Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

See, you’d always bomb the railroads first cause the trains carried arsenal and supplies from the factory to the field.

Member how they were still using those ole steam engines when the war started?

Man, they was slow.

I member gettin my assignment, then boardin the train and the coal from the engine blowin black smoke in my face. You could see it on yo tongue.

Naw. That was rationed tobacco.

Shoot, that wasn’t nothing. What bout those wartime farts? Everybody eatin all that rationed food.

And burping up rationed food.

Lucifer searched for the faces behind the voices. Five or six old-timers crowded a dark corner. Yeah, old-timers. Grunts whose legs could no longer memory march (let alone hump). Thousands turn out to greet them. They march with careless, natural precision. Throw their hats into the cheering crowd. Theirs is a regiment of men who has done the work of men. Legs good for Ben-Gay and whining wheelchairs. One old-timer — Christmas tree-bright — stayed constantly in vision, a floating balloon, an advertising blimp flinging parade streamers from his talkative fingers. Medals covered his body, many attached with safety pins. Big safety pins too, with colored clasps. Like the pins we used on Porsha’s diapers.

Damn, John said.

What?

I know him.

Who?

That old-timer.

From where?

Yeah. John stroked his chin. His eyes closed in recall. Yeah. Damn, I got it! John jumped up from the table as if a hot poker had sodomized him. That’s one of Sam and Dave’s old running buddies. Before Lucifer could get a word out, John bounded over to the other table and stretched his elbows across it in conversation. His lips moved silently. Why he whisperin? Two of the old-timers rose, the animated one and a second man, stocky and bandylegged like a gorilla. The decorated man followed John. His shirttail stood out behind him, low-hung wings. His shoe heels had no roundness, worn down like clocks easing on to a final wind. The gorilla man bent his weight onto a cane. Took a few short steps, reaching out with the black hesitant eye of his rubber-tipped cane. Walked in a seesaw motion as if one leg was shorter than the other. He looked back. The decorated man shooed him forward, heading off a chicken in a yard. The gorilla man collapsed into a chair beside Lucifer. His cane poked Lucifer’s shin. Excuse me. The gorilla man apologetically touched Lucifer’s knee with the tips of his fingers.

No problem.

Let me introduce yall to some old friends, John said. This here is Roscoe Lipton.

Lucifer shook the animated man’s hand, the bones close to cracking.

Howdy. The medals winked in the dark. I understand yall some kin to Sam and Dave, those Griffith boys.

That’s right. They—

Crazy niggas.

Lucifer studied the man’s black circling brows and his wide, unblinking owl eyes. He half remembered the man at Sam’s funeral.

Then yall must be alright.

And this here is Pool Webb.

Glad to meet you. Pool Webb extended his hand — big, gorilla big — to Lucifer. The years had not loosened the vise in his grip.

Same here.

Yeah, me and Webb here go way back, Lipton said. He used to be the super at Stonewall. I worked under him. Now he retired. And I’m the super at Red Hook.

So yall from the projects? Spin said.

Well I—

I been wanting to start something at the projects, Spin said. Lucifer knew, after the war, Spin had worked as a youth counselor. Not just in Philly, Spin said, where I’m from, but where yall live too. Maybe a basketball program.

Let me know if I can help.

Me too, Webb said. He winked.

What bout yall? Spin directed the words to Spokesman, Lucifer, and John. Yall be interested? Maybe do some officiating?

Sure. Months later, the three men would keep the promise, as Spin would keep his when he formed the Royal African Company and held seasonal lotteries at Red Hook and Stonewall which gave away thousands of acres of free land in Kankakee County to the winning families. He would also start the Basketball Demons programs, Spokesman, Lucifer, and John officiating at the games, to keep teenagers out of trouble. But that was later. The old-timers held center stage tonight.

What you drinkin?

Can I buy yall something?

Lord no, Webb said. I stopped drinkin. Sugar.

Meaning, sugar diabetes?

Well, ain’t no sugar gon slow me down, Lipton said. Nor no pig. Lipton dug his fingers into the bowl of pickled pig’s brains.

They got any oysters?

Up there at the bar.

No. Those is eggs. Pickled eggs.

Pass those nuts.

Knew a nigga that loved oysters.

Musta loved him some pussy too. Webb winked.

So, where were you stationed?

In the Pacific. Germany for a while too.

Auf der Stelle, Lipton said, watching Webb.

Crazy fucker, John whispered.

Lucifer elbowed him. Be cool. Before he hear you. He bit back his laugh.

What?

A dirty deal.

Yes, Lawd. Driving cargo. See, they had us—

A dirty deal. Lipton was looking right at Lucifer, pushing his red eyes into Lucifer’s face. These words are meant for me. A shit-low, piss-level dirty deal. Lipton’s voice came with a loud, rushed intensity, as if he shouted from a distant cliff. Raise a kid, and you think it’s over, that you done raised all a man sposed to raise, that yo work done, duty done, you think it’s time to relax, time for a lil deserved rest—

Why else come to the city?

— but then she decides to wear clothes for concrete and he don’t want to be bothered, and run off, Here, old-timer, take em, and dump the crumb snatcher on you like a lump of shit, Take this deposit, my payment—

Pavement? Like the concrete clothes?

— for all you done for me these thirty-three years. A low-down cocksucking cumchucking buttfucking shitducking dirty deal. And my girl …

The first unreasoning hush. Lucifer watched Lipton with stiff delight. Lipton spoke in birdlike bursts of rapid twitter. Voices crowded the bar, but only Roscoe Lipton spoke that night.

Need to put a sign right up here, HERE BEGINS THE TRAGEDY OF … Seen him once. My daddy. Pa if you want. A man under a Mountain Peak. Just back from overseas and got message in his stride. Stride right on to the railroad line. See ya later. I’m a railroad man.

Lucifer’s tongue ran out to meet the tasty words.

And me? A scab at seven. A strikebreaker at fourteen, the age when you got enough muscle to wield a baseball bat. Lipton’s dogtags spilled out from his shirt, swinging on their chain, back and forth, catching the light. Seven comes eleven and a man ready to marry. A lil piss of a room. Dark and dank. And stank.

Lucifer saw something. Added sight to sound. A thin bar of sunlight falls across the hall. A single bulb burns from the end of a cord, shaded by old newspaper brown from the heat.

Baby, my Baby. But the work wuz good. Payday, I’d come home and throw it—

Greens. Stinky greens. Stinky steam lifting from a pot.

— up in the air. All my money. Baby and the kids, they be jumpin for all that green snow.

Green sparkled below the surface of Lipton’s eyes. Seaweed. Lucifer saw the eyes across from him, keenly bright, unblinking, unwavering, as far apart from his life as stars in the sky.

After the war, Baby and I come up here permanent. Well, not here, you know, back home, the city, Stonewall. Lipton tapped one row of medals. Muffled metal, a shovel patting down dirt on a grave. Each bar of medal is a coffin. Some dead gook or kraut buried beneath Lipton’s glory. Didn’t know a soul. But the Veteran Burial Club directed us. Set me up with a good-payin job. So I’m here.