Rails Under My Back (75 page)

Jesus was saturated with a soft feeling. He didn’t believe.

What the P stand for? Birdleg tested them.

P for people.

P for power.

P for peace.

P for prayer.

P for pussy.

P for punk.

Words disappeared in the sheen of sunlight.

Okay, pussy, punk. Better not let no Disciples hear you say that. They ain’t as nice as me.

Hatch and Abu sat picture-still. Silent.

Who you represent? Birdleg blinked.

What? Jesus said.

Who you represent?

Well …

What bout you, Hatch?

…

Abu?

Damn, yall don’t represent?

Friends.

Forks.

Persons.

Stupid. It’s People and Folks. I’m People.

Then I’m People too, Jesus said.

I’m Folks, Hatch said.

Yeah, I’m Folks. Me and Hatch. Folks.

YOU KNOW KEYLO? Jesus asked. He remembered the name from the TV news.

From Red Hook?

Yeah.

Keylo. Big hat, no cattle.

What?

Stupid. He ain’t shit.

How you know?

Stupid, he didn’t even whack the raper man who sexed with his sister.

Ain’t what? The green earth stole Jesus’s words.

Now Fort changed the nigga that stomped on his sister.

He had a sister?

Yeah. She married this nigga. He made her stay in the house all the time.

Used to invite his friends over and beat her up in front of them.

Damn.

Then he threw the baby food out the window. Then threw the baby. Fort threw him.

Damn.

What happen to the sister?

She jumped off the buildin.

Damn.

My buildin.

Damn.

Buildin A.

Damn.

My buildin.

Why she do that?

Why you think?

Damn.

And Fort shot the raper man who sexed with Hightop’s sister.

What? But they—

Was enemies. Yeah, they was. But she was his cousin too.

What? Jesus said. What?

Whose cousin? Hatch said. She was whose cousin?

Yo mamma’s, Abu said.

Yo greasy grandma.

Chill. Birdleg’s glue-white eyes sealed lips. Listen and learn.

But they was enemies, Jesus said.

Who was enemies?

Yo mamma.

Stupid. She was his cousin. Cause this one time, Hightop’s father, who was
his
uncle, he slapped his daughter who was Hightop’s sister, he slapped her fo stayin out all night, and Fort happened to be there and Fort, he slapped him to the ground. Fort be like, Don’t disrespect yo daughter.

The sun stroked a place deep under Jesus’s heart and put all of his feelings to sleep. What Hightop do?

Shot Fort in the chest. Right here. Birdleg patted his heart.

Man.

Dag, he ain’t have to do that.

Fort ran to the park. He took a ball of milkweed and stopped the wound.

The words poured into Jesus’s ears.

Stopped?

Yeah, stopped?

Next day, Fort cut up Hightop. Hightop came stumbling back to Red Hook with his guts in his hands.

Jesus pictured tangled fishing wire. Barking dogs and anxious rats. Why he do it? he asked.

Stupid. Why you think?

They enemies.

Who enemies?

The raper man and Fort.

What happened?

Stupid, this raper man sexed with Keylo’s sister and he let it happen and ain’t do nothing.

Damn.

The coroner, he be like, Hightop died of natural causes cause he got changed by a natural man.

Aw, nigga, Hatch said. That’s corny.

Yeah. Natural. That’s corny.

Natural, Jesus thought. Like a ‘Fro.

Stupid. Yall corny. Yall weak, like Keylo.

Ain’t what I heard, Jesus said. He changed a Roman with a long extension.

Yeah, he changed one, but he ain’t do it wit no long extension.

How he do it then?

He threw a bathtub on him. Pushed it from the roof of Buildin C.

Damn.

Now, Fort was my nigga. Birdleg’s eyes were big and wild and eyes reached a place in Jesus where the tongue could not. Fort changed this one Roman with a long demonstration. Changed this other Roman with a Jap chop.

Uncle John know karate. Learned it in the army.

He my uncle too.

No he ain’t.

He is too. He said so.

No he didn’t.

Jesus ignored Abu and Hatch’s exchange. Hung to Birdleg’s last words. How he do that?

Fort chopped and chopped. Birdleg mimicked the motion with the edge of his hand. And he kept chopping and chopping and chopping. Man, he sliced that pig up like a loaf of bread.

Hatch and Abu squealed laughs. Jesus sat silent, waiting for the words to return, continue.

Yeah, cut that nigga like a deck of cards. Then he shuffled and shuffled and shuffled that nigga.

Man.

Jesus remembered. Fort and Flight Lesson were partners.

What?

Shut up, Jesus.

Stupid. He’s right. Yeah. They grew up together in Stonewall.

How come you don’t know him?
Cause Birdleg showed you the alley with the fence behind the Stadium where you could see Flight Lesson and the other game-tall niggas lean into their low fancy cars. Where you shouted for an autograph but they couldn’t hear your little shouts, mosquito buzzes to their giant ears.

Am I supposed to know him? See, Fort—

Birdleg waited for the song to melt away. You know the rest.

Jesus remembered the TV news. How Fort studded the teeth of his women with diamonds. Built an opera house on Wells Street.

What happened to Fort?

He dead.

Birdleg, I know that, Jesus said. Why he dead?

Romans shot him up.

That’s right, Jesus thought, mind working.

Fort knew the Romans was after him. Think he cared? He walked around with his chest stuck out.

Like a shield, Jesus thought. A shield ready to bounce some bullets.

He went into the crib and waited. Number 111. Waited. The Romans told him to come out. Think he cared? He just laid back in the bed with his hands behind his head.

A confetti of bullets preceded the confetti of the parade on Wells Street. The sky filled with white birds, slow-falling wiggly sperm.

Yeah, Jesus said. He remembered. Found so many holes in him the undertaker thought it was buckshot. Nawl, the undertaker thought somebody had stabbed the muddafudda wit an ice pick.

Man.

Damn.

They buried that nigga in a gold Cadillac, Jesus said.

Nawl, Birdleg said.

Did too. Jesus remembered the news.

Gold-trimmed. And it weren’t no real Cadillac. It only shaped like a Caddy.

Damn.

Yeah. Damn.

What happened at the funeral? Jesus drew up images from the well of his memory, dripping, wet, and blurred.

Everybody in Stonewall went to the funeral. Caribe Funeral Home. Everybody and they mamma and they grandmamma. A whole bunch of niggas squeezed in. Birdleg spread his arms wide. Almost knocked over the coffin. All the bitches—

Don’t call them bitches, Hatch said. My sister Porsha say women ain’t—

—in black miniskirts and fishnet stockings, crying, wetting up Fort’s pink silk shirt. Them bitches went home and filled up they bathtubs with they tears. They bone was gone.

Man.

Damn.

Jesus let Birdleg’s voice seep into ears. The words sank into him, spreading out, massaging his chest. He saw tears reddening the bitches’ soft-talking eyes.

They buried him out there at Woodlawn Cemetery.

I know where that is, Jesus said. Knowing but not knowing why he knew.

Pushed him in the dirt. Then them bitches watered his seed with they tears. But Fort—Birdleg raised his shoulders like two pyramids for emphasis—that nigga, he remember everything.

BIRDLEG ANGLED HIS CANE POLE over his shoulders, guided them through blood-drawing thorns to the Tongue River. (One of the city’s twelve.) The four boys frog-filled the muddy riverbank.
It rained frogs in West Memphis. And snails. And sometimes snakes. Hatch screamed running crying and Lula Mae got the garden hoe and with a short quick downstroke chopped off the snake’s head clean and neat.
Bees buzzed overhead. Hatch and Jesus sat proud on the bank with rod and reel Inez and George had given them. The running river washed ocean waves. When the waves were still, Jesus could plainly see round rocks on the bottom, covered with red seaweed and looking as though they were floating close to the surface.

My daddy John like to fish.

Yeah? Birdleg said. He had bought a loaf of bread for bait.
John used worms and honey. Put you and Hatch in his boat-big car and drove to the Kankakee River. A silk line—glistening like spider spit—like the silk from his suit. Filling up basket after basket, stealing all the fish from the river. Cept the one time Dave came and poured E&J in the water and catfish and perch jumped up on the bank, burping and singing.
What he catch?

White perch.

Them taste good?

Yeah. The waves swelled, throwing shadowed patterns and refracted froth over the submerged red rocks. My grandmamma Honest—

Inez, Hatch said. Her name Inez.

—go fishin all the time.

Yeah? Birdleg said.

And me and Hatch used to fish down South, Jesus said. He could feel the river thunder. Feel blind subterranean fish, pulse and beat through smoky glass-water. West Memphis, he said. Two birds left a limb in the same instant. Circled the still air.

At our other grandmother’s house, Hatch said.

Lula Mae.

She my grandmother too, Abu said.

No she ain’t.

She is too.

The sun glowed on the stones, lit everything with color, drank up the water from the earth, played with the shining air that played with the leaves.

Birdleg, why they call it a bank?

Cause water is gold. A rich river flow into a lot of fields.

Birdleg, let’s go, Jesus said. Ain’t nothing biting. His line was motionless in the water.

Stupid, we only been here a few minutes.

So. Nigga, we sposed to be flying that kite.

Yeah, Abu said. He sat rubbing his hands and legs together like a fly.

That’s some pussy stuff, Birdleg said.

Nawl, I wanna fly that kite. Forget this fishin.

I got one, Hatch said. Invisible, a fish tugged his line below a small circle formed on the water, tugged, and the rod bowed like a wino’s head. Wind folded the grass into itself.

Uncle John can show us how to fly it, Abu said. He watched Jesus.

He ain’t yo uncle, Jesus said.

But I got one, Hatch said. Wind clawed the water.

Okay. We’ll go see your uncle.

But I got one.

Nobody like this fishing, Jesus said.

Damn, Birdleg. Do we have to walk?

Stupid. We gon take the train.

But I got one.

Yank it, Jesus said. So the hook catch in his mouth.

But we never take the train.
Cept when we coming to Stonewall, or leaving.

Who got some money?

Birdleg reached beneath his stomach. His hand emerged, shining coins.

Birdleg led you to the subway. The train penetrated you like wind.
One of those old trains. Green with a white roof. Not the new ones. Silver, blue, and red.
Tour guide, Birdleg pointed and gestured. Tanks used these tunnels in the last war.

For real?

Word.

You mean my Uncle John’s war?

Stupid.

The train slit the rail’s throat. The rails screamed. The train rocked, swaying commuters from side to side like church choir singers. Sewer-smelling wind ripped from the tunnel’s mouth and blew Jesus’s cap off.

My cap.

Leave it.

Birdleg, my cap.

Leave it. You gon crawl down there and get electrocuted?

Jesus looked at his cap red on the rails. That’s not the third rail. I can climb down and—

Leave it, Birdleg said. That’s where it’s
meant
to be. Didn’t it fly down there?

Emerged from the subway, clouds crawling over the sky. Hatch led them to the depot. The bus gathered its wings, and swooped them through streets—Places, more Places than streets in Eddyland—like a hawk. That cold wind off the river. That cold wind that liked to sneak into Gracie’s house on Liberty Island across the lake. Like a stork that knew the exact location of its delivery, the bus set them right before the Funky Four Corners Garage. Grime caked the car windows in the lot.

It was a strange establishment. An old Edsel perched on the very roof of the garage. The roof slanted inward with the pitch of the rafters—
like Lula Mae’s attic; Lula Mae carried a kerosene lamp in one hand while crawling like a fireman up the ladder to her attic
—and the Edsel slanted all the way forward, a brim on a nodding junky’s head, threatening to fall. Smelled like rubber from loops of fan belts hanging from the ceiling. Crowded with cases of motor oil stacked in front of the counter, coated with a film of dull oil, the desk behind the counter covered with yellow and pink slips of paper, and a red Coca-Cola machine that dropped bottled pop.

John looked up from his song, eyes slowly rising from the counter like a plane on takeoff. Slid over Jesus’s face like a searchlight. Well, he said. Well.

Hey, Uncle John.

Hey, Uncle John.

Hey.

Hey. John grinned. Yall thirsty?

Hell nawl, Hatch said. Looked at Jesus. Private joke.

Jesus smiled. Remembered car-crazy Ernie. In John’s Recovery Room, Ernie would slide a shot of gasoline to a parched customer. Ernie’s Special.

Uncle John, this Birdleg.

Birdleg? I heard a lot about you, Birdleg.

Birdleg showed his white teeth.