Rails Under My Back (58 page)

At the red-staring stoplight, she observed knucklelike roots that had pushed up through the concrete pavement but no tree. Flocks of vivid children threw bread at one another, their laughs and taunts fluttering up. The light blinked green.

She drove past the Wells Street Port with its railroad tracks extending onto docks where Tar Lake raged black waters. She was close now. Deathrow lived by himself—he had little to do with his family; long ago, he’d decided that they were guppies, eating their young—in a row house that was part of Red Hook but a good mile or more away from it.

Her wipers quit. The windshield cried with blind rain. She worked the switch. The wipers refused to function. She would have to exit the car, enter the rain, and manually set the wipers back in motion. Sighting out the passenger window, she swung car to curb and kept the engine running. Under a blind streetlamp, corner boys tried to float an old gym shoe on a puddle. And hooded boys (men?) moved lethargic, dreamlike, in the half-light of rain and street.

She stood away from the memory. Kept it at a distance. Ah, Deathrow. Deathrow.

The instructor cut his eyes toward her. His nostrils flared a little. Had she said it out loud? Or moved with the thinking of it? Deathrow.

EVEN THE SKY WAS DIRTY HERE, canvas-colored, a rough sun pasted to it. Used papers fluttered about, giant moths. The morning full of sirens, moving in waves, crashing and rising again. Stonewall and Red Hook ran the distance of the horizon. Gatewayed in his eyes. Sparkled like two big buckets cast down in the middle of South Lincoln. He walked with measured steps. Every few seconds, his head wheeled back over his shoulder. He raised his arms like wings. Sticky sweat beneath his shirt. Many a time he had placed himself into the hollow form of a chalk-white sidewalk tracing, space that defined South Lincoln nightly on the TV news. He was alone here.

South Lincoln was like another country, cut off and remote from the one on the rim. He knew. Before the Great Fire of 1871, locals called this strip of land, which ran west from Stonewall all the way east to Red Hook, Mud Europe. Poor white trash lived in low wooden houses on pole foundations that kindled into fire nightly. After the Great Fire, the city replaced them with brick town houses. Then the city tapped rail upon rail to form high-rises, a steel gift for veterans returning from the war. In a space of years, the once low shoebox houses had stretched to boot-tall projects.

A car rolled past and roared to a stop at the corner, turned, leaving behind the power of its sound. Red Hook rose up before him. A still red flower, sixteen buildings arranged petal-fashion. Wine-flushed niggas dogged a corner, leashed to a lamppost. Nerves went electric in his body.

What up, player?

What up, he said.

You straight?

I’m straight.

I got the best.

I’m straight.

Rock to you can’t stop. Make you wanna drop.

I’m straight.

Aw ight, player.

At the next corner, another group of niggas stood. Silent. Sunlight slipped inside the caves of their bowed hoods. Gleamed off bald heads. He concentrated on keeping his pace.

The project walls had the thickest bricks he’d seen. Bricks made of iron, not straw. He could feel wet heat inside them. They could withstand a bomb blast. A bomb could do no more than age the sidewalks, add some cracks.

Voices speeded in. Voices of red song, red song. Sound on skin. Sounds of skin. Noise closer upon him than his own clothes. A chicken scratch of words clawed at his eyes and ears. A charcoal dog barked from the wall. Building One. The white-painted 1 ran a rough pattern over rough brick, crayon smeared on wax paper.

He stood before a door, two slabs of steel, at the top of each a box of thick glass window covered with iron wire. The lock buzzed, sending fire through his body, and the slabs opened, light to the touch, inward like a church. He stepped into a vestibule of red tile walls and cereal-colored tile floors. Ripe heat. A man sat short like a ventriloquist’s dummy in the lap of a big wheelchair. Missing the lower halves of his legs. A second man sat next to him, his legs hidden under a metal block of desk. Wrinkles in his neck and face thicker than his mustache. A metal clipboard in reaching distance of his worm-wrinkled fingers. The fingers inched, crawled toward the clipboard.
This old motherfucker workin security?

That’s neither here nor there.

God was watching out for you. You were blessed.

Blessed hell. I wish he had killed me. In forty-five years, I ain’t slept more than two or three hours a night.

Hello. The words barely quit Hatch’s mouth.

What you want?

I’m—

You in the wrong place. This the senior citizens building.

I’m lookin for Mr. Pool Webb.

I said you in the wrong place.

If you’ll permit me.

You got a hearing problem?

No, sir. I’m looking for Webb. Mr. Pool Webb.

What?

Mr. Pool Webb.

Silence sounds in the slowness of the pause. Pool Webb?

Yeah.

Why?

He’s a friend of my father.

Who’s your father?

Lucifer Jones.

Who?

Lucifer Jones.

The man watched Hatch longer than Hatch cared to return the stare.

Go into the Community Center.

Where?

The Community Center. Round there. The man pointed.

Thanks. Do I need to sign in? Hatch gestured toward the clipboard.

Did I ask you to sign in?

THE COMMUNITY CENTER was a small round checker of a building centered in the massive grid of Red Hook. Hatch cracked the silence of the faraway metal door with the barefaced window. A desk beckoned to his immediate left.
Desk or table? Who can tell?
The room fluttered white. He heard it and saw it, a window raised on rusted strings. Four white wings veiled Hatch’s peeping eyes—had to peep (no fresh open sight), his pupils carrying the outside light inside. White doves.

Yall want this bread, yall better come get it. Damn if I’m gon chase you. The man held up two stubs of white bread. A gorilla head man with bear feet.
What kind of animal?
His body enveloped a leather chair in a shapeless mass of flabby flesh, a collapsed parachute. A black-tipped (rubber) brown (wood) cane slanted across his body, the curved head looping the circle of his lap. Hurry up, too. I gotta get back to the desk. The doves settled light onto the limbs of his thumbs. The man’s bowed head raised quickly, as if he’d been kicked in the chin. Yes, his eyes had caught the shadow of Hatch’s approaching shoes.

What you want? The voice thundered. The birds fluttered into white flight. You must be in the wrong place. This the Community Center. His eyes watched Hatch. Strained vision. Red overworked vessels. And yellow, possible jaundice. But more than red and yellow. Two globes of color. Dyed eggs.

You Pool Webb?

Yeah. Who you?

Aw, my name Hatch.

Who?

Hatch. Hatch Jones.

Don’t believe I know you.

I come here about Lucifer.

Lucifer?

Lucifer Jones. You know, Blue Demons.

The man watched.

The basketball team.

What?

Blue Demons basketball team.

Oh, the team.

Lucifer coach—

Oh, Lucifer. Pool Webb smiled in recognition. Lucifer Jones. He extended his hand. Hatch accepted it, amazed at the tension of energy coursing beneath the skin, a secret torrent that bore no relation to the flabby torso, the rubber-band legs in crisp, pressed trousers.
Does he press them? With those hands?
Ain’t heard from him in a while. How is he?

He fine.

He some kin to you?

Well, he my Uncle John’s brother.

What?

John Jones. He my uncle.

Webb watched, questioning eyes.

Lucifer my father.

Oh, I see. So you want to join the basketball team?

No. I don’t care much for sports.

Just visitin?

I guess. I heard a lot about you.

From Lucifer?

Hatch nodded his head.

He sho is a quiet one. Get more words out of one of these birds. And they ain’t even parrots.

Hatch’s face closed. He warmed to the joke, outer sun radiating upward from his inner belly. He released a delayed, high-pitched laugh.

I didn’t even know he had a son.

Hatch said nothing.

How is he anyway?

Fine, I guess.
You already asked me that.

That’s good. He know we got a game Saturday.

I don’t know if he know.

Bread-free, bird-free, Pool Webb rested his hands on the half-loop of his cane handle. Look, I gotta get back to the desk. Webb bowed forward—resting his full weight on the cane—kneeled, a sprinter preparing to drop low on his hips and haunches. The cane’s black rubber foot pressed into the carpet. The wood shaft vibrated. Hatch thought he heard it hum. He extended an arm to assist Webb, but the arm wouldn’t reach. Webb rose to full height.
He same size as me; maybe a little taller; can’t tell with those legs.
Sit down right here.

Hatch dropped into Webb’s still-warm leather seat.

I be off in fifteen minutes. Want some bread?

What?

Some bread. To feed them birds.

No, that’s okay.

Pool Webb guided his cane, his knees projecting away from one another as if they were scared to touch. Yes, the O of his knees and bandied legs made him stoop and roll when he walked. His thick head bowed, watching his long arms and big fists. Hatch thought he heard a knuckle or two scrape the concrete. Hatch thought what he hated to think.
Pool Webb look like a gorilla.

A NOISY VACUUM OF ELEVATOR sucked them in. Inner steel, cold, silver, and surgical. The doors banged shut. The elevator lurched into motion.
The spirit of gravity, Spokesman said, dancing, floating, freedom above things.
The vacuum sucked at Hatch’s insides. Sucked out the butterflies. The elevator worked in pain. Breaking pain that gave a final push to open the doors.

Hatch followed slow Webb patiently down the hall.
Should I help him?
Webb pulled noisy keys from his pocket on a loop of steel chain and unlocked all three locks. The chain pulled the keys back into the darkness of his pocket. He pushed the door open and Hatch followed him in. Don’t let the door slam, Webb said.

Hatch caught the heavy steel door. Closed it quietly. Locked all three locks.

The apartment was more window than wall. Four wide boxes—
yes, not picture windows cause they were more square than rectangle
—that filled the green-gray space with dust-flecked light and polished the furniture with sky-sharpened shine. A single space of room opening into other rooms. Webb’s bed—puffed pillows and ruffled sheets, waiting—held parallel to a concrete veranda. And beyond the veranda, Tar Lake in the distance.

Nice veranda.

You mean the terrace. We all got that overhang. The senior citizens. In a slow, stooping motion, Mr. Pool Webb rolled across the room in round gorilla movements. Make yourself comfortable. You at home.

Thanks.

Pool sat down on the bed. Pulled off his slacks. Heavyweight boxer shorts over bantamweight skinny legs. The carpet was a black sticky swamp. Hatch guarded his steps. Pulled back the aluminum kitchen chair—parallel to the wall, parallel to the veranda—and sat down. A garden colored the veranda—
terrace, it’s a terrace
—rows and rows of plants in rusted coffee cans. Tomatoes, collard greens, and peppers.

Wait a minute. Sit in one of those wood chairs there. They hold your weight.

Hatch did as instructed. A portable radio, a deck of playing cards, bottles of hot sauce and ketchup, a container of laxative, and a pencil or two were neatly arranged on the wide windowsill. Hatch saw other buildings, dead-white, stained by bird shit. So they gave you a hard time?

Hell yes. That was my last job. Worked there seventeen years.

I see.

Superintendent at Red Hook. Sixteen buildings. Ninety-six hundred families. Nine thousand and six hundred. Hundred thirty-four men worked under me. Custodians. But I couldn’t take all that pressure. Told the doctor, I can’t work no mo. He gon tell me I can. Fuck that. See my legs?

Hatch couldn’t miss them.

I got rubber veins here and here. Webb pointed out long lengths of scars, yellow lines running up (and down) the brown skin of each leg. From when I had a stroke. And that doctor talkin bout I could still work. Fuck that. I told him, See if I work.

SO HOW YOU LIKE SOUTH LINCOLN?

I can live with it.

Is it as bad as they say it is? I mean, South Lincoln?

Just like anyplace else. You got yo bad spots.

And Red Hook?

We got more security here, in the senior citizens building. Now Buildin Six, down on Federal. Webb shook his head. I wouldn live there for free. And Buildin Nine on Wells. Couldn’t pay me to live there. They snuff you in a minute.

Damn.

But a lot of these young guys in South Lincoln just plain stupid. Smalltime. If you can make corn whiskey, fix up a still in the backyard. That way you can bribe the sheriff. But if you cook it on the stove …

Hatch nodded. Make sense to me. It really did.

Yes, I seen a lot of shit in my day.

Centered on the dresser, a photograph of Pool Webb’s son? grandson?—a fat-faced boy about Hatch’s age—and daughter? granddaughter?—probably younger—equally healthy in the face.
This a eatin family.
And his grandchild—so Hatch assumed—with a black-skinned, white-bearded, and red-costumed Santa Claus.

Those yo grandkids?

No, that’s my son and daughter.

Hatch saw a young, uniformed Webb—his sly eyes and mean pouted mouth—posed with a comely woman with a haughty face.

That your wife? She look West Indian.

Wife? Nawl. That’s my mamma.

Hatch chanced a second look at the photograph. Yes, the heavy face, one sign of the aged, the same heavy face that Pool also bore.

She from Tennessee just like me.

I see.

Me and my mother used to have a helluva time. I called her Sister. Sister and I go get drunk. We come home. She clean the kitchen before going to bed.