Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

Do we have to do this? he says.

Come on. It’s not far.

They clamber up and over a ledge. Jibe left, right. Ascend level by level, story by story. The climb nearly chokes the breath out of him.

Is this necessary? he says.

Lady T laughs across the darkness.

He follows at a run, accelerating down a sloping corridor. Unsure that he can find his way out if he were to turn back.

Light finally. Light but no bulbs Jesus can see. A maze of plumbing, windowless walls, bright trash remains. Puddles where rats swim like fish. The farther they walk, the deeper, the thinner the air becomes. Ten miles high and rising. The thin air carries with it something else, something that cuts through all of what is tight inside. On they walk, the light forever changing. Light and air thread through him. Weave wish and weariness. He is actually enjoying it now, this journey, pleasure in each step. Adventure. He could stay here forever, wandering, opening doors.

Now another turn, another hall. A double row of runway-like lights leading to a white square up ahead. Closer now, he sees that the square is actually a room, lighted space.

In here, Lady T says.

He complies before the words are fully out of her mouth. Bright light comes slamming in out of the darkness. Holds his eyes hostage. He shades them with both hands. Stands waiting, white waves. Rinse open. The room spangles aflame. He feels he is at the bottom of a new steel pot. Circular steel. Walls so smooth that they show twin reflections of him and Lady T.

This is it, she says, twin voices of her, echoes.

Damn, he says. Hearing himself say it again.

The floor shines slick, clean, and bare. The walls flare and change colors like great curtains. His eyes slowly follow the walls up, the ceiling high above and almost lost in shadow. Stars blink in and out.

Look, Lady T says. Her pointed finger directs him.

Damn, he says.

Directly in the center of one wall, a circular cluster of TV screens, like a large eye pieced together with dozens of smaller eyes. Intimate images of people sleeping, eating, kissing, killing, getting juiced, pissing, shitting, fucking.

Is it real ? Jesus says.

I guess so.

Now each screen starts flickering images so quickly that vision blurs. It actually hurts to watch. Burns. Visual torture. Jesus turns his eyes away.

Damn!

It does that …

A maze of levers, buttons, gauges, meters, dials, switchboards, keyboards, runs the length of the room. Amazed, Jesus walks over for a closer look.

Don’t touch anything, Lady T says.

I won’t. He pulls back, hands out, under-arrest fashion.

What does it do?

I don’t know. I ruined yo suit.

Jesus examines his suit. Oh, that’s okay. He dusts off his sleeves and pant legs — yes, it is ruined — turns and notices that Lady T shows no sign of travel: no dirt, no sweat, no rubbing of tired muscles. Why you know bout this place?

I found it a long time ago. Playin down here. When I was little.

Why don’t they keep it locked up or something?

Lady T says nothing.

Sunlight comes in through small holes above, an iron grating in the rectangular shape of a window. Jesus can see shadows pass by. In the corner of his vision, he catches a flutter of red. He turns. It is gone.

Lady T holds out a steaming pipe. Jesus can read patterns in the fire. He takes the hot pipe, pulls smoke into his lungs, holds it in, feels it travel through his body, then he blows it out, a dragon. This is the bomb, he says.

I told you.

The bomb. He passes her the steaming pipe. She takes it slowly, making sure that their fingers touch. Sucks light into it. They share it back and forth, weave a braid of black-red smoke between them. With each hit of the hot pipe, the world melts away.

So is all that stuff true?

What stuff?

That No Face said.

Well, what do you think? Ask yourself. You know me now.

Do I?

Don’t you?

Their voices arc through silence and solitude.

You should.

Yeah. I should …

Smoke carries their voices up into darkness. Jesus’s bright reflection in the walls blinds him with color. Brightness bounces up and down once or twice before it settles in. Jesus realizes that he has experienced this before. Deep steel space. The captured German submarine at the Museum of Science and Industry from his childhood. Black torpedoes cut through ocean like great fish. Depth charges explode in silent water and crush hollow metal.

What about you? Lady T says. Is all that stuff about you true?

Who told you?

Everybody.

What did they tell you? No, don’t tell me. You can believe it if you want.

Light in Lady T’s hair like black doves. You want me to?

Yeah.

They walk and talk, enjoying the cycling of light and heat. Bounce into their own echoes. Light comes in from above and below at the same time so that they have two shadows. It is not clear if the light beneath his feet is true light or only reflected light from above.

You ain’t scared of me no mo?

No, Jesus says.

When you first came to the apartment. I mean the second time, when you came back.

You could tell?

Lady T tightens up her body in imitation of Jesus. They share a good, long laugh.

He cranes his neck and sees a rainbow high above on the edge of darkness.

BIRDLEG RIP WE REMEMBER

You’re easy to talk to, Lady T says.

Oh yeah?

Yeah.

So you enjoy my company?

Yes.

Good. Good. He stares into the colorful blackness above, feels the emptiness surrounding him, touching him with gentle, careful strokes. He feels his body expand, swell, the same feeling he felt when his dizzy form bumped from wall to wall, reached for a doorknob that was not there, fell into hard space, and crawled out of his mother’s front door never to return, belled hope inside, free to begin again, to create himself.

Tell me something, Lady T says, almost laughing the words.

Tell you what?

Tell me something good.

Rainbow blinks color into Jesus’s eyes. Rainy, vision washes in and out. I’ll tell you about Birdleg. Images tumble downward through his head.

Birdleg?

Jesus nods. His finger points a straight line to the rainbow tattooed in steel flesh.

Birdleg?

He’s inside of me, Jesus says. Right here. He rolls up his red sleeve and holds out his forearm as if for an injection, allowing her to witness rail-like scars, running, waiting.

Ugh.

Yeah, I know. Nasty-lookin, ain’t it?

She does not answer.

Birdleg. He shuts his eyes. (So he loves the world, in darkness.) Calls all within. We remember. Red images flicker on his blind lids.

FAST-CLICKING TRACKS. Air rushing in at steady rhythm. The glare of passing stations. Metal walls closing in, squeezed in somebody’s fist. The train curves through subway, tossing light then shadow. Explodes through the black tunnel, a fist shoved into a dark glove. Now, high above the expressway, zooming cars small beneath you. Spit you into light.

Wells Street. Next to the river. (One of the city’s twelve.) Burned-out buildings and collapsing porches, rubble of ship frames and rusted pieces of rigging. An old black streetcar like a lost lump of coal, the streetcar that Birdleg said once ran the old trolley lines, then was converted into a restaurant, then a barbershop, then a health-food store, then this —junk. Hang a right. Brown water pooled before a red fire hydrant. Brown mud flowing from white diapers dumped in green grass. Seven sets of yellow brick buildings (grouped three to a set) rise like missiles above the horizon— nuclear bombs stored in the basements, Birdleg said. That’s why the jets look like filing cabinets. Cause they got nuclear bombs filed away in em —each set opening onto a concrete park, steel swings, monkey bars, and metal slides like great silver tongues, and a basketball rig or two like skeletal robots guarding over a court. Stonewall. The jets. Sun behind a blue curtain of sky, drawing this world in a net of light. Building A. Birdleg’s building. Birdleg formed an A by curling his index finger into the base of his thumb, an A missing one leg. We the Stonewall Aces, he said. Leaning on the corner of Wells Street, ready to fall like a drunk into the river. Let your sight curve with the river. Let it find Red Hook two miles or so upstream (downstream?). Stonewall’s red metal twin. Stonewall. Red Hook. The jets. End of the road, end of the road, end of the road for nigga trash.