Fishbone's Song by Gary Paulsen Page B

on being maybe ten or eleven or twelve years in the world, I was hunting of an evening for either a fox squirrel or a grouse because Fishbone had a feeling he wanted to eat one or theother and I came into a gulley and there it was . . .
    A stump, a fairy stump where I could have been put down in a small hole as a new baby by the woods people, the night woods people, their stump, glowing blue-green in the new dark so pretty it almost had a sound, a blue-green sound I tried to make on the guitar as part of his song, Fishbone’s song. And you take that along with finding that I sometimes see things ahead—like I can know, absolutely know for certain if a squirrel is on the other side of a tree even without seeing him. Know enough to make the sound, the “chukker” sound that will bring his head around the side for the one clear shot so you don’t ruin any meat with the bullet and you kill him with the brain shot so very sudden the death smell, the gut smell, won’t taint the stew. All without seeing the squirrel first, just knowing it’s there.
    So then true, all the stories about how I came to be with Fishbone were true, or could be true, thought true.
    Thoughttrue.
    Or maybe none of them.
    But there was the wood box, and the letter from the state, and the glowing stump, and me, there I was, and Fishbone, and the woods, and the creek. So who can say which is real or not completely quite?
    And Fishbone’s song, his first song, with a hum at first and then the words all coming in an up-and-down roll to match the old boot tapping and sliding on the porch boards to make time, and a soft shuffle sound like the boot was dancing and drumming at the same time.
    First Song: Witching Boy
    Witching boy,
    in the night,
    in the night.
    Witching boy,
    brings the light,
    brings the light.
    For everyone to see,
    and know,
    Witching boy,
    brings the glow,
    of life.
    Shine on, shine on, Witching boy.

2
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Newtime
    N o memories of living at first . . .
    Just clouds of pictures and thoughts that might have been, probably were, like music you can almost hear and think you hear, but it’s not almost really there. Fuzzy. Until the state came and took me when I was small and then taught me to read, I didn’t have anything but picture memories.
    They worked, the way Fishbone’s stories—his songs—worked. I would see something, like a red berry bush, but I didn’t know colors, how to say or think colors, and Fishbone would say things that worked, but only for someone who knew some things.
    I didn’t know some things. I didn’t know how anything was said. He’d say something was the same color as the bottom stripe on the side of a creek chub, or that a panther scream was a caterwaul coming on like two men fighting with barbwire whips and hard words . . .
    I didn’t know yellow-blue, which was the bottom stripe on a creek chub, or that what panther-cats did when they got to talking was really to give out a screech that made the hair come up on the back of your neck. And on that was the fact that I’m old now, either ten or eleven or twelve, maybe thirteen summers, and I have never seen men fight each other, especially with barbwire whips and hard words.
    Haven’t seen any other men, period, as far as that goes, except for once a month when the man from the state comes to check on things and brings a big box of what Fishbone calls “fixins” to make food—flour, bacon, salt, sugar, coffee, nowand then a jar of pickled beets or small cucumber pickles some church group puts in the box because, Fishbone says, it makes them feel like good people. I like the good people pickles, kind of sweet and sour at the same time, but don’t like the beets because they make you pee red and I don’t like that. To pee red. Fishbone says for me to eat a slice a day just the same because he says it has iron in it, but I can’t see any trace of