Them Bones.

Them Bones.

“Them Bones. Them Bones.” Good ol Johnny Boy says with a click of his tongue. “Coming ‘round. Soon.”

Sure enough Johnny knows what he means by it when he says it and opens another beer before walking around the table. Tommy looks guilty and stays quiet while he looks over across the pile of bones at me.

The bones only come around on occasion. Something you have to understand about the bones is that they don’t interfere too much with the living if they can help it. And tonight as sure as there are bones in my body they’re coming around.

Now there are very few things that will make a dead man come up to see you. Disturbing his peace will send him spinning through your house like nothing else. Walk out on a bet and he’ll call collecting. But to steal his bones is the first thing on the list that will have him paying you a visit. And that’s plain and simple what happened here.  Only at the time Tommy swears he didn’t know that’s what he was up to.

“Damn it all if I ain’t telling the truth!” Tommy says with a stomp of his foot.

Tommy begins the story like he’s pleading his case before the court. Johnny Boy looks me over before getting up and starting in on the piano. I shake my head in disbelief when he gets to the part about his old bloodhound sniffing up in the azaleas by the Randall’s barn. Sure enough, according to Tommy that old rotten hound of his dug up a set a bones that didn’t much belong.

“Damn it if you ain’t.” I tell him with my head still shaking.

It’s funny but he cracks a grin wider than I’ve ever seen when I don’t stop shaking my head. You see, I’ve known Tommy long enough to know when he’s full of shit. And that story smells like a pile. With a nod, I look over at the clock at back at Tommy who ain’t much convinced himself about them bones.

One thing I know, sure enough they’ll come and make no difference if it’s here or there, the bones will show up wherever they find what they’re looking for. Something most folks don’t know about the dead is how damn determined they are. You can run and hide but that won’t change what’s coming.  Cause that dead man don’t want much more than what’s his.

Tommy knows ‘bout them bones as much as me and Johnny. Tonight same as the last three nights before it, Tommy’s been missing his pinky finger. Lost it fair and square to a dead man in a game of cards. Tommy swore the bones were cheating him wrong that last game. And they might have been. However once that crack of dawn rolls up across the horizon there’s little to be done about that wrong. As any dead man will attest that he dies with the dawn. So does the game. Winner takes all. And they did. Including Tommy’s pinky finger.

Sure enough as Johnny tickles the ivories on my piano he tells the story a hell of a lot different than Tommy. He says that our boy got the bright idea in his head that he’d get a little of his own back by extracting a few pieces of his opponent while the sun was still up. The guilty grin across Tommy’s face tells me that the arm bone and jaw sitting on my table don’t belong to something unknown.

Hard to say what it was when he did it. Couldn’t say at all what he was thinking. Nonetheless he did it. Maybe it was simple revenge. A cheat for a cheat. That’s how Tommy is about people doing him wrong. Funny part of it all is that it’ll probably cost him the other pinky and more when this dead man catches up with this thief.

Now there’s something about getting even when someone’s done you wrong, but you also have to understand that’s a whole level of different when you’re dealing with a dead man. Not only will that dead man roll up to your door at the break of dusk, but he’ll come in uninvited if you don’t answer his call to take what’s his, even if that means he takes it from you.

With that last tick of the 5 o’clock hour Tommy ain’t so sure that he’s a man of conviction anymore. I can see the nervousness sitting in his eye as we wait on early minutes of twilight to take a hold of the night. There’s no telling when the bones will show. The only certainty is that he’ll show all right.

With both my hands crossed in front of me on the weight of my elbows, I shake my head at him one more time before I hear it. A knock. Johnny stops dead at the keys and before another sound can make itself known, another knock.

“Them bones, them bones. Coming ‘round.”

Them bones. Them bones. They’ll come like they’re supposed to. Best believe they will. Although the “here’s”, “there’s”, “where’s” and “when’s” are in question, sometimes you have to just make the impossible possible and believe it will work out. Enjoy them bones of yours. Kisses. m.