Read Online Trail of Bones by Mark London Williams - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Mark London Williams
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We should be respeckted…
Suggest: respected.
… if we return. For we have been both brave &
foolish, and will have many tales to tell.
They all want to tell their tales, record
their own histories. Who can blame them? With no vidnews, no Comnet
how is anybody else supposed to know what they’re doing? Or what
they’ve done, after it’s over? How will anyone find out?
Only problem is, none of them can spell
really well. I don’t know for sure if spelling has been invented
yet, but I’m trying to write down some of their versions of words
so I can remember them when we return.
If we return. Like Gassy says.
Canoo [Also
suggest: “cannot”] came from Lewis, and Clark wrote speshul [Suggest: “specious”] for special , and there are tons more like that, including all
the versions of words Gassy is coming up with.
If I ever find myself in school again, I’m
going to mention these guys whenever a teacher gets upset about how
I do on a spelling test.
But school — and everything else I know,
even the Danger Boy stuff — seems a long way off now. I’m not even
sure how much time has passed in my world, my real world, my home.
I don’t know how my father is. Or whether he managed to locate my
mom.
Actually, I’m growing less and less sure
about which world, which time, really is my own, anyway.
In this world, we’ve been gone, out in the
then-unknown, a couple of weeks. We’re into June, and it’s summer
everywhere out here in the country.
What am I saying? It’s all “out here
in the country.” Even what I saw of St. Louis was more like a
mid-sized town at most and not what we think of as a city. The
country isn’t “out” there. It’s everywhere around us. On both sides
of the river.
And the river itself.
I go back and forth between riding in the
keelboat and riding in the canoe with Gassy or Kentuck. Sometimes,
I walk along shore with Lewis and his dog, Seaman. We’ve seen
amazing sights: tall, waving grasses; endless hills; flowers that I
don’t recognize, sprouting up all over; and a nearly impossible
number of animals. It’s hard to believe this many animals ever
existed outside a zoo. I’ve seen elk grazing by the shore, fish
jumping out of the water, a bobcat mom and her cubs looking for
food, deer eating berries and leaves, and even a pair of foxes that
stood and looked at us before scooting away.
Like maybe humans weren’t something they see
every day. Or have to be afraid of yet.
Seaman keeps barking all the time, so maybe
we’d see even more animals if he didn’t scare them.
The sky is filled with birds. Filled with
them. One time, I thought we were having an eclipse. “Pigeons,”
York told me. “Make good pies, if you catch ‘em. And God made so
many, people can be eatin’ those pies from here to Judgment Day,
and the sky is still gonna be full of those birds.”
He was talking about passenger pigeons. I
know about those. I remember them from when I was in school. They
don’t exist anymore. That last one died over a hundred years before
I was born.
There is so much… nature out here, that it
feels more like a Comnet game than anything else. It’s as
fantastic, really, as anything in Barnstormers.
Which is good, because since there is no
Comnet, my vidpad is useless for any kind of gaming. But I’m
getting ideas for new characters: “The Buffaloner”— half man, half
buffalo, all loner. A cleanup hitter who’s the last of his kind,
drifting from town to town, looking for a team to play with, an
outcast even among Barnstormers.
The real buffalo are pretty awesome. Huge,
and shaggy, like a force of nature all by themselves. A kinda
slow-moving force. We see them more and more often as we head up
river.
Of course, not all of this nature stuff is
so great. I’ve had ticks under my skin, and they only came out when
one of the guys burned them with a piece of charcoal from the
campfire. And we all have constant — and I mean all the time —
mosquito
Suggest: respected.
… if we return. For we have been both brave &
foolish, and will have many tales to tell.
They all want to tell their tales, record
their own histories. Who can blame them? With no vidnews, no Comnet
how is anybody else supposed to know what they’re doing? Or what
they’ve done, after it’s over? How will anyone find out?
Only problem is, none of them can spell
really well. I don’t know for sure if spelling has been invented
yet, but I’m trying to write down some of their versions of words
so I can remember them when we return.
If we return. Like Gassy says.
Canoo [Also
suggest: “cannot”] came from Lewis, and Clark wrote speshul [Suggest: “specious”] for special , and there are tons more like that, including all
the versions of words Gassy is coming up with.
If I ever find myself in school again, I’m
going to mention these guys whenever a teacher gets upset about how
I do on a spelling test.
But school — and everything else I know,
even the Danger Boy stuff — seems a long way off now. I’m not even
sure how much time has passed in my world, my real world, my home.
I don’t know how my father is. Or whether he managed to locate my
mom.
Actually, I’m growing less and less sure
about which world, which time, really is my own, anyway.
In this world, we’ve been gone, out in the
then-unknown, a couple of weeks. We’re into June, and it’s summer
everywhere out here in the country.
What am I saying? It’s all “out here
in the country.” Even what I saw of St. Louis was more like a
mid-sized town at most and not what we think of as a city. The
country isn’t “out” there. It’s everywhere around us. On both sides
of the river.
And the river itself.
I go back and forth between riding in the
keelboat and riding in the canoe with Gassy or Kentuck. Sometimes,
I walk along shore with Lewis and his dog, Seaman. We’ve seen
amazing sights: tall, waving grasses; endless hills; flowers that I
don’t recognize, sprouting up all over; and a nearly impossible
number of animals. It’s hard to believe this many animals ever
existed outside a zoo. I’ve seen elk grazing by the shore, fish
jumping out of the water, a bobcat mom and her cubs looking for
food, deer eating berries and leaves, and even a pair of foxes that
stood and looked at us before scooting away.
Like maybe humans weren’t something they see
every day. Or have to be afraid of yet.
Seaman keeps barking all the time, so maybe
we’d see even more animals if he didn’t scare them.
The sky is filled with birds. Filled with
them. One time, I thought we were having an eclipse. “Pigeons,”
York told me. “Make good pies, if you catch ‘em. And God made so
many, people can be eatin’ those pies from here to Judgment Day,
and the sky is still gonna be full of those birds.”
He was talking about passenger pigeons. I
know about those. I remember them from when I was in school. They
don’t exist anymore. That last one died over a hundred years before
I was born.
There is so much… nature out here, that it
feels more like a Comnet game than anything else. It’s as
fantastic, really, as anything in Barnstormers.
Which is good, because since there is no
Comnet, my vidpad is useless for any kind of gaming. But I’m
getting ideas for new characters: “The Buffaloner”— half man, half
buffalo, all loner. A cleanup hitter who’s the last of his kind,
drifting from town to town, looking for a team to play with, an
outcast even among Barnstormers.
The real buffalo are pretty awesome. Huge,
and shaggy, like a force of nature all by themselves. A kinda
slow-moving force. We see them more and more often as we head up
river.
Of course, not all of this nature stuff is
so great. I’ve had ticks under my skin, and they only came out when
one of the guys burned them with a piece of charcoal from the
campfire. And we all have constant — and I mean all the time —
mosquito
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