Rule of the Bone

by Russell Banks

  Finally I was over the top of the hill looking down at Mobay and came to the sign STARPORT and turned in at the stone gate and walked up the long driveway past the terraced flower gardens and all the strange white animals with the red eyes and mouths and marched up the wide front steps to the greathouse. It was real quiet and I couldn’t see anybody not even the guy who worked in the gardens or the woman, his wife who did the laundry and all but I remembered it was the heat of the day and they never worked then anyhow, but there weren’t any cars in the parking area I noticed and no one out at the pool either which was unusual. I’d never seen the place empty before and kind of liked it.

  I hollered, Yo, Pa! and Yo, Evening Star! a couple times and finally decided the place was mine for the time being. I took a cold Red Stripe from the fridge and wandered into the livingroom where I’d dropped my stuff and scrounged around till I found some cigarettes, loosies in a silver box. I took a handful and started smoking and because I hadn’t had any for a few days got instantly high although not like with skunk of course and it wore off right away. Then I noticed Pa’s CD player by his chair and I thought I’m pretty nervous and this’d be a good chance to finally hear those classical CDs I took from the Ridgeways’ summerhouse in Keene so I went into my pack and pulled them out.

  I was thinking about that place in Keene now anyhow due to the similarities of me being alone there and alone here and with both houses being old and up on a hill with great views and I was noticing how different I was now from how I was then only a little less than a year ago. Naturally in lots of ways I was still the same person but the differences were real and pretty amazing and I hoped permanent because in spite of how things’d turned out I never wanted to go back to being the sad fucked-up kid I was a year ago.

  The guys who’d made all the CDs had these mostly unpronounceable names which was definitely not like typical rock or reggae bands except for this one that attracted my attention not only because I could pronounce it, Charles I’ves but because I’ves was in big letters and seemed like an excellent Rasta name and plus some of the songs had names like The Unanswered Question and The See’r and All the Way Around and Back which sounded like they might be Rasta songs or at least spiritual, so I snapped that one in and kicked back in Pa’s chair and listened to it. I guess I was like still wishing for a message from I-Man in Africa to tell me what to do next so I listened to this I’ves guy more careful than I would’ve otherwise and accidentally got really into his songs, most of which didn’t have any words but that didn’t matter because when they did have words they were sung like in opera and I could barely understand them. But it was the band music I was into, all these trumpets and violins coming at me from different directions at different speeds and loudness but linked together anyhow. No one instrument stood out so I figured Ras I’ves must be the song-writer and probably led the band too although he might’ve been the piano player. I don’t think he did any of the singing.

  I sat there for a couple of hours and played the CD over and over and the more I listened the stronger and steadier inside I felt until I was sure that I-Man was using his ol’ compadre Ras I’ves to drum me into shape and clarity the same way the Cockpit Rastas late at night used their African drumming out on their groundations sitting around the chillum together to see into the depths and the heights of I. I figured Ras I’ves must be a white guy due to a lot of the songs having white names like Three Places in New England and General William Booth Enters into Heaven but it was obvious listening to him that he was a true heavy Rasta anyhow and I was starting to think that maybe that was the message I-Man was sending me, that even though I was a white kid I could still become a true heavy Rasta myself someday but only as long as I didn’t ever forget I was a white kid, just like black people could never forget they were black people. He was telling me in a world like ours which is divided into white and black that was how you finally came to know I.

  Along about five I heard a car coming up the driveway and it turned out to be the black Buick, Pa’s government car. The driver stopped by the steps and let Pa out and then turned and went back the way he’d come. Pa I could instantly see was seriously toasted, swinging and swaying as he came slowly up the steps and grinding his teeth like from speedballs so I decided this might not be the best time to tell him his son had returned to the fold. I grabbed my stuff and ran up the stairs and down the hallway to what used to be my room at the end and didn’t remember till I got there that I’d left the Ras I’ves CD playing. It was too late to go back so I just chilled and let him deal with it. I could hear Pa hollering downstairs for Evening Star and yelling, Where the hell is everybody, for Christ’s sake! and mumbling to himself as he walked from room to room.

  Then a little while later I heard another car drive up, Evening Star’s Range Rover from the sound of it and here comes a whole bunch of white American female voices including Evening Star’s plus one Jamaican guy laughing that when he said, Me gwan fe kill de goat now, I recognized as Jason. A couple of the females said like, Oh-h-h no-o-oo! but they were only kidding and laughed and pretty soon there was the sound of splashing and diving from the pool where I guessed everyone’d gone for a swim, except Jason I figured and Pa who I’d never seen swim even once the whole time.

  Downstairs then I heard Evening Star in the livingroom saying, What the hell are you listening to? and Pa who was somewhere else, probably in the kitchen says, Beats the shit out of me. I dunno, I think it was on when I came in, he says sounding fairly mellow so I decide this’s as good a time as any to make my appearance.

  I don’t know why but I put my pack on and brought my Jah-stick. I guess I wanted to like make a grand entrance descending the staircase which I did and they both watched me in silence as I came walking slowly down to the livingroom. Then when I got to the bottom step Evening Star came rushing over to me and wrapped me up in her arms smelling like bread and I could see on her shoulder and neck a light sweat and almost licked it but didn’t. She said, Oh Bone, thanks and praise! Thanks and praise to Jah. Bone! We’ve been so worried about you, darlin’. Look! she says to Pa releasing me then and turning me around so he can see me better. He’s back! she says. Your pick’ny’s back! and Pa gets this squinty shit-eating grin on his face like he can almost see me through the haze.

  My pick’ny, he said and he floated his hand out in the air toward me so I shook it but it was like shaking a cold banana and I let go of it real quick.

  Doc’s not feeling too good, Evening Star says to me and I go, Yeah, I see. He looked really bad actually, even thinner than before and gray-faced with dark circles under his eyes and he didn’t look like he’d had a bath in a long time either.

  Hard week, dear? she said slightly sarcastic but Southern so you can’t really tell.

  Yeah, you could say that, he says and drops down in his chair and notices the Ras I’ves which is still playing and says, What the fuck is that? and twitches like it hurts him to hear it. Ol’ Ras I’ves is deep into Central Park in the Dark then so that’s what I say, Central Park in the Dark, and Pa cringes and turns away.

  I hate that shit, he says. Turn it the fuck off!

  Evening Star reached down to the player and switched it off and said to me, C’mon in the kitchen, dear. Your daddy’s in a foul temper but I want to hear all about your adventures. I want to find out where you-all’ve been all these months. We were afraid you’d gone back to the States, she said. That is, until Jason told us he’d run into you out there at Mount Zion.

  He said that?

  Yes he surely did, only a few days ago. He said he saw you with I-Man, poor thing, and we were so worried about y’all after they found I-Man shot to death. It was drugs, wasn’t it? I hope you weren’t involved. Bone honey, tell me you weren’t involved. You’ve got to tell me everything, darlin’. Everything. There’s so many rumors floating around. What happened? she asked but immediately turned and headed for the kitchen. I dropped my backpack and Jah-stick and followed her with a few questions of my
own but she’d already started rattling in her high excitement mode about tonight’s menu, roast goat that Jason’s going to barbecue for us and some exquisite basmati rice dear sweet Rita’s brought us, whatever that was and whoever Rita was although I could guess as I heard squeals and squeaks from the direction of the pool.

  Y’ll want to take a swim, honey? You look plumb tuckered out. I’ve got to get supper going but you go ahead and meet Rita and Dickie, they’re these wonderful lesbians from Boston, she said like I gave a shit they were lesbians. They’re both artists and you’ll love them.

  Evening Star was wearing this loose red and white striped smock over a skin-colored bikini bathing suit and I could catch flashes of leg and belly now and then. Her tan was wicked good and probably all over because of the nude sunbathing she was into. She and the others’d spent the day at Doctors Cave, she said and later shopping for souvenirs for Rita and Dickie to take home. She was covered with dried ocean salt and itchy and was going to take a swim in the pool herself as soon as she had the supper under control. So you go ahead, darlin’, she said. I’ll join y’all in a few minutes.

  I said no, I wanted to hear about I-Man and all that so while she cooked and I helped by chopping the veggies and grinding the coconut and suchlike she went on about how she’d heard that I-Man’d tried to rip off some big-time American ganja dealer, she didn’t know who and he and one of his posse’d gotten shot for it. I asked her what about Doc, did he know anything about it and she said no, although Doc did know some of the Kingston dealers and various and sundry unsavory types, she called them but this one was a mystery to him too. I asked if Doc was into dealing and she hesitated a second and said, Well, sometimes a little, I reckon, but don’t say anything. Just a little ganja, you know. For the tourist trade. Basically, she said, Doc’s become a consumer. As you can see.

  Yeah, I said. Speedballs.

  She sighed and looked at her hands. I’m afraid so, honey, she said. I’m afraid so. It ain’t a very nice welcome home, is it, my love? she said and put her hands on my shoulders and looked sadly into my eyes. We were about the same height I noticed which meant I’d grown about four inches since I split with I-Man for Accompong last summer. Then suddenly she let go of me and pushed her dreadlocks back and went to work again. For a few minutes neither of us said anything and I just watched her from behind while she stirred the dreadnuts in a pan at the stove. There was some more squealing from the pool and I smelled woodsmoke from the barbecue pit out on the patio where Jason was getting ready to cook the goat. Doc had put one of his own CDs on, some old Ike and Tina Turner song and when I glanced back into the livingroom I saw he was flopped in his usual place and was smoking a decent-sized J and looking blissed.

  There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you, I said to Evening Star.

  She turned and looked at me and smiled. What’s that, darlin’?

  Well, I was like wondering. . . I was thinking maybe you’d like to fuck me. You know, since I’ve never actually done it.

  It sounds coldhearted and all probably, but it wasn’t. At least not completely. I mean, Evening Star was definitely a hot babe irregardless of her age and from when she’d hugged me after I first came down the stairs to greet her and Doc I’d been pretty turned on and everything, plus somehow just being in that house always got my sex juices flowing. Right from the start with all the loose screwing that went on at Starport for me the place’d been a sex box. It was hard especially for a teenaged kid to ignore female poets from New Orleans slapping on suntan lotion by the pool and black natties with great builds and no shirts and their units showing in their shorts sneaking off to hook up with Evening Star’s many white friends and relations, and I hate to admit it but it’s true, I really was turned on by lesbians from Boston trotting around in bikinis and from the beginning I’d been way turned on by the sexual vibes that Evening Star herself gave off constantly, how she sort of suggested that her whole purpose in life was to give pleasure whether in the form of food or drugs or sex didn’t matter, it was like the giving that mattered because that was the only thing that gave her pleasure back which is some weird kind of generosity that when you think about it and I did is more like constant desire than generosity and is very sexy to a guy. With all that going on for months and years and for all I knew for centuries practically, since slavery days, the place hung suspended out there in the darkness of normal life like Pleasure Island vibrating and twinkling and giving me a perpetual hard-on so to speak that up to now I’d tried to deal with on my own you might say.

  But it’s also true that it was coldhearted too, my asking Evening Star if I could fuck her or to be exact if she would fuck me. A, because I was wicked curious in a scientific sort of way about what it’d be like and had been wondering about the mechanical details of screwing for at least a couple of years, ever since I first found out about Russ and other guys my age or slightly older getting laid by girls they picked up at the mall and so on. And B, because of Doc and I-Man. More than my general ongoing horniness and Evening Star’s buff appearance and more than the Pleasure Island lifestyle of Starport and definitely more than the requirements of scientific curiosity, the force that drove me to hit on Evening Star in the kitchen that evening was my need to try and undo the sin I’d committed against I-Man.

  When I told Doc the night of my birthday that I-Man’d screwed Evening Star I’d separated myself from I-Man and joined up with Doc. It only lasted a minute and I did it because Doc was my father but still I’d betrayed my best friend and teacher and he’d died for it maybe. Now though, by committing the same crime against Doc as I-Man’d done, which was to steal something that Doc thought was his but actually wasn’t since it was a person, I’d be separating myself from Doc and joining up with I Man again. Stealing is only a crime but betrayal of a friend is a sin. It’s like a crime is an act that when you’ve committed one the act is over and you haven’t changed inside. But when you commit a sin it’s like you create a condition that you have to live in. People don’t live in crime, they live in sin. I didn’t know if it’d work, I was still new at this sin-versus-crime business but I had to try. I already had enough experience as a criminal to know that you can’t undo a crime. Even a so-called minor crime. When it’s done it’s done. I’d known that since the day I got kicked out of my mom’s and stepdad’s house for stealing my grandmother’s coin collection. But a sin which can go on forever irregardless of whether you’re punished for it I was hoping could be undone. Even if I had to commit a crime to do it. Well, sort of a crime. Like I said, Doc didn’t really own Evening Star, he only thought he did.

  She stood there by the stove with this little smile on her lips for a long time not saying anything, like she was running a mental video on fast forward to see how screwing me might turn out. Finally she let go of the spoon she’d been stirring with and carefully lowered the stove flame. She turned back to me and smiled. Y’all want to do it now? she says.

  Sure. Why not?

  She glanced at the clock on the wall like this won’t take long and said she had to get something from her bedroom first that I figured was some kind of birth control device which was cool as I was definitely not into fatherhood. Wait for me in the laundryroom, she said. I reckon nobody’ll bother us there. Except you maybe. And I’ll have y’all with me this time, won’t I, darlin’?

  Yes you will! I said and went through the door into the darkened laundryroom where there was a washer and dryer and various yard tools plus the little cot against the wall in back. I could tell I already had a wicked huge boner but I didn’t take off my clothes or anything yet. I remembered from porn films and such that the female always takes off her clothes first so I just sat there on the cot like in a doctor’s office until the kitchen door swung open and I could see from the daylight behind her that she’d taken off her bathing suit and was only wearing the striped gauzy shift now and nothing underneath. My breathing had definitely speeded up and I could hear my heart pounding and my hands were all swea
ty. I was seriously scared, more of doing something bad than scared of Evening Star herself but no way I’d turn back now.

  She came over and sat down beside me and started kissing me and putting her tongue in my mouth and all that and guided my hands around to her nipples but they didn’t need much guidance so she let go of my hands and started unbuttoning and unzipping my cutoffs. I kicked off my old sandals then and wriggled out of my tee shirt and she let her shift fall off and lay back and pulled me straight to her and I went right up inside like despite everything of a sexual nature that’d happened to me in the distant past this was exactly what I was made for. I’ll spare you most of the details but she pretty much controlled everything which was cool because otherwise on my own I probably would’ve hopped around there for a few seconds and that would’ve been it and I would’ve had to wait for five or ten minutes of downtime before I could do it again which would’ve been embarrassing. But she clamped onto my ass with her hands and drew me slowly in and out and taught me to make certain hinky little hitching moves and drifty swirls with my hips that seemed to really do a job on her and I was feeling kind of proud but then when she started moaning and pulling me in faster and faster I found myself getting incredibly excited and then just as I started to have some really good thoughts about this, like how sex with another person really does block everything out of your mind except that person herself who fills your mind and becomes like the whole universe, and it really helps your concentration and lets you finally forget all your troubles, and it’s got so strong a pull on your attention that you actually can’t think about yourself anymore, you can’t even try, it even blocks out your thoughts, my thoughts got blocked out and I came.