Rule of the Bone

TEN. HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN, JIGGETY-JIG

I didn’t think of it until we actually got there but me and Rose must’ve looked a little weird that morning at the Trailways station, Rose in her Little Orphan Annie dress and Expos cap and me in one of I-Man’s trademark Come Back To Jamaica tee shirts and the baggy cutoffs I’d made from old Mr. Ridgeway’s lime green pants with the red anchors on them and the both of us walking on I-Man’s fantastic homemade tire sandals. Plus in those days I was into wearing like a doo-rag on my head made out of one of those red farmer’s handkerchiefs that I found one morning in the Sun Foods parking lot and took it home and washed it up and dried it and I-Man showed me how to tie it around my head the same as a lot of cool black dudes do for keeping their hair from burning red in the sun, he said.

No problem for me, I told him since my hair was already on the reddish side anyhow.

But I-and-I got to have a lid fe protect him brain from de sun, he said, an’ to heat it up fe when de air come cold an’ wet. White man or black man, de brain be de key to de whole structure of I-self, an’ if it not too hot an’ not too cold, it be cool an’ jus’ right, an’ de res’ of I-structure be cool an’ jus’ right as well, no matter how de sun him go an’ him come.

At first I thought the doo-rag made me look like a cancer kid covering up his baldness on account of my head being big for my body which was kind of on the scrawny side but then I got into it like I was a Crip or a Blood from L.A. only the white kid from Plattsburgh, New York version and after that I almost never took it off day and night. Plus it went pretty good with my crossed bones tattoo I think which I liked to show off by doing many small tasks with my left hand that I used to do with my right. I-Man said using the off hand was good for me anyhow, that it’d improve my mental balance. So when I bought Rose’s ticket to Milwaukee I naturally held out the money with my left hand and the ticket guy saw my tattoo and said, Nice tattoo, kid, real sarcastic, and then, Jesus, you kids today. I was gonna say something like fuck you, man, but didn’t since it meant the guy didn’t give us any shit after that because basically he didn’t want to look at us like he would’ve if he’d felt sorry for us instead of pissed at my tattoo.

It was maybe an hour while I waited there beside Rose on a bench for the bus to Albany where she’d switch for the Chicago bus and after that she’d have to change again for Milwaukee. She was real quiet and nervous and I hoped she wasn’t mad at me or anything but I didn’t know how to ask if she was without sounding stupid or making her worry about what she was doing even more than she already was so I just sat there and didn’t say anything either, until finally the bus pulled in from Montreal and a few minutes later they announced all aboard for Albany.

There were only a few other people getting on with her, a couple of air force guys and a little old lady saying goodbye to her son and daughter-in-law it looked like. The old lady was normally white for someone her age but her son who kept his arm around her to show her he still cared while he watched the clock for her to leave was the whitest guy I’d ever seen, short pure white hair and beard and eyebrows and eyelashes, pale blue eyes, pink skin, like he had a pigmentation deficiency disease or something and his tall skinny wife looked like that movie actress with the short hair, whatzername Jamie Lee Curtis but the little old lady seemed nice enough so I was hoping she was going to Chicago or maybe even all the way to Milwaukee too and could kind of help take care of Rose.

Get a seat next to Grandma, I whispered to Rose and then I walked up to Mister White and said loud so he and Jamie could hear, Be careful now, sis, and remember what Pop said about don’t talk to strange men or anything.

She traveling alone? Whitey asked. He was wearing raspberry pink pants and a white polo shirt which didn’t help to cut the glare. Also he had a diamond stud in one ear which was cool but definitely not normal. The wife was wearing this long jean skirt and a striped tee shirt and a duck-bill cap that said Mountaineer on it and looked fairly normal so I was more drawn to her than him but he was obviously the boss.

Yeah, she’s alone, I said. Going home to Milwaukee, to be with our mom. I live with our dad.

No kidding, he said. Where’s your dad?

Drives a schoolbus. Can’t be here this early, so I’m seeing her off.

Too bad. Then he said to the little old lady beside him, Mother, maybe you can keep an eye on the little girl. At least as far as Albany. Be good company for you too, he said smiling down at her and it was like he’d taken her off a leash the way she went forward toward Sister Rose already talking and in deep grandma mode after weeks probably of feeling old and in the way around Mister White and the wife.

That’s the moment I chose to back off and then slip away and head quickly out to the street before I started to cry or worry too much about what was going to befall Sister Rose when she got to Milwaukee and had to reunite with her mom.

Maybe ten minutes later I’m standing out there on Bridge Street with my thumb in the air and this flashy new silver-colored Saab Turbo 9000 stops and it’s Whitey and Jamie Lee Curtis. Jamie’s driving and Whitey goes, Hop in, kid, and I jump into the back seat and we’re off. A minute later we’re out of town headed west into the mountains aiming toward my old town of Au Sable on the way to where they lived in Keene, it turned out. We were out on 9N yakking about this and that, me and Whitey mostly because his wife was really into the driving. I think the Saab was hers and brand new or something because of how it smelled and out of the blue I asked them if they knew the Ridgeways up on East Hill Road in Keene and they both said oh yeah, sure.

Nice people, he said and she laughed like maybe they weren’t.

Yeah. I used to work for them, I said but I don’t know why, the words just popped out like marbles. It was like I wanted to confess or something.

You did, eh? he said. Doing what?

Oh, mostly yardwork, raking grass and cleaning out their swimming pool and so forth.

So you’ve been there, Whitey said sounding suspicious. I wondered did he hear about the break-in and all that.

Yeah, but mainly I was only helping out a friend of mine who worked for them regular, I said back-pedaling like mad.

Is that so? Whitey said. And who might that be?

You probably wouldn’t know him. He lives in Au Sable, except for when he lives in Keene with his aunt and uncle. Russ Rodgers is his name. Friend of mine.

Oh, we know Russ! the wife chirped and Whitey shot her a look like keep out of this and I’m thinking oh shit I’ve blown it, the guy is on to me somehow and he knows more than I thought or else he knows stuff I don’t. Russ’s probably been busted and confessed all and told everyone about me to keep from going to jail himself. He probably even said I was involved in stealing all the electronics and the fire. Suddenly I was incredibly pissed at Russ not for confessing but for copping a plea like that and at my expense too. He should’ve taken his punishment like a man and not ratted on a friend.

You know Russ? I said. No kidding. How is ol’ Russ? We kinda had a falling out actually. I haven’t seen him in over a year and in reality to tell the truth I only helped him out there at the Ridgeways’ one or two days. Way back last summer, I think. In the spring maybe, before the Ridgeways came up from wherever they live.

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 mom? 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 willing 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.