The Bone Polisher

Prologue ~ Maybe Nebraska

The farm boy looked no more than seventeen as he bent over the table. He had hair the color of corn.

Dearest Max, he wrote. Then he leaned back and fished a package of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and lit one. With the cigarette in his mouth, he looked older.

The room was just a room, one in a series of rooms. If he’d closed his eyes he couldn’t have said what color the walls were. The low table, with its stack of white paper, was the only piece of furniture. The Farm Boy was sitting on the floor.

Thank you for writing me such sweet letters. I really can’t tell you how much they mean to me, here in this wilderness. Just to know there is someone I can talk to. After all these years, even though I’m only seventeen.

He tapped ash from the cigarette onto the floor and laid the butt on the table, the coal hanging over the edge. The table was striped with burns, long worms of dark wood. Without thinking, he ran his fingernail down one of them. His nails were long and well kept, and he scraped charred wood beneath the nail.

“Shit,” he said, staring at the nail. Then he scrubbed it clean on the carpet and picked up the pen again.

Do you remember Nester in the story of the Trojan War? He guided the young men, gave them his wisdom before

He glanced at the book that lay on the floor beside him and swore softly, then scratched out Nester and wrote Nestor above it, and continued where he had left off: they went into battle. That’s what I hope you will do for me. Prepare me for the battle to come. I’m not sure I have the strength or wisdom to pre

He closed his eyes for a moment, and then wrote: vail.

Please, Max, write me again soon. You don’t need to send me the photo you promised. Your words tell me all I need to know about you. You are good and kind. It doesn’t matter how old you are.

I want to come to you, but first I want you to write me again and tell me what kind of boy you really want. Tell me everything. If I am not right for you, I don’t want to push myself into your life. I need your help, but I don’t want to hurt you. If I think I can be good for you, I’ll call to see if you can send me money for the ticket to Los Angeles you promised me. It costs $650, and cash would be best. I am enclosing the gift I promised so I can recognize you at the airport. It belonged to the uncle I told you about, the only one who understood.

He laid down the pen and picked up two silvery metallic objects, which he clinked in the palm of his hand like small change. He dropped them to the wooden surface, beside the letter. Then he took another puff from the cigarette and put it back on the edge of the desk.

Oh, wait, I had to change my post office box because someone saw me there today and I’ve told you how people talk here, so I’ll have to drive into Kearney to get your next letter. Here is the new box number.

He wrote a nine-digit number quickly, without referring to any of the papers in front of him. Then he signed it:

Hope to see you soon,

Philip

“Oh, boy,” he said. He crossed out Philip and wrote Phillip.

The Farm Boy leaned back and read the letter out loud and then reached for a clean sheet of paper to copy it over.

He lifted something, a small white paperweight, from the white rectangular stack before he took a sheet, and then he replaced it, dead-center. The paperweight was a human finger, boiled to the bone.