Runaway Bones

By GARY BERGREEN

Who is Melvin Bones Whicker? A teenager, running away from home, in Ely, Nevada. Will he make it out of Lund, a haunted town, alive? He doesn’t stand a ghost of a chance with Indian spirits, and a half-dead apparition trying to kill him. Mother is coming in her eighteen wheeler to set him straight, once and for all. His girlfriend, Jennifer Collins, will be there to help. But who will save her?

• Language: English
• Publisher: GARY BERGREEN
• Release date: May 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476337838

GARY BERGREEN

Author of Word Acitivities, Coping with Difficult Teachers, Coping with Study Strategies. Freelance writer and educator living in California for the past 30 years.

Book preview

RUNAWAY BONES

By

G.S. Bergreen

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

G.S. Bergreen on Smashwords

Runaway Bones

Copyright © 2012 by G.S. Bergreen

Prologue

"I'm not ready to face the light. I had too much to dream Last night…"

Lily Baby, put on your ears. Ya out there? Come back.

Bessie Vance rolled down her window and spat her chewing tobacco out, then rolled it back up again and turned the music down. She pushed the medium button on the rig’s heater.

Tonight Bessie sat in her semi cab with plenty of miles ahead of her, singing to the Electric Prunes cassette tape, pushing the chill and the midnight accident out of her mind.

She was looking for a little conversation.

Her twenty-one year old girlish curves now kinda wiggled and drooped, her good looks had slowly fermented into a forty-something body of a woman. She had been a knockout, a real looker in her youth.

She began to find way more wrinkles than she could hide. Too many streaks of gray hair. Not exercising the excessive side handles off her body though, that wasn’t ever really an issue. She was single and happy except for the newly felt aches and pains in her joints. She hadn’t anticipated what came sneaking around with old age. A definite downer.

A little company, flappers, a couple of brewskies, a fat load, and mile markers on the side, and Bessie could bear the long, lonely miles down the big road.

Trucking was a lonely life but it was all she cared about, being on the big road.

She pressed the button again, Anyone looking for a little jawboning take it to the double harley, over.

She looked for hitchhikers, and usually found runaway teenagers coming or going to Las Vegas. But this late at night, this snow and cold, probably no one would want to brave the elements. No one to pick up and keep her warm and fuzzy with chatter.

For twenty four long years middle aged Bessie Vance had been a Teamster truck driver hauling animals and farm products in her Emeryville Diesel Cab from Portland Maine to the San Diego borders.

Sometimes with little or no sleep.

Of course, the horses whinnied, the pigs oinked, or her sheep bleated back in her trailer, all in harmony, she thought, realizing they were tagged for breeding or slaughter. It was a joyous chorus to Bessie’s ear.

Been Over-the-road hauling since the mid-1950s.

Tonight, she serenaded the livestock she was transporting and she needed her music albums to sing along with them.

It was a quiet, melancholy night what with the slow down through Lund, and the accident. She was on the turnaround, dropping off taters and beets, agricultural products of all weights from Elko to Las Vegas, and then picking up livestock and perhaps a little haz-mat heading on toward L.A. She was freelancing a haul for the feds, a special load that needed to be dropped off out in the desert near the mines. Moonlighting was against teamsters’ policy but truckers were hush-hush and glad for the extra money, no paperwork.

Was the haz-mat really hazardous? Inflammable? She didn’t ask.

Tonight’s agonizingly slow run from Elko to Las Vegas was becoming very boring, very fast. She put the mike close to her mouth as the static faded in and out.

Just been listening to my Electric Prunes and sand baggin’ some. Coming on down from Ely. Come back.

It’s Lily. Got my ears on. Looking out for broadways and boy scouts, and man o’ man, I’m going horizontal out here in Baker’s desert. There’s a whole lot of nothing, replied a gruff voice through the static.

Hey, Lily Baby, is that you?

Roger. It’s Lily. One and only. You found the Ace, Freight Shaker One, good buddy. What’s the time? 12:10 in the a.m.? Haven’t slept for the past 18 hours. What’s going on? Go on.

Hey where are you? Watch that bedstead; if you start to drift, you’d better pickle park hon. Come on back.

Like I told you. Heading back up to Reno. Where are you, Bess?

Smokey gave me a ticket after we left Jack’s Restaurant. Had to wait all day just to get the load on my rig weighed. Then the sheriff insisted on keeping me over night and brought me to the Ely Court house where I spent most of the day trying to pay the fine and then had to get the rig weighed again. Took most of two days. Didn’t get back on the road until this until a little while ago.

Got to look out for those crazy bulldogs and keep an eye out for bear caves.

Bessie pulled her tin can of Huskies Wintergreen out of her breast pocket. She pinched tobacco between her cheeks and gums and returned the green tin with the dogface back.

"Had to squeak by a bad accident.

"A black and white and a meat-wagon ‘bout blew my doors off a while back. Had us a real sticky back ‘em up there. Some 1-0-13! What a mess! We was inching our way with the traffic. Nothing to see in Lund either. Looked like a ghost town back in the Charleston dancing era. Only a gas station and general store there, not much more. Straight drive down a main two-way street.

"Lots of farms with cornfields off both sides. Looks like the place shriveled up and got lost in them good ‘old days.

Anyhows, should be heading out of here and on my way to Las Vegas, Nee-vada.

I copy that. I think I found a turkey farm to rest up, Lily baby responded and yawned.

Bessie Vance rolled down her window and spat out a great big brown luggie.

Oh, looks like we’re putting a little metal to the pedal. Moving again, Lil.

That accident. What a backup. What a mess. I see a petrified excuse for a broken down ranch house, some rotten big old truck tires laying in a heap along with some antique buggies and a couple of old rusty cars and a tractor knee deep in snow. Probably don’t even run. You’re not missing much in Lund, hon.

Crackle in her headset. Where’d you say you’re headed? Lund? Vegas, then L.A?

That’s the map Wasatch Company gave me. Don’t seem…

Bessie squinted and stuck her head out of the window like a dog enjoying the breeze running up its snout.

Hold on, pardner. Think I lay an eye on a couple of young kids up ahead trying to hitch a ride. I make ‘em to be runaways. I’m thinking I might pick them up, do a little wind jamming. See what their story is. Geez, they look like they’re freezing their butts off out there. Meet me up on channel 19 in a little while. 10-4.

Just saw a mile marker for a rest ‘em up, said Freight Shaker One. Got to pull the plug. Catch you later. 10-4 and bye.

Bessie slowed and pulled her eighteen-wheeler to the right, over the gravel edge of the road. Downshifting, she applied her engine brakes while turning on her right yellow blinker.

Bessie pulled her rig over and onto the side off the two-lane highway, and came to grinding stop. She leaned over and rolled down the passenger window.

What are you two young pups doing out here in the dead of night? she said aloud.

Gaul darn young ‘ens what are you all doing here at 12:45 a.m. in the morning?

Jenna stood and pulled Bones to his feet.

We’re freezing and hoping to get a ride. We are on our way to Las Vegas.

Well, hell’s bells! You both just hop right on up here in my cab and let’s head on down the road.

Jenna and Bones climbed up the steps and closed the big rig’s door.

The heater felt good. Jenna Collins rolled the window up and thanked Bessie again.

Bones’ imaginary friend, Sprite, awoke and echoed in his head. Melvin Bones Whicker you’d better do the same. Say thanks, which he did.

The gabbing and conversing lasted for about the next hour, it was mostly one sided. Bessie was wind jamming about everything she could think of, the weather turning cold so early in the season, the crazy drivers she had to deal with, and she was asking personal questions about who they were and why they were out this late at night.

She rolled her window down and let loose another tobacco luggie.

Eventually, Bessie ran out of things to talk about. Then she remembered what she had in her coat pocket. Earlier, absentmindedly she had picked up a flyer off the floor of Jack’s Bar and Grille back before passing through Lund and put it in her breast pocket before leaving the small shanty restaurant.

She also took out another plug of chewing tobacco.

Then she handed Bones the neatly folded piece of paper. On the backside, she had drawn a rough sketch. It was a map showing where Elijah Mining Company was located, the one that had been shut down for quite a while, the same one, rumor had it chained and housed some mighty strange critters, four legged monsters known by some as ghost hounds.

At the top, on the front side, in big, bold letters Bones read the title, "Runaway Survival Guides."

This side Jenna Collins readily recognized. The front side of that paper was all too familiar to Jenna Collins. A neatly typed list of suggestions reminded her of days with her father sitting at their old Apple Macintosh Computer, together in Jack’s Bar and Grille. It turned out to be a very effect privity with runaways who sought shelter and direction.

Bigger than croc tears welled up in her eyes when she read the name at the bottom of the page. It was her father’s computer printout. She quickly glanced back out the window of the rig.

Jenna would never see her father, ever again. She concentrated on the twinkling stars in the midnight sky. She bowed her head and said a prayer she had recently learned.

The ride in the semi could have been a little smoother. Bones laid his head back. At this moment his thoughts were buzzing like a swarm of bees. The past was still haunting him. His thoughts, as usual were confused. Reality, nightmare, reality, hallucinations, reality…

Bones had to remember to write his mother an I’m-OK- letter once he arrived in Las Vegas. But, then again, for some reason, he felt…he knew he would never see her again. A tear rolled down Melvin Bones Whicker’s cheek.

Bessie Vance turned her cassette tape up and began humming. She was determined to hit every bump on that two-lane highway so sleep was out of the question.

Chapter 1

"Born to be wild…Born to be wild…"

Melvin Whicker kind of knew that Ely, Nevada was located where the southern end of the Steptoe Valley meets foothills of the Egan Range. He’d lived there all of his life.

He didn’t know that about 5,000 people, some standing precariously vertical, and some he wasn’t sure were even counted among the living, called this place their home. He had no clue that the history of this city extends back at least 120 years.

His mother, Evie, knew. She knew just about everything you’d want to know about Ely and about everybody in it. Just ask her.

Ely, Nevada is closer to Salt Lake City than to Las Vegas. She made it her business to know about its history, geography, the neighborhoods, gossip. She made it a point to keep up with personal dilemmas that many of those friends and neighbors tried to keep secret.

Her son, Melvin Whicker was acutely aware of how boring this town had gotten, how slow pace everything seemed. He thought, dull lifestyle. Change of any kind comes like slow snot when you’ve got a cold. He didn’t like living in Ely, not at all. Stagnation. No action. Too many rules, not enough, what? Free spirits!

Customers who came into the Big Hand café were careful what they said around Evie. But she still found out about that little slut, Mandy.

Little Mandy Hawkins had suddenly become pregnant at age 15, shacking up with half the football players. Evie could never keep a secret. She spread that gossip all over town.

No matter. She didn’t care that most young girls in her church had nicknamed her (behind her back) the snoopy watchdog.

Evie Whicker, a stern, tiny little woman, raised her son Melvin with high morals, and a good dose of old fashion common sense where rules must be established and obeyed.

Olaf Valborg sat tapping his fingers on the counter. He finally got Evie’s attention, a menu, and a glass of ice water.

Olaf did a 360 on the counter stool, in his bib overalls stained with grease.

What’ll it be today, Ollie?

Reading English wasn’t in his repertoire. Evie pointed and read. He looked up at her and with a toothless smile he shook his head.

Right. One cowboy coffee.

She took the pen from her ear, wrote down the order, turned and watched as the young part-time cooked stopped and looked at her puzzled. He froze, scratched his head and wondered. What does she want?

Cowboy with spurs.

The part-time cook, Rudy Puskin, appeared to be deciphering some deep dark secret, trying to finger the waitress lingo.

Wonder why that chicken crossed…, he thought.

His contemplation of the universe was broken by less than a patient voice.

Western omelet with French fries. Got it? Evie gritted her teeth and rolled her eyes.

Yes mam. Coming right up.

******

She was an hour away from finishing her 3 to 9 shift at the Big Hand Cafe. She had covered for DeeDee, a waitress who had suddenly fallen ill. She phoned in at 2:00 p.m., just before the dinner crowd.

DeeDee always had a good excuse, Evie sneered. DeeDee had diarrhea. DeeDee had hemorrhoids. DeeDee had hot flashes. DeeDee had dropsy, and on and on. She told Ben Hand, the owner, who had come in with a hangover, that this evening DeeDee was getting DVT, Deep vein thrombosis. Or maybe it was just a clot from a shaving knick.

Evie, as usual, filled DeeDee’s slot.

Part-time cook, high school dropout, Rudy Pushkin took over for Ben.

Evie knew DeeDee’s true predicament. Got wind of it through the Relief Society scuttlebutt. She heard about her having difficulties with her rebellious, teenage daughter, Zoey, who could not be left alone day or night.

Boys, high schooler’s skipping their last class, with more than amorous or honorable intentions, uninvited, came home to visit Zoey, usually late in the afternoon while her mother, DeeDee was working.

Deedee had a list full of excuses, but fear of her daughters’ illicit, secret rendezvous, was her real problem. No matter. Evie was always available to fill in and more than ever needed the extra money now that her husband had died.

A light rain had started to fall. The Big Hand Café was almost empty.

Hey Sheriff. Set your raincoat on that hook. What’ll you have?

Sheriff McKay came in the front door and stomped his boots on the carpet, then sat at the counter, looked at the menu, and took off his Smokey the bear hat. He scratched his balding head and cleared his throat.

Biscuits and gravy, I suppose and coffee, black.

Evie turned around and watched Rudy the bubble dancer bobble a slippery glass, pulling it quickly from the dishwater.

Cats heads and easy diggins, Evie barked.

Rudy looked up over the kitchen divide, perplexed.

Biscuits and gravy. Evie rolled her eyes again and poured the freshly perked coffee into a fairly clean cup.

Rudy fumbled around banging pots and pans.

Cup of Joe, Sheriff? You know that stuff isn’t good for you, Hon.

Sheriff McKay smiled as his walkie-talkie hitched to his belt crackled. A slow, high-pitched voice filled the diner.

Sheriff? Deputy Burns here. 10-6.

Sheriff McKay click his switch, Standing by

I’m looking at a bonehead, a real palooka. Well, sir, we’ve got a 10-52. This boozer, 5’10 weighing around 200 pounds is turning his pit bull terrier on everybody that walks past his front yard. Got a 10-19 on him– no warrants. We could nail him on a 10-50. He’s being pretty disorderly and his dog in making quite a racket. Come back."

Flaps down, deputy. Just ticket him and throw the dog a bone. I’m at the chew-and-choke getting a bite. I’m on the rebound to do the paperwork in half an hour.

Deputy Burns came back even more slowly sounding a little discouraged.

No 10-81? No hoosegow for this yahoo trouble-maker? Out?

Olaf Valborg finished his coffee, placed a dollar on the counter and looked out the window at the light drizzle. He was the town’s only young immigrant from Sweden and also the only local grease monkey. He stood and waved at the sheriff on his way back to his garage.

Negatory Just the paper hanger. Let sleeping dogs…you know.

The sheriff turned the volume down low, without listening for a response.

Evie Whicker, grinned, and tried to take note of the sheriff’s conversation.

More battery acid? She poured more coffee without waiting for his response.

Later, sitting in the back booth, she looks at her watch, 8:40 p.m. After clearing off all the dishes, filling the salt and pepper shakers, and sugar holders on the ten tables she sat down in the back finishing the last of her hamburger and fries, taking advantage of the café’s only perk, a free meal at the end of a shift.

Evie felt exhausted.

She unfolded the front of the newspaper. She turned to the back of Section A. It showed a rough sketch of a weather map detailing the area along with curving arrows pointing southwest. The weather section of the Ely Gazette warned of a heavier than usual snowstorm approaching. Snow chains may be needed. Check your antifreeze. Be prepared.

The newspaper was left by a cheapskate-tipping customer, a grumpy old geezer with a navy blue tee shirt that announced Old Men Rule. He left it in the booth on the vinyl red seat and ambled out with his wooden cane for support only a half an hour ago.

She loosened her shoelaces and took another few minutes to browse through this evening’s local newspaper. The headlines caught her attention.

October is National Runaway Prevention Month

She brushed a strand of blonde hair back behind her ear and read the last paragraph of the article:

It’s safe to conclude that kids become runaways because of severe forms of everyday family conflict - difficulties with sexual orientation, sexual activity, or pregnancy. Some teenagers get the wrong message. When given an ultimatum by mom or dad to toe the line, obey the rules, or suffer the consequences, they feel they are being told to leave – and that’s just what they do.

Evie sat and read the last sentence not giving it a second thought. She stood and stretched her arms, scooped up her tea cup and utensils and took her empty plate back into the kitchen.

Rudy, with his shaggy hair over his eyes, and crooked smile, grabbed them with his soapy hands. Turning to the sink full of cold water, dirty dishes, and empty coffee cups he started to find his target, then he drop the dishes on the ground.

Smashed, broken, or washed, pretty much all the same to Rudy.

Heavy rain had come and gone by the time she left the restaurant. Still there was a drizzle. She stood at the doorway wishing she had her car fixed. She didn’t look forward to the long walk home, a good mile. Her Mini-Cooper was being worked on in the Ely Towing and Body Shop by Olaf.

She found the energy to walk all the way carrying the folded newspaper over her head, stopping under an oak tree for a few minutes while the nasty weather passed on. She opened the white picket fence gate in the front of her red brick, two-story house, and walked through her unlocked front door in time to hear her clock cuckoo ten.

Her feet ached, her lower back felt like a stone was pressing up against her spine. More and more pain goes along with age, she thought. She was thirty-eight plus. She changed into her granny pink nightgown, with the frilly doily at the wrist and neck.

Evie grabbed her red book and poured herself into bed by 10:35, without checking the answering machine, without cleaning up Melvin’s dinner dishes, and without checking to see if her son was fast asleep in his bedroom. He wasn’t.

********

Steppenwolf was on the air, "…Get your motor runnin'. Head out on the highway- Lookin' for adventure. And whatever comes our way …"

Three inebriated high school boys, with joy in their devil-may-care hearts and a force of conviction and determination, sang along as loudly as they could; cruising in a dirty, black Ford F150 pickup.

The underage driver screeched around the corner and threw an empty Jim Beam bottle out of the king cab’s window. It smashed on the curbside in front of Evie’s house sounding like a gun had gone off. It startled her from a sound sleep but she couldn’t find the energy or inclination to get up from her rickety spring mattress bed to investigate.

It was way too late.

She didn’t wake again until she heard the cuckoo clock downstairs. It was a chilly 5:00 a.m. The heater wasn’t programmed to kick on for another hour. Her legs, felt stiff and sore. Both feet were complaining of last night’s marathon jog from the kitchen, to the coffee pot, and then to customers, a few of whom were quite demanding.

They wanted more water, dessert, and coffee refills, expecting her to give them her undivided attention immediately even while she was scooping up their dirty dishes, and sneering at her when she was not available on demand. With her plastic smile, she tried to accommodate.

Now, sleep had slipped away, so she put on her pink robe and walked down the end of the hallway to check on Melvin. A beam of light flickered under the door.

That was strange. Melvin should have turned off his night light before going to sleep. That was the rule. They had talked about it before!

The table lamp inside his room had tipped over and now rolled back and forth on the wet wooden floor, and the hanging blue checked curtains danced wildly in the breeze of the unattended upstairs window. Evie looked around.

Melvin? Melvin honey? Are you there?

Strange. There was no Melvin. She set the lamp back on the bookcase plank of the bed board frame above his unmade bed and closed the window.

She latched the window to stop what was left of the night’s rain from flying onto the now soaked wooden floor covered by a colorful, hand-woven, kaleidoscopic blue, purple, and claret, and very soppy carpet.

A yellow lined paper whipped about the room landing close to her feet.

Evie bent down, oh so slowly, and picked it up feeling the pinched nerve pull and jab her in the back. She could scarcely read the wet penciled note written on Melvin’s last piece of yellow lined notepad. Pulling out her reading glasses from the pocket of her terrycloth robe and holding the note closer to the light, she couldn’t believe what her son had written, and with all of those grammatical errors, too.

dear mom,

you’re not why im leavin’ I guess. its becuz I am notted up inside about dad dyin and also school, and that night you came into my room, and stuff

hope you wont forget me when im gone. I’ll call when I can get some where, I promise.

Your son

Melvin Whicker

Chapter 2

"…leavin’ on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again…"

Melvin Bones Whicker had made his decision. He was on the road leaving Ely,