Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

Me and I-Man though, we were like invisible I guess because nobody even noticed us. We walked past everyone down the crowded road to the main road where I-Man turned left and then we walked at a good clip away from the airport into the darkness and suddenly we were surrounded by this strange silence although I thought I could hear waves of the ocean breaking off to our left a ways. I could tell from the lights behind us that the town which I guessed was Montego Bay was in the opposite direction so I said to I-Man, Where we headed now? and he goes, Not far, Bone. We gwan fine de lion in his kingdom.

That’s cool, I said. For a long time though we kept walking along the side of the road. Now and then I could see the light of a house in the distance and here came a bus or a car that blew by and I could hear a dog bark sometimes. Otherwise darkness and except for the sound of our sandals and the click of I-Man’s Jah-stick against the pavement, silence. I had about a thousand more questions to ask but I knew I wouldn’t’ve understood the answers, it was still too soon so I just marched along behind I-Man and didn’t say anything. I was like a clueless newbie. It was incredibly hot and the air was soft and really wet, it smelled like woodsmoke and curried ocean water or something which was a whole new smell to me, strange and not a good one either and I’m thinking like maybe I’m on a different planet than the one I originally came from, maybe I’m actually the pod boy from earth not Mars and for the first time since the plane took off in Vermont which was the first time in my life I’d done that I got really scared, I’m thinking like maybe I won’t be able to breathe right, maybe there’s too much oxygen here or maybe there’s some weird Jamaican marsh gas in the air and it’s fine for I-Man, he’s got gills or whatever but me, on account of growing up in New York State and all I’m not physically equipped to do this. Travel is good for you, I kept saying to myself, it broadens you and extends your horizons et cetera but way down deep I was wishing I was back in Plattsburgh in the schoolbus again, just another homeless northcountry mall rat dodging the cops and copping a J now and then and spare-changing my way from day to day until my mom finally saw the light and split from Ken so I could go home and grow up living with her as her son again.

Just then I-Man turned off the road and went down into like a ditch and over a low rock fence. There was a little moonlight now and I could see this goat standing on the fence gazing at us with these glazed pale eyes and I watched back because I’d only seen goats in pictures before and didn’t know if they bite. Come, Bone, I-Man said so I followed him and the goat didn’t do anything.

It turned out we were on this path that cut through some palm tree woods and pretty soon we were down on the beach walking along on the sand. There were waves coming in, these strange low peaceful kinds of waves, not surfer waves like you’d’ve thought from it being a real ocean and suddenly the clouds broke open and a big silver moon came out and I could see a little of where I was then, on a long strand of beach with a tangled hedge of low bushes on one side and silhouetted palm trees in back like on a postcard and mountains humped up behind and the water was dark and velvety soft in the moonlight and the clouds got all bright and were edged like in melted silver. It was wicked beautiful.

Now that same warm soft wet air seemed totally natural to me and the smell was like a flowery perfume instead of like somebody’d just pissed on a woodfire and I wasn’t wishing I could go back to Plattsburgh anymore. I was reminding myself that with I-Man and Sister Rose gone and Russ making it in the straight world I’d be all alone up there and pretty soon it’d start getting cold again and the snow would come cruising in from Canada and all the plants and vegetables in I-Man’s groundation would freeze and die and I’d probably start getting into panhandling for crack I’d be so bummed from that kind of life and it’d be downhill from there for sure. And my mom I knew wasn’t going to see the light. No way. No, I was definitely going to have to become a brand-new beggar. Just like I-Man said.

* * *

After a while we ended up cutting off from the beach and went back into the bushes on a zigzaggy path I’d’ve never seen on my own if I hadn’t been following I-Man. Finally we came to this bamboo fence with a gate that had a red and green and gold lion’s head painted on it and when we went through the gate there was this little sandy yard and then I-Man picked up a candle from a shelf beside a door and lit it and went through the door into a bamboo cave which was actually a house, this incredible house with high steep ceilings that were thatched like in Africa and walls built entirely out of bamboo tied together with vines and there were all these little circular rooms and hallways going off of each other in a hundred different directions like an ant farm I once made for school.

The rooms had bunches of huge pillows placed around the walls for sitting on like in a harem and hammocks for sleeping in and low tables and curtains made out of beads hanging at the doors and pictures of Rasta heroes on the walls like Marcus Garvey who I-Man said was the first Jamaican to figure out how to get back to Africa and Martin Luther King who I recognized on my own and an African king in a suit named Mandela I-Man told me when I said who’s that and of course the head Rasta, Haile Selassie himself, Negus of Bathsheba, Emperor of Ethiopia, Jah Rastafar-i. I was learning a lot.

Except for the pictures and the pillows and hammocks and the bead curtains everything else in the house was handmade including the picture frames out of bamboo. It was like Bamboo World, a Rasta theme park and definitely the coolest squat I’d ever seen. It really blew me away so I go, This is cool, man, which sounded so stupid I couldn’t believe I’d said it. Plattsburgh, New York, that’s where I belonged.

Lion in his kingdom fear no one, Bone. Nyah Bingh in his kingdom, twelve tribe in his kingdom, Bobo in his kingdom, he’s like chanting from a pillow where he’d sat down and was now filling the biggest best bong I’d ever seen from a huge bowl of ganja. No matter where we go, we de lion in his kingdom. Sattar, Bone, an’ smoke from de chalice.

He was off on a Rasta-rap, a kind of homecoming high I guess and I could dig that even though it sort of weirded me out, by now everything else was so different from my previous life that there probably wasn’t much left that could make me freak and besides I was interested in doing a load myself so I said, This is like your squat, right? Your Jamaican crib? And nobody else knows about it?

He was pulling these huge draws in by now, his head surrounded by spiraling clouds of smoke, the chalice bubbling and burping away and I was already lifted just from the secondhand smoke. He goes, I-and-I gots to be smart to prevent dem from tumble down on I-and-I. People of de world who see I-works an’ know of I wants to tumble down on I, backbiters — dem wants to tumble down on I, criticism — dem wants to tumble down on I, badminded — dem wants to tumble down on I…

That’s excellent, man. Lemme have a hit, I said and he handed me the chalice and off I go, more toasted in a few seconds than I actually want to be and suddenly I’m scared of losing my brains which almost never happens to me when I smoke so I tried to fake it by not inhaling so much and handed the chalice back to I-Man who was lying back on the pillow across from me a few seconds ago only he was gone now but it was too late, I was flying, the harem room was flying, the bamboo ant farm was flying, the whole world was flying through the known and unknown universe into like deep space where no boy has dared to boldly go before. I thought I saw I-Man but he turned into this tall Rasta guy I’d never seen before with dreads tied up like a huge soft bow on his head and there were a couple of other Rastas who walked past all drifty and mellow and I could hear reggae tunes coming from someplace sometimes real loud with words and chants and then just the heavy beat real quiet and no words and pretty soon it was silent.