Rule of the Bone

NINE. SCHOOL DAYS

It’s hard to think back to those days of living in the bus with I-Man and Froggy and not get all gummed up with feelings of like thankfulness although I don’t know who to thank and didn’t know then either since I-Man himself never took any credit and everything that seemed unusual to me was only normal to him.

Maybe it was normal and maybe what was unusual or weird was basically my life up to then. Because up to then for me living was the same as running through hell with a gasoline suit on.

You got to give thanks and praise, mon, he used to tell me whenever I’d say how cool things were now with me and Froggy and him living together in the schoolbus out there in the field behind the warehouses north of Plattsburgh.

I’d say, Yeah, right, who’m I supposed to give thanks and praise to? and I-Man always smiled that soft smile of his and said Jah which I guessed was his idea of God or maybe Jesus but different on account of I-Man being an old black guy and a Jamaican and all that. I wasn’t sure who Jah was really, the whole thing being still pretty new to me and when he told about how Jah was actually this African king of kings named Haile Selassie who drove the whites out of Africa and freed up his people I figured this was something white people probably couldn’t get or else I-Man was working from a different Bible than ours, one I hadn’t heard of yet.

Actually there were some Rastafarians who were like white Americans that I’d seen at the mall and elsewhere hitching et cetera, kids mainly who were into reefer but wanted a religion to go with it so they grew their hair out and twisted it into locks and put wax and other crap into it so they could make like dreadlocks out of it and these white Rastas when they talked about Jah and said give praise and thanks, mon, stuff they’d picked up mostly from Bob Marley songs they never mentioned the Haile Selassie guy. I knew they were in reality talking about God though and Jesus and suchlike only picturing Him as a way older black guy like Malcolm X with a gray beard so they could picture themselves as black too, like that was the whole point, to not have to be an American white kid worshiping the god of your parents which is why the Haile Selassie stuff got overlooked by them but it was important.

The thing is, reality, at least that part of reality which includes gods and saviors and so forth was different for I-Man than it was for us American white kids. Probably different even than for American black kids too but I can’t say much about that of course since I’m not one myself. I mean, who knows how black kids from America picture God? I guess if you judge from their parents’ artworks and church songs and suchlike it figures that they picture Him pretty much the same as white kids do only He’s a little less uptight maybe.

Anyhow whenever I-Man told me to give thanks and praise to Jah because I’d just said how cool everything was it was like he was telling me to thank the monkey god or praise the hundred-armed god with the elephant face or something weird like that. But when I thought about it since for the first time in my life I was actually happy it made more sense for me to be thanking and praising foreign gods like that than the bearded white American Methodist God and His skinny son Jesus that my mom and stepfather and my grandmother’d told me to thank and praise in church when I was a little kid. I would’ve been lying then since I didn’t exactly have a lot to be thankful for unless you count my real father taking off on me and my stepfather’s sicko visits to my room when he was drunk and my mom’s weepy dumb belief that everything was cool and my grandmother’s constant complaining. Giving thanks and praise to God and Jesus back then, that would’ve been the really weird thing and they probably knew it too. Then or now they themselves never went to church regular anyhow, not even one Sunday a month but only often enough so people knew they weren’t Catholic or Jew which I think was the main point.

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 groundbreaking 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 outlaw 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 healthy 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 glowing 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 in I 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 distance 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 me 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.

He was very clear on where to dig though and laid it out exactly with string and stakes and all while me and Froggy came along behind with our shovels turning over he soil which was surprisingly free of rocks and dark and crumbly and rich-looking. It was like I-Man was following this vein of good soil, the only good soil in the whole area actually and if he’d gone and cut a regular garden plot in the field twenty or thirty feet square like a normal person nothing would’ve grown there because most of that field like most of the whole county was rocks and gravel and in lots of places was chemical waste. Definitely the field we were working and living on then was pretty much on top of old chemicals from when they stored poison and radioactive stuff out there for the air force years ago in case the Russians attacked but somehow I-Man was able to sniff out the one narrow strip of dirt that wasn’t like contaminated and dangerous or rocky even because I never saw such dark thick dirt in that part of the country and everything he planted came up and grew wicked fast and looked as healthy as food from the olden pioneer days.

It stayed light pretty late then because we were coming up on the end of June and nights after supper the three of us would sit out on the steps of the bus with the door open and me and I-Man would knock back this blunt-sized spliff and we’d talk about stuff, him doing most of the talking actually and me and Froggy just trying to understand because he was like our teacher in life and we were the students, her in the first grade or kindergarten and me maybe in the third and there’d be these long silences in between I-Man’s words of wisdom and we’d all three just sit and listen to the crickets together and the breeze rustling the long grasses and the cornstalks and all the other plants in the garden and we’d watch the sun go down and the sky turn all red like jam and these thin strips of silver clouds would float across and one by one stars would pop out of the dark blue sky overhead like genuine diamonds and then the old moon would drift up over the tops of the trees in the distance and the field in the moonlight would look so incredibly peaceful and beautiful that it was hard to believe that at one time not very long ago I’d seen this place as spooky and kind of nasty and couldn’t hardly wait to get away. Now it was like for the first time in this old wrecked schoolbus on this bulky field I’d found a real home and a real family.

But it wasn’t a real family of course and me and I-Man couldn’t be like Froggy’s parents or even her older brothers because she was such a very young child and I was only a kid myself and an outlaw and I-Man was a Jamaican illegal alien trying to get by and eventually get home without getting busted by the American government. Plus Froggy was somebody’s real daughter and no matter how fucked up that person was we had an obligation to try and return Froggy to her if she wanted to be with her mom, or if not then we had to find her somebody else for a mom.

It was obvious that being a female and such a little kid Froggy needed a mom more than she needed me and I-Man, we understood that and accepted it and tried talking to her about it.

I-Man’d say to her, Somewhere out dere, Froggy, in de cold wild hinterlands of America, dere mus’ a mama be cryin fe you t’ come home now, chile, him cryin it time to come home. Him sorry now, Froggy, dat him sold him baby off into Babylon.

I said maybe we could call Froggy’s mom on the phone and kind of feel her out on the subject and then decide what to do and I-Man thought that was okay if Froggy wanted it but she just said, No, talk about something else.

It took weeks but her mom was named Nancy Riley, we finally got that much out of her and Froggy thought she lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin or she used to anyhow before Buster came and got her but that was a long time ago and she probably wasn’t living there anymore anyhow. Froggy didn’t cry or anything when we talked to her about returning to her mom, she’d say a few words and then just look out in space and bite her lower lip and let her eyes go dead. I knew she hadn’t been away all that long, only six months or a year and it only seemed long to her because she was still a little kid so I kept saying let’s go call information and find out if your mom’s listed, that won’t hurt, until finally she seemed to give in and said, O—kay.

It was a warm night early in July, the Fourth of July actually because I remember the fireworks later down by the lake and it was around seven-thirty that we finally got permission from Froggy to try and call up her mom. Basically I think up to then she’d been too afraid that her mom would tell her don’t come home if she called which was a natural fear I guess or that her mom wouldn’t even talk to her at all but she’d been getting some serious attention from me and I-Man for quite a while by then and a lot of description of what moms really feel for their kids regardless of how they act sometimes so she was starting to trust people a little more. It was like a major breakthrough I guess.

But it’d taken a lot of coaxing mainly by me because I don’t think I-Man was all that into talking people into doing what was good for them even little kids like Froggy who’re supposedly too young to know what’s good for them, but finally this one night when she’d said O-kay she would talk to her mom if I got her on the phone the three of us headed on our usual path across the field which had lots of flowers on it now, daisies and goldenrod and suchlike and slipped under the old chain-link fence and walked to the Officemax and around to the front of Sun Foods where there was a pay phone and not many people on account of it being Fourth of July and pretty late. I led and Froggy followed and I-Man was last.

I-Man did have a point although he didn’t make it in words, just by example instead which was typical plus it kept you on your toes and thinking on your own. But getting kids to do stuff for their own good when they don’t want to can be dangerous and only works out for the best once in a while. Actually I don’t know if it ever works out unless you’re standing in the middle of the street and don’t see the ten-ton truck coming and this good guy pushes you out of the way and says it’s for your own good. But even in situations like that if you’d’ve known the facts you’d’ve gotten out of the way on your own and with a lot less stress too and wouldn’t’ve been pissed for being shoved.

Generally it was true that in my own life so far I myself had not done anything just because my mom or stepfather or teachers I have had or any of the adults who had me in their power told me it was for my own good. No fucking way. And whenever somebody told me that, there was like this alarm that went off under the hood and all I could hear was whoop-whoop-whoop, somebody’s trying to steal something valuable, I’d think so I’d usually do the opposite. Most of the time that didn’t turn out so hot either but I’d’ve never done it in the first place if somebody hadn’t’ve been out to get me for my own good to do the first opposite thing.

Yet here I was practically begging Froggy a kid littler than me to call her mom on the phone like E.T. calling home when it was obvious she didn’t want to. Her mom’d sold her to Buster for money probably to buy rock with but still I guess I just couldn’t believe her mom wouldn’t be real happy and incredibly relieved to hear from her lost child no matter what and vice versa too.

I went inside the supermarket and cashed one of Buster’s fifties which got me a good close once-over from the customer service guy after the lady at the cash register refused to break it for me. I think they both thought the bill was a phony which happens a lot here on account of it being so close to the border and all the smuggling et cetera that goes on but I told the guy my father’s outside driving a special handicapped van because he’s a Vietnam vet in a wheelchair and it’s a huge deal for him to come in and do it himself so I was doing it to make a call to his lawyer for him due to his having to go to Washington to testify about Agent Orange. Which finally got to the guy so he broke the bill in a hurry. I don’t know why but I always like to drop that in just to say it, ever since I read about it in the newspaper and thought Agent Orange was like this cool spy who’d worked for the CIA in Vietnam and when he saw how the war was so fucked up he went over to the side of the vets and agreed to testify for them in Washington like in that movie with Tom Cruise. It might’ve been MTV news I saw it on because I don’t really read the newspapers except by accident like if I sit on a park bench and there it is on the ground staring back at me.

Anyhow I came out with a bunch of quarters and a handful of small bills and called information in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for Nancy Riley. There was a number listed for N. Riley so I dialed that and a woman answered on the first ring like she’d been sitting beside the phone waiting for her daughter to call. She goes, Hello? and I say, Is this Nancy Riley? and she says yeah and I go, Do you have a little daughter? and she’s all of a sudden wicked suspicious and starts in like what is this and whaddaya want and so on and whaddaya talking about.

My daughter’s with her grandmother, she says. I can tell she’s a pipesucker, you can hear it instantly from the buzz behind her voice like she’s got a lousy speaker.

Froggy’s looking down at her rubber tire sandals all this time and I-Man’s checking out the few customers coming from the store with their grocery carts full of food and he’s offering to push their carts to their car for them, spare-changing in other words but people of course say no real fast, no way they’re going to entrust their precious groceries to this grinning little black dude in floppy shorts and a Come Back To Jamaica tee shirt and a red and green and gold mushroom-shaped Rasta cap on his head with all his dreadlocks curled up inside like mystical thoughts of Jah. Although suddenly this one humpbacked old couple says, Yes, thank you very much young man, and off he goes pushing their cart across the lot one happy Rasta, so you never can tell although in my experience with white people when it comes to dealing with kids and blacks it’s the really old and feeble ones who’re more trusting than the healthy middle-aged and younger people, probably due to the elderlies not having very long to live.

Look, Mrs. Riley, I said to her, I’ve got a little girl here, she’s my friend and she says you’re her mom. Or at least her mom is the same name as you.

There’s silence for a few seconds and I can hear her smoking a cig and wished I had one and promised myself to buy some with Buster’s bucks as soon as I got off.

Cigarettes’ll make you do that, spend other people’s money. Finally she sighs and says, What’s her name? and suddenly I realize that all I know is Froggy so I panic and put my hand over the phone and say, Froggy, what the fuck’s your real name, man?

She takes a minute like she can’t remember herself, then she looks off toward the parking lot and just says Froggy.

C’mon, man, that’s Buster’s name for you. What’s your real name? What name did your mom give you?

Rose, she said.

Wow, I said. Rose. That’s incredible! I wish I’d’ve known that.

Her name’s Rose, I told her mom.

Where’re you calling from? the lady asks. Is she okay? My daughter’s been visiting with her grandmother, I want you to know. That’s where she stays.

Yeah, fucking duh, man.

Are you with the police or anything? You sound like a kid to me, I think you’re just a goddam kid. Some goddam kid screwing around, fucking with my head. I don’t need this.

I am a kid, lady. My name’s Bone and I’m in Plattsburgh, New York. And your daughter Rose ain’t with her grandmother. She’s standing right here beside me and she’s okay if you want to know. She’s with friends now. You oughta talk to her, man. And if you want and she wants I’ll send her home to you on a bus tomorrow no questions asked.

She laughed at that. You will, huh? I think you’re just some kid who wants to fuck with my head. Is this Jerry? I think I probably know you somewhere and you’ve got a weird sense of humor is all. This is Jerry, right? Jerry from over by Madison.

I was starting to hate this bitch. Does the name Buster Brown mean anything to you, man?

That did it. She said, Okay, lemme talk to her, and I handed the phone to Froggy. Rose.

She took the phone and said, Hi, Mom. She didn’t cry or anything. She almost didn’t show any feelings at all, just went on saying like yeah and no and so on while I guess her mom told her various stuff. I really wanted to know what but from the way Rose was acting I couldn’t tell anything. It might’ve been, I’m sorry, please come home, I love you, my child. Or just as easy, Don’t ever call me again, you sonofabitch, you’re nobody’s child. Either way Rose looked and sounded the same.

I-Man circled back and checked in before some more spare-changing and I told him what had happened so far and he just nodded like it didn’t make no nevermind to him which was an expression he liked to use and took off looking for more old people with grocery carts because it looked like he was doing okay. It always surprised me how if people gave I-Man a chance to talk they liked him even though they couldn’t understand him. He was one charming African dude.

Finally Rose passed me the phone and just said, She wants to talk to you.

I held my hand over the mouthpiece and said to her, Everything okay now, Rose? You want to go back there? and she shrugged her shoulders like whatever which was definitely not a good sign. I was starting to feel sorry I’d ever broken Buster’s fifty and gotten her into this. You don’t hafta go back if you don’t want to, I said. But you’ve got to go with somebody. A regular person, I mean. For school and all.

She said, Yeah, I know. It’s okay.

I said to her mom, Wussup.

Listen, I don’t know you from Adam but I guess you’re okay. Is Rosie living with you or your family or something? What’s the deal?

The deal is I’m only a homeless boy you might say and she’s sort of crashing with me and a friend here and we’re like outlaws. She’s too young for that. She’s only a little girl, for chrissake. So I need to find her a real home. And you looked the logical place to start.

Nothing. Just the buzz of her bad speaker.

It’s simple, Mrs. Riley. You’re her mom. And thanks to this guy Buster Brown I happen to have enough money to buy her a ticket to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. If you want me to. She’s willing. What about you?

Still nothing. What an incredible bitch, I’m thinking. What the hell, Rose’s only a little girl and you’re her mom. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?

Yeah, she finally said. Then another long silence.

So what about it, Mrs. Riley? Rose told me about her dad being in jail and all. What’s the deal with you?

Yeah, she said. That all sounds great. But c’mon, how’m I gonna pay for her when she gets here though? I’m outa work. I’m sick. You understand what I’m saying? It’s a problem. I’m broke. And I’m sick. Various things.

There was a heavy dragged-out sigh like she was waiting for me to say something sympathetic but I didn’t want to so finally she goes, All right, whyn’t you do that, then. buy her a ticket home to her mother. It’s a good thing to do. right? I need her and she needs me, a kid needs her mother. I mean, I can tell you like her and she likes you, you’re friends, I guess, which is real sweet and all. But I’m her mother. Also, listen, if you want you can put some money in an envelope with her, like when you put her on the bus. In a little pocketbook or something safe. You know? For Rosie. You can probably do that for her. So I can take care of her when she gets here. Like buy her some decent new clothes and so on. Maybe find a better place to live. So she can have her own room. You know what I’m saying? God, I love her. I truly do.

Yeah, okay, I said and then I asked her if she wanted to say anything else to Rose but she said no, that’s fine. Just put her on the Trailways tomorrow morning, she told me and write down the phone number and give it to Rosie so she could call when she got into the Milwaukee station and she’d come down and get her. It wasn’t far, she said. And don’t forget the extra money. So I can buy her some clothes and maybe find a new apartment for her. And it’s summer and we could really use an air conditioner, she said.

Yeah, I bet. I hung up then. I was feeling a little sick about the whole thing but it was too late and besides I didn’t have any better ideas and neither did I-Man, though I knew that wouldn’t bother him because except for things like his veggie patch and other day-to-day activities I-Man wasn’t really into ideas and plans and suchlike. Mostly he just took things as they came and made all his adjustments on the spot. He was like the opposite of my friend Russ and most people in America who flip out if they don’t have a plan for the rest of their lives and I have to admit there was a little of that in me too.

* * *

It was pretty dark by then and we started hearing sonic rumbles and crackles in the distance and I-Man jacked a look in the direction of downtown Plattsburgh and the lakeside park and with his eyebrows pulled down and his lips pursed he said to me, Sound like de army-dem comin fe kotched I-and-I.

I said no it was just the fireworks but he was definitely scared, I could tell and it surprised me because it was the first time I’d ever seen I-Man even a little bit scared.

It’s only the Fourth of July, man, I explained. Birth of the nation and all that. We do it every year, just blast the shit out of the sky with tons and tons of fireworks to remind us of all the wars won by America and all the people who got killed doing it. It’s like a fucking war dance, man. We’re celebrating our hard-won freedom to like kill people.

Come wi’ I, he said and grabbed Rose by the hand and waved for me to follow and led us back around behind the Sun Foods store to where the dumpsters and loading docks all were, our personal one-stop-food-shopping spot There was this steel ladder back in a corner attached to the cinderblock wall and I-Man helped Rose up onto saying, Gwan, chile, up to de top now. Gwan, don’ be ‘fraid, chile. Jah protect de pick’nies-dem.

She started climbing slowly hand over hand and I-Man signaled for me to follow which I did and then he came along behind me peering kind of wild-eyed from side to side and behind him as if any minute he expected the marines to come roaring into the lot back there and start firing at us with M-16s or something. I guess the illegal alien business was a more serious offense than I’d thought on account of it being a crime against society instead of an individual person or store like with stealing and the other kinds of illegal stuff that were in my range of criminal acts. With the blasts from the fireworks getting louder and louder I could almost see his point, it did sound more like an invasion or some kind of heavy military action was going on than a celebration and maybe the roof of the supermarket was the safest place in town.

We climbed over the top and crunched across the flat gravel roof with I-Man crouched over and in the lead taking us to the front where we settled down behind a low concrete wall there with a perfect view of the parking lot below and the rest of the mall beyond all washed in this pale orange light. There was no traffic on the roads and only a few cars down there in the lots and no pedestrians that I could see which made it a strange lonely scene like from a science fiction movie when everyone drives out of town to see where the flying saucers’ve landed and somehow we get left behind all alone.

After a minute or two I-Man started to feel safe I guess and he relaxed a little and we began watching the fireworks going on down by the lake which we could see pretty good from up there. Actually we had probably the hest seats in town. They were shooting up the big red, white and blue dazzlers now with the long whoosh as they go up and the big sprays of color across the dark sky and the huge booms like thunder after, over and over again the same way but with different sprays of color, gold and green and bright blue and pink and yellow even, until it was obvious even to I-Man now that this wasn’t a military operation out to round up all the illegal aliens in town who probably numbered no more than ten if that.

Later on of course I learned that I-Man was basically right though not on that particular night but it was a good idea to always find yourself a safe hiding place whenever you hear what you think might be gunfire because it generally is gunfire and if there’s more than one or two shots there’s usually more than one or two guns and if there’s more than one or two guns then it’s probably the police or the army shooting people. And the people, as I-Man would say, is we. I learned it in Jamaica later on but that July night in Plattsburgh I-Man knew it already and I didn’t yet or I probably would’ve panicked just like him.

After he’d calmed down some though I told him about most of my conversation with Froggy’s mom and revealed to him Froggy’s real name which he liked as much as I did.

De name irie, mon. Fe trut’, mon, you never was no frog in de firs’ place, he said to her. I-and-I know dat. Bone know dat too. You a rose, mon. Like de famous Rose of Rose Hall in Jamaica, de ‘oman who kilt all she deadly enemies an’ she lovers wi’ obeah him got from Africa Gone from bein a Froggy to bein a Rose, mon, an’ dat way fe come to know I-self more properly and move more to de true depths of I.

He smiled down into her somber face and said, Ex-cellent! which was an expression he’d picked up from me and was using now whenever he could fit it in which was cool because I’d been picking up a lot of little phrases and words from him and needed to feel useful to him once in a while in exchange. Although I knew that his way of talking was much more interesting than mine of course and he was only being polite. Still, I always got a little hit when he said things like Ex-cellent! and Yes-s-sss!

I told him how I’d agreed to send Rose back to her mom in the morning and he looked a little skeptical at that with one eyebrow cocked and his lips pressed together and didn’t say anything one way or the other. It’s for the best, I said.

Mus’ be, he said.

You think so too, don’t you, Rose? I asked but it wasn’t really a question and she knew it. She just nodded up and down it like she was obeying me instead of saying what she really thought.

Check it out, I-Man said then using another one of my trademark expressions and meaning for us to view the fireworks. They were really filling the sky now and it looked like Star Wars or something, more like the birth of the planet than the nation with these huge blasts like supernovas going off and spreading out in circular waves of red and orange and purple and then boom-ba-booms in long spine-rattling chains. Great draping clouds of smoke hung down like gray rags and you could see the bright roofs of the whole town spread out below and the trees of the lakeside park all lit from above like from flares and out on the lake you could see the fireworks reflected off of the water where way beyond in the darkness was the city of Burlington, Vermont. And if you squinted you could see the Vermonters’ fireworks going up into their darkness too. Further down along the shore on the far side of the lake you could see the fireworks from the smaller towns and harbors and boatyards and on the near shore to the south along the New York side of the lake there were fireworks going off at Willsboro and the people of Westport were shooting rockets into their version of the same darkness as we had over us. And even inland back up by the Adirondack Mountains we could see the pale yellow glow and the red and blue and silver pulsations of the fireworks from Lake Placid and over in Keene where I figured Russ must be watching with his Aunt Doris and Uncle George and his cousins, and back along the valley in Au Sable where they were shooting off their fireworks at the ballfield I knew my mom was in the stands with some of her friends from work maybe or my grandmother and all saying Ah-h-h! and Oh-h-h! when the rockets went up and splashed the bright beautiful colors across the darkness. And my stepfather was probably there too, although I knew he’d be hanging around with his beer buddies in their plastic and aluminum folding chairs talking about teenaged pussy and putting down kids generally while he kept an eye peeled for a cheek-shot under some girl’s cutoffs or a glimpse of kiddie tit and thought his ugly thoughts without anyone but me knowing them and me far far away, and all he could hope was for me to be dead or gone forever.

Early the next morning I woke up before Rose and I-Man and took a little string bag that’d come with onions in it originally and filled it with stuff for Rose to take with her, a clean tee shirt and Mr. Ridgeway’s wool sweater in case the bus was cold and some miscellaneous food mostly fruits but a jar of I-tal stew and a couple of pieces of dreadnut pudding too. I didn’t know how long it was going to take to get to Milwaukee by bus, two or three days maybe, a long time anyhow and she’d be hungry so I figured she’d enjoy having the kind of food with her that she was used to and that way wouldn’t have to go into any bus stop restaurants if she didn’t want to because those places can be creepy for a little girl late at night.

I also put some extra cash into the bag. I wrapped in a sock the small bills I had from yesterday after buying a pack of cigarettes plus another fifty which I was thinking might possibly end up buying her a few new dresses but probably wouldn’t. Still, it was worth the gamble.

Pretty soon I-Man was up and had a fire going and breakfast was ready, hard-boiled eggs and bananas and Zion juice and then Rose was up and wearing her traveling clothes which were her old red dress nice and clean and her sandals and a Montreal Expos baseball cap that I-Man’d given her a few weeks ago and I’d shown her how to curl the brim and wear it in back so it looked cool. We all ate very quickly without saying much until it looked like it was around eight and I said, Well, let’s go, Rosie, and I handed her the bag.

Rose, she said. Don’t call me Rosie.

No sweat, I said and explained to her about the money in the sock, how it was hers and no one else’s and she should use it any way she wanted or needed to and not to give it over to anybody not even to her mom although I was thinking especially not her mom.

She said thanks and all and then I-Man came over and gave her a long hug and a kiss on each cheek like she was his daughter going off to visit relatives for the summer and in a real low voice he said to her, One love, Sister Rose. One heart. One I. Heartical, mi daughter.

She nodded like she understood and then took my hand and we walked off leaving I-Man standing behind us at the fire watching. We got about halfway across the field end I turned around and looked back and saw him still standing there with his hands down at his sides and all of a sudden a thought entered my mind that was like a radical thought and completely unexpected. At the same instant I-Man raised both his hands to the heavens as if giving praise and thanks to Jah, like he knew my thought.

Wait here, I said to Rose. I’ll be right back.

I ran back to the schoolbus and rushed inside an grabbed my backpack and shoved all my loose clothes and other items inside it like the flashlight and CDs and my stuffed bird with Buster’s money that had been hanging around on my mattress and came back outside with it.

I-Man had this wide smile on his face when he saw me and his hands on his hips. So, Bone, you goin to trampoose off to Milwaukee Wisconsin wid Sister Rose. Dat be real irie, little brudder.

No, I said. Not that, man. She’ll be okay without me. No, I think I’m gonna go home too. Like Rose. I need see my mother too, I said. You know what I’m saying?

Irie, Bone. Dat be real irie, he said but he could use that word irie a hundred different ways just like he could use the word I and this was almost sarcastic mixed with a little sadness and surprise.

I didn’t know how to answer him so I just said, Thanks. Thanks for everything, I mean. You really taught me a lot, man. That’s actually why I think I can like go back home now. On account of what you’ve taught me. I think I can face my mother and my stepfather even and figure out what they want me to do and like do it. I just got to go there, man, I said to him like it was an explanation and maybe it was. Me and Sister Rose are sort of alike, I told him.

Brother Bone and Sister Rose, he said.

One heart, one love, right?

Yes, mon. De trut’. One I.

You want the rest of Buster’s money? I said and reached into my pack for my woodcock and the roll of bills.

No way, mon. Keep it. Dat fe you own self, mon. I-and-I can make plenty money pushing carts at de market, he said grinning and he showed me a handful of quarters which I guess was all he really needed out here, especially with me and Rose gone.

Well, thanks, I said. I reached out my hand and we shoook hands in a power grip and then I was running back over the field, toward Rose and this time I didn’t look back because I was afraid I’d start crying if I did.