Rule of the Bone

by Russell Banks

  This bus, man, this bus is the same one me and James used to ride to school in when we were little kids, Richard said.

  Cool, Russ said. It was morning but pretty late, like noon I think when I finally woke up and James was gone but Russ and Richard were smoking the fireguy’s cigarettes and talking like normal people for a change so I ate some more Fritos and just listened. I couldn’t talk anyhow because the Fritos made me too thirsty and the beer was finished I noticed and there wasn’t anything else to drink, no running water or electricity for a fridge or anything although in the daytime the place didn’t look as creepy as before. Rays of sunlight were streaking through cracks in the cardboard and the door was hanging open so there was some fresh air coming in. It still smelled a little like a hazardous waste site though, like they’d buried a million old car batteries out there.

  Richard was going on about how him and his brother and sister used to ride the bus to school every day but this one time him and his brother stayed home sick and that was the day the bus went off a cliff and crashed in a quarry. A shitload of kids were killed, man, but my sister, man, she was okay, he said. Well not okay, she got busted up pretty good, broke her back and everything and now she’s in a wheelchair and all that. But check it out, this fucking bus, man, me and my brother James, we wasn’t on the bus that fateful day, so this bus was like good karma for us and bad karma for my sister Nichole and bad karma for practically every kid except me and James in the whole town of Sam Dent. That’s where we’re from, man. You know it, you’re from Au Sable, right?

  Russ said yeah, he knew where Sam Dent was which is over near Keene where Russ had an aunt, his mom’s sister who was supposedly his mom. But I never heard of no schoolbus accident there, he said. I woulda heard, I think.

  Long time ago, man. Eight, ten years. You’re too young to remember. It was big though, TV and everything, lawsuits, the whole thing. But lemme tell about the fucking bus, man. After the accident and all, nobody wanted to touch it, you know? It was like cursed. Except for me and James, on account of how we’d stayed home that day. So when we graduated and came up here to State thanks to our unusual skills at the game of basketball the bus was still around but nobody wanted it so we got it off the school district for free and the guy who ran the garage in Sam Dent hauled it up here for us and dumped it right where it sits today because from when before me and James dropped out of State I knew the guy whose father owns this field and he didn’t give a shit. We just needed a place to party and all, us and the team and our friends from school, and the place got fucking famous, man! But then we started living here because our old man, who was like pissed because Nichole was in the accident and we weren’t, he wasn’t about to let us come back home, and anyhow he knew we were doing drugs and all which is why we got shit-canned from the team and fucked up at school in the first place. But fuck the old man, I’m going back next fall, he said. No shit. Me and James, man, we’ll get our shit together easy. I’m only twenty and he’s nine-teen, we can get in shape easy and make the team and get the old scholarships back and boom! Fix this bus up right, you know? Get us one of those diesel generators and a portable toilet and run some water out here in a hose from one of the warehouses. It’ll be cool, man. ‘Cause this thing has good karma, man. You can feel it, he said and he shut his eyes and let his hands float out to his sides and flutter like fish fins. This ol’ bus is going to rock, man! Parrr-teee!

  What an incredible asshole, I’m thinking and got up to leave and try to find something to drink.

  Where you going! Richard says real loud and harsh. Thirsty, is all I can manage on account of my throat was so dry from the beer last night and the Fritos this morning. Plus he’d scared me.

  Listen, you little shit! he says suddenly all feverish with excitement. I don’t know you, man, so you stay put until I say you can go. People can’t just come and go out here like they please, man! You can come in and you can go out, but only when / say so. Me or my brother James. Nobody else. Me and James rule, man.

  Just then brother James himself came in and he slung his backpack down on the driver’s seat and started pulling out groceries and stuff that I guess he stole, mostly canned goods like chili and hash including a half gallon of Diet Coke which I took the liberty of opening and swigging from because I was so nervous but nobody said anything so I passed it around to the other guys.

  James tossed a newspaper at Richard and Russ who were laid back on one of the mattresses and said, These dudes are famous, bro. That’s your fire, ain’t it? he said to Russ. You’re right up on the front page of the Press-Republican, man.

  Richard spread the paper out on the mattress in front of him and Russ, and I scooted over to the mattress and read over their shoulders. There it was, AU SABLE FORKS FIRE DESTROYS 3-FAMILY HOME, and in smaller print, 1 Dead, 2 Local Boys Missing. There was a picture of our old squat and the Video Den with smoke and flames and fire engines and ladders, the whole scene from the front, a crowd’s-eye view. The one dead was Bruce of course, but burned beyond recognition, it said. And the two boys missing was me and Russ whose names were not released pending notification of next of kin. By now they must’ve been notified though, Russ’s mom and mine and my stepfather and my grandmother. I kind of wished they could’ve notified my real father too since he was as much next of kin as anybody else. You’d’ve thought the cops’d try and find him. But he was like me I guess, missing and presumed dead. Still, I’d wanna know if my own son was burned up in a fire.

  Cool, Russ said. Excellent.

  What’s so excellent about it? I said.

  There’s nothing about my stuff. You know what I’m saying?

  Yeah, I said. Russ is pretty single-minded. He was thinking no one’d noticed his stolen electronics and they were still just lying there in the back room of the old state liquor store waiting for him to pick up someday for freight forwarding.

  So you guys are missing? Richard said.

  Yeah. And presumed dead, I said.

  Wow. That’s truly far out. It’s like you don’t exist, man.

  The idea of us not existing really got Richard excited and he started asking Russ and even me all these questions about what we were going to do now. It’s like you’re invisible, man! You don’t have fingerprints or footprints or anything! Check it out, you don’t have a past, man! It’s like being dead without having to die first. That is so cool! I truly envy you guys, he said.

  Then he switched off and got suddenly serious and tense and he said to James, You bring the rock, man? The dude show up? You get it okay?

  James said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, and the two of them went to the back of the bus where I guess they had their bong or whatever and left me and Russ alone with the newspaper since they didn’t invite us to join them. I don’t know if I would’ve although Russ I think would’ve but I don’t think crackheads are into sharing anyhow. Just knowing Richard and James were getting high made me wish I had me a J but there was some bread with the groceries and some bologna so we made a couple of sandwiches and ate them and drank the rest of the Diet Coke. We kept reading and rereading the article about the fire like it contained some secret coded message from Bruce or from our moms like, Come home all is forgiven.

  Finally Russ said, I got to get rid of my tattoo.

  Yeah, I said. But it’s permanent, isn’t it? Actually I’d almost forgotten that he even had a tattoo.

  He rolled up his sleeve and held out the underside of his forearm and examined it for a minute like it was somebody else’s. Fuck those guys, he said. You know? After what they did to Bruce and us, I hate them, man. I never shoulda got this thing.

  It was a green Nazi helmet with these black and red eagle wings attached and the words Adirondack on top and Iron below and not too big, about like a half-dollar. Whyn’t you go to a tattoo guy and just get him to turn it into something different? I said.

  Like what?

  I dunno. Something bigger, with a lot of black in it. Like a humongous black panther all ready to
leap and rip and tear living flesh with his fangs bared and claws and yellow eyes and everything. Or maybe one of those black and orange butterflies, whaddaya call ‘em, monarchs. Or a black guy. I saw a tattoo once of that guy Malcolm X that they made a movie out of and it was cool because the guy who had it was a white dude and it really stood out.

  Russ liked the panther idea the best. It’ll be my new identity, he said. My trademark. I’m going underground, man. I might even change my name.

  What to?

  I dunno. Buck maybe. Whaddaya think?

  Your last name is Rodgers, asshole. You wanna be Buck Rodgers? A fucking astronaut?

  I’ll change my last name too.

  How about Zombie, that’s cool. You can be Buck Zombie, the living dead boy.

  Maybe I will, he said but I knew he wouldn’t because in spite of everything Russ isn’t radical enough to be a true criminal. Basically he is an astronaut.

  You oughta get a new identity too in case the bikers ever come looking for you again, he said. They’ll be pissed you got away.

  It’s you they’re really pissed at, Buck. For stealing their stuff. I’m the one they think is dead, man. Me and Bruce.

  People will tell them they seen a mall rat named Chappie. Homeless kid with a mohawk. You got high visibility, man. Myself though, I’m gonna be fucking underground. New name, new tattoo, papa’s got a brand-new bag. You know what I’m sayin’?

  Yeah, well, I guess I will let my hair grow out. I was thinking of doing it anyhow, I said. I ran my hand over the shaved part of my head and it was already surprisingly nubbled.

  You oughta change your name too. Don’t get me wrong, man, but I always thought Chappie was sort of a cheesy name.

  It’s better than fucking Chapman, I said. But Zombie sounds pretty good.

  He laughed and said, Yeah, Zombie! Fucking Zombie. Buck ’n’ Zombie. No last names either. Road warriors, man. American gladiators! Like in Mortal Kombat! he said and he gave me these karate chops and kicks and I did it back—high kick, low kick, high punch, low punch, block, flip, jump, and duck, and pretty soon we’re cackling uncontrollably and falling down on the mattress almost like we’re stoned although the truth is we were really scared and were laughing and falling down to keep from thinking about what had scared us.

  Russ figured we needed about a hundred bucks to get his tattoo changed although I wouldn’t have minded saving some of it for the future for basics like weed and food, but the number plates were mainly his since he took them off the fireguy’s truck and he was the one who’d done all the driving which meant that the truck was mainly his too, so I guess it was okay for him to say what we did with the money. I actually never would’ve thought of trying to sell the plates and the truck to Richard and James in the first place who I didn’t think had any money anyhow except for buying crack with but Russ has this instinct for selling things. He knows when people want stuff and he knows they can come up with the money for it even before they do themselves.

  It helped I guess that Richard and James were pretty lifted when they made the deal but I had to admit Russ made it sound very attractive especially after he gave them his idea of stashing the truck in a used-truck lot when they weren’t using it. Just keep moving it around to different dealers, he said, and put it in with the trucks for sale and take the plates home with you and they’ll never figure it out. If somebody wants to test-drive it they won’t be able to find the keys, they’ll just think it’s a fuck-up, and the next night you put the truck somewhere else. The rest of the time it’s yours. Like right now it’s ours.

  That is so fucking smart! Richard said. Isn’t it, James? Isn’t it smart?

  Yeah, James said. But what’s it gonna cost us?

  Five hundred bucks, Russ said. And I’ll throw in the plates free. You’ll definitely need the plates. It’s a four-by-four Ranger, man, almost new.

  They said no way and Russ dickered with them for a while until finally he agreed to come down to a hundred bucks, five twenties which Richard peeled off a roll and Russ accepted with a sad face like they’d really screwed him. He told them exactly where to find the truck and they naturally threatened to kill us both if it wasn’t there. They seemed to have a lot of money for crackheads or even for college guys for that matter but Russ said they had these old college loans that they were still spending even though they’d gotten kicked out of State last fall.

  Then Russ put on my shearling jacket and made me wear his hoodie and put the hood up so my mohawk wouldn’t show and we took off for this well-known tattoo place downtown. First though we cut down to the town park and this little public beach where kids hang out by the picnic tables and cop weed which we did in a minute from this big redheaded dude I knew slightly from the mall and me and Russ split a blunt and just chilled for a while. We hadn’t chilled in a long time.

  The sun was out and when the redheaded kid left there was nobody but us there and it was warm and peaceful. We sat on a picnic table and didn’t even talk. Just thought our thoughts. Lake Champlain is huge and you can see all the way across to the Green Mountains in Vermont twenty-five miles in the distance and the water was glittering like it was covered with brand-new silver coins and the sky overhead was bright blue with these towers of puffy white clouds on the Vermont side. Seagulls screeched and swooped past the beach like tiny paper kites and the breeze blew off the lake and you could hear it behind us swishing through the trees which were hazy red and light green because of all the new buds. It was a true spring day and although I wasn’t all that anxious to think about what was coming next for the first time I felt like the worst winter of my life was over at last.

  Finally we realized we were hungry so we got a couple of slices and Cokes at the pizza joint on the corner of Bay and Woodridge Streets and headed for the tattoo place which was only a few blocks away. A couple of times I noticed the Press-Republican for sale in street boxes and stopped to check out the picture and read the front page again.

  Wanna buy one for a souvenir? Russ said since he had the money. Maybe we should take a bunch, you know? For our grandkids.

  Zombies don’t have grandkids, I reminded him. And neither do Bucks, I said although I was thinking they can if they want and knowing Russ he probably would.

  Suit yourself, man, he said and he put a quarter and a dime into the machine and cleaned it out, nine or ten copies and stuck them all under his arm like he was a paperboy in those old movies. Extra, extra, read all about it. Homeless boy disappears in fire. Local biker burned to death. Parents in shock. I can’t believe he’s gone! Mother cries. He was basically a good kid, stepfather says. Whole town mourns.

  The tattoo place was called Art-O-Rama due to the tattoo guy’s name being Art. It was in this funky old storefront on an alley off of a side street which didn’t look like much but it was famous in the area for doing air force guys from the base as well as kids who were more or less of the punk type so long as they had IDs that said they were eighteen or over which me and Russ did, of course. Neither of us’d met the guy before but we’d seen his work on miscellaneous kids we knew at the mall and liked it. Besides, Russ’s original Adirondack Iron tattoo he’d gotten from a softtail specialist down in Glens Falls who was a guy who only did Harleyheads and was a biker himself and knew all the other bikers in the northcountry so no way we could’ve gone to him.

  Art was this old guy way up in his forties or fifties and his whole body at least what you could see of it was covered with these incredible tattoos, mostly fire-breathing dragons and colorful Oriental symbols with nothing cheesy like stars ’n’ stripes or Betty Boops or valentines with arrows the way some old guys do. When he moved even a little all the tattoos moved with him like his skin was alive and had a mind of its own and his body inside was following orders from the skin the way a snake’s does.

  Russ told him what he wanted which is called a cover-up and Art showed him a bunch of panther pictures and after a lot of back and forth Russ finally settled on the one that I thou
ght was the best too because of the eyes which were emerald green and the fangs. Art said it would cost fifty bucks for the one or seventy-five bucks for the coverup plus another the same size and Russ couldn’t resist negotiating with the guy, except he was negotiating for me not himself I suddenly realized when Art says to me, Okay, kid, what the hell it’s a slow day, pick what you want from here, and he hands me this beat-up old book of drawings.

  Thirty bucks for the panther and thirty for the second, so long as you pick it from these here, he said and he lit a cigarette and went right to work on Russ’s forearm while I leafed through the tattoo book.

  The buzz of the needle was like a hummingbird’s wings and didn’t sound dangerous at all and whenever I glanced up at Russ he wasn’t wincing in pain or anything. Does it hurt? I asked him.

  Naw, he said. It feels like you got a ice cube on your arm except at first when it feels hot and sort of stings.

  I was attracted to some of the drawings more than others, like palm trees with a sunset and a howling wolf on a mountain but I figured they were more for ecology freaks, vegetarians and suchlike than kids like me. The severed heads with snakes coming out of the eye sockets and the knives dripping blood and jokers with huge red tongues were okay too but obviously for metalheads and I might be into heavy metal a little now but you never know about the future. A tattoo is forever even if you get a cover-up like Russ so you want to pick a design you can grow with.