Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

I don’t like that white woman touchin me, John said.

She okay, Lucifer said.

She was equally tight-lipped, speaking to stress the evils of sin, foretelling that either the dark wing of Satan or the bright cloak of God would trouble John’s sky if he didn’t change his ways.

Pappa Simmons had catapulted himself beyond the arms of religion. Counted the numbers of days since he last set foot in a church. I’m a workin man, he said. Ain’t never made no livin wit my mouth. That’s a rotten way to make a livin. You never heard him mumble a word of prayer. And he threatened to shoot Reverend Tower if the preacher ever stepped foot in his house. But he and Georgiana spent evenings in the living room reading from their Bible.

SOON AS HE THOUGHT HIMSELF OLD ENOUGH to board the train without supervision, John rode it with his running buddy Dallas. Miss Adams, Dallas’s mother, didn’t mind. Dallas was with John, and John was his brother’s keeper. Lucifer could recall no moment when Dallas didn’t exist on T Street. John and Dallas riding Bingo — a huge hound the height of your navel — saddle and all, like a horse up and down Church Street. Boy-men now, they rode the trains, working cons, three-card monte, the shell game — nickel-and-dime stuff. Small and swift, John zoomed from childhood directly into the world of power and feeling. Roll an occasional hooker on Church Street or milk fag-bar fairies for drinks.

I been a man all my life, Sam said.

Nigga, hold yo horses. We jus hustlin them fo some drinks.

Yeah, Dallas said. We jus hustlin them fo drinks. No harm in that.

You can get mo than drinks, Dave said. If you talk to em the right way.

John, Pappa Simmons warned, don’t let me catch you actin a fool behind alcohol again.

John and Dallas shaped masks from Chinese chop-suey boxes and rolled a Jew Town tailor. Officer, they looked like robots. Them Jews sure do bleed a lot, Dallas said. John looked at him, face tight, eyes flicking.

John swaggered through his days and staggered through his nights. Runaway child running wild. A boy rushing into the future.

John, Pappa Simmons said, pack yo bags. Georgiana watched from over his shoulder, silent. You grown now. Be out my house by sundown. And take Lucifer with you. Ain’t worth a damn if you can’t guard over yo own brother.

Lucifer, John, and Dallas moved into a basement apartment on Church Street, a cellarlike door opening onto a flight of cement steps down to a small vaulted room — the floor one large slab of stone, and the walls, slabs too, mixed with splinters of brick. The apartment kept a permanent chill. Rats ran over the exposed pipes. The floor sloped invisibly away to dark corners and walls. Formerly the Red Rooster, a jazz club. (The drugstore above later became a church.) How had dancing bodies cramped into this tight space? Loud talk and laughter, clinking glasses and crashing cymbals, blaring horns and bottles set down hard on tables woke you in the night. Drunken shadows moved in the darkness.

Flyin home

Fly like a motherfucker

Flyin home

Fly

John and Dallas come home bone-drunk and pass out on the floor. John singing his sing. And Dallas, silent, in that vomit-smellin pea jacket year-round, and slumped like some old rug lying about. Part of Lucifer was glad that his roommates spent most of their time hanging on the corner of Sixty-third and Church — Brother Jack’s Lounge behind them and Lil Bit’s Give and Take Pool Hall and Barbershop down the street — holding the stones of their groins and signifyin.

Flyin home

Fly like a motherfucker

Flyin home

Dallas, yo fly open.

ALL OF CHURCH STREET cursed John’s and Dallas’s names. Lucifer had come to believe that it was the force of John’s high-stepping activities that kicked Georgiana into her grave. Her shut windows could not keep out the odor of rumor. John’s dirt, like sewage, flowed back to her.

That boy gon come to ruin, she said. After all we done. She flopped into a hard kitchen chair, heavy breathing, hand clutched to her bosom, pale — her color restored only after Lucifer fetched her a glass of water. Try not to worry yourself, he said. He just tryin his wheels out.

JUNIOR, Inez said, can’t you do right by me?

Sho, Mamma. He kissed her.

Why you act so bad?

I want to do better. I’m tryin. He gave her a sincere look. Mamma, I need your support.

My support?

Me, Ernie, and Dallas tryin to start us up a business. He left out Spider, the bookie, who liked to use his cuff links for brass knuckles.

A business?

Yeah. Tired of workin fo the Man’s chump change.

What kind of business?

It’s legal. A car shop.

What you know bout cars, other than driving like a crazy fool? And that Dallas—

I don’t need to know nothing. Ernie know everything there is to know. Ain’t that right, Lucifer?

Lucifer nodded.

Engine Ernie they call him. That nigga can—

Don’t bring that street language in my house.

— play a motor like music. Ain’t that right, Lucifer?

Lucifer nodded.

He was born under a hood.

How come Lucifer ain’t said nothing. He part too?

John said nothing.

He ain’t part. Lucifer, you ain’t part? Why ain’t Lucifer—

John calmed her with a kiss. Held her close. You know me and Lucifer.

Junior. She gave him the money.

The Funky Four Corners Garage gave new life to old clunkers. The revived cars flashed reflections in their paint and chrome. Sparkled like dew. All went well until an engine blew up in Ernie’s face. Then Spider bowed out of the partnership, taking along his earnings and investment. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.

John didn’t quit. Pleaded with, hugged, and sweet-talked Inez.

A lounge? Junior, that’s a place of sin.

Mamma, ain’t nobody gon do no sinnin. Some dancin. Some talkin. Some preachin. Drinkin of spirits. Jus like church.

Opened John’s Recovery Room with her money. All went well until Dallas, on his own initiative, purchased some cheap ‘Sippi moonshine and put it on tap, hog piss, devil’s spit that burned like slow lava through your system and made you pee fire and fart dynamite.

Nigga, John said. He punched Dallas squarely in the nose. Nigga. Curled his fist again, but held back when he saw that Dallas was slow getting up.

SAM AND DAVE put John and Dallas up to all that foolishness. Had to be them. Lucifer had long known in his heart. Them niggas ain’t worked an honest day since they got fired from Hammer Meat Packing House. Beulah telling it — her talk about Sam and Dave was like her far-reaching stories about the South, like the South itself — telling how they would dress up a hog in trench coat and fedora, walk out the factory yard with it between them. Come on there, Wheatstraw, you know better than to drink on the job. Got caught but the white foreman was willing to forgive and forget, and them niggas hog stealing again the next week, caught, not so lucky this time, three-year sentence to Joliet State. Jet ran the article: “Sam and Dave Griffith: Fools of the Week.”

Had to be them. By the time John bought the red Eldorado, Sam was living off disability — oh, that leg-stealing train — and Dave was surviving on Jesse’s welfare check. Beulah told that too. She puttin all my business in the street. How she like me to show everybody her dirty draws? How Dave got Jesse pregnant when she thirteen. Hayseed-eatin country bitch, Dave said. How three babies popped out of her womb in three consecutive years — but weren’t there some twins? Lucifer remembered twins. Three pearls, Beulah said. Three crumb snatchers, Dave said. Dave cashed his paycheck at the liquor store. Might as well have used the money to feed them dead hogs at the factory. Fed them kids sugar water. Put newspapers on em for diapers. And Jesse. Jesse. Well — Lucifer could tell it from here, what Beulah both knew and imagined. How Dave could always get some from Jesse— My sweetness —how she remained a reliable piece until she had the stroke that sucked the life from the left side of her body and confined her to a wheelchair; Dave ran her til she had a stroke, dang fool, eyes buggin, her left arm hanging limp across her lap, trembling like a bird. So I took them poor kids, Beulah said. And brought em here to Decatur.