My Father’s Bone

 See that?  A piece of the bone my father handed me was cleanly sheared off.  This is a neck bone, a vertebrae.  He made a chopping motion to the back of his own neck.

My father had been searching for lost Spanish gold in the deserts near White Sands, New Mexico most every summer for a decade.  The ranch owner showed him the ruins of an old Anasazi pueblo, and my father would dig around in it year after year.

He said the bone was probably from a child or small woman because it was so small.  He said that the way the edge was cut, it looked like it was probably sheared off by a sword.

Rumors of the Spanish gold were perpetuated by the aging ranch owner to hook my father into returning and performing work around the ranch.  Fence mending and roof patching that her drunken ranch hand (my father’s friend) couldn’t complete by himself would slowly get finished when he was around rather than not ever getting finished at all.  I believe what really attracted my father was the way the stars would talk to you at night.

The ranch butted up against the White Sands Missile Range.  The Spanish had armor and swords and influenza and smallpox, and this was where we tested the swords of our day – stealth planes, drones, atomic bombs.

My father turned the bone over in his hand and explained his theory on the death of the human who used to own it as if he were explaining how an engine worked.  Swords aren’t really sharp, but they’re powerful.  One chop looks like it got halfway through but the blow wasn’t powerful enough.   The second chop did the trick.

I didn’t tell my father that I thought bones from four hundred years ago would probably turn to dust in your hand.

I think the Spanish made the natives bury their gold for them, and then chop chop.

 This is the only bone you found, right?

In that bone was the story of death and the promise of riches.  I realized that most of all, it symbolized hope to my father.  I turned it over in my hand.  I thought it was probably evidence of a horrible crime.  More than likely, it was just the vertebrae of a sick calf that died out on the prairie of exposure.  My father saw my skepticism and snatched the bone back out of my hand.  Gimme that.