Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

Was she a crackhead too? I asked him. I didn’t think I’d ever met one. I knew lots of kids who’d done crack a few times but they were just normal like me.

She was into rock, yeah. She said she was sixteen but I think she was real young. Fourteen or something. Maybe thirteen.

Wow. Thirteen. That’s young. For crack, I mean. You didn’t screw her or anything, did ya?

Jesus, no, Chappie. Whaddaya think I am, a goddam pervert? All she wanted was money for rock anyhow and I was broke. There were these other guys there though that she gave blowjobs to for only two bucks apiece and then she got her kibbles and bits and got high. I couldn’t relate, you know what I’m saying?

Yeah, sure, I said and we kept walking for a while without talking. These guys who own the bus, I said, are they crackheads?

I don’t know. I guess so, maybe. But they’re cool, he said. They’re college guys or something.

I didn’t see the bus until we were practically in front of it. It was this old dented beat-to-shit regulation schoolbus like from before Vietnam with broken headlights and the windows which were mostly busted were covered over inside with cardboard and no tires or wheels even. It was lying on the ground at a slight angle and looked like it had been dragged there and dropped in the middle of the field with the rest of the junk. It was still yellow but faded and people had painted peace signs and hippie flowers and a few deadhead slogans on the sides and it stank pretty bad when we got close to it like people had been shitting and pissing a lot in the immediate vicinity.

There was the one door at the front and Russ knocked on it and said, Yo, man, anybody home?

Somebody lifted a corner of the cardboard on the window next to the door, checked us out and dropped it again. There was some rummaging-around noise from inside and then this guy’s voice says, We don’t want any we don’t got any it’s fucking late go away.

Russ goes, Hey, c’mon, man, it’s me, Russ. Me and my buddy, we got some beer.

The wind was blowing pretty hard and it was definitely cold out there and weird so I was getting anxious to get invited inside even though maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. The vibes off this wrecked schoolbus were way negative. We waited a few minutes and I was going to suggest to Russ that we should forget it although I didn’t know any other place we could go. Maybe we could break into a furniture warehouse or something, I thought. I once heard about some kids who did that and lived there for a whole winter, when suddenly the door opened and this tall skinny dude with a scrawny rat’s-ass beard and pimples and hair down over his shoulders stepped outside and the first thing about him I noticed is that he smelled really ripe like he hadn’t taken a bath in a year.

Yo, man, Russ says, wussup. Remember me? I came here once, man. I brought the chick who was with the two dudes from Glens Falls.

The guy only looks at Russ with a stoned smile and then at me the same. Who’s he? the guy says pointing a long bony finger so Russ told him my name and the guy said his. Richard, man. Richard. He leaned down then and poked his face into my grocery bag and all of a sudden it’s like he’s in a completely different head and he says, Well well well what have we here a little beer a little bit o’ chips a little o’ this and a little o’ that. And number plates! Stolen number plates I bet! Yummm! We even got us some sanitary napkins, he says pulling out the Kotexes. We don’t need those, do we? and he tosses them into the darkness and goes back into the bag and pulls out a beer and says, It’s like Halloween only the trickers come a-treatin’ and the treaters come a-trickin’. He goes on talking like that, real fast and spindly, sort of to himself but not really, like he basically can’t think of anything to say so he lets his mouth do it all for him.

He didn’t seem to remember Russ from before or not to remember him either— it was like he was empty inside and stuff you said to him bounced around in his head like BBs or paintballs for a few seconds and then rolled to the bottom. After a few minutes of Russ trying to have a regular conversation with the guy he suddenly turned around and walked back inside the bus leaving the door open so we followed him in.

It was dark but they had a couple of candles burning so you could see things okay and I could tell right away that there was this one other guy there who looked just like Richard, tall and real thin, same long hair and ratty brown beard and pimples, same filthy tee shirt and raggedy jeans. He was sitting in the busdriver’s seat with his bare feet up on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead like he was driving someplace and steering with his feet.

Russ goes, What’s happening, man.

You got to pay your fare, the guy says and Russ handed him one of our beers and the guy popped it and instantly started chugging like he was starving.

This’s James, Russ says to me. Him and Richard are brothers.

No shit, I said.

Even though most of the passenger seats had been yanked and the place was surprisingly big inside like a house trailer, it wasn’t exactly homey. There were three or four old mattresses on the floor and some really moldy-looking sleeping bags and a couple of livingroom chairs with stuffing coming out that looked like they came from the dump and a table made from boards and cinderblocks with piles of dirty pans and dishes all over it and old clothes and newspapers and magazines and some kind of old brown rug on the floor that smelled and looked like they got it off a sunken ship and posters on the ceiling and against the cardboard walls from like a two-year-old Red Hot Chili Peppers concert and retro bands like Aerosmith which I guess college guys are into.

Actually I was kind of grossed out by the place but I figured it was better than no place and Richard and James seemed nonviolent types which after the bikers was almost relaxing so I came inside and sat down on one of the old bus seats like I was a passenger and opened a beer and ate some Fritos. Russ did the same although he also talked to Richard and James for a while but that’s Russ, he’ll talk to anyone and most people will talk to him.

He was going on about the bikers and the fire and all although not about the stolen VCRs and TVs I noticed, when I got sleepy and lay back on the seat. It was made of imitation leather and felt cool against my face and smelled the same as the schoolbus seats when I was a little kid, like cheese sandwiches and sour milk. I remember just before I fell asleep that night which was the first night of my new life that it would be wicked cool to have a real bus, one that worked and all and fix it up inside like a home and drive it around the country your whole life, stopping wherever you felt like and making a little money off a job for a while and if you got restless just taking off again. You could have friends and family with you some of the time and be alone some of the time but basically, and this would be the best thing, you’d be in complete charge of your life like those old pioneers in their covered wagons.

This bus, man, this bus is the same one me and James used to ride to school in when we were little kids, Richard said.

Cool, Russ said. It was morning but pretty late, like noon I think when I finally woke up and James was gone but Russ and Richard were smoking the fireguy’s cigarettes and talking like normal people for a change so I ate some more Fritos and just listened. I couldn’t talk anyhow because the Fritos made me too thirsty and the beer was finished I noticed and there wasn’t anything else to drink, no running water or electricity for a fridge or anything although in the daytime the place didn’t look as creepy as before. Rays of sunlight were streaking through cracks in the cardboard and the door was hanging open so there was some fresh air coming in. It still smelled a little like a hazardous waste site though, like they’d buried a million old car batteries out there.