Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

Richard was going on about how him and his brother and sister used to ride the bus to school every day but this one time him and his brother stayed home sick and that was the day the bus went off a cliff and crashed in a quarry. A shitload of kids were killed, man, but my sister, man, she was okay, he said. Well not okay, she got busted up pretty good, broke her back and everything and now she’s in a wheelchair and all that. But check it out, this fucking bus, man, me and my brother James, we wasn’t on the bus that fateful day, so this bus was like good karma for us and bad karma for my sister Nichole and bad karma for practically every kid except me and James in the whole town of Sam Dent. That’s where we’re from, man. You know it, you’re from Au Sable, right?

Russ said yeah, he knew where Sam Dent was which is over near Keene where Russ had an aunt, his mom’s sister who was supposedly his mom. But I never heard of no schoolbus accident there, he said. I woulda heard, I think.

Long time ago, man. Eight, ten years. You’re too young to remember. It was big though, TV and everything, lawsuits, the whole thing. But lemme tell about the fucking bus, man. After the accident and all, nobody wanted to touch it, you know? It was like cursed. Except for me and James, on account of how we’d stayed home that day. So when we graduated and came up here to State thanks to our unusual skills at the game of basketball the bus was still around but nobody wanted it so we got it off the school district for free and the guy who ran the garage in Sam Dent hauled it up here for us and dumped it right where it sits today because from when before me and James dropped out of State I knew the guy whose father owns this field and he didn’t give a shit. We just needed a place to party and all, us and the team and our friends from school, and the place got fucking famous, man! But then we started living here because our old man, who was like pissed because Nichole was in the accident and we weren’t, he wasn’t about to let us come back home, and anyhow he knew we were doing drugs and all which is why we got shit-canned from the team and fucked up at school in the first place. But fuck the old man, I’m going back next fall, he said. No shit. Me and James, man, we’ll get our shit together easy. I’m only twenty and he’s nineteen, we can get in shape easy and make the team and get the old scholarships back and boom! Fix this bus up right, you know? Get us one of those diesel generators and a portable toilet and run some water out here in a hose from one of the warehouses. It’ll be cool, man. ‘Cause this thing has good karma, man. You can feel it, he said and he shut his eyes and let his hands float out to his sides and flutter like fish fins. This ol’ bus is going to rock, man! Parrr-teee!

What an incredible asshole, I’m thinking and got up to leave and try to find something to drink.

Where you going! Richard says real loud and harsh.

Thirsty, is all I can manage on account of my throat was so dry from the beer last night and the Fritos this morning. Plus he’d scared me.

Listen, you little shit! he says suddenly all feverish with excitement. I don’t know you, man, so you stay put until I say you can go. People can’t just come and go out here like they please, man! You can come in and you can go out, but only when I say so. Me or my brother James. Nobody else. Me and James rule, man.

Just then brother James himself came in and he slung his backpack down on the driver’s seat and started pulling out groceries and stuff that I guess he stole, mostly canned goods like chili and hash including a half gallon of Diet Coke which I took the liberty of opening and swigging from because I was so nervous but nobody said anything so I passed it around to the other guys.

James tossed a newspaper at Richard and Russ who were laid back on one of the mattresses and said, These dudes are famous, bro. That’s your fire, ain’t it? he said to Russ. You’re right up on the front page of the Press-Republican, man.

Richard spread the paper out on the mattress in front of him and Russ, and I scooted over to the mattress and read over their shoulders. There it was, Au SABLE FORKS FIRE DESTROYS 3-FAMILY HOME, and in smaller print, 1 Dead, 2 Local Boys Missing. There was a picture of our old squat and the Video Den with smoke and flames and fire engines and ladders, the whole scene from the front, a crowd’s-eye view. The one dead was Bruce of course, but burned beyond recognition, it said. And the two boys missing was me and Russ whose names were not released pending notification of next of kin. By now they must’ve been notified though, Russ’s mom and mine and my stepfather and my grandmother. I kind of wished they could’ve notified my real father too since he was as much next of kin as anybody else. You’d’ve thought the cops’d try and find him. But he was like me I guess, missing and presumed dead. Still, I’d wanna know if my own son was burned up in a fire.

Cool, Russ said. Excellent.

What’s so excellent about it? I said.

There’s nothing about my stuff. You know what I’m saying?

Yeah, I said. Russ is pretty single-minded. He was thinking no one’d noticed his stolen electronics and they were still just lying there in the back room of the old state liquor store waiting for him to pick up someday for freight forwarding.

So you guys are missing? Richard said.

Yeah. And presumed dead, I said.

Wow. That’s truly far out. It’s like you don’t exist, man.

The idea of us not existing really got Richard excited and he started asking Russ and even me all these questions about what we were going to do now. It’s like you’re invisible, man! You don’t have fingerprints or footprints or anything! Check it out, you don’t have a past, man! It’s like being dead without having to die first. That is so cool! I truly envy you guys, he said.

Then he switched off and got suddenly serious and tense and he said to James, You bring the rock, man? The dude show up? You get it okay?

James said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, and the two of them went to the back of the bus where I guess they had their bong or whatever and left me and Russ alone with the newspaper since they didn’t invite us to join them. I don’t know if I would’ve although Russ I think would’ve but I don’t think crackheads are into sharing anyhow. Just knowing Richard and James were getting high made me wish I had me a J but there was some bread with the groceries and some bologna so we made a couple of sandwiches and ate them and drank the rest of the Diet Coke. We kept reading and rereading the article about the fire like it contained some secret coded message from Bruce or from our moms like, Come home all is forgiven.

Finally Russ said, I got to get rid of my tattoo.

Yeah, I said. But it’s permanent, isn’t it? Actually I’d almost forgotten that he even had a tattoo.

He rolled up his sleeve and held out the underside of his forearm and examined it for a minute like it was somebody else’s. Fuck those guys, he said. You know? After what they did to Bruce and us, I hate them, man. I never shoulda got this thing.

It was a green Nazi helmet with these black and red eagle wings attached and the words on top and Adirondack Iron below and not too big, about like a half-dollar. Whyn’t you go to a tattoo guy and just get him to turn it into something different? I said.

Like what?

I dunno. Something bigger, with a lot of black in it. Like a humongous black panther all ready to leap and rip and tear living flesh with his fangs bared and claws and yellow eyes and everything. Or maybe one of those black and orange butterflies, whaddaya call ‘em, monarchs. Or a black guy. I saw a tattoo once of that guy Malcolm X that they made a movie out of and it was cool because the guy who had it was a white dude and it really stood out.