Rule of the Bone (11 page)

Bone.

Yeah, Bone. Sor-ry. Listen, I think I'm leaving, man, he said. Real casual like he was gonna take a shower or something.

Whaddaya mean? Leaving?

Well, going back, I mean.

Back? Like where? To your mom's?

Not exactly, he said. What he had in his mind was going to his aunt's house and in fact he'd already called her on the phone. Just to feel her out on the subject, he said. But he hadn't told her where he was calling from he assured me because I was like freaked, plus he hadn't told her he was with me. She'd asked of course, like what about the other boy who was in the fire and he'd said that he didn't know what'd happened to him. He told her he'd come back to the apartment in Au Sable alone that night and he'd seen the place was on fire and he'd split because he was scared on account of knowing about all the stuff that the bikers'd stolen and stashed there. He'd been afraid of getting busted for accessorizing a crime he didn't commit.

So what'd she say? Come home to Auntie, Russell, all is forgiven?

C'mon, man, chill. She just said I could stay at her house for a while until I got everything straightened out like with the cops and my mom and so on. So I guess that's what I'm gonna do, man.

That's cool.

Yeah. I'll tell them all this time I've been staying by myself up at the Bong Brothers in Plattsburgh. You know, in the schoolbus.

Yeah. Whatever.

Don't be pissed, man.

What about the truck we stole? You mention that to Auntie?

No one can prove we did that, man.

Okay, I said. Whatever. That's cool.

He seemed real happy and put out his forearm and the stupid panther tattoo like he wanted me to kiss it. I was lying in my bed with my sleeping bag all around me and my arms inside but Russ looked so foolish and pathetic standing there with his forearm out that I squirmed my own arm free and reached up and like kissed it with my crossed bones tattoo.

All
right
! he said.

Yeah. So when're you leaving?

I dunno. Now I guess.

Okay. See ya 'round, I said and rolled over and faced the wall.

Hey listen, if you need me, man, you should like call my Aunt Doris. Even if I'm someplace else she'll know where I am. He'd already written down her phone number on a piece of paper which he handed to me like it was his business card or something. I don't think my mom and me are going to get it together again, he said. I'll probably stay here in Keene and maybe go back to school and get a job in construction or something.

I said thanks but couldn't think of what else to say to him so I didn't even try. He rattled on for a while longer about his Aunt Doris and Uncle George and his plans for his new life with them until he finally ran out of words too and then he was silent for a few minutes and I could hear him shifting his weight like he finally felt guilty and he said, Well, see ya 'round, man, and he left the room.

Then a few minutes later when I knew he was gone from the house I started to cry. That only lasted a couple of seconds though because the more I thought about it the more pissed I got at Russ for running out on me like that. First he commits a bunch of crimes like skimming the take at the Video Den and dealing meth to the bikers and stealing their electronics and so on like hey no big deal, Russ's only a young criminal working his way up the ladder of crime, and then pretty soon I start to see the wisdom of a life of crime myself and we steal a pickup together and run from the cops and deal the pickup to the pipesuckers and get tattooed and break into the Ridgeways' nice fancy summerhouse and fuck it all up. Because we're criminals now and criminals don't give a shit about owning property, they just take what they want and drop it when they're through and the kind of high that regular people get from having jobs and owning things like houses and pickups and stocks and bonds us criminals get from other activities like taking drugs and listening to music and exercising our basic freedoms and being with our friends. Russ goes the whole route with me, my partner in crime and then all of a sudden he decides that he can't pay the price anymore which is basically that regular people, the Ridgeways and the Aunt Dorises and Uncle Georges of the world don't respect you anymore. Tough. Big fucking deal. They never did respect us in the first place unless we were willing to want the same things they wanted. They never respected us for ourselves, for being humans the same as them only kids who people are constantly fucking over because we don't have enough money to stop them. Well, fuck them. Fuck him. Fuck everyone.

I threw my sleeping bag off and marched straight to the bedroom where the gun was and took it and the box of bullets and then I went down into the cellar and got a backpack and put the gun and bullets and a bunch of the camping equipment inside, a cook kit and canteen and hatchet and even a first aid kit and tied a fresh sleeping bag onto the pack frame. Then I walked through the whole house selecting various items I thought I'd need for survival like a flashlight and a couple of towels and the rest of the canned smoked oysters which I'd developed a definite fondness for and some of the other food that was left. I took one of Mr. Ridgeway's sweaters and the last of his clean socks and underwear and some other clothes and put on a cool flannel workshirt I found in the closet, the only thing of his I actually might've bought myself if I'd had any money and a loose pair of old jeans with paint stains that kind of fit me when I rolled up the bottoms practically to the knees and of course my old shearling jacket which Russ'd been decent enough to leave behind. In one of the pockets I found the folded-up clipping about the fire which I guess he no longer wanted to be reminded of but I sure did, I never wanted to forget it.

Then I checked myself out in the movie star mirror in the big bathroom and the clothes looked pretty decent on me in a grunged sort of way. I remember thinking suddenly that I didn't look like I used to anymore. I was still a kid and all and small for my age but I looked more like a true intentional outlaw now and not so much a homeless kid pretending not to give a shit that no one wanted him. I took out my nose ring for the first time in a year and my earrings too and laid them on the counter. For a second it felt funny like I was going to sneeze but then it felt more normal than ever. Same with my hair. I found a pair of scissors in the medicine cabinet and snipped off the mohawk so that I had short hair all over like a guy just released from jail.

It was strange to stand there in front of the mirror and see myself like I was my own best friend, a kid I wanted to hang with forever. This was a boy I could travel to the seacoasts with, a boy I'd like to meet up with in foreign cities like Calcutta and London and Brazil, a boy I could trust who also had a good sense of humor and liked smoked oysters from a can and good weed and the occasional 40 ounces of malt. If I was going to be alone for the rest of my life this was the person I wanted to be alone with.

One other thing I did before leaving the Ridgeways' was look around for stuff I might be able to sell for cash. There wasn't much except for things that were too big to carry like the TV and VCR and the fancy plates with golden edges and some antique furniture and pictures that I thought might be worth a lot but couldn't be sure of. I took one of the smaller stuffed birds that I personally liked though, a woodcock I think it's called and put it in a plastic garbage bag and a bunch of the classical CDs but they were things I might keep for my own private enjoyment and not sell unless someone offered me a substantial amount of cash. Otherwise there wasn't much left in the house for me to exercise my criminal mentality on that I hadn't already used or eaten or burned in the fireplace or just trashed and left in the middle of the floor.

I stood there in the middle of the huge livingroom with the high ceiling and this enormous picture window at the end because of the terrific view of the Adirondack Mountains on the other side which you couldn't see because of the wooden shutters outside, and I kept thinking there was something important that I'd forgotten to do or some final thing I needed to rob. I must've still been incredibly pissed at Russ for running out on me or something because what I did then was sort of stupid and pointlessly violent but it felt good. I reached down into my backpack and drew out the gun and the bullets. It was a small black Smith & Wesson niner, heavy and solid in my hand and when I checked I saw it was already loaded like Mr. Ridgeway'd kept it right next to his bed so he could reach into his dope and condom drawer and without even getting out of bed he could blow away whoever'd sneaked in to rape his wife and rob his valuables.

I didn't have to aim but I did anyhow, holding the gun with two hands like on TV and said, Freeze, asshole! and fired at the plate-glass window in front of me. It was incredibly loud like from the world of nature instead of a little metal handheld instrument. I fired again. The third shot was the one that did it, killed the window so to speak and the whole thing shattered at once and fell like a curtain crashing to the floor in a million pieces. It was beautiful to see and I stood there for a minute playing it back in my imagination a couple of times.

Then I crunched across the broken glass and shoved hard against the wooden shutters and busted the hooks holding them and when they swung back it let the light of day pour into the house and fill it like a tidal wave. A couple of bluejays squawked and I saw a hawk making these slow loops overhead and heard the wind float through the pine trees like a river sliding over smooth rocks. I stood there with the warm spring air and the early afternoon light hitting me full in the face and looked across the wide acres of sloping yellowed lawn below the house and the wide forested valley beyond and then up the further side to the dark blue and purple mountains, all cragged and hooked and bulky making this huge bowl of space spread out before me and it was like I was up on the balcony of a castle and could see the whole world from there.

I put the gun on the windowsill and cupped my hands around my mouth and like I was a lone wolf howling at the moon I hollered as loud as I could, The Bone!

The
Bone
!

The Bone
rules
!

The
Bo-own-n-n rooo-oo-oool-l-ls
!

Probably it would've been more polite if I'd've cleaned up the Ridgeways' summer place a little before I split especially with the busted picture window and all but I figured if I left the house funky and more or less trashed like it was they'd have to pay Russ's Aunt Doris and Uncle George extra to do the job for me. They might even put Russ to work, he was so hot to get a job and all. Pumping a little extra outside cash into the local economy was mainly how I looked at it so with no further a due or thought I slung on my backpack and grabbed the garbage bag with my CDs and stuffed bird and truly glad to be out of there at last I stepped through the window frame onto the deck and strolled down the stairs to the driveway and out to the road.

When I reached the bottom of the hill by the Stewart's in Keene I had to ask myself for the first time in a while which way to go, west or east. The road through town ran two ways. West wound across the Adirondacks to nowhere, to Fort Drum and parts of Canada I guess, hundreds of miles of little country roads and small towns and the occasional ski resort. But east went to the Northway which is the highway that runs between Montreal and Albany and from where I was standing Albany looked like the gateway to the rest of America and to the wider world itself.

I set my pack and bag down on the road there and started hitching east. I didn't have any map or anything or any money and I didn't have a detailed plan except to get out of the northcountry where I had so far lived my whole life and to just go limp so to speak and let fate take care of the rest like I was the pod boy from Mars freshly arrived on earth.

Quite a few cars and pickups flashed past without a look or a pause or else they pulled into the Stewart's for groceries or gas and I was starting to get discouraged and wondering if maybe I should try to hoof it the whole goddam fifteen miles out to the Northway where all the traffic wasn't local like here in Keene, when this old dark green Chevy van that had CHURCH OF THE DISADVANTAGED SAINTS painted on the side comes speeding around the bend. It slows like the driver is looking me over and finally stops a ways up the road and I think what the hell, Christians are people too, although it looks like there's only the one inside and I run up to where it's stopped and pull open the door and throw my pack and bag inside and climb in.

I hadn't even got my bearings yet and the old van is already rocking along at about eighty and all this neat mountain scenery is flying by in a blur and the tape deck is blasting Bodo B Street's No Mo Hoes 4 Bo, this gangsta-rap song that was pretty popular then at least with black kids I think it was. I'm thinking for a Christian this guy really wails, maybe he's not even a white guy so I turn and take a good look at him for the first time and it only takes a second for me to recognize him. He's white all right. All I can say is, Fuck.

He grins over at me and goes, Hiya, kid! Hi-ya, hi-ya, hiya! Remember
me
?

Yeah, man. I remember you.

It's the pockmarked porn dude from
the
mall, Buster Brown. He's got both hands clamped onto the wheel and his foot mashed flat to the floor and the van's flying across Keene like a stealth bomber on a search-and-destroy mission. We're like swooping under the radar and moving too fast for groundfire. I look out the window and it's way too far to the ground so I'm definitely going to get busted up on the trees and rocks if I open the door and jump and we're like slipping up on the sound barrier, flying too fast and too low for me to push the eject button without breaking every goddam bone in my body from the force of the ejection so I say the hell with it, man, just go limp and let fate take care of things.

So how're they hangin', Buster? I say to him.

Oh! He laughed. High and dry, my boy. High and dry.

Yeah? Where's Froggy? Your protege. She still with you? Ah, yes, La Froggella. The dear old dear-old. Right behind you, lad, he said and hooked his thumb toward the rear of the van. I turned and searched around the junk in back, boxes and suitcases and concert posters and a mattress and so on and finally found her curled up in a corner sleeping it looked like with a Walkman on and her thumb in her mouth like a baby. She was barefoot and had the same old red dress on as before and she didn't look any too healthy either. Worse than before.

She taking a nap? I asked him.

Yes. Napping. He smiled and then he asked me where I was headed.

I figured I'd just say the opposite of wherever I thought
h
e was headed so I said north, to Plattsburgh even though that was the opposite direction of where I wanted to go.

Not too smart as it turned out. Buster is going to Plattsburgh too, he says, right into town to a bar called Chi-Boom's, had I ever heard of it?

Yeah, I say but he doesn't even hear me, he's on one of his speed raps or maybe it's coke except I don't think he's got the money for coke. He rips along at about the same speed as he's driving, yakking about this and that like he's trying to sell me something only I can't figure out what it is unless it's himself. He's going to meet up at Chi-Boom's with this band he manages and pay them off and after one more concert dismiss them. He's gotten back into show business, he says. Only now he's on the business side instead of the performing side and while the money is much better the responsibilities are also greater, especially since musicians today are not professional in the old-fashioned sense of the word and cannot be relied upon, they have to be treated like children. Especially the niggers, he says which surprised me to hear him dissing black people since he'd been playing the Bodo B Street tape like he couldn't get enough of it and I'd noticed that there was all kinds of badass gangsta-rap tapes scattered all over the front seat of the van and on the floor in back.

But Buster Brown is a man of contrasts I guess, a guy who at first glance seems to be taking care of a child that he later turns out to be doping for his porn movies, a guy who wants to help kids who're homeless and all that but also he wants to suck and fuck them too, a Christian in a Christian van who turns out to be a has-been actor with an English accent looking for kids to be proteges and turns out to be a white guy who likes gangsta rap and manages a band and calls them niggers who turns out to be a doper on speed or coke or maybe crack and turns out to be taking care of a poor lost little homeless girl, and so on in a vicious circle like that. Buster Brown was possibly the weirdest dude I'd ever met and I was pretty sure he was capable of almost anything even cold-blooded murder of a teenaged kid so I treated him with the extreme caution and humor that he deserved.

Also I was once again thinking about saving Froggy but this time the idea of substituting myself for her did not occur to me I'm proud to say, as a sign of how much I'd changed in the last few months, since Chappie had become the Bone.

So what's with the church van? I asked him. You into Jesus and all that now? You finally seen the light, man?

He laughed. The light! Ah yes, I've seen the light all right, my witty little friend. You'd be amazed how useful an actor's skills can be in this vast and wonderfully religious country of ours. A man who gives every appearance of being a man of religion, that is, a man such as myself, can always find shelter and sustenance in America. To become known as a man of religion all you need, my boy, besides a certain verbal dexterity and the usual appearances of sincerity, is a
sign.
Look for a sign! he said and he laughed like crazy. It's your only required prop. The rest, lad, is pure acting. But don't look for the sort of sign those we-three-kings-of-Orient-are happened to see one night arise in the eastern heavens. Or the sort of sign seen by the two Marys when they went to the tomb and found it empty. No, rather you must seek the more mundane sort of sign, the sort you saw painted on the side of my van, the sign of the Church of the Disadvantaged Saints, a sign which having been writ moves swiftly on.

Yeah, I said. How come disadvantaged saints? You mean like crippled?

Hardly crippled but, yes, disadvantaged indeed, for they are the saints who are not yet known to the world at large. They are known, let us say, only to one another. And of course to the Lord above. Him too. My sign is thus a sign of recognition, a fraternal flag, a secret handshake and a greeting, and wherever I go others like me come forward and offer me shelter and, as I said, sustenance, or as in the case at hand I am able to come forward myself and offer shelter and sustenance to others even less fortunate than I. Which is basically how I've been able to get myself started booking musical acts here in the northcountry, he said suddenly switching voices and turning into the band manager and booking agent who'd put together this huge rap concert, at least he said it was huge with four or five downstate rap bands none of which I'd ever heard of but that didn't mean much since I'm not really into rap anyhow, even the Beastie Boys who're white and pretty good.

The concert'd been booked by the student council or something at the Plattsburgh branch of SUNY which is the state university of New York. Buster handed me this printed brochure that said Get Assassinated at the Soul Assassination Concert and promised to have all these bands appearing at the SUNY field house like House of Pain and the Stupid Club and so on. I was impressed. In spite of everything I knew about him Buster was definitely cool.

He then said he remembered I owed him some money which was true, twenty bucks and I didn't deny it or anything but I did say he could forget about any fucking or sucking and no screen test either. I'm like a free agent now, I said. You understand what I'm saying, man?

Not to worry, mio caro. Not to worry. He was on his way to meet one of the bands called Hooliganz who were from Troy and they'd just cut a record and everything and he was supposed to take them to the motel where they were staying for the concert. It was a little too complicated to follow especially the way Buster explained it due to his being high although I probably wouldn't have understood even if he wasn't. Anyhow he owed this money to the Hooliganz from some other concert they'd played down in Schenectady and unless he paid it to them they wouldn't do the Soul Assassination concert so now because he'd already spent the money on expenses he'd been forced to take up a special collection from the Brethren of the Disadvantaged Saints and he was hoping I'd be able to contribute my twenty bucks to the pot since I owed it to him anyhow.

Fuck that shit, I said. I can't do that. Besides, I'm stone broke, man. And all I got's a few CDs. Classical, man, in case you want to buy ‘em. How about I sell you twenty bucks' worth and we'll be even. Two, maybe three CDs. Like new, man. From rich people, professors.

He said forget it, but I could work it off if I wanted by helping him deal with the Hooliganz in Plattsburgh.

What do I hafta do, man? I don't feel like doing anything dangerous, I said. I'm still just a kid, remember. I wouldn't mind being a roadie for the concert though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he said. I could be a roadie, that was fine and tonight all I had to do was follow orders and like hold on to the money he owed the Hooliganz and give it over to them when he said and not until he said because first he needed them to sign some kind of contract that he had from the student council so that he could get his cut later when they paid the bands. I was supposed to hold on to the money in case the Hooliganz wanted to grab it off of him and do the concert the next night without signing the contract Buster needed for getting his cut.

I guess being a manager of a band is sort of like being a leech and it's hard to get yours without letting the band get theirs first but you don't want them to think they'll get theirs unless you get yours first or else they'll just rub you off against the nearest rock. It's complicated. Anyhow I said sure.

Do you have a good hiding place there in your pack? he asked me. These fucking niggers may decide to search me and they may search the van but they won't bother you. You're just a child, he said and he made this sickening dry-lipped smile.

I was going to have Froggy hold the money, he told me. But she's a little slow on the uptake let us say. And then when I saw you standing there by the side of the road. . . Well, my boy, my boy, talk about heaven-sent! Halleloo-yah. And praise the Lord.

Yeah. The Lord works in mysterious ways, I said which is something my grandmother used to say for explaining weird things.

We were all the way out to the Northway now and Buster turned the van left onto the ramp heading north, not the direction I'd originally planned on going but there really wasn't much I could do about it now. Besides my criminal mind was already kicking in and telling me that if Buster was stupid or high enough to trust me with holding the Hooliganz's money there was the distinct possibility of me getting some of it off of him before I split. And then there was the matter of Froggy which frankly I was now into viewing as a total green-light rescue operation, a definite Go.

Around five which was when Buster'd arranged to meet these guys the Hooliganz we pulled into the parking lot of Chi-Boom's but Buster looked over the cars and said they weren't there yet. There was a McDonald's two stores down on Bridge Street so Buster went off to get everyone some Big Macs and fries and left me and Froggy in the van. I asked her, You wanna book, man? You wanna get away from Buster?

She looked at me from her corner in the back like she was a suspicious beaten old dog instead of a regular little kid and didn't say anything, just glanced up at me and then looked at her bare feet and picked at the bottom hem of her dress. I could see she didn't know anymore what she wanted which was of course how Buster preferred it and why he kept her stoned so I decided then and there that if I was going to help her I'd have to take Buster's place so to speak and tell her myself what she really wanted and then go ahead and get it for her. That wasn't my style, I usually let people do what they want to do or even do nothing if that's what they want but this time I was fully prepared to take over her decision-making powers and rule her myself at least temporarily.