Time whirling inside, he moved fast. The voices behind him. He entered the bathroom. Shut and locked the door. Sat Mr. Pulliam’s indestructible green army bag on the white sink. Words flew off to nothing. Came indistinguishable through the door. The bathroom offered white solitude. His pulse slowed. There was the small gas heater next to the tub. (Every room of his grandmother’s house had one.) No flame. Flameless heat. The tile lit brown inside. Humming a soft smell. The tub where Lula Mae demonstrated the proper method of washing the body. Get a big washcloth. (The kind that could fold over your hand, floppy, like damp pizza crust.) Get it real soapy. Like this. And always use white soap cause it make the most suds. Fold your ends when you wash your face. Like this. Be sure to wash down there, wash your elephant snout. And dry off good. Be sure to dry your back off. Like this. This small tub had once been large enough to hold both him and Jesus. Imagine that. For whatever reason, this thought, this fact, unnerved him, set him back.
The mirror held him in its still gaze. He studied his cool pose and expressionless mouth, the face he had brought to West Memphis and worn daily like a favorite hat. His skin pressed Lula Mae’s outline. Over the past few days, he thought and thinking remembered everything. Stored up memories and studied them now in the mirror. Dreamed his way through all shapes and solids, for they were a map to get back by. He dwindled to a wet point in himself.
He heard it moving, water that refused to be stopped. Water that dimmed his features.
You ready? Sheila said through the closed door. You got everything?
With air and motion his head began to clear. Sheila rubbed his knee and said soothing things. Night touched him through the open window. The bridge hung by threads in the darkness. The iron grid made the cab’s tires sing. Trawlers sparkled and winked on the water’s black surface. The invisible water spoke no secrets. Under blinking bridge lights, the Memphis River took back its older form, its original name. It went on the same way, never hurrying, never hesitating.
He became aware all at once, the thought became clear though it was both wordless and beyond words: His tears were selfish. He was crying not for Lula Mae but for himself. Not her death but what he had lost, what was forever beyond him now because she was gone. Summer. Her house. Her yard. Her kerosene lamps. Her lil house. Her trees. Her red gravel road. Her railroad plank that covered the grass-choked drainage ditch. Her railroad plank that led you from the back porch to the lil house. This bridge. West Memphis. The South. His tears were private, selfish, for him only. He would never cry again.
Part Four
CITY
DREAM
49
WHY YOU ALWAYS BE WEARIN RED?
Family stuff.
Which family? No Face the Thief speaks as if through an oxygen mask.
You wouldn’t understand.
No Face studies Jesus with his one blind patch and his one seeing eye, the eye rotating like the steering wheel beneath Jesus’s hand. His breathing fills the quiet spaces between the music. Then the eye spots a freak in bikini top and biker shorts, the sun oiling her skin. No Face rolls down the window. Leans his head out. Yo, bitch. Somebody got a big booty around here. The freak flicks her tongue at him, fast and dirty. Good goobly goo, he says.
Damn you stupid.
Hey, I’m like a squirrel tryin to get a nut.
Stupid.
I’m jus tryin to represent.
A retard.
Red Hook produces few gentlemen.
On they roll at the same unchanging speed. Each window of the red Jaguar alive with a frame of moving morning space. Many people wildly busy, coming and going. Vehicles stream like confetti. Tracks gleam. All the windows are eyes, watching in wait.
A strong sun pushes through the windshield, bright, burns through Jesus’s eyes. His hand reaches inside his red blazer pocket and caresses the .9, warm and black, a bird hidden in its nest. His joints ache with wandering. His desire prickling, irritating his eyes, nose, and throat like a seasonal allergy. Shoving him through streets. Days had passed, much like one another. Searching. The city’s rivers tilting into map shapes, reversing, evaporating. Days feeling the whole city around him. Flight-sense filling his nerves. Him at the wheel and No Face beside him, his copilot. A second shadow. No Face had refused to quit his side and Jesus had allowed his refusal. Fulfilling a promise, a prediction. You said you gon put some weight in my pockets. You remember? You said that. You did. No Face maintained a steady diet of oysters and hot sauce. Cried in his sleep; Jesus would slap him awake.
I like this suit, No Face says. It feels alive on my skin.
First thing this morning, Jesus had taken him to Jew Town—time to rename it; the Jews had made their money and moved on; slopes, Pakis, and A-rabs had moved in on hot curry wind; sat on high camel humps behind their cash registers; paid the winos a dollar to shovel up water buffalo shit steaming beneath the shade of (real? artificial?) palm trees—got his ear pierced with a diamond stud twin to Jesus’s own, bought him two new eye patches—white patch one day black patch the next: domino dots—and had him fitted for a fine ocean blue suit. Jesus could no longer stand to look at or smell the dirty warm-up gear, half-moons of sweat under the armpits. But No Face is like a child, the tailored suit jacket already wrinkled years beyond pressing.
Freeze wanna see you.
Freeze’s name fell on Jesus like a thunderclap.
Freeze?
Yeah.
When you speak to him?
I spoke to him.
Jesus now has to think the obvious: over the previous days Freeze had come to believe that Jesus was buying time or, worse, that he had failed in his mission. Empty, the mission had filled him like city wind. And he expanded from within, for Freeze had chosen him—truth to tell, it is not clear to him if either of them had made a choice; circumstances had chosen them, commanded them—faith in knowing he would never disappoint. And he felt the gathering, his moving toward, growing closer toward his terminal point, where choices of destination narrowed to one, and where all possible movements and gestures became a single definitive act. He smiles more now than he had in the year previous, though he knows that he has done nothing to earn joy. He will. Better days are coming. Never has he been so certain about anything. Certainty moves red through his body like lasers.
He spoke to me.
Okay, Jesus says. I heard you. Powerless. The world is made of stone: paper, water, wind, and flame can do nothing against it.
Let’s go.
You better not be lying.
Man, you don’t know me from Adam.
If you are … I got to find a garage where I can leave my car.
No you don’t.
You is stupid. You expect me to drive there? In this.
He ain’t at Stonewall.
Where he at then?
He somewhere else. I’ll take you.
No Face navigates to the location quick and precise, the red lines in his eye like map routes.
You bring me way out here to the boonies?
This where he at.
Jesus watches him. He better be.
Man, you don’t know me from Adam.
An old red ambulance—white crosses on the doors—stretches long before the building, the silent siren like a half-buried missile in the roof. Jesus reads cursory letters printed in a glass arc above the door: Hundred Gates.
Are you sure this is it?
Damn, No Face says. Damn. He giggles uncontrollably, slobber flying everywhere, a dab catching the center of Jesus’s forehead. Jesus wipes it away. Makes a mental note to wash his contaminated hand at the first opportunity.
They rise in a whining elevator commanded by a uniformed attendant to a room free from the day’s heat.
Keylo hits No Face upside the head with his open hand, a loud and terrible blow.
Damn, Keylo. No Face rubs his head. Why you always be fuckin around?
Cause I want to, bitch. The straps of Keylo’s bomber helmet dangle about his face like gir
l pigtails. Who suit you steal?
Jesus hooked me up.
His face the color of a sweet potato, Keylo looks at Jesus.
We tight like that, No Face says.
Tight like yo mamma’s pussy, Keylo says.
Not as tight as you mamma’s.
Keylo jerks his shoulders in a threatening manner. No Face starts. Keylo laughs.
Nawl, No Face says. You ain’t scare me. I wasn’t scared.
Jesus. Freeze emerges out of the well-lit but somehow shadowless interior. Extends a welcoming hand. Jesus takes it forcefully and without hesitation. He and Freeze shake hands, businesslike, professional, nothing like niggas on the street.
Have a seat.
Thanks.
Jesus seats himself on a white leather sofa. Keylo shoves No Face onto the sofa next to Jesus. Sit next to yo daddy!
He yo daddy.
Least I know mine.
Me too.
The apartment shows both a female and a professional touch. Light colors, a deep white carpet, a bubbly fish aquarium, decorative paintings, vases, books, aesthetic furniture.
A woman comes out of the bathroom, holding a man’s shirt across her breasts. Something catches between Jesus’s nose and throat. She glances at him from the corner of her eye and quickens her steps. On the sly, he tries to see her ass beneath the shirttails as she disappears into another room.
How you makin out? Freeze to Jesus. Disappointment in his bearing, the line of mouth.
Fine.
Glad to hear it.
The woman returns fully dressed now. Thin braids sculptured in circles around her head. Gold door-knocker earrings. A sleeveless top. Excessive baby powder on her neck and bosom forms a white bib. Discreet shorts. She rushes forward, silver bracelets flashing, and hugs No Face like a close relative. Her bare shoulder blades rise like wings. She pulls back to take a full view of him. You look nice.
Yeah. No Face fingers his suit. Jesus hooked me up. He smiles at Jesus and she does too.
Hi, I’m Lady T, hand extended.
Jesus. Looking at the hand, barely touching it, avoiding her face.
Jesus—Freeze begins.
Oh, Jesus said, could I use your bathroom?
Without speaking, Freeze points with both hands like a runway signalman. Jesus rises from the couch and moves past Lady T. Their bodies casually touch.
Excuse me, he says.
She smiles a smile, polite or genuine he can’t tell which.
He pushes on to the bathroom, shuts the door behind him. Puts his ear to the closed door. Voices in the other room, the closed door muffling their meaning or the voices themselves deliberately low, secretive. The faucet rumbles, spills water into the clam-shaped basin. Dissolves the voices. He scrubs his hands with perfumed soap under warm water before a row of mirror that multiplies his red image. Leaves dirty residue. He pulls the stopper. The water drains quietly, dirty rings rotating, concentric fashion, circling, wheeling, whirling, pulling, drawing, force forcing him to feel their power …
He circles into the center of a conversation. Lady T is nowhere in sight.
No Face, what happened? Why you fuck up?
See—
Did you get hungry? Try to eat those rats?
See—
You musta tried to eat those rats. That’s why you fucked up the job.
The gat jammed.
What?
The gat jammed.
No it didn’t. You forgot to take off the safety.
No I didn’t.
Stupid bastard.
How you know?
Retard.
Keylo laughs and laughs. Jesus doesn’t think he will ever stop laughing. Mechanical hyena.
Jesus makes himself comfortable on the couch. Here now, here, and prepared for the clear mission.
So what you got good to tell me? Freeze says, white, Lula Mae’s color. Another day or two, Jesus says. At most. He clears his throat.
So what’s up then? Keylo says.
Broken words speed through Jesus’s mind.
You ain’t worried, are you? Homes, it’s easy. Keylo demonstrates. Like using a cigarette lighter.
Keylo, Freeze says. Go easy.
I coulda done it myself, Keylo says. Days ago.
Go easy. Jesus has his own way of doing things. Am I right? Freeze turns to Jesus. Puts the question in his face.
Yeah.
See, Keylo, like I said. He got his own way of doing things.
Keylo watches Jesus, bomber helmet straps in motion.
I’m here to help, Freeze says.
Thanks.
Don’t mention it … Anything I can do?
No.
You sure?
Yes.
Freeze studies Jesus in silence—Jesus does his best to look him in the eyes, not turn away, show the steel he has inside—bright light crawling like ants over his bald head. I got some information that I want to share with you.
Yeah, No Face says. Yeah. He laughs, slapping his body at the private joke.
Freeze shuts him up with one look. He returns to Jesus. Is that okay with you?
Yes.
Your family is back in town.
Jesus’s life flares backward.
Yeah, Keylo now. Saw them at the airport.
Freeze nods. No doubt.
The knowledge moves through Jesus’s body. There. Freeze had done it. Bound together the hour and the fleecy sky.
Your lucky day.
I jus wanted to tell you that.
Thanks.
Don’t be offended.
I’m not.
Look, I’m not tryin to push you or anything. I just want to speed up things, that’s all.
Thanks, Jesus says. Thanks. So they decided to return. The bird thieves. Lucifer and John.
Let’s just try to get this matter taken care of quickly.
I will.
Because, you know—
I will.
I’m glad to hear that. I took the trouble of getting you a car.
Yeah, Keylo says. Any fool know you ain’t sposed to use your own.
I tried to tell him that, No Face cuts in before Jesus can reply and defend himself. He don’t know me from Adam.
Keylo will drop the car off.
Where?
No Face laughed. Jesus took the laughter for a knowing answer.
And the keys?
Don’t worry … Well, I think that’s about everything.
Do it, Keylo says. Gather up your own.
Don’t worry, Freeze says. He will. He will.
He will, No Face says. He got me. He got me.
And yo mamma’s nasty draws.
Yo mamma’s.
YOU TRYIN TO MAKE ME LOOK BAD BACK THERE?
Nawl, No Face says. I wouldn do that.
So why you was talkin all that shit then?
What I say?
Jesus speaks in a mocking voice. I tried to tell him this. He got me. I ain’t gon let him fuck up.
I ain’t say that.
You did.
Man, you don’t know me from Adam.
Jesus says nothing. Feels red Jaguar motion.
We gon do this thing, No Face says.
No. I’m gon do it.
I’m with you. You know that.
Jesus says nothing.
You ready to do this?
Jesus lets the words pass in and out. Tell me about Lady T.
Lady T? You tryin to step to Freeze’s bitch? You want them big draws, huh? Man, don’t you know—
Jus tell me bout her.
No Face says nothing for a while. Breathes. That bitch had a rep. Word. Befo she start kickin it wit Freeze, she ain’t give no nigga no play. Straight up. She go to a club, see a nigga she like then take a jimmy hat out of her purse like this. No Face pulls a condom from his blazer pocket. She be like, You think you can handle it? Then she slam the jimmy down pow! No Face slams the condom down hard on the dashboard.
The steering wheel
jumps directionless under Jesus’s hand. Damn! Is you crazy?
Sorry.
I ought to beat you down for that.
Sorry, I was—
You one stupid motherfucker. Know that.
Sorry.
Jesus shakes his head. Lets motion take the anger from his body.
She got pregnant.
Freeze got her pregnant?
Nawl. One of them ‘Rabs.
An A-rab?
Yeah. She be fuckin em.
Jesus considers the likelihood of this. Can’t picture it. He rides the silence. Hears No Face’s whistling lungs. What happened to the baby?
What you think?
I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.
No Face laughs. Man, you don’t know me from Adam … Stay away from her. Word. She an intersexual.
How you know?
I know.
YOU WANT TO GET DIPPED?
All the time.
Jesus opens a full bottle of his best and pours No Face glass after glass. It doesn’t take long.
I’m higher than a motherfucka, No Face says.
I can see that. His skin is actually glowing with moonshine.
Jesus puts him to bed the moment he dozes off. His snoring mouth roars ocean, screams wind. Jesus removes his suit and shoes, covers him, and tucks him in.
HIS CITY REFLEXES, cunning, direct (tell, instruct) him to park his red Jaguar on a shady side street five blocks from Hundred Gates. He heads for the building, afternoon sun staggering along behind him. A truck’s motor snarls somewhere and he wobbles. Calms himself. Continues. He feels Hundred Gates before he sees it. The building rises to him—it looks much larger than before, larger than it should—across yards of trees. High above the sharp roof corners birds wheel in a sky yellow and even. The old red ambulance is no longer parked out front. A good sign.
He melts ghost-fashion into fine glass and brick, vanishing. He isn’t two steps inside when he pulls a deck of bills from his wallet and offers them to the uniformed doorman with a knowing smile. He rides up in the elevator confident that he has taken all the proper precautions, covered his tracks. The quiet hall fills him with quiet inside. He loses it all the moment Lady T opens the door.
Oh, is Freeze … is Freeze here? It comes out less than calmly.
Nawl.
Rails Under My Back Page 55