Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

I hated doing it but it was time to take the American guy’s advice. Time to head for the Mothership.

In the morning when I woke up to the sound and diesel smell of trucks and buses blatting past on Gloucester Avenue next to my head practically I didn’t know this would be my next-to-last day in Jamaica, but I wouldn’t’ve done anything different if I had. I would’ve gone up to the Mothership anyhow same as I did and I would’ve pretty much done up there what I did irregardless. I told myself I was going because like the American guy said at the ant farm, it was the only place on the island where I was safe now but actually I had some unfinished business with my father, with Doc, with Pa, and that’s why I went. I didn’t know what the unfinished business was exactly but I was pretty sure it had to do with me betraying I-Man to him the night that I-Man hooked up with Evening Star, the night of my birthday party. That was like a sin which is different from a crime and it still weighed heavily on my mind so to speak and I guess I wanted to somehow undo it if I could, especially now that I-Man was dead and I needed my father, Doc, Pa, for that.

I spare-changed for a while and by mid-morning had a few bucks in my pocket plus a meat patty breakfast under my belt so I cut over to the marketplace where I caught a bus like I-Man and I’d done the first time and rode up out of Mobay on the long winding road to the village of Montpelier and got off by the little grassy lane that led up to the Mothership. It was a real pretty day with a fresh breeze blowing and the sun out but not too hot and the local people as I passed them were friendlier toward me than I remembered from before, I guess on account of my Jah-stick and backpack and the box which maybe made me look like I’d come from a far place like Australia and was returning home. Or probably they just remembered me from my birthday party last summer and were glad to see me back again. I liked the local people, the farmers and suchlike and the women and kids who lived in the little houses and cabins in the bush all around the greathouse on the hill and who it’s possible were the descendants of people who’d been the slaves there, and it made me happy that they seemed to remember and like me too, so when they smiled and waved I smiled and waved back like mad and shook my Jah-stick in the air like it was a spear and I was on a sacred mission to deal with the dragon in his cave who’d terrorized the villagers for centuries. That’s a fantasy, I know but that’s how I think sometimes.

Finally I was over the top of the hill looking down at Mobay and came to the sign STARPORT and turned in at the stone gate and walked up the long driveway past the terraced flower gardens and all the strange white animals with the red eyes and mouths and marched up the wide front steps to the greathouse. It was real quiet and I couldn’t see anybody not even the guy who worked in the gardens or the woman, his wife who did the laundry and all but I remembered it was the heat of the day and they never worked then anyhow, but there weren’t any cars in the parking area I noticed and no one out at the pool either which was unusual. I’d never seen the place empty. before and kind of liked it.

I hollered, Yo, Pa! and Yo, Evening Star! a couple times and finally decided the place was mine for the time being, I took a cold Red Stripe from the fridge and wandered into the livingroom where I’d dropped my stuff and scrounged around till I found some cigarettes, loosies in a silver box. I took a handful and started smoking and because I hadn’t had any for a few days got instantly high although not like with skunk of course and it wore off right away. Then I noticed Pa’s CD player by his chair and I thought I’m pretty nervous and this’d be a good chance to finally hear those classical CDs I took from the Ridgeways’ summerhouse in Keene so I went into my pack and pulled them out.

I was thinking about that place in Keene now anyhow due to the similarities of me being alone there and alone here and with both houses being old and up on a hill with great views and I was noticing how different I was now from how I was then only a little less than a year ago. Naturally in lots of ways I was still the same person but the differences were real and pretty amazing and I hoped permanent because in spite of how things’d turned out I never wanted to go back to being the sad fucked-up kid I was a year ago.

The guys who’d made all the CDs had these mostly unpronounceable names which was definitely not like typical rock or reggae bands except for this one that attracted my attention not only because I could pronounce it, Charles Ives but because IVES was in big letters and seemed like an excellent Rasta name and plus some of the songs had names like The Unanswered Question and The See’r and All the Way Around and Back which sounded like they might be Rasta songs or at least spiritual, so I snapped that one in and kicked back in Pa’s chair and listened to it. I guess I was like still wishing for a message from I-Man in Africa to tell me what to do next so I listened to this Ives guy more careful than I would’ve otherwise and accidentally got really into his songs, most of which didn’t have any words but that didn’t matter because when they did have words they were sung like in opera and I could barely understand them. But it was the band music I was into, all these trumpets and violins coming at me from different directions at different speeds and loudness but linked together anyhow. No one instrument stood out so I figured Ras Ives must be the songwriter and probably led the band too although he might’ve been the piano player. I don’t think he did any of the singing.

I sat there for a couple of hours and played the CD over and over and the more I listened the stronger and steadier inside I felt until I was sure that I-Man was using his ol’ compadre Ras Ives to drum me into shape and clarity the same way the Cockpit Rastas late at night used their African drumming out on their groundations sitting around the chillum together to see into the depths and the heights of I. I figured Ras Ives must be a white guy due to a lot of the songs having white names like Three Places in New England and General William Booth Enters into Heaven but it was obvious listening to him that he was a true heavy Rasta anyhow and I was starting to think that maybe that was the message I-Man was sending me, that even though I was a white kid I could still become a true heavy Rasta myself someday but only as long as I didn’t ever forget I was a white kid, just like black people could never forget they were black people. He was telling me in a world like ours which is divided into white and black that was how you finally came to know I.

Along about five I heard a car coming up the driveway and it turned out to be the black Buick, Pa’s government car. The driver stopped by the steps and let Pa out and then turned and went back the way he’d come. Pa I could instantly see was seriously toasted, swinging and swaying as he came slowly up the steps and grinding his teeth like from speedballs so I decided this might not be the best time to tell him his son had returned to the fold. I grabbed my stuff and ran up the stairs and down the hall way to what used to be my room at the end and didn’t remember till I got there that I’d left the Ras Ives CD playing. It was too late to go back so I just chilled and let him deal with it. I could hear Pa hollering downstairs for Evening Star and yelling, Where the hell is everybody, for Christ’s sake! and mumbling to himself as he walked from room to room.