Bone Dance by Martha Brooks Read Free Book Online Page A

if she were the north wind. She would whisper, “Let the spirits dance. The land will wake up and tell you things.”
    What things? he asked with his mind. Every single time, he’d wake up to find himself as immobilized as that rusty snow-mounded wagon wheel that rested against the shed outside in the January darkness.
    He tried talking to Robert about his dreams. Robert sitting in the cafeteria, his head full of hockey scores and daydreams of Tammy Martel, who still wouldn’t sleep with him even though she’d done it with just about everybody else, Lonny included.
    â€œWhat?” he said when Lonny was in midstream, middream. Then he laughed nervously. “That’s
weird
shit, man.”
    â€œYeah, weird.” Lonny laughed, too.
    After that, day after day went by with Robert talking on and on about nothing. Lonny let him talk and could tell that he was relieved no mention was made of his mother’s spirit again.
    He sleepwalked through his days, nudged by dreams, getting A’s and B’s with his mind half-awake. His English teacher, Miss Samson, handed him a paper he’d done on a poem by Dylan Thomas. “Good work, once again, Mr. LaFrenière,” she said, and thenfrowned at the bags under his eyes. “I hope you’re planning on going to university next year.”
    At the beginning of February, Robert said he was bored. “Everybody’s bored, Lon,” he said, “and that’s because it’s winter. And so we’ve got to do something about it.”
    He suggested they round up some Ski-Doos and a few people and go down to the old LaFrenière place and have a party. “Come on, Lon,” he urged. “You’ve been all weird lately. And you need cheering up. And I’ll bet not a single person has been down there since Earl kicked the bucket. So what’ll it hurt?”
    â€œI don’t want to go down there,” said Lonny.
    But Robert wasn’t listening, and he was so fired up, there was no stopping him. A couple of days later, people were coming up to Lonny in the halls at school. By Saturday night, nineteen people showed up at the top of the snowed-in trail, piling out of cars, unloading snowmobiles off the backs of family trucks. They showed up with cases of beer, tequila, gin, and cheap wine. It was fiercely cold, and the snow was waist deep in places. A caravan of lights wound down through the bush, everybody yelling and laughing past dark, silent winter trees.
    At Earl’s cabin, Tyler Lakusta, giggling like he was already drunk, pulled off his leather mitt, fumbled under his jacket and layers of sweaters for his wallet. While somebody shone a flashlight, he used his bank card to gentle the lock on Earl’s door. It was easy. And it was wrong.
    Charlene McLean had brought candles, and shepulled off her boots at the door and told people they had to wait outside until they were lit. And when they finally did go in, it felt as if they were entering a church, candlelight flickering up the walls. Lonny half expected to see Earl laid out in a coffin in a suit even though he’d been cremated last month.
    Charlene, her thick black hair hanging down her back in a single braid, opened her arms up wide and threw them around Lonny and yelled, “Surprise!”
    And then everybody sang “Happy Birthday,” and all he could do was stand there, stunned, because his eighteenth birthday wasn’t until next week, but this was his party, obviously, and Robert had planned it all.
    Later as the woodstove and all the bodies inside heated the cabin up, people got loud and drunk. Robert and John Tessier and Curt Mason and Morgen Thiessen staggered outside and stood in a snowdrift and pulled down their pants and mooned the moon. Tyler lured Marianne Neufeld off to Earl’s bedroom, where she threw up in his lap.
    Charlene came and sat beside Lonny on the living-room floor. She offered him a cold marshmallow from a