New Orleans
Riverbend
April, 1985
LANE STARED at the long, dirt-stained bone lying on the floor of the clubhouse.
“Is that what I think it is?” He tore his gaze from the grisly thing illuminated by the flashlight quivering in his hand and looked up at Matt.
“If you think it’s a human leg bone,” Matt intoned in his scariest voice, “you’d be right.” As of the start of this school year, Matt had become Lane’s first best friend.
A shiver ran up Lane’s spine, and he swore his hair stood on end. The dark shadows in the corners of the clubhouse seemed to hold things he’d rather not think about. Or dream about.
“Where d-d-d-did you get it?” Lane whispered. He’d known Matt was brave, far braver than he’d ever be, but the idea that he’d touched the bone, much less found it, raised him up even further in Lane’s eyes.
“The cemetery.” Matt’s grin reeked of smugness, reminding Lane of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland.
“No shit.” Lane let out a low whistle.
Matt nodded, crossed his arms, and sat back against the wooden slats.
“When?”
“Last night. Snuck out my window, walked right over to the cemetery, and climbed the fence.” His voice took on a singsong tone as he told the incredible story. Lane leaned forward, his eyes wide, his ears straining to hear the soft words.
“Did you see him?” Lane had to ask, had to know.
“Old Singin’ Joe?” Matt chuckled. “Yeah, I saw him, but he didn’t see me.”
Lane blinked several times to wash away the dryness burning his eyes. He’d kept them wide open for so long. Matt was cool, but Lane would never tell him that.
“No one goes in the cemetery without old Joe knowin’. And if he c-c-c-catches you—” Lane made a slitting motion with his hand across his throat.
“But he didn’t. I was dressed in all black.”
“Like a spy.” Lane didn’t bother to hide the awe in his voice. “Smart thinking.”
“Sure. I knew what I was doing.”
They stared at the bone again. Lane fought for each breath he took in the small makeshift clubhouse. The old blanket covering the doorway hung down, blocking out sight and sound of his house. They could have been on the moon, in the middle of a jungle, or on a deserted island, not just across the backyard.
He needed some fresh air. They were breathing in “bone” air, and there was no telling what was in that. Disease. Spores. Death.
“How’d you get p-p-p-past your dad?” Lane knew he should go inside, knew it was late, but the bone had somehow paralyzed him. Or maybe it was Matt.
“He was drunk, as usual.” Matt snorted. “I climbed out my window, got the bone, then climbed back in. He never moved from in front of the TV. Passed out cold.”
Matt’s father had scared Lane the first and only time he’d ever been in Matt’s house. They’d gone there after school to do some homework, but Matt’s dad had come home an hour later, drunk, mad, and fit to be tied about something.
When the yelling started, Lane had grabbed his book bag and hightailed it out of there. He’d run the whole way home, around two corners, and didn’t stop until he’d gone up the steps of his house and stood, hands on knees, sucking in air, on his front porch.
The next day at school, Lane saw the bruises on Matt’s arms peeking from under his sleeves and noticed the way Matt was walking, favoring his side.
No, Matt’s daddy was not a man Lane wanted to cross, and that Matt did it on a regular basis made Lane wonder if Matt was the craziest kid he knew or the bravest.
“What are you going to do with it?”
Matt shrugged. “Not sure. But I need to keep it here until I find someplace at home.”
“You’re going to k-k-k-keep it?” Lane’s voice squeaked. “Here?” He shook his head. “No way, José. Uh-uh. If my mom sees this, she’s gonna have a cow.”
“Just for a day or two.” Matt looked deep into Lane’s eyes. “You know I can’t take it home.”
“Take it back to the cemetery. That’s where it belongs.” Somewhere there was a ghost without a leg bone. Lane’s throat tightened and he barely got out the words, “Do you think it’ll come lookin’ for it?” He stared at Matt.
“Shit, no. It’s just a bone that floated up from a rotten casket. I got it in the section of the cemetery for the poor people. Found it lying right on the ground.”
Lane nodded. The cemetery sat one block away, and he’d grown up playing all around it. There were four sections, each the size of one block, three filled with raised crypts, mausoleums, and graves. The fourth section housed the graves of the poor, who couldn’t afford burial above ground. Its black iron fence and gates kept all but the mourners out and the dead in.
In New Orleans, bones float.
Matt grabbed Lane’s arm. “You can’t tell anyone.”
Lane nodded and swallowed.
“I mean it.” Then he let Lane go and stuck out his pinky, crooked like an upside-down hook. “Pinky swear.” Matt’s eyes narrowed, focused on him like laser beams.
Lane’s eyes just about popped out of his head. A pinky swear, second only to a double dare in its power. This was really serious. Things happened to kids who broke a pinky swear.
Lane licked his lips and hooked his pinky with Matt’s. Both boys stared into each other’s eyes, and Matt started counting out the years they had to keep the secret. “One, two, three….”
They pulled hard, trying to break the link between them. Lane strained with the effort, but Matt was bigger, stronger, and after all, it was his secret.
Lane’s finger gave way at nine. Nine long years he’d have to keep the secret.
Matt gave him a solemn nod.
“We have to hide it here.”
Lane shivered and looked around the clubhouse for a place to put the bone, but the place was empty. No pirate treasure trunks, no locked cabinets, nothing.
“Where?”
Matt stood and turned in a slow circle, then stopped. “Here. We’ll put it here, in this box.” He pointed to the cardboard box they used to hold a mess of stuff, like jump ropes, a few decks of cards, and assorted things they figured they might need in a secret clubhouse.
He dumped everything out, then picked up the bone and dropped it in.
“Shit! You touched it!” Lane yelled, jumping up and backing into a corner.
“Shut up!” Matt hushed him. “You’re such a baby, Lanie.”
“No, I’m not!” Lane took a step forward, his fists clenched. “Just because I don’t want any death germs on me doesn’t make me a baby.”
Matt shoveled the stuff on top of the bone to hide it. Lane made a mental note to never—ever—touch that stuff again. In fact, he’d throw it all away. Once he found something to touch it with, and after the bone was gone, because he sure wasn’t going to touch anything in that box with the bone still in there.
Then Matt stood in the doorway, lifting the blanket before he left. “Gotta go or my old man’ll kill me.”
Lane nodded. Those were just the words he wanted to hear. He nearly pushed Matt out the door in his hurry to leave the clubhouse and put the bone far behind.
He paused for a moment to appreciate how Matt jumped, with an ease he could never display, over the fence that separated their backyards; then he went inside.
All that night, his blanket pulled up to his chin, Lane listened for any noise of the ghost coming back to claim his missing bone. Somewhere, somehow, in the middle of the night, he fell asleep.
Two days later
HIS MOTHER was screaming bloody murder.
Lane sat upright in his bed. Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, the ghost had found them! He pulled the covers up to his nose and then curled into a tight ball on his bed, hoping the ghost wouldn’t figure out it was him under there.
His father’s voice rumbled, then shouted in surprise.
Silence. Lane’s heart beat like a hammer as he counted the seconds, like thunder after the flash of lightning, to tell how far away the storm was, only this time it was his father.
“Lane!” he bellowed.
Heavy footsteps came down the hall, creaking on the wooden floor of the camelback’s second story. Those were definitely not the feet of a ghost; Lane knew that much.
The door to his room slammed open. Lane lowered the blanket and uncurled. His dad stood in the doorway, red-faced and glaring. Oh no, he was gonna get it now.
“Lane, boy, where the hell did that bone come from and what the hell were you doing with it?”
“B-b-b-bone?” Lane’s young life flashed before his eyes, all ten years of it. He was gonna die right now, without ever having…. Well, he didn’t know what, but he did know he was too young to die.
“A leg bone. A human leg bone.” His father ground out the words from between clenched teeth. “Your mother found it in the backyard.” His father wiped his hand over his face. “The dog had it.”
Lane choked. Shit, the dog found the bone? Oh no, the dog had licked him and he’d had the bone in his mouth. Bone germs! Lane’s stomach rolled over. He opened his mouth to say something, but only this weird gurgling sound came out.
“Your mother is hysterical. You know how she is.” His dad came in and sat on the corner of his bed. “She’s downstairs right now, calling the priest.”
“Father Phillip?”
His dad nodded.
And sighed.
And gave Lane a cocked eyebrow that said Come clean. Tell the truth.
Lane knew if he told the truth, told it was Matt, bad things would happen. He couldn’t break the pinky swear. He couldn’t betray his best friend. His mother would never let him play with Matt again; she’d already declared him “common,” and to her that was the lowest of the low.
And if Matt’s dad found out?
Matt would get a beating even he couldn’t live through.
“I f-f-f-found it,” Lane whispered. “I didn’t think it was bad.” His shoulders hunched up around his ears. His father had never laid a hand on him, his mom either, but this just might be the first time.
“It’s okay, son.” His father chuckled. “But your momma’s upset. She’s talking cleansing and exorcisms and”—he leaned forward and whispered—“maybe even voodoo.”
Lane’s eyes got so big he thought they’d pop right out of their sockets. Then he dry swallowed, the gulp loud in the small room, and whispered, “V-v-v-voodoo?”
His father nodded, got up, and went downstairs.
That afternoon
LANE STARED at Father Phillip as he walked around the backyard, sprinkling holy water and chanting in Latin. His mother stood to the side, her hands folded in prayer, a rosary dangling from between them, and her lips repeating an endless string of Hail Marys. His father kept shooting looks at Lane that Lane would rather not translate.
The bone wasn’t present. His father had wrapped it in newspaper and taken it back to the cemetery that morning, while Lane waited in the car outside the large white clapboard house that held the cemetery’s office. Lane just knew if he had to go in there to see the caretaker, Old Singin’ Joe, and tell him he’d taken the bone, he’d have peed himself.
The old priest had gone three times around the yard, and Lane could tell he was about done in from the heat of his robes. In April, it was already in the low nineties.
Now, just when it looked like it was all over, his mom opened her eyes and gasped. “Oh no, Father, you have to do the clubhouse. That’s where it was kept.” She pointed to it, sounding as if they’d kept the devil himself in there.
The priest sighed, wiped the sweat from his forehead with a white handkerchief, and nodded. He approached the clubhouse, nothing more than white-painted plywood nailed to some two-by-fours with a hodgepodge of shingles covering the roof. Lane and his dad had built it two years ago during the summer.
God knew it was going to be a long time before Lane went back in there.
After giving it a good dousing with holy water, inside and out, the priest declared the little house and the backyard clean.
“And the dog.” His mom pointed to the little poodle, sitting in the shade of the house.
The priest shared looks with his dad, then tromped over and sprinkled the dog too. The stupid thing tried to lick the holy water off its fur and just wound up chasing its rear end.
But it seemed enough to make Lane’s mom happy.
Lane exhaled. Thank God, it was over.
Father Phillip came up to him and looked down with world-weary eyes. “Lane, I hope this will be a lesson to you. The bones of the dead are not to be disturbed.”
Lane nodded.
“For your sins, you must come to confession this Sunday, where I will tell you the penance you must make.”
Any amount of rosaries, prayers, or novenas would be fine.
Lane nodded.
“And I understand you’ll be punished by your mother and father.”
Lane nodded.
The priest took Lane’s chin in his hand and raised it up. They stared at each other, and the old man seemed to bore right into his brain.
He leaned over and whispered, “And tell Matthew I want to see him on Sunday too. In church. In my confessional.”
Lane nodded.
Father Phillip patted him on the head, made the sign of the cross at him, and left with only a wave of his hand toward Lane’s mother, who followed him out to the street.
His father and he stood alone in the yard. His dad walked over to him and placed his hand on Lane’s shoulder.
“You’re grounded, Lane. One month.”
Lane nodded.
“And that boy Matt? He’s off-limits from now on.” His father’s gaze shot to the back fence and the run-down shotgun house Matt lived in.
“But Dad!” Lane gasped out. “He’s my best friend.” He could do the grounding, do the confession, but do without Matt?
“Son, with friends like that, who needs enemies?” his father drawled.