Page 80 of The Talking Bone

Ruby ran into the death house. Behind her, Jerrod Tinsley, stepping from his car and straightening his tie, barely had time to think of trying to stop her before she was through the doors. The reporters blinked at the bloody woman running into the prison.

In the viewing room, Ruby could see Mitchell through the glass. He was on the gurney. They were all watching the final seconds drain away on the clock. She knew she looked a mess, with a bloody scalp and dirt and mud and leaves all over her clothes. Her arms were coated with blood.

Everyone turned. Terrence half rose.

The corrections officers who had let her in followed her, out of concern.

Mitchell met her eyes, and the warden raised his hand, reluctantly. He did not want to postpone this execution.

She said the one thing she knew would get their attention.

“Call the governor. Tell him there’s something he wants to know.”

46.

Now the basket where the bone waited is empty, the lid ajar. The breath that moved there is gone. The talking bone lies in peace, tended by Grandfather, while Ruby travels across this broken landscape of crime and loss. None of the bodies exhumed have been identified as her mom, Desirée. She is still searching for her, hoping against hope that she is still alive. Perhaps you can join her, and help in her search.

The governor gave me the only clemency he has ever granted, in exchange for the evidence that would take down his political rival, the district attorney, Jerrod Tinsley. Ruby stood up in court and said only what she’d agreed to say, which was that Tinsley had hired a serial killer named Frank Castle to cover up his own corruption. His campaign for governor ended before it began, and the governor came out looking tough on crime, just as Ruby had promised him he would. They say he’s going to win in a landslide.

None of them really wanted Jerrod Tinsley to be punished, since that would have been a bad precedent for other district attorneys, so he was forced into early retirement. Ruby says it’s rare for police or prosecutors to face consequences for false convictions, so that was the best she could do.

The Pickleweed police were given credit for solving the case against Frank Castle, and a parade was given in their honor. That was also part of the deal. No one suffered, except for me. The newspapers wrote about the case like it was all just a big mistake. But life is never a mistake. Not mine or Betty’s or yours.

Or the women’s.

Most of the other missing women were found and identified. Delaney helped make the DNA matches, so the families could get the remains back. It’s funny how we can care so deeply about some people and not at all about others. Maybe the world just feels too big for us to care about everyone at once. One of the women Delaney identified was Rosanna Higginbottom. I heard the sheriff finally broke down and sobbed when he picked up the remains of his wife. He and his daughter have a shaky resolve to try to form a relationship, but I don’t know how that will end.

I returned here, to Oregon. I’m staying with my grandfather, just until I get back on my feet. Ruby has warned me not to delay my reintegration. To get back out there. So I got a job, back at the same shoe company, only this time I’m working with Ronald, her new sweetheart. They’re making a go of things. She seems pretty happy, the rare times I see her. But then the look comes over her face again, and I know she wants her mother. I can relate.

Soon, I think, I will move out. I have my eye on an apartment downtown. I want to live by cafés and places where I can meet others. I have hope that someday I will look out a window and not see concrete walls. I hope that the nightmare has ended. I hope that I will stop waking in the mornings in panic and desperation—with the fear that this is the death dream and I am still on that gurney. When you have come so close to death, life feels unreal. Ruby tells me that the only cure is to keep moving. Someday, she says, I will feel a sense of place in this world. I hope that’s true. But I suspect she might be lying to me, and to herself. I tell myself I don’t need to feel a sense of place in this world to make it my own. This world is magic, and it belongs to everyone.

Here’s what I have learned: I think that men like me are boneslike my mother. We are destined to be taken, because we have been appointed the sacrifices that people think will make them safe. They may not always wish us ill, but neither will they try to stop us from dying.

But then there are people like Ruby. She’s trying to change things. One bone at a time. One soul she sets free. She doesn’t do it for accolades, or even for a sense of justice. She does it because it’s the right thing to do. We are like birds in the night; we are like angels with corn husk wings rising to the sky.

It is morning here. I open my eyes and see the rectangle of door. I see my grandfather sleeping nearby. I walk outside to the green, green river, and I think about all that is terrible about this life, and all the mercy and love that can exist.