Reading the Bones (8 page)

After
The Princess
docked and everyone was off, I felt as if my body was still swaying and lurching with the waves. I gripped the rail, afraid my legs would collapse.

Tornado gave his boat a little pat and let the sun gleam off his bright smile. “She's something, isn't she? Okay, then, next lesson you‘ll be spending time in your own sailboats.” He pointed to a fleet of crummy old skiffs about six feet long. “You're going to learn about the rudder and how we use it to steer the boat.”

When I started for home, I was actually skipping. Then I remembered I was still angry with my aunt, and I felt the simmering resentment return to the pit of my stomach.

As I walked through the front door, Aunt Margaret was in the kitchen pulling a pie out of the oven. “So how did it go? Was it fun? Did you meet anyone nice?”

“Oh, sure, I met two brainless, navel-gazing bubbleheads named Barbie One and Barbie Two! And
let me see, who else? Oh, yeah, the instructor, who looks like a hot dog someone left on the barbecue too long and likes to be called Tornado. And then there was some kid whose parents just dumped the bad news on him that they're getting divorced.”

I felt victorious as I watched my aunt's hopeful expression turn into one of disappointment. At that moment I heard the familiar sound of the screen swishing back and forth and dashed out to the porch.

“Hi, Eddy! What did I miss?” I scooted down the stairs and came to a halt at the edge of the mound of screened matrix.

“Oh, hello, Peggy. I was hoping I'd see you today. I discovered something very important and wanted to share it with you.”

I followed Eddy over to the excavation pit and watched as she manoeuvered her body slowly and carefully inside it. She used her fine brush to clear the earth around a long bone before picking it up. I could see that the two ends were fragmented and cracked like a spent Roman candle on July 1. Eddy turned the ancient bone over, examining it from every angle as I waited patiently for her to tell me what was so interesting.

“Hmm ... this is a beauty, Peggy,” she mumbled, holding the bone so she could peer through the hollow opening. “There it is. Take a look at these transverse lines in the shaft of this femur.” She handed me the bone and told me to hold it up as if I were looking through a telescope. At first the centre was too narrow and dark to see anything, but then my eyes adjusted. “Now look carefully, Peggy. Hold it up so the light shines down through the shaft.” Finally, my eyes focused on a fine
net, almost like lace, spread across the inside of the bone not far from the midpoint. “Do you see it? It's almost like a spiderweb right there inside the bone.”

I nodded.

“That's a transverse line, also known as a Harris line. It tells us at some point in this fellow's life — most likely early childhood — he experienced some kind of malnutrition. Probably there was a period when the village was short on food, like in late winter. Whatever the circumstances, they were serious enough to leave this type of scar inside his bones. He may even have been close to starving to death.”

I gently handed the bone back to Eddy.

“Peggy, before there's any supper you have some chores to do.” Aunt Margaret was standing at the top of the back stairs, her hands on her hips.

I flashed her my best glare and turned to Eddy. “I'm sorry I can't help you right now, Eddy. Aunt Deadly has other plans for me.”

That night Aunt Margaret and I were at war. She said that I lacked discipline and gratitude and needed to help out more. Then she handed me a list of cleaning she wanted done. It was as if I were Cinderella and she had turned into my evil stepmother. All this fuss because I didn't tell her where I was going.

I dusted the living room, vacuumed the house, changed the kitty litter, emptied the dishwasher, and took the garbage out to the road — all without saying a word or even looking at her. Uncle Stuart flashed me a couple of smiles, but I could tell he wasn't going to get in the middle of the feud. As soon as we finished our very quiet supper, I ran up to my room and closed the
door. If I'd had a do not disturb sign, I'd have hung it on the doorknob. I flopped down on my bed, and started planning ways to get Aunt Margaret's goat.

I really wanted to work on my necklace, but I promised myself I wasn't going to say a word to my aunt all night, even if it meant not visiting Mrs. Hobbs.

I thought about calling Mom, but I knew I'd open up like a floodgate and tell her how miserable I was. Then she'd feel really bad and start to cry again, and then I'd feel worse than I already did.

After a while, I was exhausted at being angry, so I tried to remember what Eddy had said about transverse lines. I couldn't imagine a hunger so deep that it left scars on my bones. I remembered one time Mrs. Hobbs had talked about growing up during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was a time when a lot of people were out of work and had to live on small food rations. I wondered if Mrs. Hobbs had transverse lines.

Except for the lapping of the waves on the beach, the village is quiet and still. Almost all the people are out fishing or gathering fruits from the small prairie behind the village. There is a familiar prickle of excitement as everyone works to gather and prepare the last of the winter food.

Strips of drying fish and deer meat hang from the rafters of the clan house. The beach is strewn with woven grass mats covered in sweet berries drying in the sun. And stacks of the oily olachen fish, threaded with wicks, are bundled and ready to light the nights when the long darkness comes.

Today the men and women are at the river's mouth. The water is so thick with bright red salmon that it looks
like blood. The men catch the fish in their dip nets and throw them onto the shore where the women wait with their sharp clamshell knives. Many of the young people are out on the sand bars collecting clams and crabs for roasting. Only a few of the old women remain in the camp to keep the squawking gulls and ravens from stealing the berries and meat.

Shuksi'em sits outside the clan house. He has just finished the last of his duck soup with the tender inner bark of hemlock. Now he must return to his work. He pulls the heavy deerskin onto his lap. With his bone tool he scrapes the skin, wearing away the old flesh and softening the hide. The work is familiar and rhythmic. He rubs his stomach with its painful fullness from eating too much. It reminds him to thank the Great Spirit for the abundance of food this season. Not every year has been so good.

He recalls the pain of an empty stomach, long ago when he was a boy. The run of salmon had been small that summer, and winter came early and stayed long. For many weeks the tiny, cold, white stars piled higher and higher, making it difficult to leave the big house. The supply of food in the storage boxes was getting very low. Outside, the freezing winds lashed at the clan lodge, shaking the rafters and walls. Even the air inside was icy cold. Only a few of the men dared to go out to gather wood. Sometimes they managed to catch a rabbit or a seabird for a bit of fresh meat.

Many of the old and very young died that winter, their wasted bodies buried in the snow until melting time. No one spoke the names of the dead for fear their ghosts would return to haunt the living. Sleep, if it came, was the only escape from the misery of the gnawing hunger.

Shuksi'em now thinks of his baby sister. He recalls watching his mother, so weak herself, anxiously mash her tiny ration of dried fish and try pushing it into the baby's mouth, but the food would not stay down. Neither infant nor mother had the energy to cry.

The day his little sister's spirit left her body, sunshine began peeking through the clouds, and drops of melting snow started falling from the roof. But the great sun was too late to save his sister. Like so many of the children in their clan, he was scarred by his loss.

But Shuksi'em does not want to think about this for long. He rubs his full stomach again and returns to his work.

The next day I got ready for sailing class before Aunt Margaret had a chance to tell me to. If she wanted me to be independent and disciplined, I would be — so much that she'd see I didn't need her. When I came downstairs, she greeted me as if nothing was wrong between us. She had made pancakes for breakfast, but I said I wasn't hungry. I lied. I was really hungry. Not so bad to get transverse lines in my bones, but enough that my stomach growled all the way to the sailing clubhouse. My aunt came to the door and waved goodbye, but I pretended not to see her.

I figured I could stay mad at Aunt Margaret for a very long time, especially when I thought about the exciting discoveries Eddy would make again that day without me. That morning I took the grassy trail that ran behind the houses. As I strolled along it, I noticed pop cans, snack bags, and bits of plastic. There was even an old tire. I wondered if one day future archaeologists would call these pieces of garbage artifacts. And if they did, what would this midden of modern waste say about the people of my time?

When I arrived at sailing class, Tornado had already assigned me a partner. We were to practise all our knots, especially the clove hitch.

“Your name's really Thorbert?” I said. “You're
kidding, right?” The moment after I said it I realized it was a pretty insensitive thing to say. The dark-haired kid from the day before was trying to introduce himself, and here I was insulting him again. Then I realized my face was twisted and pinched exactly the way Aunt Margaret's got when she disapproved of something.

“Yup, stupid, isn't it?” he said. I felt worse when his face turned a pale shade of pink. “My dad was on some Viking kick. He named me Thorbert and my younger brother Goran after some distant ancestor or something.”

I was sorry for the kid. Why did parents do stuff like that? “So do people ever call you Thor or Bert?”

“Sometimes, but they both sound just as dorky.”

I didn't say anything, but I thought so, too. “Well, at least it's distinctive. My mom named me Margaret after my aunt. It's a pretty stodgy, old-fashioned name, but at least no one calls me that.”

I decided I liked Thorbert and nicknamed him TB. He didn't talk that much or ask a lot of questions about my mom and dad. And he was also pretty good at knots. Later Tornado assigned each pair of students a sailboat. Ours was called
The Busy Bee
. We learned to manoeuvre the rudder, set the sail, then trim the sail. At the end of class Tornado said TB and I were doing so well he wanted us to demonstrate mooring a skiff for the next lesson.

“Okay, kids, that's it for today. Tomorrow we're going to practise manoeuvring the rudder some more and learn some new things, too.” Tornado winked and shot his used-car-salesman finger at everyone. “And like they say — be there or be ...” He paused. “What's the rest of it?”

“Square!” shouted about five kids.

“Right, be there or be square.” He flashed his toothpaste commercial smile and waved everyone off.

TB and I walked along McBride together. We talked for a while about his parents' breakup. I didn't feel like sharing that things weren't all that happy at my house, either, so I told him about the excavation in my backyard.

“So you're the kid who found the old bones. I heard about you from my neighbour. Must be kind of creepy having some dead guy in the backyard.”

I couldn't help feeling a little annoyed that TB sounded like Aunt Margaret. “It's kind of hard to explain, but it doesn't feel creepy to me,” I said, trying to be patient. “When I started helping with the excavation, I thought it would be really cool to dig up the old bones and artifacts. I thought it would be fun if I could help piece them together like a LEGO project or a jigsaw puzzle. But I've been learning that the bones can actually tell you something about the person.” By the look on TB's face, I could tell he didn't really get it. “I know it sounds kind of weird, but I feel like I'm getting to know this guy. It's like I've been reading his diary, except it's bones and not words on paper.”

When TB and I came to the corner of McBride and Sullivan, he turned north. “That neighbour you were talking about wouldn't happen to be Mrs. Hobbs, would it?” I asked.

TB grinned. “Yup, that's her. She's like the best neighbour anyone could have. She's always baking us pies and cookies.”

I felt the sting of jealousy. Somehow I had always
imagined Mrs. Hobbs was just my special friend. “Yeah, and aren't her double chocolate chip cookies amazing?” I said. Just then I decided I'd stop by Mrs. Hobbs's house and say hello. When TB turned into his neat bungalow with its white picket fence and daisies nestled together in clumps, I waved goodbye and went on to Mrs. Hobbs's place one house down.

Before I even knocked at the door I heard her inside talking to Chester. “Oh, what a surprise,” she said when she came to the door. “I was wondering when you were coming over again. Come in, dear.”

“I can't right now, Mrs. Hobbs. My aunt's expecting me home soon. I just finished my sailing lesson. You know the kid next door, Thorbert? He's in my class. We're partners.”

“Thorbert? Isn't that lovely. He's such a dear boy. With his parents divorcing and all, he can really use a good friend like you. But when did this all start?”

“After I was here the other night, my aunt told me I had to take sailing lessons. She said I had too much free time on my hands. She makes me feel like I'm in the army.”

“Well, she's just trying her best to look after you, Peggy. It must be hard for her, too, you know.”

I wasn't going to let Aunt Margaret off that easy, even if Mrs. Hobbs said so.

“All right now, how about that necklace of yours? If you can't come in now, how about coming after supper?”

I think I skipped all the way up Sullivan. When I was almost home, I remembered the long list of chores my aunt would have for me. If I stayed out of her way and worked hard, I could get everything done and still have
time to spend with Mrs. Hobbs.