Rule of the Bone (13 page)

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 the 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 so 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 funky 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.