Rule of the Bone (14 page)

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 who 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 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, although 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 some 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 it 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 best 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 action 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.