Nino's Mother
A Short Story
by Charles Henderson
Based on a legend told by scoutmasters who find it amusing to scare the hell out of 10-year-old boys by telling them ghost stories after dark on camping trips. As one such lad, it is to my fellow Boy Scouts who shivered with me one wintery night before Christmas 1958, frightened out of our wits as we sat knee to knee, watching our campfire and hearing a most bloody tale, that I dedicate this story.
"That moon. It's bad luck," Rex Barnes said looking across the campfire at Toby Bach. Then he glanced at the wide eyes of the dozen boys who sat cross-ankle, crowded in a circle around the flames, warming themselves and feeling somehow magically protected by the flickering glow: Protected from what they could not see hidden in the depths of the forest's towering blackness. Rex felt uneasy too, watching the long shadows cast by the firelight as they danced against the tall Ponderosa Pines and Douglas Firs that loomed around them.
"Back on the reservation, people believed my grandfather could talk to the spirits," Rex said in a low voice, casting his eyes down at the fire. He knew better than to look at Toby Bach, a man quick with thoughtless words. Toby frequently pounced without mercy whenever he saw a chance to exercise his notion of wit and his sense of superiority. Thus Rex avoided the older man's glance and focused on the burning logs, bracing himself for a low-flung verbal dart. But this time it did not come.
"I'm not ashamed to tell you either," Rex said bravely and then looked cautiously through the flames at the scoutmaster, "I believe it too."
Toby still said nothing. He just sucked a muffled whistle of air through his pipe.
"When I was a boy, he took me with him to Sixteen Springs Canyon, and we stayed there for three days," Rex said, looking at the boys' huddled faces. "We built no fire and ate nothing. He laid a circle of smooth stones around us when the snow began to fall on the third day. It was the first snow after summer, just like this snow we had today. My grandfather said that the stones would keep us from crossing into the spirit world and would keep them from crossing into ours. On that night the moon was full, just like this one, and I saw the spirits. They came and squatted around our circle of stones and looked at us. And they spoke to my grandfather. I do not know what they said, because they spoke in the old language. But I did see them and I heard their voices.
"My grandfather told me that when the first snow comes with a full moon, that the spirits can be with us then. And we should be careful of them."
Straight up, the moon, small as a dime, cast silver light through thin clouds as they drifted southeastward. Toby Bach tilted his head back and gazed up through the wide circle of trees that surrounded the campsite. He watched the moon and the clouds, then looked at Rex and shrugged. "I guess we'd better be careful then, eh Rex?" Toby said sourly and chuckled through his teeth clenched on the pipe's stem.
"That why you laid the stones around our tents, Mr. Barnes?" asked one of the boys, a round-faced 12-year-old named John Whitten.
Toby Bach looked at the boy and then at Rex. "Stones around the tents?" Toby asked.
Then he took the pipe from his mouth and bellowed a laugh the echoed through the black canyon. "Maybe I should arrange a night light for you!" Toby roared and laughed more.
