Rule of the Bone

by Russell Banks

  It’s funny about religion, whether it’s the religion of white Rasta kids or even my own mom it’s usually got some other point than thanks and praise. For the people doing the thanking and praising, I mean. I’d actually never thought much about this stuff until I met up with I-Man that summer and then for a while before I realized it I really got into it and started making up some ground-breaking new opinions for myself. In religion I-Man was different than anyone else I’d ever met, he was actually sincerely religious I guess you could say but religious in the way that God or Jesus or whoever must’ve had in mind back in the olden days like in Israel when they first started thinking religion might be a pretty good idea for earth people since earth people were so selfish and ignorant and all and went around acting like they were going to live forever and deserved it too.

  For I-Man religion was mainly a way to give thanks and praise just for being alive because nobody exactly deserved life. It wasn’t like you could go out and earn it somehow. Plus for him religion was a way to straighten out his diet and in general get his act together due to the fact that true Rastafarians weren’t allowed to eat any pork or lobsters or any of what he called deaders which meant meat basically and no salt on anything on account of Africans being allergic to salt he told me. And they didn’t allow alcoholic beverages either, he said due to the connection between rum and slavery days, a connection I didn’t quite get till later. Anyhow everything had to be natural, he said which was one reason why he’d run away from the farm camp, because of the unnatural food they had to eat there and because of all the insecticides they put on the apple trees was the second reason he’d split.

  He’d come up from Jamaica in April with a crew of migrant farmworkers and the hiring guy hadn’t told him in advance that he wouldn’t be able to practice his religion here in spite of America being a free country because of how the food in America was all full of deaders and salt and chemicals. So I-Man’d just walked. The deal was they were supposed to work on the apple trees in the spring and then in June the same crew was supposed to go to Florida on a bus and cut sugarcane all summer for a different company and come back north in the fall and pick apples. Once you signed on you couldn’t quit until six months were up without losing all the money that you’d earned so far and your work permit so if you left the camp you were like an international outlaw, an illegal alien plus you were broke.

  I said I was an outlaw too and Bone wasn’t my real name and I-Man said every honest man was an oulaw and every free man if he didn’t want to carry a slavery name had to choose a new one. He wouldn’t tell me his slavery name, he said he couldn’t actually say it anymore and I didn’t tell him mine either, the same as my stepfather’s. Although I did say I used to have two names, Chappie and something else but now I only had one, Bone. He thought that was cool.

  He was definitely the most interesting guy I had met in my life so far. I dug his dreadlocks, these long thick black whips about forty or fifty of them that hung down almost to his waist which actually wasn’t as long as it seems because he was pretty short for an adult, my height but very muscular especially for an old guy who I think was around fifty. The dreadlocks were only two and a half feet long or so but probably if you straightened them out they would’ve reached all the way to the ground because his hair was springy and like coiled the way black people’s hair is naturally and he’d never cut it since he’d come to his lights, he said which was when he first came to know I self. That’s how he talked. Rastas weren’t supposed to cut their hair, he told me or shave either which wasn’t a problem for him since he almost didn’t have any more hair growing on his face than I did which was basically none. I thought he might be part Chinese on account of some of his looks but when I asked him once he said no, one hundred percent pure African blood.

  Of great interest to me naturally was the fact that like it was a commandment from the old African king of kings himself all good Rastafarians were required to smoke ganja pretty much on a daily basis. They smoked it in order to ascend to the heights and penetrate to the depths was how I-Man put it when what I think he meant was just getting high. Getting high was like a religious experience for him which was cool but from the way he talked about it religion was also a way to be free of control by white people, English people mainly who he said had taken his ascendants out of Africa and made slaves of them in Jamaica and many other places. Then later on when the English found out how colonization was a cheaper and less vexatious way than slavery for getting rich without having to leave London except on vacation, they went and freed all their slaves and colonized them instead. And after that when the English queen finally died and they had to let Jamaica go free the Americans and Canadians invented tourism which was the same as colonization, he said only without the citizens of the colony needing to make or grow anything.

  I liked his words, ascendants and vexatious and so on which made the subject of history interesting to me for the first time, and considering it was a religion Rastafarianism made a lot of sense too, at least the way I-Man explained it.

  I didn’t think a white boy could get into it without fakery like the kids wearing dreads I’d seen around but he said sure if you smoked enough ganja you could because once you got to the depths of understanding and came to know I-self you’d see that everything and everyone was the same I-and-I. One love, he said. One heart. One I.

  I told him I wasn’t really into going that far yet but maybe when I was older and had put travel to foreign lands and sex and eating meat and some other important experiences behind me I’d be willing to check out the depths of understanding where everything and everyone was the same. For now though I was still into differences.

  That first night when me and Froggy showed up at the schoolbus the reason it smelled so good was because I-Man had turned the bus into like a greenhouse. I couldn’t know it until the next morning of course because it was dark when we got there and I was high for the first time in a while and a little confused by everything that had happened but the first thing I saw when I woke up was the sunlight streaming in through the windows and then I saw all these incredible plants in cans and jars and wooden tubs and old barrels. They were set all over the bus wherever the sun could hit them, on boards and bus seats and plastic boxes and hanging from the ceiling by wires, even on the driver’s seat up front and the dashboard and it was like I was waking up in this beautiful tropical garden instead of what used to be a crack den and before that a regular schoolbus.

  I sat up on the mattress and studied the place. The plants were mostly young and not too leafy yet but they looked real heathy and green, all kinds of vegetables growing, some of which I could recognize myself like corn and tomatoes and others that I-Man had to tell me later like potatoes and peas and string beans and cabbages and yams and chili peppers and this Jamaican stuff called calalu but it looked like spinach and even carrots and some cucumbers and squashes. Naturally he was into growing weed. I didn’t have any trouble recognizing that even though the plants were only a few inches high. You smoke enough skunk you develop a sense for spotting it, like you turn into one of those drug dogs they use. When you water it or after it rains the smell enters the air and you can pick it up from a long ways off like lilacs or roses and that first morning when I woke up I inhaled and knew it was the smell of freshly watered cannabis. I-Man had all these small pieces of hose and tubing connected to each other and running into the pots and jars and on to the next ones with water dribbling at the connectors and out of these tiny holes he’d poked in the hosing and you could hear the drip-drip-drips and the light breeze coming through the windows and the new leaves brushing each other and with the smell of fresh green marijuana in the air it was a nice way to wake up. A super-nice way. It was like the Garden of Eden.

  I noticed that the hose came into the bus through the window by the steering wheel and when I stood up and looked out I saw that it led back across the grassy field and there was I-Man in floppy green shorts and yellow tee shirt way in the dist
ance by one of the old cinderblock warehouses where I figured there was a water spigot he’d tapped into. Then I looked around for Froggy but didn’t see her anywhere. I yelled, Hey, Froggy, where are you, man? No answer so I’m thinking she must’ve gotten scared when she woke up and found herself in this weird garden with a little old black dude who talked funny and as soon as he left to turn on the water she must’ve sneaked out and gone back to find Buster although I sure hoped not. I didn’t want him or anyone else finding out where I was presently located and also I kind of felt Froggy was my personal responsibility now and with I Man’s help I might get her situated with some real parents instead of a guy who maybe he did manage rap groups and run a religious organization but as far as I was concerned he was still the psycho porn king of Plattsburgh who kept kids on junk.

  Then I looked out the window again and saw I-Man coming across the field toward the bus and beside him is Froggy holding his hand like she was his kid. As they get closer I can see that he’s talking to her a mile a minute and pointing out the different kinds of weeds and grasses and flowers, teaching her things it looks like, probably the first time anybody’d taught her anything good in her life.

  They made a real nice picture, the two of them and it made me think of that book Uncle Tom’s Cabin which I got from the library and read in seventh grade for a book report but my teacher was wicked pissed at me for saying it was pretty good considering a white woman wrote it and gave me a D. My teacher was a white woman herself and thought I was being disrespectful but I wasn’t. I just knew it would’ve been different if it’d been written by a black man, say or even a black woman and it would’ve been better too because the old guy Uncle Tom would’ve kicked some serious ass and then he’d’ve probably been lynched or something but it almost would’ve been worth it. In those old slavery days white people were really fucked up was what I meant in my book report and the white lady who wrote it was trying not to be, that’s all. Of course white people are still fucked up, no surprises there but sometimes I forget like with the book report.

  Anyhow Froggy made friends right away with I-Man and trusted him and started telling him things I think she was afraid of telling me probably because I was more like Buster than I-Man was, being white and all and somebody Buster’d once been friendly with. Plus she knew I’d copped Buster’s wad which maybe he deserved having it copped but it didn’t make me look exactly trustworthy. Although you can be an outlaw or a criminal and still be trustworthy, just like you can be a cop or a minister and not be. But Froggy was young and more or less still in other people’s hands and she didn’t know that yet. I knew for instance that even I-Man did a certain amount of lying like where he got his reefer which he said came up from Jamaica with him but I could tell instantly from the flavor that it came from ol’ Hector who doesn’t give it away unless you deal for him so I-Man was probably dealing. And he did some stealing too, like the water and probably some of the materials for his greenhouse even though he said he only found them in people’s trash and dumpsters and odds and ends like soap and candles and shampoo and even the seeds that he said he got from vegetables that’d been thrown out at Sun Foods, this huge grocery store over at the mall which was where until his garden came in he was getting all his food now for eating.

  That was all he ate, fruits and veggies cooked the Ital way, he said which is this special Rastafarian method of cooking that I guess old Haile Selassie used in Africa and basically meant no salt plus you had to use shredded coconuts for oil and flavoring and lots of hot peppers. It was a little strange but I got used to it pretty fast, especially the few specialty items like the Zion juice which was made from carrots and these great fried bean cakes called akkra that you cover with this sauce made out of chili peppers and onions and tomatoes and limes and the Ital stew made from pumpkins and yams and bananas and coconut was real good and dreadnut pudding made from peanuts and sugar. I-Man had made himself like this whole kitchen outside the bus under an old piece of corrugated tin he’d set up on sticks so he could cook even in the rain. He’d built a stove with rocks and some iron bars for a grill and he had a couple of old pans and so on to cook with and some dishes to eat off of that did look like he’d found them in somebody’s trash but they worked fine and for a sink he had an old plastic dishpan and running water from his hose and since his food was only veggies and fruits and we went out to Sun Foods on a daily basis he didn’t need a refrigerator or anything.

  I don’t know why, probably because it made me feel independent like I was hunting and gathering but I really got into the shopping part, hanging out in the bushes behind the supermarket and waiting for them to toss out the stuff that was just going bad or was bruised or broken a little so they couldn’t sell it and then diving in as soon as the store guys had left and filling my backpack with some incredible stuff, coconuts that only had a crack in them and squashes that’d been dropped and split and all kinds of lettuces and greens and loose onions and potatoes from ripped bags and so on, enough to feed all the homeless kids in Plattsburgh if they’d gotten organized about it. Mostly homeless people aren’t vegetarians though or they’re not Rastafarians with their own outdoor kitchen like us, they’re more into fast food or restaurant leftovers like from Chuck E. Cheese and Red Lobster which we wouldn’t go near anyhow on account of the deaders so we more or less had the stuff at Sun Foods to ourselves. Except for the guy we called Cat Man who was always there prowling around in the trash mewing like a cat and a couple of really old guys who came on Tuesdays and Fridays, gay guys I think with one of them bald and crippled with these metal crutches and he’d lean on his crutches and hold a cloth bag for the stuff the other guy’d dig out of the trash. They were mostly into pastries and old bread though and Cat Man was looking for things like hot dogs and bologna and the such that’d gone bad but was still okay to eat at least maybe if you thought you were a cat it was.

  We’d make our daily grub run out there to Sun Foods, me and Froggy and I-Man and that was our main activity away from the bus except for when I-Man disappeared once every few days for a couple hours when I knew he was doing a little dealing to keep himself and now me in reefer which was cool. I knew where he bought it but not where he sold it and didn’t ask him about either, I guess because it would only give me bad memories of when I was living in Au Sable over the Video Den with Russ and Bruce and the men of Adirondack Iron which seemed like years ago and in a way different country.

  Now every day early in the morning after the plants’d all been watered the three of us’d cut across the fields behind the warehouses and come out on the edge of the mall parking lot behind the Officemax which was right next to the Sun Foods so we could basically come and go without being seen or having to cross a single street. This was good because I think we would’ve stood out, a little girl and a black Rastafarian with dreadlocks and a white kid although without my mohawk I wasn’t as obvious as before. Still, it was the combination. And there was always Buster to worry about.

  We were happy then, I know I was anyhow and little Froggy seemed happy too for the first time. Without junk she started acting normal after a few days which made me think Buster’d had her on ’ludes mainly, probably in her food and hadn’t been shooting her up with anything which was good because a kid can get off of ’ludes without getting sick, and I even caught her laughing on several occasions like when I-Man made these little Rasta dance steps and hip-hop motions when he was busy cooking supper and had two or three pots going at once or when I screwed up with the hose and sprayed water all over myself. That sort of thing’d cause her to crack up and put her hand over her mouth in case anyone saw like she was covering up bad teeth although her teeth were fine except for a couple in front that she’d lost because she was only seven and still had baby teeth. She was wearing one of I-Man’s old tee shirts for a top now that said Come Back To Jamaica and one of Mr. Ridgeway’s plaid boxer shorts safety-pinned to fit her and I-Man had made some sandals for her out of an old tire and leather strips and for m
e too instead of my old Doc Martens which I Man’d explained were military. I was into wearing just a tee shirt and cutoffs myself, same as I-Man.

  Now that it was warm and I-Man was transplanting the bigger plants from the bus like the cornstalks and tomatoes and expanding the garden generally we spent a lot of time working together outside and me and Froggy were getting tanned and real healthy looking. I even had a pretty good muscle in my arm for the first time and when I showed Froggy she was impressed. I didn’t show I-Man of course on account of his being so much more muscular than me although he was an adult so it was more or less natural for me to look puny beside him but I still would’ve been embarrassed.

  Anyhow he brought home a couple of old shovels one day and a rake that he said he’d found in a park downtown which was probably true but I don’t think they’d been tossed out in the trash exactly by the park department guys or accidentally misplaced and the next day he got us out there in the field digging and turning over the sod and shaking all the dirt out of it and so on, making a regular garden only it wasn’t like any garden I’d ever seen before. It was a single row a foot or so wide that went in these goofy loops and circles following some mysterious map in I-Man’s head that wound around the bus and beside the kitchen and then spun off through the tall grasses of the field. I wondered how it would look if you saw it from above, if it’d resemble those animals and gods that the space people made down in South America and when I asked I-Man about that he said he didn’t know, only jah knew and Jah was guiding I-and-I.