Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

What about the mother, is she Jamaican?

Yes. Yes, she is. A good woman too, as I’ve been led to believe, and Doc stays with her and Paul and his little brother when he’s in Kingston, and he stays with you and me when he’s over here! she said brightly.

His son’s name is Paul? I said. The same as Doc’s?

The older one is. I’m afraid I can’t recall the name of the other one or even if there’s but one. Paul’s the only name I’ve heard Doc say. Listen, sugar, I’ve got to get back to my stove now.

How old’s the son named Paul?

I don’t know, about ten, I guess. I’ve never met the boy. Not a teenager though. Now c’mon, we can chat about all this later. Right now I’ve got work to do, sweets. What’re you gonna do? Whyn’t y’all cool off in the pool?

No, I’m gonna book, I said.

Whatever do you mean, Bone?

I’m leaving now.

Oh Bone. Didn’t you like it with me? She made a pout. Don’t you want to do it again?

Sure, but I’m leaving. Don’t take it wrong, it’s not about you.

Oh now, Bone, you mustn’t be upset about Doc’s other family. I never should’ve told you.

Naw, that doesn’t do anything to me one way or the other. In fact I feel a lot sorrier for them than for me. Especially the one named after him. I was only curious, that’s all. No, it’s on account of Doc himself that I’m leaving. If he wasn’t here, yeah, I might stay. But he is here.

Listen, Doc won’t ever know about us, sugar. Trust me, she said. Who’s gonna tell him anyhow? You? she said and laughed.

Yeah, well, I would if I could.

Now don’t you get any bright ideas, sugar, she said and cinched her shift tightly at the waist. She was really in great shape for her age. She said, Y’all just wait till later this evening, sweetie. I’ll come tippy-toein’ down the hall to your little room an’ I’ll show you some tricks that’ll make your hair stand on end. Wait till everyone else’s gone off to bed. The evening star, don’t you know, is Venus. The goddess of love, sugar. An’ don’t you forget it.

She gave me a kiss on the lips and ran her forefinger down my tee shirt from my collar bone to my belly button. Then she turned and smiled over her shoulder and pushed open the door and went back into the kitchen leaving me alone in the darkness with my thoughts which were setting up in my mind like slabs of concrete. They weren’t many but they were tough and hard and as I’ve found out since pretty near permanent.

Dealing with my father was eased a lot due to him having passed out on the couch. The CD was silent now and when I came out through the kitchen once I knew Evening Star’d gone swimming I stopped at the doorway and for quite a few minutes stood watching Doc lying there on his back and he didn’t blink or move even afterwards when I came into the livingroom and picked up my backpack and Jah-stick. The sounds of naked women playing in the water drifted in from the pool and the bump of the diving board and so forth, and then somebody put a heavy reggae album on the big outdoor sound system and started blasting the jungle with it. Peter Tosh it was, Steppin’ Razor. Party time. Doc stirred but then lapsed back.

For a few minutes more I stood over my father’s unconscious body and looked down and wondered how I could’ve thought once that he looked like JFK. He didn’t look any more like JFK than ol’ Buster Brown had or my stepfather Ken. I’d sure run into a lot of evil men in my short life so far, at least that’s how it seemed to me and I hoped it wasn’t going to be like this the rest of the way even though I was much better prepared now to deal with them than before. I was thinking probably John F. Kennedy himself if I’d’ve known him personally wouldn’t’ve looked anything like the man I’d imagined him as. Not necessarily worse or evil, just different. But Doc, my father, he looked evil. Even passed out like this. I almost felt sorry for him, like he was possessed.

Anyhow I had my plan and started to put it in action then. No time for feeling sorry. Over on the end table next to the phone was a notepad and pencil and I ripped off a sheet and in large letters wrote out, THE BONE RULES, NEVER FORGET-TEE! At first I was going to just pin it to Doc’s silk shirt but I couldn’t find a pin anywhere. Then I had a better idea. I reached down into my pack and came out with the stuffed woodcock that I’d hauled around with me ever since the Ridgeways’. Inside the hollowed-out place where I’d once stashed Buster’s porn money I put the note with just enough of it showing so it wouldn’t get overlooked and then I stood the woodcock carefully on Doc’s chest facing him with its long beak almost touching Doc’s nose. The bird looked stupid standing there but sad and stern too, like the woodcock was me and I was giving my father the evil eye that when he came to it’d be the first thing he’d see, and if it didn’t make Doc change his ways of living right then and there maybe it’d give him a heart attack instead. Either way, it didn’t make no never-mind to me. Not anymore.

I was in a mood to study for a while the one Haitian painting that I-Man’d loved so much but it was getting late in the day and the sun was fading fast so I had to get a move on. I was headed for the marina at Mobay and wanted to get to it before they closed and locked the gate. A couple of times last fall I’d gone there with I-Man to deliver herb and knew the routine and after around nine you can’t get out onto the docks where the boats are. I took the machete out of my pack then and hitched my backpack straps over my shoulders, picked up the machete in my left hand and my Jah-stick in the other and went straight out to the patio to deal with Jason.

He was standing on the other side of the waist-high barbecue pit which was about six feet long and made from cinderblocks with this long grill and a spit where he was slowly turning the charred body of the goat over the fire. I have to admit it smelled delicious. The pool was on the further side of the patio and beyond a high wall so up here by the barbecue you couldn’t see it or be seen from there either except by someone standing on the diving board. The females must’ve been paddling around calmly now though or chilling with a J because I couldn’t hear them anymore even between songs on the sound system. Jason didn’t notice me until I was almost up to him with the barbecue still between us and when he saw it was me he grinned like we were pals and said, Hey, Baby Doc! Respect, mon. Welcome home.

No, mi not called Baby Doc no more, I said. I actually didn’t know what I was going to do or say to Jason, my plan wasn’t all that detailed. All I knew was that I was going to deal with him, whatever that meant. He saw the machete in my hand though and got suddenly serious and reached down beside him and grabbed up a machete of his own which was all bloody from butchering the goat and at that instant I felt like I was possessed, not by an evil spirit like Doc but possessed by the good spirit of I-Man. It was like my voice and words weren’t mine anymore but his, and my movements weren’t guided by me but by him.

In a low dark voice I heard myself say, Me nyan come fe slay a mon when Jah can do de job more properly. Lissen mi, Jason. Mi come fe place a curse ‘pon you, mon. Lissen mi, dis be de curse of Nonny, dat him who live by de sword shall die by de sword. Then I took a step forward and he raised his machete like to chop at me if I attacked him but I didn’t, all I did was gently place my machete on the grill below the body of the goat and step quickly away from it.

The coals were red hot and the smoke made like a shifting gray curtain between me and Jason. He seemed confused and upset, maybe even scared a little. Y’know, you fren’ him, I-Man dat ol’ Rasta-man, it be de Nighthawk who shoot him, de white man. Me couldn’ stop him, Bone. Him go crazy when him see de Rasta, jus’ pow-pow-pow like dat! Wid de Uzi, mon.