Rule of the Bone

by Russell Banks

  Connecticut, Whitey says.

  Yeah, Connecticut. How’re they doing, the Ridgeways? Nice people, I understand.

  Oh, fine, fine, he says.

  We were coming into Au Sable then and I said to drop me off wherever, right there by the Grand Union’d be fine, so the wife pulled the Saab over and I got out and pulled my backpack out and shut the door when the guy, Whitey, he leans out the window and says, What’s your name, son?

  Bone, I said.

  Bone, eh? What’s your last name? Who’s your dad?

  My last name’s different from my dad’s. On account of being adopted, I said and I gave him a wave and said see you around and started walking off in the opposite direction real fast. No more questions, man. I heard the Saab start up and after a few seconds I turned back to make sure they were definitely on their way and the car was maybe a hundred feet down the road. I saw then that it had Connecticut plates. It was them, the Ridgeways, I suddenly realized and then in a flash I remembered seeing pictures of them in the house with tennis rackets and horses and with their kids and even with the little old lady they’d just been putting on the bus.

  And then it came over me like a huge wave of cold water from the Arctic Sea and I felt really sorry for the first time that I had done so much damage to their house and burned all their antique furniture and shot up the picture window and used all their food and stuff and left it a mess. I wondered if they had a clue who they had given a ride to and I decided they did. They weren’t stupid. I wondered if Mr. Ridgeway’d noticed that my cutoffs were originally his green pants with the red anchors or if he’d recognized the backpack I’d stolen from them and knew that practically everything inside it was his, the woodcock and the gun and the clothes and the sleeping bag and the cook kit and the flashlight and the classical music CDs. The only thing I owned that I hadn’t stolen off of them was the roll of money, and that I’d stolen off of Buster. What a stupid wasteful thieving little bastard I’ve turned out to be, I thought as I walked out to the edge of town and crossed the bridge and came up to the light blue mobile home where my mom and stepfather lived and I used to live with them.

  My old dirt bike was out back by the deck getting all rusty and it looked almost like I still lived there. Nothing was changed really, at least on the outside so I just walked up onto the deck to the back door like I’d been sent home early for screwing up at school again and tried the door as if expecting it to be unlocked and it was which surprised me some since usually when my mom and Ken were at work they locked the doors and left the key under the mat.

  Inside the place was really all messed up with beer bottles and overflowing ashtrays and furniture out of place and the TV busted and on its side and dirty dishes and glasses everywhere like the bikers had been living here not my mom and her husband Ken. The place smelled of wicked ripe BO and stale beer and old food and cigarettes like they’d been partying for a week. It was weird. In the past they were capable of really getting lifted at times and staying there for whole weekends and longer and forgetting all about me but usually they sobered up by Monday and cleaned up the place and went to work and so on like regular citizens. This was so unusual that I stood at the door and for a few seconds wondered if maybe they’d moved out but everything was theirs, the furniture and kitchen stuff and even Ken’s beer can and mug collections although they were spread around and not lined up like little soldiers the way he always told Mom to keep them when she dusted and cleaned the shelves and me if I even touched one.

  I put my backpack down by the door and then I thought of ol’ Willie and started looking around calling, Here, Willie, here, Willie, c’mon out, Willie, and when I walked through the breakfast nook into the livingroom there’s my stepfather Ken standing at the hallway that leads from the two bedrooms in back. He was in his bright blue bikini underpants and a tee shirt and looked pretty fucked-up like he hadn’t shaved or showered in a week and he even had a boner.

  I was just looking for Willie, I said.

  No shit. Willie’s dead. What the fuck are you doing here? What the fuck are you doing alive, for chrissake?

  Willie’s dead? How?

  Killed by a car. Right out front. Who knows? Who the fuck cares.

  I care! Who hit him? You?

  Yeah, sure, you care, he said coming into the room and standing there in the middle of the mess while he scratched his stomach and looked all over and finally found a crumpled pack of cigarettes on the coffee table. Maybe I hit him, maybe I didn’t, he said. Point is, he was standing still when he should’ve been running. He rummaged through the cigarette pack and pulled one out and lit it and inhaled slowly and for a few seconds just looked at me like he didn’t quite recognize me and then he said, So what’s the story, morning glory?

  Whaddaya mean?

  You been having plenty of fun? That’s some outfit you got on.

  You ain’t exactly Ralph Lauren yourself, I said and he kind of laughed at that.

  We never bought the story about you being dead in the Video Den fire, y’know. Especially after they only found the one body and a few weeks later your little buddy turned up at his auntie’s in Keene. So where’ve you been all this while? Peddling your ass in New York City? That’s what all you little druggies do, isn’t it? Head for Times Square and sell your ass to rich old cocksuckers with AIDS and then come home to Mama to die.

  Sounds more like something you’d like to do, I said. Where’s my mom?

  At work. Where I oughta be, he said and he sighed and sat down on the sofa and put his bare feet up on the coffee table and I saw that he didn’t have a hard-on anymore. Well, Chappie, I am glad to see you, he said. No shit, I am. I’m sorry for being such a hardass there. It’s just, there’s been a lot of people upset since you disappeared. Especially your mom. Your grandma too. And me too, believe it or not. Even me.

  Yeah, well, I’ve been fine, I said. Living with friends is all. So what’s happening, Ken, you guys been partying? I said and kind of waved my hand at the debris and he smiled and told me he’d been laid off at the base a few weeks ago because the Democrats were going to close it and the first ones to get let go were always the building services people but my mom was pissed at him for that and some other things beyond his control and not worth mentioning and they’d had some fights, he said, and then she’d moved in with my grandmother for a while. He guessed he wasn’t much for housekeeping and I said yeah, from the look of things. He seemed like a real sad sack flopped there on the couch surrounded by his filth and even though he was still the same guy he’d been before, still in pretty good shape for his age which was around forty I think, he seemed older and softer and sadder like he’d finally received some bad news that he’d spent his whole life trying to avoid.

  I asked if him and my mom were splitting up and he said no, they just needed to give each other a little space on account of she had gone into AA, he said and now he was going to have to do the same if he wanted her back and he did. He was going in today as a matter of fact.

  My morn? I said. In Alcoholics Anonymous? Like she’s an alcoholic?

  Yeah, AA or something like that, one of those groups that meet over at the hospital. AA or Al Anon or Ali Baba or PLO or some damn thing, it don’t matter, they all say the same shit. They’re right though, Chappie. They are. They get you straightened out and keep you there. But your mom, she’s turned into a real hardass on this drinking thing.

  It turned out she herself wasn’t exactly an alcoholic he explained, or at least she said she wasn’t but she was like in this group of people who all claimed their husbands and wives were alcoholics and drug addicts et cetera and they got together once a week and talked to each other about it and according to Ken if you wanted to get your wife back you had to go into AA and give up booze or drugs or whatever they said you were addicted to.

  Sounds weird, I said and he said yeah, it was but he really wanted her back so he was going to do it.

  You want some help cleaning up? I said. She might be w
illing to come back home if the place is clean and all and I’m here now. I was thinking I kind of needed her to be living here with or without Ken because my grandmother’s place was this small one-room apartment in the Mayflower Arms in town with no kitchen and only this tiny alcove for a bed which meant my mom was sleeping on the couch so no way I could live there with her.

  Ken thought that was a terrific idea and smiled for the first time but first would I check the fridge and see was there a beer. I did but didn’t enjoy it especially because the fridge was so filthy and I knew I’d be the one to have to clean it. In spite of Ken being such a neatnik and all I’d never seen him lift a finger to clean anything himself. It was always me or my mom.

  I brought him his beer and handed it to him and when I did he grabbed my wrist real hard. What the fuck’s this? he said meaning my tattoo.

  Nothin’, I said and tried to get away but he wouldn’t let me. You little pussy! he said. You fucking twat, getting yourself tattooed like some kind of fucking fag. You got one on your ass yet? Lemme see, fag, lemme see your ass, he said and he made a grab for my shorts and when he did I slipped out of his grip. I ran back into the kitchen and he hollered, Get the hell back here, I’m gonna fuck you right once and for all!

  I could’ve gotten out the door easy then and he wouldn’t’ve caught me, he was drunk and half naked and I’m a good runner but instead I reached into my backpack and pulled out the gun and turned and very calmly walked back into the livingroom just as he was coming around the coffee table and I saw he had his boner again.

  He saw the gun though and stopped. He goes, Oh c’mon, Chappie, just give me that. You don’t know how to use that.

  Try me, you sonofabitch. C’mon, let me burn you with it, man. I mean it. Please! I said. I really wanted him to take one step toward me or to call me a fag again or a twat or a pussy. I really wanted him to say he was gonna fuck me right. I wanted to hear the words one more time, that’s all, and for him to take one more step toward me. Just one. Because I wanted to kill him. I have never wanted anything in my life as much as I wanted to kill my stepfather at that moment. But I knew I couldn’t do it unless he said one more bad thing to me or took one more step toward me. It was like a deal I had made with God, like I had been given legal permission by God to shoot the fucker in the face but only if he went one step further than he’d already gone in my life, only if he went one step beyond all the nights he’d sneaked into my room and made me touch his dick and suck on it for him and then called me a little cocksucker, one step beyond all the lies he told to my mom and made me tell too so she wouldn’t know, all the times he said he’d cut off my dick if I told and no one’d believe me anyhow because everyone knew that whatever happened was my own fault because I was the one who sucked the cock, one step beyond all the times he hit me and then was sorry and came into my room to apologize and lay down on my bed and ended up jerking off in the dark next to me. Please, please, Ken, call me a twat, call me a fag, come at me now, reach out and try to take this gun away, try to grab my wrist, please!

  He didn’t. The sonofabitch. He fell back onto the couch and put his head in his hands and started to cry. It was the first time I’d ever seen him cry and he cried like a little kid, sobbing and drooling with snot running down and everything, his shoulders and back jumping like he was throwing up. It was pretty pathetic but I didn’t feel one bit sorry for him. I was only sorry that I hadn’t been able to shoot him in the face, a lost opportunity that I knew would never come my way again.

  I turned around then and went into the kitchen and picked up my backpack and put the gun inside it and stepped out the door and shut it behind me. Standing out there on the deck I felt incredibly calm and almost old, like I was an elderly and had already lived my whole life and was only waiting around now to die. It was a cool gray day and looked and felt like it was going to rain. The leaves on the trees’d turned upside down and silver. The wind was blowing and a bank of dark clouds was building up over toward Jay which is where a lot of summer storms come from in Au Sable. Slowly I walked down the steps past my old rusting dirt bike and out to the street where I stopped for a minute and thought about Willie and wondered if he’d still be alive if I hadn’t run away. Probably none of us’d be alive if I hadn’t run away, I decided and then I turned left toward town and after a few minutes of walking real slow like in a fog I speeded up some. I was thinking I’d better walk fast if I was going to get to the clinic where my mom worked before the rain started.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  RED ROVER

  By the time I got to the clinic I’d gone all trembly and loose in the limbs. Even my jaw hung down and my mouth was open like I’d been shocked by the sight of something awful, a way bad accident or a bloody crime and I suppose I was. My hands were wet and my knees felt watery and I was afraid I was going to flip out if anybody looked at me the wrong way like with suspicion or even a hint of disrespect. And I was dangerous, wicked dangerous because after the deal back at the house with Ken I was aware now that I was carrying chrome, I was a dude with a loaded niner in his backpack who could start blasting if he wanted to and who could blast an actual person and not just some rich guy’s view of the mountains. For the first time I understood how these pissed-off ex-employees or some divorced guy who didn’t get child custody can walk into a post office or a Pizza Hut full of people and pull out his heater and start firing and not give a shit who gets hit. I didn’t want to do anything like that of course but I felt like if one little thing went wrong in the next hour or two I wouldn’t be able to stop myself, that’s how far gone I was on account of my stepfather and the collapsed situation at our house and family and the fact that ol’ Willie was dead and no one seemed to give a shit and I was trying to come home again but no one seemed to quite get that either, not even me.

  The clinic is a low brick building at the edge of town near the ballfield where there was a Little League game going and some parents sitting in the bleachers watching like it was the World Series so nobody noticed me when I walked by. I almost felt invisible or like I was watching a movie with me in it even when somebody passed me on the sidewalk or drove past on the street. Everything was weirdly normal except for the storm coming up and the trees swirling around in the wind.

  The waiting room at the clinic was empty of customers and silent like a morgue, spooky. I walked up to the receptionist, this blond mound of renown around town named Cherie who I knew by her reputation from guys but also slightly from before when she used to come around the house with my mom after work sometimes for a beer, and I said, Is my mom here?

  She slowly looked up from the People magazine she was reading and said, Huh?

  My mom. Is she here? I wanna talk with her, man. Who’s your mom? she asked evidently not recognizing me on account of my hair grown back and no more mohawk or nose rings and earrings which in the past’d kept people from actually looking at me and seeing my face for what it was which was the whole point of course. But now I was into accepting I-self as I-Man would say and as a result I didn’t give a flying fuck what people thought when they looked at me.

  I said my mom’s name and suddenly everything registered in Cherie’s mind, meaning who I was and that I wasn’t missing and presumed dead anymore which raised up a whole lot of new questions in her small mind that I did not particularly want to answer so I said, She’s still in bookkeeping, ain’t she?

  Oh yeah, sure. But listen, Chappie honey, where have you been?

  Call her in bookkeeping, willya, and tell her that I’m out here in the lobby and I want to talk to her about something important, I said and I turned around and walked across the room to a far corner behind this big plant where I set my pack on the floor and took a seat and crossed my legs and folded my arms. I studied the No Smoking sign and waited.

  A minute or two later here came my mom looking all frazzled and scared like thanks to Cherie she expected to see me covered with blood or something. I love my mom, I really do, despite everything. And I e
specially loved her then when she came running out from the bookkeeping office and rushed past Cherie at the receptionist’s desk and by the time she got to me she had her arms opened wide like a real mom so when I stood up I kind of walked right into her and disappeared inside. That’s what it felt like anyhow. Then she was like crying and saying things like, Oh Chappie, Chappie, where have you been? Let me see you, let me look at you! I’ve been so worried and all, honey, I thought you were dead!

  She told me she’d been sure I’d been burned up in that fire but Ken had kept saying no and then when my friend Russell showed up again she’d started to hope maybe Ken was right. And now here you are! she said brightly and stood back and held me by my arms and smiled and I smiled and then she hugged me again and so on back and forth like that until we’d pretty much covered the reunion scene and were ready to move on to more serious stuff.

  She wanted to know where I’d been all these months and who I’d been staying with naturally and I lied a little bit so she wouldn’t think I’d been hiding out in Keene and then Plattsburgh just down the road practically and could’ve come home easy anytime I wanted. Instead I said I’d been across the lake over in Vermont almost to New Hampshire living on a commune with these old hippies who ran an organic school. I didn’t know what that was but I could tell the words organic and school eased my mom’s mind somewhat although she’s a long ways from being a hippie. She’s just not scared of them is all and believes anything organic is good, just too expensive and of course school is the magic word. So it was like I was hanging out with rich people.

  She hugged me some more and commented on how healthy and tanned I looked and I told her how I’d been doing a lot of gardening for the hippies and lately with the garden in and all I’d had a little free time and I’d started to miss her a lot so I’d come over from Vermont for a visit maybe, in case she wanted me to visit or stay a while or whatever.