Fat & Bones (2 page)

When the cat grew dizzy and wobbled off into the wheat, Bones leaned on the axe handle and wiped his brow. He no longer had strength left to chop down the tree. He kicked at its trunk instead and broke three toes.

Meanwhile, Fat flew through the open door of the farmhouse. Bones had forgotten to close the door on his way out, and Mrs. Bald, still weeping, was in no frame of mind to have closed the door herself.

Fat hovered above the pot of pig foot stew on the stove. He held a bottle of Sunflower Skeleton Eraser in his hand. He would drop it in the soup. Then, when Bones ate his dinner, what a sight! Bones would turn into a blob of flesh on the floor—a rubbery rug—a boneless Bones!

Fat swooped and dipped in front of Mrs. Bald's face as she stood stirring the thick brown stew. She did not even blink. The woman couldn't see him through her tears. Fat giggled and said, “Get ready, bonesy Bones.”

He pulled and prodded at the stopper wedged in the bottle, but the stopper would not budge. He bit his lip, and sweat formed on the brow of his round head. He was concentrating so hard that he flew into the wall. He dipped and fluttered, holding his head with one hand, the bottle with the other. The bottle slipped, dropping into the boiling stew with a delicate
plop.

“Aaaaah!” Fat squealed.

Mrs. Bald raised her head. “Bones, is that you? I've made pig foot stew, my boy, just like you wanted. It was your father's favorite too.” At that, she began to weep all the more.

Fat did the first thing that came to mind. He dove headfirst into the stew. The mealy liquid grated against his skin. He struggled to remain clearheaded. He forced himself to open his eyes and scarcely avoided ramming into the pig foot itself. The foot brushed against his arm, squishy from the heat, and then floated away.

Mrs. Bald's wooden spoon came from behind and began stirring Fat around the pot. Nearly unconscious from holding his breath, Fat began to prepare for an undignified death as bits of vegetables and stew grit hit his face.

Then, through the murk, he spotted an elegantly scrawled
S
and lunged for it. His hand closed around the bottle. With the last of his energy, Fat climbed up the wooden spoon, gasping for air once he broke the surface. His face red and his blood vessels nearly popping, he burst from the pot with a mighty
schloop.

“Bones? What are you up to? Wash up now, the stew's nearly ready,” said Mrs. Bald, blowing her nose into her red-and-white checked apron.

Fat freed the bottle stopper with his teeth and spat it out over his shoulder. He turned the bottle upside down and dumped the Sunflower Skeleton Eraser into the pot.

Mrs. Bald smoothed her apron and picked up her wooden spoon. She stirred the stew once more and then lifted the spoon to her mouth for a taste test, licking it all over with her long pink tongue.

“No!” cried Fat. He had not intended Sunflower Skeleton Eraser for Mrs. Bald. If Bones found his mother flattened on the floor by the stove, he might figure the stew was to blame and not take a bite.

But it was too late.

The cat streaked in from outside, trailing blood from what was left of its tail. Moments later, Bones entered, his axe slung over his shoulder.

In less time than it took for Bones to hang up his hat, Mrs. Bald had dissolved into a mass of skin, fingernails, and hair, lying helpless on the floor. Only her eyeballs remained their original shape.

“Ma?” said Bones, poking her with his finger. “How'd you get so flat?”

Mrs. Bald looked from him to the pot on the stove.

“Did you burn yourself flat?” asked Bones.

Mrs. Bald's eyeballs swiveled in their sockets.

“Did you cry yourself flat?”

Mrs. Bald wheezed.

Fat chose this moment to take flight. But the stew had begun to congeal on his wings, and he moved slowly.

Bones saw Fat floundering through the air. He looked at the pot on the stove. Though not usually a very clever man, he put two and two together.

“You dirty rotten fairy!” He lunged. He reached. He grabbed. He missed.

Although Fat would have preferred to squeeze out a triumphant cackle, all he could manage was a toadlike croak. The hardened stew had thrown off his navigation skills. After banging into the doorpost, then banging into the post again, he escaped into the night air.

“I'll skin you alive, you fat devil!” screamed Bones.

The tailless cat sat on Mrs. Bald's throat, licking her face.

Mrs. Bald, lying helpless on the kitchen floor, was in danger of drowning in her own tears. She had cried the night through. Bones discovered this when he awoke the next morning and stepped from the bottom stair into an inch of water. He was not clever enough to think what to do with her. Even now, standing over her with his hands on his hips, he could think of only himself and his empty stomach.

“Where're my pancakes?” he said.

Only then did Bones realize that if he did not stretch his mother out or hang her up somewhere, she would drown, and he would never eat again. Under the threat of starvation, Bones hoisted his mother over his shoulders and transferred her to the clotheslines outside. He secured her on the line with wooden pins.

Bones's stomach growled. He wanted pancakes. He wanted pancakes so badly that he went to the garage and got the tire pump. He stuck the nozzle into his mother's mouth and held her lips close around it. Then he pumped. He pumped and pumped and pumped, but she did not inflate. Instead, she kept crying, her sobs shaking the clothesline on which she hung.

Bones tossed the tire pump aside and turned toward Fat's tree, his anger mounting as it never had before. He would catch that ugly varmint of a fairy even if he killed himself in the process.

While Bones rubbed his empty belly and thought up ways to murder Fat, Fat soaked in a bubble bath. He had spent the night immersed in warm rainwater, plucking bits of hardened stew from his skin and wings. Every joint hurt. He had known he was getting old, but this morning he felt it keenly. Old and fat. He had drunk too many mugs of acorn juice in his youth, and he was paying for it now.

A spasm in his stomach made him double over. He coughed and sputtered as the pain ebbed away. He was no quitter, though. He was no lightweight. “With war comes sacrifice,” he said. He pounded his chest with his fists and stretched his wings so that rainwater sprayed everywhere.

As if by mutual agreement, Fat and Bones came face-to-face in the middle of the field. Bones had been racing toward the tree with a mind to stuff burning leaves in Fat's hole. Fat had been flying as fast as he could toward the farmhouse, intent on contaminating the drinking water with Bluebell Blindness Inducer. Each man halted when he realized his enemy stood or, in Fat's case, hovered in front of him. Being in such close proximity for the first time unnerved them both. Fat and Bones grew bashful. Bones shuffled his feet and even whistled a note. Fat flew in brief thrusts like a hummingbird.

Bones thought he should make conversation. “My Ma's flat,” he said.

Not wanting to seem rude, Fat said, “Yes. She was supposed to be you. Or you were supposed to be her. Be flat, I mean.” Poised on the tip of a wheat stalk, he added, “There are marks on my tree.”

“Yeah,” said Bones. “Cat kept me from chopping it down.”

Things might have gone differently from that moment on if a strong wind had not lifted Fat from the wheat stalk and hurtled him into Bones's face. There might have been peace. But broken noses tend not to make friends of enemies, so while both Bones and Fat dabbed at the blood trickling down from their nostrils, the outcome became clear—they would fight to the death.

“I will shred your wings to pieces with a very tiny pitchfork!” screamed Bones.

“If you had a very tiny pitchfork, I would shove it up your big nose into your very tiny brain!” screeched Fat.

“Vermin!”

“Lummox!”

“Pip-squeak!”

“Meathead!”

Fat sliced through the air, shrieking toward Bones with the speed of a young fairy. He rammed into Bones's head, denting the man's skull. But as Fat tried to back up, to fly away, Bones's bramble hair snagged the fairy's wings. Thus bound, the two of them reeled across the field.

“Lemmego!” cried Fat.

“C-can't see,” gagged Bones. The dent in his head had damaged his sight.

Running and stumbling, spinning and falling, the two enemies crashed through the wheat, stomping down the slim golden reeds until not one strand remained. The field was destroyed.

From the clotheslines, Mrs. Bald continued to weep. The sun could not dry her eyes fast enough to keep her sorrow from flowing.

Exhausted, Bones finally fell to his knees before his hanging mother. His eyes crossed in confusion. Then he tipped over, crashing to the ground with his hands by his side. The force of the fall freed Fat's wings, and the fairy stood up, pumping his short arms in the air as if he had conquered the world.

The cat, licking up what it could of Mrs. Bald's tears, turned toward him …