Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

Truth to tell, as a technique for staying alive, humping seemed to make as much sense as anything. You’re a killer. Let your nuts hang. Though humping brings back all the feelings of self-pity you experienced after a thorough childhood whooping, after Pappa Simmons’s motion-hot belt scorched a black map into your behind. Dream it to yourself. You sit in a wheelchair, paralyzed. Pappa and Georgiana cry behind you, their guilty tears wetting your shoulder. Forgive us, we didn’t know. You say nothing, hate stitching your mouth shut. A year later, you are dead. Pappa and Georgiana are carried out from the funeral parlor, bowed over with grief. Forgive us, we didn’t know.

Your first months in the shit, you move wrapped in terror. Birds of fire rush for cover inside your head. You jump here and there with the histrionics of a bad actor rehearsing for the carnival of your death. Fucking New Guy. Slowly, by degrees (three months in the shit, you figure), a grunt learns to relax. By then fear has become so much a part of your flesh that it no longer bothers you. Your heart develops a reasonable rhythm. You master the fine points of killing and survival. For humping makes you tough and smart and capable, as the sun heats your helmet and scorches into your brain memories of your kills, from your first confirmed— Charlie came through the tall elephant grass. You let loose a whole clip — don’t overheat your weapon; squeeze the trigger in three-second bursts; and remember that every fifth bullet round is a red-tipped tracer — sixteen rounds right in the face. From the chin up, the face disappeared as if from acid. The body stood there and shivered. Took two steps forward and fell —to your most recent, your weapon resting easy in your arms, forging a new self, a matching of heart and muscle and will that force the old self into a premolded present. Tiny steps perfect in their knowing of the drum, follow the wound that is the river back to the sea. Relax. The worst that could happen, you could die. At least the humping would be over.

THE COMPANY CAMPED on a high saddle of the mountain. Been in the shit all day, humping bush and dragging through swamp. You dig a foxhole and fill up sandbags to fortify the trench. That done, you try to piss. Take a shit. Stubborn, pee and shit refuse to leave your body and be stranded in this foreign land.

You settle down on your haunches. View the night jungle through the starlight scope. (Nothing moved. Nothing ever moved. A dark flutter of leaves, perhaps.) Besides, halfway up the hill, your eyes have adjusted enough for you to discover that darkness contained its own light. And light here required shadow there.

You look up into the sky. The stars seem quite close through the branches. You count them, name those you know, identify the constellations. Rest is an illusion. Like the earth, those stars wheel in constant motion. All luminous stars are dead stars. You fix your eyes on a single star. Gather in its cold light. A gentle arm touches you.

You close your eyes doll-like once your back touches the ground.

LIGHT RACES to meet your eyes. The sun wakes you. Rise and shine. But the company has moved on without you. Shit. You study the situation. The world draws together to one center before you. You stare into the mountains, a green screen that hides the war. In many spots the trees thin to let in sunlight. Not a sound. Such quiet, such peace. What should you do? Will they come back to find you? Should you search for them? Surely, if you stay here, Charlie will find you. If you move, you might find Charlie. Flesh surprise flesh. You directed your gaze at the sky. Big whitish clouds massed together. God is up there somewhere.

SHEILA ALWAYS FEELS TRAPPED DOWN HERE, in this steel box sliding over iron rails. She gives her body over to the rocking and swaying of the train. Her feet are stinging, need a pan of hot water and vinegar to draw out the tired.

Are they really nasty like people say? Shaneequa scrunches up her face, a frown line or two in her young smooth skin. Her white head wrap forms a swirl like vanilla ice cream. Her face is turned toward Sheila with the window behind it, a black rectangular frame, and Sheila stares in stunned admiration. Shaneequa is the best age to be, for a woman, a year or two short of twenty-five, before age invades the skin, sets in, stays. I mean, nobody can be that nasty.

Their daughter is, Sheila says. She take off her panties and let them drop: the floor, the piano stool, in front of the fireplace, the kitchen table — it don’t matter.

Nasty, Shaneequa said.

Enough to make you sick.

Nasty.

And she had plenty of home training.

You ever think about retiring?

And do what?

Lots of things.

You sound like Porsha.

Did you ask them?

Hush. Don’t bother me.

Mamma —

Now, I done told you not to bother me.

They’ll give it to you if you ask them.

How you know?

Cause the Shipcos are good people.

Maybe, but that don’t mean they have to give me anything.

If you ask, you could move —

Now, don’t bother me. I’m tired and don’t want to hear none of your foolishness.

Wish Sam was here, Hatch said. He’d ask them.

Who asked you anything? You tryin to aggravate me too?

How bout Dave? Porsha said.

Dave? Wit his drunk self? Hell, you might as well get Lucifer.

Dad? He never open his mouth fo anything. Barely mumble a word of praise or complaint.

John.

Yeah. Get John to ask em. He ain’t scared.

Look, ain’t nobody askin nobody nothing. I can ask myself. And I’ll ask them when I feel like it.

I’m gon work til I can’t work no mo.

I got to buy a car, Shaneequa says.

You know it, girl. Save yo money. I might start riding with the car pool.

Why don’t you buy a car?

Me?

Shaneequa nods.

You must be jokin. I don’t know how to drive.

You can learn. Porsha can teach you.

It’s too late for that.

Steel meets steel with a jolt as the brakes grab and spring, shaking rhythms. The string of cars halt. Several boys enter the car from the door at the end of the corridor, slapping daps, rolling their hips, holding the knots in their groins. Shaneequa leans forward over her shopping bags. Sheila could not move if she wanted; her body is a deep dry well of exhaustion, from the last round of labor, calling out for water. Shaneequa’s gesture exposes the small butterfly pin stuck (floating) over the back of her right shoulder. She wears a new pin each day, always some variety of butterfly.

Sheila nodded at the boys. These younguns, she said. Can it get any worse? You wouldn’t believe what I saw yesterday when I was standing on the El platform.

What?

This Asian — She thought about it. Should she tell? No. She would save it for Lucifer. Get down in his thoughts and have him share them with her. Oh nothing. Jus these durn younguns. She shook her head. People wonder why they so bad. Raised in the streets. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. She shook her head. People don’t understand that a train can’t run in but one direction.

Yes, ma’m.

One night, Porsha and Nia, Porsha’s lifelong friend, had brought Shaneequa over to dinner.

Mamma, Nia said, this is Shaneequa Chase, my Stylist of the Month. Actually, she my stylist of every month.

From what little she knew, Sheila had gathered that Shaneequa was a bright young woman quick to see the possibilities of any new venture. She would go places. She had much to learn and Nia and Porsha could teach her. Nia and Porsha, two peas in a pod, a fat one and a firm one, one formless and spongy, the other shapely and hard; a lima bean and a pea — their relationship stretched back to childhood, like the rows of paper dolls they loved to cut from magazines. Nia and Porsha were serious in both work and play, strictly business in money and men, having sampled everything in the fish-giving sea, though Porsha was particular about what she tasted, while Nia was catch-as-catch-can. She seemingly had a new man every week, though she never let any man stand in the way of her money. The dominoes fell and she gathered up her chips.