Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

I knew the brethren pretty good by then, Terron and Elroy and Rubber who were in their thirties or forties, older Rastas with wicked massy dreads. Terron and Elroy were I-Man’s cousins and like junior partners in his groundation and Rubber whose name came from his face which he could twist into all these different expressions anytime he wanted but mostly looked sad was his nephew and had his own groundation in the cockpit next to I-Man’s. They were heavy dudes, darker and fiercer than the ant farm posse, expert machete men with great builds who looked like they could pull your arms out if they wanted. I-Man who was a tiny old guy compared to them they treated with total respect and Terron once told me that someday I-Man when he ascended unto the fullness of his age and completed his trampoosing among the various peoples of the world would probably become the chief of the Maroons in Accompong or at least the secretary of state.

Finally we were way down in the bottom of one of the cockpits where the moonlight couldn’t reach and you couldn’t even see the stars and I was just following I-Man in pitch darkness by the sound of his footsteps now. Then suddenly I couldn’t hear him anymore so I stopped and after a few seconds I said, Yo, I-Man, where you at?

Rubber who was right behind me said, Keep movin’, Rasta.

But I-and-I cyan see nuttin.

No matter, mon, he said and gave me a little push on the shoulder with the tip of his machete and that got me going again. On and on I walked in total darkness like for a quarter of a mile maybe, thinking, Well, if I walk off a cliff I won’t know it till it’s too late so why worry, when I noticed that the air had gotten cool like a fan was blowing and I could feel through my sandals that I was walking on smooth flat rock now not dirt or grass anymore and I could hear water dripping. I knew I must be in a cave but it was like I had a blindfold on and I started imagining bats and snakes and shit darting at me out of the darkness and my skin got goose-bumped all over and for a second there I was scared I’d lose it completely and start trying to claw my way back out to the moonlight and for the rest of my life I’d have to live with the shameful knowledge that I’d panicked at the very moment I was supposed to be viewing the lights of I-self and ascending in that irie glow to the heights of I-and-I where I’d finally come to know Jah.

I heard a match then and saw the flame and I-Man’s craggy brown face as he lit up a spliff and took a deep hit off of it and with the same match lit a candle and then took it and went around lighting more candles that were in these nooks and crannies in the walls of the cave. The darkness disappeared and tall shadows flashed and fell all around like I-Man was dropping solid dark gray wool blankets off of a clothesline and revealing behind them this humongous room with yellowish-white rock walls that were curved and smooth like they’d been carved out of solid rock by water over millions of years. It was like being inside a gigantic human skull and we’d come in through the mouth. Up above there were a couple more dark caves leading out that looked like eye sockets and in back where I guess the spinal column was I could see another dark hole and I could hear water running down there like that was the ancient riverbed and it was still carving its way deeper and deeper into the earth.

I-Man sat me down on a little ledge and sat beside me and pointed out a bunch of red pictures up on the top of the skull of these weird squiggly signs and a couple of animals I recognized like turtles and birds and snakes and stick figures of guys with spears who were fighting each other, some lying down with the spears sticking out and some with their heads cut off and the rest whaling on them. The pictures were way up on top, higher than you could reach without an extension ladder which they didn’t have in those olden days so I wondered how they got up there to paint them.

Dem fly up, Bone, I-Man said. Dem ol’ Africans could fly lak birds, mon.

I figured there’d be some kind of ceremony now and I was really hoping it wouldn’t involve any cutting and blood but I’d come this far without turning back and was ready to go the whole route no matter what the drill was. So I was really relieved when Rubber reaches into the cloth bag where I’d been thinking they had the knives and bowls for collecting blood or whatever and instead he pulls out this cool little clay chillum made in the shape of a pregnant African woman sitting with her legs crossed and her arms folded under her huge tits and I-Man immediately fills it from a pouch and says, Dis be some special herb, Bone, and lights it. He passed the chillum down to Terron and Elroy and Rubber who all took huge hits and then to me and I gave it my usual medium-sized whack and passed it on to I-Man but before the tube’d even reached I-Man’s mouth I felt myself whirling like in a barrel going over a waterfall and for a second it was completely dark again and I couldn’t see anything except I knew I was still spinning in the barrel. Then my eyesight came back and I was in a totally different place than the cave and with different people.

I’m remembering it now while I’m telling it so I’m like in two places at once, here and now and then and there, but when it was happening I was only in the one place which was not a limestone cave in Cockpit Country in Jamaica with I-Man and his Rasta brethren, and it wasn’t like any tripping on acid I’d ever done where you’re also in two places at once and one of them is weird and the other normal. Even dreaming you’re usually in two places at once. No, this was like real and I didn’t have any memory of how I got there or any plans for getting out.

A drum was beating, real heavy and slow like thump, thump, thump, and it didn’t let up or change, it just went on and on, a sort of sound track on a continuous loop that seemed to come from the place itself the way the sound of the wind does, like it was coming right out of the trees and fields and sky and not from outside. I wasn’t scared or anything yet, I just went with it and discovered one thing at a time and dealt with it, like the fact that I was up on a wagon driving a team of oxen I guess they are, like cows only bigger slowly along a lane that cuts across a wide green cane field and my wagon is heaped up with cane stalks. There’s the sea in the distance with waves breaking on a thin sandy beach and rocky ledges further on and a bright blue sky overhead and a burning sun and behind me the dark green mountains.

I’m all alone out there on my wagon and it’s hot under the noonday sun and it takes me a long time to get across the cane field to the line of trees at the edge and when I pass into the shade of the trees it’s cooler and a light breeze blows and I’m pretty happy for a few minutes then. There’s a little stream flowing by and where the trail crosses it I stop the wagon and let the oxen drink from it and drink a little myself and wet my doo-rag and wipe my face with it.

Then I get back up on the wagon box and drive on and cross some more cane fields until finally I come into this little town where there’s a regular stone church and some stores and so on and lots of people walking around, mostly black people barefoot and in work clothes and a few white people dressed more or less the same until I get to the town square where there’s more white people than black now and the whites are wearing straw hats and these old-fashioned suits. Nobody pays any attention to me so I go by real slow and try to catch the scene although it makes me feel ashamed and I don’t want to look. But I do.

The white people are buying and selling black people. A white guy up on a kind of stage in the middle is showing off a naked scared-looking black kid about my age, making him turn around and bend over and spread his cheeks and show his ass and balls to the crowd which has a fair number of females in it and different whites in the crowd are bidding on the kid while another white guy off to the side of the stage, the auctioneer I guess points to this or that bidder and keeps the price going up. Everybody acts like it’s normal. Even the black people. Little pick’ny kids are running around and black women are carrying bundles on their heads and white men are smoking cigars and talking. Nobody’s crying or looking embarrassed or pissed off, everybody’s relaxed and easy and familiar with each other, white and black alike although obviously the whites are the bosses and tell the blacks to do this or that which they do but not too fast.