Jeremy Stone Read Online Free PDF Page B

maybe a bird or two but all I heard was traffic from the highway and announcements on the PA from inside the school.
    Maybe if I could just see her—
    if she could see me—one more time.
    Can you help me do that?
    Why was he asking me this impossible thing to do?
    No, I—
    I heard the bird sound first.
    Then I saw him, Old Man
    leaning against a No Parking
    sign.
    Jeremy, he said, I’ve been
    meaning to tell you. You
    are an Old Soul. Some would
    call you a shaman. You can
    do this maybe, with a little
    help.
    But it takes practice.
    Hmm. Well.
    Maybe I can.
    But first I want
    to try it
    on Heaney.
    If I can make him see you, you can convince him to change
    (That would be one off my list, maybe.)
    and then we try it
    on Caitlan.
    Jenson smiled.
    Old Man smiled
    but I saw
    the worry
    in his
    dark eyes.

Another Sleeping Story
    Usually I sleep like a log.
    Head hits the pillow. Lights out.
    Old Man always said that Indians had to move freely between the many worlds:
    Wilderness, community, White Man’s World (which he referred to as WMW), the world of the past,
    the present, the future, dreamworld, and spiritworld.
    Dreamworld and spiritworld are connected, but sometimes it’s hard to sort out the dreams. If you are standing in front of math class in your underwear with everyone laughing at your shorts, you are probably not getting a real important message from the dream world.
    But if you have a large eagle, say, speaking to you directly, then you should take it seriously.
    Only it wasn’t an eagle this time. And it was not Old Man who would sometimes show up in my dreams and play tricks on me or deliver advice.
    This time it was just a skinny Indian kid named Jimmy. I knew who he was as soon as he appeared.
    Jimmy was one of the little kids I used to wrestle with back in my house in the community. Jimmy always had a runny nose so whenever he wrestled you, you got snot all down your back.
    But I liked Jimmy. Everyone did. His full name was Jimmy Falcon, sometimes called JF by his dad.
    Jimmy died of something when he was only eleven. And his mom, well, she went off the deep end and never really came back. His father spent three days in a sweat lodge until he said he made contact with Jimmy and he told everyone that Jimmy was in a good place and we should not be unhappy. Then Jimmy’s father sat down and started eating the moose meat and bannock and potato salad that had been prepared for him by the neighbors. He ate more potato salad than seemed humanly possible.
    But Jimmy had not appeared to me until that night, lights out, full asleep.
    Stoney, he said. (He had always called me that.) Stoney,
    they asked me to deliver some news to you.
    I wanted to say, Hi Jimmy, good to see you, but couldn’t. I can hardly ever speak in those dreams. Maybe you aren’t allowed to have vocal cords in dreams.
    Relax, he said, and let me do the talking.
    I relaxed just like he said and he came much more clearly into focus. Hadn’t changed a bit.
    We know about your list.
    I’m still not sure who “we” were but I was pretty sure this was a spirit dream and not just an underwear one.
    The reason this is all coming down the pike at you
    is because you are an Old Soul
    (I knew that part)
    and because you are a healer. A fixer.
    A guy who needs to set things right.
    (Shit, I was thinking. That’s way too much responsibility. I can’t hardly keep myself together. How can I heal others?)
    I know, I know. It sounds like a bit much.
    And I haven’t been on your side of the line
    in a while
    so I can only guess what it’s like these days.
    I can see, though, that you have more baggage than
    me. Dying young has its advantages.
    Jimmy was always the one to see the upside of everything. You go fishing and catch no fish and Jimmy would say, At least we got to sit by the river and avoid doing homework. Or if his dad’s car broke down, Jimmy got to hang out with his father and have a