Rule of the Bone Read online

  The furnace was off naturally and the house was colder inside than out and smelled damp and moldy from being closed up all winter but it was comfortable anyhow and Russ said we could build a fire in the fireplace in the livingroom after it got dark when nobody’d see the smoke and he thought there was probably some space heaters around. Not a good idea I thought after our last go-round with a space heater and I kind of hoped he wouldn’t come across any which he didn’t.

  When I tried a faucet in the kitchen nothing came out and I said to Russ, Hey, the water’s off. So how’re we gonna piss and shit, man? We can’t even wash up.

  Russ said he thought maybe we could figure out how to turn on the water ourselves so we hunted around awhile until we found the door to the cellar and when we went down there we saw all this incredible camping equipment on shelves by the stairs including sleeping bags which we took two of to sleep in because the beds didn’t have any blankets or sheets on them. It took a while but eventually we found the pipe where the water came into the house from the well and Russ just turned the handle on the pipe and flipped the pump switch to On and in a few seconds we could hear the pipes gurgling and banging all over the house. Let there be water! Russ said. Then he turned on the electric water heater and said, Let there be hot water!

  Our sleeping bags we laid out on the two beds in the main bedroom on the second floor which had its own bathroom with lights all around the mirror like a movie star’s and then after we each squeezed some pimples and studied our tattoos because of the good light and took a piss in the toilet we went back down to the kitchen and cooked up some of this weird green spaghetti they had.

  It was pretty good spaghetti but a little on the clumpy side. We made it with tomato sauce and tuna fish from a can mixed in and sat at the long diningroom table and ate it off these great gold-edged plates with instant iced tea in fancy wine goblets but no ice of course. Russ sat at one end of the table and me at the other and we talked like Bib and Maddy Ridgeway’s teenaged sons home on vacation from their fancy prep school while Bib and Maddy’re down in Connecticut making more money to buy us more good stuff.

  Pahss the salt down, would you, deah brother?

  Why I’d be dee-lighted to, and would you care for another helping of this most exquisite green spaghetti? It’s the color of old money, isn’t that the most charming idea? I’ll have the butler Jerome bring us some.

  Why thank you, deah brother, how thoughtful of you.

  That first night in the summerhouse was the best I’d felt in a long time even though I knew it was only temporary and we were like burglars more or less. Of course now that I was a fugitive from justice and definitely committed to a life of crime I didn’t worry much about being a small-time burglar. Once you cut your ties to the past like we’d done you’ve gone the whole route. There’s no more near or far, it’s all the same thing—gone.

  After supper we watched TV for a while but since we couldn’t figure out how to work the satellite dish the picture was lousy and all we got was Channel 5 from Plattsburgh. We kind of watched Sally Jessy Raphael and then the local news came on with some stuff about the fire which was basically the same as the newspaper had only with not as many details except that now we were presumed to have perished in the fire and weren’t missing anymore. That got us really psyched and we pumped our fists and said All right! and kept hoping there’d be interviews with our moms and all but the news guy just went on to some boring stuff about taxes being due today.

  When Jeopardy came on after the news we shut the TV off and went looking through the Ridgeways’ tapes and CDs for some tunes but all they had was classical and Russ said no way with that shit although I wouldn’t’ve minded a little classical. I remembered liking it that one time when the guy gave me a lift back to Au Sable from the mall. There was a portable radio in the kitchen though and we found a pretty good rock station from Lake Placid that came in loud and clear and played old guys like Elton John and Bruce Springsteen and me and Russ amused ourselves by dissing them for a while.

  Later when we knew it was dark we went looking for some firewood and when we couldn’t find any in the house we noticed that a lot of the furniture especially in the livingroom was made out of old sticks and logs, mostly birch branches and rough with the bark still on and everything, all these wobbly chairs and tables like a kid’d made them for his clubhouse. It didn’t seem like anything rich people would give a shit about and they came apart real easy so we made a fire with one of the chairs and then just lay back in front of the fireplace on some pillows from the couch and got real mellow.

  At a certain point we realized that it’d be perfect if we had some weed and Russ got it into his head that the Ridgeways were dopers because they were like famous artists and his aunt had even said she’d seen some once when she was cleaning house.

  Where’d she see it? I asked him.

  I dunno, she never said. But let’s start sniffing, man, Russ said and he jumped up and began to feel around in all the table drawers and in the desk and even behind the books on the shelves. C’mon, Bone, give me a hand, will ya? he said. I didn’t think there was anybody who’d leave their smoke behind when they locked up their house for the whole winter but I helped him look anyhow just to shut him up.

  I checked out the kitchen for a while and then went upstairs to the big bedroom where we had our sleeping bags and went through the closets and dressers but didn’t find anything. Then I pulled open the drawer of this table that was next to one of the beds and suddenly I was staring at a sandwich bag of about twenty of these neat little already rolled joints.

  Excellent discovery.

  Then I saw a bunch of condoms and I thought maybe there’s even some coke in here because you get greedy when you’re this lucky so I reached way into the back of the drawer and felt what I instantly knew was a gun and a small box of bullets.

  The joints and the condoms I took downstairs with me and showed to Russ but not the gun and the bullets which I didn’t even tell him about although I don’t know why not except maybe because he’s so excitable and all I didn’t trust him with it. Anyhow we split up the joints fifty-fifty and I gave him all the condoms because I didn’t know when I’d get to use them if ever and he said he wanted them because it was always better to be safe than sorry and he was looking forward to screwing some of the local babes. Then we sat down on the rug in front of the fire and each smoked a joint and the evening was way perfect.

  Later I asked him how long before the Ridgeways come up from Connecticut.

  Long time, man, he said. Not till June probably, they won’t come till after blackfly season. Relax, man. For the next couple of months, man, this place is ours.

  What about your uncle, doesn’t he ever like come inside and check things out?

  Naw. He just does what he has to. He drives up and looks around and most times he doesn’t even get out of his truck. Then about a week before they come up I guess the Ridgeways call him and he drives over and turns on the water and the furnace and all that.

  How’ll we know when to split?

  We’ll just hafta keep listening for his truck to drive up and I guess we’ll go out the same way we came in.

  What about after that?

  What?

  After he comes and we leave. Where do we go then?

  I dunno. Jesus, Bone. Cross that bridge when we come to it, man.

  I was thinking somehow Russ wasn’t into this new way of life as deep as I was. Every time I brought up the subject of Florida or California or life after now he’d try and talk about something else or he’d say we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it like it wasn’t already staring at us in the face. It was like I had gone and changed completely who I was, my name, my whole attitude, my hair even, and he hadn’t changed anything. I was the Bone now for sure but Russ was still Russ.

  After the first few days time passed slower and slower until finally it didn’t seem to be passing at all. It got incredibly boring. We couldn’t even look out
the windows at the view of the mountains because the windows were all blocked up and it was dark inside so we kept all the lights on day and night and slept whenever we felt like it which was most of the time. We watched TV a lot, the one lousy channel from Plattsburgh which came in all snowy and we tried playing some dumb board games that we found which are no substitute for video games that’s for sure but the Ridgeways weren’t the type for video games I guess. They did have these Jane Fonda exercise tapes that we watched on the VCR though and we got off on those for a while on account of Jane’s tights and all until neither of us could stand the squealing anymore. We ate mostly spaghetti and then sometimes for variety rice or oatmeal and drank powdered iced tea and instant coffee and Tang which is a diet you can get sick of really fast.

  In the den where the animal heads and stuffed birds were they had hundreds of books but even they were boring, at least the few I tried because of the titles that made me think they might have a little sex in them like Evolution and Desire, a dog turd of a book that I couldn’t get through the first page of. And this one book I remember, Beyond the Pleasure Principle which I thought was a sex manual only it didn’t have any pictures and one called Finnegans Wake that I hoped would be a murder story with some good plotting but it turned out to be in like some strange language that was made up of mostly English words but was actually foreign. They had a whole bunch like that. I don’t know why people write books that normal people can’t read because I sure couldn’t and I was always pretty good at reading.

  Russ’s uncle did drive up a few times and turn around and leave without getting out of his truck but in case he decided to get out and like check the doors we didn’t unlock or use them at all and instead went in and out of the house through the same upstairs porch we’d come in by, making sure each time to put the screen we’d cut back in place so you couldn’t hardly tell anyone had broken in unless you got right up close to it. Generally we stayed inside the house though and when we did go outside we only lurked around the yard since there really wasn’t anyplace else to go, A, because we didn’t have a car or any money and were way out in the boonies where there wasn’t anyplace for kids to hang except a Stewart’s and this one restaurant down on the main road. And B, because of Russ’s aunt and uncle and his cousins and numerous other local citizens who if they saw us would recognize Russ instanly and know we weren’t dead.

  Anyhow after the first few times even going outside got boring. We’d walk around the yard awhile and check out the no-net tennis court for the fiftieth time and the empty pool and all that but they didn’t have any good stuff out there that we could use like a basketball and hoop or dirt bikes. We found some split firewood in a woodshed but it was too hard to haul it inside via the porch so we kept on busting up the furniture when we wanted a fire in the fireplace at night. We only used the stuff that was made of sticks and twigs though, not the good things.

  The inside of the house was getting real funky and our source of firewood was disappearing fast and there were all these dumb cluster flies buzzing around now especially in the kitchen where the dishes were stacked like to the ceiling and the garbage can was overflowing. Neither of us were into washing dishes so we kept on using new plates until after a while we couldn’t find any more and would just turn them over and eat off of the other side and the pans we figured it was okay to keep on using without washing because when you cook things it kills the germs. Plus there was a lot of stuff lying around that we hadn’t put away because we’d forgotten where it came from originally or just didn’t feel like it, things we’d used or only fooled around with like jigsaw puzzles we’d given up on as soon as we saw how cheesy the picture was going to be and bath towels and emptied tomato sauce cans and Mr. Ridgeway’s clothes that we’d started wearing even though they were baggy and definitely uncool, green plaid pants and alligator shirts and old-guy boxer underwear which I actually liked wearing but outside the green pants not inside. The house was a real mess.

  Maybe it was the strain of being confined like that and bored out of our minds and the house getting all grunged out, I don’t know but after a few weeks of it Russ and I started having these little fights, just dumbass arguments over nothing like who was going to cook the spaghetti or whether or not to watch Jeopardy which in desperation I had gotten into but Russ said he hated the smartasses who knew all the questions to the answers before he did, which he faked knowing anyhow.

  It was no real biggie but we started avoiding each other so to speak. We even took our sleeping bags and put them in separate bedrooms and used different bathrooms and all so we’d some days go the whole day without seeing each other although we no longer even knew if it was day or night except from what was on TV or unless one of us happened to go outside the house.

  Of course we’d used up all the weed long ago and didn’t have any cigarettes either and that probably contributed to the tension too. When we weren’t sleeping we were too wired and too bored for normal conversation. A couple of J’s and a carton of Camel Lights and a couple malt 40s would’ve helped civilize things between us for sure but it still would’ve lasted for only a day or two. When you’ve been high for most of your life it’s hard to be nice when you’re not.

  I’d already started thinking about what it would be like if me and Russ were traveling alone instead of stuck here together when this one night, or maybe it was morning—I didn’t know because I hadn’t watched any TV in a long time and hadn’t been outside in at least a couple of days—Russ comes slumping into the guestroom I was using for my crib then and he goes, Chappie, I gotta have a talk with you.

  Bone.

  Yeah, Bone. Sor-ry. Listen, I think I’m leaving, man, he said. Real casual like he was gonna take a shower or something.

  Whaddaya mean? Leaving?

  Well, going back, I mean.

  Back? Like where? To your mom’s?

  Not exactly, he said. What he had in his mind was going to his aunt’s house and in fact he’d already called her on the phone. Just to feel her out on the subject, he said. But he hadn’t told her where he was calling from he assured me because I was like freaked, plus he hadn’t told her he was with me. She’d asked of course, like what about the other boy who was in the fire and he’d said that he didn’t know what’d happened to him. He told her he’d come back to the apartment in Au Sable alone that night and he’d seen the place was on fire and he’d split because he was scared on account of knowing about all the stuff that the bikers’d stolen and stashed there. He’d been afraid of getting busted for accessorizing a crime he didn’t commit.

  So what’d she say? Come home to Auntie, Russell, all is forgiven?

  C’mon, man, chill. She just said I could stay at her house for a while until I got everything straightened out like with the cops and my mom and so on. So I guess that’s what I’m gonna do, man.

  That’s cool.

  Yeah. I’ll tell them all this time I’ve been staying by myself up at the Bong Brothers in Plattsburgh. You know, in the schoolbus.

  Yeah. Whatever.

  Don’t be pissed, man.

  What about the truck we stole? You mention that to Auntie?

  No one can prove we did that, man.

  Okay, I said. Whatever. That’s cool.

  He seemed real happy and put out his forearm and the stupid panther tattoo like he wanted me to kiss it. I was lying in my bed with my sleeping bag all around me and my arms inside but Russ looked so foolish and pathetic standing there with his forearm out that I squirmed my own arm free and reached up and like kissed it with my crossed bones tattoo.

  All right! he said.

  Yeah. So when’re you leaving?

  I dunno. Now I guess.

  Okay. See ya ’round, I said and rolled over and faced the wall.

  Hey listen, if you need me, man, you should like call my Aunt Doris. Even if I’m someplace else she’ll know where I am. He’d already written down her phone number on a piece of paper which he handed to me like it was his busines
s card or something. I don’t think my mom and me are going to get it together again, he said. I’ll probably stay here in Keene and maybe go back to school and get a job in construction or something.

  I said thanks but couldn’t think of what else to say to him so I didn’t even try. He rattled on for a while longer about his Aunt Doris and Uncle George and his plans for his new life with them until he finally ran out of words too and then he was silent for a few minutes and I could hear him shifting his weight like he finally felt guilty and he said, Well, see ya ’round, man, and he left the room.

  Then a few minutes later when I knew he was gone from the house I started to cry. That only lasted a couple of seconds though because the more I thought about it the more pissed I got at Russ for running out on me like that. First he commits a bunch of crimes like skimming the take at the Video Den and dealing meth to the bikers and stealing their electronics and so on like hey no big deal, Russ’s only a young criminal working his way up the ladder of crime, and then pretty soon I start to see the wisdom of a life of crime myself and we steal a pickup together and run from the cops and deal the pickup to the pipesuckers and get tattooed and break into the Ridgeways’ nice fancy summerhouse and fuck it all up. Because we’re criminals now and criminals don’t give a shit about owning property, they just take what they want and drop it when they’re through and the kind of high that regular people get from having jobs and owning things like houses and pickups and stocks and bonds us criminals get from other activities like taking drugs and listening to music and exercising our basic freedoms and being with our friends. Russ goes the whole route with me, my partner in crime and then all of a sudden he decides that he can’t pay the price anymore which is basically that regular people, the Ridgeways and the Aunt Dorises and Uncle Georges of the world don’t respect you anymore. Tough. Big fucking deal. They never did respect us in the first place unless we were willing to want the same things they wanted. They never respected us for ourselves, for being humans the same as them only kids who people are constantly fucking over because we don’t have enough money to stop them. Well, fuck them. Fuck him. Fuck everyone.