The Bones of Bonnie Jean

Early on a Saturday morning in mid October while Tasha was away visiting family, our doorbell rang. Standing there on the stoop was our old friend Arf Brickwall. A little over six feet with a shaggy mop of gray hair, bloodshot blue eyes and a drooping mustache, he looked the epitome of the syndicated columnist that he was. "Surprise!" He gave me his customary wink, a perfunctory hug and with several pieces of luggage in tow lumbered into the cottage.

He set down his bags. "That couch looks so inviting. Is breakfast still on the kitchen table? Any of Tasha's homemade scones available? It's been way too long," he babbled.

"Lately you always appear when she's out of town," I grinned. "I guess you'll have to put up with my cooking."

He frowned. "That's all right we can eat out." Then his eyes lit up. "So you're home alone. Good. You can help me."

A cloud of doubt moved in on me with hurricane force. "Doing what this time?"

"It's a long story." He yawned. "And I've got jet lag, but since you saw me last I've tramped both the lowlands and the highlands of Scotland. I've sat in cramped little huts with wise women and sages who spoke in dialects I could barely understand. Yet I persisted in my quest and finally I was able to track down Loch Dred."

His eyes glistened and his expression was intense. For a moment I wondered if he had finally gone round the bend.

"That's where I found her grave," he said dramatically. "Or at least whatever was left of it."

Coincidently, a cool breeze and the scent of sweet Scottish heather whisked through the cottage. From the corner of my eye I saw the impish ghostly form of his beloved Bonnie Jean. I was reminded of our last adventure when Arf and I discovered the laboratory of the mystical Dr Dee nestled mysteriously within the confines of Boston's Beacon Hill. He had said that if Arf wanted him to restore her to flesh and blood he must first go to Scotland and retrieve her bones.

"You've been to Scotland!"

"Trudged every inch of it!" Arf grimaced. "When I wasn't peering into old graveyards I'd read Burns and munch on haggis. She might have been one of the saucy lasses in his Merry Muses of Caledonia. Those rhymes have been banned more often than Fanny Hill," he snickered.

My eye was drawn to the back of his neck where ghostly fingers were playing with his hair. He shivered gleefully.

"Stop that, my darling," he giggled. "But everything came to a dead end. Then I came across a toothless old hag in a pub who aimed me in the direction of Loch Dred. I was warned that it was the most haunted locale in Scotland. And for that reason alone it wasn't on any tourists' maps."

"And you found it."

"More to the point it found me. The hag told me to drink a quantity of Glen Dred, a thirty year old single malt Scotch and then to wander the moors on a moonlit night."

"Loch Dred." I nodded. "Certainly has an eerie ring to it."

"The broken ankle capital of Scotland. But I survived." He said proudly.

"All these sharp jagged rocks underfoot. Nothing but steep wee hillocks and then those endless dark clammy moors where you could hear the ghostly hounds baying in the darkness."

I was impressed. "You've got yourself a book here."

"Had to bribe the constabulary. More cases of Glen Dred than you could shake a divining rod at. But once they looked the other way I was able to unearth her bones."

"They're here now? And soon that incredibly lovely and sensual ghost who's been keeping you company for all these years will become a real woman again?"

"Oh she's real enough just the way she is," Arf assured me. "But try doing the tango with a ghost; it just doesn't wash at the Washington Press Club. And I've been called inebriated once too often."

He paused and looked helplessly toward the kitchen. "Got any of your wife's scones or blueberry pie? Anything to eat?"

I nodded. As we started toward the kitchen he pointed to his luggage. "And just to be on the safe side, even though I wanted her remains closer I kept her out of my carryon." His voice fell. "You never know about airport security these days. Her bones are way down in there," he pointed at his old leather valise, "right next to my laundry and underwear."

"Amazing." I felt a soft breeze whistle through my hair and smiled knowing that Bonnie Jean was happy to be back in Grafton.

"And as soon as I wash up and take us out to lunch we'll take a spin into Boston and I'll have me my woman for real."

"And you know for sure that this is your Bonnie Jean and not someone by the same name? I mean, aren't there lots of Bonnie Jean's buried all over Scotland?"

"Don't even go there!" Arf rebuked. "I've no time anymore for occupational skepticism."

Dr. John Dee, celebrated 16th Century Scottish magus and Royal Physician to the Court of Elizabeth the First did not seem especially pleased to see Arf again. Reluctantly, grumbling what sounded like old Scottish expletives best not repeated, he stood aside and allowed us to enter his small stone laboratory. It was nestled in a crevice between narrow row houses on one of Beacon Hill's cobblestone lanes. How we found our way back to it still remains a mystery to me.

How he had been transported to this present time is also a mystery. I suppose the best explanation a neophyte like myself could offer any suspicious reader would be to suggest that once we lucked into a parking space along Charles Street we were guided by a mystical and inexplicable kismet. Those powers of mystery and wonder provided greater guidance for us than any street map. For even though we'd been here before neither of us would have been able to find our way without supernatural assistance.

Humbly Arf smiled and gave the good Doctor a polite bow. Then proudly he held out the battered leather satchel he'd had since prep school. Inside wrapped in his old Washington Redskin tee shirts were what was purported to be the bones of his beloved Bonnie Jean. Her scent of sweet Highland heather swirled about the laboratory.

Dr. Dee sneezed twice, wiped his nose with a red silk handkerchief and looked at Arf over his half moon spectacles. "So yer' still testing the fates, are ye?" Dr. Dee groused. "Well let's see what ye brought back from the sacred sod." Dr. Dee snatched the satchel from Arf and placed it atop his long wooden laboratory table. However before opening it, he sprayed it with a substance that smelt of alcohol and burnt sage. Then he waved his arms over it and closing his eyes spoke a lengthy litany in Latin. I figured this vigorous incantation was intended to frighten away any marauding ghosts or poltergeists out for a little mischief.

He squinted through his spectacles and looked hard at Arf "Ye can't be too careful when reaching into the nether world," he said. He pronounced each syllable emphatically with a burr to his "rs". Then seemingly content that sufficient purification had occurred, he unwrapped each bone as though it were a sacred relic. Reverently he placed them carefully on his narrow wooden table, arranging them in the semblance of a skeleton.

"Toothless," he sighed when he put her skull just above the remnants of her collarbone. "And what's this?" still sounding annoyed he studied an additional though considerably smaller bone and frowned. "Was she buried with some small beastie by her side?" He questioned. "For surely this bone is not from her skeleton. Go ahead, ask the lass!" He told Arf.

Arf's face reddened. He gulped and started to stammer. I knew that he'd been through a lot. Judging from his nervous condition perhaps asking her something as specific as this right then might be difficult.

I put my hand on Arf's shoulder. "Bonnie Jean," I volunteered, "was some sort of a pet buried with you?" But there was no response.

"Perhaps a familiar of some sort. What I sense here was her cat," Dr. Dee said.

Arf wrinkled his nose. "I'm allergic to cats." He looked around the laboratory. "I don't see her right now." Then he started sneezing.

Dr. Dee sighed. "A complication," he grumbled. "Over time, human beings and their familiars can become linked. And upon Bonnie Jean's rebirth," he paused and shrugged his shoulders, "well……. there could be complications."

"Waddah ya mean?" Arf sounded bewildered. "She won't have whiskers will she? Or like, you know, claws?"

""You're asking questions that have no immediate answers," Dr Dee began. "What we're doing here is of such an extraordinary nature," he paused and scratched his balding pate. "And I canna be responsible for the final outcome except to assure you that I'll do me best."

Arf grimaced. "So now I can look forward to a toothless bride who might be part cat? Next thing you know I'll have to go out and buy her a scratching post."

"You can always take her to a dentist and get her a set of dentures." I said hoping to be helpful. "I know of a really good one."

"That's a possibility." Dr Dee offered. "But as I've said so many times before, sometimes it's best to leave things as they are especially if you're somewhat satisfied with them that way."

But at that moment Arf wasn't buying his philosophy. "No! Bring her back," he insisted. "I didn't trudge all over Scotland and bribe half the cops at Loch Dred to give up now just because she might cough up an occasional hairball."

Dr. Dee nodded and turned toward the shelves and cabinets that lined his laboratory walls. Mumbling to himself began taking down glass beakers filled with odd herbal compounds and packets of other mysterious substances.

Dr John Dee set down the assortment of beakers, packets of herbs and clay jars he had taken from his cabinets. He stared at the odd assortment of bones laid on his wooden worktable in the form of a human body. He looked over at Arf and scowled. "And you're sure this is all there was in her grave?

"Absolutely," Arf said. "No bones about it."

Judging from the way the celebrated royal magus fidgeted and paced about his laboratory I had a sense that something might be wrong. With the exception of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, I'd never come upon any successful attempt to bring someone back from the dead, especially if the deceased had passed over several hundred years earlier. Yet history had attested to Dr Dee's brilliance and who was I to question the byways of the supernatural. "You've done this before doctor?" I asked as politely as possible.

He turned his piercing gaze toward me. "More in olden times." He sighed and looked over at Arf. "Be careful what ye ask for," he said ominously, "for ye may get just that and then face the consequences. Her bones date back to an earlier time. Her solid flesh has long since melted and resolved itself upon its journey to the immortal spheres." Then he turned back to the table and began mumbling.

Arf looked at me. "What's he getting at?"

I shook my head and shrugged. "Just that what sits up from that table may not be quite what you're expecting to see." I began as tactfully as I could. "Since Bonnie Jean first took up with you, you're used to a fun loving, bawdy wench who dazzles you with her sensuality and beauty."

"Anything wrong with that?" Arf asked defiantly.

"Of course not. But what I think he's trying to say is that instead of the gorgeous woman you're expecting to see rematerialized you could well have a toothless grumpy old hag in your arms."

"I don't think so," Arf was adamant. "I know this woman. Why we make Lasagna together. She skips around my condo in her alltogethers. She's got more pizzazz than any woman I've ever met."

"But that's because she's dead." I pleaded. "She's flung her inhibitions to the wind. You can do that when you're dead, but all that could change."

"She would never change," he said staunchly. "I know my Bonnie Jean!"

"Not to mention the legal issue of citizenship," I persisted. "If Immigration ever finds out about her, bingo, she's immediately classified as an illegal alien and deported. Try telling them she was born around the time of the War of 1812 and you'll both find yourselves in a holding cell somewhere, maybe in Afghanistan "

His forehead wrinkled and the corners of his mouth drooped. "They only do that to Mexicans and Muslims, don't they?"

" Ever since 9/11 it applies to everyone. So forget about anything legal like her ever getting a passport, or a driver's license, or for that matter even a marriage license. I'm not saying you can't spend a bundle of money on lawyers and possibly surmount some of these obstacles but things might be a lot easier for you both if you just let her stay dead."

"We're still a free country, aren't we?" Arf rolled his eyes. "I've got a little clout you know. I played chopsticks with Nixon. Talked golf with Gerry Ford, even had grits for breakfast with the Carters."

"It's a different country today. People are scared."

"Of what!"

"The boogie man. Things that go bump in the night."

"Too much SiFi Channel," he said cynically.

"Too much Karl Rove and the conservative agenda of fear."

"He's resigned, off playing golf with Nietzsche."

"Arf, why not just write a book about your love life with Bonnie Jean—how a dead woman can make you happier than a live one?"

"You wouldn't talk this way if your wife were a ghost and people looked at you like you were a whack job every time the two of you went out on a dinner cruise up the Potomac or took a stroll arm in arm around the Monument."

Dr Dee turned around and went to his bookcase. He pulled out an ancient large leather volume and set it carefully on the table. As he opened it I craned my neck to get a look at the pages but he waved me off and pointed to a chair. All I could see was that the text was in Latin and hand lettered in a variety of colored inks. Briefly I glimpsed alchemical designs and drawings interspersed with the hand written text.

Arf began to shake. "I'm just like any other guy. I just want to take her to the mall and buy her things and then go to a concert at the Lincoln Center. Is that asking too much?" He held his palms open as though questioning a higher authority. Besides, what else can you do with your wife of a Saturday night in DC.?"

Dr. Dee kneaded a powdery substance with his bony wrinkled fingers and molded it over Bonnie Jean"s skeleton. Before it could harden he quickly smoothed and shaped it into a lush physical form.

"Looks like he"s getting ready to bake bread," Arf said.

I gazed admiringly at Dr. Dee"s sculptural talents. "I think he"s recreating her earthly form."

The scent of Highland heather swirled around us. Arf"s tweed jacket flapped open. He closed his eyes. "She"s upset about the way he"s shaping her hips and thighs." Bewilderment was evident in his voice.

"I"d let it ride if I were you. Once she"s back in her body you can always sign her up for a health club or get her a personal trainer."

Dr. Dee frowned, stopped what he was doing and turned toward Arf. "There"s no telling where all this could lead. I"m just not sure. Ye need to know that."

"Waddya mean?" Arf inquired gruffly.

"Just no telling." He repeated. "I remember being called in by Bloody Mary herself and being commandeered to restore a battalion lost in France." He sighed and mopped his brow. " I did the best I could."

" Well, what happened?" Arf"s eyes grew wide.

"Soldiers never did return. But word was that wild pigs turned up all over the countryside. Ye can know the Books of the Dead better than refuted passages from Deuteronomy and still not find the right road back." Then he turned and put a sheet over the form he had created.

He lit a long wooden match and held it against what appeared to be strips of magnesium ribbon. A brilliant burst of flame ensued followed by distant shrieks and cries. A door in mid air opened and ghostly essences hovered around the shroud.

Arf clenched his teeth. "Maybe they"re her dead relatives come to see her off." But his face was white. The immediacy of all this was way more real than any special effects in a Hollywood horror flick. I cold scarcely believe my eyes; this was the real thing.

"I call upon the spirit of Bonnie Jean to regain her earthly essence this side of paradise to join this man through thick and thin." Dr Dee intoned. He waved a wand and a being began to take shape. It had to be Bonnie Jean. The scent of highland heather was intense. Her eyes were the brightest of blue and her hair was a fall of shiny autumn leaves cascading around her.

"Arf," she said tenderly. "I"ll come back to ye now but ye must agree to let me be me," Her voice faded. "Let me be me."

"What does that mean? You are you. Who else could you be?"

"In the special wood by the lochs of greenery and tartans clan," came a jumble of words. "That ye may turn away from all that is and take the ax and chop the wood that we be warm when winter snows cover the paths."

"What"s she talking about?" Arf blinked and shook his head.

"I think she"s trying to say she wants the two of you to live the simple life back in Scotland."

She stroked the huge furry cat that had materialized in her arms. Her eyes shone brightly. "And ye"ll fish in the streams and hunt the wild beasts and skin them that I may cook the meat for ye in our stone fireplace. And like me kin before me we"ll keep the bees and the chickens and I will shear our sheep and weave yer plaidy." Her voice trailed off."

"But I"m allergic to bees," Arf admitted. "I don"t even like the outdoors."

"Maybe for Christmas I"ll send you a subscription to Field And Stream." I said.

"We can"t live that way!" Arf grimaced. "No cell phone towers. How can I get my laptop networked or my columns in on time?"

"What ye must understand," Dr Dee interjected, "is that for her to meet ye again in yer own time means yer time and hers must merge, and for her that means to be in the Highlands where all can be familiar and she can milk her cow while you chop the wood."

"I never chopped anything in my life." Arf protested. "I don"t even know how to make chopped liver."

Her eyes lit up. "Oh and when ye"re not doin" yer chores we"ll walk together in the woods and hear the sweet laughter of the elves and fairies. We"ll spend our nights locked in our true embrace. And ye"ll tend the sheep and I"ll weave our garments, and ye"ll work the farm and I"ll put food by for the winter." There was pleading in her voice.

"Farms make me claustrophobic. And I have allergies." Then he began to sneeze.

As she was speaking, her cat hissed and reached out a clawed paw in his direction.

"Makes sense," I said. She has to return to what was once for her so she can survive. Once she is fully materialized, the woman who walks out of here with you could never handle the beltway."

"That cat hates me!" Arf looked askance at the furious animal. Clawing and hissing it reached toward him, its fangs sharp in its wide open mouth. Arf sneezed and backed away.

Dr Dee frowned. Waving his wand over Bonnie Jean's essence he repeated his incantation. With each wave she would materialize fully then slowly fade backwards into a shadowy haze.

"Make up yer mind," he told Arf crossly. "Ye can't expect the energy to hold steady while you two have a lover's spat."

"No one ever said I'd have to give everything up and go live in some damp hovel in the middle of nowhere," Arf groused.

"'Tis me home and me hearth and me heart and I'm wanting to share it all with ye," Bonnie Jean pleaded. "You can't expect me to agree to dwell with ye in a den of thieves--liars who would steal the very bread from your plate."

Arf scowled "You're talking about my home town."

"You called them that many times: Liars and cheats."

"But that's how Congress works," Arf flustered. "And when you live in the middle of it, after a while it rolls off your back. The old bipartisan same old same old."

"Come with me to a kinder place and live with me and be my love," she pleaded. Her cat wailed again. She soothed it gently cradling it in her arms. The cat hissed and spat.

Arf backed away and sneezed.

She hugged the beast closer. "Percival's just tryin' to talk sense at ye." She said tartly. "And to think you'd choose a den of thieves over the sweet highland heather."

"Stop with that den of thieves stuff!" Arf blurted.

"Since I've known ye you've never had a good thing to say about anyone there and now you clutch their lies to your bosom instead of me."

"Forget it!" Arf's face reddened. "The Beltway's in my blood. I can't help it. I'm addicted to it. Everyone living in DC ends up that way."

Before she could reply a cold wind blew through Dr. Dee's laboratory. A roguish voice called out. "Come back to me my Bonnie Jean." And from the shadows emerged the dim shape of a man who looked as though he'd stepped from the cast of Pirates of The Caribbean.

"Oh Captain, my captain." Bonnie Jean laughed and a slight smiled played at the edges of her lips. "Ye'll be haunting that Inn in olde Grafton and stealing kisses from the ladies in their sleep without me."

He laughed "But without ye by my side it can't be the same! Come back with me that we may break open new kegs of wine."

"You have no right to interrupt our conversation." Arf huffed. "Stay out of our domestic affairs. Besides you're dead."

"So she's unless you agree to go back to the highlands with her," I reminded him.

"You always liked it when we went for picnics at the Monument," Arf pleaded. "I'll get you charge cards for all the high end shops in Georgetown."

"Nay! Come back to me," wailed the spirit of the pirate captain. "There are good times still to be had." He patted his tummy. "And I've me treasure to share with ye."

"What am I to do," Bonnie Jean's cried piteously.

"I've never cared for any woman alive as much as I care for you," Arf pleaded.

"What you've got to understand is that I'm just not a woodsy kind of guy. I couldn't last without my cell phone, my laptop, air conditioning." He gulped and his voice fell. "My Ipod. Even my microwave."

"And it's all that frequency that will turn ye to dust before yer time," She said scornfully. "Livin' in simplicity means a longer, more peaceful lifetime."

"She's making a good case." I urged him.

"She'll never be yours!" The ghost of the pirate captain cried. He drew his sword and waved it about. "A duel to the death," he yelled. His sword arced in Arf's direction.

"No fair," Arf yelled.. "You're already dead!"

"Personally I don't think you stand a ghost of a chance up against this guy." I told him. Clumsily Arf stumbled away from the sword.

"Me ux, me jo," cried yet another voice. "Oh come back with me to our eternal resting place in Glen Dred."

Abruptly the sword dropped. Arf breathed a sigh of relief.

"Go back to sleep, husband" Bonnie Jean said forcefully. She glared at the ghostly figure that had just appeared, a rugged balding blacksmith in a worn leather apron. "You don't need me for your eternal rest."

"Oh but I do," he cried. "Why without you who will feed the children?"

"Come back with me to the inn that we may go on having our fun." implored the Sea Captain, "we have such good times together."

"Where did all these men come from," Arf said in bewilderment "And when have you had time for them?"

"While you sleep. And snore so loud you wake the dead." Bonnie Jean said airily.