Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

Your seventh birthday John stormed out the front door, you and Hatch two in kind, seated in a high-backed chair, clutching the armrests, Dogma the chameleon — confused about color — caged in plastic across your shared laps, and Gracie — the woman you know as mother, the woman who grunted you into this world — holding her massive Bible at her side, weight that anchored her, kept her from being swept away.

Every hair on your head is counted, she said. Each strand has a name.

Well, John said. You ain’t got to worry. I ain’t coming back. He let the door close.

Without hesitation Gracie turned from the shut door and slipped into the spell of habit. Bathe, put on her perfumed gown, rub Vaseline under her nose, grease the skin above her upper lip, lotion her body for the motions of love, cook John’s favorite meal, salmon or trout, place the food beneath two glowing steel dishes for warmth, then retire — her small hesitant walk, steps of a little bird — to her bedroom rocking chair before an open window overlooking Tar Lake, her Bible open on her lap, and patient as a fisherman, waiting for her John to arrive with his Cadillac ways. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Rocking robin, rocking robin, beak-hungry for the spermal worm. Come moonlight, John bounds through the door, and a burning awakens her, wine color brightens her black berry face. John leaves quiet as dew the next morning, and she returns to her rocking chair.

JESUS HEARD A SOUND, corn popping over an open fire. Hooded niggas circled a corner, drinking from a swollen paper bag.

What up, homes?

What up. He measured his words. He didn’t look into the cave of the hood.

Want some? A hand extended the paper bag out to him.

No, thanks.

Yo, g. You kinda tall, ain’t you?

You shoot hoop?

Yo, black. Kinda red, ain’t you?

Funny-lookin muddafudda.

Blood-colored.

Three quick full steps took him beyond the voices’ range. A can rolled down the gutter, its source of locomotion invisible. Red Hook shoved his head back — as if tilted for a barber’s razor, straining the neck. Red Hook. Twelve buildings, each twenty-six stories high, a red path of brick thrusting skyward, poking the clouds, bleeding them. Each building a planet in configuration with the next, a galaxy of colors. Sharp structural edges challenged anyone who entered. Word, heard stories about project niggas throwing bikes on unsuspecting passersby. And sure-eyed snipers who could catch you in the open chances of their sight. Can’t miss me. A tall nigga like me stand out. And red too.

Jesus spit, saw the thought rise and fall. Above him, birds cried. He lifted his face to the sky — black specks of birds high above the buildings, their cries changing in pitch as they shifted in direction — and let it crush him. The sun was almost blinding. Thick clouds of black smoke, a ship’s smokestack puffing up from the buildings. Word, used to be able to drop yo garbage in the incinerator. Every floor had one. Til people started stuffing their babies down wit the garbage. The shiny brick more like tile. A scorched dog black-snarled from the wall. In a rainbow of colors, weighted words screamed. Too much of it, lines and colors running together, a mess of messages. Inside a sickle, a half-moon, letters darkened and deformed, scrawled in a giant’s hand: BIRDLEG WE REMEMBER.

Birdleg? Jesus inhaled the word into his lungs. Fact? Fable? Ghost? Memory was so deep as to silence his footsteps. Somewhere here was an honoring presence. Jesus felt it at his back. Shit, Red Hook! The jets! You can get caught in the middle of something. Rival crews. But he refused to allow this possibility to slow him. If it’s gon happen, it’s gon happen. His shadow swooped high and huge above him.

He entered a vestibule the size of a bathroom. Felt it, more than saw it. A cramped doghouse of shadows. Every vestibule inch quilted with more rainbow-strands of words. Bare shattered floors. Long rows of metallic mailboxes, most broken and open like teeth in serious need of dental work. And bottled-up summer heat. A metal stairwell rigged up and out of sight. Metal stairs? A broken escalator? Word, stairwells often carried fire throughout an entire building. Jesus knew. Stairwells are chimneys. Up ahead, the elevator caved. Word, in the jets, elevator motors were mounted on each building’s outside, victim to vandals and weather. What if the elevator stopped between floors, caught in midair, like a defective yo-yo? What if flame climbed the yo-yo string? Are elevators chimneys too? Jesus entered. A hard aroma of piss. He pushed the button for seven.

DOORS SHUT. Pulleys groan into motion. Cables whine. Tug at the muscles of his legs and belly. Rust metal walls compress on him. He extends his arms scarecrow fashion, the walls in-moving as the car rises, and water rising inside him, cold, making him swell. He shuts his eyes.

Black weight drops like an anchor and knocks him flat.

Just relax.

Put your head down.

Iron fingers mine for the diamond in his ear. Hey, he warns. Be careful. That diamond cost me … Iron fingers squeeze his throat and crush the words. He chokes. Voices spin above him. He feels caressing fingers on his back— whose? — strokes of bird feather. Easy, boy. Calm down. His hands move rakelike in Gracie’s plush living-room carpet. I said calm down. The anchor lowers. Two steel loops snap click and lock around his wrists. (He hears them, he feels them, but does not see.) Spikelike leaves rise high above him from the coffee table (ancient, he has always known it) — supported by four squat curved legs, wooden ice-cream swirls — above but close enough for him to make out small red-and-green buds. Wait, he says. I’m money. The two cops work on the pulleys of his arms — he is heavy with Porsha’s cooking and the coin of life — drawing them, lifting him high above the carpet, table legs, table, plant pot (glossy green paper), the spiked leaves — bright red on the front side, but colorless on the reverse; veined and tissue-thin, lizard skin (Dogma the chameleon) — and small red-and-green buds, small planets from his height, small planets dissolving in distance. In his fury, he melts into his deep essential life, hard and heavy, a red stone, a fossilized apple. Gravity. The cops raise their nightsticks like black trees. Don’t give us any trouble. He fights the anger shooting through his stomach. The door flies (or hands shove it) open. The two cops, Jack and Jill, thunder down three nightmare hills of stairs. A blast of winter wind, a cold wind whipped up by Tar Lake. His tongue covers, blankets his teeth against the chill.

Jack looks him in the face.

He smiles. Can’t break me. Smiles. Gravity. Or frowns. His face is so cold he isn’t sure. His red eyes shove two fossilized apples into Jack’s teeth. Jack yanks down on the cuffs. Get in. He ducks his head under the siren roof and squeezes into the low ride. The engine squeals into life like a slaughtered pig. A thin rapid shimmer of exhaust and the cool wind of motion. Sweat cools out of him. His wrists itch raw with the rub of the handcuffs. He gazes through the wedges of mesh partition that separates him from Jack and Jill. Studies the back of their two capped heads. Then he sees a face in the rearview mirror. Bitten by sin, Gracie said. Bitten by sin. Two wild eyes burning in the darkness. Yet, man is born into trouble, as the sparks fly upward. The car takes a heavy curve. He shuts his eyes. Circular momentum.

He flutters up through the roof into the domed siren, red light spiraling through his veins. Springs out into wet darkness. Flares, flame to sky. Shines. Settles.

A particle of light enters his cell. Spreads like spilled ink on paper. He feels a flutter in his spine, his back, his shoulder blades. Peels away from the floor and starts to rise. White. Cold. Weightless.