Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

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.

Flyin home

Fly like a motherfucker

Flyin home

Fly

Flyin home

Fly like a motherfucker

I said, flyin —

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.

John held an oily cloth at his hip like a dishrag. Watched the boys. The Funky Four Corners, he said.

Nawl, Jesus wanted to say. Not the Funky Four Corners, John, Ernie, Spider, and old drunk-ass, dog-faced Dallas. That time John and Dave found Dallas asleep on the court, inside the rim, dunk-drunk. Five men, a basketball team, the Funky Five Corners. So call this garage the Funky Five Corners Minus One, Lucifer. Cause Lucifer didn’t want to have nothing to do with the garage. But he was there for the hunting trip. Remember? Ernie, Spider, Dallas, Spokesman, Lucifer, and John. A trip to celebrate the opening of the business. Remember? Spokesman’s idea. Brought back rabbit and deer from the weekend, but John sold them to the butcher cause neither Sheila nor Gracie knew how to cook them. Yes, John selling them to the butcher but saving two rabbit feet, one for you and one for Hatch. Yall stuffed them in yall pockets til John came through with his promise, gold neck chains where the feet could dangle, even run a little up and down your chest. A week later, the feet were too stanky to wear and Spokesman had to fumigate yall clothes. Don’t you know you just can’t give somebody dead feet like that? Spokesman said.

Nawl, Birdleg said. SA. The Stonewall Aces. He finger-flashed an A.

Okay, John said, amused. The Stonewall Aces.

What up, Uncle John?

In the garage proper, a car nested on the upper branch of a silver-colored, cylindrical, pneumatic dolly — black underside exposed. The dolly an axle. Spin that car round and round. A seal twirlin a beachball with its flippers. It was back there where Ernie had poured gasoline in a carburetor to fire up and test-run an engine— gin, that’s what they say he called it, a gasoline gin —and the engine had exploded in Ernie’s face. Ernie screamed his country whistle. A birdcall. The same whistle he used when he stood before Gracie’s door and yelled— Why can’t he use the doorbell like normal people? Gracie said —John! Yes, Ernie whistled, then carried his black face to the roof of the garage, felt his way inside the Edsel, slammed the door and locked it and locked all the other doors. John, Dallas, and Spider (and Lucifer?) banged on the window, but Ernie hammered his black face against the window again and again. Then the fireman came and red-axed the window. Too late.

Where Spokesman?

He at lunch.

He workin on that car? Hatch nodded to a car’s raised hood.

Yeah. Yall stay away from there. I don’t want nobody’s mother cryin all in my face if somebody gets hurt.

Ain’t nobody gon get hurt, Hatch said. We got this kite. He held it, wedge end pointed at the ceiling.

A kite? What yall lil niggas need wit a kite?

Can you show us how to fly it?

They insist, Birdleg said. He took a scab from his M&M box and popped it into his mouth. Chewed.

Jesus glared into the raised hood. Saw the open distributor cap. Like an intricate flower, the coils with thousands of turns leading to a handful of rubber-covered paths.

Mr. Birdleg, you can’t fly no kite?

Birdleg acted like he didn’t hear.

John shook his head. A bird in the hand is worth more than a bush.

Damn, Uncle John. Don’t start crackin on him.

DRY OAK LEAVES tangled in the grass. Jesus and Birdleg tugged at the flying string with everything they had.

Damn, Birdleg. You stuck it in the cloud.

No, Birdleg said. That’s where it wants to be. Didn’t it fly there?

It’s stuck. Jesus tugged at the string.

Go easy, John said. He watched the kite, his eyes liquid and golden brown.

Jesus tried to steady the spool of string.

Let it go where it want, Birdleg said, his breath tangled in Jesus’s face.

Damn, Birdleg.

Let it go where it want.

WORD?

Word.

Birdleg, huh?

Birdleg.

Hmm … So that’s who you represent?

Yep. From now til. The rail-like scars on his forearm disappeared into the tunnel of his shirtsleeve.

Interesting.

Yep.

Well …

Yep.

Well …

Excuse me?

Is that all?

Yep. Told and ain’t no mo to tell. Threw yo mamma down a wishing well.

She giggled. You’re funny.

I ain’t funny. Never been. Never will be.

You make me laugh.

Do I now?

Yep.

I’m glad.

Are you?

Yes.

She thought about it, watching him, inside him.

Jesus cleared his throat.

Interesting, she said.

Well, I try to keep it real.

I’m not talkin bout that. You. She raised up like a mannequin on a string. Me? An ax glint of light split his head in half. He could feel the silence.

Tell me something.

Yes?

She moves to put as much of their bodies in contact as she can.

HE CAN VIEW THINGS from a height. His view stretches to country distances. So he lies watching the rectangle of the high window, waiting for the glass to gray. Staring makes his eyes run.

He stares inside too, big lungs breathing in remembered sight, Lady T, magnifying her. He remembers. And more he remembers. He will say that he has seen her spoken words. He will say that she allowed him all the colors of her body. This he will say. He will also say that he had quit Lady T’s secret place to discover that little time had passed. A fall of hours.

His task looms before him. He will erase Lucifer from the earth and condemn him to the place of memory, then he will go back there, to the secret place — free, relieved of his chronic angers, cut off from the family, existing only for himself — retire, and give up the world.

Freeze had raised his final resolve into an airtight structure and driven Jesus inside. For years, Jesus had lain awake at night and breathed the colors of Lula Mae’s hair on the pillow. And for the length of this day, he heard Lucifer’s grave voice broadcasting from another world, dreamed Lucifer’s red widow’s peak, a blade so sharp it would surely wound, when he closed his eyes. Now Freeze had shown him how to circle back, circle inside his plagued sleep.

There floods on Jesus an extraordinary understanding. His blood flows through the bodies of forty-four generations. Whenever he looks at any family photograph, he sees replicas of himself, Hatch, Lucifer, and John. All from the same wet vine, the circular eye of God’s (or the devil’s) dick.