Rails Under My Back

by Jeffery Renard Allen

  If God wanted men on the moon he woulda put them there. I ain’t gon believe no men on no moon til I go there myself.

  Beulah, they had it on TV. In the newspaper.

  I don’t have no truck with such nonsense. Them white folks think they got the sun and the moon locked inside a briefcase. But there are some things the Lawd wants all folks to know, some things jus the chosen few to know, and some things no one should know.

  She could tell stories, though Sheila didn’t want to hear them—Hush; Beulah, don’t go digging up the past; I been through enough in my life; that was then, this is now—though Gracie stiffened at the voice, closed her eyes against remembrance, though Beulah took so long between words you didn’t know if she had finished talking or was only resting, and you listened attentively, clutched every kernel from her throat, for she was willing to pass on greasy-fingered tales. Tales like houses, yards, gardens, other worlds, spaces to inhabit, hand-me-downs, generational clothes.

  Thirteen of us in that shotgun shack, fifteen cluding Mamma and Daddy.

  Hatch listened.

  Fifteen. She watched him from across the lamp. People today don’t know nothing bout being crowded. Fifteen of us. Fifteen. Thirteen—

  Thirteen.

  —chillun. The five oldest chillun stay and help Mamma and Daddy work the farm. The five younguns go to the fields. Crawlin through them fields on yo hands and knees. Tie some cloth patches cross yo knees so they won’t wear down.

  Talk bout hard times. People today don’t know nothing bout no hard times. There was this one bad season, real bad, bad harvest. Our dogs Blackjack and Redman howled all day and night, bellies hanging off them like empty sacks.

  One afternoon, Daddy came home all slumped up, bone-tired. He hadn’t been to the fields that day. And he come in and take something outa his shopping bag and set it down on the table. A ham. All wrapped up neat and nice in butcher paper and smelling like sawdust. A big heavy one too. Make the table wobble.

  What that? Mamma said.

  Daddy looked at her. Woman, what you think it is?

  Where’d you get it?

  Where you think?

  Well, can’t eat that thing by itself. She removed a quarter from her bosom. Go to the store and get me a pound of greens.

  Why can’t you send one of these chillun?

  Cause they busy doin stuff for me.

  What about Beulah there?

  Daddy looked at me.

  Beulah gon help me fix this ham.

  Soon as Daddy left, Mamma tucked that ham under her arm. Beulah?

  Yes’m.

  Follow me.

  We walk and walk. I could feel the heat all along the back of my neck, that heat trying to get into my head and legs and arms. I never knew a person could get so hot. Mamma, where we goin?

  To get some seasonin.

  We walk bout a mile from the house. Mamma stop and let the ham fall to the ground. I start to pick it up.

  Leave it, she say.

  Mamma find her a thick branch and start to diggin at the ground.

  Mamma, what you doin?

  Preparin that ham.

  You gon cook it in the ground? I ask. (Sure was hot enough.)

  She didn’t say nothing.

  She dig her a hole and kicked the ham into it.

  I says to her, Mamma, why you do that?

  She didn’t say nothin.

  Mamma, why you bury that good ham?

  DADDY LOVED THEM DOGS. Redman and Blackjack. What we ate, they ate. Never had a cold meal. Followed him everywhere, he just talkin away and they beside him, noddin they heads and waggin they tails. They be the first at the do when a guest come. Gon way from this door, Red. This caller ain’t fer you. And what you, Blackman, his shader? They could howl so, like to scare off any thang come creepin long in the night. Walk us to school, one long each side a us. And be waitin outside the schoolhouse to walk us back. And them dogs could sniff out the devil down in the deepest hell. When the huntin be good, Redman and Blackjack liked to rob the woods of all coon, possum, and rabbit.

  Nasty, Hatch thought, almost saying it.

  Daddy even have enough meat to sell.

  There was this mean ole cuss, Mr. Boatwright. Talkin bout a nigra shouldn do this, and a nigra shouldn do that. Even the other white mens couldn’t stand him.

  Hatch watched her in disbelief.

  One day, Daddy and I take Redman and Blackjack to town. Mighty fine hounds you got there, uncle, Mr. Boatwright said.

  Yes, suh.

  Mighty fine.

  That Mr. Boatwright was a right nasty white man. He carry this brown snot rag hangin long out his back pocket. He pull it out and start to blowin.

  Reckon a nigga can do right well for himself with such hounds.

  Daddy keep walkin.

  I figure five dollas a right mighty, uncle.

  Thank ya, suh, but they ain’t for sell.

  Awright, ten dollas, uncle.

  No, suh.

  Damn it, uncle. You got somephun gainst money?

  No, suh. Daddy keep walkin.

  Next morning, Mr. Boatwright come out to the farm. Daddy greet him. I’m holdin back Redman and Blackjack, barkin.

  Well, uncle. Come to bring you that ten dollas.

  Suh?

  Fer them dogs. We had a deal. No, suh.

  Now, uncle, you callin me a liar?

  No, suh.

  Well, bring me them dogs.

  White folks, why don’t we let the sheriff handle this.

  Mr. Boatwright look at Daddy. Now, ain’t no need to get the sheriff involved. Sure he got plenty to keep him busy. Be seein you, uncle.

  Bout a week later, ole Redman and ole Blackjack out in the front a the house chasin each other tail. Round and round. Round and round. Then they start spittin up meat filled wit maggots.

  Moving like tiny white fingers.

  Turnin round and round in a circle. Then no meat jus maggots start to comin out they mouth, churnin like milk. You shoulda seen it.

  He wished that he had.

  Next morning, Daddy buried them out behind the house. Daddy never did talk much, and he talk hardly at all after that.

  Mamma rubbed his shoulders. And rubbed. And rubbed.

  Daddy said, Don’t you go and Bible me.

  Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold but climbeth up some other way—

  Beulah worried the silence. And Daddy didn’t say nuthin else. But he was the first one to enter the church when Mr. Boatwright died, all respectful, hat in his hands, walked right up to that white man’s coffin and just stood there so long that the usher had to make him move long.

  47

  BIG JUDY WAS A MESS.

  You remember the time she cut that woman for tryin to cut in with Buck?

  Don’t remind me.

  Beulah, Lula Mae, and Koot tried to steer Big Judy away. Judy, you know that woman crazy. You know she done killed five peoples. But with that quick straight razor from her bosom she cut that woman ten red roads on her hands and arms—a good Christian, she spared the woman’s face—before the tramp could even get the handle of her gun out of her purse.

  Well, Beulah, I guess we better get you all ready to go back to St. Paul.

  Beulah’s colored medicine bottles waited on the nightstand like missiles on a launching pad. No, Beulah said. I ain’t ready to go back. They keep passin me round like a plate of green peas. They only interested in my pension check. You know they all on that stuff.

  I kinda suspected that, Sheila said.

  I don’t know how much mo I can take.

  Beulah’s look pushed in at her. She recalled how Beulah had pleaded with Sam’s woman, Don’t kill him. He’s my only brother.

  Can I come live with you?

  Beulah, I’m tired. You know that. Tired. I’ll come up to St. Paul and help you find the best nursing home they got there.

  I wanna come live with you.

  Beulah I
work every day. Who gon take care of you when I’m gone? I bet they got some good nursing homes in St. Paul. I know they do. Find you the best.

  YOU’LL FEEL BETTER, Montel said. My father is buried just down the road. I talk to him as I could never do in life.

  Sheila studied Montel’s long, melonlike head—some hair left, not much, enough for a small Afro—and the body gone soft in a few places. A miracle that Montel was alive at all, here in Miss Emma’s living room. (The same after all the years. More the same each time she visited.) Doctors had predicted, promised that the sickle-cell anemia growing inside would kill her by age forty. She battled continual sickness and always bounced back. She had remained a familiar, normal presence for fifty years. They became best friends from day one at the Catholic high school during the war. Pencils in their hands and legs proper under their desks. Stealing looks at the white boys under the nun’s habited faces, hovering above them, monitoring, anxious to punish. Girl things. Frequent Beale Street clubs, flirt with the men, get the cute ones to buy them drinks. A beer or two, nothing hard. Drink, giggle and flirt, dance. No sex. Just fun. Gracie had tried to strain their solidarity. Kept popping up in their path, a needlelike weed. You’d be having a good time on the riverboat then turn and see Gracie watching you, angry but calm, uneventful, natural and forceful like the waterwheel. Ain’t nobody following yall. She had a right to be there.

  They had it on the news that big flood yall had, Montel said. Yall didn’t have any problems getting out of the city?

  No. They say they got it under control.

  That’s good.

  Never know, though. We might have problems going back.

  I hope not. Pray for the best.

  That’s all you can do.

  Where’s Lucifer? Why didn’t you bring Lucifer? I ain’t seen him in so long. I missed him at the funeral.

  Lucifer, sound and name, entered Sheila and flowed like an unknown substance through her body. You didn’t miss him. He wasn’t at the funeral. He couldn’t make it. She thought about telling all, all to tell, all she knew. He had to work. Couldn take off.

  I see. Working hard.

  Yes. He don’t know how to stop. Ditchdigger mentality. His co-workers always call the house. Slow down. Tell him to slow down. He makin us look bad.

  Montel laughed. (The blood and warmth of her laughter.) Sargent the same way.

  Sheila stirred in her seat, surprised at the comparison, Lucifer and Sargent. Sargent worked a good job, a well-paid superintendent for the Board of Education. She had always believed that if Lucifer found a good job he might slow down.

  Some men are just like that.

  I guess so.

  An easy silence in the room.

  Please wait for Mamma to come back. She sure wants to see you. Before she left this morning she was telling me how much she wants to see you. You know how much she likes you. I don’t have to tell you that.

  Yes. Miss Emma was the bouquet of the house, the growing force that kept it alive. (Miss Emma nursed a piece of money that her husband, a tavern owner, had left her.) You sat in the room with Miss Emma and felt force radiating from her, heat. She talked sparingly about the past but feverishly of the present, never advising, always asking about you, discovering, disclosing. Her look silently said that she knew more about your life than you knew yourself. Silent circumstances. I want to see her too. But we haven’t finished packing.

  That’s too bad.

  I wish I could.

  Yes, Montel said. She’ll be sorry. Hurt. But she’ll understand.

  Sheila smiled a genuine smile. Miss Emma’s house looks good. Always does.

  Sargent stays on top of things.

  I hate that Miss Emma ain’t here. Tell her that I said her house looks good.

  I will. You can always come visit. Nothing has changed. We want to see you. Don’t be a stranger. You have a reason to visit.

  Sheila rode the deep currents of Montel’s voice.

  And you be sure to send Porsha by here. Maybe she can motivate Gregory. He got the cutest daughter. Did I send you her picture?

  No.

  I’ll give you one before you leave. Remind me. Don’t let me forget. Her mother ain’t bout much … You tell Porsha to come on by here and see him.

  Yes. She needs somebody good in her life.

  Good? Good and broke. I can promise you that. All his money go into paying his car note. You see that fancy thing sitting out front there? Montel pointed. But maybe they would be good together. It happens.

  Wouldn that be something.

  Yes …

  Seeing Montel before her, sitting and feeling it all in Miss Emma’s house, Sheila lived the old life again, felt the old feelings, drawn by the new promise, driven, determined, energetic, expectant. She found day work and worked it, while Lula Mae exhausted her New Mexico savings and worked three times as hard to put and keep Sheila in the Catholic high school, her day carrying her from Memphis to Tupelo to Fulton and back to Memphis. After graduation, Montel went off to teachers college and Sheila followed Beulah North to the city. Her first Christmas in the city, she boxed some snow, wrapped it with ribbon and bow—web of excitement—to send Montel. See, the world really does get cold. Snow really does exist. Yes, it tastes like milk. I really am in the city, up North.

  I think about it all the time, Sheila said. A ghost of a chance. Invisible possibility. Moving back here.

  Believe me, Montel said. Memphis is nothing to move back to. We got the same problems here where you live. And West Memphis is even worse. They call it Lil City. Young people are crazy. Crazy. Changing change.

  Montel said what Sheila already knew. Her eyes were open to the world’s frightening changes. Even the blind couldn’t miss them. But saying made the knowledge immediate, acceptable. Helped ease her terminal homesickness. I’m gon buy me a suitcase. Leave this town. A voice she trusted telling her never to return.

  Maybe if I had stayed, she said. She sees it all before her now. Shapes only a foot away.

  48

  THE POLAROID INSTANT CAMERA hugged his eye. He shot the bare kitchen—no red metal table, no red metal chairs, no white stove, no white refrigerator—the bare bathroom, the bare living room, Lula Mae’s bare bedroom, Mr. Pulliam’s bare bedroom. He shot the front yard, now minus lawn furniture. He shot the pear, plum, and peach trees. He shot the backyard, the thin clothesline—wind filled trouser legs and blouse sleeves, blowed them about, whipped them light and dark—the railroad plank that flattened the backyard grass, and the bald grass-free space where the little house had been docked. He shot the back end of the house. He reloaded the camera. He shot a frontal view of the house. Shooting done, he arranged the fresh photographs like a chessboard. He had what he needed, unyellowing artifacts. He packed camera and artifacts in Mr. Pulliam’s canvas army duffel bag. Green force.

  SUITCASE IN HAND, he opened the chain-link fence—he did not close it behind him—and crossed the wooden railroad plank—swollen but firm, the belly of a sumo wrestler; splinters like prodigious hair—that offered safe passage over the grass-covered drainage ditch. He loaded the suitcase into the cab’s open trunk. Then he stood in the red gravel road—sun flowed down his arms, out his fingers, and arrowed through the tips to stab the earth—and took a final memory-absorbing survey. Miss Bee’s house across the road, her backyard once yellow with corn and chickens. Miss Witherspoon’s house on the corner on this side of the road, her backyard—flowers still in the summer wind; he could describe the colors and textures but knew none of the names—no further than a stone’s throw from Lula Mae’s front yard, next to where the pear trees grew. Lula Mae’s house itself. 1707 Monroe. West Memphis. Summer. The South.

  Go ask John Brown to carry us to town in that buggy of his, Lula Mae said. (She called any automobile a buggy.)

  Yes, ma’m.

  John Brown’s old blue pickup truck waited in the red gravel road. Animated by its own rhythm. Humming grunting popping farting mumbling across the Memph
is Bridge. John Brown leaning forward, arms bent around the huge steering wheel, the arcs of his tall knees pointing like mountains. The steering wheel moving between his raised knees. Lula Mae immobile beside him. You and Jesus in the open back, your feet hanging over and out the lowered door. Back-wheel boats churned a still black river—time fell off the great waterwheel but the ferry never moved—and steel stools spun smoke and talk before a wood counter in a steaming greasy spoon that served the best hamburger, something called a Hawaiian burger, and real soda from the fountain. And looking through the low-hanging bushes of the tree before the sidewalk, you could see John Brown’s rotting shell of a house. The sagging roofline. The worn porch steps like bad teeth. (One plank had rotted free.) The crooked mouth of porch. Peeling green paint, a shade darker than the uncut grass swamping the yard, as if the house were part of the very land itself, growing up from the earth.

  See the monkey? John Brown circled the length of his property, fingering every link of the chain fence, every blade of grass, every rough edge of tree. See the monkey? he said again, pointing up into the treetops. A few hairs on his skull, head and hair like a coconut shell. Gnarled arms like vines. The veins wormlike beneath his dirt-colored skin. You could hear ghosts inside him, warring for control.

  See the monkey? Boy, do you see the monkey?

  You saw birds wheeling above tall trees.

  Boy, do you see the monkey?

  You saw sun like fire in trees.

  Boy, you see the monkey?

  You saw treetops filtering shafts of light. No, sir.

  No, sir? No, sir? Course you see that monkey. There. John Brown stuck out a board-long finger.

  Where?

  There. John Brown shook his pointing finger for emphasis. Right there. Shakin his bare ass. Poppin it like a .45. Rattlin his hairy balls. Right there. Snappin rim shots wit his tail. Course you see him—

  You ran like speed itself to Lula Mae’s house.

  THE HOUSE CROWDED WITH GHOSTS. Some dead, some alive. The brightness of their sunken eyes. Forever hospitable, they offer familiar praise, extend the usual invitations. Words spin in his head, marbles in a bowl. His muscles unravel like spools of thread.