Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

He says in his smoothest voice, Hey, hey, c’mon, Wanda, chill, it was ol’ Rudy himself who checked out Petty Woman. He does it all the time, you know that, and never even signs for them or pays either. He took it out probably for you. He himself returned it this morning, I think. He probably brought it home for you himself and forgot to tell you or left it in his car or else you guys got too busy or something…

Don’t give me that fast talk! she yells. You’re only trying to change the subject. Just get out of here, Russell, she says, calmer now. Go. And all your friends upstairs, the motorcycle gang. Get them out too. Chappie, I’m sorry, you too. Out.

Yeah, well, that’s easier said than done, Russ says looking up at the ceiling which is rumbling and starting to shake off bits of paint and plaster. You could hear Pearl Jam pretty good and could almost make out the words even.

Don’t you threaten me. I could always call the police, she says. They’ll get you out.

You could. Yes, you could. You certainly could call the police, Wanda. But the place is a firetrap, he pointed out. Then he told her if the cops came they’d probably condemn the building and she’d have to close down the whole operation. No more Video Den, Wanda. Nada.

This made her nervous. Just get out of there by the weekend, she said. All of you.

Russ was silent and downcast for a while. I doubt you could find anybody to replace us up there, he says. Who else would rent it?

She purses her orange lips. She’s thinking. She says, Two months plus this month, two hundred and forty dollars you owe me.

Right, and he could pay it off a whole lot easier, he said, if she didn’t fire him because then she could take part of the rent out of his pay, like thirty bucks a week and in a single four-week month she’d have half of what was owed her and he would definitely collect the rest from Bruce and the other guys. Definitely.

No, she says, very firm. You’re still fired. You’ve been stealing from us, Russell. From now on she would run the store herself, she told him and he would just have to come up with the rent some other way.

He argued with her for a while longer but it didn’t do any good, her mind was made up, we weren’t quite evicted yet but Russ was definitely fired.

Finally me and Russ left the Video Den and sat out on the back steps in silence. I knew Russ was thinking hard which he’s very good at. His chin was in his hands and there was like smoke coming from his ears.

I said, What’re you gonna do, man? Get a job up at the mall?

Yeah, right, Chappie. The mall. The line forms at the mall, man. They got fucking college graduates up there flipping Big Macs and carrying out the garbage. Forget it, man.

Well maybe you could sell your Camaro. You could get eight, nine hundred bucks easy for it. More maybe.

You bet your ass more. A grand and a half easy. But no fucking way, man. That car’s all I got between me and nothingness.

What, then? I was more than idly curious because in a way I was dependent on Russ, him being two years older than me and all. Russ was the same for me as his Camaro was for him, the only thing this side of total nothingness.

Well, he says nodding in the direction of the bikers upstairs, there’s a lotta empty bongs up there. Maybe I’ll start keeping ‘em filled. Plus Hector told me anytime I wanted crank to deal he had it available. Those guys may not have any money for rent but they always have it for booze and drugs.

Crank. Jeez, I don’t know, I said. That’s some heavy shit, man. I was thinking if Russ starts dealing drugs of any kind to the bikers he’s going to put me out of business but also selling speed was different from the occasional bag of weed. I was just a kid then and not too good at telling right from wrong but Russ was smart and I trusted him so I said, Whyn’t you deal just the meth, okay? You do the crank and leave the skunk to me, man. It’s sort of my specialty, you know?

Yeah, sure. Sure, man. That’s cool, he said but he was thinking hard, he was already making deep plans that probably did not include me. Except as his unwilling accomplice.

It was around this time that I started missing my mom again. Not really missing her because I knew she didn’t want me back, more like wondering what she was doing at certain times of the day or night while I was doing strange stuff that would have made her think I’d died and gone to hell if she’d known about it. I wasn’t doing strange stuff so much as witnessing it, but my mom would’ve tried to keep me from seeing it if she could. Anyone would’ve.

Like, I’d wake up in the morning on my sofa in the livingroom and one of the bikers, Joker or Raoul or Packer would be over in the corner on his hands and knees with his pants around his ankles humping some female from behind I’d never seen before while Roundhouse sprawled on a chair next to them jerking off and slugging back a quart of Genny. It was pretty gross.

I’d pull my blanket over my head and think of my mom just getting up and coming out to the kitchen in her old flannel robe and fuzzy pink slippers to make coffee and feed Willie the cat. My stepdad would still be snoring in the back bedroom and my mom with these few minutes to herself would flick on the kitchen TV and watch the Today Show and let Willie sit on her lap while she sat at the table and drank her coffee and smoked her first cigarette.

Willie I truly did miss and sometimes I thought about bringing a kitten back to the squat. They were all over town that time of year and people would give you a whole litter if you wanted. But I didn’t trust the bikers not to kill it. So I’d just lie there on the couch all morning and let myself miss ol’ Willie instead.

Meanwhile out in our kitchen Bruce would be standing in his jockstrap at the sink full of old caked dishes and pans shaving the stubble off his huge chest and washboard belly preparing for his daily pump at Murphy’s Gym, and in the bathroom some weird thin gray-skinned pimply guy with a motormouth Bruce’d dragged back to the squat from Plattsburgh the night before was shooting up without the decency to close the bathroom door while he did it. Russ was in his crib with the door locked on the inside where he slept until late afternoon which he said he did because daytime was the only time the squat was quiet enough to sleep but I think he was starting to dip into the crank he was selling and liked to stay up all night yackety-yakking with his customers.

Russ was into the big subjects anyhow, God and the Universe and so on even when he wasn’t high but the meth made it seem like all those things were linked together in this gigantic cosmic conspiracy, like algebra only real and since I wasn’t very interested in math or any of the big subjects in the first place and it was all way over my head anyhow due to my youth Russ liked talking to the other guys instead especially when they were wired on crank. To me it was just talk but to them it was reality.

Most days I hitched up to the mall and hung there with some kids I knew until it closed and Black Bart the security cop or one of his little helpers ran us out and then I’d hitch back to Au Sable and crash at the squat and except when they wanted some of my weed the men of Adirondack Iron pretty much ignored me, like I was their mascot or something. They teased me about my mohawk a lot because to them it was retro but to me it was like my trademark. It was how people knew me.

Once Joker was going to cut it off. Get bald, man, he said, you look like a fucking hippie. Who’s got some scissors, gimme some fucking scissors, he said and he grabbed me by the arm so I couldn’t move.