Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

Then a little while later I heard another car drive up, Evening Star’s Range Rover from the sound of it and here comes a whole bunch of white American female voices including Evening Star’s plus one Jamaican guy laughing that when he said, Me gwan fe kill de goat now, I recognized as Jason. A couple of the females said like, Oh-h-h no-o-oo! but they were only kidding and laughed and pretty soon there was the sound of splashing and diving from the pool where I guessed everyone’d gone for a swim, except Jason I figured and Pa who I’d never seen swim even once the whole time.

Downstairs then I heard Evening Star in the livingroom saying, What the hell are you listening to? and Pa who was somewhere else, probably in the kitchen says, Beats the shit out of me. I dunno, I think it was on when I came in, he says sounding fairly mellow so I decide this’s as good a time as any to make my appearance.

I don’t know why but I put my pack on and brought my Jah-stick. I guess I wanted to like make a grand entrance descending the staircase which I did and they both watched me in silence as I came walking slowly down to the livingroom. Then when I got to the bottom step Evening Star came rushing over to me and wrapped me up in her arms smelling like bread and I could see on her shoulder and neck a light sweat and almost licked it but didn’t. She said, Oh Bone, thanks and praise! Thanks and praise to Jah, Bone! We’ve been so worried about you, darlin’. Look! she says to Pa releasing me then and turning me around so he can see me better. He’s back! she says. Your pick’ny’s back! and Pa gets this squinty shit-eating grin on his face like he can almost see me through the haze.

Mi pick’ny, he said and he floated his hand out in the air toward me so I shook it but it was like shaking a cold banana and I let go of it real quick.

Doc’s not feeling too good, Evening Star says to me and I go, Yeah, I see. He looked really bad actually, even thinner than before and gray-faced with dark circles under his eyes and he didn’t look like he’d had a bath in a long time either.

Hard week, dear? she said slightly sarcastic but Southern so you can’t really tell.

Yeah, you could say that, he says and drops down in his chair and notices the Ras Ives which is still playing and says, What the fuck is that? and twitches like it hurts him to hear it. Ol’ Ras Ives is deep into Central Park in the Dark then so that’s what I say, Central Park in the Dark. and Pa cringes and turns away.

I hate that shit, he says. Turn it the fuck off!

Evening Star reached down to the player and switched it off and said to me, C’mon in the kitchen, dear. Your daddy’s in a foul temper but I want to hear all about your adventures. I want to find out where you-all’ve been all these months. We were afraid you’d gone back to the States, she said. That is, until Jason told us he’d run into you out there at Mount Zion.

He said that?

Yes he surely did, only a few days ago. He said he saw you with I-Man, poor thing, and we were so worried about y’all after they found I-Man shot to death. It was drugs, wasn’t it? I hope you weren’t involved. Bone honey, tell me you weren’t involved. You’ve got to tell me everything, darlin’. Everything. There’s so many rumors floating around. What happened? she asked but immediately turned and headed for the kitchen. I dropped my backpack and Jah-stick and followed her with a few questions of my own but she’d already started rattling in her high excitement mode about tonight’s menu, roast goat that Jason’s going to barbecue for us and some exquisite basmati rice dear sweet Rita’s brought us, whatever that was and whoever Rita was although I could guess as I heard squeals and squeaks from the direction of the pool.

Y’all want to take a swim, honey? You look plumb tuckered out. I’ve got to get supper going but you go ahead and meet Rita and Dickie, they’re these wonderful lesbians from Boston, she said like I gave a shit they were lesbians. They’re both artists and you’ll love them.

Evening Star was wearing this loose red and white striped smock over a skin-colored bikini bathing suit and I could catch flashes of leg and belly now and then. Her tan was wicked good and probably all over because of the nude sunbathing she was into. She and the others’d spent the day at Doctors Cave, she said and later shopping for souvenirs for Rita and Dickie to take home. She was covered with dried ocean salt and itchy and was going to take a swim in the pool herself as soon as she had the supper under control. So you go ahead, darlin’, she said. I’ll join y’all in a few minutes.

I said no, I wanted to hear about I-Man and all that so while she cooked and I helped by chopping the veggies and grinding the coconut and suchlike she went on about how she’d heard that I-Man’d tried to rip off some big-time American ganja dealer, she didn’t know who and he and one of his posse’d gotten shot for it. I asked her what about Doc, did he know anything about it and she said no, although Doc did know some of the Kingston dealers and various and sundry unsavory types, she called them but this one was a mystery to him too. I asked if Doc was into dealing and she hesitated a second and said, Well, sometimes a little, I reckon, but don’t say anything. Just a little ganja, you know. For the tourist trade. Basically, she said, Doc’s become a consumer. As you can see.

Yeah, I said. Speedballs.

She sighed and looked at her hands. I’m afraid so, honey, she said. I’m afraid so. It ain’t a very nice welcome home, is it, my love? she said and put her hands on my shoulders and looked sadly into my eyes. We were about the same height I noticed which meant I’d grown about four inches since I split with I-Man for Accompong last summer. Then suddenly she let go of me and pushed her dreadlocks back and went to work again. For a few minutes neither of us said anything and I just watched her from behind while she stirred the dreadnuts in a pan at the stove. There was some more squealing from the pool and I smelled woodsmoke from the barbecue pit out on the patio where Jason was getting ready to cook the goat. Doc had put one of his own CDs on, some old Ike and Tina Turner song and when I glanced back into the livingroom I saw he was flopped in his usual place and was smoking a decent-sized J and looking blissed.

There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you, I said to Evening Star.

She turned and looked at me and smiled. What’s that, darlin’?

Well, I was like wondering… I was thinking maybe you’d like to fuck me. You know, since I’ve never actually done it.

It sounds coldhearted and all probably, but it wasn’t. At least not completely. I mean, Evening Star was definitely a hot babe irregardless of her age and from when she’d hugged me after I first came down the stairs to greet her and Doc I’d been pretty turned on and everything, plus somehow just being in that house always got my sex juices flowing. Right from the start with all the loose screwing that went on at Starport for me the place’d been a sex box. It was hard especially for a teenaged kid to ignore female poets from New Orleans slapping on suntan lotion by the pool and black natties with great builds and no shirts and their units showing in their shorts sneaking off to hook up with Evening Star’s many white friends and relations, and I hate to admit it but it’s true, I really was turned on by lesbians from Boston trotting around in bikinis and from the beginning I’d been way turned on by the sexual vibes that Evening Star herself gave off constantly, how she sort of suggested that her whole purpose in life was to give pleasure whether in the form of food or drugs or sex didn’t matter, it was like the giving that mattered because that was the only thing that gave her pleasure back which is some weird kind of generosity that when you think about it and I did is more like constant desire than generosity and is very sexy to a guy. With all that going on for months and years and for all I knew for centuries practically, since slavery days, the place hung suspended out there in the darkness of normal life like Pleasure Island vibrating and twinkling and giving me a perpetual hard-on so to speak that up to now I’d tried to deal with on my own you might say.