Rule of the Bone (32 page)

I don't mean to go wandering off on the subject of the singer and his family but there was something about the kids, Rachel and Josh that really got to me as we pulled out of Mobay late that afternoon and headed southeast along the coast of Jamaica. Probably instead I should've been paying attention to my departure from this place where so much good and bad had happened to me in less than one short year. I was sure I'd never get back again unless someday I came searching for I-Man's grave up in the churchyard cemetery in Accompong to put flowers on it. My natural father lived in Jamaica but that didn't exactly provide a draw, not anymore and I'd had my first total-immersion sex experience with a woman there but that's something you can only do once. And I'd come to know I in Jamaica, I'd seen the lights of I at the heights and at the depths, but you can't do that more than once either. Either the lights of I kick in or they don't, and if they don't you keep going back to the heights and depths until they do. But when they do kick in like they had with me that night in the cave you're supposed after that to look out from I and forward, not in to I and back. You're supposed to use those bright new lights strictly for seeing into the darkness.

Which is what I was doing I guess by not looking back over my shoulder at the quickly shrinking green hills of Jamaica and peering instead through the small square window of the galley at the children up on the foredeck. The parents were stretched out on their chaises in the middle, their pale skin glistening with lotion and their eyes shut behind sunglasses. Josh was sitting on the starboard side and Rachel was on the port. With his knees drawn up to his chin and his arms wrapped around his shins the boy stared solemnly out to sea, and just as serious as him the girl was pointing her toes out in front of her like a ballet dancer and gazing at the opposite sea.

They were totally alone, those kids, like each had been accidentally sent to earth from a distant planet to live among adult humans and be dependent on them for everything because compared to the adult humans they were extremely fragile creatures and didn't know the language or how anything here worked and hadn't arrived with any money. And because they were like forbidden by the humans to use their old language they'd forgotten it so they couldn't be much company or help to each other either. They couldn't even talk about the old days and so pretty soon they forgot there even were any old days and all there was now was life on earth with adult humans who called them children and acted toward them like they owned them and like they were objects not living creatures with souls.

I could see from their expressions and gestures that those two little kids, Josh and Rachel were probably going to grow up to be just like their parents. They were already practicing. But who could blame them? No one in his right mind would want to stay a kid forever. Certainly not me.

We put in late that night at Navy Island which is just off Port Antonio at the eastern end of Jamaica and real late after everybody'd gone to bed I dragged my mattress up on the topdeck. It was actually just the roof of the main cabin but that's what Captain Ave called it, the topdeck. The night was totally clear and the stars were awesome, like zillions of tiny lights bobbing on a wide black ocean. I was still thinking about the kids Josh and Rachel and wondering which star up there they'd originally come from and if they knew it, or say I found out somehow and pointed it out to them would they want to go back there and be among their own kind again?

Probably not. The experience of being born on earth and living among humans even for only a few years changes you forever. I guess all you can do is make the best of what's clearly a bad situation. Still, it would be nice to know that on this one particular star or maybe on that one over to the right of it there were people who loved you for yourself.

I was thinking that and other such thoughts when suddenly I noticed that it was true, the biggest stars or at least the brightest ones were related like in a family and you could connect the dots so to speak and make a picture if you wanted, same as the old shepherds did who watched their flocks by night. I'd tried lots of times to see them before but it'd never worked so I'd figured constellations were just one of those things like atoms and molecules that people tell you exist but you can't see them so you say yeah, whatever.

But it
was
true. There was a bunch of bright stars here and another there and several other bunches that stood out from the zillions of stars in the background. The trouble was, even though finally I could see with my own eyes that there really were such things as constellations up there I couldn't remember any of the names or pictures anymore. I knew there was supposed to be like some guy with a bow and arrow and a chariot and horses and various Greek gods and goddesses but I couldn't tell which was which.

So I tried connecting the dots on my own. There was this one cluster of stars fairly low in the northern part of the sky and when I connected them they made like a perfect barbell. That's the constellation Bruce, I thought. Only not to have it sound stupid I decided to call it Adirondack Iron, the sign of the bad boy with the brave heart.

Another batch of stars that floated all by themselves in a really dark part of the sky turned out to be a long-stemmed rose, and I looked at that for a long time and almost cried it was so delicate and exposed out there on its own. It had little thorns on it and beautiful red petals. It was the constellation Sister Rose, the sign of the rejected child.

A third cluster of stars hovered right above me and I lay there on my back looking straight up until it came forward in the shape of a lion's head with a crown, the constellation Lion-I, the sign of the open mind, and among those stars, even though I couldn't see him I knew I-Man sat looking down on me with his lips in that little pursed smile and his eyebrows raised in slight surprise at the way things'd turned out.

All the rest of the night I passed my gaze from one constellation to the other and watched them float slowly across the sky until finally along toward dawn it began to get a little pink out on the ocean in the east and the stars started sliding into the darkness behind the mountains. First Adirondack Iron passed into the dark, and then Sister Rose, and finally Lion-I. They were gone and I missed them but even so I was very happy. For the rest of my life no matter where on the planet earth I went and no matter how scared or confused I got, I could wait until dark and look up into the night sky and see my three friends again and my heart would swell with love of them and make me strong and clearheaded. And if I didn't know what to do next I could ask I-Man to instruct me, and across the huge cold silence of the universe I'd hear him say, Up to you, Bone, and that's all I'd need.

R
USSELL
B
ANKS
is the author of twelve works of fiction including
continental Drift Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter
. He lives in upstate New York.

Visit
www.AuthorTracker.com
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‘To read
Rule of the Bone
is to want everyone you know to read every last word, to hear the story in Bone's words and see the world through his eyes. . . . One of the great rewards of the classic coming-of-age novel (and
Rule of the Bone is
surely one) is that the reader is allowed not only to observe but to partake in the protagonist's growing acumen, to watch the wide-eyed wise up and maybe to smarten up a little ourselves.”

—
Washington Post

“Ingenious. . . . It takes a very special and hard-to-achieve voice to make a first-person fictional character. And it takes something close to a miracle to achieve a first-person voice for a 14-year-old that will do vital and nuanced justice not only to the boy but to the age-old world he moves through. Bone's voice performs excellenty.” —
Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Brutally, often fantastically picaresque . . . captures the mix of defiance and confusion, pride and remorse. . . . The moral underlying Banks' work up to now asserts itself with a new force. . . . He is at his characteristic best as he explores the combustible mix of fear, frustration and passionate feelings.”

—
The New Republic

“Veteran novelist Banks has finally done it: He has written the Great American Novel. Or, to be more precise, he has rewritten it.
Rule of the Bone
is Huckleberry Finn transposed to Upstate New York in the 1990s. Banks . . . excels at portraying lives on the edge. .. . In
Rule of the Bone
he gives us a searing wake-up call.”

—
People

“What Russell Banks has given us in his fiction is the truth— sometimes creepily intimate—about what's going on in the underpasses of America's highways. . . . Bone's scary pilgrimage is a continuation of that journey, and an emotionally authentic one.”

—
Boston Globe

“Banks has . . . pulled one adolescent from the drably dressed, drifting throng and found in his candor and freshness some-diing like a diamond.”

—
Chicago Tribune

“Rule of the B
one works because we are strongly moved by someone who can keep his integrity in a world that barely knows the word.”

—
Seattle Times

Also by Russell Banks

THE SWEET HEREAFTER

AFFLICTION

SUCCESS STORIES

CONTINENTAL DRIFT

THE RELATION OF MY IMPRISONMENT

TRAILERPARK

THE BOOK OF JAMAICA

THE NEW WORLD

HAMILTON STARK

FAMILY LIFE

SEARCHING FOR SURVIVORS

“All Is Forgiven” appeared in slightly different form in a
New York Times Magazine
special Christmas issue in 1992.

“Just Don't Touch Anything” appeared in slightly different form in G Q in May 1993.

“The Bone Rules” appeared in
Adirondack Life
in September 1994 and “Canadians” in
Antaeus,
Fall 1994.

Two more sections ran in the Spring 1995 issues of the
Ontario Review
and
Salmagundi,
respectively: “Presumed Dead” and “School Days.”

“Red Rover” appeared in
Columbia
magazine in April 1995.

RULE OF THE BONE
. Copyright © 1995 by Russell Banks. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

ISBN 0-06-092724-0 (pbk.) ISBN 978-0-06-092724-0(PBK)

EPub Edition © JULY 2011 ISBN: 9780062123190

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