Bone Dance

Sher had both postcards, skull and toad, in her hands and was studying them. “They’re both death symbols.”

“Oh, happy bankers,” Frances sighed. “No wonder the building’s standing empty now.”

“Noooo… Theo, hasn’t your family got it? Why’s it empty?” Sher tapped the edges of the cards and fa

“I’m not sure. Something about security, I think. And maybe just that they’re so close in size, and somebody didn’t like the competition. It’s not really empty. It’s got stuff stored in it.”

I sat on my heels next to Frances. “What kind of stuff?”

“Groovy stuff. I’d have gotten it all by now, except you can’t exactly take most of it out in your pockets. Uninterruptible power supplies, the four-hour ones; about three dozen heavy-duty storage batteries; some charge controllers; a whole pile of halogen floods — hey, they must be replacement bulbs for the outdoor lights. Take that look off your face. Just because the place isn’t lived in doesn’t mean it’s not guarded.”

I’d forgotten LeRoy, and was startled when he said, “Y’know, if we’re not going to find the books, we might as well have di

Sher said, “LeRoy, it’s your house, but don’t you think we oughta put this back in the boxes, at least?” She flourished the postcards. “Hey, can I hang on to these?”

I stood up and worked my way around the pile to the closet again. The books I’d tried to get at on the shelf were still there. I pulled them down. Modern English Grammar, 7th Ed. Windows on Western History. And, binding and page edges irregularly tan, Adventures in Physical Science. I stared at them, and at the pile of paper on the floor, and the postcards in Sher’s hand.

“If you want to send a message,” I said softly, frowning again at the books, “try Western Union.” But no telegrams were forthcoming.

I wound up delivering the textbooks to Paulo and coming back to LeRoy’s for di

Sher contributed a bottle of Iron Range malt whiskey. We climbed to the warm, barely sloping roof of one of the hay sheds and sprawled there, drinking from the bottle and watching the emerging stars and talking, erratically, about nothing particular. The whiskey was smoky and full on the tongue, and the roof slope faced south, away from the City.

The bottle had gone around a few times when I dropped my gaze from the sky to the roof. Sher, Frances, and Theo were picked out in monochrome by starlight and a half moon, the uneven rickrack lines of heads, shoulders, and knees dusted silver. The moody voice of a clarinet rose behind us, from somewhere in town, asking rhythm-and-blues questions that didn’t need an answer.

Frances held the bottle on her chest and said thoughtfully:

I said, “Who—”

“W. B. Yeats,” Frances sighed. “There’s nothing like the Irish for times like this.”

“Bottle,” said Theo, and Frances passed it.

I looked at them, and thought it was no wonder that I hadn’t subscribed to the concept of friendship. The silliest exercise I could imagine would be to squeeze these three profoundly dissimilar people under the umbrella of the single word “friend.”

But, it seemed, I’d been silly. “Bottle,” I said to Theo.

“But of course, my little chickadee.”

“’Sparrow,’ you asshole. That’s a good Fields, though.” I held the bottle up to the moon. “To us,” I said, very softly, and drank.

The moon was high when we slid, graceless but undamaged, down from the roof. Frances was still collected and fluent, but I thought the whiskey had worked; the wild taint on her words since she’d seen the postcards was gone. It occurred to me, my own feelings rocking more freely than usual on the surface of the liquor, that I’d probably just attended a wake.

We walked Frances and Theo back to LeRoy’s house. I turned to the town circle, and the sight of the farmhouse and its wide front porch. Then I said, “Sher?”

“Well, don’t shout. I’m right next to you.”

She was, too; I’d thought she’d started toward her place, but she hadn’t moved. As if she’d known I was going to ask.

“Tell me about the town,” I said, feeling the twitch of fear in my stomach that goes with the begi

I had good night vision, but I longed suddenly for a full moon instead of a half. Something — the moon, a star, a last lit window in a house — reflected for a moment in Sherrea’s right eye and was gone. “Why?” she asked.

“Josh said I should.”

“I wanted to know, back when you were still sick, if you’d taken a vow not to ask questions. Now you ask ’em because you’re told to?”

I felt the same rush of irritation I had with Josh. “When have I ever done what I was told?”

Around us was a fury of crickets, but I thought I heard her draw breath. “Always,” she said. “Because it’s the easy path, and the one you’re least noticed on.”

I had a powerful longing to turn and go. “Tell me about the town, Sher. I want to know.”

“Why do you want to know?”

I thought of the camel, and Josh saying that the character of the town might have a little to do with the zoo. And Frances’s frivolous comment about the cooking school. “Because I like it here. I’d say you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but if you didn’t want to, you’d have told me so and gone to bed by now.”

“Sparrow,” she said in an odd, unsupported voice. “Why do you want to know?”

I did turn then, and took three steps toward the circle. The movement shook a thought loose. The postcard lying on the floor in LeRoy’s attic, face up in front of the only person in the community who had seen that view before. And the books we were looking for, stored where they would set off that cascade when moved, just as the cards in a tarot deck, if you believed it worked that way, always came off the stack in the right order.

And Theo being a friend of Sher’s, and me knowing both of them; Sher being friends with China Black; meeting Frances on the bridge; Mick finding my body in the first place. Further back, that I had come to this City, and stayed, and further yet, that I’d been brought to life at all. We, the tarot cards, had come off the deck in order.

I faced Sherrea, queasy with nerves. “Because I think I know half a secret, and I can’t keep it properly until I know the rest. Because whoever’s shuffling is stacking the deck. Why did Josh ask if I knew about hoodoo, then tell me to ask you about the town?”

For a moment she didn’t answer. Then: “Maiden, Mother, and Crone. I didn’t think you were go

“Do what!” I said, my patience frayed.

“Prove you knew enough to understand the answers, dipshit,” she told me happily. “I’m go

So I stood under the big tree and waited for her. I could see the stars between the heavy branches. The grass of the circle, faintly reflective with dew, was a little lighter than the sky.

I was still queasy. It was as if my stomach knew something my reason didn’t, about what I had asked, what I was about to find out. It was hard not to go straight to the farmhouse and lock the door behind me. I sat down, leaned against the trunk, hugged my knees, and tried to think of nothing.