Bones in Daylight

Bones in Daylight

  (A Tale of the Turner Boneshakers)

  Brian S. Wheeler

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author's imagination and used fictitiously.

  Copyright ? 2016 by Brian S. Wheeler

  For Kate.

  If you enjoy this story, please consider purchasing one of the following novels available at your favorite distributor of ebooks. Flatland Fiction welcomes your feedback at [email protected].

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  The Light Floats Slowly

  Hugh Simms looks to find hope amid the stars when he fails to find any on Earth. Heartbroken by the loss of his only love, Hugh loads his great spaceship with ash and glass before launching his Starchaser into the cosmos. Miraculously, that spaceship finds an alien civilization in the vast dark, and Hugh might deliver that civilization the salvation he failed to deliver to the Earth.

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  Bones in Daylight

  Brian S. Wheeler

  Content

  Other Books by Brian S. Wheeler

  Chapter 1 - The Quiet Old Man

  Chapter 2 - Offerings

  Chapter 3 - Another Visitation

  Chapter 4 - Homecoming

  Chapter 5 - Consequences

  Chapter 6 - Blasphemy

  Chapter 7 - Madness

  Chapter 8 - Results

  Chapter 9 - Content

  About the Writer

  Visit Flatland Fiction online for other stories by Brian S. Wheeler

  Chapter 1 - The Quiet Old Man

  "I'm sorry you need to wear the wig, Grandpa Roscoe, but a man your age can't expect to keep much of his hair. I promise no one thinks any less of you for wearing it. Your guests will only stay for a brief moment, and you know how much everyone respects you, no matter if you're wearing a wig."

  Maximillian wished he possessed a phrenologist's touch, wished that he could trace the shape of Roscoe's bones with his hands and know the kind of man his grandfather had been all those years ago when Roscoe Turner ruled the glass factory's furnaces and supplied life to the village of Owensville. Max sighed. Those days were long gone, and he could accept the truth that those days were also long dead.

  Those who still called the leaning village of Owensville home could not accept that their community was a corpse as could Maximillian Turner. Those elderly residents, all of whom once worked at Roscoe's furnaces, would soon arrive to again consult Roscoe Turner on how they might manipulate their tired days so that they might find a way to bring warmth and wealth back to the glass factory that once made Owensville healthy. Maximillian hurried to help his grandfather look his best. The residents would soon arrive at Roscoe's estate. They would peek into Roscoe's home. They would bring their offerings. And then they would ask old Roscoe Turner how they might resurrect their younger days of industry.

  "So, I won't hear it, old man. No complaining about the sun or the heat. No complaining about the wind and the cold. Rain or shine, you're going to hear what those residents have to say, and you're going to kindly accept whatever they offer you. They depend on you, Grandpa Roscoe. They couldn't get by without you."

  Maximillian fluffed Roscoe's pillow before gently resting his grandfather's head on the soft cushion. He fluffed the comforter. Though the summer day would be hot and humid, Maximillian realized it was for the best that Roscoe remain wrapped in the bedding of his king size bed. Roscoe was always covered in his blankets. It was what the residents expected of their patriarch. Roscoe Turner wasn't allowed to age.

  "And remember, Roscoe, listen politely. No interrupting any of them when they tell you their concerns."

  Maximillian giggled at the thought of his grandfather cutting a guest short. Roscoe would listen, and then, the residents who still lived in Owensville would drift back to their dilapidated homes, their hope renewed that for as long as Roscoe Turner still lived in his great estate their homes might once more flourish.

  Maximillian giggled all the way to the basement.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 2 - Offerings

  The rural community of Owensville squatted on land too tainted by toxins to grow crop. Forty years had passed since the Turner glass factory produced its last fruit jar or brown liquor bottle. More than forty years had passed since the Turner glass factory provided a living to three hundred men and one-hundred women. Decades had fallen away after the final furnace was extinguished that once provided the wages that afforded children and homes, and yet the toxins oozed by that endeavor continued to ruin the land so that the hardiest soy or corn seed could not grow.

  Forty years ago, Roscoe Turner's glass factory supplied breath to the village of Owensville. Roscoe's salaries provided the thirst to sustain close to a dozen taverns that shaped main street. Roscoe's glass delivered sewing machines, ice boxes and radios to the modest, one and two bedroom homes built in Owensville for those who worked Roscoe's glass. The glass factory glowed for little less than twenty years, for no longer than the span of a single generation, and that was time enough for Roscoe Turner to conquer the hearts of those who called Owensville home.

  A populace of nearly a thousand men and women, most of them old enough to remember what their town had been before the furnaces turned cold and chains locked the factory's doors, still clutched to the remains of their community. They refused to abandon their leaning, molding homes as the sufferings of advanced age beset them. They refused the help and services other communities in their county might offer. They denied all assistance. For almost everyone in Owensville was old, and they still believed that Roscoe Turner wo
uld again ignite his furnaces and resurrect their fallen town.

  Once again, those townsfolk hobbled out of their homes and grimaced into their cars and trucks to visit Roscoe Turner's Colonial, brick estate. They admired the trim and green lawn of the front yard, and they remained awed by the craftsmanship exhibited in the white trim of the windows. From the front, the shingled roof looked like it could withstand another century of rain, and the brick work showed no trace of weakness. Roscoe Turner's home, built by that patriarch's grandfather, seemed, at least from that front, to remain a proud estate, one worthy of the man who had provided so much for Owensville. As they drifted further down the Turner lane, those residents regretted that they had to impeded upon Roscoe's privacy, but the outside world once more threatened to intrude upon their town. The world outside Owensville again trespassed on the graves of empty storefronts. Thus the old returned to Roscoe's Colonial manor, so that they could look upon what remained of that man and listen to whatever advice the memory of Roscoe might proffer.

  "Is old Roscoe moving this morning, Nate? Has the old man stirred in his bed?"

  Nate Phillips shook his bearded face at his neighbor Janet Mason. He waited to answer, kindly giving Janet the time to struggle out of her car and into her wheelchair, politely helping her push herself through the broken terrain found strewn about Roscoe's backyard.

  "It's still early. He's not given any sign that he's noticed us yet. But he will once the sun starts hitting his body. I'm sure Roscoe will tell us how we need to vote on the coming referendum."

  Janet nodded and peered towards what remained of the estate's back side. "Well, sure. But aren't you worried that Roscoe has too many blankets on a morning as hot as this? He must be baking beneath all those covers. It's the start of August, and Mr. Turner's bundled up like it was the coldest day of winter."

  Lee Helmsworth cleared his throat and pushed into the conversation. "Let's remember that Roscoe's bones aren't young like they used to be. They might feel cold on the hottest of summer days, so who's to say that those blankets aren't a great comfort? Who are we to question how Mr. Turner chooses to keep his bed?"

  Everyone who limped onto the estate's backyard could clearly gaze into Roscoe Turner's third story bedroom. All of them could just as easily see into the kitchen or den on the first floor, or into the master bathroom located in the center of the second. The front of the home might've still appeared strong, with its square and straight walls, where there was no sign of water damage, where the window curtains still looked clean. Yet the rear of the house provided a study in opposites. Three-fourths of the rear brick wall had collapsed onto the ground. None in Owensville knew the day or the night when that wall fell. None of the town's amateur historians evidently thought the collapse of a wall to be an event worth circling on a calendar. But for seven years, those pieces of brick and lumber remained just as they had fallen. No one ever made an effort to clear any of the debris. No one made any effort to reconstruct that wall. Roscoe Turner didn't seem to care. In fact, a fallen wall appeared an insufficient reason to rouse Mr. Turner's old body from the comforts of his bed.

  The fallen wall exposed an expansive view of the home's interior, which delighted nearly everyone in Owensville, who had for so many years dreamed of all the treasures the only wealthy man their community ever knew might've accumulated within his home. Gathering in the back yard, residents whistled at the Tiffany lamps standing on marble side tables in the hall. Residents watched how the sunshine danced over the crystal chandelier suspended in the heart of the great dining room. They could read the titles occupying the spines on all those books collected in Mr. Turner's den. The collapsed wall revealed closets, and residents enjoyed peeking at the business jackets and pant slacks Mr. Turner wore when he once attended to the glass factory's demands. The collapsed wall even exposed Mr. Turner's personal bathroom on his third story floor, and the residents, who so well knew the aches of inflammation and joint pain, loved to imagine the relief all the medications surely held behind the vanity could offer if they might ever soak in Mr. Turner's claw-footed, copper bathtub.

  The fallen wall at the back of the Turner estate offered so many tantalizing peeks into the life of Owensville's favorite, wealthiest patriarch, but none of those exposed chambers captured the residents' imagination like that of Mr. Turner's upstairs bedroom. There, framed so well by a massive, oak wardrobe and clothing bureau, sat the king sized bed that held Roscoe Turner. The layers of crimson blankets were always pulled up to Roscoe's chin, but enough of that man's head peeped out from the bedding to give Owensville a peek of the back of Mr. Turner's skull. Roscoe's face never turned to face his guests, but none in the town ever felt slighted if Mr. Turner didn't nod to acknowledge them. People in Owensville remained of a pious nature, capable of forgiving their town patron if he seemed to doze through their presentations. They too were old, and they understood how arthritis in the bone and all the prescriptions ingested to combat high blood pressure could leave a person exhausted. Residents recognized that the bedding was routinely changed. They noted the occasions when Roscoe's hands lay in a different position. Those movements were enough. The residents didn't shout at the back of Roscoe's head to entice that old man to move.

  The shriek of an air horn echoed off of Roscoe Turner's interior walls.

  "All right everyone!" The widow Charlene Allen shouted. "It's still good manners to give Mr. Turner our gifts before we ask him for advice. Everyone go on and set whatever you've brought over there on that picnic table Mr. Turner always puts out for us."

  The guests always crowded that picnic table with gifts. The town's widows offered fresh tins of blueberry muffins and oatmeal cookies, for everyone who worked in the glass factory remembered how Mr. Turner loved sweets at breakfast. Chuck Essington, whose father had long ago operated the Owensville meat locker, brought sirloins and hams to the table. There were dozens of casserole dishes. Nor wore those offerings limited to the rich and heavy cuisine favored in the town. Residents offered cross-stitched pictures of roses, homemade candles and any other product of simple craft they created while hiding in their homes' shadows.

  Many residents offered money. Even in a town as poor as Owensville, money remained as simple and powerful symbol of devotion. Clint Bishop carried another coffee tin of quarters. Leroy Fullbright dug up half of his front lawn to retrieve plastic sandwich bags filled with the fifty and twenty dollar bills he had long ago buried for a rainy day, and he gladly offered that soiled currency to the table. Arlene Dooley couldn't write personal checks for Roscoe Turner quickly enough, and she would happily forgo restocking her refrigerator for weeks at a time if that's what it took to show Mr. Turner how highly she regarded him.

  For those of Owensville, Mr. Turner's home, with its crumbled rear wall and its exposed, interior chambers, stood as a kind of a shrine, as a holy place that reminded them that those dark buildings that remained on either side of downtown had not always been empty. To those of Owensville, that head that peeked out of so much bedding was a holy kind of a relic, a piece of a man whose intelligence, ingenuity and compassion once guided their town.

  "All right everyone! That's another fine offering!" Charlene grinned to see the table again crowded with cheese balls and vegetable platters. "Time we tell Mr. Turner all about the referendum on the upcoming ballot. Someone step up and try telling Mr. Turner what it's all about."

  Nate's back cracked as he straightened his spine before lifting his voice to the home's third story bedroom. "Mr. Turner, the school district wants us to vote on whether or not to build a new school house."

  Mr. Turner didn't move. He never fidgeted while the residents shared their concerns with him. Mr. Turner always listened politely. He never interjected when those townsfolk had something to tell him.

  "Go on, Nate!" Janet Mason shouted. "Fill him in! Don't make him wait! Mr. Turner's time is very valuable!"

  "Hush," Nate snarled. "I've got to think on how to say this just right." Nate paced back and f
orth. He thought about nibbling on an oatmeal cookie while he thought, but then he pulled his hand back and decided it poor etiquette to take from one of Mr. Turner's gifts. "Mr. Turner, those folks with the county say the old school building in Smithton isn't safe enough for the students. They say that it lacks enough technology. They say the building doesn't accommodate students with disabilities. They say it leaks, and they say there's asbestos and lead throughout the school. They're telling us that all that puts those students in danger. They're telling us we need to raise our property taxes to fund the construction of a new building."

  "That's horseshit!" Charlene yelled.

  Janet covered her ears. "Watch your tongue. Show Mr. Turner some respect."

  Charlene rolled her eyes. "Hell, anyone who ever worked at the glass factory knows that Mr. Turner's not afraid of any foul language." Charlene lifted her chin towards that head peeping out of the blankets. "Mr. Turner, I say we let those folks in the county rot! They shouldn't have closed our little school house in town twenty years ago if they were so worried about the state of that building over in Smithton. None of us had any fancy technology, and yet we learned our letters just fine. What harm did lead and asbestos do to us? And does anyone care about the disabilities we suffer in our old age? Does anyone offer to build us more accommodating homes? Mr. Turner, I think I pay more than my fair share, and I think those people in Smithton have some nerve to ask us to give any more!"

  Most of those standing in the back yard grumbled in approval. But a few exchanged worried glances, and among those, Janet cleared her throat to be heard.