Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

I remember the singer and his wife lying in their perfect bodies on the foredeck on these plastic chaise lounges getting tanned and zoned and not saying anything which was their style even to each other. They were like in the middle of a ten-year fight and they didn’t know if you were going to come in on his side or hers so they weren’t talking till you declared yourself. No smiles, no jokes, no questions, except like where’s the bathroom and so on. They weren’t unpolite, just into themselves a lot and each of them into blaming the other whenever something went wrong. Like already their whole vacation’d gone wrong on account of the Belinda Blue not being a clipper ship but instead of just making the best of it they seemed to prefer giving each other dirty looks and ignoring the rest of us, including their own kids.

I don’t mean to go wandering off on the subject of the singer and his family but there was something about the kids, Rachel and Josh that really got to me as we pulled out of Mobay late that afternoon and headed southeast along the coast of Jamaica. Probably instead I should’ve been paying attention to my departure from this place where so much good and bad had happened to me in less than one short year. I was sure I’d never get back again unless someday I came searching for I-Man’s grave up in the churchyard cemetery in Accompong to put flowers on it. My natural father lived in Jamaica but that didn’t exactly provide a draw, not anymore and I’d had my first total-immersion sex experience with a woman there but that’s something you can only do once. And I’d come to know I in Jamaica, I’d seen the lights of I at the heights and at the depths, but you can’t do that more than once either. Either the lights of I kick in or they don’t, and if’ they don’t you keep going back to the heights and depths until they do. But when they do kick in like they had with me that night in the cave you’re supposed after that to look out from I and forward, not in to I and back. You’re supposed to use those bright new lights strictly for seeing into the darkness.

Which is what I was doing I guess by not looking back over my shoulder at the quickly shrinking green hills of Jamaica and peering instead through the small square window of the galley at the children up on the foredeck. The parents were stretched out on their chaises in the middle, their pale skin glistening with lotion and their eyes shut behind sunglasses. Josh was sitting on the starboard side and Rachel was on the port. With his knees drawn up to his chin and his arms wrapped around his shins the boy stared solemnly out to sea, and just as serious as him the girl was pointing her toes out in front of her like a ballet dancer and gazing at the opposite sea.

They were totally alone, those kids, like each had been accidentally sent to earth from a distant planet to live among adult humans and be dependent on them for everything because compared to the adult humans they were extremely fragile creatures and didn’t know the language or how anything here worked and hadn’t arrived with any money. And because they were like forbidden by the humans to use their old language they’d forgotten it so they couldn’t be much company or help to each other either. They couldn’t even talk about the old days and so pretty soon they forgot there even were any old days and all there was now was life on earth with adult humans who called them children and acted toward them like they owned them and like they were objects not living creatures with souls.

I could see from their expressions and gestures that those two little kids, Josh and Rachel were probably going to grow up to be just like their parents. They were already practicing. But who could blame them? No one in his right mind would want to stay a kid forever. Certainly not me.

We put in late that night at Navy Island which is just off Port Antonio at the eastern end of Jamaica and real late after everybody’d gone to bed I dragged my mattress up on the topdeck. It was actually just the roof of the main cabin but that’s what Captain Ave called it, the topdeck. The night was totally clear and the stars were awesome, like zillions of tiny lights bobbing on a wide black ocean. I was still thinking about the kids Josh and Rachel and wondering which star up there they’d originally come from and if they knew it, or say I found out somehow and pointed it out to them would they want to go back there and be among their own kind again?

Probably not. The experience of being born on earth and living among humans even for only a few years changes you forever. I guess all you can do is make the best of what’s clearly a bad situation. Still, it would be nice to know that on this one particular star or maybe on that one over to the right of it there were people who loved you for yourself.

I was thinking that and other such thoughts when suddenly I noticed that it was true, the biggest stars or at least the brightest ones were related like in a family and you could connect the dots so to speak and make a picture if you wanted, same as the old shepherds did who watched their flocks by night. I’d tried lots of times to see them before but it’d never worked so I’d figured constellations were just one of those things like atoms and molecules that people tell you exist but you can’t see them so you say yeah, whatever.

But it was true. There was a bunch of bright stars here and another there and several other bunches that stood out from the zillions of stars in the background. The trouble was, even though finally I could see with my own eyes that there really were such things as constellations up there I couldn’t remember any of the names or pictures anymore. I knew there was supposed to be like some guy with a bow and arrow and a chariot and horses and various Greek gods and goddesses but I couldn’t tell which was which.

So I tried connecting the dots on my own. There was this one cluster of stars fairly low in the northern part of the sky and when I connected them they made like a perfect barbell. That’s the constellation Bruce, I thought. Only not to have it sound stupid I decided to call it Adirondack Iron, the sign of the bad boy with the brave heart.

Another batch of stars that floated all by themselves in a really dark part of the sky turned out to be a long-stemmed rose, and I looked at that for a long time and almost cried it was so delicate and exposed out there on its own. It had little thorns on it and beautiful red petals. It was the constellation Sister Rose, the sign of the rejected child.

A third luster of stars hovered right above me and I lay there on my back looking straight up until it came forward in the shape of a lion’s head with a crown, the constellation Lion-I, the sign of the open mind, and among those stars, even though I couldn’t see him I knew I-Man sat looking down on me with his lips in that little pursed smile and his eyebrows raised in slight surprise at the way things’d turned out.

All the rest of the night I passed my gaze from one constellation to the other and watched them float slowly across the sky until finally along toward dawn it began to get a little pink out on the ocean in the east and the stars started sliding into the darkness behind the mountains. First Adirondack Iron passed into the dark, and then Sister Rose, and finally Lion-I. They were gone and I missed them but even so I was very happy. For the rest of my life no matter where on the planet earth I went and no matter how scared or confused I got, I could wait until dark and look up into the night sky and see my three friends again and my heart would swell with love of them and make me strong and clearheaded. And if I didn’t know what to do next I could ask I-Man to instruct me, and across the huge cold silence of the universe I’d hear him say, Up to you, Bone, and that’s all I’d need.