Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

I thought we was going together?

I changed my mind.

Why?

I jus did, that’s all.

Abu looked at Hatch for a long balancing minute. Emotion bled from his face. Understanding set him in motion. Okay. Aw ight. Check you later.

Maintain, T-Bone called after him.

Abu said nothing. Went swinging along and alone.

He’s gone, Hatch said. Abu’s gone. So tell me.

I think you hurt his feelings.

You can’t hurt Abu, Hatch said. He too fat.

That’s yo homeboy. Learn how to be subtle.

He’ll get over it. So tell me.

T-Bone’s bulldog biceps bounced and leaped at invisible possums.

Come on, T-Bone. Tell me.

T-Bone smiled, showing toothpick between teeth.

He said it was serious. Something about Uncle John and Jesus.

How yo family doing? T-Bone spoke with night hush in his voice.

Damn, T-Bone. Hatch kept his voice calm. Held his anger and anticipation in check. No easy task. Skin hot, he wanted to scream. Damn. Why you holdin back?

Chill.

I am chill.

Ain’t you never heard, patience makes virtue.

Patience is a virtue.

I said it right the first time. T-Bone’s bright bald head threw Hatch’s glances back at him.

Okay, Hatch said. You’re right. I am chill. I really am. Chill.

Good. T-Bone spit out his toothpick; it arched and dropped, missilelike. John stole a bird.

Uncle John did what?

You heard me.

Come on, T-Bone. Come on.

T-Bone worked a new toothpick into his mouth. John stole a bird.

Damn, T-Bone. Damn. Why you playin?

You know I don’t play.

Then somebody—

And Lucifer helped. Aiding and abetting.

Lucifer?

Yes, Lucifer. Aiding and abetting.

Lucifer? Hatch chuckled. No. That can’t be right. Who—

I saw it, T-Bone said. Saw it with my own eyes.

Hatch’s head traveled in a rotating pattern. Damn. Damn. You don’t dispute fact, Hatch thought. Fact working through T-Bone. Eyes surprised into witness. Damn, Hatch said, his voice wavering. Damn. Whose bird did he steal?

Freeze.

Hatch felt something wet in his chest. Freeze?

T-Bone nodded.

From Stonewall?

You know another?

Uncle John don’t even know Freeze.

T-Bone’s toothpick curved limp and white, wet and heavy from spit and words. T-Bone tugged at it.

How?

Does it matter?

Hatch said nothing. His voice was buried deep inside. If he attempted speech, surely no sound would emerge.

Long as you know. Long as you know Freeze know. And long as you know that Freeze let Jesus know.

Jesus?

Jesus. T-Bone smiled again, less teeth this time. He read words in Hatch’s face. Jesus? Why Jesus? Ask yourself.

Hatch looked outside of himself, like a passenger in a car. Yes, he thought. Yes. Jesus. No one else. It made perfect sense.

I just thought you should know.

There, Hatch thought. There. He had it all, the hard lump of truth. He could feel T-Bone’s eyes on him like hands, shaking him, demanding response.

THE TRAIN SPENT THE GREATEST PART OF THE JOURNEY standing still. Stillness etherized the passengers. Jackals all of them. They floated now, on floods of bright talk. These jackals barely held together by cotton and steel, liquid and air. Their dens in weedy waste. Take a gun to all of them. Hatch waved off their shameful smell.

The black tunnel roared overhead. The train rocked over the clunking rail joints. Sped on, swaying to the curves. Hatch’s mind eased away from his spine. Floating, flying. A clear feeling. It made things plainer.

T-Bone had solved one riddle even as he presented another. Ah, that explained it. Yes, that explained it. John. Uncle John. So that was why he’d made himself scarce recently. A disappearance both gradual and sudden. Each day, an oxidizing of a single cell, a single organ, a single limb, until — no more John. Uncle John. But Lucifer? Why would Lucifer aid and abet? Lucifer and John, brothers in the skin, but no closeness.

Light pitched upward, ran away from Hatch, quicker the farther it went. Each shaking train window mirrored blackness. Drawn by the seat’s gravity, he was a body at rest. His mind signaled his body, Move, Act, but he could not. He ran his mind over T-Bone’s smooth black tale, shining with lacquered luminosity. Bird. Betrayal. Lucifer. John. Jesus.

THE FAMILY HADN’T SEEN OR HEARD FROM HIM since last year, Christmas. Nor did they want to. Forgiveness had wings, but Jesus had ridden it to death. His fury, like a powerful storm, had carried him to heights that had permanently separated him from the family. Now — still unknown to them — he had orbited back into their life like a red meteor.

Even before he could walk or talk, he had exercised his red will. He refused to allow anyone to feed him. He would turn his face away from the feeding hand and food like poison. Cry in anger. You had to wait for him to fall asleep, then sneak the food into his little mouth. And once, his innocent teeth had tasted Lula Mae’s big bare toe. She kicked (from reflex and fear)— I thought a rat was biting me —teeth and taste down his throat.

These events had come to Hatch’s ears through the living mouths of his family. But he had no reason to question their validity.

His eyes fell on Jesus’s long-fingered hands that balanced an old battered brown suitcase — Gracie’s? Uncle John’s? — across his high knees. Red, why didn’t you check your suitcase?

I ain’t want to, Jesus said. He turned to Hatch from the seat opposite, his face blurred and distant with sleep. They had been on the train for many hard hours. Jesus had refused to check the suitcase with his other baggage, refused to put it on the luggage rack above and kept it on his lap the whole time like a baby.

But ain’t you uncomfortable?

Jesus laughed, a deep laugh that echoed inside Hatch.

Hatch let it drop. Silence seemed to pin them in moving place.

Hatch, Junebug called, come here.

What? Hatch said. He approached. What you want? What you doing on my grandmamma’s grass?

You don’t like it?

Get off my grandmamma’s grass.

You make me get off.

You better get off.

Shut up, punk. Junebug smacked Hatch’s black face red.

Jesus cracked Junebug over the head with his milk-weighted baby bottle.

I’m gon tell yo granny, Junebug said. You crazy.

So what, Jesus said. Tell her. She ain’t my mamma.

The train checked speed, then jolted back. He knew what to expect, the pattern immediate, intuition, instinct. Lula Mae would greet them at the station — her white skin like light in the Memphis night — safe in something better and greater than herself. Two days later, her deepest heart would convert her warm smile into a permanent, burning frown. They were her prisoners for the summer, in her small, knowable world. Near summer’s close her heart would cool. Her cold tears would greet their departure home. Yall call me, Lula Mae would say. Write me.

The same thing next summer. Predictable. Why do we visit her every summer?

Red—

Don’t call me Red, Jesus said.

Hatch’s eyes collided with his reflection in the train window. Jesus’s face was so similar to his own. He sat up very straight and tried to smile.

Nasty granny nasty granny, Junebug said. Whitelady, Whitelady. Briar-patch legs.

Better not say that again, Jesus said.

Whitelady. Briar-patch legs.

Jesus’s fist exploded red.

He had the feeling that Jesus was dissolving, disappearing. Again he tried to smile. The feeling deepened, widened.

HATCH LISTENED TO THE SECRET WHISPER of Jesus’s sleeping blood. Even in the dark he could see the ever-present suitcase. One end of a thin length of cord knotted around the handle, the other looped around Jesus’s outstretched wrist that hung limply over the side of the bed. All day, he had refused to let the suitcase out of his sight, even carrying it to supper.