Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

Girl, get you some ah them pinder.

The air rushed in and shaped the words. Yes, Pappa Simmons. She pulled up a seat to the theatrical workings of his mind. Grabbed a pinder fistful from the bowl.

They sat very close, she in the rocking chair and he in the cane seat, his forehead shot with red veins, his breath hot in her face.

Good you come here rather than church, he said. When a man’s got the spirit of the Lord in him, it weakens him out. Can’t hoe the corn. Milk the cow. Do the things need to be done. Rains County learned me that.

Yes, Pappa Simmons.

I never been too big on ligion. Church, I mean. Now, some say the closest a nigga get to heaven is the lynchman’s rope. Some report and lie. I don’t. I ligion. But but hard onot church. Home got more ligion than church. God can hear yo prayers jus as good in the bedroom as from the church bench.

Yes, Pappa Simmons.

Christ been down to the mire

You must bow down

He studied her — she never forgot the strange excitement she felt when he looked at her — rows of lines like pews in his forehead. Don’t be ashamed, my chile, cause you was hatched from a buzzard’s egg. Inez pretty as the day is long but she short on sense.

Her sense-driven mind revolved around the axle of his conversation.

How yo mamma?

Fine.

And a fine woman too.

Thank you, Pappa Simmons. I’ll tell her.

I’ll tell you like Whole Daddy told me, Die in defense of your mother.

Yes, Pappa Simmons.

Ain’t much else worth dying for.

She ate the pinders, a handful at a time as his mind worked rakelike, combing among the dead leaves of memory.

Backthrust in the cane-backed chair — and if he wasn’t sitting, he was standing (on two vines for legs, vines hidden under the dark cloth of his pants) before a mirror, silver mane flowing down his shoulders, or sometimes he sat small under a big Panama hat, with a bright yellow band like a collar of sunlight, saying, Ernest Simmons, my God you’re a handsome son of a bitch — where cool breezes whistled through the wire mesh of screens, the old man watched her with grim and cold intensity. (Come smooth or rough, he had surely borne what he had seen.) His bow tie (sometimes a four-in-hand) motionless in the breeze. Yes, he sat very still, telling stories, only his lips moving (and hers, eating) and the cannon voice drowning the outside sounds.

He had a need to relate his life, to tell his story in full detail, from the moment he rocked the cradle up to the event at hand, but he knew how to tell stories, and you could feel him thinking, moving his mouth over the words, experimenting with them, tasting them, searching for colors strange even to him. She rode along on the endless stream of his voice. And they traveled here and there, here and there, carrying story. Lucifer and Uncle John were blessed, blessed to have lived in the house with Pappa Simmons for all those years. To shine in the treasure of his voice.

It is unwise for a man to tell more than half of what he knows.

Yes, Pappa Simmons.

From the earliest rocking of my cradle, I member Whole Daddy talkin bout Juneteenth and Jubilee and niggas pattin Juba and stompin Jublio and the flame of laughter and celebration that spread from one farm to another. Niggas drunken to a proverb. Dancin so hard the devil can’t sleep beneath they movin feet.

Whole Daddy talkin. Mamma and Aunt T rather feed you than talk. Get more words outa a dog.

A day go by that Whole Daddy didn’t talk bout it. You get him to quibble and reveal here and there a lil piece bout Rains County and Sabine Hall, then you memory and invent.

Whole Daddy was a small man, like me, wit same silver hair, wild and kinked.

Jet trail. Yo hair is a jet trail. Rocket sparks.

Sabine Hall was the only mansion in the county. Cuthbert Page had won it in the county lottery. The previous owner or perhaps the county itself had built the big ole mansion and a lil mansion the like, the cottage out back, twin in appearance, where the guests stayed.

She saw and heard. A diamond light from another time cut through the day.

Columns magnolia and white. And inside, posts walnut and newel. Oak floors that walk yo reflection. A calliope from some riverboat. Blinding silverware. And fancy paintings of woogies dressed stiff and proud and bright rivers and thundering horses.

But the size swelled and impressed. The mansion was big. One house wit a lotta lil houses inside. Nobody ever stop to count all the rooms, lacking will and time. Rumor this nigga Jupiter fled. Paddies never found him. Rumor Jupiter ain’t go no further north than the attic of Cuthbert’s mansion. Attic hide ten families and more easy. And Jupiter lived there, in one room or another, maybe comin back to the firs room and starting all over again. Lived there dead or lost. Never knowing that Cuthbert Page the father fall and Calhoun Page the son rise. Never hearing the bells of Jubilee.

Cabins stretched on both sides of the mansion like wings. Log cabins with thatched roofs. Looked like arks. Make no mistake, every cabin was a fine place to live. Sturdy built on a lot behind a rail fence and some thorn-bushes. A nice chimney and a nice fireplace. A stack of candles. Good candles too. Made from beeswax, not soap. Cotton mattresses and blankets. Page dressed his niggas in fine linen. No sackcloth but calico and cotton. Fed them well too. Plenty of food every two weeks. Good food too. (Not jus fat and meal. And none of that hardtack.) With coffee. Page wouldn give a chile a piece of bread if it weren’t buttered and sugared on both sides. Chillun used to steal chickens off neighborin farms, raid watermelon and tater patches, jus for fun.

What Page didn’t give, the land provide. See, in Rains County, the earth give off a deep redness. If you know how, you can dig down into the dirt and put a little sugar in it. Taste jus like cake.

Yuck. She had never heard of nobody eatin dirt.

Bout any food you imagine flow from the red of that land. Peaches, watermelon, strawberries—

Porsha closed her inky eyes and created night. Sketched places and faces in the black lands of her mind. Going there to know there.

— raspberries, celery, orange, grapefruit, cabbage, sweet corn, squash, turnips, cucumbers, collard greens and mustard, too, pumpkins—

Pumpkins? You mean like Halloween? You carved and Uncle John carved. The smooth orange head felt like a warm belly in your hands.

Yes. And string beans and butter, garden peas and black-eye, tomatoes, beets, tobacca, rice, lemon, cane, and sorghum. Pecans and walnuts sprouted up wild, papershell so soft you can crack them with finger and thumb. And green apples.

In August, you hang up yo tobacca to dry. Put the peanuts on a white cloth to dry in the sun.

Each word was a perfect jewel in the open light.

But hard work to eat. Even though Page buy every labor-saving machine and then some. Sometimes the soil baked hard enough to break hoe, pick, or shovel.

All dem pretty girls will be there

Shuck that corn befo you eat

They will fix it for us rare

Shuck that corn befo you eat

I know that supper will be big

Shuck that corn befo you eat

I think I smell a fine roast pig

And plenty of ponds, rivers, and lakes. Catfish, perch, trout, eel, cooter, gator, and what have you.

Gator?

You bet gator. Whole Daddy go git a ax handle and chase a gator when one come floppin up past de chinaberry trees at the front gate. And forests with coon and deer and possum and rabbit to hunt. You been hunting yet?

No. I’m a girl.

A girl? You mean Junior ain’t learn you to hunt?

No.

A girl or no girl. Ain’t nothin like it.