Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

His new understanding does nothing to lessen his rage. He closes his eyes. Remembers the future that will forever erase his past. Knows that his red will put him on the map, red lines red places. Large, out there: a red astronaut cut free from his ship, enough oxygen only for himself, floating in blackness.

THE SKY SEEMS CLOSE TO THE BUSHES. A sharp sickle moon. Red at the edges. Lights spill outward into the streets. Ghosts scuttle along in bone light.

What you do while I was sleep?

A little of this, a little of that. He moves through the night streets, his mind a pile of furious red shards.

No Face leads him to the car with prophetic certainty. A brougham, long and shiny red, smoke-tinted windows. He kicks the engine into life. We gon do this tonight?

No doubt.

How?

Elementary.

Surveyed locations from recent days go ripping by in the night.

We gon do this like Brutus, No Face says, belly-laughing the words, hardly able to contain himself. In the dark, Jesus catches glimpses of his face, his insane committed eye. Soon he will have what he wants more than anything else.

It seems the most intimate moment he has ever known. He can see back through the years, far back to a time that might have been the beginning of what he was feeling now. Everything now seems disconnected from what he had done before and what he will do after.

My style is tricky, No Face says, like spelling Mississippi. Ceremonially, he guides the brougham — the air conditioner full blast on this hot night — Jesus beside him with his.9, locked deep in concentration. Surprised at his skill at the wheel.

Darkness at the edges of broken shapes. Jesus lets instinct guide him. Faith. I thought I saw him, he says. His first glimpse of the red ruling target. And this he says: Circle back.

They circle back.

His heart grows hot against him. He searches the streets for the hidden shape he knows is there. Envisions the events to follow.

A red shape flickers across his path. That’s him.

Where?

Right there.

Where?

Right there. The words fly from his mouth, magnetic, migratory.

That don’t look like—

How you know what he look like?

Man, you don’t know—

Circle back.

They circle back. No Face slows the brougham so that Jesus can jump out with the car still in motion, the gun like a heavy bird in his hands.

Do it. Put some head out. Peel his cap back.

Jesus runs up to Lucifer like an urgent messenger, close enough to recognize the bones of his uncle’s red skull. Aims. Signals him with a birdcall. He turns. Meets hot surprise.

Birds take to the sky with the noise. Bright ribbons floating on the air.

Immediately, Jesus feels a moment of release. Blood singing in his body, this day marking the beginning of his seeing the world.

SOUND OF LIMB AND MIND, I leave:

My heart to my mother (Hope you deserve it)

My feet to my brother (Errand runner, keep humping!)

My penis to my wife

My mouth to my son (Sing poems)

My eyes to my daughter (See wisely)

My arms (for strength) to my grandchildren still unborn

My head to my sister-in-law (sorely in need of brains)

My teeth to my nephew (Eat and put on some meat)

My nose to the taxman (no other use for it)

My ass to a casket

EVERY SOLDIER TUGGED HOME A THICK HEAVY ALBUM of snapshots. Horse-playing with his war buddies. Flexing muscle in the flexing jungle. Or posed proud and pensive with weaponry. Even photos of kills. John brought back few frames from the war, all black-and-whites touched up for color, like (in the old days, years ago, years gone) the photos of jazz singers fronting the nightclubs on Church Street. Lucifer’s favorite, the one angled in the corner of the bedroom mirror and so angered his wife: John arcing for a dive into ocean, arms thrown back like wings, frozen in time.

Sheila refused to look at it now. Caged her eyes and yielded to excess. Free. Vindicated. Her heart shaped something it could not utter. Her blind fingers discovered the thick world of Lula Mae’s Bible. Black surface (artificial leather) and white depth. She touched the book with a tender sense of all it symbolized. She opened the cover and her eyes.

Jesus Chapter 5? No such thing. No Book of Jesus. Certainly in no Bible she had seen. She searched the Table of Contents to be certain. Found nothing. Hidden, protected, absorbed, she turned to the Sixth Chapter of Matthew and read to the end.

She flipped two or three slow pages. Then—

She spun the pages like a riverboat’s wheel.

Spun. Wind and water. Spun. Motion. She floated freely. An undercurrent tugged at her. Some deep weight that anchored inside her so she could not advance. Why would Lula Mae save the FBI clipping? She searched for it, waded back, searched but found nothing. She searched again. Still nothing. She was heavy with her lack of discovery, heavy but held up, light, buoyant with possibility ahead. (She would have to find it at another time, some other day, hour. It ain’t going nowhere. ) She hurried to meet undiscovered pages.

The Genealogy Record Family Register was blank, untouched.

At the back of the Bible, at the very top of the page, written in blue ink in Lula Mae’s hand:

She turned two pages.

Read from page bottom to page top. Reversed the book’s direction. Read. Page bottom to page top. Read. None the wiser. Flipped on. Maps of the Holy Land, past and present. Faraway lands charted, penciled, reduced. Journey on, eye and hand. Journey to the final page. Find there written in blue ink:

She lifted the NAACP receipt attached to the page by a baby’s safety pin and revealed the name beneath: Cynthia. Cynthia? No name she recognized. No fact in her memory.

She worked her way backward through the Bible, hovering and hesitating, small strips and squares of paper positioned between pages, and small sheets of paper with handwritten verse headings, Lula Mae’s private index. She closed the Bible. Enough for now. She had years to read it. Years.

LOOK, GEORGE, Inez said. It’s Junior’s wife. She spoke through tight teeth, teeth clamped down on invisible hairpins. Watched Sheila with a face framed in smooth yellow.

No it ain’t, George said. That’s Sheila. You remember Sheila. That’s your other son’s wife. Lucifer.

I know. My daughter-in-law.

Sheila could see through Inez’s body, wax paper, see her cloudy insides. She was disappearing, disappearing into the same invisible space where John and Lucifer had gone.

My daughter-in-law. Gracie.

How are you, Inez?

Inez stared into Sheila’s eyes. I think I’m dead.

Here, Inez, George said. Why don’t you come on in here and lie down. He took her by one thin biceps, holding it like a broom handle, and guided her to the bedroom.