Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

I went into my backpack and pulled out my own wallet, a little canvas job that I always kept there because it didn’t have anything in it except my phony ID and a few phone numbers people’d given me over the years and the clipping about the fire from the Plattsburgh newspaper, and there it was, Russ’s Aunt Doris’s number in Keene, New York that he’d given to me the day he split off from me at the Ridgeways’ place on East Hill. I hadn’t thought of it until that exact moment but once it was possible, once I like had that lady’s AT&T card and her home phone number in my hand all I could think about was hearing my ol’ compadre Russ’s voice in my ear.

I shoved all my stuff further under the bushes so you couldn’t see it unless you knew exactly where to look and walked across the hospital grounds straight into the lobby like I was there to visit my mom who was a patient and I did not realize it was after hours. But there was nobody in the waiting room except this nurse at the reception desk who was half asleep and she didn’t even look up as I crossed the room to a pay phone by the elevator door.

I put all the numbers through and the phone rang and rang way up there in upstate New York and I thought. Shit, it must be really late there and they probably don’t even know where Russ is now. I was about to hang up when I heard Russ himself say H’lo?

It’s me, man. Wussup.

Who.

Me. Bone, for chrissake! My voice must’ve changed, I’m thinking.

Who? he said again so I finally had to tell him Chappie but when he heard that it really flipped him out and he goes, Wow, Chappie, no shit, where the fuck are you, man? and so forth.

I told him Jamaica and he said you mean the country? and I said yeah and that blew him away for a while. When he finally came back I tried to tell him a little of how I got there but as soon as I started I realized there was no way I could fill him in even if I had a year to do it. Too much had happened. Plus I’d changed in ways that even I didn’t understand yet. Russ who was pretty smart was never what you’d call sensitive when it came to other people’s lives so I mainly asked questions and when the conversation came back to me and what’s happening in Jamaica and drugs and babes and all I just got vague and changed the subject.

I was surprised he was still at his aunt’s but he said he’d gone to work in construction last summer for his uncle and stayed there because they’d let him live in a room in the basement. I’m like a fucking mole in a hole, man, he said. His mom’d basically washed her hands of him which was mutual, he said and everything that’d happened in Au Sable, the fire and all had blown over and been forgotten and he’d even gotten his old Camaro back.

Guess what my first job with my uncle was, he said.

Beats the shit out of me, man, I said already pretty bored but starting to hatch an interesting new idea. Hey listen, I said, there’s something I need to ask you, man.

My first job, right? I hadda clean up the Ridgeways’ place that we trashed, you remember that? Oh man, was that place a fucking mess and it looked like you did some heavy damage on your own, man, after I split. Lots of busted windows, man. But don’t worry, I never mentioned it was us. Or you.

Thanks. Listen, Russ—

Oh an’ wait till you hear this, man. This’ll fuckin’ cheer you up. Your mom and stepdad? They split, man.

They got divorced? I said really psyched.

No, no, dipshit, they split. They moved away.

Oh. Where?

He didn’t know. Someplace out near Buffalo where my stepdad got a job as a prison guard which sounded like the perfect job for him. I asked him when and he said right after my grandmother died.

Grandma died? I said.

Oh man, wow, like I’m sorry, I forgot you wouldn’t’ve known that. How long you been in Jamaica, man? That happened in the fall, October I think. Heart attack or something, he said. He didn’t know the details, he’d only heard about it from his aunt who knew him and me were friends.

That pretty much settled it. My mom and my stepdad were gone which made my hometown of Au Sable all of a sudden look seriously tempting especially since Russ was doing okay over in Keene and we could still hang. Grandma was dead which made me sad and all but not too much because we hadn’t exactly been buddies and besides it freed me from any possible future connections to my mom and stepdad. They wouldn’t even know I’d come back. Any life I ended up leading in Au Sable now would be my own. I could even go back to school if I wanted. What had been only an interesting new idea now turned into a plan.

Listen, man, I said, I want to come back. I’m ready to come home now.

He was shocked. Here? Gimme a fucking break, he said and went on about what an asshole place Au Sable was and how everything and everyone there sucked the big one.

But I said no, it’d gotten too tense for me here and I needed to come back to the States and lead a normal life and get my shit together for the future. I was even thinking about college someday, I said although actually that thought’d never crossed my mind in my whole life until I said it and I might’ve been lying. It was a moment of weakness and I was pretty confused right then.

But I don’t have any money for plane fare, I told him so I was wondering if he could maybe loan me three hundred bucks say and I’d pay him back as soon as I got a job which I’d do right away, probably at the mall.

Now he was really shocked. Stunned. You’re shitting me, man! he said. The fucking Plattsburgh mall? And go to school? In Au Sable? When you could be kicking back in fucking Jamaica drinking excellent rum and cokes and smoking humongous spliffs of ganja and screwing Jamaican babes under the tropical moon! I heard Jamaican babes are the best, man, and they really dig white guys. That true?

Russ, it’s not like you think, I said. Nothing is.

Yeah, sure, for you maybe but if like the two of us were down there together, man, everything’d be incredibly cool. You’re too young to be there alone, man. There’s like too much you don’t know yet. I’m seventeen now and can kind of show you the way, you know what I’m saying? I’ll tell you what, Chapstick. I’ll raise some money, I’ll sell my Camaro, that’s how much I love you, man, only I’ll come there instead of you coming here. This place rots, man. It truly rots. And besides, my aunt and uncle’re trying to get me the fuck outa here anyhow. They want their basement back and they’re always on my case to like join the fucking army. But I got this guy I know, he’s willing to give me seven hundred bucks for the Camaro. Cash. It’s a piece of shit anyhow. I’ll sell it and be there in two days. Less, even. I’ll fucking be in Montego Bay tomorrow. Like where’ll I meet you, man? Just tell me where we can hook up and I’ll be there. We can deal a little ganja, hang out on the beach, screw all the local babes and fucking party, man! And if you still want to be a wuss and like come back here and work at the mall flipping fucking burgers at McDonald’s and go back to the little red schoolhouse, fine. Do it. I’ll even pay your way home.

I didn’t think he’d show up in Jamaica tomorrow, or ever. I didn’t even think he’d sell his Camaro but I said okay anyhow and told him I’d be hanging out by the clock tower in the main square in downtown Mobay. It was a place I almost never went and now would avoid completely, just in case.

Mobay, huh. That what they call it?

Yeah. Montego Bay.

Cool. You just hang there, man, and if I’m not in Mobay by the clock tower tomorrow night I’ll be there the next. And Chappie, he said.