Bone Road

Follow the rusty tracks down to my secret spot with Oliver’s shoes tucked under my arm. There’s no one’s footprints in the grass or the gravel, no one else that’s been here in my secret spot. Hear grass tickling in the wind and the wind pulling my shirt and tickling my hair, but nothing else. Turn down the bend and there’s Red Creek bubbling far away. Find Old Rusty where he’s supposed to be, leaning in the beach grass behind the red storage house. Water’s tapping on his coppery roof. Walk to him and look in through the empty windows and kick my foot against his slumped tires. Old Rusty. Pieces of driftwood still bed around the car—all the ones found along the beach that looked like bones. They curl like fingerbones and armbones with knots like elbows and knuckles. Drop Oliver’s shoes on the driver seat and kneel in the grass to look at my bones. No one’s been here. The bones are still crisscrossed.

            Open the door. It creaks like a voice.

            Hello?

            Take out the box under the seat and open it. The moldy pacifier. The rattle. The bib. The little tin boy dragging the blanket—it used to hang in the Christmas tree. No one’s been here. Drop the shoes in the box. Close the lid and slide the box under the seat and sit down in the seat with my hands around the steering wheel. Shut the door and hear the little voice creak before the door clicks shut. Look out the window, down at the bones circling the car like a white road, like they pass under. Water’s dripping on the roof, dripping like a faucet, dripping like the faucet. See the bathtub now, like it’s out the windshield. See the water coming up over the white shiny edges and spilling to the floor, and the faucet still dripping. The bones are moving faster under the car. Look into the passenger seat, say: Where do you want to go, Oliver? But he can’t answer and the water keeps dripping.