Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

Anyhow Froggy made friends right away with I-Man and trusted him and started telling him things I think she was afraid of telling me probably because I was more like Buster than I-Man was, being white and all and somebody Buster’d once been friendly with. Plus she knew I’d copped Buster’s wad which maybe he deserved having it copped but it didn’t make me look exactly trustworthy. Although you can be an outlaw or a criminal and still be trustworthy, just like you can be a cop or a minister and not be. But Froggy was young and more or less still in other people’s hands and she didn’t know that yet. I knew for instance that even I-Man did a certain amount of lying like where he got his reefer which he said came up from Jamaica with him but I could tell instantly from the flavor that it came from ol’ Hector who doesn’t give it away unless you deal for him so I-Man was probably dealing. And he did some stealing too, like the water and probably some of the materials for his greenhouse even though he said he only found them in people’s trash and dumpsters and odds and ends like soap and candles and shampoo and even the seeds that he said he got from vegetables that’d been thrown out at Sun Foods, this huge grocery store over at the mall which was where until his garden came in he was getting all his food now for eating.

That was all he ate, fruits and veggies cooked the Ital way, he said which is this special Rastafarian method of cooking that I guess old Haile Selassie used in Africa and basically meant no salt plus you had to use shredded coconuts for oil and flavoring and lots of hot peppers. It was a little strange but I got used to it pretty fast, especially the few specialty items like the Zion juice which was made from carrots and these great fried bean cakes called akkra that you cover with this sauce made out of chili peppers and onions and tomatoes and limes and the Ital stew made from pumpkins and yams and bananas and coconut was real good and dreadnut pudding made from peanuts and sugar. I-Man had made himself like this whole kitchen outside the bus under an old piece of corrugated tin he’d set up on sticks so he could cook even in the rain. He’d built a stove with rocks and some iron bars for a grill and he had a couple of old pans and so on to cook with and some dishes to eat off of that did look like he’d found them in somebody’s trash but they worked fine and for a sink he had an old plastic dishpan and running water from his hose and since his food was only veggies and fruits and we went out to Sun Foods on a daily basis he didn’t need a refrigerator or anything.

I don’t know why, probably because it made me feel independent like I was hunting and gathering but I really got into the shopping part, hanging out in the bushes behind the supermarket and waiting for them to toss out the stuff that was just going bad or was bruised or broken a little so they couldn’t sell it and then diving in as soon as the store guys had left and filling my backpack with some incredible stuff, coconuts that only had a crack in them and squashes that’d been dropped and split and all kinds of lettuces and greens and loose onions and potatoes from ripped bags and so on, enough to feed all the homeless kids in Plattsburgh if they’d gotten organized about it. Mostly homeless people aren’t vegetarians though or they’re not Rastafarians with their own outdoor kitchen like us, they’re more into fast food or restaurant leftovers like from Chuck E. Cheese and Red Lobster which we wouldn’t go near anyhow on account of the deaders so we more or less had the stuff at Sun Foods to ourselves. Except for the guy we called Cat Man who was always there prowling around in the trash mewing like a cat and a couple of really old guys who came on Tuesdays and Fridays, gay guys I think with one of them bald and crippled with these metal crutches and he’d lean on his crutches and hold a cloth bag for the stuff the other guy’d dig out of the trash. They were mostly into pastries and old bread though and Cat Man was looking for things like hot dogs and bologna and the such that’d gone bad but was still okay to eat at least maybe if you thought you were a cat it was.

We’d make our daily grub run out there to Sun Foods, me and Froggy and I-Man and that was our main activity away from the bus except for when I-Man disappeared once every few days for a couple hours when I knew he was doing a little dealing to keep himself and now me in reefer which was cool. I knew where he bought it but not where he sold it and didn’t ask him about either, I guess because it would only give me bad memories of when I was living in Au Sable over the Video Den with Russ and Bruce and the men of Adirondack Iron which seemed like years ago and in a way different country.

Now every day early in the morning after the plants’d all been watered the three of us’d cut across the fields behind the warehouses and come out on the edge of the mall parking lot behind the Officemax which was right next to the Sun Foods so we could basically come and go without being seen or having to cross a single street. This was good because I think we would’ve stood out, a little girl and a black Rastafarian with dreadlocks and a white kid although without my mohawk I wasn’t as obvious as before. Still, it was the combination. And there was always Buster to worry about.

We were happy then, I know I was anyhow and little Froggy seemed happy too for the first time. Without junk she started acting normal after a few days which made me think Buster’d had her on ‘ludes mainly, probably in her food and hadn’t been shooting her up with anything which was good because a kid can get off of ‘ludes without getting sick, and I even caught her laughing on several occasions like when I-Man made these little Rasta dance steps and hip-hop motions when he was busy cooking supper and had two or three pots going at once or when I screwed up with the hose and sprayed water all over myself. That sort of thing’d cause her to crack up and put her hand over her mouth in case anyone saw like she was covering up bad teeth although her teeth were fine except for a couple in front that she’d lost because she was only seven and still had baby teeth. She was wearing one of I-Man’s old tee shirts for a top now that said Come Back To Jamaica and one of Mr. Ridgeway’s plaid boxer shorts safety-pinned to fit her and I-Man had made some sandals for her out of an old tire and leather strips and for me too instead of my old Doc Martens which I-Man’d explained were military. I was into wearing just a tee shirt and cutoffs myself, same as I-Man.

Now that it was warm and I-Man was transplanting the bigger plants from the bus like the cornstalks and tomatoes and expanding the garden generally we spent a lot of time working together outside and me and Froggy were getting tanned and real healthy looking. I even had a pretty good muscle in my arm for the first time and when I showed Froggy she was impressed. I didn’t show I-Man of course on account of his being so much more muscular than me although he was an adult so it was more or less natural for me to look puny beside him but I still would’ve been embarrassed.

Anyhow he brought home a couple of old shovels one day and a rake that he said he’d found in a park downtown which was probably true but I don’t think they’d been tossed out in the trash exactly by the park department guys or accidentally misplaced and the next day he got us out there in the field digging and turning over the sod and shaking all the dirt out of it and so on, making a regular garden only it wasn’t like any garden I’d ever seen before. It was a single row a foot or so wide that went in these goofy loops and circles following some mysterious map in I-Man’s head that wound around the bus and beside the kitchen and then spun off through the tall grasses of the field. I wondered how it would look if you saw it from above, if it’d resemble those animals and gods that the space people made down in South America and when I asked I-Man about that he said he didn’t know, only Jah knew and Jah was guiding I-and-I.