Fat & Bones by Larissa Theule Page B

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.
    â€œMa?” said Bones, poking her with his finger. “How’d you get so flat?”
    Mrs. Bald looked from him to the pot on the stove.

    â€œDid you burn yourself flat?” asked Bones.
    Mrs. Bald’s eyeballs swiveled in their sockets.
    â€œDid 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.
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œI’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.
    â€œWhere’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