Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks Page A

for getting rid of the bikers regardless of how we’d done it.
    Either way I didn’t want to be connected to what had happened to Bruce. I didn’t even want to think about it. He was my friend and he’d tried to save me. It was just bad luck that I’d already been saved by Russ.
    What we got to do now, man, I told him, is disappear off the face of the earth. If anybody sees us they’ll have more questions than we’ve got answers for.
    Boy, is my mom going to be pissed, he said.
    Forget that, man. Your mom is like my mom, I said. They’ll both think we died in the fire with Bruce and will be real sad or else as usual they won’t know where we are and won’t really give a shit. Russ’s mom wasn’t married with a regular job like mine, she was sort of a hooker who worked in a bar near the air force base and lied about her age and told the guys she brought home that Russ was her nephew which is why he left home when he was fifteen in the first place. She was a babe but I actually preferred my mom to his although he was better off than I was having no stepdad like mine to deal with.
    We stayed there under the bridge in the dark for about an hour listening to the cars and trucks rumbling overhead and the steady roar of the river which was only a few inches below the walkway and the occasional siren as fire trucks from the towns around came in to help. A fire is one of the few things that gets people together nowadays. The bridge was a big stone arch and when we looked out from under it we could see a piece of the sky which was all lit up like there was a night baseball game over where we used to live with the bikers and it did make me want to go and join the crowd so I tried not to look.
    What I really wanted was to get high but neither of us had any weed so Russ and I talked for a while about Bruce and what a cool dude he was and what bastards the other bikers were to leave him like that. He had soul, man, Russ said. White soul. You know what I’m saying?
    I said, Yeah, but actually I didn’t want to talk about him anymore because of how my feelings were all mixed up. Then one time I peeked out and noticed that the sky was getting dark again so I figured we should book while people were still somewhat distracted by the fire and thinking maybe we had burned up in it. Russ had about ten bucks and an almost full pack of cigarettes and I had nothing but the clothes on my back but Russ said he knew these excellent guys in Plattsburgh who lived in a bus where we could crash as long as we wanted and no one would know because there were always different kids who stayed there between squats, nobody permanent except the dudes who owned the bus.
    We couldn’t get out of Au Sable though and hitch over to Plattsburgh without being spotted and we didn’t have Russ’s Camaro anymore so we decided to sneak up by Stewart’s which is like this late-night convenience store where people drive in for last-minute items like cigarettes or beer and sometimes leave their car running outside. By keeping to the alleys and backyards we got to Stewart’s without anyone noticing us and then hid behind a dumpster next to the store and waited. It was pretty cold but I had my shearling jacket and Russ had his Islanders hoodie so we were okay.
    Quite a few cars and pickups came in and a lot of them were people we actually knew but they were locals and knew not to leave the motor running. After a while the out-of-town fire engines and some of the volunteer firemen with their blue bubble lights on the dashboards started passing by and two or three of them stopped for gas or went in for supplies and the such but even though they were from away they shut off the motor and took their keys with them.
    Then this one pickup, a red practically new Ford Ranger pulled in. It was a volunteer fireguy probably heading home to Keene or some other small town where nothing was open this late. After a few