LITTLE TREASURES

 Little Treasures was a novel that came to me when I thought about all of the little collectables people amass over a lifetime, that they pass down to their families. It occured to me that even the cheapest stuff must've meant something, had a past of its own. 

LITTLE TREASURES

1. Chloe

Chloe Brady couldn’t believe how twisted fate could be. She lost her parents in February, found out she was adopted in March, and discovered that her last blood relative was dead in April, which made her the sole inheritor of a magnificent, Cape Cod-style house. What she wanted more than anything was a family but, in lieu of that, a mansion would suffice.

Then she saw the place.

‘Jesus.’

‘So it’s a fixer-upper,’ said her boyfriend.

Up until April, Chloe thought she’d have to bop Guy over the head, caveman style, and drag him up the aisle, but he’d been very keen to commit since the reading of the will. These days, it was Chloe’s feet that were turning blue. She wasn’t an idiot, she’d wait until the renovations were done, then Guy would be gone. He walked three steps ahead of her until they got to the front gate, which was when he realized she had the keys.

‘When did they say this place was built, Babe?’

‘Nineteen-hundred, and I think that was the last time anyone cleaned it.’

Guy patted her on the back as though she was a little girl, in desperate need of grown-up consolation.

‘Don’t worry, Honey. We’ll have her back to her glorious old self in no time.’

Chloe would never understand men’s need to feminize inanimate objects. She supposed it was like marriage; once the papers were signed, the lady was all theirs. Just let him think that way. It would make the gob-smacked expression on his stupid face that much more priceless when he found out he’d been her bitch all along. Sea winds had eaten away the paint on all the windows, several roof tiles were missing, and the garden was a mass of barren rose bushes and rusty ivy, but the exterior was an impressionist painting compared to the sight that confronted Chloe once she opened the double doors.

The only thing that had lived here in comfort for a long time were spiders, judging by the gossamer draped over evry surface. The upstairs seemed to have fared much better. Chloe supposed that was where the woman spent the last few years of her life. Chloe tread carefully, taking things in one at a time for fear of being overwhelmed by it all. Guy had no such qualms, tripping here and there, opening cupboards and drawers, investigating. Chloe clamped down hard on her tongue to stop herself from laughing when he yanked open the doors of an imposing mahogany wardrobe in the corner of the room, only to fall flat on his ass when a scrawny grey cat leaped out. Chloe put her hand out and stroked its head.

‘Poor baby. How’d you get in here? Did the crazy man scare you?’

‘Did I scare him?’

‘He must’ve been shut in here the last time somebody came through.’

She picked up the cat, and he fell back against her chest as though he’d known her all his life.

‘Let’s get you a nice bowl of water, huh?’

She headed downstairs. Guy called after her.

‘I’ll just look around on my own then, shall I?

‘Knock yourself out.’

The cat, whose name was Crispin according to the hasty scrawl on his feed bowl, was gulping down his water, growling softly with each exhalation, when a mouse skittered out from behind the kitchen door. Chloe screamed. Guy walked in, almost dropping the box he was holding, and screamed louder. Crispin looked up briefly from his bowl, pinned the mouse with one paw, then went back to drinking. Chloe knelt down beside him.

‘It’s gonna be nice, having a man around.’

Guy flashed his patented used car salesman smile and put the box on the kitchen counter.

‘Found this in the wardrobe, covered in cat hair. I won’t tell you what else I found in there.’

‘Wow.’

Guy shoved the cat out of the way.

‘What? Antiques? Heirlooms?’

Chloe gave him a look.

‘Relax, Rockerfeller, I think it’s just some family stuff. Old toys and things. Some of it looks pretty cool.’

Guy was already on his way back upstairs.

‘It’s probably junk. Just put it in the trunk of the car and we’ll dump it on our way back. Chloe ignored him and took out the first thing to grab her attention. It was a knuckle-bones set, otherwise known as Jacks. This was the kind of stuff that appealed to Chloe. Let the Guys of the world have their mansions and their sports cars and their stock portfolios; it was all worthless compared to the blood, sweat, and tears a kid put into doing something they loved. The jacks were a little scuffed, but the ball looked like new. Chloe wondered how long it had been since someone played with it. She scooped up the jacks in one hand, and picked up the ball with the other.

‘I bet metal bounces real well on hard wood.’

The cat watched her warily from the far corner of the room.

‘Probably leave some wicked scratches, huh?’

The cat offered nothing. Chloe scattered the jacks with her left hand, bounced the ball with her right, and found she only had to stoop slightly to catch one of the jacks mid-air. Guy rushed in, and was none too pleased when he saw what all the commotion was about.

‘Those are hardwood floors, Chloe. Hard wood! Do you know how much value hardwood floors add to a house like this? Or how much they cost to replace? You might as well key my Porsche!’

Guy scooped up the game and threw it back into the box.

‘It all goes to Goodwill tomorrow. Don’t get attached.’

Guy went back upstairs, oblivious to the obscene gesture Chloe was making behind his back. She couldn’t picture him ever playing anything but Monopoly as a kid. If, indeed, he ever really was a kid. He’d never understand what the little things were worth.

2. Knuckle Bones

Stanley Thomas was hopeless at Knuckle Bones, but that didn’t stop him trying. He spend hours scattering the jacks along the pavement, bouncing the little pink ball. His throwing technique was okay, and he could bounce the ball like a son of a gun, but he just couldn’t seem to get the timing right. It annoyed his sisters to no end.

‘Oh, for Pete’s sake, Stan,’ said Stella.

‘You throw the jacks first,’ said Shirley.

‘You’re such a stupid baby,’ said June.

‘Am NOT!’ Stanley wailed, and pushed her over.

‘Stanley Eldridge Thomas!’ yelled his mother. Stanley suspected his sisters had seen her coming, but he couldn’t be sure. She had just returned from her weekly tennis game with the Leons and, by the looks of it, she’d lost.

‘How was your game, Mama?’ asked Shirley.

The other girls smiled, and Stanley knew for certain he was the victim of a conspiracy.

‘Dreadful, Darling,’ said Dahlia, ‘Mildred Leon cheats horribly. Now, where was I?’

‘Stanley, Mama,’ said June, helpfully.

‘Oh yes,’ she wagged a finger at her son, ‘The country is at war with the Koreans, and you’re out here throwing your weight around like a general! I am sick to death of your rudeness, young man. I have done me level best to raise you to be gentleman, but if you insist on acting like a savage, I’ll treat you like a savage. Do you understand what that means?’ She crossed her arms, waiting.

‘Yes, Mama. It means you’ll give my toys and my clothes to the poor kids, then take me up to the forest and leave me alone to play in the dirt.’

What Daliah Thomas didn’t understand was that, despite his sisters teasing him that they didn’t live in the woods anymore, playing cowboys and Indians with real Indians was Stanley’s idea of heaven, particularly when compared to living with four women who seemed perpetually annoyed by his presence. He was sure things would be different if his father was alive. Dahlia wagged her finger at him again.

‘Now, apologise to your sister.’

‘Sorry, June.’

‘Give her a hug.’

This Stanley did grudgingly, not because he hated it, although he most certainly did. The reason he would have preferred to keep his third-eldest sister at arms length was because she pinched him whenever she got the chance, and he knew the temptation to give the flesh on the small of his back a good wringing would be too powerful to resist knowing that he couldn’t react to it. He went in carefully, being sure to stand with his back to his mother.

‘That’s better. Tell him all is forgiven, June.’

June smiled and took Stan’s hand.

‘All’s forgiven, Stan.’

‘That’s my good girl.’

All three girls watched, smiling, as their mother made her way down the front walk and into the house. They waited until they were certain she wasn’t coming back out before they all smacked him upside the head. Stanley yelped.

‘Hey! I’m telling Mama!’

‘She won’t believe you,’ said Stella.

‘I’ll tell her you pushed me again,’ said June.

‘Then she’ll take you out to the forest and leave you there,’ sneered Shirley.

‘Good,’ said Stanley, ‘then I can live with the Indians!’

Shirley laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’ Stanley scowled.

‘I told you, Dummy, there are no Indians up there anymore. They were all killed or chased out by the…’

‘Knuckle Bones Boy,’ June interrupted.

‘The what?’ wailed Stanley. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘It’s true,’ said June, ‘it was in the newspapers for weeks.’

Stanley looked at her blankly.

‘Oh I forgot,’ said June, ‘dummies can’t read the news. The Knuckle Bones Boy was a regular kid like you who loved to play Jacks, back when Jacks were called Knuckle Bones, and one day he died, right in the middle of a game. Now he needs someone to help him finish the game so his soul can rest.’

Stanley stood transfixed.

‘He tried coming home and asking his mama for his jacks back, but she told him she gave them away with the rest of his toys. He got so mad that he killed her. Then that Catholic priest, the one Mama says not to talk to or he’ll convert us, he came and blessed the whole town, and banished the boy to live up in the woods.’

‘What did the boy do to the Indians?’

‘I’m getting to that! They say that when he got to the woods, he saw to Indian boys playing with a set of jacks their daddy made for them out of bones, and he asked if he could play too. The boys said no, so he killed them too. The Indians were real scared after that, so their chief took the jacks set and threw it into the fire. He thought that would make the boy go away, but it didn’t. He went from tee pee to tee pee asking the Indian children where his jacks were, and he got madder and madder. He killed them all, then he killed the chief. The rest of the Indians took what they could and left. So now the Knuckle Bones boy lives up there all alone, waiting for someone to come along and play with him, and God help you if you don’t have a set of jacks.’

‘KNUCKLE BONES!’

Stanley screamed, swatting away the hands that gripped his shoulders. Shirley fell down laughing.

‘Good one, Shirl,’ said Stella. ‘I think he almost peed himself!’

‘Did not!’ yelled Stanley.

The truth was, he had peed himself. He had become so engrossed in his game, so determined to taste victory, just once, over jacks and over the whole world, that he saw emptying his bladder as something that could be put off – forever, if need be. The familiar burning feeling had set in when his sister started talking, and grew steadily worse with each grim detail, but he held it. It wasn’t until Shirley grabbed him that the floodgates opened. Stanley held his hands over his crotch and bent down, pretending to be fascinated by something in the grass. The very possibility of insects in the vicinity was enough to send Shirley and Stella screaming into the distance, and June followed them everywhere.

‘What ARE you staring at, Beetle Brain?’ asked Stella.

As luck would have it, a big, black, shiny rhinoceros beetle clambered over the curb and onto the grass just when Stella was almost at sniffing distance. Stanley bent down and picked it up.

‘This,’ he said, holding it under Stella’s nose.

Stella shrieked. Shirley cried. June, who wasn’t afraid of anything, stood her ground, and for one terrible moment Stanley thought he was done for. Several ideas came to him all at once, but the one he settled on was the one that would ultimately seal his fate. He opened his mouth wide and screamed.

‘IT’S BITING ME! IT’S BITING ME!’

All three girls scattered. Stanley bent down and returned the creature to the grass.

‘And they call ME a dummy.’

Stanley went up to the house, carefully peeked inside to make sure he had a clear run, then dashed through the rear corridor of the house and into the laundry. Berta, the maid and the only member of the household who hated the girls as much as he did, was attending to his mother’s tennis dreass. She turned to him and smiled.

‘Stanley, mein Liebchen, what can I do for you?’

Stanley closed the door and pointed to the front of his shorts. Berta shook her head.

‘Have your sisters been frightening you again?’

Stanley nodded solemnly. Berta reached into a basket full of freshly ironed clothes and took out an identical pair of shorts for him.

‘Here, Darling. Thank God your mother puts more thought into your sisters clothes than yours. Go over into the corner there and get changed. Berta will take care of everything.’

Stanley loved Berta. She was as tall as a door, as wide as a chest of drawers, and when she stood ram rod straight, her iron bosom looked like a battering ram. Dahlia always treated Berta with formal respect; Berta was the only servant who ever got pleases and thank yous out of her. The girls were afraid of Berta, and rightly so. She saw them as the spoiled, wicked little brats they were, and up with their bullshit she did not put. She once caught Stella trying to force Stanley to eat snails, so she planted one of her size thirteen shoes in Stella’s pink, frilly behind. Then, just in case the girl got any ideas about running to her Mama, Berta informed her, quietly and succinctly, what people homeland did to squealers.

Berta hated the Nazis. She once told Stanley that she could have single-handedly won World War II for the allies if only they’d left her and Hitler alone in a room together.  Stella didn’t know any of this, and so when her mother asked her how she got her brand new dress so dirty, Stella said exactly what Berta told her to say.

‘I was playing Doctor with some boys.’

Stanley wasn’t sure what that meant, but he knew it wasn’t good, because it was the one and only time he ever saw his mother hit one of the girls.

‘I wish I was your son,’ he said now as he pulled on the freshly ironed pair of shorts Berta had given him.

Berta smiled.

‘In alles, aber Blut, Sie sind mien Schatz.’

‘I forgot to give you my jacket. That ridiculous woman spilled half a martini on me again. Honestly, I’d hate her if she wasn’t such a dear friend…’

Dahlia had burst into the laundry room with her usual bluster, just as Berta was holding Stanley’s sodden shorts up to the light for inspection. Stanley pulled at his zipper a little to zealously in his haste to cover his shame before she saw it, and ruined his fourth pair of shorts that month. Two hours later, he was being tucked into bed, nursing a bandaged pecker and missing the only friend he’s ever known.

‘The nerve of that woman! Hiding your disgusting habit from me. God knows how many times she’s seen your private parts. That’s what I get for hiring foreign help, I suppose. Damned spies, every one of them.’

‘Berta’s not a spy!’

‘Oh, of course she is! I should’ve know something was wrong, the way she doted on you. It’s positively nauseating.’

‘Berta’s not a spy!’

Dahlia ignored him, tucking furiously until it was physically impossible for Stanley to move.

‘There. That should keep you from rolling over in the night and exasperating your…problem. I couldn’t face that doctor again. Go right to sleep now. I don’t want any more monkey business out of you today.’

‘Yes, Mama.’

Stanley closed his eyes and waited for the sound of the door latch catching. When he was sure his mother was gone, he turned over slowly onto his stomach and punched his pillow. When it made a crinkling sound, he turned on his lamp and lifted his pillow to make sure he wasn’t hearing things, as his siters would surely assume he had. A note, made out in much planer and neater handwriting than his mother’s, was pinned to his undersheet.

MEET ME IN THE FOREST. I HAVE LEFT A TRAIL. LOVE BERTA.

Stanley would’ve suspected the note to be the work of any one of three blonde, nasty, ribbon-headed suspects, were it not for the now mangled German cookies that were stuck to it. Linzer Augen were traditionally a Christmas cookie, but Berta baked them year round, just for her little Liebchen, and now Stanley shoveled one down, cotton fibres and all, to give him strength on his journey.

There were two motivations for stealing June’s bike. The first was practicality – he wasn’t going to be able to make the five-mile-journey on foot without having to stop and rest along the way, and he wasn’t about to curl up under a tree in the dark, even if he did suspect that the Knuckle Bones Boy was a figment of his rotten sister’s imagination. The other, most important reason, the one that made him smile despite the sounds of loons whooping in the distance, was simple: satisfaction.

Dahlia refused to buy Stanley a new bike after June wrecked it two days after Christmas, saying that he had been mad to let her ride it in the first place, (as if he had had any choice in the matter), and that she felt sorry for anyone unlucky enough to share the road with her little girl if she did actually manage to pass her driver’s test one day. So incensed was June by this insult that she refused to eat for a week, worrying her mother sick and prompting her to buy a present by way of apology – bigger, better, and shinier than the one she had written off. As far as Stanley was concerned, he was evening the score, making things right. The thought of his chief tormentor starving herself to death was just gravy.

He grinned when he got to the forest entrance, and wondered whether the story of Hansel and Gretel would have been far less complicated had the children left behind something more substantial than breadcrumbs to mark their passage. Even crows would take forever to get through cookies the size of a large German woman’s hand. Puffing triumphantly, Stanley gave a quiet cheer when he got to the top. The loons calls were all but whispers now, and the steep uphill climb felt like a straight path with a heart full of hope and a tummy full of sugar to sustain him.

There was also the tent.

Sheltered beneath two trees, its crisp whiteness was more inviting than Stanley’s bedsheets and he dove inside, ignoring the fire. Pinned to the smaller sleeping bag, his sleeping bag, was another note.

BACK SOON.

More German cookies lay in wait for him in an old butter caramels tin that was sitting at the end of his sleeping bag. He devoured the lot, then washed the meal down with the contents of a flask that sat on the floor of the tent. He only managed to drink half of the extra-tangy lemonade before his eyelids became too heavy for him to hold up anymore and he climbed into his sleeping bag and allowed himself to drift off.

It seemed to Stanley like he’d only been asleep a few minutes before a large, comforting hand gently roused him. He blinked. Berta’s smiling face beamed down.

‘Hello, mien Liebchen.’

Stanley threw his arms around her waist.

‘You’re here!’

‘Yes, Darling, and I will never leave you again.’

‘Promise?’

‘I promise.’

‘You’ll be my mama, always?’

‘Always,’ she stroked his hair, ‘Go back to sleep.’

Stanley lay down again and closed his eyes. It was still dark out when he woke up the second time to find Berta sitting on her undisturbed sleeping bag with a present on her lap.

‘Gott sei dank! I thought you’d never wake up!’

She held the present out to him.

‘For you.’

The look of expectation Berta’s face reminded Stanley a little of his sister’s faces whenever he walked smack dab into one of their traps, but Stanley wriggled out of the sleeping bag and took the gift anyway. Berta’s smile broadened as Stanley pulled the meticulously tied black ribbon undone.

‘Such a surprise you’ll get!’

Stanley flung the ribbon over his shoulder and pulled back the box flap. At first, there appeared to be nothing in the box but a whole lot of black space, but when he reached inside, his hand grasped something small and familiar. Blinking furiously, certain that he was still asleep and most of the way through a very bad dream, Stanley closed his hand into a fist, pulled it out of the box, and opened it.

In the centre of his palm was a wooden ball, no bigger than his thumb. It was similar to his own, except that this one was speckled with the festering cruelty of decay. There was only one thing missing.

‘Knuckle Bones.’

Stanley looked in the direction from which the order had come. Berta was smiling so widely now, the corners of her mouth were starting to crack.

‘Knuckle Bones!’

The cracks opened and bled.

‘KNUCKLE BONES!’

Stanley jolted awake. He was still in the tent, inside the sleeping bag his Berta had laid out for him, and he was still alone. He wriggled out of the sleeping bag, crawled over to the entrance of the tent and peeked outside. His mother had expressly forbidden all of her children to play with matches, and Stanley had been just fine with that – fire was at the top of a long list of things that terrified him, but it dropped several rankings when he tried to look out into the forest and discovered that God had turned out all the lights while he was asleep. Then Stanley remembered something June did while Dahlia was in the house, having tea with Great Aunt Emma.

Great Aunt Emma was the only woman in the world Stanley liked even less than his mother. Dahlia hated her too, but she still had Berta lay out the silver tea set in the parlor every Saturday afternoon, and rushed all the kids outside when she saw her marching toward the house, the double strand of pearls she had worn for as long as anyone could remember laying perfectly still against her chest as if they, too, were frightened of incurring her wrath. Emma couldn’t abide children, but the thought of the government getting their hands on her money when she passed and doling it out to the needy was twice as repellent, so she gave her word that her widowed niece would always be taken of. The unspoken caveat to this arrangement was that Great Aunt Emma must always be treated like royalty, which meant insuring that she and her worldly possessions were handled with kit gloves, so when the charred remains of her prize mink stole were found abandoned in the middle of the yard alongside a half smoked Vogue cigarette, Dahlia came perilously close to having to register for assistance herself. Stella was apprehended while trying to stuff the remaining cigarettes and a book of matches into Stanley’s shirt pocket and, thinking the fire had been the accidental product of illicit smoking, Emma put all ten cigarettes in Stella’s mouth and forced her to smoke them, down to the ends.

Placated when the child ran into the house to vomit, the fire in Emma’s cheeks burned out, and Stella was spared the responsibility of landing the entire family in the poor house. Had Emma and Dahlia ventured a little farther out into the yard, they would’ve caught the real accidental arsonist in the act of destroying the evidence. June had made a bet with her sisters that she could start a fire without a commercial spark, and it was the disastrous success of this experiment that Stanley kept at the front of his mind now as he made his way out into the forest to collect fallen branches.

He told himself that the noises he was hearing were just the sounds of nature settling in for the night - owls inadvertently rustling the leaves of the trees, a mouse making a dash through the scrub before said owl saw it – but then the sounds got louder. Still Stanley told himself he couldn’t possibly be hearing what he was hearing. The owl had seen the mouse, the whispering shush blowing through the trees was the sound of its wings gliding it toward its prey, and a bigger creature, probably a raccoon, had joined in the chase.

Racoons aren’t awake at night.

‘Shut up!’ Stanley hissed.

That clacking sound wasn’t the result of someone shuffling a handful of jacks. A bunch of acorns had fallen on the ground at the same time, that was all.

Acorns don’t fall in the summer.

‘Who says?’

Clack.

‘Knuckle…’

Clack.

‘Bones.’

Stanley stopped.

‘June, is that you?’

Clack.

‘Knuckle…’

Clack.

‘Bones.’

‘Cut it out!’

The footsteps that were trampling the brush drew closer. Stanley tried to sound brave.

‘You’ll be in big trouble if Mama catches you!’

The footsteps stopped. Stanley puffed out his chest.

‘Now go home. I’m not afraid of you anymore!’

Stanley listened, waiting for the sound of June’s Mary Janes hot-footing it in the opposite direction, but there was only silence.

‘I said, go ho…’

‘KNUCKLE BONES!’

How did June get her voice so low?

‘KNUCKLE BONES!’

She didn’t, that was how. Stanley dropped the one pitiful twig he’d been able to find in the dark and ran deeper into the woods. The Knuckle Bones Boy’s footsteps grew louder and heavier behind him, until Stanley felt sure he was close enough to reach out and snap his neck but then, the footsteps fell away. By the time Stanley realized his feet weren’t touching the ground anymore, he was already sailing down toward the bottom of a hole he wouldn’t have seen in the daylight, much less in pitch blackness.

The fact that he survived the landing was some consolation, until pain overtook him. He reached down and felt his right ankle poking through the skin. Stanley bit his lip and clamped his hands over his mouth. He was fairly certain the Knuckle Bones Boy hadn’t seen him fall, and he wasn’t about to give away his position. He dragged himself out of the way of the view from the mouth of the hole and sat with his back against one of the hard clay walls, willing himself to stay awake. If anyone was going to scare off the Knuckle Bones Boy, it was Berta, and Stanley didn’t want to be asleep when she came along.

He sat with his eyes fixed on the rough, natural ceiling above him. He had it on good authority that it was next to impossible to fall asleep if you stared at the ceiling real hard. The font of schoolyard knowledge who shared this information with him was Billy Wells, whose father passed this and many other choice survival tips onto him in the many letters he sent from his various postings around the world as a government agent. When Stanley had the audacity to ask him why a letter from Alaska would bear the same postmark as one from Paris, Billy huffed that the government put fake ones on there for reasons of national security. He offered a similar reason when questioned about the distinctively feminine handwriting.

Stanley stared at the ceiling until he was bug-eyed, and his head began to ache. He wanted desperately to cry but furrowed his brow and stared harder. What would Berta say if she went to all the trouble of rescuing him, only to find him blubbering like a little girl? He thought about her, what it would be like to be her son, helping her with the groceries, eating dinner at a little table just big enough for the two of them, sitting by the fireplace and listening to stories about how nice Germany was when she was little. He held out his hands and could feel the warmth of the flames, and it was marvelous. But Berta didn’t think it was warm enough, and now she was taking a gas can off the mantle. Stanley thought it was plenty warm enough, but Berta knew best. She smiled as she poured the fuel onto the fire, despite the fact that her Little Liebchen was sweating.

‘It’s okay, Berta, I’m warm already.’

Stanley knew he had fallen asleep when he saw light coming in. No wonder he was sweating: the sunlight was so orange, he could see it through the massive fog that had just blown in. It had to be ninety degrees already! When the fog drifted closer, Stanley saw that it wasn’t sunlight illuminating the cave. Another revelation came to him when smoke clouded his vision, and he finally allowed himself to cry.

‘She didn’t come back.’

He stared into the smoke until it hurt too much, and black tears dropped down onto his vest. He wondered if this was how was for the Indian boys, whether their chests had burned, whether their mouths had tasted like sour dirt, whether they retched violently when soot began to choke them, only to take in more with each exhaustive breath. In the end, thinking proved just as tiring as breathing, and Stanley closed his eyes, barely noticing the pain of the flames licking at his bare legs. Berta wasn’t coming to his rescue, and no one else would miss him. There was nothing worth fighting for.

‘Hey!’

Stanley opened one eye and could just make out two shapes a couple of feet in front of him. He opened both eyes and the shapes changed unto two elongated forms. He stared hard until the forms came slowly into focus, and became two boys with strange hats on their heads.

No, not hats, headdresses.

Another kid at Boy Scouts once told Stanley that breathing in smoke made you see all sorts of strange things that weren’t really there, but he didn’t care. He had dreamed of meeting and Indian his whole life, and now there were two of them! Real or imagined, Stanley was determined to enjoy this, however long it lasted.

‘Hey,’ he replied, ‘Um, I mean, How.’

The older of the boys smiled and brought Stanley’s hand back down.

‘It’s okay, you don’t need to do that.’

The boy picked up several small objects off the ground and held them out to Stanley.

‘You wanna play?’

He set up the jacks and handed Stanley the ball.

‘Guest goes first.’

And so Stanley began a never-ending game of Knuckle Bones.

He never grew tired of it.