Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

Anyhow after the first few times even going outside got boring. We’d walk around the yard awhile and check out the no-net tennis court for the fiftieth time and the empty pool and all that but they didn’t have any good stuff out there that we could use like a basketball and hoop or dirt bikes. We found some split firewood in a woodshed but it was too hard to haul it inside via the porch so we kept on busting up the furniture when we wanted a fire in the fireplace at night. We only used the stuff that was made of sticks and twigs though, not the good things.

The inside of the house was getting real funky and our source of firewood was disappearing fast and there were all these dumb cluster flies buzzing around now especially in the kitchen where the dishes were stacked like to the ceiling and the garbage can was overflowing. Neither of us were into washing dishes so we kept on using new plates until after a while we couldn’t find any more and would just turn them over and eat off of the other side and the pans we figured it was okay to keep on using without washing because when you cook things it kills the germs. Plus there was a lot of stuff lying around that we hadn’t put away because we’d forgotten where it came from originally or just didn’t feel like it, things we’d used or only fooled around with like jigsaw puzzles we’d given up on as soon as we saw how cheesy the picture was going to be and bath towels and emptied tomato sauce cans and Mr. Ridgeway’s clothes that we’d started wearing even though they were baggy and definitely uncool, green plaid pants and alligator shirts and old-guy boxer underwear which I actually liked wearing but outside the green pants not inside. The house was a real mess.

Maybe it was the strain of being confined like that and bored out of our minds and the house getting all grunged out, I don’t know but after a few weeks of it Russ and I started having these little fights, just dumbass arguments over nothing like who was going to cook the spaghetti or whether or not to watch Jeopardy which in desperation I had gotten into but Russ said he hated the smartasses who knew all the questions to the answers before he did, which he faked knowing anyhow.

It was no real biggie but we started avoiding each other so to speak. We even took our sleeping bags and put them in separate bedrooms and used different bathrooms and all so we’d some days go the whole day without seeing each other although we no longer even knew if it was day or night except from what was on TV or unless one of us happened to go outside the house.

Of course we’d used up all the weed long ago and didn’t have any cigarettes either and that probably contributed to the tension too. When we weren’t sleeping we were too wired and too bored for normal conversation. A couple of J’s and a carton of Camel Lights and a couple malt 40s would’ve helped civilize things between us for sure but it still would’ve lasted for only a day or two. When you’ve been high for most of your life it’s hard to be nice when you’re not.

I’d already started thinking about what it would be like if me and Russ were traveling alone instead of stuck here together when this one night, or maybe it was morning— I didn’t know because I hadn’t watched any TV in a long time and hadn’t been outside in at least a couple of days— Russ comes slumping into the guestroom I was using for my crib then and he goes, Chappie, I gotta have a talk with you.

Bone.

Yeah, Bone. Sorry. Listen, I think I’m leaving, man, he said. Real casual like he was gonna take a shower or something.

Whaddaya mean? Leaving? Well, going back, I mean.

Back? Like where? To your mom’s?

Not exactly, he said. What he had in his mind was going to his aunt’s house and in fact he’d already called her on the phone. Just to feel her out on the subject, he said. But he hadn’t told her where he was calling from he assured me because I was like freaked, plus he hadn’t told her he was with me. She’d asked of course, like what about the other boy who was in the fire and he’d said that he didn’t know what’d happened to him. He told her he’d come back to the apartment in Au Sable alone that night and he’d seen the place was on fire and he’d split because he was scared on account of knowing about all the stuff that the bikers’d stolen and stashed there. He’d been afraid of getting busted for accessorizing a crime he didn’t commit.

So what’d she say? Come home to Auntie, Russell, all is forgiven?

C’mon, man, chill. She just said I could stay at her house for a while until I got everything straightened out like with the cops and my mom and so on. So I guess that’s what I’m gonna do, man.

That’s cool.

Yeah. I’ll tell them all this time I’ve been staying by myself up at the Bong Brothers in Plattsburgh. You know, in the schoolbus.

Yeah. Whatever.

Don’t be pissed, man.

What about the truck we stole? You mention that to Auntie?

No one can prove we did that, man.

Okay, I said. Whatever. That’s cool.

He seemed real happy and put out his forearm and the stupid panther tattoo like he wanted me to kiss it. I was lying in my bed with my sleeping bag all around me and my arms inside but Russ looked so foolish and pathetic standing there with his forearm out that I squirmed my own arm free and reached up and like kissed it with my crossed bones tattoo.

All right! he said.

Yeah. So when’re you leaving?

I dunno. Now I guess.

Okay. See ya ‘round, I said and rolled over and faced the wall.

Hey listen, if you need me, man, you should like call my Aunt Doris. Even if I’m someplace else she’ll know where I am. He’d already written down her phone number on a piece of paper which he handed to me like it was his business card or something. I don’t think my mom and me are going to get it together again, he said. I’ll probably stay here in Keene and maybe go back to school and get a job in construction or something.

I said thanks but couldn’t think of what else to say to him so I didn’t even try. He rattled on for a while longer about his Aunt Doris and Uncle George and his plans for his new life with them until he finally ran out of words too and then he was silent for a few minutes and I could hear him shifting his weight like he finally felt guilty and he said, Well, see ya ‘round, man, and he left the room.

Then a few minutes later when I knew he was gone from the house I started to cry. That only lasted a couple of seconds though because the more I thought about it the more pissed I got at Russ for running out on me like that. First he commits a bunch of crimes like skimming he take at the Video Den and dealing meth to the bikers and stealing their electronics and so on like hey no big deal, Russ’s only a young criminal working his way up the ladder of crime, and then pretty soon I start to see the wisdom of a life of crime myself and we steal a pickup together and run from the cops and deal the pickup to the pipesuckers and get tattooed and break into the Ridgeways’ nice fancy summerhouse and fuck it all up. Because we’re criminals now and criminals don’t give a shit about owning property, they just take what they want and drop it when they’re through and the kind of high that regular people get from having jobs and owning things like houses and pickups and stocks and bonds us criminals get from other activities like taking drugs and listening to music and exercising our basic freedoms and being with our friends. Russ goes the whole route with me, my partner in crime and then all of a sudden he decides that he can’t pay the price anymore which is basically that regular people, the Ridgeways and the Aunt Dorises and Uncle Georges of the world don’t respect you anymore. Tough. Big fucking deal. They never did respect its in the first place unless we were willing to want the same things they wanted. They never respected us for ourselves, for being humans the same as them only kids who people are constantly fucking over because we don’t have enough money to stop them. Well, fuck them. Fuck him. Fuck everyone.