Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

To the Tree of life

What? The cashier took her money. Do you want a transfer?

Cherubs nested in the neural tangle inside her skull, the dense network of cordlike fiber — handpicked by God himself — that obtained, stored, and transmitted information from the front backwards. She watched their wings, veined and transparent, insectlike. Scriptured wings. Walk with Jehovah, shoulder to shoulder. The Prophet 1 Faith Stimulator patent pending had done its work.

What?

She charged through the turnstile, boarded the train, found a seat, and turned her face to the window. The train pulled into motion. The windows shook, drummed deep inside her. Don’t bother me none. Her body was stone.

A legless man came rolling down the aisle on a wooden board. He rattled his change-filled can. Give if you can. Rattle and roll. Give if you can. Rattle and roll. She took a quarter from her purse, leaned forward into the aisle, and, like a game contestant, tossed the quarter at the moving can. She missed. He picked it up with stained fingers. Flipped it into his can. Looked at her with red eyes. Said through his masklike beard, That’s the way yo do it. He rattled and rolled to the next car.

The nerve. She settled back into her seat.

She saw a brilliant sun through the window. A few sailing (fishing?) vessels speckled the lake. Flocks of phosphorescent birds. Wards Tower loomed over the Loop — a towering mass of soaring walls reflected in the terminal black glow of its windows — against a radiant sky, a mile-high, gray and black tombstone. The city was a flat prairie that spread outward from the lake. No mountains or other natural formations to relieve the endless vistas of water, land, and sky. But cliffs and peaks constructed out of steel, glass, and stone. She saw a plume of smoke rise from the harbor, fan out and lift, black fingers reaching for the sun.

SUNLIGHT TEARS THE RAFT APART beam for beam tides and tongues stream metal and a breeze to witness the hour you mud-colored creature water wiping out the salt of your wounds rocking cliffs pearl-colored clouds. The circle closes, the net is being hauled in. You ride the monster’s back, sheeted with flame, a live rocket. Avoid its sprout, red tentacles, flaming vines. Dawn ruins it. Wakes of yellow flame. Seaweed. A thousand years deep.

She pinched her leg to force herself to stay awake. Coffee? No way. Bad for your breadwinning body. Glad she hadn’t driven. Once, stalled in choked traffic, she had drifted asleep at the wheel to be awakened by a concert of furious honking.

A hot wish rose in her body. Deathrow. With his body she could exhaust all the day’s games and pretense. Deathrow.

THE NIGHT HELD STILL outside the rolling train window. The glass framed a clean black box. Hatch reached for Elsa’s hair. Smooth and black, pulled tight in a ponytail, or combed forward — this he hated — a curved wing on each cheek. He reached for her waiting scent. Dream it to yourself. Elsa entered the night spaces of his brain.

The cleanly dressed congregation greeted one another in the bustling calm following Sunday service. He knelt on the podium, prayer-fashion, and placed his guitar into its padded case, soft, shapely, a protective womb. Case/guitar he gripped close, then hoisted it up and slung it over his shoulder like a rifle.

That was glorious. Reverend Ransom rolled forward, polished shoes — twin reflections of Hatch on the toes — inches above the red-carpeted podium floor. He took Hatch aside — Abu was still packing up his drum set — and discreetly produced the weekly cash.

Thank you. Hatch took the cash and quickly divided it into two equal portions.

That was simply glorious.

I’m glad you enjoyed it.

Reverend Ransom continued to hover above the floor, quiet, smiling into Hatch’s face. I have something else for you. He produced a business card. Floated it over to Hatch. CARIBE FUNERAL HOME. A CENTURY OF EXPERIENCED CARE FOR YOUR ETERNAL NEEDS. Explained: Close friend and colleague, the Reverend Drinkwater K. Bishop, was in desperate need of a musician for his funeral services. Go see him tomorrow. The Lord does provide. Hatch quickly slipped the card into his pocket.

The following afternoon, Hatch met the preacher-mortician in the floral chambers of his office. The undertaker explained, fingering his paintbrush mustache, that he had tired of the typical organ sound. Every funeral parlor had one. Even the angels are bored. He wanted an instrument that sounded equally celestial. My chariots need some new shoulders at the wheel, he said.

Hatch couldn’t stand funerals. Down-home spooks in their Sunday best. The chemical stench of preserved death. Dearly departed cramped in the casket. (Strange to see how death gets hold of the flesh.) White-skinned Dave eternally at rest in the black casket. Uncle John puts a brick of E&J — Old Rocking Chair, Sheila said, that was Sam and Dave’s drink — in his stiff pocket. Bad enough he’d drink you out of house and home, Sheila said. Bad enough he wouldn’t lift a finger to help raise those kids. He was the biggest liar. Oh, he could lie. Told Lula Mae that I smoke reefer. Big mouth — her tongue flopping up and down like a vessel on stormy sea — Beulah commenced to whooping and hollering. Sam, if I hada just been there to hold up your head. The preacher — Rise in the flesh up to heaven — resurrected the dead with the saliva of his voice. Once at the cemetery, the pallbearers (in ant formation) carry the morsel of casket to the rim of the grave. Dust dust and ashes, fly over my grave. And he had never played one, but he took the assignment.

IT WAS A CAB like all the others, small and functional, bug-shaped. Aerodynamic. Uncle John, yo cab ride smooth as a Cadillac.

Don’t it. Spokesman worked on it.

Hatch, Uncle John said. Bet you don’t know this one.

When Adam and Eve was in the Garden of Eden

They didn’t know til the good Lord walked out

Say, when Adam and Eve was in the Garden of Eden

They didn’t know til the good Lord walked out

Eve turned around and soon she found out

Uncle John, that’s corny.

Where Abu?

That nigga sleep. He was sposed to come and help me with my gear.

You ain’t get him in on the gig?

The—

That’s yo running buddy.

The undertaker didn’t ask fo no drummer.

Uncle John shook his head.

Well—

Uncle John kept shaking his head.

Maybe next time.

How he payin? The undertaker I mean.

Good.

Good?

Yeah. Real good.

Good for you. Get that money.

CARIBE FUNERAL HOME swam into focus. The letters formed large bright yellow boxes like at a supermarket.

Thanks, Uncle John.

Break a leg.

THE FUNERAL HOME was an apple, red outside — cherry-wood panels — and white — oak walls and pews — inside. The assembled marched like a long line of black ants up to the raised coffin. Small clouds of handkerchiefs at their faces. Wept before the body stuffed in eggshell velvet in a gleaming bronze casket. Looped back to their seats.

Preacher Bishop started them out slow. Brothers and sisters, how often I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chicken under her wings. But such is the life of man.

Yes.

Hatch whipped organlike waves from his guitar.

Because Adam fell from grace, each of us must fall into the hands of sin, let Death lower us into the grave.

That’s right.

Reverend Bishop caught fire in the assembled’s faces.

But the grave is not our home. I say, the grave is not our home.

Lord said it ain’t.