Rule of the Bone

by Russell Banks

  The noise of the fire was incredible, like a jet plane taking off with sirens and firehorns and firemen giving orders over loudspeakers. They had hoses snaked all over the place and were shooting hard heavy streams of water into the fire but it was like the fire was alive and the water was its food that only made it grow larger and hungry for more. I spotted Wanda and Rudy LaGrande out on the street with a crowd of people but then the cops pushed everyone back out of sight and a third fire truck pulled into place. On the far side of the street I thought I saw a bunch of people I knew, including my mom and my stepdad but I think it was an optical illusion due to fear and excitement.

  Pretty soon the firemen must’ve realized there was no way they could save the house so they started spraying water on the buildings on either side of it including the one me and Russ were in to try and keep them from going up too. I could hear the water pounding on the roof and a bunch of firemen ran past the window toward the back. The storage room was filling with smoke and we were coughing from it and our eyes stung and sparks were starting to float down from the darkness near the ceiling like fireflies.

  We better book, man, I said.

  He goes, What about my stuff? I can’t leave my stuff

  It’s not your stuff. Never was.

  Bruce and the other guys, they’re the ones who stole it!

  Yeah, and you stole it from them. Now Bruce’s dead and the other guys’re gone.

  Like it’s the first time he’s thought it Russ says, The cops’ll think I stole it too.

  Fucking duh, man. Let it burn. It’s our best chance.

  What about my car? I need my car.

  Forget it. We’re criminals, man. You’ll have another chance. Maybe we’ll get lucky and people’ll see your car and think we died in the fire too, I said and ran for the door thinking that was the way it should be, me and Russ and Bruce burned up in the fire together, our bodies turned into three piles of char surrounded by burned-up tons of stolen electronics.

  I didn’t know how Russ’s mom would take it but mine would be sad at first and then she’d get over it and my stepdad would be secretly happy especially since he could carry on like he’d lost something important to him.

  Nobody else would think much about it though. Except Black Bart maybe since he’d lost a lot of freight forwarding business with the bikers plus a homeless kid who used to sell him his daily blunt. But nobody else’d care.

  Russ was a step behind me and when I pushed open the door I freaked a pair of firemen who had their axes all ready to chop their way in.

  Jesus! What the hell are you doing in there! the lead guy hollered. Get the hell outa there! he said and I said, We’re gone, man! and we were.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SKULL & BONES

  We booked like mad through a bunch of backyards and cut down to the river where there’s this narrow brick walkway from the olden days when the mill was running that snakes under the Main Street Bridge. You can stand down there next to the water which in spring comes right up to your feet and smoke a J if you want or just hang out and talk without being seen or heard which is why kids have been going there for generations I think.

  Due to the fire and everybody in town wanting to watch it, us getting out of Au Sable without being seen was easier than it probably should’ve been but of course nobody was actually looking for me and Russ yet. They didn’t know yet that we were missing and presumed dead.

  It was my idea not to let anyone see us. Russ said, Maybe they’ll be so busy putting the fire out and keeping it from spreading and all that they won’t notice my stuff and we can go back later for it. Plus he was worried about his car. Russ is a very material guy.

  I said, No way, man. Firemen are really smart and they hate unanswered questions. They’re not like cops, I told him, who would’ve just grabbed up all of Russ’s stolen VCRs and computers for themselves like it was Christmas and then busted us for some other crime than stealing. Like arson, even though it was only accidental. And once they found Bruce’s body up there in the apartment which unless he was burned to a crisp they could identify easy because of all his Gulf War tattoos they’d try and nail us for murder although a lot of people’d want to give us a good citizenship medal for getting rid of the bikers regardless of how we’d done it.

  Either way I didn’t want to be connected to what had happened to Bruce. I didn’t even want to think about it. He was my friend and he’d tried to save me. It was just bad luck that I’d already been saved by Russ.

  What we got to do now, man, I told him, is disappear off the face of the earth. If anybody sees us they’ll have more questions than we’ve got answers for.

  Boy, is my mom going to be pissed, he said.

  Forget that, man. Your mom is like my mom, I said. They’ll both think we died in the fire with Bruce and will be real sad or else as usual they won’t know where we are and won’t really give a shit. Russ’s mom wasn’t married with a regular job like mine, she was sort of a hooker who worked in a bar near the air force base and lied about her age and told the guys she brought home that Russ was her nephew which is why he left home when he was fifteen in the first place. She was a babe but I actually preferred my mom to his although he was better off than I was having no stepdad like mine to deal with.

  We stayed there under the bridge in the dark for about an hour listening to the cars and trucks rumbling overhead and the steady roar of the river which was only a few inches below the walkway and the occasional siren as fire trucks from the towns around came in to help. A fire is one of the few things that gets people together nowadays. The bridge was a big stone arch and when we looked out from under it we could see a piece of the sky which was all lit up like there was a night baseball game over where we used to live with the bikers and it did make me want to go and join the crowd so I tried not to look.

  What I really wanted was to get high but neither of us had any weed so Russ and I talked for a while about Bruce and what a cool dude he was and what bastards the other bikers were to leave him like that. He had soul, man, Russ said. White soul. You know what I’m saying?

  I said, Yeah, but actually I didn’t want to talk about him anymore because of how my feelings were all mixed up. Then one time I peeked out and noticed that the sky was getting dark again so I figured we should book while people were still somewhat distracted by the fire and thinking maybe we had burned up in it. Russ had about ten bucks and an almost full pack of cigarettes and I had nothing but the clothes on my back but Russ said he knew these excellent guys in Plattsburgh who lived in a bus where we could crash as long as we wanted and no one would know because there were always different kids who stayed there between squats, nobody permanent except the dudes who owned the bus.

  We couldn’t get out of Au Sable though and hitch over to Plattsburgh without being spotted and we didn’t have Russ’s Camaro anymore so we decided to sneak up by Stewart’s which is like this late-night convenience store where people drive in for last-minute items like cigarettes or beer and sometimes leave their car running outside. By keeping to the alleys and backyards we got to Stewart’s without anyone noticing us and then hid behind a dumpster next to the store and waited. It was pretty cold but I had my shearling jacket and Russ had his Islanders hoodie so we were okay.

  Quite a few cars and pickups came in and a lot of them were people we actually knew but they were locals and knew not to leave the motor running. After a while the out-of-town fire engines and some of the volunteer firemen with their blue bubble lights on the dashboards started passing by and two or three of them stopped for gas or went in for supplies and the such but even though they were from away they shut off the motor and took their keys with them.

  Then this one pickup, a red practically new Ford Ranger pulled in. It was a volunteer fireguy probably heading home to Keene or some other small town where nothing was open this late. After a few minutes he came out with a bag of groceries and got into his truck and started to back out but then he suddenly stopped and
jumped down from the cab and with the motor still running walked slowly back inside the store like he’d forgotten something he was supposed to bring home for the wife and was pissed.

  Russ ran around to the front of the store, took a quick look through the window and came back to the dumpster and said it was cool, the guy had his head in the ice cream freezer. We scooted across the lot and Russ jumped in on the driver’s side and I climbed in beside him and we were outa there.

  At first I thought Russ was going the wrong way but it was only a deceptive maneuver to make the guy or anyone who saw his truck leaving the lot think we were headed west in the direction of Lake Placid instead of east to Plattsburgh. As soon as we’d gone a few blocks he cut left and zipped back on River Street which turns into River Road and then crosses the river on this old wooden bridge outside of town a ways where it connects a few miles further on to the main road to Plattsburgh.

  A few minutes later we were doing eighty headed east on Route 9N smoking the fireguy’s cigarettes from the carton of Camel Lights I’d found in his grocery bag and laughing like crazy. There was other good stuff in there too—a twelve-pack of Bud kings, Fritos, some chips, and some Kotexes probably for the guy’s wife which naturally caused Russ to make a couple of his cruder jokes but I didn’t mind because for the moment at least we were like free, free to just be ourselves, driving fast with the windows down and the heater blasting, smoking cigarettes and eating junk food and drinking beer and crankin’ with Nirvana’s Serve the Servants on WIZN screaming from the speakers. It was definitely cool. We even switched on the blue bubble light so if anyone saw us they’d think we were heading for a fire.

  Russ said, Yesss! and pumped his fist and I said, Yesss! and did the same although it felt a little stupid because of everything that’d happened. But life is short I guess and you have to celebrate it when you can so that’s basically what we did.

  We stayed off the Northway and shut off the bubble light because there was likely to be staties cruising and took the back roads into Plattsburgh and parked the pickup in a used-car lot out on Mechanic Street where there were fifty or sixty used trucks for sale. It was around midnight by then and not much traffic and only a few local cops who were probably drinking coffee over at Dunkin’ Donuts so there was very little danger of us getting caught.

  After Russ took the number plates off the truck with this screwdriver he found in the glove compartment the fireguy’s Ranger looked like all the other pickups on the lot. Russ figured it wouldn’t be discovered there until somebody tried to buy it or else they did an inventory and when they did no way it could be tied to us. Russ was good at criminal activities and even when he was doing something for the first time it seemed like he’d already done it twice last week.

  The number plates he put in the bag with the beer and stuff because he figured maybe we could sell them if we met somebody who was into stealing cars and then we booked on foot for the dudes who lived in the bus, which wasn’t very far, Russ said.

  It was out past these old warehouses and junkyards where there weren’t any regular homes or stores and you had to go through a break in a chain-link fence and cross a huge field where people had dumped old tires and refrigerators and such. It was kind of spooky out there in the dark lugging the grocery bag over the rough crumbly ground with the wind blowing and everything smelling wet and rusty like it was a hazardous waste site or something. Russ said he’d only been out here once when he took home this girl he’d picked up at the mall and it turned out she was crashing at the bus with these crackheads from Glens Falls who were going to Montreal for a Grateful Dead concert but never made it.

  Was she a crackhead too? I asked him. I didn’t think I’d ever met one. I knew lots of kids who’d done crack a few times but they were just normal like me.

  She was into rock, yeah. She said she was sixteen but I think she was real young. Fourteen or something. Maybe thirteen.

  Wow. Thirteen. That’s young. For crack, I mean. You didn’t screw her or anything, did ya?

  Jesus, no, Chappie. Whaddaya think I am, a goddam pervert? All she wanted was money for rock anyhow and I was broke. There were these other guys there though that she gave blowjobs to for only two bucks apiece and then she got her kibbles and bits and got high. I couldn’t relate, you know what I’m saying?

  Yeah, sure, I said and we kept walking for a while without talking. These guys who own the bus, I said, are they crackheads?

  I don’t know. I guess so, maybe. But they’re cool, he said. They’re college guys or something.

  I didn’t see the bus until we were practically in front of it. It was this old dented beat-to-shit regulation schoolbus like from before Vietnam with broken headlights and the windows which were mostly busted were covered over inside with cardboard and no tires or wheels even. It was lying on the ground at a slight angle and looked like it had been dragged there and dropped in the middle of the field with the rest of the junk. It was still yellow but faded and people had painted peace signs and hippie flowers and a few deadhead slogans on the sides and it stank pretty bad when we got close to it like people had been shitting and pissing a lot in the immediate vicinity.

  There was the one door at the front and Russ knocked on it and said, Yo, man, anybody home?

  Somebody lifted a corner of the cardboard on the window next to the door, checked us out and dropped it again. There was some rummaging-around noise from inside and then this guy’s voice says, We don’t want any we don’t got any it’s fucking late go away.

  Russ goes, Hey, c’mon, man, it’s me, Russ. Me and my buddy, we got some beer.

  The wind was blowing pretty hard and it was definitely cold out there and weird so I was getting anxious to get invited inside even though maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. The vibes off this wrecked schoolbus were way negative. We waited a few minutes and I was going to suggest to Russ that we should forget it although I didn’t know any other place we could go. Maybe we could break into a furniture warehouse or something, I thought. I once heard about some kids who did that and lived there for a whole winter, when suddenly the door opened and this tall skinny dude with a scrawny rat’s-ass beard and pimples and hair down over his shoulders stepped outside and the first thing about him I noticed is that he smelled really ripe like he hadn’t taken a bath in a year.

  Yo, man, Russ says, wussup. Remember me? I came here once, man. I brought the chick who was with the two dudes from Glens Falls.

  The guy only looks at Russ with a stoned smile and then at me the same. Who’s he? the guy says pointing a long bony finger so Russ told him my name and the guy said his. Richard, man. Richard. He leaned down then and poked his face into my grocery bag and all of a sudden it’s like he’s in a completely different head and he says, Well well well what have we here a little beer a little bit o’ chips a little o’ this and a little o’ that. And number plates! Stolen number plates I bet! Yummm! We even got us some sanitary napkins, he says pulling out the Kotexes. We don’t need those, do we? and he tosses them into the darkness and goes back into the bag and pulls out a beer and says, It’s like Halloween only the trickers come atreatin’ and the treaters come a-trickin’. He goes on talking like that, real fast and spindly, sort of to himself but not really, like he basically can’t think of anything to say so he lets his mouth do it all for him.

  He didn’t seem to remember Russ from before or not to remember him either—it was like he was empty inside and stuff you said to him bounced around in his head like BBs or pinballs for a few seconds and then rolled to the bottom. After a few minutes of Russ trying to have a regular conversation with the guy he suddenly turned around and walked back inside the bus leaving the door open so we followed him in.

  It was dark but they had a couple of candles burning so you could see things okay and I could tell right away that there was this one other guy there who looked just like Richard, tall and real thin, same long hair and ratty brown beard and pimples, same filthy tee shirt and raggedy jeans. He was
sitting in the busdriver’s seat with his bare feet up on the steering wheel, staring straight ahead like he was driving someplace and steering with his feet.

  Russ goes, What’s happening, man.

  You got to pay your fare, the guy says and Russ handed him one of our beers and the guy popped it and instantly started chugging like he was starving.

  This’s James, Russ says to me. Him and Richard are brothers.

  No shit, I said.

  Even though most of the passenger seats had been yanked and the place was surprisingly big inside like a house trailer, it wasn’t exactly homey. There were three or four old mattresses on the floor and some really moldy-looking sleeping bags and a couple of livingroom chairs with stuffing coming out that looked like they came from the dump and a table made from boards and cinderblocks with piles of dirty pans and dishes all over it and old clothes and newspapers and magazines and some kind of old brown rug on the floor that smelled and looked like they got it off a sunken ship and posters on the ceiling and against the cardboard walls from like a two-year-old Red Hot Chili Peppers concert and retro bands like Aerosmith which I guess college guys are into.

  Actually I was kind of grossed out by the place but I figured it was better than no place and Richard and James seemed nonviolent types which after the bikers was almost relaxing so I came inside and sat down on one of the old bus seats like I was a passenger and opened a beer and ate some Fritos. Russ did the same although he also talked to Richard and James for a while but that’s Russ, he’ll talk to anyone and most people will talk to him.

  He was going on about the bikers and the fire and all although not about the stolen VCRs and TVs I noticed, when I got sleepy and lay back on the seat. It was made of imitation leather and felt cool against my face and smelled the same as the schoolbus seats when I was a little kid, like cheese sandwiches and sour milk. I remember just before I fell asleep that night which was the first night of my new life that it would be wicked cool to have a real bus, one that worked and all and fix it up inside like a home and drive it around the country your whole life, stopping wherever you felt like and making a little money off a job for a while and if you got restless just taking off again. You could have friends and family with you some of the time and be alone some of the time but basically, and this would be the best thing, you’d be in complete charge of your life like those old pioneers in their covered wagons.