Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

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.