Bones

By Margaret Karmazin

Jayne Copley, a depressed museum collections manager, finds the petrified bones of an ancient Native American shaman. When she touches a finger bone, she flashes to 1000 BC and can see through the shaman's psychic eyes. Over the next months, Jayne vicariously lives Eyes-of-Wolf's life through her childhood training to become a shaman, to a clan war where she helps save her people, through a disappointing marriage to her joining with the love of her life, the shaman Silver Skin. Through it all, Jayne deals with her own feelings for her married boss and her developing friendships and emerges from her depression into a more fulfilling life. She inherits Eyes-of-Wolf's personal power along with her totem spirit guide, Light-Carrier. BONES is 'women's fiction' with a touch of magic realism and two likeable heroines from very different eras and cultures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 28, 2001
• ISBN: 9781469756417

Margaret Karmazin

Margaret Karmazin's stories have appeared in Aim Magazine, Reader's Break, North Atlantic Review, Eureka Literary Magazine, Short Stories Bimonthly, The Acorn, Slugfest, Timber Creek Review, Mountain Luminary, Potato Eyes, Papyrus, thINK and other magazines. She lives on a lake in rural northeast Pennsylvania with her husband and two cats.

Book preview

Chapter 1

I suppose a person falls into depression without any idea that it’s happening. But everyone around her is painfully aware of it. Family members and friends begin suggesting discreetly that she might consider seeing someone. In other words, she’d better hightail it to a shrink as soon as possible before she ends up going berserk and being mentioned on the six o’clock news. Depression sneaks up you and once afflicted, you actually believe that’s the way life is, that basically it sucks. The problem is never in you but always out there.

That was my exact frame of mind in the spring of 1999 as I dragged myself to work, home, work, home and work. I barely noticed the bright yellow daffodils screaming their joy from lawns everywhere, nor did I see the sweet baby leaves on tree limbs and bushes. The birdsong and pungent aroma of first cut grass sailed right over my head as I slumped along the street to my job. Often I felt too tired to walk the six blocks and drove with windows up and the radio off.

The museum where I earned my living was my raison d’être, what held my molecules and atoms together and where I lived from eight-thirty in the morning until seven or occasionally even nine at night. The museum offered the kind of escape into ideas I enjoyed since I was the sort of person who ran in terror from adventure and human interaction into purely mental comforts. An afternoon sifting through arrow heads or an evening watching Star Trek reruns were a hundred times more attractive to me than spending time with people and listening to their predictable and boring prattle. Popularity was not my middle name. Working with dusty artifacts was my indulgence.

At the time, in late April, we were organizing and storing a collection of obsidian ceremonial blades from the Hopewell Indian culture brought in by Dr. Jergeson’s group the month before. I was not overly fond of the anthropology professors we often dealt with. As a group, they tended to believe they were somewhere just slightly beneath God and above the Angels in the order of Creation. This applied more to the men. The females had their wonderful exceptions and I did like the way they often dressed in ethnic clothing and tribal jewelry. Dr. Jergeson was, unfortunately, male and made a point of bellowing hello to anyone with a degree above Masters and snubbing me entirely. I toyed with the idea of losing his ceremonial blades in the Dumpster out back, but somehow refrained. I was pleased when he and his retinue returned to the University of Pennsylvania and left me peacefully to my sorting.

Men in general annoyed me. In the four years since my divorce from Mr. Mesmerized-By-The-TV-&-I’m-Too-Tired-For-Sex, I’d only dated one person and that had turned out disappointing and sad. My entire sexual life occurred only in my head. And after a while, it seemed my engine just sputtered and died. Lack of practice, lack of interest. From hindsight, I suppose that was partly due to depression too.

The Franklin Evermeyer Museum of Archeology was run on a trust left by Dr. Evermeyer in his will when he died in 1977. He had built the little museum thirty years before when he was in his late fifties and a veteran of numerous successful digs all over the world. Franklin Evermeyer had lived in Africa, Asia, Australia and South American but his archeological heart lay in his own continent and his choice of area for his pet projects was my home town of Montbleu in northeast Pennsylvania, in the midst of the lake country and Endless Mountains.

The town now held about ten thousand citizens and at one time, Dr. Evermeyer had been its intellectual king and wowed its upper crust of society with his Indiana Jones escapades and swashbuckling persona. Tall, slim and white-haired, he’d attended every event in his usual attire of boots, khaki pants and leather aviator jacket with arrowheads on a thong around his neck, African medicine pouches hanging from his belt, and spinning a small Tibetan prayer wheel to keep himself centered. They say his wife spent their entire sixty or more years of marriage in a state of exasperation, being a conventional person who just wanted bridge evenings and regular church going and nothing bizarre to interfere with her life. Franklin, however, refused to conform to any such mold and once even brought home an Australian Aborigine to live with them for six months. Within a week, or so the story goes, Mrs. Evermeyer had packed the poor native’s bags and driven him to the airport.

When the Evermeyers took a trip to Newark, Ohio to visit relatives and looked over Mound Builders’ Park, it was then that Franklin realized the rich archeological treasures in his own back yard, so to speak, and immediately dedicated his little museum to the exclusive study of the Americas. He donated his non-American artifacts to other museums, in particular the University of Pennsylvania Museum in Philadelphia, and kept only Native American artifacts for the Evermeyer. Once he had his own museum running and purring, he dressed himself in comfortable sweat suits garnished with handmade Navajo jewelry and flew all over the U.S. and Canada, happily giving lectures at universities and scientific societies. When he died at eighty-eight, he was eating corn chips and sorting through a tray of pottery fragments from the Koster dig in Illinois. Slumping over his tray, he broke only two of the fragments, nothing really important. He was greatly missed.

I never knew him, being at the time fourteen years old and concentrating on boys and my idealized future in which I planned on being a rock star. Second choice was veterinarian, third Famous Reporter.

Ending up Collections Manager in my hometown’s little museum had not been on the agenda. Ending up divorced and childless, living alone in a basement apartment with my old cat and the TV for company…these were not in the plans either.

It wasn’t that my life was hideous. I wasn’t lying in a gutter or living in a jail cell or hospital bed with tubes up every orifice. My home was reasonably cozy with its square bedroom, nice size kitchen and L-shaped living room with real plaster walls. Actually quite nice in the summer when it remained cool due to being partly underground. I holed up there every night, opened a book or turned on the tube (thank God for cable) and consumed popcorn and Diet Coke. What else was there to do? I didn’t understand why my sister, Lisbeth, got so worked up over the condition my life was in.

Though I have to admit, it was growing harder to go home at night, more and more difficult to leave my cozy desk in the museum basement where I had my personal little nest, my microwave, my comfy swivel leather chair and my stash of Cadbury Milk Bars. Amusing, was it not, that I both lived and worked in a basement? Basements are comforting and casual. They remind me of a place to play in childhood, are like nights when you were a kid and your dad was out for dinner so the rest of you just ate scrambled eggs and tomato soup. I love basements. Basements are like caves.

No one at the museum, least of all my boss, Peter Kline, forced me to take a basement room for my work area. I chose it. There was a perfectly good vacant office upstairs on the first floor and a smaller one on the second, but I insisted on the room where I was. For one thing, it was near the storage shelves, which I used on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. For another, it was easier to be eccentric and isolationist down there.

From my little domain, I had a view of the maintenance people as they took their breaks near the mammoth boiler, passing around their boxes of donuts or cupcakes. They often offered their goodies to me but I refused. I was particular about my treats and didn’t like store bought (other than chocolate candy, of course). I also didn’t want to encourage Tyrone, James and Marlene to visit with me. Once you started that kind of thing, there was no controlling it. How would I possibly get my work done with James popping in to express his exasperation over his wild teenage daughter, or Tyrone wanting to swagger about his exploits with women? How would I ever stand listening to Marlene whine about her heel spur, her gall bladder and her husband’s emphysema? No, it was better to stay the way I was, aloof, brusque and up to my neck in work. That way I could be comfortably alone and make my escape into prehistory.

Hey, Jayne! Tyrone now shouted from his perch on a crate that had once held a mummified child from Peru. You want some pizza? It’s from Bernucci’s! Pepperoni, extra cheese, sausage and peppers! Gotta big slice for you right here!

I sighed, supposing this called for at least a show of manners. Dragging myself to a standing position, I moved past piles of boxes and books to the door of my office. Actually there was no door. Parts of the basement were built into cubicles which each had three walls and one partial wall. Over the partial one in my cubicle, I had strung a shower curtain, but it was partly open. I stood in this opening now. No, thanks, Tyrone, I called back. I’m on a diet! (Not true but should have been.)

You don’t need to diet! he yelled back. You look just fine the way you are, baby!

Thanks, I answered wearily. Thanks, but no thanks. And as I turned away from him and the others, I understood I was turning down more than pizza. I was turning down the world.

Chapter 2

On this week’s visit to my sister’s, I was subjected to the usual harangue about my mental and emotional health.

Look, Jayne, she said in her pointed way, you remember our great grandmother on Dad’s side was crazy. Well, maybe that’s a little strong of a term. She had her spells. According to family lore, she hauled all the furniture out of the house and set it on fire in the front yard. Supposedly, they put her away periodically. You might have inherited a tendency. Nothing really psychotic or anything, but just the tendency. I mean, you’re exhibiting just too many symptoms to ignore.

I sighed and bit into a large chocolate chip cookie from the cooling tray on Lisbeth’s kitchen table.

See? she said. You’re stuffing yourself with carbohydrates. One of the classic signs of depression.

If you don’t want me to eat them, why do you always have them out when I stop by?

I don’t know when you’re going to stop by, She retorted, correctly I had to admit. I was baking them for us, not to tempt you. I can hardly run my life on the possibility that you might drop by.

I didn’t reply but kept on chewing.

You’ve put on weight and your color isn’t good. There’s a kind of, I don’t know, limp look about you, like you’re lacking in energy or something. I’m not into that New Age stuff, but if I were, I’d say your life force is low. Is that the right term for it?

Why ask me? Do you see me running around with purple pyramids on my head?

She was starting to truly annoy me. I loved my sister, but just because she was five years older, she seemed to believe she was morally superior to me and that it was her calling to uplift my corrupted character. Everything I did, in her mind, seemed to support her ignoble view of me. If, for example, I did one little shady thing, like let a bank error in my favor slip by once in ten years or pass a gift I didn’t like on to someone else, she chalked this up on some celestial black board in the sky. All the good things I did, like helping someone out with a little cash gift or taking in a stray animal or lending a neighbor my car, she forgot about in five minutes. Lisbeth saw only what she was looking for and in her mind, I was basically a flawed being and that was that.

You have a zit forming on your chin, she said. You haven’t been taking iodine supplements, have you?

I stood up. I’m going, I said and took a swig of my tea to wash down the last bit of cookie.

And you haven’t had a date in how long? Two years? Three? And the guy turned out to be gay, didn’t he? Jayne, you simply have to make an effort. If you’ll give me your permission, I’ll get you an appointment with Patty’s therapist. She says he’s pretty decent. Maybe an anti-depressant would help, Prozac or something.

See you next time, I said in my now habitual monotone.

She scampered around in front of me. You’re not listening to a thing I’m saying! she almost yelled. Actually, Lisbeth does not yell, she merely projects well from a normal speaking voice.

I wanted to just knock her out of my way. Of course I didn’t, but I could have if I chose to, being that I am taller and sturdier of build than she. If I ever played a sport, I look like it would be volleyball, while Lisbeth looks like tennis. She is preppy straight up and down, small-chested and wears her brown hair in a blunt cut bob. Undoubtedly, her underwear is white cotton. It was when I last saw it twenty years ago and most likely has not changed.

I, on the other hand, took after my father’s side of the family and am wide shouldered, busty and lighter in coloring. My hair is a dark honey blond when just washed and fluffed but dishwater drab when in need of attention. People tend to believe I come from the wrong side of the tracks before I even open my mouth, while Lisbeth they think went to prep school. It doesn’t matter that I have a college with some post grad credits; they still assume I am probably a waitress in some greasy diner. Perhaps it’s my wild looking hair. Maybe the on-the-edge look in my eye. Although at the moment, that look is probably one of a zombie.

You’re definitely getting on my nerves, Lisbeth, I told her. You think you’re so freakin’ superior.

She hates all F-words. Please, Jayne, do you have to talk like that? It’s so incredibly low class. Just keep going the way you are and see how you’ll end up. When you wake up sedated and strapped to the bed after your electric shock treatment, don’t say I didn’t warn you. You could nip this in the bud now if you’d just admit you’re depressed and do something about it!

Yeah, well, I’ll do something about it when you do something about your obsessive-compulsive cleaning disorder. And with that, I was out the door, having completed yet another identically miserable visit to my sister’s.

That was on a Saturday. God, how I hated that day of the week. Sundays were even worse, although by then I’d usually give up on trying to be normal and slither back to the museum. I had my own keys, knew how to work the alarms and would let myself in, and after looking at exhibits to my heart’s content, I’d wander on down to my cave and get lost in some archaic land, some bag of finds, some old tray with flints on it, or pottery shards, or pieces of ceremonial headgear. I’d get lost somewhere in time where I wouldn’t run into myself.

In the basement, it was cool in the hot months and cozy warm in the cold ones. From some deep sink somewhere, you could hear a faucet dripping. There were the innumerable noises of the heating system turning on and off, pipes banging, wood creaking, the scamper of mice and the occasional loud meow of the cat they kept to kill the mice. It sounded friendly and safe and there was no one but me, just me, alone in the world.

The following week Peter Kline, the museum director, clunked down the basement steps to have a word with me. Normally, Peter and I kept our communications down to weekly meetings in the conference room so his visit signified something unusual.

He ducked a bit to enter my office, although it wasn’t really necessary, but since he was over six feet tall, I suppose he did that out of habit.

Um, Jayne, um, I don’t know how to mention this, but…

This did not sound good. Peter Kline bumbling around did not portend well.

I got up to scrape the junk off my only extra chair. Have a seat, I offered. him.

He sat his long-limbed body down and tried to arrange it to fit into the allotted space. Jayne, I don’t know quite how to broach this subject, but…well, it’s rather. he paused.

Oh God, had I done something atrocious like Lisbeth would have expected?

He blurted, I want to remind you that psychological care is included in our health benefits package. His face was beet-red and he had to stop to regain his composure. Anyway, it has come to my attention that, well, maybe you could use some care from that direction.

I sighed in relief. Thank God, he wasn’t firing me! What would I do without this job? But my next emotion was rage. How dare he? What do you mean ‘it has come to your attention’?

Now Jayne, don’t get your dander up. Everyone cares about you. You know your work here is exemplary. You’re an important part of our operation so there’s no bad light cast on your job performance or position. I-

I interrupted. Who suggested I need psychological help? I must have had on what my family calls my scary mad chicken look. I assume they’re referring to the look of a pissed off, beady eyed, pointy beaked hen.

He hesitated. Well, different sources. The maintenance crew, Dr. Jergeson, one of his student helpers and, um, your sister.

My sister? I practically shrieked, standing up from my desk. How dare she stick her nose into my work environment?"

Sit down, Jayne. Don’t blame her. I’m the one who telephoned her to ask about you, to see if she was aware of any changes in your behavior.

I would appreciate it if you never took that liberty again, I said coldly. How would you like it if-

Now he interrupted. I had a brother who was depressed. He committed suicide. I promised myself I would never let those signs go past me again without trying to help. As for the maintenance crew they, especially Tyrone, really like you, Jayne, and they above all people know your work habits. A year ago, you put in the time of a typical slightly workaholic employee, staying maybe an hour past closing time, coming in an occasional Saturday morning, but now you’ve grown truly obsessive. We know about the Sundays, Jayne.

I shook my head. This is rich. A boss trying to dissuade an employee from putting in extra hours! I don’t believe my ears!

I’m a proponent of the well rounded individual, explained Peter. You know the old saying, ‘all work and no play’, etc. Good health calls for a balance of work, home duties, personal interests and recreation. My brother ran a small leather goods factory. Before he shot himself, he was practically living at the factory. That’s where they found him. First he gave up his trips to the bookshops, then it was his racquetball. He became a machine that grimly filled orders and shipped them out. I know what I observe in you. You’re clinically depressed

My attempt to contradict him was feeble. I don’t agree with you.

He was relentless. There was now no hesitation in his speech. You’ve gained weight—what, about ten pounds or more? You’ve stopped coloring the bit of gray in your hair. You dress in only gray and black. You never smile anymore. When you walk, you shuffle. When did you last have a date, Jayne?

He was getting way too personal. I forgot that I had known him for years, that maybe he had a right. What does that have to do with anything? You know this town. How would I meet anybody? Everyone I knew from high school is married or moved away. I’m not in touch with any of the guys from college. I’m too old to go bar hopping and besides, that’s too dreary a scene for me. My best girlfriend got married and moved to New Jersey. The cousin I used to party with took a job in Alaska. No one ever introduces me to anyone. What do you suggest?

I asked this last question with a tinge of sarcasm. Peter and his wife moved in much higher social circles than I did. Peter had graduated from Yale and Martha was a Vassar grad from Old Money stock. They lived in a classic old colonial just outside of town and kept a small apartment in London. Their daughter, Chloe, had married Rains Dumont, the heir to a small cosmetics empire. When the Klines entertained, their guests were from New York and Main Line Philly, and the entertainment consisted of dinner parties where no one got to eat until nine PM when I was probably in bed with a book. Undoubtedly, they all discussed concerts, benefits, plays, charities and who they personally knew in politics, all outside of my scope or interests. If I were to attend these things, I would probably come off like a rhinoceros at the Queen’s tea party. Yet I knew they probably had eligible men at these events. They knew I was divorced and, I suppose, lonely, yet no invitations had ever popped up in my mailbox.

Peter didn’t have the grace to blush. Indeed, he probably didn’t even notice anything was amiss. Maybe nothing was amiss. Why would I have any right to expect to join my boss’ social milieu? I suppose I didn’t, anymore than he had any rights to mine. Of course, why would he want any rights to mine?

Yes, I know it’s difficult to meet the right person, he finally said. I know things haven’t exactly fallen into your lap. Look, I’ve only brought up this sensitive issue because I value you. He paused a moment. .as an employee. I mean, so does everyone. We all care about you. If no one cared, they wouldn’t bother.

I was silent, my head bowed in mortification. It was totally humiliating to be judged a wacko by your work-mates, by everyone. Maybe I’d just have to buckle down and do as they suggested, damn it. I detested the very idea of going to a shrink. Years ago I’d seen one and he was wackier than I was. Make sure your foot doesn’t touch my desk, the wacko said when I crossed my legs and accidentally brushed against the stupid thing. And later, he’d suggested the two of use get into his hot tub for one of the sessions. Nude. Small wonder I didn’t like shrinks.

Both of us were embarrassed as Peter took his leave and resigned to my fate, I opened the yellow pages to psychologists. Within a week, the woman had me on pills, or supposedly on pills. My primary care physician wrote me a prescription and I had it filled but two days later emptied the bottle into the toilet. I lied to the therapist, my family and Peter as a matter of course. And I still sneaked into the museum after hours to lose myself in the dimly lit back shelves where trays held artifacts brought in years before and ignored ever since.

The Hopewell stuff had been properly stored in Section 10C and we were at the moment between batches. Dr. Geraldi from Syracuse was taking his group to Kentucky to check out some pieces a farmer found in his field, so I was having a little rest. But a rest was the last thing I needed to distract my presumably screwed up mind.

That was why, on that Friday afternoon in late May, I wandered back to the very farthest and longest ignored shelves that were under about a fourth-inch covering of dust, and pulled out an old fashioned wooden tray marked Majors, July 1951, Susquehanna Co., Pennsylvania

The tray was not treated as we do today with everything carefully placed and marked in sealed plastic bags, but consisted of a drawer-like box lined in black felt and covered with a glass pane slid into a slot. When I wiped the dirty glass with my sleeve, I could see what was under it: a bunch of loose bones. Brown, polished-looking human ones.

I had no idea that these bones would drastically change my life and make Prozac seem like so many jujubes.

Chapter 3

It is strange now to remember that I almost put that tray back in its dusty place. At Evermeyer, we weren’t too big on the biological end of things, being more concentrated on the collecting of objects. The museum owned, or had on loan, thousands of flints, arrowheads, pottery shards and whole pieces, bead and leather work, scraps of woven cloth, tools for cooking, hunting, cleaning skins and carving wood, body ornaments, and even a couple of pounded gold masks. We had objects that people had lovingly tucked into the final resting-places of their dead to help them on their spirit’s trip into the next world. We had objects they hung in or on their homes to prevent evil from entering and decorations they used to lure the opposite sex into mating with them to thereby assure the birth of the next generations. There was more, but the list was long. We were collectors of things as a rule, but there were the occasional exceptions, and once in a great while, we took in bones.

These would consist of skulls, skull fragments, teeth, pelvic girdles, femurs, ribs, whatever was offered. Once, we had for two weeks only, the wizened mummy of a young Indian girl on its way from Peru to New York. It was a memorable occasion and I was permitted to observe the examination by Drs. Frank Brisbane and Eleanor Wright for a total of ten minutes before I was sent on some bogus errand. They did not like spectators.

The only time I had done any real sorting and storing of bones was on a little collection from the Buzzard Cult from one of the Mississippi centers brought in by a professor now dead eight years.

But it was a dull rainy day and although it was way after hours, I didn’t feel like going home to wash my clothes in the creepy laundry room or eat a solitary dinner of cottage cheese and fruit or canned soup and peanut butter bread. Another evening like that and I might jump out in front of a truck. So I carried the tray down the long aisle between the floor-to-ceiling shelves and placed it gingerly upon my desk.

The glass cover was stuck. I tugged and jiggled it, then jerked it back and forth. I realized I was growing angry, like a heroin addict whose hypodermic was jammed. These trays were my entertainment, my distraction from life, and now the damned lid was stuck! Finally, I yanked a desk drawer open, retrieved my wooden mallet and gave the thing a good whack. At last the glass cover loosened and slid grittily, inch by inch, out of its wooden slot until I had freed to the eroding air the little assortment of aged bones.

I felt a strange quieting inside myself, a profound feeling of stillness. My hand hovered over the little collection and stopped when it reached what appeared to be a finger bone, a phalange I believe it is called. The little bone between the knuckle and the first joint. For some reason, I had the feeling it was part of an index finger. Strangely, I hesitated before touching it, as if I had a premonition that to do so would.would what? I’d never been prone to psychic type stuff. It did not run in my family. We were not of Welsh descent with a tradition of the second sight nor did we have any Italian grandmothers with the power to throw the evil eye. Only once had I known who was calling before I picked up the telephone.

Understand I did not pooh-pooh the idea of the paranormal. It just had not yet manifested in my life nor had it in the lives of my relatives, friends and acquaintances (or at least they weren’t talking about it if it had.) All I knew about such things I had read in books and not too many of them. Yet now my hand seemed to be arrested in flight, actually stuck in the air over this phalange bone, afraid for some reason to move on down and pick it up. Did I imagine the thing would jump like a Mexican bean? What on earth was the matter with me?

Get a grip, I said to myself, then went for it. My fingers closed over smooth, cool bone and it felt like ivory, quite nice as a matter of fact. I lifted the piece up in front of my face and took a good look. It was about an inch long, maybe three eighths of an inch thick in the middle and slightly knobbed at one end. Should have been at both ends, I thought, but maybe not, I was no expert on human body parts. I set it down, then for some reason picked it back up and when I did, experienced the most extraordinary sensation.

What in hell was it? For a few seconds, I glanced around, cocking my ears for the usual museum basement noises, the drips, bangs and creaks, but there was nothing. Tyrone had left for a dentist appointment, James had taken off that Friday and Marlene was upstairs somewhere, probably dusting the huge display case in the Woodlands Room. I told myself without conviction that there wasn’t anything to worry about. A bone was not going to harm me.

But I had the oddest feeling. It was as if that bone had electricity in it. Not exactly the same as receiving a jolt from the TV after walking on wool carpet in winter, and not like when you get a little shock from something shorted out. Maybe a bit more like being in love when your hand brushes against your lover’s and a wee bolt of energy sparks between you. More like that, but still not exactly.

I set the bone down, then gingerly touched it again with my forefinger and felt it again! Like some kind of undercurrent, a faint vibration or humming. I jerked my hand back while feeling my heart lurch.

What did this mean? Should I tell someone? And if I did, what would they think? Obviously, they would think I was nuts. Then it hit me: they already thought I was nuts. Something like that would only confirm their suspicions! I was stuck and this problem was strictly my own.

But wait…where was Marlene?

I waited on pins and needles a good half-hour before hearing her heavy tread on