Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

There it is, right up there.

How was poor-sighted George so precise? Was he speaking from memory or instinct?

I see it. She eased the car into the lot.

Park over there.

She did.

Keep the engine running.

She did. She carefully took neat, clean bills from her purse and handed them to Hatch. There you go, Junior. Buy a box.

Yall want any?

No.

Buy some for yourself, George said.

Hatch ordered the cheapest box and pocketed the change. Boxed chicken under his arm like a football, he ducked back into the car.

Now back out the way you came, George said.

But the sign says—

I’m telling you the right way to go.

But those arrows there—

Inez, just do what I say.

She didn’t.

What are you doing?

She said nothing.

Inez, what are you doing?

Shut your damn mouth unless you going to drive. She swung the car into the streaming avenue, just missing another car. She drove on steadily. Drove past their turn. George said nothing. She turned left and moments later, they were back at the chicken shack. This time she turned right, at the wrong corner. It went on like this. They circled the chicken shack again and again and again.

Make a right at the corner, Hatch said.

Okay, Junior. She made a right.

Now, there’s the alley. Turn left.

Thank you, Junior. She turned, car bouncing, tires crunching on gravel. See, they fixin the street. Junior, you see?

Yes, Inez.

Those cobblestones ruin the tires. She pulled the car before the garage. George got out. Hatch got out.

I’ll park it, George said.

Okay. Inez made her way for the house. Junior, come on.

You see what jus happened? George whispered. You see? George took Hatch’s silence as acknowledgment. She spend all her time in that garage. All her time. He blinked back his anger. Tell yo mamma to call me. I got to tell her something very important.

I will.

Be sure and tell her.

I will.

Better yet, tell your sister to come out here.

I will.

Tell her.

I will.

SHEILA LEANED OVER THE EDGE of the platform — a wood-and-iron structure rising stories above the street — to see if her morning train was coming. A yellow oval shimmered near her face. A young Oriental woman watched her, small, prim, and delicate in a red dress suit. Her hand held firm to the black leather purse strapped over her shoulder. Her eyes were sharp and curved, glinting swords. Hear they don’t like to be called Oriental but Asian. Oriental like saying Negro. Or nigger. Bet she own a cleaners. Or a restaurant. Or a grocery store. Turned her face away when she and Sheila locked stares.

The rails looked white and fragile under the sun. Sheila often wondered what Sam felt when he fell under the speeding train and lost his leg. Nawl, I didn’t pass out. I tried to get up and walk away. Crawl away. I remember looking up at the third rail high above me. I felt like one of those limbo dancers. Cause after it happened, all he did was look her in the face from his hospital bed and say, Niece, I gotta learn to use my wings again. Then he looked at Lucifer. Sam and Dave were big on teasin Lucifer and John.

He say war or whore?

Yall been fightin a war or a whore?

What kinda fightin yall do over there?

Sam, these niggas ain’t do no fightin.

Yeah. Ain’t been gone but a year.

What kinda fightin can you do in a year?

Shit, take a year to learn how to kill a man good.

Boy, Sam said, that train reared back like a horse to keep from hitting me. Lucifer didn’t crack a smile. Like worn-out brooms, his eyebrows cast shadows over the soft light of his black eyes.

Sheila could not remember where Lucifer the boy ended and Lucifer the man began. The stern face of the seven-year-old child she had seen for the first time at one Sunday service was the same stern face of the forty-seven-year-old adult she had seen this morning, the boy-man-husband who would never set foot in a church today. Unless somebody died. With her white fingers, Georgiana would dress her two grandsons for church — fine clothes too that her white hands scrubbed and washed and pressed for; fine clothes, not the cheap tight-fitting wash-once-and-wear-once Jew Town clothes — greased their thorny naps, shiny as grapes, and hurried them off to Mount Zion. Georgiana would hammer home the importance of religion, cause, as everybody knew, Pappa Simmons spit when he heard the word ligion. He wasn’t much on ligion, or anything else white after those crackas back home had cheated and tricked him out of everything he had. If I’da kept my hand on the plow, he said, I’d still be back there in bad man boss’s cheating fields. So much fo the weak will inherit. Lucifer and John — Sheila seems to remember that damn fool Dallas as one with the Jones brothers; yes, she recalls three boys, a trio, so she sketches Dallas in one or two remembered scenes, a faint image like chalk on paper, a tentative figure that scatters and disappears at blown breath — would cut the fool in church. And Beulah would spend Sundays at the baseball park— Damn, fool, can’t you hit no ball? Don’t be scared of it. He pitch mean but knock his teeth out! So after service, Lucifer would fix her a plate of food, carefully placing her buttered roll so that it wouldn’t topple off of the plate, and bring it to her at the T Street apartment Sunday evening. Miss Beulah he called her. Thank you, Beulah said. You a fine boy. An angel. Wish I could make it to church. But I can’t. Lucifer also mowed the courtyard — mowing with Pappa Simmons’s rusty scythe, mowing with that same expressionless face and the same hollow eyes. He would always take time to speak, How you, Miss Sheila? — and carried Sheila’s groceries.

One morning, he spoke:

Miss Sheila, may I speak to you?

Lucifer.

I never seen nobody get the Holy Ghost like you.

Sheila didn’t know if she should blush. Had he embarrassed her?

I mean. I never seen nobody do it that pretty.

Her eyes lit up inside. Yes, it had happened to her last Sunday, as it seemed to eventually happen to all of the church’s sisters. Bloat with the Holy Spirit. Music beats round the rim of your ears. Air flows solid and cold with fire. Your lungs crumble, sprout legs, then run free of your body, leaving a black hole in your bosom. A stranger enters. Yes, a stranger inside you, shaking the bars of your chest, gnawing through the iron with her teeth, flailing her arms, kicking her feet, running from one corridor to another and screaming FIRE! breaking free of the cage and into the light, running dead into the glowing face of the spirit. So you must keep moving cause your body is FIRE! red ants ravaging skin. And the striding shadow of the spirit riding you, holding on, with one hand thrown up in testimony, against your strong steady bucking. White-gloved ushers hold on too.

You know John and Gracie spending time together.

She looked at the set of Lucifer’s shoulders. He was over six feet tall and weighed better than two hundred pounds, though he wasn’t a handsome man. Yes. I know. Seen the spirit in her eyes.

Well, I decided. You the one I want. He said it real matter-of-fact, like asking for a job.

Is that right?

Yes, ma’m.

She thought a moment. Decided to feel him out. A levelheaded young man. Both feet on the ground. An earthling. So unlike his brother John. What makes you think you can have me?

Jus informin you.

Sheila didn’t know what to say.

Jus informin you. His eyes were clear black stones, hollow and unchanging, eyes without taste or heat. Keep em open while we do it. Keep em open.