Emily Littlejohn - Inherit the Bones

Canyon was inconsolable that afternoon.

It was early July, one of those perfect, warm days that occur a handful of times between late spring and early fall, when the air is hot and the sky is blue and the world seems bursting with life and color.

Canyon was a delicate child, not yet showing the body type he inherited from his late grandmother, she of the narrow shoulders and the wide buttocks. Seven years old, skinny as a twig, with a nose that ran constantly from allergies and wet eyes that were red-rimmed and sensitive to bright lights.

“But why?” he asked and it sounded like “bud way.”

Sylvia Kirshbaum wiped her son’s nose again-the rate this child went through hankies!-and gripped his fingers around the cup of tea. His were pale, thin fingers that were longer than they should have been for his age and size, like a piano player’s fingers or a surgeon’s.

“Because, my dear heart, you’ll catch your death. Now, you must rest here while Mama goes to work, and when I get back, we’ll make a surprise for Daddy. How does that sound?” she asked.

If she was late again, Mr. McGuckin would call her into his office and make her sit there on the black leather sofa and he would stare at her over those horn-rimmed eyeglasses and scold her. Scold her, a grown woman, for punching in her time card one minute past her expected return from lunch.

There were no words. Canyon simply wailed as she checked her handbag, fished out her heavy brass key ring with the funny owl tchotchke, and locked the door behind her.

For one hour, he was safe and sound, inside the house.

Every minute of that hour represented an opportunity for something, anything, to occur to prevent him from going outside and setting into motion the terrible events of that summer.

But the clock went tick and tock and Canyon occupied himself, with no idea that Fate waited patiently just outside.

The familiar squeal of the postman’s truck brought Canyon to the door and gingerly down the front steps. He snatched the new issue of Boy’s Life from the tin box, leaving the Sears catalog and two slender envelopes behind. Back inside, in the kitchen, he poured a big glass of milk from the bottle in the icebox, and then checked the pantry again, in case his mother had managed to hide a box of cookies. But she hadn’t, so he contented himself with the glass of milk and a slice of cold pie. It was cherry, though, and slimy as snot, and he dumped half of it into the sink.

He whispered shitpie as he watched it slide down into the drain and then giggled and said it again.

Shitpie !

In the living room, Canyon lay on the floor on his stomach, his body carefully angled to catch a single ray of sunlight. He read the magazine, wiping his nose every few minutes on the back of his hand. He sneezed and pretended not to see the wet spots that appeared on the page in front of him. Instead he focused on the newest clue in the Mars Attacks! Mystery. With his tongue between the gap in his front teeth, he carefully penciled in the code and added it to the notebook he kept in his back pocket.

Movement outside the living-room window caught his eye. He peeked out and saw something very interesting. The Kirshbaums lived at the end of a cul-de-sac, just beyond which was a big meadow filled with pines and aspens and a trail that led down the creek and deep into the wooded open space. Making their way down the trail were two blond, older boys. Canyon recognized them from the middle school that adjoined his elementary school.

It was 2:15 p.m.

Moving fast, he pulled off his pajamas and left them in a heap on his bedroom floor, and yanked on a pair of cotton shorts and a dirty old shirt his mother kept trying to toss. By the time he got outside, the boys were almost to the end of the trail. By the time he caught up to them, he was out of breath and snot caked his upper lip. The boys turned as they heard him approach.

“Hey, guys, whatcha doing?” Canyon asked.

It took a minute for them to understand what he had said, and he blushed at the congestion and stutter that turned his words into indecipherable mush.

“He’s showing me a secret,” the younger of the two boys said, pointing to the older, taller boy.

“A secret, huh?” Canyon said. “Can I come?”

They looked skeptical. “I don’t know. You’re just a baby. A sick baby.”

“Please? I’m not a baby.”

One of them asked, “How old are you?”

“Nine,” Canyon lied. The older boy scoffed. “Okay, eight but almost nine. I’m just small for my age. Jeez.”

The two boys went off to the side of the trail and conferred in whispers. After what seemed an eternity, the older one beckoned to Canyon with his finger.

“You can come but you got to keep your mouth shut, okay? This is my secret lair and I don’t want a bunch of babies finding out about it.”

They went off the trail and walked along the creek for a ways until they came to a little hill. Just beyond the crest of the hill was a bramble of bushes, thick with berries and thorns. Canyon had never ventured this far in the woods and the bramble looked menacing and dangerous, like something out of the fairy-tale books his mother read to him.

The younger boy noticed Canyon’s pause. “C’mon, he’s not going to wait for us.”

In fact, ahead of them, the older boy had disappeared. Laughing, the younger one hurried to catch up to him. Canyon wiped his nose on his shirt. The bush swallowed up the older kids, and the sound of laughter sounded far away.

And then all of a sudden it was quiet, and Canyon stood in the sunlight, alone.

He wiped his nose again and took a deep breath and pushed into the thicket. The leaves and branches weren’t too thorny, after all, and he caught sight of the boys squatting in a small meadow, passing something between them. It was small, about the size of a cigarette, but it smelled different, sweeter.

“What’s that?” Canyon asked.

The blond boys looked at each other knowingly.

The younger one said, “Weed. Want some?”

Canyon shook his head.

“Come on, Canyon. Live a little,” the older boy said. He put the funny-looking cigarette to his mouth and inhaled, holding the smoke in as long as he could and then exhaling it in one big breath. He started coughing and hacking, his face turning beet red. The younger boy laughed but Canyon didn’t dare. He’d seen that big kid wallop too many boys at school.

Over the sound of the coughing and the songs of the birds in the meadow, Canyon heard the low rumble of a diesel truck.

“You guys, shh. Someone’s coming.”

The older boy quickly ground out the cigarette under the heel of his boot. “Oh, shit. We’re royally fucked if we get caught with this. I stole it from my mom’s jewelry box.”

“What do we do?” the younger boy said. He was in a panic. His dad was twice as mean as the older boy’s dad.

“Quick, up there,” the older boy said, and pointed up a small hill. “We can hide.”

The boys took off running toward the hill. Canyon quickly fell behind, his breathing labored, his nose more stuffed up than ever. He felt too hot and he wondered if he had a fever. Stupid idiots. He should have known better than to follow a couple of losers like them into the woods.

He reached them finally, and found them lying flat on their bellies, on the backside of the small hill.

“Wha-” he started to say, and then the older boy was grabbing him and pulling him down on the hill and wrapping a hand across his mouth that smelled of tuna fish salad and motor oil. Canyon struggled against the big kid and then stopped when he saw what they were looking at, down at the creek below them.