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Rails Under My Back

Page 56

by Jeffery Renard Allen

Ah, um, when will he be back?

  Lady T studies him—her eyes forcing nervous motion on his body—for a long time, as long as she pleases, a stone configuration. I don’t know. You can wait. She pulls the door wide enough for him to enter.

  Thanks. He enters the apartment with a tight turn and stands with back against the wall, stiff rods holding him in place.

  Have a seat.

  Thanks.

  He sits down on the couch and unbuttons his blazer so he can move. You got a nice place here.

  Everybody say that.

  He tries to force his tense face to smile.

  Can I get you something?

  No, thanks. I’m straight.

  You sure?

  Yeah.

  You thirsty?

  A little.

  Lady T gives him a glass of water made from honey. Thanks. He holds the drained glass out to her.

  You welcome. Jus sit it on the table. Here. She positions a coaster near him on the marble coffee table. He places the empty glass squarely down on the coaster. Legs crossed on the love seat, she watches him from the other side of the table. Her eyes pry him away from a lifetime of certainty.

  That’s a nice suit, she says.

  Thanks.

  Nice color. (His usual red.)

  Thanks.

  Different.

  Thanks.

  She watches him. You bald as a stone.

  Thanks. Saying it but unsure in the saying.

  Is that all you know how to say, thanks?

  What you want me to say?

  You don’t know how to talk to a woman? Beneath the T-shirt, her breasts move deep and full.

  What makes you think that?

  Lady T says nothing, visibly annoyed. The white baby powder has disappeared (evaporated? blew away?) from her neck and shoulders since he last saw her an hour or so ago.

  What time do you expect him? Jesus studies the slim curve of her waist. I ain’t.

  Well, Jesus says. Well …

  You ain’t got to leave. Chill for a while.

  Thanks.

  She sighs. Ugh. Thanks.

  Sorry … So, how did you meet him?

  The same way most people meet.

  What is it that you like about him?

  I don’t know. Why do you like me?

  The words rub hot against Jesus’s skin. You seem like a nice person.

  I am.

  I mean it.

  I do too.

  Jesus doesn’t know what to say.

  You know why?

  Why?

  Cause I’m from the old school.

  What school is that?

  I stay home and protects mine. Back in the day, you had to stay home and keep it together while the man be out there kickin up dust. Now we be out there too. That’s why things be the way they be. Fucked up.

  Jesus thinks about it. It’s like this, he says, what you do one day parlays into the next.

  Lady T watches him: understanding, agreeing, admiring, confused, annoyed—he can’t tell.

  You have your own way of saying things.

  I do. Factual, not boastful, but pleased that she finds him pleasing.

  I heard about you.

  Me?

  You. You famous.

  Jesus grins. Pokes out his chest. I maintain.

  Lady T smiles.

  I heard about you too.

  Oh yeah. What did you hear?

  Without a thought, Jesus tells all No Face had told him.

  You believe that?

  That’s what he said.

  If she sees something else in his face she ignores it. No Face is stupid.

  Yeah, I know.

  Stupid.

  You from here?

  No. Red Hook.

  Oh. Jesus doesn’t know what else to say.

  You ever been there? I’ll take you, she says before he can answer.

  Take him, as if to Paris, Rome, some faraway place.

  She taps his arm, a single detonation of touch. Let’s go.

  He rises and follows. Where?

  To Red Hook. I gotta show you something.

  Now?

  Yes.

  Oh, okay, he says, catching the drift. Show me something. So they would do it there, get mad busy. His safe sense shouts inside, tries to lock his feet. What about the car? She expect you to drive it to the jets? You can’t drive no car like that to no jets. But why not show him at a quick and safe hotel? He wants to ask her. Can’t.

  Don’t worry about yo car. I know a good garage.

  TWO DOGS MEET, and a third. Lips curled, white fangs watering. They bark off after gray squirrel motion. The air is coming awake. The afternoon is drawing on. Human shapes flash in the streets. Lady T’s eyes move about without real interest on faces, faces nearly invisible in the hot haze. Twelve red buildings rise like missiles against the red summer horizon. Ash images of burned-out buildings and houses here and there. Red Hook. The world is made of stone: paper, water, wind, and flame can do nothing against it. Like Red Hook itself. Inevitable. Indestructible.

  Jesus moves heavy with omen. Unsure if he is safer with Lady T, a Red Hook homegirl, or more vulnerable. He doesn’t want to be here but can’t pull back. She speaks to no one. Heads straight for Building Six. He thinks he hears someone calling him through the cutting bitterness of the wind. Lady T’s sandaled feet kick garbage out of their path. Beer cans crushed into the shapes of women. Diapers like padded boxers’ helmets. Condoms like old, worn socks. He follows her inside the building, around one corner then another, down one hall and up a flight of stairs, through one door and out another. They edge through a rusted opening. Footsteps ring down metal stairs. Echo after them. They descend into darkness. (Her white blouse like a torch before him.) Travel down a long hall. He has to walk in a crouch, keep his head low. Smells bore through him: old storms and garbage, mildew and rot, sewage and fuel. This is the basement, he thinks. They are beneath Red Hook, all that life above. Trust leaves him. They could bury him down here, the world none the wiser.

  Do we have to do this? he says.

  Come on. It’s not far.

  They clamber up and over a ledge. Jibe left, right. Ascend level by level, story by story. The climb nearly chokes the breath out of him.

  Is this necessary? he says.

  Lady T laughs across the darkness.

  He follows at a run, accelerating down a sloping corridor. Unsure that he can find his way out if he were to turn back.

  Light finally. Light but no bulbs Jesus can see. A maze of plumbing, windowless walls, bright trash remains. Puddles where rats swim like fish. The farther they walk, the deeper, the thinner the air becomes. Ten miles high and rising. The thin air carries with it something else, something that cuts through all of what is tight inside. On they walk, the light forever changing. Light and air thread through him. Weave wish and weariness. He is actually enjoying it now, this journey, pleasure in each step. Adventure. He could stay here forever, wandering, opening doors.

  Now another turn, another hall. A double row of runway-like lights leading to a white square up ahead. Closer now, he sees that the square is actually a room, lighted space.

  In here, Lady T says.

  He complies before the words are fully out of her mouth. Bright light comes slamming in out of the darkness. Holds his eyes hostage. He shades them with both hands. Stands waiting, white waves. Rinse open. The room spangles aflame. He feels he is at the bottom of a new steel pot. Circular steel. Walls so smooth that they show twin reflections of him and Lady T.

  This is it, she says, twin voices of her, echoes.

  Damn, he says. Hearing himself say it again.

  The floor shines slick, clean, and bare. The walls flare and change colors like great curtains. His eyes slowly follow the walls up, the ceiling high above and almost lost in shadow. Stars blink in and out.

  Look, Lady T says. Her pointed finger directs him.

  Damn, he says.

  Directly in the center of
one wall, a circular cluster of TV screens, like a large eye pieced together with dozens of smaller eyes. Intimate images of people sleeping, eating, kissing, killing, getting juiced, pissing, shitting, fucking.

  Is it real? Jesus says.

  I guess so.

  Now each screen starts flickering images so quickly that vision blurs. It actually hurts to watch. Burns. Visual torture. Jesus turns his eyes away.

  Damn!

  It does that …

  A maze of levers, buttons, gauges, meters, dials, switchboards, keyboards, runs the length of the room. Amazed, Jesus walks over for a closer look.

  Don’t touch anything, Lady T says.

  I won’t. He pulls back, hands out, under-arrest fashion.

  What does it do?

  I don’t know. I ruined yo suit.

  Jesus examines his suit. Oh, that’s okay. He dusts off his sleeves and pant legs—yes, it is ruined—turns and notices that Lady T shows no sign of travel: no dirt, no sweat, no rubbing of tired muscles. Why you know bout this place?

  I found it a long time ago. Playin down here. When I was little.

  Why don’t they keep it locked up or something?

  Lady T says nothing.

  Sunlight comes in through small holes above, an iron grating in the rectangular shape of a window. Jesus can see shadows pass by. In the corner of his vision, he catches a flutter of red. He turns. It is gone.

  Lady T holds out a steaming pipe. Jesus can read patterns in the fire. He takes the hot pipe, pulls smoke into his lungs, holds it in, feels it travel through his body, then he blows it out, a dragon. This is the bomb, he says.

  I told you.

  The bomb. He passes her the steaming pipe. She takes it slowly, making sure that their fingers touch. Sucks light into it. They share it back and forth, weave a braid of black-red smoke between them. With each hit of the hot pipe, the world melts away.

  So is all that stuff true?

  What stuff?

  That No Face said.

  Well, what do you think? Ask yourself. You know me now.

  Do I?

  Don’t you?

  Their voices arc through silence and solitude.

  You should.

  Yeah. I should …

  Smoke carries their voices up into darkness. Jesus’s bright reflection in the walls blinds him with color. Brightness bounces up and down once or twice before it settles in. Jesus realizes that he has experienced this before. Deep steel space. The captured German submarine at the Museum of Science and Industry from his childhood. Black torpedoes cut through ocean like great fish. Depth charges explode in silent water and crush hollow metal.

  What about you? Lady T says. Is all that stuff about you true?

  Who told you?

  Everybody.

  What did they tell you? No, don’t tell me. You can believe it if you want.

  Light in Lady T’s hair like black doves. You want me to?

  Yeah.

  They walk and talk, enjoying the cycling of light and heat. Bounce into their own echoes. Light comes in from above and below at the same time so that they have two shadows. It is not clear if the light beneath his feet is true light or only reflected light from above.

  You ain’t scared of me no mo?

  No, Jesus says.

  When you first came to the apartment. I mean the second time, when you came back.

  You could tell?

  Lady T tightens up her body in imitation of Jesus. They share a good, long laugh.

  He cranes his neck and sees a rainbow high above on the edge of darkness.

  BIRDLEG RIP WE REMEMBER

  You’re easy to talk to, Lady T says.

  Oh yeah?

  Yeah.

  So you enjoy my company?

  Yes.

  Good. Good. He stares into the colorful blackness above, feels the emptiness surrounding him, touching him with gentle, careful strokes. He feels his body expand, swell, the same feeling he felt when his dizzy form bumped from wall to wall, reached for a doorknob that was not there, fell into hard space, and crawled out of his mother’s front door never to return, belled hope inside, free to begin again, to create himself.

  Tell me something, Lady T says, almost laughing the words.

  Tell you what?

  Tell me something good.

  Rainbow blinks color into Jesus’s eyes. Rainy, vision washes in and out. I’ll tell you about Birdleg. Images tumble downward through his head.

  Birdleg?

  Jesus nods. His finger points a straight line to the rainbow tattooed in steel flesh.

  Birdleg?

  He’s inside of me, Jesus says. Right here. He rolls up his red sleeve and holds out his forearm as if for an injection, allowing her to witness rail-like scars, running, waiting.

  Ugh.

  Yeah, I know. Nasty-lookin, ain’t it?

  She does not answer.

  Birdleg. He shuts his eyes. (So he loves the world, in darkness.) Calls all within. We remember. Red images flicker on his blind lids.

  FAST-CLICKING TRACKS. Air rushing in at steady rhythm. The glare of passing stations. Metal walls closing in, squeezed in somebody’s fist. The train curves through subway, tossing light then shadow. Explodes through the black tunnel, a fist shoved into a dark glove. Now, high above the expressway, zooming cars small beneath you. Spit you into light.

  Wells Street. Next to the river. (One of the city’s twelve.) Burned-out buildings and collapsing porches, rubble of ship frames and rusted pieces of rigging. An old black streetcar like a lost lump of coal, the streetcar that Birdleg said once ran the old trolley lines, then was converted into a restaurant, then a barbershop, then a health-food store, then this—junk. Hang a right. Brown water pooled before a red fire hydrant. Brown mud flowing from white diapers dumped in green grass. Seven sets of yellow brick buildings (grouped three to a set) rise like missiles above the horizon—nuclear bombs stored in the basements, Birdleg said. That’s why the jets look like filing cabinets. Cause they got nuclear bombs filed away in em—each set opening onto a concrete park, steel swings, monkey bars, and metal slides like great silver tongues, and a basketball rig or two like skeletal robots guarding over a court. Stonewall. The jets. Sun behind a blue curtain of sky, drawing this world in a net of light. Building A. Birdleg’s building. Birdleg formed an A by curling his index finger into the base of his thumb, an A missing one leg. We the Stonewall Aces, he said. Leaning on the corner of Wells Street, ready to fall like a drunk into the river. Let your sight curve with the river. Let it find Red Hook two miles or so upstream (downstream?). Stonewall’s red metal twin. Stonewall. Red Hook. The jets. End of the road, end of the road, end of the road for nigga trash.

  A swan-white sun floated radiant feathers down to the basketball court. You drove the ball to the hoop, only to let some nigga half yo size steal it from you, yes, snatch the pill from your hand and rob the pharmacy. This short nigga, guarding you, like white on a maggot, eating up the ball, forcing you to take shots. Flapping the wings of his arms, beating up a white blur of motion. Game point came before you knew it.

  The swan flapped its wings, rippling wind. The short nigga rode white wind. Dropped the ball like an egg in the basket.

  Damn, see the thread on that ball?

  Yeah. Nigga must think that’s his mamma’s sewin basket.

  Good game, homey, the short nigga said.

  Thanks, Hatch said.

  Thanks, Abu said, his fat titties bouncing better than he could bounce the ball.

  Right, Jesus said.

  Yo.

  Jesus saw a belly, pushing at and poking through spaces of the shimmering chain-link fence which divided the court and the sidewalk.

  Yo. Come here.

  Jesus headed straight for the belly.

  Jesus stopped before the fence and looked into the boy’s chalk eyes. He looked something like a Halloween pumpkin. Though he wasn’t orange enough. Sure, yellow, like the candlelight that illuminated pumpkin skin. A bana
na-colored nigga. Dark skin is not darkness. Nor is fair skin illumination. No, skin the color of Gracie’s weak Chinese tea. Speckled brown like a butterfly’s wing. Shiny as wax fruit. Knife-slit eyes. Hard and white like the river stones down South. Softened by sweat. Nigga must have a water fountain hidden beneath his bald head.

  Yo. Try putting a flick in yo wrist, the round-bellied boy said. You know, like a fag. The boy demonstrated, raised hand curled, a praying mantis. And shoot in an arc. Like this. You’ll never miss a free throw. Guaranteed.

  Chirped words blew straight at the nests of Jesus’s ears. He wanted to speak, but his own words stuck on his tongue.

  And why you run around like somebody short?

  What?

  Learn to use your height.

  Jesus felt the stabbing sunlight. Held up the basketball and watched his reflection, rippling, in shiny leather. One of those rare things that happen two or three times a summer. The ball gets stuck between the rim and the backboard and somebody has to unstick it. Get Jesus, cause he can jump up and punch and blacken both the moon’s eyes before he comes back down. Who you?

  Birdleg.

  Birdleg? I ain’t never seen you round here befo.

  I ain’t from round here.

  Where you from?

  Stonewall.

  Nigga, stop frontin.

  Do it look like I’m frontin?

  It didn’t. Birdleg’s eyes were chalk-white, and his words were whiter, scrawling themselves across Jesus’s chest. Learn to use your height. Stonewall. Jesus knew, Birdleg might know a thing or two about basketball since Stonewall was but blocks from the Stadium, where His Highness, Flight Lesson, the basketball king, flew and ruled. How you get here?

  I walked.

  Walked? Sounded crazy to Jesus, but anything was possible: Birdleg came from Stonewall.

  Stupid—

  The white ice of the word put a cold pick in Jesus’s heart.

  —walked. I gotta go.

  Wait. I wanna go.

  Birdleg began walking, wide-legged and slow, like a pregnant woman. Jesus watched him through the cone spaces of the fence.

  Hey—he shouted at Hatch and Abu. Come on.

  Where we going?

  Stonewall.

  Nigga, stop lyin.

  Yeah, Abu echoed, nigga, stop lyin.

  Come on.

  Hatch and Abu dragged their tired kicks from the court and followed. Birdleg’s kicks never touched a court. His white eyes watched from the sidelines. Walking was as physical as he ever got.

 

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