Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

TWO COPS LED A BOY OUT OF A STORE, sunlight glinting on the handcuffs that bunched his wrists. Sunlight crawled yellow spiders up the boy’s bald head. The boy offered no resistance. Lucifer studied him — some sign of familiarity? a boy Hatch’s age, Jesus’s age; other signs of familiarity? — and he watched Lucifer back, throwing the hard stones of his black eyes. Red Hook eyes. Stonewall eyes. Project kids stared at you that way. Tough kids that the Blue Demons basketball program hoped to soften. You officiated a call, using the fingers of both hands, forming them into a triumphal arch. They’d say Shit! or Fuck! or Damn, money. Can’t you see?

Look, I’m jus tryin to be fair.

Fair? What’s up wit that? Fuck fair.

And their eyes said more. I’ll beat you down. Steal yo money. Cap you. Pop yo life and yo wife. Many a time, Lucifer clenched a red angry fist, ready to break and bruise some punk’s face. But his anger met a wall. His skin.

The morning’s alcohol flooded down from his brain into his eyes. No mo drinkin wit John. I’m too old. The boy’s face shifted before him, two cloud-thick puddles. Lucifer flexed and unflexed his fingers to rid them of stiffness. The boy stiffened and drew back, a muscleman tugging a train.

THE TRAIN SHOT THROUGH THE LONG GRAY TUNNEL into an even blacker dark. In the car’s unstained light, Porsha shook, a reed in the wind. Times like this, she wished she had driven. The city shouldered a notorious reputation for its thick traffic, scant parking facilities, and maniacal drivers. She never drove to an assignment. Watched the dingy windows of the train each day. Her green Datsun 280ZX that Mamma called a man’s vehicle —

Mamma, everybody drives cars like this now. Why don’t you retire and get you one.

Daughter, I ain’t ready to retire.

Think them Shipcos care?

I ain’t ready to retire.

Ain’t you tired?

Mamma said nothing.

Why’d you do it? Why’d you do day work all yo life?

I always knew I had a job

— was parked safely in the garage on D Street at Hundred Gates, where she lived. She’d caught hell the last time she’d driven it.

The day has claimed her with its demands. She parks at the corner store, Cut Rate Liquors, goes in, and comes out with bath beads. She is thinking about the night ahead, a hot bath and Deathrow’s hotter touch. She puts the gear in reverse, is about to turn her head back over the seat and back out of the lot when some young short punk — even today, here on the epileptic train, his face was a blur; they all look the same, baseball cap, Starter jacket, ankle-high gym shoes — some unsuspecting life moving in the darkness, approaches her car. He stoops to line up his face with hers. Hey, baby. Can I get a cigarette?

I don’t smoke.

He looks at the paper bag on the seat beside her. You lyin bitches ain’t shit. He raises up. She eases the car back. Feels a burning sensation in her nose. Ribbons of blood spray from her face, red-wetting the green leather steering wheel, the green leather dashboard, the rearview mirror, and the windshield.

Damn, homeboy. Why’d you hit that bitch like that?

Don’t fuck wit me.

She brakes the car, throws it into park. Picks up the chunk of red brick lying next to the paper bag. In one motion she clicks out of the car yelling Yo, homeboy; he turns; she fires the brick whistling at his teeth.

He got the worst of it. No stitches for her, only a nick over the bridge of her nose. Some swelling for a few days — the second and third days were the worst, the bridge so puffy and swollen she could barely see — but nothing to rob her of bread and butter. If the brick had hit some other part of her body, another story. Cause her body was the only story that mattered.

Her beauty ran south of her neck. She thanked God and Mamma. Mamma had made her wear a girdle as a growing girl, as Mamma herself wore one. Had Lula Mae started this family custom? Aunt Beulah? Keen insight. Prophetic. The sacrifice had paid off. She made her living as a body-part model.

The train’s lurch shifted her head to Deathrow’s remembered shoulder. Her mind full of last night’s argument.

They had horsed around, then lay resting, the two of them, under the sail-white canopy of the bed, continent-wide, limbs tangled, the second wind in their channeled muscles — sailors recovering from a shipwreck.

Clarence?

You know my name.

I don’t like that name.

It ain’t bout what you like.

A lump of words congealed in her chest. Dammed her breath. She forded them. She and Deathrow made up in bed. Deathrow took her to new heights of feeling, his lips smacking the waters of her thighs, his tongue propelling her clit, then diving into the well of her asshole. She arched, sending rivers of shivers through her body.

Yes. Yes. Eat it, motherfucka.

Afterward, he lay on the bed. She moved her hands over his body. It was like iron. She could find no softness. She nibbled at his boomerang-curved dick. What’s this?

If it looks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, if it wobbles like a duck, it is a duck.

Quack. Quack. She nibbled some more. Blew hot air past the hollow eye of his dick, making it whistle.

Aw, baby. Don’t tease. Smoke my pole.

She went hard at the words.

He sensed her stiffness. What? He raised up on his elbows.

She watched him, hard.

Yo pussy ain’t no mo important than my dick.

Huh, well maybe I should be giving my pussy to someone who thinks it is important.

I didn’t say that it ain’t important.

What are you tryin to say?

Drop it. Jus drop it.

No, I want to know what you meant.

Drop it.

She did. She had learned to put up with his tongue. Red Hook had woven him. Judge the sample by the cloth.

He settled off into the first flutterings of sleep, a curved shape. She squeezed her eyes shut. Slowly, her body faded away, dissolved into the white sheets.

The next morning, he was quieter than usual. What to make of his silence? His sharp features often made his moods look worse than they were. She tried to conversate while they bathed and dressed. He would nod or mumble a word or two. She would bounce back with a question. There followed a long elastic silence. What should she do next? She knew how to handle his bad mouth: with a thick titty stuffed in it. But how could she break his silence? She decided to harbor her words and release them in the full light of day.

The sun was ripe. His sudden and harsh anger last night had set a warning in the sky. Something red and hungry hung in the air.

She hooked her arm in his and guided him toward the subway station. Are you mad at me?

No.

You’re mad at me?

No.

How come you so quiet then?

I jus don’t feel like talking right now.

Why not?

I jus don’t.

Why not?

I would have to talk to explain to you why I don’t want to talk.

She thought about it.

The day formed a red tube of silence that shuttled them to the subway station.

Okay, he said. We’re here. I’ll see you tonight. He put both hands on her shoulders and pulled her forward. Kissed her light on the lips.

What kind of kiss is that?

His eyes, full of hardness, held her. Loose paper curled in its own turnings. He pulled her close and gave her a wet searching kiss.

That’s better, she said.

Have a good one.

You too. Off to work?

Nawl. I gotta go home first.

Home?

Yeah.

She knew home, Red Hook, boiling with life and trouble. She wanted to say, Be careful. She prayed for him silently. God keep and protect. You want me to drive you?