Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

When you’re in a country full of black people and you’re a white kid and don’t want to stick out the best thing is to go hang where the white folks gather. Which in my case was Doctors Cave in Mobay, this private beach club with a bunch of fancy shops and restaurants in the neighborhood and white people all over the place strolling hand in hand and buying things and getting suntanned and feeling safe from attack or deception by the natives. Plus since I didn’t have any ganja to sell now it was an excellent place to spare-change a few bucks while I figured out what to do next.

That first night I crashed in the back seat of an unlocked Volvo I found in the lot behind the Beach View Hotel on Gloucester Avenue and the next morning after I’d successfully scored for change a few times despite my dreads with my story about being left behind by my teenaged Christian tour group I was sitting on a bench eating a meat patty for breakfast and reading a copy of the Daily Gleaner I’d found in a trashcan, and over on the second page I saw a little article stuck in the middle of all these other articles about shootings and machete choppings and suchlike about two unidentified men found shot dead in Mount Zion. That’s the name of the town the ant farm was in so I knew it was about Prince Shabba and I-Man. Like no way I was going to go to the cops and identify their bodies, but I did think I ought to hitch out to Accompong maybe and tell I-Man’s old lady and Rubber and the guys what had happened, so that’s what I did.

I was all burdened down by guilt feelings then, partly on account of not being able to help I-Man at the moment when he most needed me although I don’t know what I could’ve done to distract those dudes so he could get away. Still I might’ve thought of something. I’m a pretty good talker especially when it comes to bullshitting white people. That was the other thing that had me all twisted up. Whiteness. Even more than being Doc’s son it was my white skin that’d saved me from being blown away like Prince Shabba and I-Man. I knew if I wasn’t white, if I’d been a real Rasta-boy like I’d been pretending to be I’d be dead now.

When I got out to Accompong that afternoon though, right away I saw it was a mistake. They didn’t need me to bring the news. I probably should’ve realized it but everybody already knew what’d happened at the ant farm— Jamaica’s a really small country and news travels fast even without telephones especially when it concerns somebody as well known on the ganja circuit as I-Man. Anyhow I went to I-Man’s old lady first but she wouldn’t even talk to me. I’d never actually learned her name, I-Man’d only called her his ‘oman and introducing people to each other by name wasn’t his style exactly but I was ashamed I’d never even asked. She was a short stocky lady with a hard face and when I knocked on the door to her and I-Man’s cabin she came to the door with a little pick’ny-kid on her hip and when she saw who it was she just waved me away like I was a fly and closed the door in my face.

Everybody else in the village, the guys hanging out at the general store and the bar and the kids who used to be real friendly all just turned away when they saw me coming or watched me from a distance with cold dark faces. It was grim. Finally I went out to I-Man’s groundation where I found Rubber watering the baby plants by himself but even he didn’t want to see me or talk about what had happened. I tried a couple of times to act friendly like before and introduced the subject by saying stuff like, You heard about I-Man I guess, but he just nodded and went on with his work like I wasn’t there. It looked like he was taking control of I-Man’s plants and didn’t want me around to help him or even witness it.

People weren’t like making physical threats against me or anything but for the first time it felt dangerous up there amongst the Maroons and I figured it’d be best if I got out of there before dark so I went up to my old cabin and got my backpack and my belongings. While I was there I saw my old machete leaning in a corner that I-Man’d given me and taught me how to use for all the different tasks. I’d used it as a plow and a shovel and a hoe and an ax and a gigantic jackknife and a sword all in one, and I thought, man, I’ve earned that at least, so I took the machete and the sharpening file too. I didn’t say goodbye or anything to Rubber, just walked off toward the village and then down the long slope to the main road.

When I got out to the road I set my pack down and I-Man’s box and leaned my Jah-stick against them to start hitching but for a while there weren’t any vehicles coming so I checked out my machete and started sharpening it with the file. Pretty soon it was like razor sharp and I tried that old hair test where you pull out a hair and slice it in half and then all of a sudden I’m sawing off all my dread locks one by one. It only took a minute and they were gone, lying at my feet like a pile of dead snakes. I leaned down and scooped them up in my hands and carried them back into the bushes a ways and laid them gently on the ground there and patted them like saying goodbye to a sweet friend or a pet you have to abandon. Then I came back to the road where my stuff was and continued hitching and the third car that passed stopped and picked me up. It was a Baptist minister, a fat black guy sweating in a suit and tie who drove me all the way in to Mobay singing hymns in this deep loud voice and dropped me off right in front of Doctors Cave.

That night I couldn’t find any unlocked cars behind the hotels along the Gloucester Avenue strip and finally real late I sneaked onto the St. James Hospital grounds which’re like a park with a fence around it and camped under some bushes near the fence so I could climb back over and hit the street real quick if I had to. For a while I lay there with my head on my backpack for a pillow thinking about my troubles and how much I was missing I-Man already and what a little turd I was for trying not to be white when all the time I’d been enjoying many of the benefits of the white race, like still being alive for instance. I thought no wonder the Maroons were pissed at me, they probably figured I’d helped set the whole thing up and was working for Nighthawk and was only coming back to Accompong to try and rip them off a second time.

It was hard to fall asleep, due to my turbulent thoughts of course but also from the ambulances coming and going plus the action on the street, mostly drunk or stoned tourists heading back to their hotels from the beach bars. But finally it quieted down and I was just starting my nod when I heard a cop whistle and heard somebody running real hard. I peered out through the fence to the sidewalk which was right next to it and here came two little Jamaican kids maybe ten or twelve years old running like mad and half a block behind them a red-striper was in hot pursuit with his gun out blowing his whistle and hollering for them to stop or he’ll shoot. As the kids race past where I’m hiding the one in front tosses something over the fence and it lands almost on my head, a ladies’ pocketbook and then they’re gone and not till the cop runs past a few seconds later and I can’t hear them anymore do I pull the pocketbook up to me and take a look inside.

It was the usual ladies’ items, makeup and Kleenexes and suntan lotion and also a suede wallet with a snap but when I open it it’s empty, no money, no credit cards, until I look inside this one compartment and find a Kentucky driver’s license with a picture of a good-looking silver-haired woman on it and also a telephone calling card from AT&T. Excellent discovery, I’m thinking. If only I had the woman’s phone number I could use the card and reach out and touch someone, although up to that moment there hadn’t been anybody I’d wanted to reach out and touch except I-Man and not even AT&T could connect me to him now. Then I noticed this little black address book and inside the woman had foolishly filled in the ID section and there was her home phone number. Cool. Now I could call anybody in the world if I wanted to, at least until the woman from Kentucky reported her card was stolen.