Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

Russ told him what he wanted which is called a cover-up and Art showed him a bunch of panther pictures and after a lot of back and forth Russ finally settled on the one that I thought was the best too because of the eyes which were emerald green and the fangs. Art said it would cost fifty bucks for the one or seventy-five bucks for the cover-up plus another the same size and Russ couldn’t resist negotiating with the guy, except he was negotiating for me not himself I suddenly realized when Art says to me, Okay, kid, what the hell it’s a slow day, pick what you want from here, and he hands me this beat-up old book of drawings.

Thirty bucks for the panther and thirty for the second, so long as you pick it from these here, he said and he lit a cigarette and went right to work on Russ’s forearm while I leafed through the tattoo book.

The buzz of the needle was like a hummingbird’s wings And didn’t sound dangerous at all and whenever I glanced up at Russ he wasn’t wincing in pain or anything. Does it hurt? I asked him.

Naw, he said. It feels like you got a ice cube on your arm except at first when it feels hot and sort of stings.

I was attracted to some of the drawings more than others, like palm trees with a sunset and a howling wolf on a mountain but I figured they were more for ecology freaks, vegetarians and suchlike than kids like me. The severed heads with snakes coming out of the eye sockets and the knives dripping blood and jokers with huge red tongues were okay too but obviously for metalheads and I might be into heavy metal a little now but you never know about the future. A tattoo is forever even if you get a cover-up like Russ so you want to pick a design you can grow with.

Then I saw what I wanted. It was like a pirate’s flag only without the flag, just the skull and the crossed bones behind it which reminded me of Peter Pan from this book I had when I was a little kid that my grandmother used to read to me anytime I wanted. I loved that book. I remember studying the pictures up close like you do when you’re real small and asking Grandma about the flag because it kind of scared me but she said it was just something Captain Hook and the pirates did to make people think they were evil when all they were really interested in was finding buried treasure. It’s a good story. Peter Pan goes to this big city looking for his lost shadow and he meets these rich kids whose parents don’t like them so he teaches them to fly and takes them back to his island hideout where they have all kinds of adventures against Captain Hook and the pirates. There’s an Indian princess and an invisible fairy named Tinker Bell and they help Peter Pan and the rich kids defeat the pirates and it’s like a very cool place for them, this island which is called Never-Never-Land because there’s no adults and you get to stay a kid forever. But eventually the children start to miss their parents and want to go home and grow up like regular people so they have to leave Peter Pan behind on his island alone. The ending is actually sad. Although he does have his shadow.

Anyhow I figured a tattoo is like a flag for a single individual so I decided on the skull and bones flag like Captain Hook’s only without the skull in it. Just the crossed bones. The skull kind of grossed me out and I was pretty sure after a few years of looking at it I’d get bored by it, so I was thinking X marks the spot and Malcolm X like in the movie and Treasure Buried Here and RR Crossing and suchlike. Plus when they saw it people’d still think I was evil even without the skull part which was cool. And whenever I looked at it myself I’d remember Peter Pan and my grandmother reading to me when I was a little kid. Russ thought it was an excellent decision too but he only picked up on the evil part. I didn’t see any point in telling him about the rest.

I had Art put it on the inside of my left forearm like Russ’s so I could show it to other people by making a power salute or a high five and could show it to myself just by turning my arm and looking down at it. The tattooing part actually stung a lot more than Russ said and stayed hot the whole time while Art made it and was sore afterwards but it really looked wicked excellent when he was done except my skin all around it was red and inflamed-looking. But it was a real work of art. The crossed bones had big joints at the ends like thighbones or something and were very detailed. The guy could draw.

Fucking A, man! Russ said and we both high-fived with our left hands. You got the bones! he said to me. I could tell Russ was wishing he hadn’t gotten a panther now but it was too late.

That’s what your name oughta be, he says. Bone. On account of your tattoo. Forget Zombie, man, it sounds like you’re into voodoo or some weird occult shit like that. Bone is hard, man. Hard. It’s fucking universal, man.

Yeah. Forget Zombie. Bone is cool, I said and I meant it and was already viewing myself as the Bone. You still gonna use Buck for a handle? I asked him. I was thinking Buck ‘n’ Bone didn’t sound so good. Country and western. How about Panther? I suggested so he’d maybe feel better about his tattoo but I didn’t really think Panther was such a cool name for a talkative dude like Russ, I just said it.

Naw. I’ll stick with Buck for now, he said. Like the Buck knife company. Or like one of those big twelve-point deer, man. You know, in that insurance ad.

Yeah. Or like in Bambi.

Fuck you, asshole, he says. I could see he was pissed and I’d hurt his feelings about his name and his tattoo.

C’mon, man, I’m only kidding you. The Bone’s a great kidder, y’know.

He said sure and paid the guy for the tattoos and we walked out. Except for Russ being bummed I was feeling truly excellent, like I was a way new person with a new name and a new body even and my old identity as Chappie wasn’t dead, it was only a secret. A tattoo does that, it makes you think about your body like it’s this special suit that you can put on or take off whenever you want, and a new name if it’s cool enough does the same thing. To have both at once is power. It’s the kind of power as all those superheroes who have secret identities get from being able to change back and forth from one person into another. No matter who you think he is, man, the dude is always somebody else.

After we paid Art for the tattoos Russ only had thirty-some bucks left which limited our options so to speak and we had nothing to sell except maybe my shearling jacket. That and the nine or ten copies of the Press-Republican Russ tried to unload for spare change as we walked along but it was afternoon already and the citizens weren’t interested. Plus we didn’t have any safe place we could crash except the schoolbus and Russ wisely thought better of that when I reminded him that the Bong Brothers were definitely going to fuck up and get themselves busted driving around in our stolen pickup.

Crackheads, man, they do dumb things, I reminded him.

Yeah but these’re college guys, he said.

Fucking duh, man. It doesn’t matter they’re college guys. Nobody but a pipe sucker’d give you a hundred bucks for the license plates and keys to a pickup stolen from a Stewart’s only twenty miles away, I told him. And the minute those assholes get busted they’ll try to blame us and will reveal our secret identities to the cops who if we go back to the bus will instantly try to entrap us.

Russ said yeah, but like Richard and James didn’t know our secret identities, they only knew our old ones which I had to point out were the same thing, it was Chappie and Russ that were our secret identities now, not Bone and Buck. I don’t know why but I really hated referring to him as Buck. He did look a little like a buck, a young one, a four-pointer maybe, gawky and long-faced with big brown eyes and straight brown hair and ears that stuck out, but whenever I had to call him by his new name I could only say it in a somewhat sarcastic tone or else I stumbled over it and almost said Duck or Fuck or Suck. You’d’ve thought a guy who talked as good as Russ would’ve picked a name easier to say and more inspiring to think about.