Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

Early the next morning I woke up before Rose and I-Man and took a little string bag that’d come with onions in it originally and filled it with stuff for Rose to take with her, a clean tee shirt and Mr. Ridgeway’s wool sweater in case the bus was cold and some miscellaneous food mostly fruits but a jar of I-tal stew and a couple of pieces of dreadnut pudding too. I didn’t know how long it was going to take to get to Milwaukee by bus, two or three days maybe, a long time anyhow and she’d be hungry so I figured she’d enjoy having the kind of food with her that she was used to and that way wouldn’t have to go into any bus stop restaurants if she didn’t want to because those places can be creepy for a little girl late at night.

I also put some extra cash into the bag. I wrapped in a sock the small bills I had from yesterday after buying a pack of cigarettes plus another fifty which I was thinking might possibly end up buying her a few new dresses but probably wouldn’t. Still, it was worth the gamble.

Pretty soon I-Man was up and had a fire going and breakfast was ready, hard-boiled eggs and bananas and Zion juice and then Rose was up and wearing her traveling clothes which were her old red dress nice and clean and her sandals and a Montreal Expos baseball cap that I-Man’d given her a few weeks ago and I’d shown her how to curl the brim and wear it in back so it looked cool. We all ate very quickly without saying much until it looked like it was around eight and I said, Well, let’s go, Rosie, and I handed her the bag.

Rose, she said. Don’t call me Rosie.

No sweat, I said and explained to her about the money in the sock, how it was hers and no one else’s and she should use it any way she wanted or needed to and not to give it over to anybody not even to her mom although I was thinking especially not her mom.

She said thanks and all and then I-Man came over and gave her a long hug and a kiss on each cheek like she was his daughter going off to visit relatives for the summer and in a real low voice he said to her, One love, Sister Rose. One heart. One I. Heartical, mi daughter.

She nodded like she understood and then took my hand and we walked off leaving I-Man standing behind us at the fire watching. We got about halfway across the field end I turned around and looked back and saw him still standing there with his hands down at his sides and all of a sudden a thought entered my mind that was like a radical thought and completely unexpected. At the same instant I-Man raised both his hands to the heavens as if giving praise and thanks to Jah, like he knew my thought.

Wait here, I said to Rose. I’ll be right back.

I ran back to the schoolbus and rushed inside an grabbed my backpack and shoved all my loose clothes and other items inside it like the flashlight and CDs and my stuffed bird with Buster’s money that had been hanging around on my mattress and came back outside with it.

I-Man had this wide smile on his face when he saw me and his hands on his hips. So, Bone, you goin to trampoose off to Milwaukee Wisconsin wid Sister Rose. Dat be real irie, little brudder.

No, I said. Not that, man. She’ll be okay without me. No, I think I’m gonna go home too. Like Rose. I need see my mother too, I said. You know what I’m saying?

Irie, Bone. Dat be real irie, he said but he could use that word irie a hundred different ways just like he could use the word I and this was almost sarcastic mixed with a little sadness and surprise.

I didn’t know how to answer him so I just said, Thanks. Thanks for everything, I mean. You really taught me a lot, man. That’s actually why I think I can like go back home now. On account of what you’ve taught me. I think I can face my mother and my stepfather even and figure out what they want me to do and like do it. I just got to go there, man, I said to him like it was an explanation and maybe it was. Me and Sister Rose are sort of alike, I told him.

Brother Bone and Sister Rose, he said.

One heart, one love, right?

Yes, mon. De trut’. One I.

You want the rest of Buster’s money? I said and reached into my pack for my woodcock and the roll of bills.

No way, mon. Keep it. Dat fe you own self, mon. I-and-I can make plenty money pushing carts at de market, he said grinning and he showed me a handful of quarters which I guess was all he really needed out here, especially with me and Rose gone.

Well, thanks, I said. I reached out my hand and we shoook hands in a power grip and then I was running back over the field, toward Rose and this time I didn’t look back because I was afraid I’d start crying if I did.

I didn’t think of it until we actually got there but me and Rose must’ve looked a little weird that morning at the Trailways station, Rose in her Little Orphan Annie dress and Expos cap and me in one of I-Man’s trademark Come Back To Jamaica tee shirts and the baggy cutoffs I’d made from old Mr. Ridgeway’s lime green pants with the red anchors on them and the both of us walking on I-Man’s fantastic homemade tire sandals. Plus in those days I was into wearing like a doo-rag on my head made out of one of those red farmer’s handkerchiefs that I found one morning in the Sun Foods parking lot and took it home and washed it up and dried it and I-Man showed me how to tie it around my head the same as a lot of cool black dudes do for keeping their hair from burning red in the sun, he said.

No problem for me, I told him since my hair was already on the reddish side anyhow.

But I-and-I got to have a lid fe protect him brain from de sun, he said, an’ to heat it up fe when de air come cold an’ wet. White man or black man, de brain be de key to de whole structure of I-self, an’ if it not too hot an’ not too cold, it be cool an’ jus’ right, an’ de res’ of I-structure be cool an’ jus’ right as well, no matter how de sun him go an’ him come.

At first I thought the doo-rag made me look like a cancer kid covering up his baldness on account of my head being big for my body which was kind of on the scrawny side but then I got into it like I was a Crip or a Blood from L.A. only the white kid from Plattsburgh, New York version and after that I almost never took it off day and night. Plus it went pretty good with my crossed bones tattoo I think which I liked to show off by doing many small tasks with my left hand that I used to do with my right. I-Man said using the off hand was good for me anyhow, that it’d improve my mental balance. So when I bought Rose’s ticket to Milwaukee I naturally held out the money with my left hand and the ticket guy saw my tattoo and said, Nice tattoo, kid, real sarcastic, and then, Jesus, you kids today. I was gonna say something like fuck you, man, but didn’t since it meant the guy didn’t give us any shit after that because basically he didn’t want to look at us like he would’ve if he’d felt sorry for us instead of pissed at my tattoo.

It was maybe an hour while I waited there beside Rose on a bench for the bus to Albany where she’d switch for the Chicago bus and after that she’d have to change again for Milwaukee. She was real quiet and nervous and I hoped she wasn’t mad at me or anything but I didn’t know how to ask if she was without sounding stupid or making her worry about what she was doing even more than she already was so I just sat there and didn’t say anything either, until finally the bus pulled in from Montreal and a few minutes later they announced all aboard for Albany.

There were only a few other people getting on with her, a couple of air force guys and a little old lady saying goodbye to her son and daughter-in-law it looked like. The old lady was normally white for someone her age but her son who kept his arm around her to show her he still cared while he watched the clock for her to leave was the whitest guy I’d ever seen, short pure white hair and beard and eyebrows and eyelashes, pale blue eyes, pink skin, like he had a pigmentation deficiency disease or something and his tall skinny wife looked like that movie actress with the short hair, whatzername Jamie Lee Curtis but the little old lady seemed nice enough so I was hoping she was going to Chicago or maybe even all the way to Milwaukee too and could kind of help take care of Rose.