Bone Dance by Martha Brooks

steps. Straight down, three feet, onto wild prairie grass.
    Her father and, she supposed, the LaFrenières before him had simply allowed all that green and mauve and amber grass, strewn with little white wild-flowers, to roll away, down the sloping embankment onto the rocky shores of the lake. She sat there, gazing out over the ruffled water until the breeze died and the mosquitoes started to urge themselves into the cabin.
    Then she tried calling home. Remembered that Mom, whom she should have called earlier, was going shopping with Auntie Francine and then to dinner and a late movie, so that they wouldn’t worry about her, which they probably were doing anyway. So she left a message on the machine: “Hi, Mom. Hi, Auntie Francine. It’s me. It’s Alex. I’m here. I didn’t get lost. I’m fine. Mom, I’ll call you later. Or I’ll call tomorrow. Or something.”
    She got off the phone and called Peter. His little brother, Dougy, answered with a bored voice and didn’t want to talk to her, and in the background she could hear the TV turned way up and some girl who was with him singing in a weird voice like she was part duck.
    â€œSo will you give him the message?”
    â€œYeah. Sure.”
    â€œDougy, did you even write down the number? Read it back to me.”
    â€œI’ve
got
it! Bye.”
    She knew that Peter wouldn’t get her message. She put down the phone. The LaFrenières’ phone number was right there in her father’s familiar scrawly hand. She stroked her fingers over it, feeling the ridges and hollows the pressure of his pen had made.
555-3651, Tom and Lonny LaF.
    The sun was just slanting, late-day gold grazing the top of the big hill behind the cabin. She hadn’t eaten since late morning, two doughnuts before she drove onto their property, just before they brought her here. The clock over the fridge had stopped working who knows how long ago, at seven minutes to three. Besides the clock, the kitchen contained a woodstove, a table, one chair, and the refrigerator. A sofa, a little table, and a circular braided rug were in the living room. A bed and an empty bureau in the bedroom. That was it. No pictures. No ornaments. No really personal traces other than the clothing.
    Oh, and in the kitchen, a few pots, dishes, utensils. And in one kitchen drawer, wrapped carefully in dark pink tissue paper, she found seven fat white candles and a perfect round, low candleholder. Green, green stone. Dark and smooth. Beautiful. She cradled the candleholder in the palm of her hand and went and lay down on the bed. She sprawledon her back. She placed the green stone on her abdomen, breathing deeply, feeling its weight. Letting it gently rise and fall, rise and fall. She tried to relax. She tried to sleep. Then she stared at the ceiling and tried to feel at home.

6
    After the sun, a great fiery ball, started to edge the rim of the prairies, he went out and watched a hawk fly with ponderous dignity off a fence post, walked over the sagging wires and silvery wolf willow onto what was now Jacob Wiebe’s pastureland.
    He came to a circle of white rocks and looked down at a dried cow pie. Prairie grass grew right up through it, and it crumbled under a light kick. He thought about how many buffalo had once grazed here. How many of their bones were scattered or crumbled or buried. How many generations of pasture sage had grown up from this very earth they had walked on, from their bones and dust and blood and hearts.
    All these thoughts became jumbled with images of the dark-eyed girl over at Earl’s place. The white sleeve of her T-shirt resting against her smooth arm. Her lofty nose. The smell of her, sitting between him and Pop, as they drove over there in the truck. Damn, she smelled good. Like clover or something. How did she get that smell? It didn’t come from a perfume bottle.It came from her. It drove him nuts, the memory of that sweet