Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

LUCIFER FELT THE SHUDDERING RUMBLE of an approaching train. A rush of air at the side of his face. The train arrived so fast it seemed to fall toward him. The doors collapsed open. Passengers spilled out the silver insides, while new passengers poured in and refilled the depths. Root-stubborn, his feet refused to move. Sheila, one foot said. Sheila, the other answered.

STREETS OPENED TO HIS EYES. Rows and rows of glittering parked cars. Shop-windows rippling with reflections moving to and fro, fading and fleeing like ghosts. Billboards flashing the fast colors of advertisement. He walked, glancing over his shoulder, trying first one shop, then another. He had to find the right gift for Sheila, the right gift to set things right. When he had left the house earlier that morning to meet John, he’d tried to kiss her. She would have none of him.

A kiss? Why don’t you kiss John?

He walked heavy through the spring crowd. He was all water, from the crown basin of his head to the ditch of his feet. The wells of his skin sweated rivers under the red dot of the sun. Yes, his feet were heavier than John’s luggage. He tasted sweet summer dryness.

He circulated about another section of stores and shops — looking over his shoulder, glancing down the street with a steady eye on traffic — the buildings so close to the curb that one could drive up and purchase an item without getting out of the car. Some of the stores even had a drive-through. The spokes of the shops extended out from the hub of Union Station. Like after a firefight, after you dropped the airpower and the next morning you went into the bush to check the damage. Dead gooks laid out like random pieces of iron.

Kind sir. The bum spoke above a squall of traffic. Could you spare a quarter? Veins formed a black net in the outstretched palm. I hate to beg.

SHEILA FISHED IN HER PURSE for a quarter, and in that moment before she placed it in his hand, everything in the world grew quiet but his heart. Something catchy about a woman almost tall as you. A slight downward tilt of your face into hers and your lips touch. He had loved her for as long as he could remember, smooth-skinned woman— and after the years, her caramel skin sweet as ever, her figure taut and fine, in both his memory eyes and his real eyes —who chastised him in church, her perfume close and heavy. His mental hands were forever hunting, trying to lift up her skirt and touch. Later, a man, he told her, I used to come to church every Sunday just to see you. He spoke truly. He had bowed his head and mouthed prayer, while his inner mouth hummed another wish. God, give me this woman. He had placed his pumping red heart across his humble kneeling knees. White red green orange or purple swirl in the dress that balloons around her stockinged legs. Sheila mostly dated men from the church — Mount Zion Church, rows of varnished benches hard to the butt, steeple-shaped windows, stained-glass Christ with a flowing river of golden hair and two blue doves for eyes — and her sister, Gracie, was dating John. Rumor had it that back home, down South, Gracie had, well, you know. Cause there was Cookie, the daughter. Rumors warn, John would eventually learn that Gracie’s love never did anybody any good. One day when the apple trees were heavy and white, Lucifer felt her move like the smallest of earthquakes— his skin slippery against hers —felt her heart beating under his lips.

You don’t want that woman, Dallas said.

Why not? Lucifer said. He sensed a slight possibility that Dallas knew something he didn’t.

Women are excess baggage, Dallas said.

Dallas would think that.

Sides, you don’t want that woman. Been so long since she had any, I bet you her bed buried in cobwebs.

Lucifer looked at him, mouth hot and tight.

Dallas blinked, catching the sun directly. Man, those McShan bitches stuck up, got their asses way up on top of the church steeple.

Nigga, John said, you jus mad you ain’t got nobody.

Dallas flinched at the words. He musta known it was true, cause Gracie said (and Sheila told) that he’d talked to the double preachers, Cotton Rivers and Cleveland Sparrow, about his trouble with women. Gracie would know.

Have patience, son, the patience of an angel, Cotton Rivers said. For centuries, Cleveland Sparrow added, they’ve been waiting to try out their wings.

Dallas had surrendered to his problem, settled for the whores on Church Street — the ones he could afford and the ones who would accept his money. He still talked a good game.

Man, I went to the Coal Bin last night.

Whoopedoo. What else new?

Picked up this fine woman.

Nigga, you couldn pick up a spoon.

Nawl, I picked her up. Little Red Riding Hood.

What?

You the firs nigga I ever heard of jerkin off to a fairy tale.

Nawl, that’s what she called herself. Little Red Riding Hood. Had on this red cape. It stop right here. Dallas placed the edge of his hand beneath his groin. Man, I tore that pussy up.

Nigga, stop selling wolf tickets.

I ain’t —

Did you touch it?

What?

Did you touch it?

Course I touched it. How else I’m gon get it in.

Dallas held bright in Lucifer’s memory, a young fat face shadowed under a hat’s brim. So you gon lead Gracie? Dallas said.

John didn’t look at him.

Nawl. She the woman I’m gon marry. And later, he told Inez, Mamma, these the women we gon marry.

Junior, Inez said.

But we don’t have no money fo the wedding.

Rivers and Sparrow don’t come for cheap. And they charge more for a wedding than a funeral or a baptism.

Junior.

And that’s what she said at the wedding, the handkerchief wet in her hand, Junior. Pappa Simmons holding her up and George holding him up. A joint wedding, a joint ceremony, a joint sermon — Cotton Rivers and Cleveland Sparrow, silver-voiced; every time they opened their mouth, a coin fell out; Christ is the stone the builders rejected, the spiritual rock from which the water of life springs. This stone is extracted from you, for you are its mineral —and a joint line of twenty-five or twenty-six fancied-up cars — JUST MARRIED — Lucifer’s car in the lead — well, Ernie’s car that he’d borrowed, a rambling, slow, beat-up green thing, destined for the junkyard — since he was the oldest, and John’s Eldorado (the mighty red machine) and the other cars honking behind him, slowly moving down Hayes Street, a bright and noisy procession of vehicles with tin cans rattling in tow and backstreams of fluttering crepe paper. He would not enter a church for fifteen years (Cleveland Sparrow’s funeral, same year Hatch and Jesus were born). Cotton Rivers put pennies over his dead partner’s eyes — the double preachers were double no more, the once blazing rails now a single track — tears streaming from his own. The congregation shut their eyes in prayer. When they opened them, the pennies were gone.

KIND SIR, HOW BOUT A NICKEL THEN? Even a penny would help?

Lucifer fished in his pocket for change. Tossed a quarter into the black-veined net.

God bless you.

THE UNDERGROUND housed exclusive shops. Lucifer entered the low red building separated from Union Station by a covered walkway. The Underground grew from the stone innards of the station, a Siamese twin. Eight levels of interchangeable structures — skywalks and skyboxes, catwalks and treadmills, marble waterfalls, silent escalators, glass elevators like transparent cocoons, layers of shops like the tiered galleries in a coal mine — that did not quite connect. Air itself was an invisible web holding it all together. Robotic surveillance cameras trawled the crystal floors, portaging live images. Lucifer plied their tracks. Hovered in one beat and out the next. His reflection was fresh and new in the shopwindows.