Pig Bones

When Riley heard her mother’s footsteps coming, she quickly climbed onto her dresser, pushed up a ceiling tile and hid a small black notebook in the plenum space above the ceiling.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” Riley said, and the footsteps turned around and went back to the kitchen.

At dinner, Riley studied her parents. They had no concern but for their ordinary daily doings and bingo night down at the Legion. If she told them about the notebook, they’d probably say it was junk. It was a conversation Riley didn’t want to have. At the very least, the notebook was interesting and maybe it would be worth something to a collector. Riley planned on going to college in a couple of years. Any money she could make now would help. She wondered how much money her parents had in the bank. Their house was small and needed repair, but if it weren’t for the crack in the stone cellar wall and Riley having to dig out around it, she would never have found the notebook. Or the bones.

“I see you’re down past the frost line already.” Riley’s father said. “That’s good. Got to dig out the whole wall. Corner to corner. Get it sealed up and reinforced. Get those jacks out of there.” Riley didn’t answer. She got up and washed her dishes so she could get back to digging. There were things to be found out there.

Outside, Riley picked up the shovel and climbed down into the trench. It was grueling work at first, but now the sound of the shovel slicing into earth was rhythmic and soothing, and small treasures kept turning up. Bones mostly. Riley started a collection. The trench had grown deep and extended the entire length of the house. At the deepest part, the banks were higher than Riley’s head. A chill slid down the back of her neck and down her arms when the phrase ‘six feet under’ popped into her head. It didn’t stop her, though. Lucky thing because a moment later she saw a string like object near her feet. She picked it up and cleaned it off to discover a bracelet with the initials TB engraved on a heart. Riley added the bracelet to the pile of bones and kept digging.

When her father came out to check on her progress and saw the pile of bones, he dismissed them. “Probably from a pig roast people had before we bought the place. That’s what people did back then,” he said. “Buried trash in the yard.”

It was earlier that day that Riley had unearthed the metal box that contained the notebook. She’d taken it into the barn and pried it open with a screwdriver. The notebook pages were so perfectly preserved it made her shiver. She couldn’t wait to look through it after everyone was asleep.

When daylight dwindled, Riley dug in the porchlight, filling the wheelbarrow at the bottom of the trench and pushing it up the slope at the far end to dump it. Bone after bone, Riley dug. A skull, if there was one, would solidify her suspicion that someone had been buried alongside the house. It was nearly midnight when Riley noticed a flap dangling from the side of the bank. She wondered how she’d missed it before. She supposed it blended in with the roots protruding from the bank. There were so many, reaching out like gnarled hands which every so often snagged her T-shirt or hair. She pulled two boot fragments out of the side of the bank. They were child sized with holes for laces that went up over the ankle. Riley placed them with the bones and the bracelet then took them all into the barn and set them on a workbench for the night. “Pig bones,” Riley mumbled to herself as she headed in for the night. “Right. And pig shoes. A pig bracelet. And a pig notebook.”

Back in her bedroom, Riley retrieved the notebook from above the ceiling tiles and curled up on her bed with it. On the inside cover was handwritten Tiesa’s Dienynas. Riley skimmed through the yellowed pages stopping here and there to read about sewing, cooking, church, and what appeared to be the sale of Tiesa’s grandfather’s business. June 8, 1945--Today was the last day at Papa Bulve. The shelves have been sold. Matis and I helped all day. An ill-tempered man came in the evening and gave Grandfather a bag. The man spoke the old language and I did not understand but for a few words. Karas, auksas, and ruble. War, gold, & Soviet money. Grandfather told me to put the bag behind the chickens and to never speak of it to Grandmother or anyone. I did so.

Riley continued to read. An entry dated August 15, 1945 was for a funeral. It was only two months later; the grandfather had died. Tiesa had written: The man who spoke the old language was at the funeral. I saw him looking at me from the parlor not in a kind way. I hope I shall never see him again.

Riley’s suspicions grew. Who was this ill-tempered man and why was he staring at Tiesa? Riley tossed and turned all night long. What was in the bag? And how could you hide something behind the chickens? And worse, were the bones she found Tiesa’s?

The next day when Riley was in the barn putting air in the wheelbarrow tire, something caught her eye. There was an old metal sign screwed to the far wall. It had been there as long as she could remember. She’d hardly noticed it behind an old bedframe, some boards, and the tractor. It was about knee height. Its white paint was faded and rusty, and there were three red chickens on it. Riley weaved her way to where the sign was nailed to two upright boards creating a gap behind and between the sign and the outer siding. She peered over the top edge of the sign. Something was stuffed down in the gap behind it. She reached behind the sign and pulled up a zipped leather bag and opened it. It was filled with foreign money! Each bill had written on it: 1000 Lietuvos banknotas Tukstantis Litu. They were dated 1924.

Riley leaped into the air. “Yes! Yes!” Then suddenly aware of her surroundings she quietly zipped up the bag and snuck it into the house. She was rich! Well, maybe. She was reminded of the time her father had given her a handful of pesos, but because of Mexico’s inflation, they were worthless. Immediately, she got on the family computer and searched Lietuvos Banknotas. It was Lithuanian money! Riley could not, however, figure out the exchange because in 2015 Lithuania began using the euro. She hadn’t given up though. As she thought about what she would do next, it occurred to her that her finding the money bag meant that Tiesa died having never divulged her grandfather’s secret. Had the ill-tempered man killed Tiesa looking for the Lithuanian money?

That afternoon, Riley took a few bills and rode her bike to the bank. She pedaled hard and fast and by the time she got there was so out of breath she could hardly speak. She set three bills on the counter and took a deep breath. “Can this money be exchanged?” The bank teller wore a name tag that said ‘Hello! I’m Martha’.

Martha picked up the money and studied it. She looked at Riley perplexed. “Where did you get this?”

“I found it,” said Riley. “Is there a problem?”

“I’ll let you know in a minute,” said Martha, and she picked up the bills and took them into a side room. All sorts of things ran through Riley’s head while she waited. Was it against the law to possess old Lithuanian money? Would they confiscate it and charge her with a crime?

Just then, Martha returned. “Well,” said Martha, “this is Lithuanian currency from 1924. But they use the euro now. The Litas hasn’t been legal tender since 2015. You might be able to exchange it for euros in Lithuania, but I’m sorry, I can’t help you here. This currency is obsolete.”

Riley rode home disappointed. It was like the pesos all over again. She could try to find a collector. But the more she thought about it, if Tiesa had been murdered, the truth should be exposed. She decided to take her treasures to the police. It was the right thing to do, even if her parents thought the bones were pig bones.

Once home, Riley gathered everything up and put it in her backpack. On her way out the door, she called out so her parents could hear, “Just so you know, I’m taking the bones to the police station!” She didn’t wait for a response. She rode to the police station and unloaded her backpack outside the bulletproof glass that separated the lobby from the officer behind the desk.

“I dug up these bones and found all these things buried or hidden at my house,” she told the woman officer. “I think a girl got killed and buried there.”

The officer asked directly, “Are you reporting a crime?”

“Well, I don’t know,” answered Riley.

“Do you have the name of the victim?” asked the officer.

“Tiesa,” said Riley.

“Tiesa what?” asked the officer.

“Um—”

The officer sighed and opened the bag. For all her indifference, she did seem surprised when she saw the money. She began checking seams and linings, and to Riley’s surprise found a name written on the inside of the bag. Jokubas Backus. “Alright,” said the officer. “We’ll look into it. Let me get your name, address, and phone number. I take it you’re not eighteen, so we may contact your parents.”

Riley left the police station deflated. She parked her bike and went in and flopped onto her bed. She had no interest in digging anymore. She’d kept three of the bills for memorabilia and had taken pictures of the things she found. She was plagued by thoughts of countless ways Tiesa might have been murdered.

Weeks passed. Riley heard nothing. Two months later, just before school was about to start, she got a call. The police had located Tiesa’s family members.

Riley was elated. “You found her family?”

“A brother, Matis. And,” the officer added, “he would like to give you a $20,000 reward.” Riley could hardly believe what she was hearing. “The bones were indeed the bones of a child. Without DNA evidence to compare with as yet, we can’t be absolutely certain the bones are Tiesa’s, but it’s highly likely. The presence of the diary, the bracelet, and the shoe fragments seems to have convinced the girl’s brother of his sister’s fate.”

“Which was?” Riley asked.

“Well, it’s thought that Tiesa’s grandfather, Jokubas, had some not so innocent business dealings with an associate from the old country—Lithuania. It’s likely one of his deals went awry. See, the money couldn’t be spent as it was then either. That currency was replaced by the Soviet ruble in 1941. Still, there were profits to be made on the exchange in Lithuania, but this caused another set of problems for the country and limits were then set by the government. Maybe that had something to do with the deal gone wrong. Anyway, looks like Tiesa got caught in the middle. We will be investigating further. I’ve already informed your parents.” Riley’s father was still working on the wall, so the trench was still accessible. The officer continued. “These folks, Matis Backus and his wife, they’re up in Maine and they’re elderly so they don’t travel. It’s a trying time but be assured they’re grateful. They wrote you a nice letter and I have a check here waiting for you.”