Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

Yeah, I bet. I hung up then. I was feeling a little sick about the whole thing but it was too late and besides I didn’t have any better ideas and neither did I-Man, though I knew that wouldn’t bother him because except for things like his veggie patch and other day-to-day activities I-Man wasn’t really into ideas and plans and suchlike. Mostly he just took things as they came and made all his adjustments on the spot. He was like the opposite of my friend Russ and most people in America who flip out if they don’t have a plan for the rest of their lives and I have to admit there was a little of that in me too.

* * *

It was pretty dark by then and we started hearing sonic rumbles and crackles in the distance and I-Man jacked a look in the direction of downtown Plattsburgh and the lakeside park and with his eyebrows pulled down and his lips pursed he said to me, Sound like de army-dem comin fe kotched I-and-I.

I said no it was just the fireworks but he was definitely scared, I could tell and it surprised me because it was the first time I’d ever seen I-Man even a little bit scared.

It’s only the Fourth of July, man, I explained. Birth of the nation and all that. We do it every year, just blast the shit out of the sky with tons and tons of fireworks to remind us of all the wars won by America and all the people who got killed doing it. It’s like a fucking war dance, man. We’re celebrating our hard-won freedom to like kill people.

Come wi’ I, he said and grabbed Rose by the hand and waved for me to follow and led us back around behind the Sun Foods store to where the dumpsters and loading docks all were, our personal one-stop-food-shopping spot There was this steel ladder back in a corner attached to the cinderblock wall and I-Man helped Rose up onto saying, Gwan, chile, up to de top now. Gwan, don’ be ‘fraid, chile. Jah protect de pick’nies-dem.

She started climbing slowly hand over hand and I-Man signaled for me to follow which I did and then he came along behind me peering kind of wild-eyed from side to side and behind him as if any minute he expected the marines to come roaring into the lot back there and start firing at us with M-16s or something. I guess the illegal alien business was a more serious offense than I’d thought on account of it being a crime against society instead of an individual person or store like with stealing and the other kinds of illegal stuff that were in my range of criminal acts. With the blasts from the fireworks getting louder and louder I could almost see his point, it did sound more like an invasion or some kind of heavy military action was going on than a celebration and maybe the roof of the supermarket was the safest place in town.

We climbed over the top and crunched across the flat gravel roof with I-Man crouched over and in the lead taking us to the front where we settled down behind a low concrete wall there with a perfect view of the parking lot below and the rest of the mall beyond all washed in this pale orange light. There was no traffic on the roads and only a few cars down there in the lots and no pedestrians that I could see which made it a strange lonely scene like from a science fiction movie when everyone drives out of town to see where the flying saucers’ve landed and somehow we get left behind all alone.

After a minute or two I-Man started to feel safe I guess and he relaxed a little and we began watching the fireworks going on down by the lake which we could see pretty good from up there. Actually we had probably the hest seats in town. They were shooting up the big red, white and blue dazzlers now with the long whoosh as they go up and the big sprays of color across the dark sky and the huge booms like thunder after, over and over again the same way but with different sprays of color, gold and green and bright blue and pink and yellow even, until it was obvious even to I-Man now that this wasn’t a military operation out to round up all the illegal aliens in town who probably numbered no more than ten if that.

Later on of course I learned that I-Man was basically right though not on that particular night but it was a good idea to always find yourself a safe hiding place whenever you hear what you think might be gunfire because it generally is gunfire and if there’s more than one or two shots there’s usually more than one or two guns and if there’s more than one or two guns then it’s probably the police or the army shooting people. And the people, as I-Man would say, is we. I learned it in Jamaica later on but that July night in Plattsburgh I-Man knew it already and I didn’t yet or I probably would’ve panicked just like him.

After he’d calmed down some though I told him about most of my conversation with Froggy’s mom and revealed to him Froggy’s real name which he liked as much as I did.

De name irie, mon. Fe trut’, mon, you never was no frog in de firs’ place, he said to her. I-and-I know dat. Bone know dat too. You a rose, mon. Like de famous Rose of Rose Hall in Jamaica, de ‘oman who kilt all she deadly enemies an’ she lovers wi’ obeah him got from Africa Gone from bein a Froggy to bein a Rose, mon, an’ dat way fe come to know I-self more properly and move more to de true depths of I.

He smiled down into her somber face and said, Ex- cellent! which was an expression he’d picked up from me and was using now whenever he could fit it in which was cool because I’d been picking up a lot of little phrases and words from him and needed to feel useful to him once in a while in exchange. Although I knew that his way of talking was much more interesting than mine of course and he was only being polite. Still, I always got a little hit when he said things like Ex- cellent! and Yes-s-sss!

I told him how I’d agreed to send Rose back to her mom in the morning and he looked a little skeptical at that with one eyebrow cocked and his lips pressed together and didn’t say anything one way or the other. It’s for the best, I said.

Mus’ be, he said.

You think so too, don’t you, Rose? I asked but it wasn’t really a question and she knew it. She just nodded up and down it like she was obeying me instead of saying what she really thought.

Check it out, I-Man said then using another one of my trademark expressions and meaning for us to view the fireworks. They were really filling the sky now and it looked like Star Wars or something, more like the birth of the planet than the nation with these huge blasts like supernovas going off and spreading out in circular waves of red and orange and purple and then boom-ba-booms in long spine-rattling chains. Great draping clouds of smoke hung down like gray rags and you could see the bright roofs of the whole town spread out below and the trees of the lakeside park all lit from above like from flares and out on the lake you could see the fireworks reflected off of the water where way beyond in the darkness was the city of Burlington, Vermont. And if you squinted you could see the Vermonters’ fireworks going up into their darkness too. Further down along the shore on the far side of the lake you could see the fireworks from the smaller towns and harbors and boatyards and on the near shore to the south along the New York side of the lake there were fireworks going off at Willsboro and the people of Westport were shooting rockets into their version of the same darkness as we had over us. And even inland back up by the Adirondack Mountains we could see the pale yellow glow and the red and blue and silver pulsations of the fireworks from Lake Placid and over in Keene where I figured Russ must be watching with his Aunt Doris and Uncle George and his cousins, and back along the valley in Au Sable where they were shooting off their fireworks at the ballfield I knew my mom was in the stands with some of her friends from work maybe or my grandmother and all saying Ah-h-h! and Oh-h-h! when the rockets went up and splashed the bright beautiful colors across the darkness. And my stepfather was probably there too, although I knew he’d be hanging around with his beer buddies in their plastic and aluminum folding chairs talking about teenaged pussy and putting down kids generally while he kept an eye peeled for a cheek-shot under some girl’s cutoffs or a glimpse of kiddie tit and thought his ugly thoughts without anyone but me knowing them and me far far away, and all he could hope was for me to be dead or gone forever.