Fishbone's Song by Gary Paulsen Page A

Dozing, he said, dozing on his memories. Some you might like to get shed of, wear them off, burn them. But now and again a memory was so fine you wanted to keep it. Like a warm cloud you could doze on. Just sit in the chair, and sip on a jar of good ’shine and close your eyes and doze on the memory. Part of getting old, he said. Maybe the best part of getting old.
    This time wasn’t so long. Took a sip of ’shine from the jar, really just a lip wetter, said you came three ways. In a box, from family and guv’ment, and from a witching stump. Can’t pick one because they’re all the right way at different times. After you were here with me and learned to suck a milk rag, then a calf bottle, one night I took you to a ghost stump glowing in the dark, and put you on the ground to see if you were a familiar. See if the light jumped from the stump into you. It was on a cold night, soft cold, and you caterwauled some.Sounded like an old hog stuck in a gate. Might have been the cold. You were partial to being warm when you were small, and I maybe had a bit too much ’shine in me that night. Wasn’t so good at controlling it then, like I am now. So I held the blanket open a bit to see if the light jumped into you, but it didn’t. It didn’t. You just got cold and let out more noise. So you ain’t. Ain’t a familiar.
    Again I thought. Again. What’s a familiar, I said. Or who?
    They help witches work when it comes to casting spells. Sometimes be a little boy, sometimes a little girl, sometimes a cat, and now and again just a candle. Lit, of course. Candle won’t work unless it’s lit. And it helps if it’s a beeswax candle or tallow. Not store wax.
    You believe in all that, I said. Witches and the like.
    There are things we don’t understand to know. To know. And maybe if we don’t know about how athing is, how it works, how it can be—just because we don’t know how it is doesn’t mean it’s not real.
    And so there are witches, I said.
    Maybe. Maybe not. I’ve never seen one, known one, but I’ve heard. Heard things that don’t make a lot of sense. Knew an old lady once, could touch her elbow and tell you if it’s going to rain. Tell you when. To the hour. Some can take a willow fork and walk around and tell you if there’s water and how deep down it is. Seen that many times. The stick bends down when they find water. Sometimes bends down so hard it strips the bark off in the man’s hand. They call it witching water, or divining water, but I don’t know if they’re witches or not. Just know I don’t understand it. And I can’t do it.
    And I’m not one. I can’t hold a stick and find water.
    No, no. He shook his head, sipped his ’shine. No. And you ain’t a familiar either, or it would have showed by now. But you have these dreams, thickdreams, that don’t make a lot of sense, except. Except they do, they kind of do make sense. They come from thinking of things, thinking of things around you, and I think that just means you can see. See out and around and front and back. See new and old things. You dream-see your cot, your sleeping place, your living place, going out and out. Getting bigger, and I think it means you are more, want more.
    So what do I do, I asked.
    Was me, he said, smiling that soft, no-tooth smile. Was me, I’d go out and out and see where it led to. Go find the edge of the dream.
    And so I did.
    Took the bow and a sleeve-quiver with a half-dozen cane arrows and forty or fifty strike-anywhere wooden matches, what Fishbone called Lucifer fire sticks, and an old steel pot with a bent handle, and at the last minute a small role of stovepipe wire I found on a nail on the back of the cabin. Fishbonehad talked of making small rabbit and squirrel snares with the wire, and I had a thought of trying it.
    Also took a small paper pouch of wheat flour and corn flour mixed. Maybe