Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

Give me a minute.

Uncle John, where yo binoculars?

My binoculars?

Yeah.

What you need wit binoculars?

I want to watch Randy’s hands.

Who?

The nigga we going to see.

I thought you said he white. Hatch heard the bathroom door close. Heard the shower spill open. He imagined water rolling down Uncle John’s tired muscles and the muscles giving the water more speed and force. He could feel the water, feel it roll, feel it rise in his chest.

UNCLE JOHN’S SHINY YELLOW CAB was imprinted with a moving image of Hatch as he approached it. The sun made two white spots on Uncle John’s spectacles and blotted out his eyes. Uncle John seemed the focus of the day’s heat. It shone in his face, in his voice, his walk. He opened the back passenger door from the inside. Company regulations: no passenger can sit in the front seat next to the driver. Hatch ducked inside the car. As a child, he and Jesus would take turns peering over the steering wheel of Uncle John’s gold Park Avenue. Then Uncle John would take the wheel and spin them into the world.

Take us to Fun Town.

Yeah, Uncle John. I wanna ride the Ferris wheel.

You know why they invented the Ferris wheel?

Who? Why who —

Nawl, why?

The army did it. They used it to elevate artillery spotters above the treetops.

For real?

For real.

Wow.

Uncle John pulled the cab away from the curb, down the thin black strip of street, a plane down a runway. Uncle John was the pilot, Hatch his copilot. The cab rode so smoothly that Hatch had no sense of a road under the tires, sled over snow. The sun followed at a distance. Above, clouds of many shapes drifted in the evening sky, hard and congealed the closer they were to the horizon, vaguer in outline higher up. Hatch held the binoculars carefully, for they were one of the few mementos Uncle John had brought back from his tour overseas.

The windshield stretched a veil hiding Hatch and John from the eyes of outsiders. Thick windows and the air conditioner’s hum blocked out the city’s natural night sounds. Uncle John sent the cab spinning around a corner — Hatch gripped the binoculars to keep them from sliding out of his lap — down a greased ramp; then one bounce, two bounces — the diving board stiffens — and the cab sprung out onto the expressway. Uncle John and Hatch rode through the bright hot spring evening. The buildings gave way to houses and the houses to cornfields. Countryside speckled with barns, silos, sheds, and shacks.

Are we headed to Decatur? We look like we headed to Decatur. Damn, Uncle John. We going the right way?

A shortcut.

John singing.

I’m a tail dragger. I wipe out my tracks.

I get what I wants, and I don’t come sneakin back.

A shortcut?

Uncle John took I-54, increasing speed. Hatch, you a backseat driver now? I drive every day. Don’t you think I know how to go?

I just thought — Hatch saw his face framed in the rearview mirror, then fingered the dogtags Lucifer had given him years ago. Fingered them for assurance, to know they were there at his chest. Habit. Custom. New steel organs.

I got a mean red spider

And she been webbing all over town

Gon get me a mean black spider

So I can tie her down

His face slid over to the window. Now he remembered. I-54. The expressway they always took to Camp Eon back in the Boy Scouts days. Steel mills. (Most of the city’s steel had come from here.) Yellow hard hats mushroomlike. The iron pulse of steady hammers. Showering sparks, an arc of red-hot tracers brightening night sky. Trolley tracks that ran to the mouth of Tar Lake. Bridges like hats above the lake, like upper and lower dentures that parted to permit a tongue-ship to enter the mouth-harbor. A mountainous ship held still on the waters. And in the distance, the low houses of Crownpin and Liberty Island. And Gracie. If you watched it long enough, the island would travel the length of your vision, float from one end of the horizon to the other.

Hatch heard bells. Baby-boot bells. Tinkle-tinkle. Round silver balls. The white ghost of Jesus’s baby boots kicked with the cab’s motion. Two white shoelaces flowed like milk streams from boots to rearview mirror. Whalelike, the back seat swallowed both him and Jesus, their eyes barely window level, excited, holding their breath. Then in Gracie’s kitchen, Jesus’s clumsy hand knocked a glass of milk off the table into Uncle John’s lap.

Uncle John rose from his seat and stood up, his chair falling backward.

Jesus blinked.

Boy, look at what you done. Uncle John’s hands, palms forward at his sides, as if displaying stigmata. He picked up Hatch’s glass of milk and poured it empty into Jesus’s lap. There, he said. See how that feel? That should teach you to think befo you make a mess.

Jesus did not move, his lap like a basin full of soapy water.

Elsa sure is fine, Uncle John said.

Thanks.

Mexican?

Nawl. I already told you. Puerto Rican. Mixed actually. Puerto Rican and—

Did you knock?

Hatch stirred in his seat. You know me, Uncle John.

Maybe I don’t. Did you knock?

Hatch said nothing.

Come on, you can tell me. Did you knock?

Nawl.

What? You didn’t knock?

Nawl. Not yet.

You crazy or something? Fine woman like that.

She—

It ain’t about her. If you fly right, you’ll never get anywhere.

Hatch scratched his chin.

Look, bitches are like cattle. Wherever you lead them, they will go.

Hatch thought about it.

You practice today?

Practice every day.

Good. God helps those who help themselves.

God?

Uncle John grinned. Hatch caught the joke. They looked at each other and laughed.

Women like musicians.

Hatch said nothing.

You can play music, you can play a body.

Rougher road now. The tires hummed, vibrated into the roots of Hatch’s teeth.

Music is sweet and everything good to eat.

How much rent they charge you on this cab?

A hundred a week.

Damn. You might as well buy a house.

Could buy the cab. But it’d be worn down in five years.

Damn. Bet Jews own the company.

Probably. Got some regular white trash frontin for them. You know them Jews.

Yeah, I know them. Hey, you used to hunt. Ain’t Hanukkah a duck call?

Uncle John chuckled. You real serious on them Jews. But I’ll tell you one thing, on the Jewish holidays I don’t make no money. When Jews don’t do no business, nobody does.

Yeah? I can believe that. Hatch thought about it. Uncle John gon make his money. Always has. Always will. Now Lucifer is serious. Strictly business. The wee bird satisfied with the crumb. But Uncle John. Hatch tested the binoculars. The world came pressing in upon him.

They reached the high road outside the city limits. Uncle John pulled the cab to the side of the road. Hatch exited, walked around the rear of the cab — two POW stickers on the fender, soldiers in silhouette — got back in the car, sat in the passenger seat next to Uncle John. There beside his uncle, he truly felt like a copilot.

They let you fly those stickers?

Ain’t said nothing yet. Maybe they ain’t notice.

That’s good. Yall bring back any contraband?

Just them rugs I gave Gracie. And them robes. Gracie draped the robe over her shoulders. Blooming branches of embroidered silk and bright, soft dragons. Spokesman got all kinds of shit though. He woulda brought back the whole damn country if it weren’t strapped down.

How’d they choose you for the job? I mean, how’d they choose you for the Hairtrigger Boys?