Rails Under My Back (6 page)

Yall come eat.

The family blasts into the dining room like an express train. Porsha directs them: Mamma, you sit here next to Dad. Aunt Gracie, you sit over there next to John.

Jesus grins it over, grins cause Sheila and Gracie are sisters, but you must keep them apart. Can’t stand each other. Always been that way, always will be.

And you boys sit down there.

Boy? Hatch says. Who you callin a boy?

Yeah, Jesus says. We men.

Seventeen ain’t grown, Porsha says.

Don’t start, Sheila says.

Dressed to the nines, as always, John removes his glasses, sets them next to his plate. He whispers something to Lucifer—
my uncle
—who nods in silent agreement. Two brothers, their hair spotted gray, strewn with ashes.

Aunt Gracie, why don’t you say grace?

Okay. You must realize that in the last days the times will be full of danger. Men will become utterly self-centered. They will be utterly lacking in gratitude. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

Prayers circulate around the table. Sheila says, Let the peace of Christ control in your heart and show thanks. Porsha says her say. In connection with everything give thanks. Lucifer, John, Hatch, and Jesus mumble in unison, Christ wept.

Let’s eat!

Jesus tears into his food, though the sleeves of his thick winter coat slow him somewhat. He watches the others as he eats, prickly aware of himself.

I was jus remembering something, Sheila says over the clatter of dishes. When Porsha was little, she couldn get enough of Jesus and Hatch. Feed them. Bathe them. Take them anywhere they wanna go. I tell you. Sheila smiles and shakes her head in memory and delight. She used to drape their wet diapers across the radiator. And bring them fresh cookies from school.

Oh, Mamma, Porsha says. Why you have to bring that up?

Cause I—

Sheila, ain’t you got this boy tied to yo apron strings?

John, I don’t see nothing on my apron.

Look again, cause the way I remember it, when Hatch there was a baby, he was always ridin yo hip.

As tired as I was. How he gon ride my hip?

You go to the grocery store and he ridin yo hip.

John.

You go to the Laundromat and he ridin yo hip.

Please.

Well, he rode it. Yeah, while you cleaned up yo house.

Dr. Shipco, Lucifer says, told me himself that Hatch rode her hip while she cleaned his house.

Dinner over, the family retires to the living room with two fifths of Crown Royal. The women take glasses and a bottle and retire to one corner. The men take the other bottle and another corner.

Give them boys a drink, John says.

Just one, Sheila says. One glass apiece.

What about Porsha? Hatch says. How come she can drink?

Porsha grown and livin in her own house, Sheila says.

But I’m livin in my own house, you say.

You ain’t grown, though.

Don’t worry, John whispers to Hatch. Got something for you. He slips Hatch a shapely paper bag. Don’t let the women see that.

Time passes.

Lucifer and John grow louder with each successive tip of the Crown Royal bottle.

Liquor-possessed words slip from John’s slack mouth. So me and some of the fellas at the dispatch tryin to start our own company.

Yeah.

We got the cabs. Most of the guys own theirs.

Still ain’t gon buy yours?

John laughs, a laugh that begins little on his lips but expands to swell his stomach and chest.

Still ain’t … Lucifer kills the words, staring at the laughing John with his heavy, stone-cold eyes, then uplifting the bottle and the weight dropping from the eyes, the mouth slacking into a smile, adding his laugh to the other. Jesus sees recognition in Lucifer’s face, his own features and nothing else.

Brother. John shakes one bottle then the other. We empty.

Can’t have that, Lucifer says.

Be back in a flash. John’s slow fingers fit his spectacles onto his face, the sidepieces creating viselike pressure at his temples, pressure that scrunches up his face, features distorted, pained. He quits the house for two fresh bottles of Crown Royal.

Boy, you sho is tall. Smile gone, Lucifer speaks with his torso craned forward, the widow’s peak at his forehead like a scorpion’s tail. Jesus knows what is coming. The liquor helps bring Lucifer’s true feelings to the surface. Where you get all that height? Lucifer says. And that red hair? Can’t be from John. No. Can’t be from my brother.

Come on, Hatch says. He tugs at Jesus’s elbow. Hot, Jesus refuses to move, soldered in place. Come on. Hatch tugs.

Jesus and Hatch move to the bamboo patio with the big movie screen of a window overlooking shrubs, kept green and square by any wino willin to do the job for the buck or two John paid. Green but hidden today behind curtains of slanting rain.

Where you get that jacket? Hatch says. It’s the hype.

Arms out, Jesus twirls like a ballerina so that Hatch may admire it. Red down (goose feathers that flutter when he walks) with a black leather circle centered in the back. From Jew Town.

The hype. I gotta get me one.

Cool. We should go down there. I’ll take you to the store.

They slide their food-heavy bodies onto the oak rocking chair, feeling the baked ham and turkey, the candied yams, buttered corn, the collard greens and string beans, apple and peach cobbler settle into their bellies. Hatch pulls a brown paper bag from his blazer pocket, unwraps it, a brick of Night Train, the lil somephun that John had promised, that John had sneaked in under his jacket. Hatch crumples the paper, returns it to his pocket. Breaks the cap and offers Jesus the first taste. Jesus tilts the bottle twice, taking two huge swallows, a musical gurgle of liquor in his throat. The wine’s heat spreads fanwise out from his stomach, filling his entire body. He passes Hatch the bottle. Hatch hits it, eyes closed. Passes it back to Jesus. So it goes. They share the wine while their legs pump the rocking chair in motion. The liquid spills forward in the upturned bottle. Jesus gulps. Hatch gulps. Gracie’s plants lean into the absent daylight. They drink in silence, only the rhythm of the rocking chair and their breathing indicating that they are not asleep. Drink, until the empty bottle glints beyond their reach.

Guess they think we sposed to sit there and watch them drink.

One drink.

Yeah.

One.

One.

Won’t even let us drink like a man.

Check it.

I mean she let Porsha … Jesus’s mouth seems swollen, the words too fat to escape through his lips. He reaches up to examine them. Fingers tell him what no mirror can reveal.

Hatch brings the empty bottle to his lips. Damn!

Jesus recognizes in the gentle, absentminded movements of his hand something like a familiar melody. You remember?

Remember? Remember what?

Jesus shakes his head. Hard falling rain turns him to the window. Later. I’m out.

Where you going?

Business.

Business?

Peace. His legs carry him quietly out the back door, away from the loud adult voices in the front room. He stares down the deserted street back of the house. Somewhere in the distance, the thick-throated whistle of a freight train. Wherever he turns, he breathes water, drinks air. He throws his head back into steaming rain. Wind-whipped water pokes needles into his face. Yellow streetlights pop on.

He jets to his red Jaguar. Melts into it. Sits a moment, his clothes slippery, puddling on the red leather seat. Beyond the glassed-and-metaled outsides, the rain falls light now, spaced, fine and fresh. He teases the engine into life, and it purrs like a zoo cat house. The liquid world dissolves under the wipers’ squeaky swath. Forms again, dissolves. He eases the car into the street. Works up speed. Streetlamps run in two straight lines. The g ride runs silk patterns in the rain. A rooster tail of water arcs behind.

The rain shuts off. He kills the wipers. The world looms close. A star-blanched night. The heavens wheel and march overhead. The road flies past in the cold glitter of the moon.

He poplocks out of the g ride into a wet, cold, shining world. The street shimmers and swims beneath the streetlamps. The rain has washed the air clean. He inhales deeply, savoring the taste. Pure breath.

Inside the store, he shakes off rain like a bird. His hands blunder upon the counter, shedding coins. He tries to pick them up, but they run and jump from his fingers. He feels the counter edge against his stomach. His hands return the last coins to his pocket.

The slant-eyed slope—gooks, John called them, gooks—opens his mouth in disbelief. Toothless. His gums loom red. A flame opens in Jesus’s stomach. Swells through his blood and makes all his muscles loose and warm. Something kicks him in the back of the head. The slope’s face spills into red dots.

YOU LOOK LIGHT, Jesus said. He surveyed the apartment. I’m gon help you change the weight of your pockets.

What you mean?

Change yo cents to centuries.

Huh?

Damn you stupid.

No Face looked blank, an empty gun.

We can hang.

No Face raised his head. Thought you said you don’t represent?

I don’t.

Then—

We can hang.

No Face fed on silence. Really? The eye watched Jesus in disbelief.

Yeah.

You jus sayin that.

Really.

Really?

Yeah.

And we can hang?

Yeah.

Really?

Straight up.

On the for real?

For real.

In one movement, No Face bounded out of his seat and dropped down like a shoe salesman before Jesus’s feet. Thank you.

Hey!

Thank you. His tongue dripped hot saliva on Jesus’s canvas kicks.

Just relax, Jesus said, feeling saliva seep through shoes, socks, between his toes.

Thank you.

Hey!

Thank you. No Face sat there panting at Jesus’s feet.

Hey! Stop actin like a lil bitch.

Still on his knees, No Face raised his head, eye and patch studying Jesus’s face. When we roll?

I should kick yo teeth out, Jesus said.

Sorry.

Damn.

When we roll?

We don’t, Jesus said.

What?

I’m at another level.

Tell me about it.

What’s to tell. It’s a twenty-four-seven thing.

What?

Nigga, get off yo knees.

He did.

Find a seat.

He did.

Kick back.

He did.

It’s like this. Everything you do parlays into the next day. All yo life. And that’s the jacket you got to wear. Forever.

No Face looked at him, face slack.

Forget it.

No Face watched with his single eye.

Forget it. Just relax. Kick back.

No Face put a big glass pipe on the table. Jesus couldn’t tell what it was shaped in imitation of, a trumpet, a rocket, or a dick.

Beam me up, Scotty.

Where your father? Jesus really wanted to know.

Ain’t you already asked me that?

Ask you again.

No Face looked at him. He gone to work.

Jesus took off his shoes and removed the hot, wet socks. He put the socks inside the shoes and placed them neatly in front of him.

Turn off the lights.

No Face did.

Now close the shades.

Why?

Jesus looked at him.

No Face rushed over to the shades, snapped them down one after the other. Know any stories? Word, I heard you can tell some good lies. Tell me one.

Tell you bout the time yo mamma sucked my dick.

Hey, can’t you stop talkin bout my mamma? Show me some respect.

Jesus didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he told a lie about the nigga who could catch his own farts, the only story he could remember at the moment. No Face laughed all the while, uncontrollably, twisting and shaking, slapping his knees.

Know any more?

Jesus thought about it. Should he tell one of John’s war stories?
See, West-side was tired of humping. So he shot himself in the foot. One problem. The
bullet ricocheted off his anklebone and hit him square in the forehead.
Wait, that was one of Lucifer’s stories. The one or two he told. John told this:
Water. We wanted water. Our feet was burnin after all that humpin. So we was beaucoup happy when we saw the resupply choppers flyin in. Beaucoup happy when we saw those choppers drop us down some buckets, some buckets of what we knew was some good cool water after a long thirsty hump. So we hurried up and opened one bucket and another and another. Fuck. Ice cream. Those lifers had brought us buckets of ice cream. Can you believe that? So we took off our boots and started stompin marchin in that ice cream. Humpin all over again.
No.

Come on.

I said I don’t know any mo. Damn.

No Face went silent.

Jesus blew the trumpet. It hissed. Light began to glow in his chest, particles of smoke creeping outward through his bloodstream, penetrating muscles and bones, washing his stomach hollow, his whole body slipping inside it, a pit where heat and light coiled around him, a nest of snakes.

He closed his eyes.

THE AIR CONDITIONER HUMMED like a speeding train, you snug in the bed under a winter blanket, staring at the ceiling, which seemed strangely close. You heard the creaking of Lula Mae’s sleeping bones from across the hall. Smelled her odor (Ben-Gay). Took stock of the day’s wrongs. Wrongs inside of wrongs, this onion that you peeled from one layer of stink to another, from one eye-watering sight to another. Each wrong deed joined like stones on a path.

Hatch?

What?

You sleep?

Sound like I’m sleep?

Lula Mae mean.

Yeah.

Real mean.

Yeah.

Let’s fix her.

How?

We gon walk home.

Kinda far, ain’t it?

A million miles.

Oh.

We can make it.

You sure?

Positive.

Okay.

You packed your bags, you and Hatch. Moved ghost-silent through the house, sensing the presence of the attic far above—the roof slanting inward with the pitch of the rafters. You unlocked the front door—it always stuck when you tried to open it; the rusty hinges were informants—and moved out into the black reaches of night. You stood on the front porch, where a yellow light burned—a swarm of insects—and saw a world in full bloom. The sky like a dark open flower. A full-eyed moon. The sound of covert crickets. And the short, discontinuous fire of lightning bugs.
When they hold they breath, Hatch said, they fire come on. When they blow it out, they fire go off.
Heat.
Yes, even the nights were hot in West Memphis. Dark forgot its connection to cool.
You waded out into the night, waded, then dolphin-leaped the fence, a red arc of light. Damn! Hatch said. He lifted the silver cuff that latched gate to post. You waded. Hands jammed in your pockets, head thrust forward, you scowled down the empty road. Stepped onto the red noisy gravel. Luggage dragged you to the corner. Dragged too by the pulley of a fresh act.