Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

Nobody had any scissors naturally. Use a knife, one of the guys said. Scalp the little motherfucker. He looks like a fucking Indian anyhow.

You cut my hawk, man, I’ll slice off your balls while you’re sleeping, I said to Joker.

Luckily Bruce was there and intervened. He grabbed onto Joker’s choke collar and said, Release, Joker. Release! Chappie here’s my little buddy and I like him the way he is. He’s my little banty rooster, he said and ruffled my hawk.

Yeah, well fuck you too, I said and he laughed but Joker backed off permanently on the hair thing although he still tried to scare me whenever he had a knife in his hands which wasn’t that often however since he preferred holding guns.

* * *

Then one night I hitched back from the mall late with this guy from town who worked at Sears and all the way home to Au Sable he played classical music from this station in Vermont which was cool and unusual and got me thinking a lot about my mom and Willie and my previous homelife but not my stepfather, so when I came up the stairs to the apartment I was feeling incredibly mellow. This was in April and most of the snow had melted and the black oily water had run off into the river and the mud had dried out and the air was warm and wet even at night and I could smell the buds of the trees and bushes, lilacs and such and the sound of the river a half mile away made me think of little kindergarten kids in a playground for some reason.

The door was locked which was not normal so I had to bang on it awhile until finally it opened a crack and Russ peeks out. It’s only Chappie, he calls back.

Lemme the fuck in, I say.

He goes, Wait a minute, and locks the door again. So I wait and pretty soon he comes back and lets me inside my own apartment for Christ’s sake. What the fuck’s going on? I say. Right away I notice it’s kind of dark. There’s only candles burning in the livingroom and all the lights in the apartment are off.

Russ says, Just be cool, man.

We go into the livingroom and Bruce and Joker and Roundhouse are there and two other guys who’ve been staying at the squat lately, this guy Packer who’s from Buffalo and has a classic ‘77 FLH with chrome drag pipes and everything and his buddy Raoul who drives a piece-of-shit Chevy pickup and is one of those bikers without a bike like Joker which always seems to put an edge on them, like they’re pissed off at guys who do have bikes and also at guys like me and Russ who don’t particularly want one. I’d barely graduated from skateboards and dirt bikes back then and Russ of course had his Camaro.

You holding? Bruce says to me. All around the living-room were these big unopened boxes that said Sony Trinitron and Magnavox and IBM on them and the guys were sitting around looking tired like they’d just finished lugging the boxes upstairs.

I had a bag of tropicana in one pocket for myself and another in my other pocket for sale so I said sure and passed it over. Forty bucks, man, I said. That’s what it cost me, I said which wasn’t quite true since I’d paid Hector twenty for it. What’s with the boxes? I asked him.

Nobody answered. Then Bruce says to Packer, Give the kid thirty bucks, and to my surprise he did. I’m thinking I should’ve said fifty on account of it was tropicana not northcountry homegrown and maybe I’d have gotten forty and then I could’ve bought my shearling jacket back from Russ.

Bruce stoked up a bong and they all proceeded to get lifted for a while and didn’t offer any to us which was boring so Russ and I went into his crib and split a blunt by ourselves. What’s the deal with the boxes? I asked him.

Be cool, man. Like, you shouldn’t’ve said anything out there. It’s TVs, man. And computers and VCRs. All kinds of shit. Brand new.

This was excellent news because we didn’t have a TV or a VCR in the squat although I didn’t care one way or the other about a computer. But a VCR would be good because I hadn’t watched a video since Russ lost his job at the Video Den. And I was missing my MTV, especially late-night shows like Headbangers Ball and other heavy metal programming.

But the electronics were not for our personal use, I quickly discovered. Bruce and the guys were stashing the stuff until they could deliver them to a guy from Albany he’d met who had a warehouse and sold them wholesale to these Arabs and Jews who had stores down in New York City. Bruce and the guys were paid by the pound, Russ explained. So much for TVs, so much for computers and so on and the boxes couldn’t be opened because they ended up being sold in New York as brand new with guarantees and everything.

Where’d they get them? I asked.

Service Merchandise, man. Up to the mall.

No shit. How’d they get them though? They just break in and steal them?

Naw, man. Took ‘em right off the loading dock while the store’s still open. They just drove up earlier tonight in Raoul’s pickup alongside real customers picking up the shit they’d actually paid for and filled the truck, man, and drove off. The security guy, the black dude, Bart, he arranged it. Bruce worked it out, it’s his deal.

Cool, I said and took a big hit off the blunt.

Russ said, Yeah, I’m trying to get the guys to cut me some of the action. There’s a shitload of money in this and with Black Bart on the inside there’s no way we’ll get caught, man. There might even be something in it for you too.

Cool, I said but I was thinking it was wrong to be stealing stuff on this scale. It was different from me stealing some old coin collection from my mom or the Christmas shoplifting that I got busted for when I was only trying to get back in her good graces. Besides I’d gotten swiftly punished for both those crimes and as long as I stayed away from home I didn’t feel guilty about them anymore. This was different and the punishment to fit the crime was going to be heavy so I didn’t want any part of it. Plus I’d already done enough in my life that was wrong and didn’t need any more.

So it was only Bruce and his gang, Joker, Roundhouse, Raoul and Packer, and Russ if they’d let him, not me who were into stealing the TVs and stuff and for a while every few nights they brought more of it back to the apartment until the place was like a warehouse and all the rooms were filled with these huge cartons so that we had to climb over them just to get in and out. I guess the guy from Albany wasn’t ready for delivery or something. The door stayed locked and nobody else was allowed in the place anymore except me and Russ, probably because Bruce and the guys were afraid if they kicked us out we might go home to our parents and tell them or the cops and besides we were more or less responsible for keeping them in drugs. One or two of the bikers were always in the apartment on guard, usually stoned or asleep though and they sent me and Russ out for food and smokes and on minor errands besides drugs which for once they paid us for.

There was a fair amount of money flowing then, expense money from the Albany guy I figured or maybe some sales to private individuals on the side so for the first time I had enough cash on hand to indulge in some amusements at the mall like video games and the occasional movie. Russ bought a set of new sheepskin seatcovers for his Camaro at Pep Boys and screwed a girl who was a senior at Plattsburgh High on them the first night and told me about it later. It sounded like fun but I still wasn’t ready for that.

Russ talked a lot about the TVs and all. The whole deal really had him stoked and he wanted to be a partner in crime with the bikers and bring me in as a partner too but the men of Adirondack Iron were not interested in cutting Russ or me a piece of their pie so to speak and they got very pissed off whenever Russ tried to talk them into it especially Bruce.