Rails Under My Back (20 page)

A wind sucked the shops out and he breathed the smell of fried chicken, chitlins, candied yams, and greens. The horizon clicked, turned. Noise and light lowered. He thought he could hear the bright sound of the river.

The sun couldn’t reach Uncle John’s side of the street. The apartment was completely dark and Hatch could barely make out furniture in the shadows. One wall, squares of mirrors that multiplied the reflection of any who stepped through the front door. A plain black doormat, hard as a board beneath your feet. A blind television.

Hatch was pissed. Patience expired. The plan: Uncle John would quit work early—he drove a cab seven days, twelve hours a day minimum, from seven in the morning until seven at night; some weekends, Hatch helped him wax and polish the cab until it glowed like a UFO—and meet Hatch here by five-thirty. Here it is, damn near six and the concert start at seven. He probably chasin some woman. Puttin on dog. Or fuckin round wit Gracie. Fuckin Gracie.

Why’d you get married?

A dog don’t like a bone, Uncle John says, but he likes what’s in it.

Can’t understand why Uncle John continue to deal with her, put up with her ugly face and ways.
A married woman, Uncle John says, she the sweetest thing in the world.

Hatch was pissed. Yet one glance at Uncle John’s face made him forgive much. Canal Street had become the room so he hadn’t heard a door rusty on the hinges, the click of key in lock, song rolling in thick waves off tongue

Hatch.

Uncle John.

Sorry I’m late. Uncle John smiled. His eyes moved behind the spectacles, which magnified them and camouflaged his fatigue. Tiredness showed in his shoulders.

Hatch felt Uncle John’s smile in the muscles of his own. That’s okay.

Slow day. Uncle John approached, a certain stiffness in his walk, moving in rhythm to his thoughts. You know me and some of the guys at the dispatch tryin to start our own service. He snatched Hatch in close for a hug. They embraced in a room of melting walls. They were the same height.

Hatch drew back. Let’s go.

Give me a minute to wash up.

The concert start at seven.

I jus need a minute. See, we jus need some capital and—

What?

The cab service.

Oh. That’s all you talk about.

You got to put in the work if you want the rewards.

Them Jews gon give you some money?

Which Jews?

Gracie’s. Them people she work for. The Sterns.

No.

You ask em?

I ain’t waste my time. I got better fish to fry. In a single gesture, Uncle John shed his clothes. Hatch turned to the window.

Give me a minute.

Uncle John, where yo binoculars?

My binoculars?

Yeah.

What you need wit binoculars?

I want to watch Randy’s hands.

Who?

The nigga we going to see.

I thought you said he white. Hatch heard the bathroom door close. Heard the shower spill open. He imagined water rolling down Uncle John’s tired muscles and the muscles giving the water more speed and force. He could feel the water, feel it roll, feel it rise in his chest.

UNCLE JOHN’S SHINY YELLOW CAB was imprinted with a moving image of Hatch as he approached it. The sun made two white spots on Uncle John’s spectacles and blotted out his eyes. Uncle John seemed the focus of the day’s heat. It shone in his face, in his voice, his walk. He opened the back passenger door from the inside.
Company regulations: no passenger can sit in the front seat next to the driver.
Hatch ducked inside the car. As a child, he and Jesus would take turns peering over the steering wheel of Uncle John’s gold Park Avenue. Then Uncle John would take the wheel and spin them into the world.

Take us to Fun Town.

Yeah, Uncle John. I wanna ride the Ferris wheel.

You know why they invented the Ferris wheel?

Who? Why who
—

Nawl, why?

The army did it. They used it to elevate artillery spotters above the treetops.

For real?

For real.

Wow.

Uncle John pulled the cab away from the curb, down the thin black strip of street, a plane down a runway. Uncle John was the pilot, Hatch his copilot. The cab rode so smoothly that Hatch had no sense of a road under the tires, sled over snow. The sun followed at a distance. Above, clouds of many shapes drifted in the evening sky, hard and congealed the closer they were to the horizon, vaguer in outline higher up. Hatch held the binoculars carefully, for they were one of the few mementos Uncle John had brought back from his tour overseas.

The windshield stretched a veil hiding Hatch and John from the eyes of outsiders. Thick windows and the air conditioner’s hum blocked out the city’s natural night sounds. Uncle John sent the cab spinning around a corner—Hatch gripped the binoculars to keep them from sliding out of his lap—down a greased ramp; then one bounce, two bounces—the diving board stiffens—and the cab sprung out onto the expressway. Uncle John and Hatch rode through the bright hot spring evening. The buildings gave way to houses and the houses to cornfields. Countryside speckled with barns, silos, sheds, and shacks.

Are we headed to Decatur? We look like we headed to Decatur. Damn, Uncle John. We going the right way?

A shortcut.

John singing.

A shortcut?

Uncle John took I-54, increasing speed. Hatch, you a backseat driver now? I drive every day. Don’t you think I know how to go?

I just thought—Hatch saw his face framed in the rearview mirror, then fingered the dogtags Lucifer had given him years ago. Fingered them for assurance, to know they were there at his chest. Habit. Custom. New steel organs.

His face slid over to the window. Now he remembered. I-54. The expressway they always took to Camp Eon back in the Boy Scouts days. Steel mills. (Most of the city’s steel had come from here.) Yellow hard hats mushroomlike. The iron pulse of steady hammers. Showering sparks, an arc of red-hot tracers brightening night sky. Trolley tracks that ran to the mouth of Tar Lake. Bridges like hats above the lake, like upper and lower dentures that parted to permit a tongue-ship to enter the mouth-harbor. A mountainous ship held still on the waters. And in the distance, the low houses of Crownpin and Liberty Island.
And Gracie.
If you watched it long enough, the island would travel the length of your vision, float from one end of the horizon to the other.

Hatch heard bells. Baby-boot bells. Tinkle-tinkle. Round silver balls. The white ghost of Jesus’s baby boots kicked with the cab’s motion. Two white shoelaces flowed like milk streams from boots to rearview mirror. Whalelike, the back seat swallowed both him and Jesus, their eyes barely window level, excited, holding their breath. Then in Gracie’s kitchen, Jesus’s clumsy hand knocked a glass of milk off the table into Uncle John’s lap.

Uncle John rose from his seat and stood up, his chair falling backward.

Jesus blinked.

Boy, look at what you done. Uncle John’s hands, palms forward at his sides, as if displaying stigmata. He picked up Hatch’s glass of milk and poured it empty into Jesus’s lap. There, he said. See how that feel? That should teach you to think befo you make a mess.

Jesus did not move, his lap like a basin full of soapy water.

Elsa sure is fine, Uncle John said.

Thanks.

Mexican?

Nawl. I already told you. Puerto Rican. Mixed actually. Puerto Rican and—

Did you knock?

Hatch stirred in his seat. You know me, Uncle John.

Maybe I don’t. Did you knock?

Hatch said nothing.

Come on, you can tell me. Did you knock?

Nawl.

What? You didn’t knock?

Nawl. Not yet.

You crazy or something? Fine woman like that.

She—

It ain’t about her. If you fly right, you’ll never get anywhere.

Hatch scratched his chin.

Look, bitches are like cattle. Wherever you lead them, they will go.

Hatch thought about it.

You practice today?

Practice every day.

Good. God helps those who help themselves.

God?

Uncle John grinned. Hatch caught the joke. They looked at each other and laughed.

Women like musicians.

Hatch said nothing.

You can play music, you can play a body.

Rougher road now. The tires hummed, vibrated into the roots of Hatch’s teeth.

Music is sweet and everything good to eat.

How much rent they charge you on this cab?

A hundred a week.

Damn. You might as well buy a house.

Could buy the cab. But it’d be worn down in five years.

Damn. Bet Jews own the company.

Probably. Got some regular white trash frontin for them. You know them Jews.

Yeah, I know them. Hey, you used to hunt. Ain’t Hanukkah a duck call?

Uncle John chuckled. You real serious on them Jews. But I’ll tell you one thing, on the Jewish holidays I don’t make no money. When Jews don’t do no business, nobody does.

Yeah? I can believe that. Hatch thought about it. Uncle John gon make his money. Always has. Always will. Now Lucifer is serious. Strictly business. The wee bird satisfied with the crumb. But Uncle John. Hatch tested the binoculars. The world came pressing in upon him.

They reached the high road outside the city limits. Uncle John pulled the cab to the side of the road. Hatch exited, walked around the rear of the cab—two POW stickers on the fender, soldiers in silhouette—got back in the car, sat in the passenger seat next to Uncle John. There beside his uncle, he truly felt like a copilot.

They let you fly those stickers?

Ain’t said nothing yet. Maybe they ain’t notice.

That’s good. Yall bring back any contraband?

Just them rugs I gave Gracie. And them robes.
Gracie draped the robe over her shoulders. Blooming branches of embroidered silk and bright, soft dragons.
Spokesman got all kinds of shit though. He woulda brought back the whole damn country if it weren’t strapped down.

How’d they choose you for the job? I mean, how’d they choose you for the Hairtrigger Boys?

I shot this sapper from a tree. Bull’s-eye. The center of the forehead from a distance of four hundred yards.

Wow.

And at Fort Campbell, I’d done pretty good on the range.

Hatch watched the high sun, the last of a brassy day. He sat and watched and thought. Copilot.

You heard him before? Uncle John said.

Who?

Who? The silk you gonna see, that’s who.

Yeah. Well, I gotta coupla his albums. And he’s done a lot of music for war films. Bombs. Machine guns. Helicopters. You know, sound effects.

Oh yeah. Well, how come I ain’t never heard of him?

He ain’t rich and famous like Spin.

You know Spin. He gon make his market.

Jus like you, Uncle John.

Jus like me.

Hatch and Uncle John tossed the laugh between them.

Don’t you be banging your head against no walls.

What?

Ain’t that what they do at these concerts?

Uncle John, you got it all wrong.

I wasn’t born yesterday. Uncle John put his foot on the gas. The engine roared into life.

Nawl, you’ll be born tomorrow.

There it is. His voice slid beneath the engine’s growl and resurfaced. He was not wasting words tonight. A raw deal. He had gotten a raw deal. Inez. Gracie. John’s Recovery Room. The Funky Four Corners Garage. He had had his share of downfall. A raw deal. Such is your luck. Such you are called to see. And let it come rough or smooth, you must surely bear it. Uncle John had taken it all and was ready for more. Cabdrivers need razor-thin instincts, given the con artists, thieves, and gangstas who’d shoot you in the back of the head for fun. Alert observers whose survival depends upon knowing people, knowing exactly how much to give and how little to take.

Never pick up a pregnant woman. They think they don’t have to pay. Like it’s some honor to bring another crumb snatcher into the world.

They drove down the highway drowning in steamy evening sunlight, the shut windows vibrating from the air conditioner’s hum. Beneath the cool noise, Hatch thought he heard rings of laughter from surrounding cars. Uncle John kept one eye on the road and one on the speedometer, trying to keep the cab within the legal limit. The cab went on, smooth and swift, powerful. Uncle John’s palm light on the steering wheel, almost hovering above it, bird on a limb. The cab seemed to bring out the tenderness, fast but smooth, unlike the big old bullying Uncle John cars that elbowed other vehicles out of the lanes. Uncle John would whip the car in and out of traffic, bearing down upon other cars until they slewed aside with brakes squealing. He would shoot across intersections, speed up at the sight of a slow pedestrian, speed out of the city onto the highway, the engine screaming, the lights of the other cars falling fast behind, spinning in the distance, flying saucers.

How come you don’t drive the way you used to?

You get old, you slow down. I ain’t as quick. The reflexes. Uncle John flexed a wrist motion.

The sky turned, white light washing to the red of daybreak and sunset. The sun raced down the sky and the moon raced up. That suddenly. Fallen light lingered, the road lit as if by distant fires. Bright enough for Hatch to decipher silver letters:

Darkness dissolved the glare on Uncle John’s face. His eyes enlarged behind the spectacles. He clicked on the searching beams of the headlights. The streetlamps popped on one after another, a string of firecrackers. They rode in silence, wrist-deep in shadow, white lines caught in the headlights’ gleams.