Rails Under My Back (71 page)

Maybe if I had stayed, she said. She sees it all before her now. Shapes only a foot away.

THE POLAROID INSTANT CAMERA hugged his eye. He shot the bare kitchen—no red metal table, no red metal chairs, no white stove, no white refrigerator—the bare bathroom, the bare living room, Lula Mae’s bare bedroom, Mr. Pulliam’s bare bedroom. He shot the front yard, now minus lawn furniture. He shot the pear, plum, and peach trees. He shot the backyard, the thin clothesline—wind filled trouser legs and blouse sleeves, blowed them about, whipped them light and dark—the railroad plank that flattened the backyard grass, and the bald grass-free space where the little house had been docked. He shot the back end of the house. He reloaded the camera. He shot a frontal view of the house. Shooting done, he arranged the fresh photographs like a chessboard. He had what he needed, unyellowing artifacts. He packed camera and artifacts in Mr. Pulliam’s canvas army duffel bag. Green force.

SUITCASE IN HAND, he opened the chain-link fence—he did not close it behind him—and crossed the wooden railroad plank—swollen but firm, the belly of a sumo wrestler; splinters like prodigious hair—that offered safe passage over the grass-covered drainage ditch. He loaded the suitcase into the cab’s open trunk. Then he stood in the red gravel road—sun flowed down his arms, out his fingers, and arrowed through the tips to stab the earth—and took a final memory-absorbing survey. Miss Bee’s house across the road, her backyard once yellow with corn and chickens. Miss Witherspoon’s house on the corner on this side of the road, her backyard—flowers still in the summer wind; he could describe the colors and textures but knew none of the names—no further than a stone’s throw from Lula Mae’s front yard, next to where the pear trees grew. Lula Mae’s house itself. 1707 Monroe. West Memphis. Summer. The South.

Go ask John Brown to carry us to town in that buggy of his, Lula Mae said. (She called any automobile a
buggy.
)

Yes, ma’m.

John Brown’s old blue pickup truck waited in the red gravel road.
Animated by its own rhythm. Humming grunting popping farting mumbling across the Memphis Bridge. John Brown leaning forward, arms bent around the huge steering wheel, the arcs of his tall knees pointing like mountains. The steering wheel moving between his raised knees. Lula Mae immobile beside him. You and Jesus in the open back, your feet hanging over and out the lowered door. Back-wheel boats churned a still black river—time fell off the great waterwheel but the ferry never moved—and steel stools spun smoke and talk before a wood counter in a steaming greasy spoon that served the best hamburger, something called a Hawaiian burger, and real soda from the fountain.
And looking through the low-hanging bushes of the tree before the sidewalk, you could see John Brown’s rotting shell of a house. The sagging roofline. The worn porch steps like bad teeth. (One plank had rotted free.) The crooked mouth of porch. Peeling green paint, a shade darker than the uncut grass swamping the yard, as if the house were part of the very land itself, growing up from the earth.

See the monkey? John Brown circled the length of his property, fingering every link of the chain fence, every blade of grass, every rough edge of tree. See the monkey? he said again, pointing up into the treetops. A few hairs on his skull, head and hair like a coconut shell. Gnarled arms like vines. The veins wormlike beneath his dirt-colored skin. You could hear ghosts inside him, warring for control.

See the monkey? Boy, do you see the monkey?

You saw birds wheeling above tall trees.

Boy, do you see the monkey?

You saw sun like fire in trees.

Boy, you see the monkey?

You saw treetops filtering shafts of light. No, sir.

No, sir? No, sir? Course you see that monkey. There. John Brown stuck out a board-long finger.

Where?

There. John Brown shook his pointing finger for emphasis. Right there. Shakin his bare ass. Poppin it like a .45. Rattlin his hairy balls. Right there. Snappin rim shots wit his tail. Course you see him—

You ran like speed itself to Lula Mae’s house.

THE HOUSE CROWDED WITH GHOSTS. Some dead, some alive. The brightness of their sunken eyes. Forever hospitable, they offer familiar praise, extend the usual invitations. Words spin in his head, marbles in a bowl. His muscles unravel like spools of thread.

Time whirling inside, he moved fast. The voices behind him. He entered the bathroom. Shut and locked the door. Sat Mr. Pulliam’s indestructible green army bag on the white sink. Words flew off to nothing. Came indistinguishable through the door. The bathroom offered white solitude. His pulse slowed. There was the small gas heater next to the tub. (Every room of his grandmother’s house had one.)
No flame. Flameless heat. The tile lit brown inside. Humming a soft smell.
The tub where Lula Mae demonstrated the proper method of washing the body.
Get a big washcloth. (The kind that could fold over your hand, floppy, like damp pizza crust.) Get it real soapy. Like this. And always use white soap cause it make the most suds. Fold your ends when you wash your face. Like this. Be sure to wash down there, wash your elephant snout. And dry off good. Be sure to dry your back off. Like this.
This small tub had once been large enough to hold both him and Jesus. Imagine that. For whatever reason, this thought, this fact, unnerved him, set him back.

The mirror held him in its still gaze. He studied his cool pose and expressionless mouth, the face he had brought to West Memphis and worn daily like a favorite hat. His skin pressed Lula Mae’s outline. Over the past few days, he thought and thinking remembered everything. Stored up memories and studied them now in the mirror. Dreamed his way through all shapes and solids, for they were a map to get back by. He dwindled to a wet point in himself.

He heard it moving, water that refused to be stopped. Water that dimmed his features.

You ready? Sheila said through the closed door. You got everything?

With air and motion his head began to clear. Sheila rubbed his knee and said soothing things. Night touched him through the open window. The bridge hung by threads in the darkness. The iron grid made the cab’s tires sing. Trawlers sparkled and winked on the water’s black surface. The invisible water spoke no secrets. Under blinking bridge lights, the Memphis River took back its older form, its original name. It went on the same way, never hurrying, never hesitating.

He became aware all at once, the thought became clear though it was both wordless and beyond words: His tears were selfish. He was crying not for Lula Mae but for himself. Not her death but what he had lost, what was forever beyond him now because she was gone.
Summer. Her house. Her yard. Her kerosene lamps. Her lil house. Her trees. Her red gravel road. Her railroad plank that covered the grass-choked drainage ditch. Her railroad plank that led you from the back porch to the lil house. This bridge. West Memphis. The South.
His tears were private, selfish, for him only. He would never cry again.

WHY YOU ALWAYS BE WEARIN RED?

Family stuff.

Which family? No Face the Thief speaks as if through an oxygen mask.

You wouldn’t understand.

No Face studies Jesus with his one blind patch and his one seeing eye, the eye rotating like the steering wheel beneath Jesus’s hand. His breathing fills the quiet spaces between the music. Then the eye spots a freak in bikini top and biker shorts, the sun oiling her skin. No Face rolls down the window. Leans his head out. Yo, bitch. Somebody got a big booty around here. The freak flicks her tongue at him, fast and dirty. Good goobly goo, he says.

Damn you stupid.

Hey, I’m like a squirrel tryin to get a nut.

Stupid.

I’m jus tryin to represent.

A retard.

Red Hook produces few gentlemen.

On they roll at the same unchanging speed. Each window of the red Jaguar alive with a frame of moving morning space. Many people wildly busy, coming and going. Vehicles stream like confetti. Tracks gleam. All the windows are eyes, watching in wait.

A strong sun pushes through the windshield, bright, burns through Jesus’s eyes. His hand reaches inside his red blazer pocket and caresses the .9, warm and black, a bird hidden in its nest. His joints ache with wandering. His desire prickling, irritating his eyes, nose, and throat like a seasonal allergy. Shoving him through streets. Days had passed, much like one another. Searching. The city’s rivers tilting into map shapes, reversing, evaporating. Days feeling the whole city around him. Flight-sense filling his nerves. Him at the wheel and No Face beside him, his copilot. A second shadow. No Face had refused to quit his side and Jesus had allowed his refusal. Fulfilling a promise, a prediction.
You said you gon put some weight in my pockets. You remember? You said that. You did.
No Face maintained a steady diet of oysters and hot sauce. Cried in his sleep; Jesus would slap him awake.

I like this suit, No Face says. It feels alive on my skin.

First thing this morning, Jesus had taken him to Jew Town—time to rename it; the Jews had made their money and moved on; slopes, Pakis, and A-rabs had moved in on hot curry wind; sat on high camel humps behind their cash registers; paid the winos a dollar to shovel up water buffalo shit steaming beneath the shade of (real? artificial?) palm trees—got his ear pierced with a diamond stud twin to Jesus’s own, bought him two new eye patches—white patch one day black patch the next: domino dots—and had him fitted for a fine ocean blue suit. Jesus could no longer stand to look at or smell the dirty warm-up gear, half-moons of sweat under the armpits. But No Face is like a child, the tailored suit jacket already wrinkled years beyond pressing.

Freeze wanna see you.

Freeze’s name fell on Jesus like a thunderclap.

Freeze?

Yeah.

When you speak to him?

I spoke to him.

Jesus now has to think the obvious: over the previous days Freeze had come to believe that Jesus was buying time or, worse, that he had failed in his mission. Empty, the mission had filled him like city wind. And he expanded from within, for Freeze had chosen him—truth to tell, it is not clear to him if either of them had made a choice; circumstances had chosen them, commanded them—faith in knowing he would never disappoint. And he felt the gathering, his moving toward, growing closer toward his terminal point, where choices of destination narrowed to one, and where all possible movements and gestures became a single definitive act. He smiles more now than he had in the year previous, though he knows that he has done nothing to earn joy. He will. Better days are coming. Never has he been so certain about anything. Certainty moves red through his body like lasers.

He spoke to me.

Okay, Jesus says. I heard you. Powerless. The world is made of stone: paper, water, wind, and flame can do nothing against it.

Let’s go.

You better not be lying.

Man, you don’t know me from Adam.

If you are … I got to find a garage where I can leave my car.

No you don’t.

You is stupid. You expect me to drive there? In
this.

He ain’t at Stonewall.

Where he at then?

He somewhere else. I’ll take you.

No Face navigates to the location quick and precise, the red lines in his eye like map routes.

You bring me way out here to the boonies?

This where he at.

Jesus watches him. He better be.

Man, you don’t know me from Adam.

An old red ambulance—white crosses on the doors—stretches long before the building, the silent siren like a half-buried missile in the roof. Jesus reads cursory letters printed in a glass arc above the door: Hundred Gates.

Are you sure this is it?

Damn, No Face says. Damn. He giggles uncontrollably, slobber flying everywhere, a dab catching the center of Jesus’s forehead. Jesus wipes it away. Makes a mental note to wash his contaminated hand at the first opportunity.

They rise in a whining elevator commanded by a uniformed attendant to a room free from the day’s heat.

Keylo hits No Face upside the head with his open hand, a loud and terrible blow.

Damn, Keylo. No Face rubs his head. Why you always be fuckin around?

Cause I want to, bitch. The straps of Keylo’s bomber helmet dangle about his face like girl pigtails. Who suit you steal?

Jesus hooked me up.

His face the color of a sweet potato, Keylo looks at Jesus.

We tight like that, No Face says.

Tight like yo mamma’s pussy, Keylo says.

Not as tight as you mamma’s.

Keylo jerks his shoulders in a threatening manner. No Face starts. Keylo laughs.

Nawl, No Face says. You ain’t scare me. I wasn’t scared.

Jesus. Freeze emerges out of the well-lit but somehow shadowless interior. Extends a welcoming hand. Jesus takes it forcefully and without hesitation. He and Freeze shake hands, businesslike, professional, nothing like niggas on the street.

Have a seat.

Thanks.

Jesus seats himself on a white leather sofa. Keylo shoves No Face onto the sofa next to Jesus. Sit next to yo daddy!

He yo daddy.

Least I know mine.

Me too.

The apartment shows both a female and a professional touch. Light colors, a deep white carpet, a bubbly fish aquarium, decorative paintings, vases, books, aesthetic furniture.

A woman comes out of the bathroom, holding a man’s shirt across her breasts. Something catches between Jesus’s nose and throat. She glances at him from the corner of her eye and quickens her steps. On the sly, he tries to see her ass beneath the shirttails as she disappears into another room.

How you makin out? Freeze to Jesus. Disappointment in his bearing, the line of mouth.

Fine.

Glad to hear it.

The woman returns fully dressed now. Thin braids sculptured in circles around her head. Gold door-knocker earrings. A sleeveless top. Excessive baby powder on her neck and bosom forms a white bib. Discreet shorts. She rushes forward, silver bracelets flashing, and hugs No Face like a close relative. Her bare shoulder blades rise like wings. She pulls back to take a full view of him. You look nice.