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“I never knew how much Addieville hated us, Vance. Think of the planning that had to go into this. How could we not have heard anything during the night?”
My father gripped my mother’s hand. “I’m amazed Addieville found the energy to do it.”
We woke in the morning and found that Addieville made a ghoulish site of the heartland home we worked to make pleasant. Dozens of dolls crafted by my mother’s hand swayed from the three oak trees planted in our front yard. A noose gripped the neck of every cornhusk and rag doll hung from our trees. Paper sacks covered the faces of the porcelain baby dolls, so that perhaps those responsible for the macabre scene would not have to notice how the eyes of those dolls opened and closed as their bodies shifted in the breeze.
I trembled beside my parents. I couldn’t leave their sides. Sounds of low sobbing woke me just before dawn. Anguished cries, hardly audible below the wind, pulled me out from my dreams, and I peeked through the windows to discover those dolls tied to the trees. My parents made no mention of hearing a sobbing when the wind stilled. They gave me no reason to suspect they heard anything at all. I feared the recent tension eroded my reason, and I didn’t dare ask if my parents heard that pitiful crying as I did when the wind kept still and I held my breath.
“I never knew you sold so many dolls, Nikki.” Dad sighed before he removed a clothespin doll dressed in a green dress of velvet.
“I never did. I think every doll anyone in Addieville ever purchased from my shop is hanging in the trees. But all the plastic ones were probably purchased from the larger stores in Miller Junction.”
Dad turned to me. “Better get the ladder out of the garage, James. I’m going to need your help to get these dolls out of the trees.”
But my courage failed me before I reached the garage. That sobbing continued to echo deep within my ear, reminding me of the soft whispers I heard on the tape I made of my interview with Mr. Turner. I was not a foolish, young boy. I was not a boy prone to seeing monsters in shadows, never a boy to fear creatures lurked in my bedroom closet, or beneath my bed. Yet I continued to hear a sobbing, and I couldn’t bring myself to face those dolls swaying in the trees. I was afraid of looking upon one of those fabric faces to watch painted lips snarl at me.
So I bolted into my home and locked myself in the bathroom, refusing to come out to help my father carry those dolls down from the trees no matter how my mother urged me to be brave. I would’ve remained locked behind that door for the entire day had someone not visited my family.
“You need to come out now, James.” Father’s voice carried through the bathroom door. “Mr. Turner would like to speak with you.”
Mr. Turner sat in our living room, wearing the same suite he had that day when the crowd denied the ceremony deserved by that old man’s poetry. His face looked still paler than it had the morning of our interview, and his green, right eye twitched. I noticed how his hands trembled as he gripped a steaming mug of my mother’s strong coffee, and I wondered if my mother had been wise to serve him caffeine instead of gin.
“Again, Vance, I’m real sorry if my book brought any of this onto your family. Perhaps I should’ve kept all that poetry to myself.”
Mom shook her head. “Don’t you dare let this town silence you words.”
Mr. Turner nodded softly. “Perhaps my verse is too dark to share with the public.”
“The world needs your words, Mr. Turner,” responded my father. “I believe the world needs them more than ever. Too many people continue to close their eyes. We need your poetry to pry them open. There’s a cancer eating away at this town. There’s a cancer eating away at this country. Your poetry confronts it. Your poetry brings that cancer into the light when everyone else tries to ignore it. One way or another, Addieville was going to shove my family back on the road. It might’ve taken them a little longer, but they would’ve pushed us onward for one reason or another.”
Mr. Turner winced as he leaned upon his canes to stand from his chair. “You are kind people, and you do much to encourage an old poet. I hope all of it hasn’t given James too much of a fright.”
“I’m not scared.” The snarl in my voice surprised me.
Mom glared at me. “Watch your tone. As a matter of fact, Mr. Turner, James locked himself in the bathroom so he didn’t have to help his father take the dolls out of the trees. James is going to have to learn how to stand up to this kind of treatment.”
“Don’t be too hard on him, Nikki,” replied my father. “James only has a big imagination.”
Mr. Turner’s eyes peered into mine. “Oh, I think there might be a little more to it than imagination. May I have a private word with James before I return home?”
“Of course,” my mom instantly answered.
I hesitated to follow Mr. Turner into the front yard, where many dolls still swayed from their crooked branches. Those trees would never be the same for me. The weight of the dolls seemed to turn them crooked. I sensed a million bugs scurrying up and down the bark, could hear them burrowing deeper into the roots. Mr. Turner then squeezed my arm, and my mind turned quiet as those sounds fled from me, leaving me so I heard nothing else but wind.
Mr. Turner’s voice was low. “Now it’s my turn to ask you a question that cuts to the heart of many things, James Frost, and I need an honest answer. Can you promise me that?”
I nodded.
“You hear them crying, don’t you James?”
“Hear who crying?”
Mr. Turner shook his head. “Oh, there’s no use trying to hide it from me, boy. I see the fear in your eyes, and it gives you away. You hear those dolls crying in the wind. You hear them suffering at the end of their ropes.”
“But they’re only dolls.”
“They were made into something more when they were hung from these trees,” Mr. Turner whispered. “The folks of Addieville didn’t know it when they strung all these plastic people in your trees, but they turned these dolls into vessels, filled them with all their jealousy and all their hate, filled them with so much hurt. Believe me, James, there’s plenty of hurt to go around in this town. I heard these dolls crying this morning, and their anguish called me out of bed. And I know you heard them too.”
“I heard them.”
“And when did that crying start?”
I swallowed before answering. “It started in my dreams, and it didn’t go away when I opened my eyes.”
Mr. Turner’s eyes squared onto mine. “I judged by your face that you’re much like me, son. I judged by your face that you have a boneshaker’s lean.”
“What’s a boneshaker?”
“This isn’t the time and the place for me to tell you.”
“Can you tell me why this town so hates my family?”
Mr. Turner spotted a doll that still swayed from her noose, and he gently untied the rope from her plastic neck before combing her hair and gently setting the figurine into the inner pocket of his jacket. He turned to me just as he began his walk home.
“It’s the boneshaker in you that needs to know, James. I’m afraid you’re not going to find much peace until you know, and I’m afraid I’ll have to explain to you what a boneshaker is all about if I’m going to lend you any solace. Be brave the next time you visit me. Wait long enough so that you no longer hear the dolls crying in your ears, and then knock on my door. I’ll let the doll speak for herself, and you will know why this town hates your family.”
I wasted no more of my day hiding behind the bathroom’s locked door, and I summoned my courage to hold the ladder while my father stretched from the top rung to reach the dolls located higher in the trees. I suspected that animated swans of paper and ink and bone-white, skull flowers were going to be simple parlor tricks compared to the magic Mr. Turner would soon show me, and so I refused to close my eyes like a frightful child as my father handed me one doll after another until we emptied our trees of their suffering.
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