Rails Under My Back

by Jeffery Renard Allen

  Gracie! Beulah opened her arms like a strong machine, curved black hat like a snail shell on her head. Hair below her shoulders in one electrified whitening ray. She sucked Gracie in with vacuum power and speed.

  Hey, Beulah. Glad to see you.

  Beulah loosened her grip just enough to allow Gracie to angle, bend, and hug Sheila.

  Gracie. Sheila’s hand rubbed concrete circles on her back. Gracie. So glad to see you.

  Gracie searched the words for warmth and truth.

  You, redcap! Beulah screamed. Come take my niece’s bags.

  Once home, Sheila and Beulah allowed her an hour to bathe and rest, then guided her out of the apartment to discover the city. She can still remember smartly dressed city people betaking themselves to their chosen destinations, remember the casual walk to the Elevated platform, her first sight of a green commuter train, car doors rattling sliding banging open, and city people charging out like racehorses. Faces at every window formed a chain of countless eyes all staring at her. She clutched her Bible to her freshly bathed and powdered bosom. Train rocked and rumbled by.

  This not our train? she asked.

  No, Beulah said.

  That’s when Sheila explained the city’s complicated network of trains and lines: subway and Elevated, A train and B train, express and local, rush hour, the Englewood line, Howard line, Jackson Park line, Evanston line, Ravenswood line. On and on.

  Memphis had only buses. Surely city trains would shake her to pieces.

  The three women boarded their train. Sat side by side. Gracie placed her Bible on her lap and folded her hands over it. The train began to move. Quicken. She stared out the green-flying window as a lens, clicking mental photographs at rows of shops and stores exposed to merciless morning sunlight, at streets boiling with life and trouble, pools of people linking into other pools, rivers of cars linking other rivers—things as common to northern city life as dog and dung on a ‘Sippi road. She dug her fingernails into the green leather seat.

  Beulah and Sheila shuttled her all over the city, the ins and outs, from the (seemingly) penthouse-high elevated trains to the sewer-low subways. She saw a subway minister for the first time.

  It is written in the Scriptures, Be not deceived God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man sows he shall also reap the same. Good for good and evil for evil. The Lord has sown his good seed into the world today and should it fall on good and pure hearts it shall bring forth much good. So you have the faith, but you must plant it in good soil in order for you to do great things. But mortal soil cannot produce eternal things. One must place his faith in God. This is the best soil.

  She would learn, here in the North, many preachers carried pulpits in their voices. Even frail-bodied subway evangelists like Mother Sister could paddle you with wood words. They got wings for us to fly around. And water beds filled with blue rivers. But rent in heaven ain’t cheap. Nor are flying lessons.

  Beulah found Gracie a job (day work) with the Sterns in Deerfield, a sharp, clean suburb a good hour north of the city. Train, carry me. Train, bring me back.

  HER FIRST CITY WINTER. Snow. Pretty when it first fell. White and clean enough to eat, then later, gray and muddy with footprints or tire tracks. Snow coating the windows of cars, but the apartment windows heated from the warmth pulsing inside, free of frost, an occasional collar of snow on a ledge. Snow on the bare tree branches—bare branches curled, fingers reaching to grab the falling snow—half the branch white and the other half brown-gray, like flesh slipping out from a split pants leg or coat sleeve. The sky white—the fog white of after-snow—above the buildings. And cars making that washing sound you hear in rain or snow, beneath the motor’s hum the sound of water spilled from a pail. Then the first killing frost. The frozen steel of subway and apartment pipes. The asthmatic breathing of the radiators. (Better than a rusted yard pump and the carrying stones of the fireplace, flames licking—coals really—crackling with heat.) Jack Frost nipping at yo nose and peeking up under yo clothes. Hawk trying to snatch off your draws. Winter laid a sheet of ice between you and yo kinfolk in the apartment. You looking out the white window and thinking, thinking, perhaps of spring—because in this city, winter often carried over into mid-spring, or came back in spurts both spring and summer, like an unexpected relative. Spring: the trees a green maelstrom of mad leaves and brown movement because the city’s wind stayed with you year-round, folding into the seasons. And thinking further of autumn, your favorite season, when the city grew alive with color, the summer’s last fires flicking new flames of heat and pigment, red and green and blue and white and pink and red-pink and brown-red and yellow-brown and not just the pinks and greens and whites of budding May. But fall so far away, not like the babies who stand in the trees all day and night, a few feet from the building.

  HER FOURTH CITY WINTER—so it seems to her now—she boarded the train and saw the Burned Man for the first time. A short man and fat, every space of his blue-jean jumpsuit covered with buttons—sermons, slogans, prayers. A few clumps of hair, like an unfinished bird’s nest. And his head a lump of clay kneaded onto his body. No neck, all head. Clean swathes of smooth brown skin—funny how burns leave brown scars, not black—and the face smooth too, no eyebrows or eyelashes or eyelids. He rattled his hot tin cup, the metal sound giving more momentum to the steel wheel grinding steel rails.

  Brothers and sisters, I come from the Church on the Rock and I bring you these books—pamphlets, flyers—these revelations designed to bless each and every individual which shall read them seven straight days, seven days in a row. As of today, there are 916 confirmations of blessings, 916 people who had received glowing gifts from the hand of Christ. Just last night a woman phoned me, Brother Foot, I thank you. Christ reached out his hands and turned my rags to gold raiments. I won the lottery after reading your book seven straight days and seven days in a row. Sister, I said to her, All who believe in Christ shall hit the jackpot. There are no number runners fleeter of foot than the winged angels in our Father’s heaven.

  God sent his only son to save man. Praise be to his only son, our Lord Saviour Christ. The burned man rattled his cup. Please give what you can. Read these Scriptures seven straight days, seven days in a row.

  Gracie removed a dollar from her purse. Dropped it into the hot tin cup. Keep your book, she said. She never rode the train again.

  HER SIXTH CITY WINTER, Sam and Dave arrived from Houston—on a fleeing locomotive—in summer’s clothing, and made all Englewood sweat from their sinful Houston heat. Daily they galloped from bar to bar, lounge to lounge, liquor store to liquor store; sundown, they posed against afterglow on corners, watching cars cruise down Church Street—

  I gotta get me a car, Dave said.

  The way you drive, Sam said. Huh.

  What’s wrong wit the way I drive?

  You don’t know? Sam shook his head.

  I gotta get me a car.

  —and rested at night, collapsed in the bug-ridden pastures of nasty women’s beds.

  TWO YEARS LATER, Sam and Dave got sent up the river for stealing hogs from the factory, dressing the hog up like a man in a long coat and Dobb, leaning its legs over their shoulders and holding it up between them, Come on, Wheatstraw, you drunk fool, know you ain’t sposed to drink on the job. But of course, two years after that, after the arms of justice had released them, they needed a place to stay and crowded into the one-room apartment with Beulah, Sheila, and Gracie, Sam and Dave sleeping beneath the kitchen table on the red-and-white-checkered oilcloth—Damn, you niggas, Beulah said, get out from under my tablecloth. People gotta eat on it. Enough to spoil yo appetite—the same checkered oilcloth where, later, in the house here on Liberty Island, John would beat Lucifer and Dallas (his pig’s snout level with the board, as if this could improve his concentration) at chess, and still later, whip the pants off the boys, Hatch and Jesus, til Hatch mastered the game, beating John and Lucifer for their spare dollars. Wasn’t a week before every devil-may-care man on Churc
h Street cussed their names.

  You niggas need some work, Beulah said.

  Them two Jones boys—Sheila began.

  Lucifer, Gracie said. And John. The one wit those brown eyes.

  Why you worried bout em? Sam wanted to know. You mus like them brown eyes.

  —got jobs washing windows. In Central. Good money too.

  Now, what we need with work? Sam said.

  Tell her, uncle. We had plenty work in the joint.

  Well, Beulah said, why don’t yall go back there and press some license plates.

  License plates? Woman, I worked in the infirmary. And he assisted me. Sam hooked his thumb at Dave, who sat stretched back in the wooden chair, leg hooked over the arm.

  Look, I don’t care if you—

  Don’t say it, Sam said. Beulah, you know I know you. Don’t say it.

  Beulah gave him a hard look.

  Look, woman. Get it straight. We ain’t workin fo no chump change.

  And we ain’t luggin round that kid no more. Dave flicked a nod at Cookie. Like to break my back. Shit, silks ain’t serve me no hard labor. Jus a straight sentence.

  Yeah, Sam said. We ain’t her daddy.

  And we ain’t gon pretend.

  Sides—Sam smoothed his conk with the palm of his hand, followed its movement of waves, wet leaves—we fin to light out fo California and see R.L. Surprise visit.

  Yeah. Surprise visit.

  The only way you lazy niggas get to California is if it come to you.

  That’s mighty fine wit me, Beulah. Mighty fine. But I ain’t luggin round that two-hundred-pound baby no mo. Sam hooked his thumb at Cookie, who sat crooked and twisted in the wooden wheelchair—the one that Gracie, years later, stuffed in the pantry, beyond Hatch’s and Jesus’s curious reach, the toddlers mistaking it for a rocking chair—body both tense and limp, legs smooth, round and slack as ropes, tiny feet motion-ignorant on the running board. Nothing straight about her, even with the leather belt holding up her waist, face lax, mouth open, completely relaxed, or tired perhaps, just tired. Only her eyes moved, watching you come in and out of the room, blank and unblinking, dead fish stare.

  Got that right, Dave said.

  I was so glad to get shut of them niggas when they went off to the service, Beulah said. War didn’t change them none. Always askin, beggin, Sister, how bout lettin me hold some change. Then Dave go, Aw, Sam, don’t ask her. She cheaper than Jack Benny. Sam and Dave worry me so that sometimes I wish they’d never come back from Bataan. Buried there wit all them Japs.

  Beulah worked nights—spring and summer—so she could attend baseball games during the day—That Paige, oh that Paige; his curveball hum like a Roadster—and Sheila worked nights so she could watch Cookie during the day. When you returned from work, you and Sheila would lift Cookie down the three flights of stairs—a trip someone would make for seventeen years until your gains ebbed away and Cookie drowned in a sea of pneumonia—so you could take Cookie strolling in the park. You took her there every day, through lazy snow or sun slanting with wind. Circle Park was beautiful then, fields of red and yellow and pink roses, fields wide as the moon. The sky large, white, clear: a huge drop of milk. The grass neat. The hedges trimmed. Wind in the air. The iron streetlamps free of rust and the stems so brown and tall, and the lantern so wide and green, you mistook them for trees. And you circled the lanes, palms firm-gripping the handlebars of the wheelchair—hanging on the course of your life. The stroll was just that easy; a single movement, a slight turn of the handlebars, returned you to the apartment door stoop. You removed the keys from your purse.

  Why, Miss Gracie. John watched her with those brown eyes. You need some help gettin Cookie back upstairs?

  Yeah, Miss Gracie, Dallas echoed. You need some help gettin Cookie back upstairs?

  John stood there, hat in hand, head bowed, thin waves of hair shining, the cut of his eyes directed where the hat brim would be, stood there, before a spillage of leaves on the vestibule doorsteps.

  Thank you, boys.

  John and Dallas slipped out of their blazers—no, Dallas wearin that old funky nasty pea coat—folded them neatly over their shoulders, and stooped like stretcher carriers, hands positioned on the wheelchair. Okay, John said. On the count of three. One. Two. Three. John and Dallas lifted Cookie in the air and carried her up the stairs, never missing a breath, their heels tapping cutting rhythm. Set her down—Cookie slobbered a smile—and stood waiting before the front doors, watching Gracie.

  Yall want something to drink?

  Yes’m.

  Yes’m.

  Have a seat. They did as Gracie ordered. She got them cool lemonade in Beulah’s mason jars. John tilted his head back and drained his jar, throat working. Dallas did the same. John watched her—she thought of herself, how her skin gleamed like black milk—feet several inches above the floor. He was so small and Dallas so large that Gracie expected John to hop in Dallas’s lap like a ventriloquist dummy. But he watched her. She assumed the men wanted a tip. Took two quarters from her purse and pushed it into their hands.

  Wish I could give yall mo money.

  John watched her, eyes wide as stage lights. Why, we don’t want no money. Here. He reached out and took her hand, his own moist with heat, and put the quarter inside it. Dallas did the same, parroting, watching her with wino eyes, flood-delta red eyes. She returned her hands to the safety of her lap.

  The windows let in chunks—square after square, box after box—of summer. It was a hot day, and the sun made the screen shimmer. Yellow light—line after line—streamed inside her window and tangled itself with the glow of the hanging sheets.

  Dallas, where you from? She said it to break the ice. She smelled raw oysters on his breath, the raw oysters with hot sauce that everyone in Woodlawn knew he bought from Brother Jack’s Lounge, this only child of smooth-skinned Vanilla Adams, who worked the white folks’ houses but never showed the wear, this boy who could fix anything that went bad, radios, toasters, space heaters, electric blankets, humidifiers, refrigerators, and (later, when people began to afford them) televisions.

  I was born by a golden river in the shadow of two great hills, Dallas said.

  Nigga, John said, stop that clownin.

  You stop.

  You still drinkin that wine? Gracie asked.

  Dallas shaped the brim of his Dobb. John flipped his on, fit it in place, pushing down softly. Dallas did the same.

  I takes a nip every now and then. How you know?

  Nigga, she smell yo breath.

  You a lie. Dallas put his nose into the cup of his palms and blew air, testing.

  Don’t mind him, Miss Gracie. He still kinda young.

  IT WAS MONDAY ALREADY and the service had been a good one. Moses parted the Red Sea, allowed the people of Israel to escape the waters through the hollow of his reed staff. Gracie had carried the service home with her, like a take-out order. She could still hear the chorus of laughter and amens, ringing shouts and pleas, stomping feet and clapping hands. Cotton Rivers helped Reverend Tower back into his seat, the older man shaken by the force of his own sermon. Rivers was always helping. Draw his handkerchief at the first bead of sweat on Tower’s brow. Some folks in the congregation called him Bird Dog, cause it was his job to hunt out the places on Church Street most needing redemption. His job to follow Tower, that Cleveland Sparrow tagging along, each holding up one sleeve of Tower’s flowing robe, absorbing its power.

  Someone knocked on the door, hard and fast, like a fire warning. Gracie opened it. John, hat in hand, head bowed, the wings of his eyes lowered.

  Hi, Miss Gracie.

  Why, John.

  The careless lifting of his brown eyes. I thought you might need some help.

  GRACIE HAD WATCHED LUCIFER AND JOHN grow from two pint-sized boys in railroad caps—John the pint, Lucifer (two years older) the quart—whose laughter disrupted Reverend Tower’s solo flights—I know there are some greasy souls here today, tryin to slip their way up into he
aven—boys who shot down his heavenly sermons like clay birds with their filthy tongues—Though I speak with the tongues of angels, and have not charity, I am becoming as sounding brass, or tinkling cymbal—slipped their snores into his verbal pauses, and Reverend Tower would wake them with biblical anger. If you boys wanna snore, go to Catholic mass! It was her duty to shepherd the children from the chapel to the bathroom, and there they would be, Lucifer and John, aiming two streams of urine at the ceiling.

  Nigga, you can’t piss fo shit.

  Piss better than you.

  Well, can you piss this high?

  Higher.

  And Gracie would feel some new feeling circling around her heart, circling and rising, while Lucifer and John held their faces tight, roping in their grins, until she snatched their ears, their hands panicking, trying to slip their worm-small penises into the sanctuary behind their pants zippers. The entire congregation knew they were being raised by the grandfather, Pappa Simmons, the squat nigga with a touch of Indian, or a dash, depending on who you asked—the roll of something wild in his yellow-red features; the gray of his eyes had crushed out the brown; Was he blind?; his words were so ancient they crumbled to the carpet before they reached your ear—and Georgiana, his white-looking wife, both worn down from sharecropping back home and hauling city sugar and mail sacks, their old flesh and down-home ways left in the dust by the quick city steps and ways of the boys. Yes, she had watched them grow from mannish boys in railroad caps, the skinny rails of their legs beneath baggy slacks, to teenagers, two young men in tweed or plaid golf caps and peg pants. How could she have known then that these two boys held men’s seeds, that these seeds would someday crack open and the newborn beings would accept the agreeable weight of manhood, would carry the silver rails of Sam’s coffin, help to bury the old seed. Yes, they grew, stretched out of their tweeds, their swelling heads shrinking their boy caps—they replaced them with man-holding Dobbs—Lucifer upwards and John sideways, til no britches could hold them, they going one way and restraint the other, Lucifer running errands, and John running the streets with Dallas and Ernie and Spider and the other bad niggas who kept up a heavy traffic between the clubs and lounges on Church Street. Couldn’t pass a corner without seeing John and Dallas pitching pennies, tossing the coins easy and graceful like life rafts.