Rule of the Bone (22 page)

So I split off from I-Man for a while and tried hitting on some sunburned tourist types weating straw hats and carrying video cams and checking out the natives, male and female couples who sometimes are easier to spare-change because one of the two will try to harsh on the other for being too suspicious and he or usually she will give the poor kid a couple of quarters. I tried to look worried and scared and said I was on a class trip and my teacher and everybody else in the group'd left for Kingston in the van early without me and I just needed seventeen dollars to meet up with them or I'd miss the plane back to Connecticut and get left behind in Jamaica, which would've worked probably except that both the couples I hit on turned out to be German or Italian or something. They just shrugged and smiled and wagged their heads no comprendo until finally I gave up and held out my hand and said, Spare change, man? which I guess is universal because they said no loud and clear and acted disgusted that a white American boy'd act that way in front of all these poor starving Jamaicans.

I was wishing I'd run into some of the Indiana party animals who I figured would be relieved to buy some ganja from a white kid who spoke regular English instead of having to deal with a scary black Jamaican like I-Man, exploit my fellow Americans' race thing in other words, and who knows, if it worked turn it into a regular job with I-Man and the posse, specializing in paranoid package tourists at the hotels. Having their own white kid on the staff so to speak'd give I-Man and the posse a definite advantage over the competition when it came to the tourist trade, I thought and then I wondered if I-Man'd already figured that out long ago, back in Plattsburgh even and had just eased me along without me knowing it, recruiting me and this was all a sort of apprenticeship in the ganja trade and if I came up believing it was my idea instead of his I'd never feel like he'd victimized me or anything or that he'd taken advantage of an innocent kid.

It wasn't like Buster and Sister Rose. I mean, either way, whether it was my idea first or I-Man's plan all along it didn't matter once I was doing it because at any point along the way from the ferry ride across Lake Champlain to this morning in Mobay I could've said I'm outa here and I-Man would've said, Up to you, Bone. It's important for me to remember that even though I-Man usually knew what I was going to do before I did a thing he never tried to make me do it.

So anyhow just when I'm in the middle of deciding to reenter my old life of crime you might say I spot another white couple on the other side of the marketplace. They're easy to pick out of course due to practically everyone else is black or at least brown and the couple is getting out of this big mud-spattered Range Rover and walking over to I-Man who greets them like he knows them from before. I could tell instantly they weren't tourists. They were both older, like in their forties and tanned like they'd been living in Jamaica a long time and incredibly cool-looking, definitely cooler than any white people I'd seen here so far.

The guy was real tall and skinny and clean-shaven but with a long ponytail and wearing a tan safari jacket and one of those great-white-hunter helmets like you see on lion tamers and reflector sunglasses. The woman had a Rasta tam on her head with brown matted dreadlocks sticking out and was wearing all these Rasta bracelets and necklaces and even though she was on the heavyset side and older she was surprisingly sexy even to me because of her red and green striped belly dancer pants with only a yellow bikini bra on top, plus she had great tits.

I'm watching from across the market and I-Man passes the tall dude a brick of sens and the guy hands him some money and everybody does a power handshake even I-Man and the woman and touches fists a couple of times and then when the couple turns to go back to the Range Rover the man pulls off his shades and helmet and wipes off his face with his sleeve and suddenly my mouth goes dry and my eyes practically bug out of my head.

I know him. I know his face, way down deep inside me, like in my chest I know him. And for the first time I understood why I'd decided to follow I-Man to Jamaica. I knew he'd be here. It's my
father
! My real father! My mouth flopped open and I couldn't say anything but in my mind I'm like calling him in this little boy's voice, Daddy! Daddy! Over here, it's me, your son Chappie!

I didn't once think it might be a case of mistaken identity, I knew absolutely it was him. I'd recognized his face the second I saw it from how I remembered it when I was a little kid and from the picture my grandmother had and he still looked a little like a tall thin JFK even with the ponytail. I remembered him from when I was with him all the time and he was still married to my mom and life was perfect. It was definitely my real
father!

I started running then, dodging around people and jumping over goats and chickens in cages and shoving my way up and down the long jammed aisles until I finally got to the other side of the huge tin-roofed market building where I blew by I-Man just as my father and the white Rasta woman slammed the doors of the Range Rover only about a hundred feet beyond and drove out of the lot between a bunch of buses onto a narrow street. My father was driving and they weren't moving very fast due to the mud and deep ruts so I ran after them, right down the middle of the street with people jumping out of my way and dogs barking as I blasted past running faster than I've ever run before, stretching my legs out in front of me as far as they'd reach and pumping my arms and hollering, Wait up! Wait up! It's me, it's your son Chappie!

I chased them down one street and then up another and was only a few yards behind them and even got close enough almost to jump onto the back bumper where I could've hung on to the spare tire and ridden there, when they turned onto a bigger street and the Rover speeded up some but I kept on running after and hollering even though my chest was burning and my legs felt like iron. I slipped once and fell down and scraped myself and got mud all over me but I scrambled back up and saw them still ahead of me but further away now and I ran after them anyhow but limping and both knees and the palm of one hand bleeding from when I fell. They got to the center of the town where there's this big traffic circle but when I came to it the Rover was already on the far side with a big fountain in between us and it turned off there onto like a highway that led out of town and I heard my father shift into fourth gear and hit the gas and the Rover disappeared around the bend probably doing fifty already.

For a long time I stood there with my heart pounding and my chest on fire and the only thought in my head was that at last I'd seen my father. My real father! Finally after all these years I'd come to Jamaica not knowing that I was looking for him even and then one day completely by accident I'd found him. And even though I'd lost him again I knew it was only temporary this time. I was bleeding and muddy and all but I felt like I'd finally woken up from one of those nightmares that trick you into thinking you're awake and this is really happening. It was like this incredible
relief.

After a minute or two of just standing there by the fountain like an idiot child sweaty and panting and bleeding from the knees and hands I came back to my senses and turned around and walked slowly back through town. As I walked people who must've seen me when I was running came up and patted me on the back and made sorrowful faces like they knew somehow that it was my father I'd been chasing and that I'd lost him again. I didn't think I had though since this was the closest I'd ever been to finding him and now we were at least on the same island together but it was nice they sympathized. In the States the whole thing would've been a big joke.

Finally I made it back to the marketplace where next to a table with all these Rasta carvings of African lions and noble black men with dreadlocks and such I saw I-Man standing in the shade smoking a spliff and chatting up the woodcarver who looked a lot like one of his own statues. There was this cop there, a young red-striper who seemed more interested in me than I-Man's spliff and when I came up the cop says right away, You know 'im?

Who? I-Man? Yeah, I guess so, I said thinking maybe it's a trick and he's going to bust the both of us or something although so far I hadn't seen any signs that selling ganja was illegal in Jamaica except maybe in stores and even in stores you could buy it if you talked to the right guy.

No, mon. I mean the white man. Doc. You know 'im?

Yes I do, I proudly said.

So why're you chasin' him, mon?

He's my father. Only I haven't seen him in a long time, and I've been living in the States and he didn't know I was coming back to Jamaica. That's why he kept going, I said. He probably just didn't see me.

Doc be cool, I-Man said. Him come an' go alla time, fe trampoosing all across de lands, him settin' de pace. Time, material an' space, mon, gas, clutch an' brakes. Technology controls, Bone, techno set de pace.

I said for them to c'mon, cut the shit and tell me what's up with Doc because I only knew what my mom and my grandmother'd told me which wasn't all that much and the cop laughed and said the same as I-Man, Doc be cool. Didn't know he had a son in the States though.

Baby Doc, I-Man said and he laughed too. Papa Doc an' him baby.

They were like slipping around the subject but I kept asking and pretty soon it came out that my father was an actual doctor working for the government in Kingston about a hundred miles away and he lived over there in a big government apartment and the woman he'd been with in the Range Rover was his girlfriend named Evening Star, this rich American who lived near here in a greathouse whatever that was and who he visited sometimes and came down to Mobay driving her car and so on.

Papa Doc a man you can deal wi', I-Man said. Don't know him 'oman though. Him call Evenin' Star?

The cop said oh yeah he knew her all right, most everybody in Mobay knew Evenin' Star and knew her house too, big fancy place with lots of different people hanging out including Doc. Dem mostly jus' limin', the cop said and he told us where the greathouse was located which wasn't far, this town called Montpelier maybe eight or ten miles into the hills. I-Man shrugged and said we could go up there by bus if I wanted and I said, Excellent. Let's go now.

No problem, I-Man said and off we went with the cop kind of smirking after like he smelled something we didn't but I just figured it was because he knew I-Man was going up there to check out the ganja-selling possibilities, not just to help me find my father which was okay by me. Everybody's got his own agenda and that's cool. The good thing about I-Man was he never laid his agenda down on top of mine. Unlike certain people. He always just said, Up t' you, Bone.

We rode this old top-heavy wheezing green bus that was all decorated with Rasta designs like lions wearing crowns and even had a name on the front, Zion Gate up a long curvy hill with cliffs that dropped away from the edge of the narrow road into gorges and you could see rusting cars and trucks and even a crashed bus way at the bottom with the jungle growing back over them and little cabins close by the side of the road where kids stood at the door and watched as we passed and women were washing clothes next to a stream and so on. Until finally we came to a village which I guessed was Montpelier with a couple of one-room convenience stores the same as we have Stewart's and 7-Elevens at home only smaller and when we got off the bus and went inside one of them for Craven A's it had hardly anything to sell, like canned milk and yellow cheese and rum and beer was about it.

I-Man asked the woman behind the counter for directions to the home of the Evening Star which she rattled off in Jamaican too fast for me to understand. Then we came back out and walked along the road a ways and cut off it up this long winding lane to the left where there were little cinderblock houses with tin roofs set back in the bushes with goats lunching on the brush and pigs wandering loose or sleeping in the yard and little blond dogs yapping at us as we passed, a white kid wearing a doo-rag and a Rasta with a Jah-stick from away heading slowly uphill. As we walked we got occasional peeks and views of the bright blue ocean way below. Hummingbirds and regular birds too flew alongside us and there were loads of butterflies making loops and there weren't any more houses after a while, just the lane and the trees and vines and the birds and butterflies and those big black buzzards they call John Crows circling high overhead. It was real quiet and we were sweating pretty good from the climb by now and I was wondering if maybe I-Man'd heard the lady with the directions wrong.

But pretty soon we came over the top of this one mountain where we could see down through the hills and valleys below gaining a sudden wideview panoramic look all the way to the ocean and could even see Mobay down there looking like a regular seaport town with boats and white buildings and orange rooftops and all, and for a minute I was remembering the terrific view of the Adirondacks from the Ridgeways' summerhouse. Then when we walked a little ways further we came around a corner and saw this fancy old sign that said STARPORT which I knew was the house's name, not the people who owned it and I almost lost my locale and was back on East Hill Road in Keene with Russ instead of I-Man that day after I first got my tat and took the name Bone.

A small black goat with blue eyes stood in the bushes though and stared at me and I-Man and that brought me straight back to Jamaica, and then there were these big stone pillars that we went through and suddenly we're in this fantastic terraced yard with green grass and all kinds of flowers growing and these strange statues all over the place of life-size American-type animals like rabbits and foxes and beavers and suchlike painted white except for their eyes and nostrils and mouths which were bright red. They were a little on the strange side. It was definitely an unusual kind of yard, like you expected them to be making a movie there or a fancy restaurant.

The driveway curled up a long ways to this huge white-stone two-story ancient house from France or England set on the side of the mountain looking down on Mobay and the sea ten miles away like it ruled the countryside and a duke or a minor king lived in it. We came up on it from below peering up at its majesty like on our hands and knees showing reverence only we were just walking along the driveway trying to look cool, leastways I was. The house was real old, I think from slavery days but fixed up with lots of columns along the front and huge high windows and like patios all around and more animal statues with the red eyes and mouths placed here and there on the patio walls. There was a swimming pool over at the right side of the house and you could see some white people and black people standing around up there with glasses in their hands and a couple of white females with bikinis in the group who didn't have anything over their tits the same as the guys. Then on the left over at the other side of the house and toward the front I saw a few parked cars, including the Range Rover.

All of a sudden I got incredibly nervous. Like what if he told me to fuck off? I knew he was my real father for sure so I wasn't worried it was a case of mistaken identity but what if he denied he even had a son my age named Chappie who he'd left behind in upstate New York almost ten years ago? What if he didn't like me personally? What if he thought I was too short or something?

Then there was this roaring noise and I thought it was a bomb going off but it was a humongous blast of music coming from the pool area like from a live reggae concert. It was Baldhead Bridge by Culture which I recognized from the ant farm tapes and it was booming out of these two huge black speakers up on the wall by the pool that were the size of refrigerators, the kind you see at outdoor concerts in the States and they were aimed away from the pool and rocked the universe out there, slamming reggae down through the gardens and the jungle-covered hills all the way along the steep valley to Mobay practically and the folks up at the pool now were dancing around with the females' tits jiggling and the guys bobbing and snapping along, everyone with spliffs and drinks in their hands. The music was so loud and the bass was so heavy it controlled your heartbeat and I was thinking the leaves'd start coming off the trees any minute and the white animals might crack and crumble from it.

As we went up the long set of wide steps to the front door I-Man leans into me and he goes, Jah-sniffers, Bone, and looked suddenly real serious instead of how he usually looked which was only curious and patient. Then we were standing on this long wide porch in front of a huge open door and could see inside the house to I guess the livingroom which was dark and all paneled and filled with fancy couches and long tables and a big set of stairs disappearing above and a bunch of bamboo birdcages with green parrots and other birds in them and all these weird paintings on the walls of wild animals and tropical scenery like they'd been painted by a little kid on acid and for a second I wanted to get out of there and back to the ant farm where things were more normal.

But just then here comes Evening Star, the white Rasta lady of the house in this flowing red and gold and green gown and her dreadlocks swinging and her bracelets clanging and I notice she's holding a pretty-good-sized J like it's a cigarette. Her skin was this professional sun-bather's color almost like a wallet but she was pretty good-looking for her age like she worked out a lot and dieted and all because even though she was on the heavy side I could see she had a lot of muscle. Coming along beside her was a big old black Lab and trotting behind the Lab was one of those tiny blond Jamaican yard dogs who're usually scrawny but this one's fat like a taco and both the dogs look and act like they're used to strangers and almost glad to see us which is not like any dogs I've ever known.

Evening Star smiles at I-Man and goes, Greetings, Rasta! Respect, mon. Everyt'ing irie, mon?

He just nods and turns to me like I'm supposed to say something but nothing comes. I don't know why but suddenly it was like my tongue wouldn't work. I even opened my mouth but no words, no sounds came out at all.

Finally I-Man said, De bwoy him be Baby Doc, an' him lookin' fe him fodder, Papa Doc.

The reggae was blasting away outside by the pool and we could barely hear even normal words never mind I-Man's Rasta-rap so she asked him to tell her again which he did until she seemed to get it and smiled at me real warm and almost motherly and drawled, Oh, y'all want to look at the
paintings
! The Haitian pictures. Are you an
artist
? she says to me like I'm in kindergarten which kind of pissed me off and I said no and very relieved to be talking again I said, I'm looking for somebody.

I
see,
she said real serious but I could see she didn't see so I went ahead and told her I was looking for the man she'd been with at the marketplace in Mobay. I'm looking for Paul Dorset, I said.

Paul?
You mean
Dod
!

Yeah, whatever.

You're an American, aren't you? Nobody from
here
calls him
Paul,
she said. Except
me.
She had this weird slow way of talking that put a lot of emphasis on certain words and when she spoke she kind of leaned forward and wrapped her lips around the word like she was kissing it which was distracting so you tended not to notice that she wasn't saying anything very important or interesting. She sounded like she was from down South maybe, like Alabama or Georgia. Also due to her not wearing any bra when she leaned forward like that you could see her tits which I think she liked but that too made you forget what she was saying.

O-kay,
she said. Y'all and the Rasta just sattar, everyt'ing be irie, mon, an' mi bring Doc, she said and she whirled and split and took off up the wide curving stairs with the dogs following her like shadows leaving me and I-Man to look at each other like, What kind of crazy shit is
this
?

We wandered around in the livingroom looking at the birds and then the pictures which were from Haiti I guess and actually when you studied them they were basically peaceful and kind and made you feel relaxed even though they were definitely strange. The room was like a ballroom with high ceilings and windows from the floor to the ceiling almost that were open to the wide porch out front and a breeze blew through and it was shady and cool inside and with the reggae playing and now and then the sound of people laughing by the pool and the splashes when they dove in and suchlike I was thinking this is a pretty cool life my father's got. Better than anything he had with my mom, that's for sure.

I-Man was in back watching this huge painting of a lion lying in the jungle with all kinds of other animals that it would normally slay and I was standing there by the door looking out across the terraced gardens with all the white red-eyed animals and down the valley to the sea and for a while I watched a couple of John Crows slowly loop their way up the long slope rising and circling without even moving their wings as they rose into the sky until I almost forgot why I was here, when I heard footsteps behind me clicking on the polished floor and I turned and there he was, my real father!