Bonesteel

Shauna Friesen

I am fifteen when I buy the bus ticket to Bonesteel, and I board with nothing but a Polaroid in my pocket and a kitchen knife in my school backpack.

     Jodie didn’t ask me to do this for him. In fact, I’m sure he’d do anything to stop me from going. Hold me pinned to the ground with his sharp elbows and knees if he had to, the same panicked way he had the first time I’d tried to kiss him. 

     But I need somewhere to sink this bladed rage. A neck I can plunge it into, down to the hilt. In my seat at the back of the Greyhound, I unzip my bag just enough to reach inside and feel for the polished handle, gripping it to aching, imagining my arm running with red, floor beneath my boots blooming with the satisfying stain of it.

     The bus heaves an exhale and lurches forward.

***

Forehead to the window, I watch squat glass office buildings and the brick university and the triangles of the church towers flatten into long tracts of corn. The green stalks have grown well past my shoulders in late summer, fingers of the tassels grappling at the sky.

     I remember liking Jodie from the first second the teacher guided him into the fifth grade classroom, his eyes narrow and serious. We all gaped at a bulky plaster cast on his right arm. Our whole class signed it with colored Sharpies over lunch, Jodie stiff with discomfort as we flocked around him, watching with somber, unblinking intensity as markers were passed around. Girls sketched hearts and daisies and crucifixes near his elbow. Boys snickered while they scribbled sloppy insults. I could feel Jodie’s breath on my ducked head while I wrote my name up his wrist, and I couldn’t find my voice to offer him so much as a hello, couldn’t work up the nerve to even look him in the eye.

     While I walked home, I pitched myself sideways onto the concrete a few times, throwing out my right arm so I’d land on it hard.

     If I could have found a way to snap the bone, flung myself down with enough force, we’d have had that much in common. Something to talk about. Stories and signatures to compare, but all I earned myself was a throbbing shoulder and an elbow smeared with blood. 

     I didn’t say a word to Jodie until the next school year, and he didn’t talk to anyone much, either.

***

Each town the Greyhound trundles through feels smaller, flicks by faster. We whip past big rigs crammed with swaying cattle. Boys younger than me operate juttering tractors. Town halls are still decorated for the fourth of July. An eternity of cropland unfurls on either side of the coach.

     At our first stop, the driver takes his time nursing his coffee and cigarette. He and a filling station’s proprietor exchange familiar greetings.

     I lean against the skillet-hot side of the bus, squinting in the near-noon scorch of the sun, cicadas roaring in the sugar maples like a warning. The road ahead simmers and melts to a silver pool in the heat.

     “You’re young to be riding alone,” a woman observes while she pops a soda tab beside me. “Where are you headed?”

     I mumble a lie about visiting family in Platte, clutching my backpack to my chest, relieved when the driver finally whistles and slaps the bus.

***

I study the photograph I brought along carefully while tires drum against asphalt beneath my seat.

     I’d found it at Jodie’s house. It fell from a book I opened while he was out of the room, and I’d slipped it into the pocket of my jeans before he’d returned.

     Jodie is small in the Polaroid. Seven or eight, standing on porch steps between a man and woman. The faces are too distant to make out, but it is the house behind the trio that interests me most. The angle of the roof’s pitch. The framing of the windows. All the places under the eaves where the paint has peeled. 

     The house number is too blurred to read, but there is a handwritten caption beneath the picture. 

     BONESTEEL. 1991.

     I flipped through my parents’ atlas when I got home from Jodie’s. A small town. A six-by-six grid. 

     The house isn’t going to take long to find when I get there.

***

The next stop is mine. 

     The closest station to Bonesteel, and I wait until the Greyhound has jerked from the curb and winked out on the horizon to begin my southbound trudge along the highway, thumb up when vehicles pass.

     It is a relief when the first car that slows is an elderly woman, silver-haired and shielding her eyes with a weathered hand when she rolls down the window.

     “Where are you headed, young man?”

     Choir hymns crackle on an AM station when I slide in, holding my school bag in my lap, feeling the outline of the weapon inside. Her old Buick picks up speed. Her church music builds to a crescendo that vibrates the dashboard. Voices fold to one. A final chord is struck on the organ with all the power I’ve seen lightning clap Badlands.

     “Bonesteel?” The woman smiles as if she knows something I don’t. Teeth are missing from her grin. “Funny place. What sort of business do you have in a town like that?”

     “I’m doing a favor. For a friend.”

***

It wasn’t until the eighth grade that Jodie told me why he’d started at my school with a broken arm, and I cried so hard when I got home my mom came into my room. I let her hold me when she did, rock me and stroke my hair while I wept.

     I don’t remember who dared who first, only that Jodie and I cannonballed in all our school clothes into the cola-brown Sioux on the first day of summer, sputtering and ramming each other’s heads underwater, sprawling on a boulder near the falls afterward while our shirts and shoes dried. The spray was cut with spectrums, mist diamonding us all over, foam spinning past our perch in eddies.

     It was easy to forget about the scars on Jodie’s arm, the careful way he almost never let them show, but in the blazing sun when he propped his head on his hands, they were so purple and angry I wondered if they still hurt. Two magenta knots where his bone had come through skin, writhing worms running with the radius where metal pins had to be put in.

     “Did I ever tell you I tried to break my own arm?” I told him. “On your first day. I thought it would be a good way to get you to be my friend.”

     “You’re such a dumbass.” Jodie laughed but it came out flat, humorless. He swatted at a pair of gnats jittering in the mist. “Guess you didn’t try that hard.”

     “Wasn’t easy. Trying to break it myself.”

     Jodie shrugged. “Wasn’t hard for me.”

     “What do you mean?”

     “I did it to myself, too.”

     “You fell or something?”

     “I used a hammer.”

     I snorted. “Bullshit.”

     “I wanted it to be bad. Blood everywhere. I wanted to have to go to the hospital awhile.”

     It was the most information he’d ever volunteered about the time before we’d met, and I sat up straight to gape at him. River beat against quartzite behind us. “Jesus Christ, Jodie. That’s awful. That can’t be what happened. There’s no way you could’ve done that to yourself.”

     “I know. It sounds crazy. That’s why I had to do it that way. Because no one would ever believe it was me that did it. I could blame it on anybody I wanted.”

     I swallowed, uneasy. “Who did you blame it on?”

     Jodie wouldn’t look at me, eyes fixed on the Sioux, on the water scattering to froth and gem when it tumbled over the rapids. For a long time he seemed to be working out whether or not to answer, his voice even when he did, expression vacant. “The perverted piece of shit my mom used to date. I wanted her to leave him. It sounds stupid. I know. I should’ve just told her what he was really doing to me when she wasn’t around. I think she would have believed me. I probably didn’t have to go to so much trouble. But it worked.”

     My throat closed so tight I thought I’d never be able to speak again.

     “You can’t tell anyone, okay? I never even ended up telling my mom. No point. Everything’s okay now. It would just make her sad.”

      I felt heavy. Like he’d handed me a cinderblock. Like I’d drunk grease by the gallon. Like the anger growing inside of me by the minute was made of lead. I didn’t realize I’d asked the question until it was out of my mouth. “Where is he now?” 

     Jodie shrugged, so casually. “Don’t know. Probably still in the same shitty house I grew up in.”

     “What’s his name?”

     “Why?”

     “I want to kill him,” I said.

     “You’re funny,” Jodie said, but he wasn’t laughing. “It was years ago. It doesn’t matter anymore. Honestly. I can hardly remember any of it. Sometimes it feels like I made everything up. Like none of it ever happened.”

     But Jodie worked his jaw so hard after saying the words I thought his molars would be ground to powder. 

     Jodie still flinches most of the time when I touch him first. Jodie always sleeps with a chair propped against his door. Jodie holds my hand so tight when we are alone I think he will break it. Jodie smiles so rarely it feels like a full moon when he does. So magnetic it could drag you by the iron in your blood. So overpowering and incandescent it could make you do something crazy.

***

The sun strikes the center of Bonesteel like metal strikes metal, with such force the whole town seems to ring. Sweat runnels down my temples while I dial his number at the payphone.

     “Jodie,” I say, receiver quivering in my hand.

     “Oh. It’s you. Thank god. Your mom called here. She thought you’d been with me all day today so I covered your ass. Where the hell are you?”

     “I needed some time to think.”

     “About what?”

     “I love you, Jodie,” I say.

     I can hear it in his voice from two hundred miles away, the way Jodie is trying to suppress one of his infrequent, enormous, giddy grins, one bright enough to blind. “Seriously? That’s what you were thinking about? You’re so fucking corny.”

     “I have to go,” I say.

     “Wait, I—”

     I hang up before he can get another word in. A group of younger children approaching on bicycles is the first sign of life I’ve seen in the quiet, sweltering town, and I hold up the photograph as they pass.

     “I’m looking for this house,” I say.

     Boys and girls smirk and snicker amongst themselves as if sharing some private joke before they point in unison.

***

The first time I ever saw Jodie cry was after we’d hopped the fence to sneak into the abandoned flour mill. Bullfrogs sang us a chorus. The river roared just past the crumbling brick. I was surprised at first when he pulled me in to kiss me, and then we were ribcage to ribcage, teeth to teeth, kissing harder than he’d ever allowed before. I reached up without thinking to grip his face between my hands, and in the same moment Jodie shoved me back, with such violent force I tumbled to the rubble floor, crying out as I fell, elbows scraping cinder, my palm sliced open on broken glass.

     After he’d seen the blood and dropped to his knees to examine the cut, he sobbed so hard his shoulders shook.

     “It’s okay,” I told him over and over. “I’m okay.”

     “I’m sorry,” he said, in a voice so cracked and trembling I hardly recognized it. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. There’s something really wrong with me.”

***

I’m not sure how long I linger on the peeling-paint porch trying to even my breaths, slow my rib-splitting heartbeat, still my shaking hands. I draw the kitchen knife from my backpack and weigh it in my hand, wiping the flat steel of the blade on my jeans, stowing it behind my back before I sound a knock.

     I hear a clatter inside. A high-pitched yap of dogs. A bellowing shout. “Door’s unlocked!”

     I hesitate. My heart pulses once in my throat.

     “Come on in!”

     I swallow, clinging to my weapon like a precipice, trying the door. Triplet Yorkshire Terriers with bowtie collars topple out to dance around my ankles, startling me back, snagging needled teeth on the hems of my denim. I have to step around dog shit as I shuffle into the entry, clamping a hand over my mouth at the smell when it hits me. 

     It is something worse than excrement. Like rotting flesh. Rancid meat.

     A man’s low voice in the curtained dim at my right makes me jump. 

     “Are you new?” he asks. The middle-aged man is in a recliner aimed at a muted television, eyes squinted to slits like he is having trouble making me out over his shoulder, hands so enormous when he lifts them in greeting I am sure he could crush my skull with just one. “Jesus. You look young. I know the agency’s been short staffed, but I’m supposed to be getting a nursing aide every single day. Not just when one of you feels like coming. And not some trainee. Get my glasses, will you? From the table there.”

     I stare slack-jawed, frozen.

     “If they’re not there check the kitchen. Not so easy for me to get up and look around for them myself.”

     He nods at his feet, and I see what he means when I inch a wide arc along the wall to get closer. Bile rises in my throat as he continues to ramble. The man is missing toes, and what remains of the ten are hardened to black knots, mummified, gangrenous, propped on the raised leg rest, so putrid I almost vomit right there. Empty insulin vials and needles for injections are on the table beside him. Glasses thick as magnifying lenses sit within my reach. His three miniature dogs go on clawing at my shins, launching from their hind legs to fling themselves at my knees. The room spins once.

     “—cleaners come Wednesdays. Not exactly how I’d prefer to entertain,” the man has been speaking the whole time I’ve been standing there. He gestures around the squalid room. “Not the best kept of the bunch anymore, but I grew up in this house. Always lived here. Maud thinks I ought to sell but I don’t want to leave it. Wouldn’t even have to consider it if you young folks these days knew how to show up for your jobs. What happened to that Nigel fellow that used to come? Right on time. Every day. He still with your company? Tell your boss to start sending him again if he can. Could you ask?”

     I work the grip of the knife around in my fist, staring at the soft roll of the man’s neck. My mouth is so dry I can’t swallow. Hatred buzzes electric in my ears. 

     “You really can’t imagine how lonesome it gets. It’s difficult for me to get out much. Nigel always used to stay on a little extra. Keep me company for a round or two of something. What about you? What do you say? Do you like Rummy? Checkers?”

     I take an unsteady step forward, twelve paws and three wet, nudging noses scrabbling to follow me, one of the matted yorkies gnawing at my shoelace.

     “I know the agency probably doesn’t pay all that well. I have some cash. If you don’t mind sticking around after you’ve done the rest. I’ve got Battleship somewhere over there, too. Ever played it?”

     His hollow desperation turns my stomach. When he laughs, I almost take off running.

     “I’ll warn you. Ha. I make for some pretty stiff competition. What’s your name, then?” he asks.

     The air is too thick to breathe, the stench of decay making me dizzy. “I’m a friend of Jodie’s.”

     “Jodie? Who’s Jodie?”

     My anger flares. I swing the kitchen knife forward and aim it with both hands, so much fury contained in the sharpened steel it feels scalding hot between my palms. “You lying piece of shit. Don’t pretend like you forgot.”

     Terror bulges in the man’s eyes when he recognizes what’s in my hand. “What are you talking about? Who are you? What is this?” His pupils spin panicked and confused in their sockets. The three dogs launch into a frenzy of yipping barks as he lurches in his armchair, grapples for a cane that slams to the floor, knocks vials from the side table in clumsy urgency.

     I raise the knife higher. Lower it. Raise it again.

***

Jodie didn’t speak to me for weeks after he pushed me down, and then he was there tapping at my window in the dead still of a July night, all clumsy, lanky limbs clambering over the sill, bringing all the lamp-hungry cutworm moths in with him. I was so happy to see him I wanted to fling my arms around his neck, but I knew most of the time he didn’t like to be touched.

     “I want to try something,” he said, breathless.

     “Okay,” I agreed, too eagerly.

     Jodie’s face was solemn as a funeral when he lifted it to look at me. Wings fluttered like ash in the air around him. “I want you to hit me.”

     “What?” I was bewildered, sure I’d heard wrong. “No. I could never—”

     “As hard as you can. Wherever you want. Then we’ll be even.”

     “Even? I don’t care about that, Jodie. It was an accident. I’m not—”

     “Please. I really need you to do this for me.”

     “I’m not going to hurt you.”

     Jodie’s breaths were still coming ragged, as if he’d run the whole way to my house and maybe he had. “I don’t know what else to do. How else to stop thinking about it.”

     “It was no big deal. Just let it go—”

     Jodie grabbed me by my shoulders, almost shouting the next words. “You don’t understand! I need your help. I know this is going to help. I can’t stop thinking about it. Any of it. It won’t go away. I just want all of it to go away!”

***

I grip my knees while I retch in the diabetic man’s front yard, and after all the contents of my stomach see sun, I cry so hard I can’t catch my breath. 

     I thought it would be the easiest thing in the world, burying the knife until the steel half disappeared. I thought I could funnel all my anger down the cut I’d make in him like dirty water down a drain. I thought after it was over, I’d feel the way I did coming up for air after jumping from a cliff into river. Weightless. Baptized.      

     But in the end I’d let the blade fall unused from my hand and catapulted for the door to be sick outside.

     It is while I am swaying on my feet, steeling my nerve to go back in and make good on what I’d promised myself that I finally spot it. 

     The awful joke I wasn’t in on.

     Three doors down, a neighbor’s house stands identical to the one in front of me. Another boxy white single-story prefab. Save for a crooked shutter, the windows and porch and chipping paint on the facade are an exact duplicate. The roof’s gable is pitched to the same degree. 

     There are two more just like it at the end of the avenue. When I cut across lawns to the next street and hold up the polaroid to compare, a whole row of three match Jodie’s picture.

     I hitch the first ride I can get out of Bonesteel, hugging my empty backpack in the wind-whipped bed of a pick-up truck while the sky goes red.

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