Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

Baby, I can count. Do lotta other things too.

She took him at his word. His eyes were hooded with secrets. Hmmm. I better give it to you then. She produced her business card.

He read it. Body-part model?

Um huh.

What’s that?

I’ll tell you about it.

He put the card in his shirt pocket. Stood and walked into the aisle. She observed his wishbone legs. (Later, whenever he made her angry, she would look at his legs and fuck with him. Hey, cowboy. Forget yo horse?) He stooped over his seat, hauled up a heavy cloth sack, his wares — incense, batteries, socks, scarves, jump ropes, umbrellas, telephone cords, body oils — sticking out the top. Santa Claus, she thought. He faced her. Extended his big hand. Pleasure to meet you.

She took the big hand in her own. A terrible excitement shook her. An old feeling. Ancient. Uncle John would pour popcorn into her girl-small hand— I’m scared, Uncle John —and the pigeons would swoop down and peck and feed. It feel funny, Uncle John. The same, she said.

Deathrow exited the bus, rolling his tight butt.

A PYRAMID OF LIGHT filtered from the projection room, specks of dust dancing in its blinding whiteness, to a wide screen that hemmed in the horizon. Your empty eyes filled up with white moving. Empty ears vesseled words and sounds of black surprise. Deathrow’s face tinged blue and orange by the bright images shifting over it. A perfect first night out. A good-looking man and a low-budget horror movie. Grainy shots of two sisters, a castle, hooded rituals and Latin chants, and a frothing red-fanged witch who drags her victims, pleading, screaming, kicking, and bleeding, into the dark world behind the waxy plane of an oval mirror. Jump to 1940. A woman drives a knife again and again into a second woman prone beneath her on the bed. The mirror watches. Jump to the present. A third woman purchases the mirror at an antique shop. Once home, the mirror menstruates. Masturbates. Moans. Metamorphoses into a cavernous vagina that swallows the pet poodle. A psychic warns the woman not to fuck in front of the mirror. She does so anyway. The mirror swallows her lover. She seeks the psychic’s help. The mirror swallows the psychic. She seeks the help of her best friend. Don’t white folks know when to leave? Jus leave the damn house. The mirror possesses the woman’s best friend, turns her into the red-fanged witch. You worked the popcorn out of your teeth with your tongue. A struggle ensues. The images come together. Form a magical whole. Everything moves. Everything immobile inside you moves. Frame after frame, you watch what your eyes cannot see. The screen gathers in your own image. You feel the electric rush of heat when Deathrow sticks his tongue in the socket of your ear.

THEY HELD HANDS in the late summer light and strolled through Circle Park, forested with a full and secret view of the harbor crowded with visions of amateur sailors and jewel-named ships. Esperanza. María Concepción. Helena Nataría. She walked very close to him, occasionally bumping her hip against his. The sun sank low, from glowing white to dull red, without rays and without heat. They sat close on the grass, Buddha-fashion, beneath low-hanging leaves, sharing bottle after bottle of wine — zinfandel, her favorite, neither sweet nor dry — which they chilled in the river where the last flames of sunlight glided like snakes. She felt the warm wine break a hot path through her stomach, growing hotter and sharper as it moved. Then the sky died down to the color of smoke. Points of light flicked rhythm from the lighthouse. Her breathing reached deep, where no air had ever come.

Damn, I gotta pee, he said. He pushed to his feet, legs heavy with water.

Need some help?

He did not hesitate. Yes.

She stood straight up, managing the wine better than him. Unzipped his pants and took his dick in her hands. What with one thing and another, before she knew it—

IN THE FIRST WEEKS, she discovered his secretive feet. He would keep his socks on during sex; and he would never allow her to see his bare feet. One of life’s greatest pleasures is charting the fine lines on the soles of the feet. She pondered and planned. One day, she asked him to take a bath with her. (She loved baths, would sit in the tub an hour at a time.) They both disrobed. He raised a socked foot, ready to stick it in the water.

Uh oh. Take off your socks.

What?

Who heard of anybody taking a bath with they socks on?

With slow fingers, he removed his socks. And there they were, feet, like badly carved canoes, the sides scarred and rough, the skin mildew brown.

What happened?

Birthmark.

A birthmark?

Yeah. And he never said any more.

AFTER THE FIRST WEEKS, he stopped opening doors for her. Never pulled out a chair to seat her. Walked on the side of the sidewalk farthest away from the street. The man should be near the street. Pappa Simmons had told her that this custom dated back to the days of horse and buggies and unpaved roads. If the wooden wheels of a buggy should spray an angle of mud onto the sidewalk, the gentleman’s body would shield his lady.

Woman, you said. Say woman. Lady signify.

Pappa Simmons blinked.

Lady like callin an Asian Oriental. A black person Negro.

Once, they met for dinner outside Davy’s Garden, her favorite restaurant, where fig-leafed and sandaled waiters and G-stringed and pastied waitresses served the tasty low-calorie semi-vegetarian dishes that she needed. To start, he was late — he was often late, as if there were two worlds, he a member of the one lagging slightly behind ours — but he offered no apologies, and she didn’t get angry, let it slide, put her tongue deep in his mouth. He played his palm over her ass.

Stop. You embarrassing me.

He gave her ass a firm slap.

Later, she said.

He opened the door and went inside. She waited outside. A minute later he came back.

What’s wrong? he said.

Be a gentleman. Open the door for me.

What?

Open the door for me.

His eyes widened. You ain’t handicapped.

Niggas ain’t shit.

So what does that make a bitch?

Yo mamma the bitch.

Why you comin at me like that? What I do?

Being a young ignant stupid low-life no-class punk-ass muddafudda, that’s all.

He grinned. Can’t we just chill?

She looked at him.

Sound like a personal problem to me.

Yeah, you the person.

SHE LIKED HIM, though he was rough around the edges, and didn’t hold the sharp weapons of money and power. With him, there was always something new under the sun. And not just the lovemaking, the wild gyrations of a twenty-year-old. Nineteen? What difference does a year make? They spent nights in Circle Park, near the Japanese garden, drinking and screwing. (She had scars on her knees to prove it — hi-riding the saddle of his crotch — manageable scars, nothing she couldn’t hide with a dab of Nu Nile cream.)

He puts his ear to her yawning vagina.

What you doing?

Trying to hear the sea.

But he wasn’t stuck on sex. He knew the value of a hug and would hold her all night sometimes, her head on the boulder of his shoulder.

Equally drawing were his wild dangerous moments. Once, they were standing in the lobby of Davy’s Garden, waiting for a table.

How long will it be?

I already told you, sir. Fifteen minutes.

Me and my baby want to eat.

I’m sorry, sir. Fifteen minutes.

Deathrow knocked the host’s head back with a short quick punch. Just like that. The host straightened his tie. Found them a table.

On another occasion, Deathrow shrouded his empty plate with his white napkin, then took Porsha by the hand and led her to the men’s bathroom. (She had not finished eating. His quick teeth always finished before her.) He tipped the bathroom attendant about half what dinner would cost. Instructed the attendant to, Give us a minute. Shoved the attendant out the door, bribe money in hand. Locked the door. Checked the stalls. Washed his hands and her hands — his soap lathered them a single skin — one finger at a time. Undressed. Naked, eyes closed, they climbed into each other, a thin black seam. She held her breath. Their work was sweat and light, sweat and light. When they were done, they made a distance from one another and breathed, outstretched on the warm tile floor, smiling, faces pressed against stone.