Rule of the Bone: A Novel
4/5
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About this ebook
In the tradition Huckleberry Finn and The Catcher in the Rye, Russell Banks’s quintessential novel of a disaffected homeless youth living on the edge of society “redefines the young modern anti-hero. . . . Rule of the Bone has its own culture and language, and Bone is sure to become a beloved character for generations” (San Francisco Chronicle).
When we first meet him, Chappie is a punked-out teenager living with his mother and abusive stepfather in an upstate New York trailer park. During this time, he slips into drugs and petty crime. Rejected by his parents, out of school and in trouble with the police, he claims for himself a new identity as a permanent outsider; he gets a crossed-bones tattoo on his arm, and takes the name "Bone."
He finds dangerous refuge with a group of biker-thieves, and then hides in the boarded-up summer house of a professor and his wife. He finally settles in an abandoned school bus with Rose, a child he rescues from a fast-talking pedophile. There Bone meets I-Man, an exiled Rastafarian, and together they begin a second adventure that takes the reader from Middle America to the ganja-growing mountains of Jamaica. It is an amazing journey of self-discovery through a world of magic, violence, betrayal and redemption.
With a compelling, off-beat protagonist evocative of Holden Caulfield and Quentin Coldwater, and a narrative voice that masterfully and naturally captures the nuances of a modern vernacular, Banks’s haunting and powerful novel is an indisputable—and unforgettable—modern classic.
Russell Banks
Russell Banks, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, was one of America’s most prestigious fiction writers, a past president of the International Parliament of Writers, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into twenty languages and he received numerous prizes and awards, including the Common Wealth Award for Literature. He died in January 2023 at the age of eighty-two.
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Reviews for Rule of the Bone
363 ratings19 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book is pitch perfect from start to finish. A great coming of age novel that managed to deal with weighty issues with a light touch.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I found this book on the side of the road a few years ago and had no idea what to expect - I was more than pleasantly surprised by the originality of the writing, the topic and the character development. Its gritty edge and fast paced action make it a compelling read while immersing the reader in a deeper conversation about self and personal growth.I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking to expand their reading list in an unconventional way.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This books was a serendipitous find. Having picked the book up off the counter of my parents house about 12 years ago (I believe my father was reading it) and reading a page or two, I made a mental note to read the book one day. All I could remember about it was a yellow cover and the word "bone" in the title, so I have been passively looking for the book for over a decade. Then one day while at work (I'm a librarian), it was returned by a patron. And so began my journey with Bone.Bone's story is that of a lost teenage boy of fourteen who leaves his broken and dysfunctional home after enduring years of abuse at the hands of his Stepfather. He drifts and gets by as well as possible, selling weed to a group of unruly and violent Bikers with whom he and his friend crash with in a rundown apartment. As he drifts through his homelessness, spending his days in a mall the next town over, he begins to question what it means to live as a criminal, all the while trying to maintain a sense of right from wrong. As time passes, he finds himself in a position to rescue a young girl around six-years-old who was sold by her mother to a sceevy and dangerous pedophile. The two find refuge in an abondoned bus in the middle a field, inhabited by I-Man, a Jamaican Rastafarian and illegal immigrant homesick for his own country. And so begins the second stage in Bone's journey to himself, which takes him to Jamaica and onward.This book was incredibly hard to put down, and I found myself reading well past my bedtime. Bone's narrative is authentic and at times soars. His voice was well developed, as were the characters he described. It was an honor to watch Bone evolve from a scared fourteen-year-old boy unsure of himself and the future, into a young man who was ready to embrace his true self and the journey that lies ahead of him. Highly recommended.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rule of the Bone is the story of a teenage boy who's confused about life. He's got his mohawk, his loser friends, and he's got a couch to sleep on at the den of a local motorcycle gang. A whole lot of things get out of hand - a drug deal gone bad and fatal fire among them - and our boy is sent off wandering the country - and then the world - as he slowly grows up and comes to term with his life. This book is heartbreaking and funny and has such a unique voice. I really enjoyed the slow, convincing character development and the subtle humor. Two thumbs up from this gal.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Loved the way this book was written from the perspective of a homeless young person. It was non-judgemental and questions societal norms. I thought the author did a brilliant job of creating this character; especially the language use of this young character. Reminded me of Catcher in the Rye.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rule of the Bone is yet another coming of age novel generally compared to others such as Huck Finn and The Catcher in the Rye. Personally, this one reminded me much more of Huck Finn than The Catcher in the Rye. It's told by a first person narrator, Bone, a 14 year old homeless boy who struggles with conventional society and occasionally likes to assure the reader of his honesty, which says Huck Finn all over to me. The first half at least also spends some time contemplating what it means to be American- homelessness and abuse issues, racism, religion, relationships to history, among other things. Instead of Jim, who Huck Finn patronizes, Rule of the Bone has I-Man, who Bone idolizes.The second half of the novel consists of Bone's adventures with I-Man in Jamaica. Questions of racism and hierarchy are looked at from a different angle. While the plot kind of meanders as Bone drifts from one thing to another, there are definite moments when Bone will come out with something that just strikes me as completely true. Like toward the end when he talks about crime versus sin. Bone is on a quest for personal meaning and out to do the "true" thing , even though it very well may not be what most people would consider the "right" thing. On the one hand, you want for Bone to be saved, but on the other, you think that maybe he really is saving himself by living his life in such an unstructured way. The lack of cohesion in the novel kind of bothered me, but then, I think that the structure suits the narrator- for me, this novel was about breaking artificial boundaries- such as the way I expect a novel to be structured.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I thought the lead character was a bit of a snot, and his going off to jamaica to live made me dislike him even more.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Early Banks, appealing but not up to the quality of his later works.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5"Rule of the Bone" by Russell Banks is for anyone who has ever felt the anguish of being a teenager. In other words, it's for anyone who ever passed through the valley of the shadow of those awkward years between 13 and 19.Russell Banks has made a living going straight to the heart of characters in his novels, set mainly in upper New York state ("The Sweet Hereafter," "Cloudsplitter," "Affliction"). "Rule of the Bone" cuts right to the bone. Banks, a middle-aged writer, has dared to capture the voice of a modern teenager, Chapman, aka "Chappie," aka "Bone." Bone is a self-proclaimed mall rat, complete with punk mohawk and tattoos who always seems to find himself on the wrong end of the law. Bone is a runner, one step ahead of the law, his mother, his dead-end pot-smoking friends, death itself. Bone literally goes through fire and comes out smelling like smoke, but still he's unable to pull himself out of his downward spiral of a life on the streets. Bone is constantly on the move, on a quest to find peace and happiness--two things he thinks his deadbeat dad will give him. When Bone finally catches up with his father in Jamaica, the result is less than satisfying, both for Bone and the reader.Herein lies part of the book's problem. The first half of the novel--before Bone hooks up with a spliff-smoking Rastafarian named I-Man and they take off for Jamaica--is absolutely riveting. You watch with increasing dread and despair as Bone tries to make a life for himself on the streets. Banks uses no quotation marks; his prose style is intoxicating and dizzying, as if Bone has no time for the delay of punctuation marks. There is an urgency in Bone's narrative voice that will get right under your skin. One particularly gut-wrenching scene has Bone hiding out from security guards in the back corridors of a shopping mall. If those five pages don't break your heart, you've got granite in your veins.But then, Bone descends into a haze of marijuana and Rastafarian rap as he and I-Man trip on down to Jamaica. I still cared about Bone as his heart was once again broken by his father, but my compassion started to dwindle a little and I found myself getting impatient with Banks. It's like his sharp-focused portrait of an American teenager had suddenly gone soft and blurry.Still, it's hard to fault Banks for even this because Bone is, without a doubt, one of the best American teens in our nation's literature--right up there with Huck Finn, Holden Caulfield and company.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Russell Banks wowed me with his story, "Sarah Cole: A Kind of Love Story", which he read on NPR's "This American Life". I immediately went out in search of his newest book, and found this instead. The story doesn't seem likely to please: a ne'er-do-well teenage boy, smoking pot, and somehow trying to figure out who he is, or why life is worth living. The narrator's voice drew me in, being honest, and utterly revealing. I felt I could see inside the head of a person quite different than myself. And what is a good book for, if not to take the reader away on the journey of different identity? The story travels to Jamaica, and through successive trials of morality. With each test, the narrator finds out more about what goodness and integrity are, and how these virtues contribute to his satisfaction as a person. It is a story of transformation, and as the narrator evolves, so does the writing, leaving me with the impression that Russel Banks is a genius flying somehow just under the radar of fame.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A gift from my Uncle Jack, I found this an enjoyable read. I would not necessarily read it again, but I was left with a good enough of an opinion that I have picked up Russell Banks again.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5It took a while to like this 14 year old kid who was out of control - pot, parties, thievery, but after awhile I wanted to read more. The scene in Jamaica is wild but rasta life and philosophy of I Man saves the day. Is this autobiographical?
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I was surprised to find myself liking this book. At first the only reason I thought I would enjoy it was because of the familiarity of the setting in northern New York. It didn’t take long before I was wondering what was going to happen next the main character, how was he going to get out of the trouble he was getting himself into, how was he going to explain some of the things he had done. The book surprised me by taking Bone out of the setting he had grown up in, and sent him down to Jamaica for a reunion with his father. Rule of the Bone is at times a bit too fantastic to be believable, but it does a good job at illustrating the life of a troubled youth as he grows up and has to find a way to live in the world.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bone is a grade eight drop-out, runaway, small-time thief, drug user and dealer. He is a product of a poor family that doesn’t give him love and support, and is in denial about past sexual abuse. Bone escapes to find himself with other “families”, like a group of bikers, an older teen age run away, drug addicted college - aged brothers, a creepy man, who he suspects is a pedophile, with a little girl who is not his own child. Bone rescues the little girl and they end up sharing an abandoned school bus with Jamaican Rastafarian, I-Man. I-Man gives him the stability and guidance he needs to navigate his own way in the world. The characters in this often harsh and touching story stayed with me long after I’d finished the book.There are some interesting details about Rastafarian life-style, Jamaican history and the slave trade, and modern Jamaica. It had me pulling out my old Reggae music.A caution that some readers may find the passages describing marijuana use somewhat romanticized. Recommended for older-teen to adult readers, due to passages describing drug use, violence and sex.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Insane book. Even insaner plot. Still, the book makes you hooked, until you are finished. The lessons you have to learn. This is how life can go. Bone will stick with me for a while, thats for sure.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book moved in directions I didn't think were possible when I started it. It follows the first-person narrative of Bone, a rebellious stoner teenager in a small American town. Bone's story moves through a series of the depressing and predictable situations, as he leaves his mother and sexually abusive stepfather, escapes possible murder by his biker roommates, lives in a schoolbus with two college dropouts (characters from The Sweet Hereafter, I think), to his attempted reconciliation with his mother who rejects him when he asks her to choose between himself and his stepfather. While this might be the climax of the novel if written by less imaginative authors, Banks takes Bone into more fantastic scenarios, that push the character beyond what a reader might think he would be "capable" of. Bone rescues Rose, a little girl he suspects of being held captive by a child pornographer, and returns to the schoolbus to meet I-Man, a Jamaican Rastafarian who is growing pot and vegetables in and around the bus. I-Man and Rose become Bone's new family, and Bone tries to make Rose's life right by finding her mother and sending her back. He then follows I-Man to Jamaica, meeting his father (Doc) by accident, and living the life of the idle rich with Doc and Doc's girlfriend, Evening Star. But the novel doesn't rest here either; Bone surprises I-Man having sex with Evening Star, and confesses the scene to Doc, who is high on speedballs and swears to kill I-Man. Bone and I-Man flee, returning to I-Man's village and harvesting a crop of pot for smuggling out of Jamaica. When I-Man is shot by drug runners, Bone is spared, being Doc's (white) son; he returns to Evening Star's home, wreaks havoc on Doc, and then flees to serve as part of a private yacht's crew to Dominica. It's not just the plot that's unpredictable -- it's Bone's own emotional growth that is a surprise. He realizes the importance of love and responsibility, the implications of race, and the reality that trying to do the 'right thing' does not make things right. In many ways, the book is all about accountability; Bone repeatedly comes face to face with the people affected by his actions. His mother, whom he knows loves him intensely, rejects him for her husband, and his father, whom he doesn't know, accepts him without taking parental responsibility for his son. Bone has a series of realizations about race and class privilege, about how we affect one another, and about the unthinking way many people live. There is no great redemption and no justice in this book; but by the end, I had a strong sense of optimism for Bone's future, and felt sure he would continue to learn and be able to find his way towards living a responsible, moral life.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rule of the Bone is certainly a book worth reading. Its about a teen that really hasn’t been a teen very long. His home life leaves a lot to be desired, as many are. He goes through many ups and downs and they are serious downs. A normal kid, mixed up, tries the boundaries because the home life pushes him to look outside for love, comfort and who he is and could be. The ending not perfect but it does give hope for other teens that are going through on or all of the things he does.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5very engaging which is how I rate a great book.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Rule of the Bone is the story of a young boy from Au Sable in New York State trying to sort himself out in spite of being hindered by every adult around him. When we first meet Chappie, he's the ultimate lost boy. At just fourteen years old, he is on the verge of being disowned by his mother and abusive stepfather. Chappie is already well on the way to trouble (presumably we know this because he has a mohawk and a nose piercing), and for the first few chapters he certainly finds it. So far, so stereotypical.After fleeing a burning squat, he and his friend Russ part ways for a while. Chappie finds himself returning to an abandoned school bus on some waste ground where he'd sought refuge once before. Only this time, the bus has a new inhabitant - a middle-aged Jamaican who goes by the name of I-Man, and who becomes a huge influence on Chappie's transition to Bone, his new persona.While the first few chapters of the book may not elicit much sympathy from the reader, it soon becomes apparent that this could be the author's intention. Punk Chappie appears to be a selfish and thoughtless boy, though what we're really seeing is naivete and immaturity from a kind enough but rudderless child. As Chappie grows into Bone - the man he wants to become - we see evidence of his innate kindness as well as learning more about the complete unreliability of the adults in his life. I-Man is an anchor for him, a moral and spiritual guide if that doesn't sound too cheesy, and Bone latches on to him as one of the few positive influences he's had in his life.Bone is ultimately a young, naive and misguided soul, but he's had very little help, to be fair, and the turn of events in the middle of the book take his life in a very new direction that is just as challenging as everything he's faced so far.This was quite a sweet book really, even if it makes you feel sad about the inadequacies of people who have children then treat them as nuisances for the rest of their lives. Bone becomes a survivor, and you have to give him credit for that.
Book preview
Rule of the Bone - Russell Banks
CHAPTER ONE
JUST DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING
You’ll probably think I’m making a lot of this up just to make me sound better than I really am or smarter or even luckier but I’m not. Besides, a lot of the things that’ve happened to me in my life so far which I’ll get to pretty soon’ll make me sound evil or just plain dumb or the tragic victim of circumstances. Which I know doesn’t exactly prove I’m telling the truth but if I wanted to make myself look better than I am or smarter or the master of my own fate so to speak I could. The fact is the truth is more interesting than anything I could make up and that’s why I’m telling it in the first place.
Anyhow my life got interesting you might say the summer I turned fourteen and was heavy into weed but I didn’t have any money to buy it with so I started looking around the house all the time for things I could sell but there wasn’t much. My mother who was still like my best friend then and my stepfather Ken had this decent house that my mother’d got in the divorce from my real father about ten years ago and about that she just says she got a mortgage not a house and about him she doesn’t say much at all although my grandmother does. My mom and Ken both had these cheesy jobs and didn’t own anything you could rob at least not without them noticing right away it was gone. Ken worked as a maintenance man out at the airbase which is like being a janitor only he said he was a building services technician and my mom was a bookkeeper at the clinic which is also a nothing job looking at a computer screen all day and punching numbers into it.
It actually started with me roaming around the house after school looking for something that wasn’t boring, porn books or videos maybe, or condoms. Anything. Plus who knows, they might have their own little stash of weed. My mom and especially Ken were seriously into alcohol then but maybe they aren’t as uptight as they seem, I’m thinking. Anything is possible. The house was small, four rooms and a bathroom, a mobile home on cinderblocks like a regular house only without a basement or garage and no attic and I’d lived there with my mom and my real dad from the time I was three until he left which happened when I was five and after that with my mom and Ken who legally adopted me and became my stepfather up until now, so I knew the place like I knew the inside of my mouth.
I thought I’d poked through every drawer and looked into every closet and searched under every bed and piece of furniture in the place. I’d even pulled out all these old Reader’s Digest novels that Ken had found out at the base and brought home to read someday but mainly just to look good in the livingroom and flipped them open one by one looking for one of those secret compartments that you can cut into the pages with a razor and hide things. Nothing. Nothing new, I mean. Except for some old photograph albums of my grandmother’s that my mom had that I found in a box on the top shelf of the linen closet. My mom’d showed them to me a few years ago and I’d forgotten probably because they were mostly pictures of people I didn’t know like my mom’s cousins and aunts and uncles but when I saw them again this time I remembered once looking for pictures of my father from when he was still alive and well and living here in Au Sable and finding only one of him. It was of him and my mom and his car and I’d studied it like it was a secret message because it was the only picture of him I’d ever seen. You’d’ve thought Grandma at least would’ve kept a few other snaps but no.
There was though this stack of letters tied with a ribbon in the same box as the albums that my father’d written to my mom for a few months after he left us. I’d never read them before and they turned out pretty interesting. The way it sounded my father was defending himself against my mom’s accusations that he’d left us for this female named Rosalie who my mom said had been his girlfriend for years but he was claiming that Rosalie’d only been a normal friend of his at work and so on. He had good handwriting, neat and all the letters slanted the same way. Rosalie didn’t matter to him anymore, he said. She never had. He said he wanted to come back. I almost felt sorry for him. Except I didn’t believe him.
Plus I didn’t need the letters my mom’d written to him in order to know her side of the story because even though I was only a little kid when this all happened I’ve got memories. If he was such a great guy and all how come he split on us and never sent any money or even tried to be in touch with his own son. My grandmother said just don’t think about him anymore, he’s probably living it up in some foreign country in the Caribbean or in jail for drugs. She goes, You don’t have a father, Chappie. Forget him. She was tough, my grandmother, and I used to try and be like her when it came to thinking about my real father. I don’t think she knew my mom’d saved my dad’s letters. I bet my stepfather didn’t know either.
Anyhow this one afternoon I came home from school early because I’d cut the last two periods which was just as well since I didn’t have my homework anyhow and both teachers were the kind who boot you out of the class if you come in empty-handed, like it’s a punishment that’ll make you do better next time. I rummaged around in the fridge and made a bologna and cheese sandwich and drank one of my stepfather’s beers and went into the livingroom and watched MTV for a while and played with the cat Willie who got spooked and took off when I accidentally flipped him on his head.
Then I started making my rounds. I really wanted some weed. It had been a couple of days since I’d been high and whenever I went that long I’d get jumpy and restless and kind of irritated at the world, feeling like everything and everyone was out to get me and I was no good and a failure at life which was basically true. A little smoke though and all that irritation and nervousness and my wicked low self-esteem immediately went away. They say weed makes you paranoid but for me it was the opposite.
I’d about given up on finding something in the house that I could rob—a personal possession that could be hocked like the TV or the VCR or the stereo would be instantly noticed when it was gone and all the rest of their stuff was boring household goods that you couldn’t sell anyhow like electric blankets and a waffle iron and a clock radio. My mom didn’t have any jewels that were worth anything except her wedding ring from my stepfather which she made a big deal out of but it looked like a Wal-Mart’s ring to me and besides she always had it on. They didn’t even have any decent CDs, all their music was seventies stuff, disco fever and easy listening and suchlike, on cassettes. The only kind of robbing I thought was possible was big time like stealing my stepfather’s van while he was asleep for example and I wasn’t ready for that.
I was taking one more look into their bedroom closet, down on my hands and knees and groping past my mother’s shoes into the darkness when I came to what I’d thought last time was just some folded blankets. But when I felt into the blankets I realized there was something large and hard inside. I pulled out the whole thing and unwrapped what turned out to be these two black briefcases that I’d never seen before.
I sat cross-legged on the floor and put the first briefcase on my lap thinking it was probably locked until it snapped open which surprised me but then the real surprise came when I lifted the lid and saw a .22 automatic rifle broken down into three parts just lying there with a rod and cleaning kit and a box of shells. It wasn’t hard to fit the parts together, it even had a scope like an assassin’s rifle and pretty soon I was into a Lee Harvey Oswald trip standing by the bedroom window and brushing the curtain away with the tip of the barrel and aiming through the scope at stuff on the street going Pow! Pow! I blasted a couple of dogs and blew away the mailman and nailed the drivers of cars going by for a while.
Then I remembered the other briefcase and went back to the closet and sat down and opened it. Inside are all these Baggies, thirty or forty of them filled with coins, mostly old quarters and Indian head nickels and even some weird-looking pennies with dates from way back in the early 1900s. Excellent discovery. I figure the rifle must belong to Ken and he stashes it in this briefcase on account of my mom always saying she’s scared of guns and the coins too, I’m thinking, because if they were my mom’s I would’ve known it since she pretty much told me everything in those days. Besides she wasn’t the hobby type. Ken though was definitely the kind of guy who would have a cool gun and never show it to me or even tell me about it, plus he collected things like exotic beer cans and souvenir coffee mugs from the various theme parks they’d gone to and put them out on shelves where anyone could see although he was always telling me not to touch them because I never left things the way they were which is basically true.
I took the rifle apart and put it back in the briefcase and then I took a couple of coins from each of about six Baggies so he wouldn’t know any were missing if he happened to check. Afterwards I wrapped the briefcases back in the blanket and put the bundle behind my mother’s shoes in the closet where it had come from.
I had maybe twenty coins, small change, nothing bigger than a quarter and I took them to the pawnshop on Water Street near the old tannery where I knew some kids had hocked stuff they’d stolen from their parents, jewels and watches and so on. The old guy in there didn’t say a word or even look at me when I spread the coins out on his counter and asked him how much he’d give me. He was this big fat guy with thick glasses and huge sweat circles under his arms and he scooped up the coins and took them in back where he had an office and a few minutes later he comes out and says eighty dollars which really blew my mind.
Sounds fine to me, man, I told him and he paid me in twenties and I went out already high just thinking about all the skunk I could get for eighty bucks.
I had this very good friend Russ whose mom’d kicked him out in the spring and he and a couple of older guys who were like headbangers and bikers were living in an apartment over the Video Den downtown. Russ was sixteen and had quit school and had this part-time job at the Video Den so that’s where I went when I wanted to hang out and get high or just chill until I had to go home. Russ was okay but most people meaning my parents thought he was a loser because he was into heavy metal and all that and did a lot of drugs. At the time he wanted me to get a tattoo because he had one and thought they were cool which they were but I knew what my mom’d say if I came home with a tattoo. I was already driving her and Ken crazy with my lousy grades in school and having to go to summer school now and getting a mohawk haircut and nose rings and being a general pain in the royal ass around the house as Ken liked to say and not helping out enough and I could tell Ken especially was really getting sick of me. I didn’t need any more trouble than I already had.
It’s amazing how fast good weed goes when you’ve got the money to buy it with especially when you’ve got some friends to smoke it with like I had Russ and these older dudes who lived with him. They were what you’d call bikers not Hell’s Angels and some of them didn’t even have bikes but were the same violent type so they were hard to refuse when they’d come in and see me and Russ rolling joints on the kitchen table. In only a few days my stash was gone and I had to go back to the briefcase in the closet for some more coins. I’d always put the rifle together while I was there and stand at the window hitting imaginary targets coming along the sidewalk or just sit on the floor going Blam! into the darkness of the closet.
It was getting toward the end of summer school and I knew I was going to flunk at least two out of the three courses that I needed to pass just to get out of eighth grade which was going to make my mom crazy and deeply piss off my stepdad who already had his own secret reasons for disliking me but I don’t want to talk about that right now, so I was smoking a lot of skunk, more even than usual and was cutting most of my classes and hanging out at Russ’s place. Russ and the biker guys were my only friends then really. My stepfather’d developed this new habit of referring to me as him and never talking directly to me or even looking at me except when he thought I didn’t notice or when he was drunk. He’d like say to my mother, Ask him where he’s going tonight. Tell him to take out the goddam trash. Ask him how come he goes around with torn clothes and wearing earrings in his ears like a goddam girl and in his nose for chrissake, he’d say with me watching TV right there in front of him.
As far as he was concerned I was her son now not his even though he’d adopted me when I was eight after they got married and he moved in with us. When I was a real little kid he was an okay stepfather with some significant exceptions you might say, but when I got to be a teenager he sort of pulled out of the family unit and did a lot more heavy drinking which now my mom was into blaming me for. I didn’t care if he didn’t like me anymore, fine by me but I didn’t want her making it into all my fault. Some of it was his.
I went back to the coin collection in the closet a lot that summer always taking only a few coins at a time from six or seven different Baggies and I was starting to figure out which ones were worth the most like the dimes with the lady on it and the Indian head nickels and I’d just take those and mostly not bother with the others. Sometimes the guy at the pawnshop would give me fifty bucks, sometimes I’d get over a hundred. One day he says to me, Where’d you get these coins, kid? and I go into this sad story about my grandmother dying and leaving them to me and I could only sell a few of them at a time because it was all I had of hers and didn’t want to let the whole collection go.
I don’t know if he believed me but he never asked me about them again and just kept shelling out the bucks which I kept turning into weed. I was a good customer by now and had moved up from buying it off of the couple of older kids who were dealing at school and out at the mall to this Spanish guy named Hector in Plattsburgh who hung around Chi-Boom’s which was a kind of club down on Water Street. I bought so much skunk Hector thought I was dealing and a couple of times when I had extra I actually did sell a few bags to friends of Russ’s roommates but basically it was me and Russ doing most of it, and the bikers.
Then one night I came home around midnight from Russ’s place. I still rode around then on one of those knobby-tired dirt bikes which my mother’d given me a couple of Christmases ago. It was like my trademark, that bike, the way some kids do with their skateboards and I had this habit of taking it into the house at night and parking it in the front hall. Only this one time when I come up the steps carrying my bike the door like opens in front of me and it’s my stepfather standing there with my mom right behind him with her face all red from crying. I can see he’s deeply pissed and maybe drunk and I naturally think he’s been whaling on her which he’s been known to do so I shove my bike right into his stomach and the handlebars hit him in the face and knock off his glasses and suddenly everybody is screaming, me included. My stepfather yanks the bike out of my hands and throws it back down the steps and this makes me go crazy and I start calling him all the worst names I can think of like faggot and fucking asshole while he’s grabbing me by my arms and pulling me inside the house and telling me to shut the fuck up because of the neighbors and my mother is yelling at me like I’m the one who was whaling on her and tossing kids’ bikes around not her own husband for chrissake.
Finally the door’s closed and we’re all panting and staring at each other and he says, Get into the livingroom, Chappie, and sit down. We have some news for you, mister, he says, and that’s when I remember the coins.
On the coffeetable is the briefcase and it’s closed and for a second I think it’s the one with the rifle but no, when my stepfather flips it open I see right away it’s the one with the coins and I realize for the first time that there aren’t very many of them left. It was kind of a shock. None of the plastic bags had more than a few coins inside and some of the bags were completely empty although I didn’t remember emptying any and leaving them in the briefcase but it definitely looked like that’s what I had done. Dumb. My mom sat down on the couch and looked at the open briefcase like it was a coffin with a body in it and Ken said for me to sit in the chair which I did while he stood between me and the table and crossed his arms like some kind of cop. He had his glasses back on and was calmed down a little but was still steamed I knew from me hitting him with the bike.
I felt like a pathetic jerk sitting there looking at those few remaining coins. I remembered how I’d felt the first time I opened the briefcase and saw inside an endless supply of weed like it was the goose that laid the golden egg. My mom started crying then like she does when I really fuck up and I made a move to get up and comfort her by apologizing like I usually do but Ken told me just to sit there and shut the fuck up even though I hadn’t said anything yet.
Chappie, this is the worst thing you’ve ever done! my mom said and she started sobbing harder. Willie the cat tried to get on her lap but she pushed him away hard and he got down and left the room.
Ken said he didn’t give a shit anymore what I robbed from other people or how much dope I bought, that was my problem not his and he’d given up on me anyhow but when I stole from my own mother that’s where he drew the line especially when I stole something irreplaceable like those coins. He said I was goddamned lucky I hadn’t taken his rifle because he definitely would have called in the cops. Let them handle it. He was sick of feeding and housing and clothing a freeloader and a thief and a drug addict and as far as he was concerned if it was up to him he’d boot me out of the house this very minute except my mother wouldn’t let him.
I said to him, I thought they were your coins, and he reached out and slapped me real hard on the side of my head.
They were your mother’s, he said real sarcastic and she went sort of crazy then, screaming about how the coins had been her mother’s and she’d given them to her years ago along with other precious and sentimental items and someday the coins were going to be mine and really valuable but now I’d gone and stolen them and sold them and spent all the money on drugs so she’d never be able to pass them on to me. Never.
They were only coins, I said which was stupid but I didn’t know what else to say and I was feeling really dumb anyhow and lowdown so why not say something that sounded like I felt. They weren’t worth much anyhow, I said and my stepfather whacked me on the head again right on the ear this time tearing out an earring which really hurt. But it was like the sight of my blood got to him because then he belted me a couple more times, harder each time until my mother finally hollered for him to stop.
He did and when he went out into the kitchen and got a beer I stood up and still shaking I said real loud, I’m leaving this place!
Neither of them tried to stop me or even said where do you think you’re going so I walked out the door and slammed it as hard as I could and picked up my bike where he’d thrown it and went straight over to Russ’s who let me sleep on a ratty old couch that was in the livingroom.
The next morning as soon as I knew my mom and Ken would be at work I went over to the house for my clothes and stuff. I took a few towels and a blanket from the linen closet and some shampoo from the bathroom and shoved everything into two pillowcases. I was just about to leave when I remembered the few remaining coins and said to myself why not try and find them and take what’s left since they’re supposed to be mine someday anyhow. I was feeling hard and cold like a criminal mentality was creeping into me, and it was funny to me that I’d gone and made up the story about my grandmother to the pawnshop guy and then it’d turned out to be almost true.
I put my stuff down by the front door and took a beer from the fridge and popped it and walked back to my mom’s and Ken’s bedroom. I knew that as the saying goes a friend in weed is a friend indeed and if I was going to crash at Russ’s I’d better have some smoke to pass around until I got a job or something.
It didn’t seem likely they’d put the coins back in the closet but it was worth a look and sure enough when I reached into the darkness there were the two briefcases wrapped in the blanket the same as the day I found them. Ken and my mom must’ve thought that after last night I’d be too scared to go back there again but it was like I’d gone too far by now to be scared of anything anymore. The first briefcase had what was left of the coins, maybe fifty or sixty of them in a half-dozen bags which I took. I opened the second case and put the rifle together as usual and loaded it this time just to see how you did it since it was probably my last chance.
I was standing by the window aiming through the scope at a little kid on a tricycle across the street when I heard the bedroom door behind me creak like someone was coming in from the hallway. When I spun around it was Willie the cat jumping onto my mother’s bed. I must’ve been freaked because I aimed the rifle at him and pulled the trigger but nothing happened. Old Willie came down the bed and sniffed the end of the barrel and looked like he was ready to lick it. I pulled the trigger again but still nothing happened and then I realized that the safety was on and the trigger was locked.
I started to look for the safety but just as I found it Willie jumped down off the bed and disappeared into the closet which was lucky for him because as soon as he was out of sight I suddenly saw myself standing there with the gun in my hand and I could see what I’d been trying to do to him and I started to cry then, from my stomach up to my chest and into my head until I was standing there sobbing with my stepfather’s stupid rifle in my hand and the last remaining bags of my grandmother’s coins on the floor and the black briefcases open beside them. Nothing seemed to matter anymore because everything I touched turned bad so I just started firing. Blam, blam, blam! Mostly I shot at my mom’s and stepfather’s bed until the rifle was empty.
Then I came out of it like I’d been in a hypnotic trance. I stopped crying and put the rifle on the bed and got down on my hands and knees and tried to get Willie to come out of the closet but he was too scared. I was talking to him like he was my mom saying, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, real fast and high-pitched like when I was a little kid and similar stuff happened.
But no way that cat was going to trust me now. Way back there in the dark end of the closet scared out of his mind, he looked like I felt so I figured the best thing I could do was leave him alone. I picked up the coins and walked down the hall.
I hauled my stuff over to Russ’s place and stayed there until the last of the coins and the weed ran out and Russ said the older guys didn’t want me hanging around anymore. Hector let me have a couple of bags on credit so I could start dealing on my own and then the older guys said I could have the couch in the livingroom at least for the rest of the summer if I kept them in weed and since I was a dealer now that’s what I did.
Sometimes that first summer and during the fall too I thought about going back and trying to make peace with my mom and my stepfather even and offering to pay her back for the coins as soon as I got a job but I knew I could never pay her back because it wasn’t the money. Those old coins of my grandmother’s, they were like my inheritance. Besides my mom was scared of Ken and wanted to keep him happy and since for certain reasons that only I knew about he was relieved that I was finally out of sight and out of mind so to speak, there was no way now she’d let me come home again. So I didn’t even try.
CHAPTER TWO
ALL IS FORGIVEN
Things went smoothly more or less like that for the rest of the summer and all fall. Unbeknownst to me however I was developing a criminal mentality. Dealing skunk to the bikers and so on I knew was illegal but that didn’t make it a crime so it wasn’t on account of committing any actual crimes that I became a criminal, it was because of my changing attitude toward my mom and Ken and other regular people.
I didn’t go to jail for it or anything but I think of the time I got caught shoplifting at the lingerie store up at the Champlain Mall in Plattsburgh as the true beginning of my life of crime. I mean, that was when I first saw myself as a person who was a criminal. It was coming up on the first Christmas after my mother and Ken’d kicked me out of the house and I was still fourteen and crashing at Russ’s place with the bikers down on Water Street in Au Sable Forks. They were still letting me sleep on this ratty couch they had because I kept them supplied with weed lots of times on credit even but mostly when I hung out there I stayed in Russ’s room. The bikers were older than us and heavier into drugs. I saw one of those guys once rub a line of coke straight into his eye which kind of grossed me out. Plus they drank a lot.
Russ was sixteen and worked days part time at the Video Den so nights we used to ride up to the mall in his Camaro and I’d deal a little weed to the other kids and we’d hang out till the stores closed and hit on the girls. But mostly nothing was happening so we’d sit around on the benches and watch all these cheesy couples doing their Christmas shopping. At Christmas the malls’re filled with people who feel rotten because they don’t have enough money so they fight a lot and yank on their kids’ arms. The carols and blinking lights and the guys in Santa suits are supposed to make you forget your troubles but in reality it’s the opposite. At least for me it was which is one of the reasons I liked to get high before we went there.
This one night about ten days before Christmas I didn’t have any weed and I was thinking about my mom and Ken, how it would be the first time they’d be alone and I wondered what they’d do on Christmas Eve. What they usually did was get smashed on this eggnog and bourbon mixture that my mom said was her mother’s secret recipe and watch TV specials. Around eleven when the news came on we’d open the presents we’d got for each other and hug and say thanks and then they’d go into their room and pass out and I’d smoke a fatty in the bathroom and watch MTV with Willie till I fell asleep. It was okay but not exactly ideal. But we had a tree and lights in the windows and all and last year was cool because I got this excellent suede shearling jacket from my mom and Ken gave me a Timex watch. So I could start coming home on time, he said. I got her one of those long silk Indian scarves that she seemed to like a lot and for him I got a pair of lined driving gloves. Everybody was happy, in spite of the eggnog.
But a lot had happened since then. For one thing, the main thing that’d happened was me getting kicked out of the house. But it also had to do with my mohawk and getting my ears and nose pierced and screwing up in school and even though they never caught me at it my mom and Ken’d known all along I was heavy into weed which was why I’d stolen the coins in the first place. When I left home it was sort of by mutual agreement, I guess.
They would’ve let me come back if I’d wanted but only if I could be a different person than I was which was not only impossible but unfair because I didn’t know how to keep myself from getting into trouble anymore. I must’ve crossed a line but didn’t know it way back when I was a little kid like five or six after my real father took off and Ken moved in.
I knew it was hopeless but I started imagining this scene anyhow. I get Russ to drop me off at my mom’s and Ken’s house. All my stuff including my trademark dirt bike is in Russ’s Camaro and we unload it and set it on the sidewalk. But also I’ve got this huge bag of presents for my mom and my stepfather, truly excellent items like a toaster oven and a microwave and maybe some jewels and a fancy nightgown for Mom and for Ken I’ve got a Polaroid camera and a portable sander and a Polo ski sweater. Then Russ takes off and I’m all alone on the sidewalk. The house is dark except for the string of lights around the front door and the deck railing in back and electric candles in the windows and I can see the Christmas tree lights blinking through the curtain in the livingroom where I know they’re watching the Cosby special or something. It’s Christmas Eve. It’s snowing a little. They’re really sad because I’m not with them but they don’t know how to let me come home without acting like what I did to them doesn’t matter—stealing the coin collection and smoking grass and getting a mohawk and all and living with Russ and the bikers and not going to school anymore which they probably know about by now and dealing weed for Hector the Hispanic guy at ChiBoom’s which they don’t know about although I wonder what they think I’ve been living on all these months, charity? Also they don’t know that so far I haven’t gotten a tattoo even though Russ has this very cool tattoo on his forearm and is always after me to get one.
So in this scene I go up to the door and knock and when my mom comes out I say, Merry Christmas, Mom, just sort of flat and normal like that and hold out the bag in which all the presents are wrapped in this incredible shiny paper with bows and everything. She starts to cry like she does when she’s excited and my stepfather comes to the door to see what’s the matter. I say the same to him, Merry Christmas, Ken. And I show him the bag of presents too. My mom opens the door and takes the bag from me and passes it back to Ken and gives me a big maternal hug. Ken shakes my hand and says, Come on in, son. We go into the livingroom and I distribute the presents to them and all is forgiven.
They don’t have any presents for me which embarrasses them naturally and they apologize but I