Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

Each day, Sheila gave her a dollar and felt better for it. God needs soldiers. Tomorrow is not promised to us.

Mother Sister wasn’t like some of these really crazy ones who got all up in yo face, a bullhorn, screaming, Repent! The wages of sin is death! The Lord will stamp your passport to hell: Blaspheme! Fornicator! Homosexual! Whore! Dope fiend! Drunkard! The crazy ones who say, God don’t tolerate this, he don’t tolerate that. Christ is coming. Take care of yo soul. No, Mother Sister wasn’t bad. Nor the Burned Man. Each day Sheila gave him money too — a quarter — while most passengers turned their faces to the window.

Heard he really saving that money fo an operation.

What happened to him?

Got burned up in a car crash.

That’d give anybody religion.

No money could sway Lucifer. His feelings about religion had petrified into one silent shape. Once, Sheila and Lucifer had boarded a crowded bus. He found a seat and she found one behind him, both directly on the aisle. She could watch the taut ropes of his neck. The squareness of the back of his head. Whisper over his shoulder. For the next few stops, passengers crowded into the river of space that separated the two rows of seats. Stood tidal wave-tall above them, swaying to the bus’s motion. A man vacated the seat next to Lucifer and he slid over to the window, opening the vacated seat for her. Before she could rise out of her own seat, a bean-bald young man snapped down into it. Sheila started to tap his shoulder, say, Sir, this man is my husband. Would you mind? But people today full of devil. Every word was a challenge. The man fumbled in the pockets of his blazer, stealing glances at Lucifer. Hi, the man said.

This was her opportunity. He had spoken and without venom. She saw the mug-shot profile of his face, every feature straining under a permanent smile.

You know you hear bout so much evil these days but rarely do you hear of the wonders of God. The man waited for Lucifer’s response. Here is my chance. I could ask him, Kind sir, this man is my husband. Would you mind exchanging seats so we could sit together?

Why, ma’m. Not at all.

Guess so, Lucifer said. He was looking directly ahead, not at the man.

Bet you never heard of DDT?

DDT?

Guess not.

Disciples Against the Devil’s Tribulations.

Oh.

Oh.

Now, do you attend church?

No, Lucifer said, saying it more with his eyes than mouth, cause they were in constant motion, whipping back and forth between watching the man and looking straight ahead.

Why not?

Well, it’s kind of hard to explain.

Try as best you can. Don’t be embarrassed.

Well—

I’m not asking anything from you. See, we Disciples are just a few men who get together on Thursday nights and discuss the glories of the Bible. We don’t even have a church. Sometimes we meet at the Medina Temple, or the New Riverside Multimedia Church, even the Cotton Club.

That disco on Hayes and Twelfth?

But most of the time, we just meet at somebody’s house. Brothers discussing the Bible’s wisdom. How does that sound to you?

Fine.

The young man watched Lucifer with his permanent smile.

It’s just that, see, I’m leaving the city, so I—

What?

For good?

Yes.

Where are you moving to?

New York.

What? Sheila stiffened at Lucifer’s lie. You are not. Oh, I see. Clever.

Lord. The capital of sin. They got what, six million people there?

Ten.

That’s a lot of sin. But you know, I’m sure DDT has a church there. Look them up and tell them you met a Disciple here who told you how God desperately needs your services.

I will.

You know, I used to live right over here on Forty-third. I used to stay up in the house all the time, lonely, alienated, didn’t have many relationships. You have many relationships?

Guess so.

You married?

Yes.

Good. Cause if you ain’t you could find some nice sister Disciples in New York. See, we always say, the devil put the d in evil. I used to do evil and I thought I was all alone up there in my room. See, I used to have this problem. With masturbation.

Sheila pulled the lines of her face taut, towing in her grin.

Yes, I would be up there in my room, my hand working up sin rather than flipping the pages of the Bible. Then I met a Disciple. He talked to me just like I’m talking to you now. I went to his house that Thursday. And these brothers were so honest they blew me away. It was an awesome experience. Right away I told them about my problem with masturbation.

This one brother told me, Every night, pray to Desire. And I did and after seven nights I didn’t have my problem anymore. The Lord stepped in and kicked out that problem I’d had for nearly eight years. And you see, I’m not embarrassed to talk about my problem with anybody. Cause the problem means the cure. Gotta let people know about a good doctor. Ain’t that right?

Right.

The Disciples are just awesome. And if you gon be a Disciple, you gotta be ready to suffer for the Lord. See, people don’t want to suffer. They want a comfortable life. But every day can’t be a McDonald’s McCherry Pie day. Sometimes you got to eat just meat and potatoes. Sin lasts for only a little while. Take the s out of sin and you will get in to the kingdom. Moses and Abraham got their tickets punched to glory. Do you want to get into heaven? Do you want to go where there ain’t no pain and suffering and crime and lies and overall evil?

Yes.

You seem like a pretty intelligent guy. Think God can use your talents? What do you do?

I work for UPS.

What? You work at the airport. Crownpin. Why had Lucifer lied? He would never see this man again.

Would you like to deliver glory in the kingdom? Doesn’t that sound awesome?

Guess so.

Then you must be ready to roll up your sleeves and go to work for God?

Lucifer said nothing.

It is no accident that I am sitting here talking to you. Let God blow you away. See, I used to have a problem with masturbation, but today I have many relationships. Cause the Bible says, the body is the temple of Christ. The body belongs to Christ. Am I right?

Yes, Lucifer said. I’ll look up the Disciples in New York.

Good. What kind of music do you like?

Jazz, I guess.

Well, I like classical music, though I listen to a bit of everything. Soul. Rap. You like those Christian rap bands?

What?

You ain’t never heard of them?

No, Lucifer said. How does it sound?

Well, I never got to hear it good. But I saw some bands on this cable station.

Hm.

You ever heard Peter and the Wolf?

No.

Awesome. I listen to it all the time where I work. You know—

Well, Lucifer said, this where I get off.

A SECOND TRAIN banged by the platform without slowing down. The Asian woman watched Sheila, bulging black eyes, ripe plums. Sheila caught a glimpse of something else. Roundness stretching out the thin frame, as if the woman’s belly were metal being drawn out by a magnet. The woman saw where Sheila was looking. Hid her stomach behind her small black purse. Might as well hide a watermelon behind a napkin. Can’t be done. Two of mine died on the vine.

Hatch born seventeen summers ago, the summer of the cicadas — last year, they came a season early, mistaking spring for summer; or (perhaps) after seventeen years, too impatient to wait for summer; or (perhaps) their folded wings felt the coming heat (it would be the hottest summer in the city’s history, sky red and the soil baking your feet) — the summer after the spring that the country pulled out of the war that had called both Lucifer and John, the year the cutthroats killed the Reverend Cleveland Sparrow. Yes, niggas were changing even back then. They beat the reverend (Father is too good a word for him), made a bloody crown of his brains, punctured his body with the thorns of their ice picks, then propped him up on the altar, arms spread as if floating, over the open waters of his spilled blood. Cotton Rivers found the body of his partner in God, and he pined away in a matter of years (three?), this young man leaving behind a young wife and a new son, leaving the church in the young arms of his only son, Cotton Rivers, Junior, who the congregation knew as the New Cotton Rivers, the (now) fourteen-year-old evangelical who, through the clean channels of the TV screen, converted the pimps and prostitutes of Church Street and Cottage Grove and Stony Island and Hollywood and Broadway and all the other cesspools that flowed through this river-rhythm town. From the moment of conception, he’d given her no peace. Nausea. Diarrhea (brown rivers). Dry skin. Cramps. More diarrhea (brown lakes). She thought labor would bring blessing and release, but he didn’t want to leave her womb, fought her for thirty-six hours until the doctors had to cut her open. Then the fatigue wouldn’t quit her body. I’d been out of the hospital four months. Still tired. I mean tired. Tireda than when I was pregnant. Beulah had said it’d be a boy. They the ones tire you out. Fill you with morning sickness. Make you labor. Beulah was right. Porsha had come easy. But Hatch …