The Bones of Dessie Grayson
Twenty-two years in the ground. She's coming home piece by piece.
They found her bones on a Wednesday. Halfway through a gas line project behind the Dollar General. The excavator operator shut off the engine and leaned out the cab, squinting at the orange clay.
“That the Grayson girl?” he asked.
He wiped grease on his jeans. He didn’t sound scared. He sounded like he’d won a bet.
The discovery rippled through Simpson County by noon. Detective Warren Hale stood at the edge of the pit. He watched a forensic tech bag a silver bracelet stamped with DG. Warren didn’t think about her as a ghost. He remembered the county fair in ’02. She’d won a blue ribbon for a quilt and traded it to a carny for a pack of unfiltered Camels. She stood by the Tilt-A-Whirl, blowing smoke at the sheriff’s boots while her mother looked for the car keys. She didn’t look like she belonged to the town. She looked like she was just visiting from somewhere meaner.
Ray Merrin didn’t call the station. He showed up at 2:00 a.m. and sat in the lobby. He looked like a man who had spent two decades getting beaten by a world that only got tougher. He held a floral box on his lap.
Warren pushed through the heavy glass door. The hinges screamed. The town hadn’t greased them since the first Bush administration.
“I thought you moved to Dayton, Ray.”
Ray didn’t look up. He stared at a crack in the linoleum. “Dayton didn’t take. Too much concrete.”
He set a box wrapped in floral print paper on the laminate counter. It made a light, hollow sound as he lifted the lid.
Warren looked inside. They were small and white against the cardboard. Twelve of them. They looked like they’d been polished with a jeweler’s cloth.
“She had a gap between the front two,” Ray said. He tapped his own incisors. His fingernails were yellow from nicotine. “I used to tell her it was for luck. She called me a cliché and told me to buy her a beer.”
“The note is the part that got me,” Ray said. He pulled a piece of lined paper from his pocket. It was soft from handling. “Look at the y’s. Those long tails. She used to write me lists. Change the oil. Buy more milk. Don’t be late. She always dragged the tails.”
Warren looked at the note. Two words. Written in a hand that didn’t shake.
Stay lucky.
The tails of the y’s didn’t curve. They slashed straight down into the empty white space below. The ink was darker at the bottom of the stroke. She had pressed hard.
“You told her she was lucky because of her teeth,” Warren said.
Ray’s mouth twitched. “She hated it. She said luck was for people too lazy to work for what they wanted. Seeing it there, in her hand. It feels like she’s still mad at me.”
“You’re sure it’s her hand,” Warren said.
Ray finally looked at him. His eyes were bloodshot and flat. “I spent three years with her, Warren. I’m sure.”
Ray stood up. His joints popped. He walked to the door and stopped.
“I kept the engagement ring in a tackle box,” Ray said. “I thought about throwing it in the river every year on her birthday. I never did. Now I’m glad.”
He pushed outside into the humidity.
Warren killed the engine. The truck ticked as it cooled. The Grayson house sat at the end of a gravel drive. The white siding was peeling in long, sunburned strips. A plastic deer lay on its side in the high grass. It looked like it had been shot.
He climbed the front steps and knocked. No answer.
He walked around the side. The screen door was unlatched. He let himself in.
The kitchen reeked of ammonia and lemon.
Mrs. Grayson sat at the laminate table. A roll of wrapping paper lay next to the toaster. Daisies on a yellow background. It was the same pattern. The one from Ray’s box.
She caught him staring at the roll. She didn’t look up from her hands.
“Dollar General had a sale,” she said. “Three for a dollar. You can’t pass that up.”
A blue Bic pen lay on the table. The plastic end was chewed flat. Warren looked at her hands. Her cuticles were white. Her skin was pruned like she’d been doing dishes.
“Ray says the note was her handwriting,” Warren said. “The long tail on the y’s.”
Mrs. Grayson wiped a rag over something small and curved. A collarbone. It shone like a pearl.
“I taught her how to write. I used to hold her hand and guide the pen. Muscle memory is a hard thing to break, Warren.”
She set the bone down. It clicked against the table.
“She always had a temper.” She picked up the Bic pen again. She scribbled a circle on the tablecloth to get the ink moving. “You should go. I have work to do before the humidity kicks in. They get tacky in the heat.”
Warren looked at the sink. It was full of gray water and white shapes, soaking.
Bones.
“You’re digging her up,” he said.
“I’m not a young woman, Detective. My back isn’t what it was.” She looked at the circle of ink on the cloth. “She’s doing the heavy lifting. I’m just the welcome committee.”
Warren walked past her and out the back door. He followed the fence line to the garden.
She was standing there.
Dessie Grayson. Eighteen years old. Blonde hair tangled down her back, arms at her sides, bare feet in the grass. Everything was in place.
Except her jaw.
Where her mouth should have been was nothing. Smooth skin, unbroken, like she’d never had one at all. Her eyes were open and fixed on him. They didn’t blink.
Warren turned and walked back to his car. Through the window he saw Mrs. Grayson still at the table, threading blonde hair through a needle. She didn’t look up. She just pulled the thread tight.
“Check your pockets, Detective. You always were a collector.”
Warren reached into his coat. His fingers brushed something cold and hard. He pulled out a molar. It was still wet. A trace of pink gum clung to the root.
THE END
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