Two Boys, Hunting for Bones

by John Powers

We found a pair of hammers in the garage. We climbed onto the largest rock and started swinging. Sharp little slivers of stone stung at my legs.

Kurt Winters went around the side to find a soft spot.

The really big ones are loaded with fossils, he said. Every rock this size has a dinosaur inside it.

He came back with a handful of broken bits.

Dinosaur eggs, he said.

He pointed at a sunny patch of grass. We gotta put them somewhere warm.

Rocks don’t grow, I said.

But these are dinosaur eggs.

I told him I don’t know about dinosaur eggs but putting pebbles in the ground wasn’t going to accomplish anything. This wasn’t some magic garden.

He made a fist and swung at me.

I pushed him away. It wasn’t hard enough.

He hit me in the face. I just stared at him for a second. I wondered why he suddenly looked like somebody else.

I put my hand to my mouth and it came away bloody. My lip had split against my teeth like a juicy slice of fruit.

Kurt Winters laughed.

Fartface, he said.

It was time to go home.                                                              

Chickenshit, he called out. That means coward.

At home my mother was angry. She said I was lucky I didn’t need stitches. She told me not to mess around with grown-up tools or else I’d hurt myself worse, next time.

My mouth felt swollen and strange. I sucked on my tongue. It was a baby habit but nobody was watching after I went to bed. The bullfrogs began croaking by the pond. They got louder as it got dark. I listened to them groaning late into the night and thought about Kurt Winters. Plus some other stuff. I started thinking about my father, about how things might be different if he were around, still swinging a hammer, instead of staring down from heaven or whatever. I couldn’t get to sleep. Thinking only makes things worse.

It was too hot to shut the window. I scratched the screen with my fingernail. My hand turned silver in the moonlight like something made of steel.

In the morning I put on my boots and went down to the pond. The frogs were silent, sunning themselves along the muddy banks. I found a nice heavy rock. I called their names out loud as the stone came down. Fatty and Blimpy and Fartface and Dumbbutt.

The last one was small and yellowy with black eyes that never blinked.

Kurt, I called it.

I didn’t touch him.

I left him there to think about his friends.


John Powers is a writer and investigator in New York. His work has appeared in Salon, Wired, and The New York Times Magazine. He can be found online at www.johnpowers.info.

Previous
Previous

Dear Prudence

Next
Next

After the California Sun Sets