Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

I was just looking for Willie, I said.

No shit. Willie’s dead. What the fuck are you doing here? What the fuck are you doing alive, for chrissake?

Willie’s dead? How?

Killed by a car. Right out front. Who knows? Who the fuck cares.

I care! Who hit him? You?

Yeah, sure, you care, he said coming into the room and standing there in the middle of the mess while he scratched his stomach and looked all over and finally found a crumpled pack of cigarettes on the coffee table. Maybe I hit him, maybe I didn’t, he said. Point is, he was standing still when he should’ve been running. He rummaged through the cigarette pack and pulled one out and lit it and inhaled slowly and for a few seconds just looked at me like he didn’t quite recognize me and then he said, So what’s the story, morning glory?

Whaddaya mean?

You been having plenty of fun? That’s some outfit you got on.

You ain’t exactly Ralph Lauren yourself, I said and he kind of laughed at that.

We never bought the story about you being dead in the Video Den fire, y’know. Especially after they only found the one body and a few weeks later your little buddy turned up at his auntie’s in Keene. So where’ve you been all this while? Peddling your ass in New York City? That’s what all you little druggies do, isn’t it? Head for Times Square and sell your ass to rich old cocksuckers with AIDS and then come home to Mama to die.

Sounds more like something you’d like to do, I said. Where’s my mom?

At work. Where I oughta be, he said and he sighed and sat down on the sofa and put his bare feet up on the coffee table and I saw that he didn’t have a hard-on anymore. Well, Chappie, I am glad to see you, he said. No shit, I am. I’m sorry for being such a hardass there. It’s just, there’s been a lot of people upset since you disappeared. Especially your mom. Your grandma too. And me too, believe it or not. Even me.

Yeah, well, I’ve been fine, I said. Living with friends is all. So what’s happening, Ken, you guys been partying? I said and kind of waved my hand at the debris and he smiled and told me he’d been laid off at the base a few weeks ago because the Democrats were going to close it and the first ones to get let go were always the building services people but my mom was pissed at him for that and some other things beyond his control and not worth mentioning and they’d had some fights, he said, and then she’d moved in with my grandmother for a while. He guessed he wasn’t much for housekeeping and I said yeah, from the look of things. He seemed like a real sad sack flopped there on the couch surrounded by his filth and even though he was still the same guy he’d been before, still in pretty good shape for his age which was around forty I think, he seemed older and softer and sadder like he’d finally received some bad news that he’d spent his whole life trying to avoid.

I asked if him and my mom were splitting up and he said no, they just needed to give each other a little space on account of she had gone into AA, he said and now he was going to have to do the same if he wanted her back and he did. He was going in today as a matter of fact.

My mom? I said. In Alcoholics Anonymous? Like she’s an alcoholic?

Yeah, AA or something like that, one of those groups that meet over at the hospital. AA or Al Anon or Ali Baba or PLO or some damn thing, it don’t matter, they all say the same shit. They’re right though, Chappie. They are. They get you straightened out and keep you there. But your mom, she’s turned into a real hardass on this drinking thing.

It turned out she herself wasn’t exactly an alcoholic he explained, or at least she said she wasn’t but she was like in this group of people who all claimed their husbands and wives were alcoholics and drug addicts et cetera and they got together once a week and talked to each other about it and according to Ken if you wanted to get your wife back you had to go into AA and give up booze or drugs or whatever they said you were addicted to.

Sounds weird, I said and he said yeah, it was but he really wanted her back so he was going to do it.

You want some help cleaning up? I said. She might be willing to come back home if the place is clean and all and I’m here now. I was thinking I kind of needed her to be living here with or without Ken because my grandmother’s place was this small one-room apartment in the Mayflower Arms in town with no kitchen and only this tiny alcove for a bed which meant my mom was sleeping on the couch so no way I could live there with her.

Ken thought that was a terrific idea and smiled for the first time but first would I check the fridge and see was there a beer. I did but didn’t enjoy it especially because the fridge was so filthy and I knew I’d be the one to have to clean it. In spite of Ken being such a neatnik and all I’d never seen him lift a finger to clean anything himself. It was always me or my mom.

I brought him his beer and handed it to him and when I did he grabbed my wrist real hard. What the fuck’s this? he said meaning my tattoo.

Nothin’, I said and tried to get away but he wouldn’t let me. You little pussy! he said. You fucking twat, getting yourself tattooed like some kind of fucking fag. You got one on your ass yet? Lemme see, fag, lemme see your ass, he said and he made a grab for my shorts and when he did I slipped out of his grip. I ran back into the kitchen and he hollered, Get the hell back here, I’m gonna fuck you right once and for all!

I could’ve gotten out the door easy then and he wouldn’t’ve caught me, he was drunk and half naked and I’m a good runner but instead I reached into my backpack and pulled out the gun and turned and very calmly walked back into the livingroom just as he was coming around the coffee table and I saw he had his boner again.

He saw the gun though and stopped. He goes, Oh c’mon, Chappie, just give me that. You don’t know how to use that.

Try me, you sonofabitch. C’mon, let me burn you with it, man. I mean it. Please! I said. I really wanted him to take one step toward me or to call me a fag again or a twat or a pussy. I really wanted him to say he was gonna fuck me right. I wanted to hear the words one more time, that’s all, and for him to take one more step toward me. Just one. Because I wanted to kill him. I have never wanted anything in my life as much as I wanted to kill my stepfather at that moment. But I knew I couldn’t do it unless he said one more bad thing to me or took one more step toward me. It was like a deal I had made with God, like I had been given legal permission by God to shoot the fucker in the face but only if he went one step further than he’d already gone in my life, only if he went one step beyond all the nights he’d sneaked into my room and made me touch his dick and suck on it for him and then called me a little cocksucker, one step beyond all the lies he told to my mom and made me tell too so she wouldn’t know, all the times he said he’d cut off my dick if I told and no one’d believe me anyhow because everyone knew that whatever happened was my own fault because I was the one who sucked the cock, one step beyond all the times he hit me and then was sorry and came into my room to apologize and lay down on my bed and ended up jerking off in the dark next to me. Please, please, Ken, call me a twat, call me a fag, come at me now, reach out and try to take this gun away, try to grab my wrist, please!

He didn’t. The sonofabitch. He fell back onto the couch and put his head in his hands and started to cry. It was the first time I’d ever seen him cry and he cried like a little kid, sobbing and drooling with snot running down and everything, his shoulders and back jumping like he was throwing up. It was pretty pathetic but I didn’t feel one bit sorry for him. I was only sorry that I hadn’t been able to shoot him in the face, a lost opportunity that I knew would never come my way again.