Rails Under My Back (42 page)

Suh, I said, beg pardon but there must be some misunderstanding.

Manfred came right out wit it, You can’t steal what ain’t yours!

The woogie look at him. Nigga, go hire you a lawyer.

WE LEAVE RAINS COUNTY with one hundred twenty-six dollars Whole Daddy had kept tied in a knotted rag and buried in an old barrel out in the barn. Wasn’t nothing to keep us in Rains County, make us wanna stay. Shake the tree and see what falls from the branches. Sides, niggas talk. (Don’t we?) In the city, the fire hydrants full of wine and all the grass green onions and there taters neath the sidewalks. Mighta gone to Library if we knew how to get there.

Had to steal away durin day cause the white folks guard the railroad at night. Guess them white folks thought rightly no nigga stupid nough to leave in broad daylight. Broad or narrow, me and Manfred git.

Packed everything I owned into a grip. I wuz lookin good the day I left Rains County. Never will forget. A duster.

A duster?

High dicer.

High dicer?

A derby. Lil hot fo the summer. Frock coat. Vest. Paper collar. Watch chain all shined. And my brother was lookin good, too. (Folks took us fo twins, only he was taller.) Straw hat. Spats and high boots polished with Bixby’s Best Blacking.

If I live nother hundred years, I ain’t gon forget that railroad station. Station house no bigger than a toolshed and this lil ole red-faced woogie in striped overalls, like a convict or somebody on the gang, wheezin behin these three lil rusty iron bars wit his red face stuck in a piece of window. You can tell he think he high dukey there behind his window. One of those real nasty woogies, the salt that make the cracker.

How yall? he say.

Fine.

A good day fo travelin.

Yes indeed.

Two tickets fo two niggas, Manfred said.

I stomped on his foot.

That woogie’s eyes snapped out of his face, like red whips. Niggas?

That’s right, Manfred said.

We don’t low no white niggas in this here county.

Yes, sah.

And we don’t low none to leave.

We won’t tell if you don’t, Manfred said. He winked at the woogie.

Boy, you need to school you some manners. The red-faced woogie take the money and slid the tickets under the bars.

Manfred had to have the final word. Make sure his money rang loud on the counter. Thank you, white folks, he said.

We wait fo the train on a piece of knobby plank they called a bench under the station porch. Then it come.

Inside Porsha, the story grew and grew. She could see it, the locomotive puffing short blasts of black smoke that held, lingered in her memory, then grew, a long black plant.

I stand there and watched the moving walls of that train as it come rushin in and past, fast as a flood.

A few woogies get off and yawn and stretch.

We want the Jim Crow car, Manfred say. See, Whole Daddy had told us many stories about travelin woogies. Nasty. Spittin in the aisles.

Son, you know we don’t low that.

If I’m payin, I’m nigga.

Suit yoself.

So we board at the noon whistle. Ride in the Jim Crow car. Niggas give us a curious eye, tryin to pretend like they ain’t lookin. We right up front near the engine. Cinders jus fly right in through the window.

She faced him in light where red was missing. Shadows of dreams passed along his forehead, clouds over water.
So you fled across a black land similar and same to the black land that birthed you. The train rushed on. And your heart raced to keep pace. You leaning to the window, watching the fleeing countryside, the tracks hill-rising and valley-plunging, and your heart leaning into your chest, trying to flee your tight skin.

But that car was dandy. Real dandy. Red carpet. Lamps glintin on the ceiling. Leather seats soft like a pretty lady’s skin. This shiny-buttoned porter bawling out the stations. And the woogie conductor wit his shiny ticket puncher.

We stop to water the engine.

Water?

That’s right. Just like a horse. They ran on steam. (Live and learn.) And we go on.

That train snort and burp and cough and fart and ginny and shake. And the walls shove you and the ceiling shovel you on top of the head and people camped and cramped bout and the flo rollin this way and that spillin people into yo lap this minute and out the next.

Damn, Manfred, I say. Move over.

What? I ain’t on you.

See, I ain’t never been on a train befo. Wasn’t like no horse or no wagon or nothing else. That locomotion get in yo stomach and it spin round and round and round. I had no eyes, no ears, no nose, jus a mouth. Next thing I know, I spilled all over my brother’s shoes.

Yuck.
Disgusting,
she thought, not saying it.

Christ! Manfred said. Christ! Jus like that. Jumping back like it was hot water.

He hand me his initialed handkerchief. (Aunt T had stitched us both one.) I wipe my mouth.

Christ! he say. What bout my shoes?

I get my handkerchief. Clean his shoes. Then I throw both hankies under his seat. The train wuz still movin but I felt better. And the train started to slow down.

Then the train slowing down but your heart still rushing. Yes, the train slowing into town. And your body a gathering of tremendous effort. Cause this you must do and it can’t wait. A sea of faces white-waiting on the platform. Like hot stones, they draw the water from your body. Something breaks and rushes away.

I felt worse again. All I could do to dam my bowels and keep it from running down my leg. I tell Manfred, I gon get off.

What? he say.

I can’t stand it.

You seasick again?

Do fat ladies eat?

We proceed. See, the conductor said. That’s what yall get fo niggerin.

I was so glad to feel land again. But standin there on that platform, I feel something else too. Red eyes on me. Feel like a fish in a bowl and I’m hopin these woogies don’t kick the bowl over.

Manfred, you get back on the train. I’ll catch the next one.

Couldn’t you go on a boat? she asked.

Nigga, you crazy? Think I’m gon leave you here?

Why didn’t you go on the boat? she said.

You know what’ll happen if these woogies discover us? Better one than both. I’ll find you.

Yall should have rode a boat.

Know how many colored folks in that city?

I’ll find you.

So we talk like that, him fussin and me fussin. Manfred knew what I knew. Life don’t sit still. It may wait a minute. So when time come to get back on that train, he get on. He ain’t look back. And I ain’t seen him since.

Where was you?

Mobile.

Mobile, Alabama? She could find it on any map.

No. The other Mobile.

Oh.

I get me a room in a boardinghouse. Live regular wit the woogies. Every now and then, a wonderin eye peep you, but the mouth say nothing. If somebody woulda asked, I woulda told. That’s how I am. Always was, always will be.

Well, I got me a job workin on this bridge. Know how to build a bridge?

No, Pappa Simmons.

Well, you got to build both ends at once. It meets in the middle. Building backwards.

Why?

Ask me if I’m an engineer. Well, I ain’t. I jus knows it meets in the middle. Building backwards. Well, I eat cheap and sleep cheap and save my money.

When we finished the bridge, I get me a job hauling sugar sacks at the process factory. I work and save. I bought me a brand-new Model T with cold hard cash. A man has to get around. My barking Model T scared all the dogs. And all the woogies laugh. Ernest, what you got there? they say. An automobile? You think worse than a nigga. Soon, they come beggin me fo a ride. I oblige. Charge them a nickel to ride in it.

So I ride and work, ride to work, work to ride. Well it went like that fo months and years.

Then the Broad River Baptist Association held their annual picnic. I ain’t never been to the church. Like I say, I ain’t big on church. The Scriptures got mo religion. I pray. God, kill all the woogies but leave all the niggas. But I figured I’d go to this here picnic.

Why?

I was gettin on in years.

I don’t under …

How you today, white folks? All the niggas look at me. This here a Jim Crow picnic, they say.

I’m Jim Crow, I say. You see, I had let them believe what they believe.

Well, fix you a plate.

I joined in the hospitality. I saw this girl, sitting out under the chinaberry tree, legs stretched out white and stockinged. Eatin an apple. Takin lil polite bird bites. She was a small woman. Small. Bird bones. If you glance her with the tip of yo elbow she snap right in two.

Porsha thought about it. Mamma remembered his wife, Georgiana, as a sickly woman with olive-colored hair. (Pappa Simmons rarely mentioned her, the name trembling on his lips, rattling the cage of his flesh.)

Yes, distant stovewood am good stovewood. Her all dolled up in a choir robe with gold sash. Didn know that in a few weeks we become a divine institution. I’d been waitin fo the right gal to come along. Nothing should be plucked until it’s ripe.

I joined her under the tree. We talked. I invited her for a walk in the trackless forest. Then I took her rowing on the lake.

Come sundown, I drove her home in my Model T. We screamed above the barking engine. Simple as that.

If you want to catch you a gal, give her something nice occasionally to wear, and praise her up to the skies whenever she has anything tolerably decent.

When the woogies see me in town wit this girl, they knows I was a nigga. Mobile ain’t but neigh big. Everybody got one foot in they do and one in yours.

Come morning, I’m fired. (Each day begins wit a lesson and ends wit a lesson.)

I had worked my way up to foreman. I worked my people hard and ain’t tolerate no nonsense. Mr. Simmons, they say, he mean as the devil. I try to teach em to work and save, work and save, work and save. Don’t spend every fool penny.

Boss man say, Ernest, you a good worker and bout the best foman I ever had. And I ain’t got nothin gainst niggas. But—

I understand, suh, I said.

Here yo pay, and here yo half-day. I know you wouldn want me to give you mo.

No, suh.

And Ernest?

Yes, suh?

Good luck. A nigga need all the luck he can git.

GEORGIANA WAS A LAZYBONES. Her mother and father let her do nothing but sit around all day. Watch them work. Lazybones. And many a time I talk to her something fierce to get her to lift a light finger. A man should never strike a woman. Rather trespass on an angel.

Wasn’t but two things a nigga could do in that town, wash or field. Unless you was a preacher, but the town already had one.

Did yall share—

By and by, befo you could blink good, Georgiana swell up and start to totin her belly round. We work, bear a child, work. Cept them woogies never pay you what you earn. Georgiana pray. I complain. Pray. Complain. Ain’t much else you could do. Then the night riders—

Night riders?

—mail me a letter.
Nigra, you act like you don’t know who running the show.
They wrong. I know.

That’s when I decide to come North, train or no train. Locomotion or no locomotion. We took what money we had and some we didn—I earned, see, saved; I earned and saved—took and stole away in the night.

How old was Inez?

I don’t member exactly but she was jus a girl. No older than you.

Inez often spoke about the three of them crowded into their first apartment, on South Park (later renamed King Drive after the beloved doctor-reverend). A kitchenette—
railroad flat,
she called it—heated by lumps of coal that warmed the iron potbelly stove. She taught Pappa Simmons to read by the stove’s light.

But I thought you said Page taught all his niggas to read? If he did, then Whole Daddy surely learned and shared.

Why’d you come
here
?

Cause we followed the train and the train followed the bridge over the river and the river ran all the way to Cairo.

In Kankakee County?

Yes. We stopped in Cairo to change trains. You could go east or west or north. I asked the conductor, What’s the nearest city? He told me, Take that train, the one going north. We did. We here.

But Inez said—

I don’t care what Inez said. I tell you without lie.

EARLY AFTERNOON. The sky had already died from red fire to ash gray. Gray sidewalks, tar patches in the asphalt, vacant lots sparkling with old glass. Inez and George lived here in Morgan Park—far south, past Woodlawn, past South Shore—a two-hour train ride from North Park. Porsha strolled along the brick sidewalk with cold sun on her head.

She found Pappa Simmons palely asleep in his favorite talking chair. Pale but also on the edge of color. The red he had pined for, so many years—how many? it took her several minutes to count that number on her fingers—in reaching distance. She summoned George. He look funny, she told him.

George listened for his pulse, checked his heartbeat.

FRAGRANT COOKING brought Porsha to Inez’s bosom, a white welcome table, again and again. Inez, you got any of that applesauce? I’ll take four biscuits, please. Did you make more? Yes, cherry preserves. Inez, can you cook me one of those hamburgers? You ought to go in business.
Now Inez can cook, Pappa Simmons said. She learned from the best, but she can’t hold a match to the best. But apples up here ain’t nothin like the ones we had back home. And the meat don’t taste live.
To indulge in these culinary delights, Porsha marked the fourteenth day—why the fourteenth? the day after unlucky thirteen? she liked even numbers? the halfway point of the month? (well, that would be fifteen, or even sixteen) or perhaps it took the first two weeks of each new month for her to channel enough strength to weather Inez’s storm of pessimism?—of each month in her datebook. In this way she could remember to visit Inez. Then Inez started to forget. She forgot her recipes. She forgot the day of the week. She forgot all that happened the day before. She forgot your name. She mistook you for Mamma, insisting that Mamma’s aging face was masked behind your fresh skin.