couple of Crow scouts who worked for the Seventh, they swore by his medicine bundles, said they were protected in battle. So what are you sayin, Stanley Many Tongues, you saw Ryan kill Carruthers?”

  “If you saw it, you need to tell Hope,” Jacob said.

  “They won’t believe him,” Bosley countered.

  But Stanley shook his head. “Didn’t see it. The beavers told me.” And to their bemused looks, he explained, “Beaver-spirits are friendly to men. Where the water-monsters are prisoned in the rock, the beaver-spirits are their keepers.”

  Jacob made an exasperated huff, but Bosley waved him into silence. “That’s all to the good, son, but if we’re gonna accuse one rich white man of murderin another, we need proof. You got any idea how he did it?”

  “He didn’t have to do it. He lured the man within reach of the monster’s jaws. And the water monster’s thrashing shook down part of the bluff.”

  Jacob gave a snort of nervous laughter. He could all too clearly visualize the scene as Stanley described it. Hell, he could feel what Ryan must have felt, standing in the cool night wind, damp under his arms and down his back, listening to the gurgling, greedy voice of a thing long trapped but not-quite-dead, waiting and hungering over eons for someone with the right curse, a corresponding greed and hunger. For approval, maybe, or fame. Someone willing to trade in blood to get what he wanted—

  “Boss,” Bosley said sharply, and Jacob came back to himself with a jolt. He fought the urge to shiver as they stared at him—Bosley with worry, Stanley with sympathy.

  “I’m all right,” Jacob said. “I’m goddamn tired, is all.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, trying to ward off the eerie, familiar, dreaded tingle of awareness, as if someone were hovering behind him, urging him to turn around and face
what he knew was there. “Listen, Stanley. Boz’s right. We need some kind of proof.”

  “Like a weapon,” Bosley added. “Whatever he stabbed Carruthers with, it can’t have gone far. Ryan must’ve stashed it somewhere. Something that looks like teeth, set in a row. You get me?”

  Stanley’s brows lowered in a stoic expression. Jacob had long ago learned to tolerate people treating him like a fool or a lunatic, because the consequences of insisting on the truth were so much worse. But Stanley, he realized with a kind of dizzying wonder, did not seem afraid of the truth. He spoke of beaver-spirits with as much frank certainty as Jacob’s father had professed to know the will of God, as his teachers had talked about demons of temptation and the sin of Pride. Yet Stanley offered neither the ominous condemnation of the priests, nor the cozening assurances of the Spiritualist frauds Jacob had encountered.

  “I get you,” Stanley said finally. “You want me to hunt around til I find something that matches the marks on the body.”

  “Can you do that?” Bosley said. “And not get caught?”

  “I can get caught or not, whatever you need.” Stanley gave a hard shrug. “But I gotta know you’re gonna heed the report I bring back, Buffalo Soldier.”

  “I ain’t in the army no more,” Bosley said curtly.

  Whatever this meant to Stanley, he accepted it with a nod. He jerked his chin toward Jacob. “If you hear any voices call your name tonight, don’t follow ’em.”

  “I never do,” Jacob said.

  10

  The shared confines of their tent seemed tighter that night, less companionable. Jacob wanted to ask why Bosley had been humoring Stanley about the spirits, even though he plainly didn’t believe a word of it. He wanted to ask what Stanley meant with that crack about heeding reports, and what the army had to do with it. But if he started asking questions he’d have to expect a few in return, and that was a dangerous door to open. He didn’t want to lie to Bosley, and he couldn’t risk telling the truth.

  Fortunately, their interrupted sleep of the previous night made for a quick drop-off into oblivion.

  Or not quite. For Jacob sleep was like stepping over the drop-off of a lake, water closing over his head as he went down and down into warm blackness and caressing liquid. He felt weightless, freer than he had in a long, long time. The murky water tasted of salt and living things, carried sounds and vibrations from leagues off, gave him a sense of being connected to the world in a way he had never fully felt but somehow craved. It was as if the water dissolved a barrier between his senses and a deeper truth that lay beneath the surface of things.

  Maxpé-man, it whispered to him. Speaker with the dead. I’ve been waiting for you.

  No, Jacob said. You got the wrong man—

  You hear. You see. You are stronger than the other one. I can help you—

  Get back from me, demon, Jacob said, and pushed away through the water, found himself in the vast bowl of the prairie. He knew somehow he was in the same place, but the stars had changed, the water had ebbed away, the land had dried out and given birth to new plants, new creatures.

  Lightning streaked through the sky, reflecting off the rock bluff right before his face. The mosasaur’s teeth lit up blood-red in the flash, and Jacob startled back, fell on his butt and scuttled through the long grass. To his horror, the massive skull in the rock began to move, twisting back and forth as if to stretch its neck after a long sleep. It turned and looked at him, wise and somehow mad, teeth bared in a friendly grin. Don’t be afraid, maxpé-man. I know your kind. We can help each other—

  No! Ryan protested, and suddenly he was standing over Jacob with a pick-axe. It’s mine!

  The pick swung up and Jacob shook himself awake with a howl, though it sounded more like a bark in the darkness of the tent.

  There was a flurry of motion from Bosley’s cot, and then that strong corded hand in the dark, finding his wrist and clutching it hard, anchoring him in reality. “Easy, Boss. You awake now.”

  “Damn it, quit callin me that,” Jacob croaked. “I said partners and I meant it.”

  There was a short silence. “All right. I ain’t callin you Sweetheart, though. People might get the wrong idea.”

  Jacob laughed, and then wept a little. The pressure of Bosley’s hands stayed constant on his arms.

  “This a regular thing with you?” he asked after a while. “Cause I don’t remember you wakin up like this on the trail to Yankton.”

  “No,” Jacob said. “Not for awhile, now. It’s the cool air, and that kid dyin.”

  “Yeah.” Bosley’s voice was firm, final, and Jacob knew he wouldn’t ask the questions that buzzed in that steel-trap mind of his.

  But Jacob wanted him to know. Not the worst of it, maybe, but he deserved some truth. “I was with Stonewall Jackson at Sharpsburg— Antietam,” he said, and sensed Bosley’s stillness, his comprehension. “A friend of mine from seminary, his family was from North Carolina, and when he went to enlist I went with him. My Da disowned me for that.”

  “He was a Unionist, I take it.” Bosley’s tone was neutral, offering no judgment.

  “He was an Abolitionist. And a vengeful old bastard. He sent me to seminary when I was fourteen, said I was gonna be a priest whether I liked it or not. And I didn’t give a damn about state’s rights or slavery—it was one in the old man’s eye, and we all thought it was gonna be such a lark.” He caught his breath, still stunned by the naiveté of that young man. “We were deployed to hold that wagon-lane ahead of the Union advance—lyin down in that ditch takin blood and gunpowder in our faces til they ran right over us. I took a bayonet in the side and fell there with the rest of the company. Three days before the ambulance men pulled me out. I wasn’t… I wasn’t in my right mind, after that. Not for a long while.”

  That was the first time he’d heard the voices, lying there among the bloated and blown-apart bodies of his comrades, watching them one by one stand up, shake themselves under the burning sky, and march off toward the setting sun. They’d urged him to follow, but his head had been every bit as hard as his father claimed: he kept on breathing, against all odds and inclination. Eventually a pair of Negro gravediggers had pulled him out, realized he was still alive, and alerted the ambulance men.

  How he remembered that, Jacob had no idea. Much of the weeks after the battle he saw in his mind’s eye as if watching from outside his skull, floating over his own body. He saw and heard and knew things there was no way he should have known, like the doctor telling the nurse he would never survive with that gut-wound and not to waste medicine on him. And the nurse stealing laudanum to pour down his throat to make him more comfortable. A questionable mercy, that—the opium had loosened something in his head, opened it up like the shutter on a lantern, so the spirits of the dead were drawn to his light and they clustered round his bed, whispering and pleading and pawing at him until he raved at them in his pain and fever.

  “I just get… sometimes when I’m tired. Sometimes when the weather’s right, or if there’s an accident and someone gets hurt, or a loud noise. Sometimes I don’t even know why.”

  It wasn’t the whole truth. But it was enough to make Bosley understand why he didn’t want to talk about it.

  “You said you was takin care of your sister back in St. Louis,” Bosley said after a while. “That mean your old man ain’t livin no more?”

  “Cholera carried ’em off three years ago. Him and his wife… and my wife, too. We’d just been married, came to live with them in Missouri.”

  Bosley gave that the moment of silence it deserved. “But at least you made it up with him, before.”

  “Yeah,” Jacob said, and thought, But I was the reason they died.

  11

  The next morning was Sunday, and like every Sunday for the past two months, Hope read them Scripture over breakfast. It was usually Psalms or the Beatitudes or some exhortation to embrace work as its own virtue. The Quakers were a kindly bunch, compared to some of the more bombastic Pro
testants Jacob had heard at the pulpit.

  This morning’s sermon was a bit different, however.

  “Take heed to yourself,” Hope read in a loud clear voice, “lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going. You shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images, lest you play the harlot with their gods, and one of them invites you in and makes of you a sacrifice to them.”

  That was a tad on-the-nose, Jacob thought, appalled. He glanced around—Matheson and Ebury and the others looked guilty. Ryan, standing alone with his bandaged hand cradled to his chest, wore a faint smug smile.

  Hope closed his Bible and regarded them sternly. “A man died here yesterday, under strange circumstances. It is natural at such times to wonder why, to look for meaning. But to give credence to heathen superstition is not becoming to Christians or men of Science.”

  Jacob shot a look across the camp toward Bosley, who stood beside the chuckwagon, plate in hand but knees flexed, as if braced for attack. Jacob had an ugly premonition of what was coming next, and was glad Stanley had left early for that day’s water-run.

  “We are here, gentlemen, as ambassadors of civilized and rational thinking. For thousands of years the indigenous tribes have roamed these lands, but did they have the ingenuity to cultivate it? No. Did they establish schools and hospitals? They did not. Did they devise a written language to allow knowledge to be shared, assimilated, built upon? No! Even in this enlightened age, they rely on oral tradition, insisting on the unchanging race-memory of their shamans. And if you would credit the superstition of savages over the logic of evolved men, then I say none of you are fit to call yourselves scientists.”

  Evidently someone had gotten wind of Stanley’s water-monster story and spread it around. But who? Jacob had never seen the boy talk to anyone except for himself and Bosley, and the cook. And the cook rarely said more than a grunt to anyone.

  “Now we will have no more talk of monsters and curses,” Hope said. “I expect all of you to be at work in an hour. Take the time to examine your souls and your ambitions—some of you are risking your careers.”