Stone and Bones
  Preview of upcoming Novelette 

            Conflicted                 

   I’m Jason Pike. I’ll try not to be rude; it could still happen.    I’m proud to be an Irishman, a member of the clan, Pike. My mother named me Jason; she was counting on Jacqueline, until the last moment, convinced I’d be a girl.  She later did the right thing gave me Pa’s name, Patrick. I am also called Jason Patrick, just JP.

   My mother hates me.

She told me so then went on how  I throw shit Pa gives me,  hurl her way.  I told her, “Ma, you make me nuts, you’re fuckin with my brain.”

I don’t hold the shit inside the way some kids do. I let her have as good as she gives. She walks out and later in the day deadbolts the house. I come back from school, get nothing to eat, and sleep in the hay barn.

   She divorced Pa, a month ago, after sixteen years of unhappy. Pa still works on the farm. Ma never loved him, same as him for her, just got caught with a baby. They were kids.   I suppose she has had a dry spell of sex for more than sixteen years?  Jenny is thirty-five, her wild seeds growing. Catholic upbringing compels her to celebrate,  finally guides her to a Priest’s afternoon delights.  It's like communion, I suppose.

   I am thinking she is fucking with Father Como. He is one of the men with white collars who ain’t gay. I know a few that are.

   How do I know Ma is a lover of Father Como?  I caught them.  Last Wednesday, she didn’t remember the inside deadbolt,  she usually does. I use my emergency key, come home after school as usual. She underestimates me, I’m fifteen,  I know what sex is. I ain’t religious,  I do know this whole thing is wrong.

    A strange car at the barn?  Reverend Como’s black Lincoln, sloppily parked. The Father is keen on showy.    He is a traveling salesman.

   Everybody loves wealth lavish lifestyle,   take what they want, do as they please.  The Father's  Church mobile, it’s a  Lincoln, needs a scrubbing;  got a “wash me”  smiley face sprawled center rearview.

   My mother might be mad locks herself in the house.      She forgets; I have my key.  I hear them upstairs, her bedroom sniggering?  That’s not a prayer meeting.

   Thuds interspersed with sighs,  Ma forgot it was three, I arrive home from school, change clothes, head for the cowshed, help Patrick and Cyrus with evening milking.
  I am about to kill them if something doesn't end their laughing. 
 Ma hears me and pretends she is having a prayer meeting with Como. She says my stale Mc Dees gravy biscuit is in the frig and she can't get away right now to fix me my supper.

   

                                                          Chapter 1

                                   Saved from Hell

I can’t hear you; I decided to kill myself. I got the noose and a step ladder. I don’t know where I’ll do it yet. That could be the hay barn. They won’t look there, maybe not for a week or two after they see I’m missing in action. You can’t stop me; I’ve thought it through.

Ma, says, she was sorry I was born, wants to get another chance. Pa, Patrick, will miss me. I know he loves me.  There ain’t no God anyway, and it is just black out, gone, over, never again.

 Hopeless, Zane, my only friend, says he is too. Sometimes, I think he is more desperate. Pipe’s Ma drinks too much never go outside. They live in a rusty tin can with windows, upon Fisherman’s Ridge.

 I’ll bet you get worried; I write this in my journal. My teacher would, and I won’t show her.  The good news, I was saved by something on a Friday, just before Easter Sunday. It happened in Mister Crain’s science class. We call him the Big Bird, and Zane calls him Bird Man of Alcatraz. We just got done reading a book about jailbreaks, jailbirds, who escape.  I know I’d like to avoid somewhere. The darker, the better. That’s crazy shit, a kid like me has every damn thing to live for?

 I have to get over the school, always picked last.  I’m the final one called to get on the team. I am what they call a kid by default.

I know I’m damn decent with drums.  Insane Zane is excellent with his fuzzy mind and guitar. We could be a rock band, and I keep hoping Zane can get us a gig.  The first school understood both of us,  throw away kids, probably going to lead good ones astray.             

Here are no coincidences; it’s called fate. I am struggling in waves. Now, if fate would allow me a noose and a step ladder, I know that would bring peace.  No need to resist; you have no control, never did. It’s an illusion, Houdini showed that and he said to believe.

That’s what my Grandma Pike did, and it killed her. She just miscalculated, didn’t realize Houdini performed all his tricks; none were miracles.  There is a story here, and I may get to it. She was too optimistic. The Lord would bring her to safety, prove she was special.

They found her eyeballs, near where they located her glasses. This horrible secret told me by Cyrus Perce, our hired man.

I called Cyrus, Cork Screw, and the old bugger loves that moniker.

 Pa branded Cyrus, Mister Cowboy. The problem with Cork, you never knew where fact and make-believe separated.

I wondered about him. He was a slender build, balding white locks, long in the back. The crown of his head disclosed a birthmark. Perhaps it was a war wound or a self-inflicted injury. The appearance was that of a spiral, a snake, maybe the wedding of a spider as well.

Cork, called that since he was a true born, on the Isle of the Lepricon, in the county of Cork.  His father, John, had come to Vermont to investigate his great-great-grandfather, who immigrated before the American Civil War. He brought with wife Mary and young son John. It said the family O’Neill, had a monument up in East Middlebury.

When Cyrus joined the U.S. Army, that gave him the heads up of the list to become a citizen. In the mid-nineteen fifties, he was sworn in. He served in Europe, in Germany, he saw walking dead. These were people Nazis killed, murdered, and nobody paid.

He spoke little about his army experience, if he slew anybody, I didn’t know. He was close to his mother, who passed away one night as she was making strawberry shortcakes,