Rails Under My Back

by Jeffery Renard Allen

  She was afraid to ask. What?

  The Lord Christ, he took the first one, see, and rolled it in his sandbox. Then he painted the wings yellow. Then he dipped the beak in some red jelly. Then he brought it to life as a goldfinch. Hatch’s face was completely serious. Guess what the Lord Christ did wit the other one?

  Where’d you read this?

  The infant Christ, he dipped that second bird in his milk and brought it to life as a dove. Hatch walked off, his back and shoulders stiff and stooped. Them big buckteeth, Lula Mae said. He got too much mouth. Boy, stop that chunkin!

  Seven. He musta been seven—cause his face became like Lucifer’s face; cause he had stopped smiling; you saw the buckteeth only when he spoke—when he asked her, If God is good and God is great, why he do that to Cookie? Hatch wore Cookie’s photograph like a mask.

  Her lips grew tight with anger. She wanted to say, God works in mysterious ways, but she needed something fresh. The young won’t touch anything old and wormy. What do you know about it? she said. Cookie passed befo you was even born.

  And it seemed that every day that followed, he had a new challenge.

  If God made man, who made him?

  Why God test Job? Ain’t cruelty a sin?

  Why did God tell Abraham to kill his son? Would Lucifer kill me?

  Noah was mean. Cain ain’t do nothing wrong. He wasn’t naked.

  If the Lord Christ so kind, why he put them demons in them pigs? I like bacon.

  Why the Lord Christ put his two bloody paw prints on Judas’s face?

  So she told him, Stay on the track. Cause a train can’t run but on two rails in one direction. Hold on, lest your hands slip from the rail and you go splashing into water. Hold on.

  What if it gon crash? Hatch asked. Should I still stay on track? And can’t trains back up? She slapped the smart words back into his smart mouth. Cause religion was more than ligion; it was the whole thing, not simply using part of the thing and hiding the rest, like Gracie, who made the Bible her poker face.

  Last Christmas dinner, Hatch had even refused to say grace.

  God is good. God is great. Thank him for our food. Amen. Porsha passed the pea of prayer to Hatch.

  Hatch sat with his face bent over the plate.

  Hatch, your turn.

  Hatch watched his plate.

  Hatch?

  I can’t think of nothing.

  Christ wept, Gracie said. Christ wept. Say it.

  Hatch watched his plate.

  Say it, Porsha said. Why you always tryin to be a nonconformist?

  Shut up.

  Who you tellin to shut up?

  You.

  Boy, you ain’t talkin to one of yo little friends. I’ll knock—

  Say it, Lula Mae said. Before I knock them big horse teeth out yo mouth.

  Nephew, John said, brown eyes blinking behind his silver frames, jus say it. So we can eat.

  I don’t remember nothing.

  Couldn’t say nothing when he was sposed to, only when he wasn’t. Hatch’s brain heated up too fast, putting words where they don’t belong.

  But John said Hatch was too slow. Nothing fast enough for John. Sheila— John adjusted his silver-rimmed spectacles, watched her, his eyes like two brown animals caged behind glass—when you gon release this boy from yo apron strings?

  Now, John, you know I ain’t got him in no apron strings.

  Damn if you don’t. Do you know that he almost fell in Dave’s grave?

  Yall be sure to lay a wreath on Daddy Larry’s grave.

  Where he buried?

  That man Lula Mae work fo show you. Thinking, Cause he lies close by the river near the dark fence where the troubled waters flow and toss his body to and fro in the casket and the pigs used to run to him like puppies.

  And don’t forget the rest of yo kin, Big Judy and Koot and Nap.

  I didn’t, Hatch said. He watched John, face saying, Why you do this to me? He forever tried his best to keep step with his Uncle John.

  We lowering Dave in the grave and the next thing I know, Hatch here—

  I didn’t, Uncle John. You lyin.

  Boy, Sheila said, watch yo mouth.

  He lyin.

  Sheila slapped his mouth closed.

  Last summer—the summer after the cicada spring; yes, buried in the blind ground, surely they prophesied the coming heat—she felt the slighest lifting of her heart when Hatch told her he had found a job playing Reverend Ransom’s Sunday service at the New Promised Land Baptist Church. She felt light inside, even if he only doing it for the money. She dropped to her knees like an exhausted cross-country runner, arms raised in victory, and lifted praise to the Most High.

  SHEILA HEARD A CLICKING SOUND, like a train bumping over tracks. Black water towers rose above distant buildings like bad hats. They got water towers all over New York, Lucifer said. Hear they work, too. She felt a strange sharpness, a cutting sensation. She saw two eyes dry and black. Heard a clicking sound, sharp eyes working, cutting her open, perhaps searching for some secret reservoir. The young Oriental woman’s thin lips were drawn as if framing a difficult question. The blood went thick behind Sheila’s eyes. The Oriental woman looked both ways over the tracks, and kept looking, like someone crossing the street, her black gaze flying and buzzing past Sheila with each turn of her head. Birds cut through the silence. Then she saw the shaggy tremendous form of her train, an invisible smoke-colored shape—for she heard it before she saw it—hovering above the arched curve of track where it came around the building corner, smooth as water from a hose, this silver train with shadow on its roof, a seepage of moisture somewhere between earth and water, then the water level with her vision, the sound too, rushing and flowing, fish-flopping out of dark deeps, washing a metal sound, a thumping pail. The train hovered in the approaching distance, shaking steady on tracks, wavering, as if caught in a slow drizzle of rain, and the Oriental Asian woman looking both ways, hand clamped tight to her purse, and for a second that was more or less than a second, holding Sheila in her gaze, and Sheila seeing a thin black wing of charcoal-sketched eyebrows, and two black eyes punctured into a porcelain-smooth doll face (for she really was a doll, small and smooth and perfect), and the doll lips creaking open, parting to smile (would you call it that?), shout (call it that), silent beneath the train’s roar, or as if the wind-loud train itself had lunged out the tunnel of her mouth, then the Oriental Asian woman moving with ease, flowing, and disappearing, not as Sheila might have imagined it, a slippery log rolling out from under her, no, not like this, but sinking, the anchor of her purse drawing her down, or the platform itself collapsing beneath her, a ringing chorus of rails.

  11

  LUCIFER FELT THE SHUDDERING RUMBLE of an approaching train. A rush of air at the side of his face. The train arrived so fast it seemed to fall toward him. The doors collapsed open. Passengers spilled out the silver insides, while new passengers poured in and refilled the depths. Root-stubborn, his feet refused to move. Sheila, one foot said. Sheila, the other answered.

  STREETS OPENED TO HIS EYES. Rows and rows of glittering parked cars. Shop-windows rippling with reflections moving to and fro, fading and fleeing like ghosts. Billboards flashing the fast colors of advertisement. He walked, glancing over his shoulder, trying first one shop, then another. He had to find the right gift for Sheila, the right gift to set things right. When he had left the house earlier that morning to meet John, he’d tried to kiss her. She would have none of him.

  A kiss? Why don’t you kiss John?

  He walked heavy through the spring crowd. He was all water, from the crown basin of his head to the ditch of his feet. The wells of his skin sweated rivers under the red dot of the sun. Yes, his feet were heavier than John’s luggage. He tasted sweet summer dryness.

  He circulated about another section of stores and shops—looking over his shoulder, glancing down the street with a steady eye on traffic—the buildings so close to the curb that one could drive up and purchase an item
without getting out of the car. Some of the stores even had a drive-through. The spokes of the shops extended out from the hub of Union Station. Like after a firefight, after you dropped the airpower and the next morning you went into the bush to check the damage. Dead gooks laid out like random pieces of iron.

  Kind sir. The bum spoke above a squall of traffic. Could you spare a quarter? Veins formed a black net in the outstretched palm. I hate to beg.

  SHEILA FISHED IN HER PURSE for a quarter, and in that moment before she placed it in his hand, everything in the world grew quiet but his heart. Something catchy about a woman almost tall as you. A slight downward tilt of your face into hers and your lips touch. He had loved her for as long as he could remember, smooth-skinned woman—and after the years, her caramel skin sweet as ever, her figure taut and fine, in both his memory eyes and his real eyes—who chastised him in church, her perfume close and heavy. His mental hands were forever hunting, trying to lift up her skirt and touch. Later, a man, he told her, I used to come to church every Sunday just to see you. He spoke truly. He had bowed his head and mouthed prayer, while his inner mouth hummed another wish. God, give me this woman. He had placed his pumping red heart across his humble kneeling knees. White red green orange or purple swirl in the dress that balloons around her stockinged legs. Sheila mostly dated men from the church—Mount Zion Church, rows of varnished benches hard to the butt, steeple-shaped windows, stained-glass Christ with a flowing river of golden hair and two blue doves for eyes—and her sister, Gracie, was dating John. Rumor had it that back home, down South, Gracie had, well, you know. Cause there was Cookie, the daughter. Rumors warn, John would eventually learn that Gracie’s love never did anybody any good. One day when the apple trees were heavy and white, Lucifer felt her move like the smallest of earthquakes—his skin slippery against hers—felt her heart beating under his lips.

  You don’t want that woman, Dallas said.

  Why not? Lucifer said. He sensed a slight possibility that Dallas knew something he didn’t.

  Women are excess baggage, Dallas said.

  Dallas would think that.

  Sides, you don’t want that woman. Been so long since she had any, I bet you her bed buried in cobwebs.

  Lucifer looked at him, mouth hot and tight.

  Dallas blinked, catching the sun directly. Man, those McShan bitches stuck up, got their asses way up on top of the church steeple.

  Nigga, John said, you jus mad you ain’t got nobody.

  Dallas flinched at the words. He musta known it was true, cause Gracie said (and Sheila told) that he’d talked to the double preachers, Cotton Rivers and Cleveland Sparrow, about his trouble with women. Gracie would know.

  Have patience, son, the patience of an angel, Cotton Rivers said. For centuries, Cleveland Sparrow added, they’ve been waiting to try out their wings.

  Dallas had surrendered to his problem, settled for the whores on Church Street—the ones he could afford and the ones who would accept his money. He still talked a good game.

  Man, I went to the Coal Bin last night.

  Whoopedoo. What else new?

  Picked up this fine woman.

  Nigga, you couldn pick up a spoon.

  Nawl, I picked her up. Little Red Riding Hood.

  What?

  You the firs nigga I ever heard of jerkin off to a fairy tale.

  Nawl, that’s what she called herself. Little Red Riding Hood. Had on this red cape. It stop right here. Dallas placed the edge of his hand beneath his groin. Man, I tore that pussy up.

  Nigga, stop selling wolf tickets.

  I ain’t—

  Did you touch it?

  What?

  Did you touch it?

  Course I touched it. How else I’m gon get it in.

  Dallas held bright in Lucifer’s memory, a young fat face shadowed under a hat’s brim. So you gon lead Gracie? Dallas said.

  John didn’t look at him.

  Nawl. She the woman I’m gon marry. And later, he told Inez, Mamma, these the women we gon marry.

  Junior, Inez said.

  But we don’t have no money fo the wedding.

  Rivers and Sparrow don’t come for cheap. And they charge more for a wedding than a funeral or a baptism.

  Junior.

  And that’s what she said at the wedding, the handkerchief wet in her hand, Junior. Pappa Simmons holding her up and George holding him up. A joint wedding, a joint ceremony, a joint sermon—Cotton Rivers and Cleveland Sparrow, silver-voiced; every time they opened their mouth, a coin fell out; Christ is the stone the builders rejected, the spiritual rock from which the water of life springs. This stone is extracted from you, for you are its mineral—and a joint line of twenty-five or twenty-six fancied-up cars—JUST MARRIED—Lucifer’s car in the lead—well, Ernie’s car that he’d borrowed, a rambling, slow, beat-up green thing, destined for the junkyard—since he was the oldest, and John’s Eldorado (the mighty red machine) and the other cars honking behind him, slowly moving down Hayes Street, a bright and noisy procession of vehicles with tin cans rattling in tow and backstreams of fluttering crepe paper. He would not enter a church for fifteen years (Cleveland Sparrow’s funeral, same year Hatch and Jesus were born). Cotton Rivers put pennies over his dead partner’s eyes—the double preachers were double no more, the once blazing rails now a single track—tears streaming from his own. The congregation shut their eyes in prayer. When they opened them, the pennies were gone.

  KIND SIR, HOW BOUT A NICKEL THEN? Even a penny would help?

  Lucifer fished in his pocket for change. Tossed a quarter into the black-veined net.

  God bless you.

  THE UNDERGROUND housed exclusive shops. Lucifer entered the low red building separated from Union Station by a covered walkway. The Underground grew from the stone innards of the station, a Siamese twin. Eight levels of interchangeable structures—skywalks and skyboxes, catwalks and treadmills, marble waterfalls, silent escalators, glass elevators like transparent cocoons, layers of shops like the tiered galleries in a coal mine—that did not quite connect. Air itself was an invisible web holding it all together. Robotic surveillance cameras trawled the crystal floors, portaging live images. Lucifer plied their tracks. Hovered in one beat and out the next. His reflection was fresh and new in the shopwindows.

  TWO COPS LED A BOY OUT OF A STORE, sunlight glinting on the handcuffs that bunched his wrists. Sunlight crawled yellow spiders up the boy’s bald head. The boy offered no resistance. Lucifer studied him—some sign of familiarity? a boy Hatch’s age, Jesus’s age; other signs of familiarity?—and he watched Lucifer back, throwing the hard stones of his black eyes. Red Hook eyes. Stonewall eyes. Project kids stared at you that way. Tough kids that the Blue Demons basketball program hoped to soften. You officiated a call, using the fingers of both hands, forming them into a triumphal arch. They’d say Shit! or Fuck! or Damn, money. Can’t you see?

  Look, I’m jus tryin to be fair.

  Fair? What’s up wit that? Fuck fair.

  And their eyes said more. I’ll beat you down. Steal yo money. Cap you. Pop yo life and yo wife. Many a time, Lucifer clenched a red angry fist, ready to break and bruise some punk’s face. But his anger met a wall. His skin.

  The morning’s alcohol flooded down from his brain into his eyes. No mo drinkin wit John. I’m too old. The boy’s face shifted before him, two cloud-thick puddles. Lucifer flexed and unflexed his fingers to rid them of stiffness. The boy stiffened and drew back, a muscleman tugging a train.

  12

  THE TRAIN SHOT THROUGH THE LONG GRAY TUNNEL into an even blacker dark. In the car’s unstained light, Porsha shook, a reed in the wind. Times like this, she wished she had driven. The city shouldered a notorious reputation for its thick traffic, scant parking facilities, and maniacal drivers. She never drove to an assignment. Watched the dingy windows of the train each day. Her green Datsun 280ZX that Mamma called a man’s vehicle—

  Mamma, everybody drives cars like this now. Why don’t you re
tire and get you one.

  Daughter, I ain’t ready to retire.

  Think them Shipcos care?

  I ain’t ready to retire.

  Ain’t you tired?

  Mamma said nothing.

  Why’d you do it? Why’d you do day work all yo life?

  I always knew I had a job

  —was parked safely in the garage on D Street at Hundred Gates, where she lived. She’d caught hell the last time she’d driven it.

  The day has claimed her with its demands. She parks at the corner store, Cut Rate Liquors, goes in, and comes out with bath beads. She is thinking about the night ahead, a hot bath and Deathrow’s hotter touch. She puts the gear in reverse, is about to turn her head back over the seat and back out of the lot when some young short punk—even today, here on the epileptic train, his face was a blur; they all look the same, baseball cap, Starter jacket, ankle-high gym shoes—some unsuspecting life moving in the darkness, approaches her car. He stoops to line up his face with hers. Hey, baby. Can I get a cigarette?

  I don’t smoke.

  He looks at the paper bag on the seat beside her. You lyin bitches ain’t shit. He raises up. She eases the car back. Feels a burning sensation in her nose. Ribbons of blood spray from her face, red-wetting the green leather steering wheel, the green leather dashboard, the rearview mirror, and the windshield.

  Damn, homeboy. Why’d you hit that bitch like that?

  Don’t fuck wit me.

  She brakes the car, throws it into park. Picks up the chunk of red brick lying next to the paper bag. In one motion she clicks out of the car yelling Yo, homeboy; he turns; she fires the brick whistling at his teeth.

  He got the worst of it. No stitches for her, only a nick over the bridge of her nose. Some swelling for a few days—the second and third days were the worst, the bridge so puffy and swollen she could barely see—but nothing to rob her of bread and butter. If the brick had hit some other part of her body, another story. Cause her body was the only story that mattered.

  Her beauty ran south of her neck. She thanked God and Mamma. Mamma had made her wear a girdle as a growing girl, as Mamma herself wore one. Had Lula Mae started this family custom? Aunt Beulah? Keen insight. Prophetic. The sacrifice had paid off. She made her living as a body-part model.