Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

Yeah?

Line us up a couple of buff Jamaican chicks, man. I got a permanent boner these days and it needs some of that black pussy to stroke it.

Yeah. Sure.

All right! he said.

I told him I had to go then so I said goodbye and hung up, wondering if Russ’d always been such a dickhead only I hadn’t noticed on account of I was a dickhead myself. And I was pissed, pissed at Russ for everything he’d said and at myself for being such a wuss and wanting to go back to Au Sable in order to get my shit together like I couldn’t do it just as good here or anywhere in the world. I’d been sad and lonely though when I’d called Russ due to everything that had happened and I couldn’t blame him for not having the equipment to understand. He was who he was. But if I was sad and lonely when I called him I was even sadder and lonelier now.

I flopped down in this plastic chair next to the phone and was putting Russ’s aunt’s phone number back into my wallet when this other piece of paper slipped out and fell to the floor and just then a little breeze crossed the lobby and blew the paper across the room like in a dance. I was almost too bummed to do anything about it but I got curious suddenly about what was on the paper so I stood up and chased it across the tile floor of the lobby toward the open door and managed to snatch it up just as it got to the door. Then I took a look. It was my own handwriting and said N. Riley who I’d never heard of with what looked like a telephone number and area code I didn’t know, 414.

I’m not usually superstitious but I guess I was kind of spacey then from not having smoked any herb for two whole days almost and my idiotic conversation with Russ. It’s a message, I’m thinking, a secret coded message sent from I-Man imitating my handwriting with instructions about what to do next and as usual he wants me to do some headwork on my own in order to get it. I’m thinking maybe 414 is the area code for Jamaica and I-Man’s secret name is N. Riley and like the N. stands for Nonny after the old Maroon female warrior who could catch the British bullets with her pussy and fire them back from her ass, and the letters in Riley are supposed to be rearranged. I studied them for a minute and came up with I–LYRE which made complete sense if it really was a message from I-Man since a lyre is like a harp that angels use. By now I was really psyched.

I went straight to the phone and punched the numbers in, using the AT&T card of my Kentucky friend like before. Man, I’m thinking, this is going to be wicked incredible. I was so stoked to hear I-Man’s voice again that when a woman’s voice came on and said, Yeah? I just blurted out, Lemme speak to I-Man.

Who?

Then I realized of course I-Man wouldn’t be using his own voice anymore so I said, Jeez, I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t sound rude. Is this like… Nonny?

Yeah. This’s Nancy, she says and something about the voice is familiar. It’s slurred and a little buzzed like it’s coming through a cheap speaker even though it’s a clear enough connection.

Ah.. this isn’t Nonny?

It sure ain’t, honey. I thought you said Nancy. Sorry ‘bout that. But you can talk to me if you want, she said and laughed like a crackhead, a little off. I remembered then.

The area code 414 was for Milwaukee, Wisconsin and I was talking to Nancy Riley. Sister Rose’s mother.

Yeah, well… I guess I’m calling for Sister Rose actually.

Sister Rose? You mean my Rosie? Jesus Christ, whad-da you, some kind of church or something? I don’t need this—

Wait, don’t hang up! I’m like a friend of hers, of Rosie. I’m the one who sent her home to you, I’m the one who got her away from that guy Buster Brown. Remember? I… I’m just calling to see if she got there okay and all.

Oh yeah, she says. You’re the kid with the money. Yeah, she got here fine. You know, that was Buster’s money, I found out, and you stole it off him. If he ever finds you, kid, he’ll fucking kill you, believe me.

That’s cool, I said. So is Rose there? Can I speak to her?

No.

No I can’t speak to her or no she’s not there?

There was a long silence. I’m thinking if I ever get back to the States I’m going to find this woman and kill her and then I’m going after Buster. Finally she says, Both.

Both what?

You can’t speak to her and she’s not here. Rose… Rose passed on last September.

I didn’t know what to say to that so for a long time we just listened to each other breathe. Then I said, C’mon. Sister Rose didn’t die.

She was real sick when she got here. That was one sick little girl you put on the bus, mister.

The fuck she was! What’d she die of, bitch?

Pneumonia, if you want to know. And you don’t have to talk to me that way. I’ve been through hell. I tried to save her but I’m sick myself, you know what I’m saying? Rosie was my little girl but they took her away from me like it was my fault she was sick. It was yours though. You never should’ve put her on that bus. That’s what did it, she said.

I did some deep breathing so I wouldn’t lose it on the phone and calmly asked her where was Rose buried. I knew someday I’d be able to go there and put flowers on her grave and I would, but I didn’t tell her that.

The woman obviously didn’t even know where her own daughter was buried and just said it was none of my business unless I was willing to help pay for the funeral costs. It’s expensive, you know, and I’m broke, mister. I don’t even have enough money to put a little gravestone up. You could help with that, if you’re really her friend like you say. Five hundred bucks’d cover it, I think. You could just put it on your credit card and like wire it to me.

Lady, I said, for what you’ve done you should burn in hell forever.

Yeah, well, fuck you too, she snarled. I already am burning in hell. And I hope Buster finds you and cuts your balls off, she said and hung up.

For a few minutes I stood there in the hospital lobby with the receiver in my hand looking at it like it was a bug. Then I set it on the hook. I had I-Man’s message in my other hand and still thought of it as I-Man’s message even though it was about Sister Rose and not him or me so I put it into my mouth and chewed it up and swallowed it.

Later I was back under the bushes on the hospital grounds lying with my head on my backpack and trying to organize my thoughts and keep my feelings out of it at least long enough to decide what to do tomorrow so I could fall asleep tonight. My main man I-Man had flown back to lie beside his ascendants in Africa where I could never go. And all the doors of Accompong were closed to me forever and the ant farm was a busted-apart house of death that I never wanted to see again. Sister Rose was gone to wherever little kids go when they die, and I was too old to go there now and start life over with her— I almost wasn’t a kid anymore and knew too much and was too strong and wily now to die without a struggle. And Russ, my homeboy, ol’ Russ was basically off my screen. Permanent. My moment of weakness had passed over me like a dark cloud and gone and with Grandma dead and Mom and my stepdad moved to Buffalo, even though it would be more peaceful for me in Au Sable there was no more reason for me to go there than anywhere else in America. Au Sable was a town like any other where I’d be just another homeless kid scraping by trying to stay off drugs and not catch AIDS. Forget-tee, I said to myself.

Here in Jamaica though I was a foreigner and an illegal alien and white besides and I couldn’t spare-change on the streets of Mobay many more days before the red-stripers busted me for vagrancy, and without a reliable source of ganja anymore I couldn’t deal to the tourists for a living and raise enough money to rent a regular room. Things were truly grim. I’d never been so bummed.