Page 1 of Them Bones

SHEL

Shel hadn’t seen the boy in months, and the weather was turning. She was worried.

She didn’t really know why she was so fussed. The boy seemed more than capable of taking care of himself, and she didn’t have anything to offer him beyond the occasional hot cup of coffee and breakfast sandwich. But she worried just the same.

It had been a cold fall. The leaves had dropped quick, branches turning naked and brittle, and she knew he’d been sleeping outside a lot because she could smell it on him. He never smelled bad, nasty, like some of the other homeless folk who came in with change for a hot cup of something. He always just smelled of outside. Like winter. Even in July.

She couldn’t remember when he’d started showing up, exactly. It was as if she just walked into the kitchen one day and found him doing dishes and a sandwich fell into his mouth. She didn’t normally allow strangers back there – it had been just her and Ness and Brian for as long as any of them could remember, and none of them took easy to new folks. But the boy slid in there like he’d always been, no fuss, quietly washing or drying dishes. Brian didn’t say boo (and healwayssaid something) so Shel hadallowed it, time and time again, until they’d all gotten so used to him that now it was bothering her that he hadn’t been around.

There was something about that kid. He had a strange, quiet sort of presence. He was polite enough, but not a conversation-starter. Helpful but not eager. Never lingered when there was nothing to be done. She almost would have equated him to a ghost if he hadn’t had that indescribablethingabout him that made him utterly unforgettable. It was like he generated his own climate – dark and unfamiliar – that had you watching him out of the corner of your eye, wondering what he’d do next. He always looked like he was right on the verge of hanging himself or taking you to bed.

Not that Shel thought about him like that! She puffed on her smoke, crossed herself, and threw up a silent prayer, apologizing for the lie because… shedidthink about him like that, sometimes.

Shel threw up another apology for her weakness of the flesh. It really wasn’t like that – it wasn’tnasty,the way she thought about him. He was just so intriguing – mysterious, almost – that you couldn’t help it. Even Ness, as old as dirt, got that gleam in her eye, the unmistakable look of a woman appreciating a man. He wasn’t the kind you’d kick out of bed for eating crackers.

Shel never worked Tuesdays because of the Lord. The boy had once said he thought Sunday was the day for church, and she’d smacked him so hard in the back of the head she was sure he'd taken a temporary trip to heaven.

“You don’t get Sundays off in a diner,” Shel rasped, hanging halfway out the back door with a cigarette in her mouth. “So’s God and I got an understanding.”

Shel sometimes wondered if she’d have offered for him to stay with her if she had a proper place. But she didn’t have one, so it didn’t matter.

She rented a room from a cranky Ukrainian woman who liked to hit the ceiling with her broom in warning whenever anyone upstairs was “walking too loud”. There were no men allowed, and that suited Shel just fine (Lord knew she’d had enough babies) as she found that in her old age she had little patience for the stronger sex, anyway.

She heard the front door tinkle and steeled herself, hoping against all hope that it wasn't a family with kids.

Please Lord, let him be okay,she prayed.

As she stepped back into the diner, the soles of her white tennis sneakers sticking to the syrupy floor, she did a double-take; standing just inside, pink from the wind, was the boy, his arm around a girl.

“Hey kid!” she shouted, launching across the diner at a half-jog before she threw her arms around him. He looked taken aback but gave her a little squeeze. “Come, sit, sit!” she mothered, giving them a booth by the window.

As they peeled off their layers, she noted the colour of his cheeks. There was a spark in his eye that she had never seen before. Like he’d woken up.

Shel took in the girl and tried not to stare but it was tough – she was a looker, a pointy blonde little thing with sharp green eyes and pouty lips and a nose you’d want to tweak if the girl didn’t give the distinct impression that she’d bite you for it. She had that same magnetic quality about her, and the two of them together were hypnotizing. Several people at nearby tables watched them openly with interest.

The girl disappeared behind a menu, and Shel noticed the way the boy was staring at the back of the grimy plastic cover like he could see right through it. He looked hungry, and it wasn’t for food.

“What’ll it be kids,” she asked with a frown.

“Chocolate chip pancakes for me, please,” said the girl with a grin. “Extra chocolate chips.”

The boy grimaced and the girl stuck her tongue out at him.

“And what’ll you have, honey?”

He handed her back the menus. “Anything but pancakes.”

She tutted knowingly at him and trotted back to the kitchen, grasping her gold cross, thanking Him for letting her know that the boy was safe.

But as she glanced back at the table, their heads bowed together, she had a strange, sinking feeling that those two were never supposed to have met. That His divine plan had been knocked off-course, somehow, and now that it was Done it couldn’t be Undone.

She grasped her cross tighter.Our Lord doesn’t make mistakes,she told herself, but she felt the creeping shadow of doubt.

For the first time in thirty years, she closed the diner that Sunday.

She needed to go to church.

SHANE

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