Rails Under My Back (12 page)

No problem.

Let me introduce yall to some old friends, John said. This here is Roscoe Lipton.

Lucifer shook the animated man’s hand, the bones close to cracking.

Howdy. The medals winked in the dark. I understand yall some kin to Sam and Dave, those Griffith boys.

That’s right. They—

Crazy niggas.

Lucifer studied the man’s black circling brows and his wide, unblinking owl eyes. He half remembered the man at Sam’s funeral.

Then yall must be alright.

And this here is Pool Webb.

Glad to meet you. Pool Webb extended his hand—big, gorilla big—to Lucifer. The years had not loosened the vise in his grip.

Same here.

Yeah, me and Webb here go way back, Lipton said. He used to be the super at Stonewall. I worked under him. Now he retired. And I’m the super at Red Hook.

So yall from the projects? Spin said.

Well I—

I been wanting to start something at the projects, Spin said. Lucifer knew, after the war, Spin had worked as a youth counselor. Not just in Philly, Spin said, where I’m from, but where yall live too. Maybe a basketball program.

Let me know if I can help.

Me too, Webb said. He winked.

What bout yall? Spin directed the words to Spokesman, Lucifer, and John. Yall be interested? Maybe do some officiating?

Sure. Months later, the three men would keep the promise, as Spin would keep his when he formed the Royal African Company and held seasonal lotteries at Red Hook and Stonewall which gave away thousands of acres of free land in Kankakee County to the winning families. He would also start the Basketball Demons programs, Spokesman, Lucifer, and John officiating at the games, to keep teenagers out of trouble. But that was later. The old-timers held center stage tonight.

What you drinkin?

Can I buy yall something?

Lord no, Webb said. I stopped drinkin. Sugar.

Meaning, sugar diabetes?

Well, ain’t no sugar gon slow me down, Lipton said. Nor no pig. Lipton dug his fingers into the bowl of pickled pig’s brains.

They got any oysters?

Up there at the bar.

No. Those is eggs. Pickled eggs.

Pass those nuts.

Knew a nigga that loved oysters.

Musta loved him some pussy too. Webb winked.

So, where were you stationed?

In the Pacific. Germany for a while too.

Auf der Stelle,
Lipton said, watching Webb.

Crazy fucker, John whispered.

Lucifer elbowed him. Be cool. Before he hear you. He bit back his laugh.

What?

A dirty deal.

Yes, Lawd. Driving cargo. See, they had us—

A dirty deal. Lipton was looking right at Lucifer, pushing his red eyes into Lucifer’s face.
These words are meant for me.
A shit-low, piss-level dirty deal. Lipton’s voice came with a loud, rushed intensity, as if he shouted from a distant cliff. Raise a kid, and you think it’s over, that you done raised all a man sposed to raise, that yo work done, duty done, you think it’s time to relax, time for a lil deserved rest—

Why else come to the city?

—but then she decides to wear clothes for concrete and he don’t want to be bothered, and run off, Here, old-timer, take em, and dump the crumb snatcher on you like a lump of shit, Take this deposit, my payment—

Pavement? Like the concrete clothes?

—for all you done for me these thirty-three years. A low-down cocksucking cumchucking buttfucking shitducking dirty deal. And my girl …

The first unreasoning hush. Lucifer watched Lipton with stiff delight. Lipton spoke in birdlike bursts of rapid twitter. Voices crowded the bar, but only Roscoe Lipton spoke that night.

Need to put a sign right up here, HERE BEGINS THE TRAGEDY OF … Seen him once. My daddy. Pa if you want. A man under a Mountain Peak. Just back from overseas and got message in his stride. Stride right on to the railroad line. See ya later. I’m a railroad man.

Lucifer’s tongue ran out to meet the tasty words.

And me? A scab at seven. A strikebreaker at fourteen, the age when you got enough muscle to wield a baseball bat. Lipton’s dogtags spilled out from his shirt, swinging on their chain, back and forth, catching the light. Seven comes eleven and a man ready to marry. A lil piss of a room. Dark and dank. And stank.

Lucifer saw something. Added sight to sound.
A thin bar of sunlight falls across the hall. A single bulb burns from the end of a cord, shaded by old newspaper brown from the heat.

Baby, my Baby. But the work wuz good. Payday, I’d come home and throw it—

Greens. Stinky greens. Stinky steam lifting from a pot.

—up in the air. All my money. Baby and the kids, they be jumpin for all that green snow.

Green sparkled below the surface of Lipton’s eyes.
Seaweed.
Lucifer saw the eyes across from him, keenly bright, unblinking, unwavering, as far apart from his life as stars in the sky.

After the war, Baby and I come up here permanent. Well, not here, you know, back home, the city, Stonewall. Lipton tapped one row of medals. Muffled metal, a shovel patting down dirt on a grave.
Each bar of medal is a coffin. Some dead gook or kraut buried beneath Lipton’s glory.
Didn’t know a soul. But the Veteran Burial Club directed us. Set me up with a good-payin job. So I’m here.

Yes you are.

Couldn stay there. The town was a railroad division point, full of transients, bums, hoboes, hatless men in overalls. A thousand streets that ran as one street. The whiskey went down your throat cold, without taste. He had been a moonshiner before the Mountain Peak and the over there and the stepping-off stride, my daddy, my pa, a light-skinned man, lighter than
you.
Yellow, as high yellow as high could get. A yellow man who passed, hanging wit the other broad-brimmed big-city men miles away, another country, in Memphis. Then one time Mamma took me there. Pointin. There, she said. There yo daddy. There.

Lipton paused. Sighed.

So I tell them, my children, I heard it all. I’m tired. Don’t give me no shit.

My girl, she come to me. What you doin here? I asks her.

Daddy, he beat me.

We all gets beat. That ain’t no reason to leave home.

But—she start.

No ifs, ands, or buts. We all gets beat.

He likes to beat me. Smilin. Likes it. In front of his friends.

A family must stick together. He a good provider.

And he threw the baby food out the window.

Git back home.

No.

Don’t make me use my belt.

He used his already.

Listen, he provide. And he gave me two grandkids. Two. To continue the line. If he spit, git down on yo knees and lick it up.

But my feelings changed. Daddy, Bobo said. Bobo, he my son. Cops had him all in handcuffs. Daddy, he say. Git her away from that nigga. Then they carted Bobo off and locked him up.

Way Bobo got round, all these kids out here might be kin. Even yours. Lipton’s eyes rippled wet light. Yours too. The wet eyes whirled John into their two wet pools. And yours. Spin sampled his drink. And yours. Spokesman calculated. Sowing oats. Whole fields of em. Nuff eatin fo a lifetime. But if he say jus this one, I believes him. This one, this girl named Sharmeta—Lady T they calls her, Lady T—now she faster than a biting flea, but I still raise her for my own. I believes him. Never know him to have no problems claimin what’s his. That polio that twisted his legs and forked his feet couldn’t slow him down none. Them crutches built him some shoulders and arms. Know how women like muscle. Flies to shit.

That’s why I say, a dirty deal. You can put that on my grave. Raise a kid, and you think it’s over, that you done raised all a man sposed to raise, that duty done, that service done, that it’s time to relax, but then she decides to wear clothes for concrete and he run off.

John whispered, He really is crazy.

Uh huh.

IF JOHN WASN’T TELLING all to be told, the three—and perhaps the five, with crazy Lipton and crippled Webb added—would have a Washington reunion, followed by a New York sortie.
I will not be there.
Lucifer took another gulp of gin, let it linger in his mouth, feeling both its smooth icy coolness and its heavy hotness.
I will not be part.
With his tongue he worked the ice cubes in his mouth. Light-headed with hunger—he’d hardly eaten any breakfast, so anxious to meet John—he had made the ride to Union Station, taking the long route, the El along and above the river, the river like a candle wick, innumerable strands washing and flicking.
The
subway—lights on the tunnel wall announcing the train’s arrival, white snakes crawling along black tunnel walls—let you out on the second level of the Underground—yes, you could avoid the revolving doors, doors you always got stuck in, your legs slower than the spin, and avoid altogether the thick crowds of Circle Boulevard and Himes Square—then you took a fart-shaking elevator up through black-marbeled bowels into the station lobby. Lucifer’s palm followed the curved edge of the wood table, back and forth. He and John had had a hearty breakfast, bowls of boiled eggs—
how Pappa Simmons liked them, not runny or scrambled (food meant to be eaten, not fork-chased, he said) or sunny-side up, yellow eye watching you (food meant to be eaten not admired, he said)
—stacks of pancakes, each with a mountain of jam—
ah, your mouth watered for Georgiana’s perfectly circular hotcakes, her homemade jam, sticky and tasty in the memory
—and plenty of meat, so much that they’d held a meat-eating contest: monkey-wrench-shaped steaks that banged against their trained intestines, fingers and fingers of sausage that poked their belly walls, and sonorous bacon. Indigestion fogged up their chest and stomachs. They agreed on a draw. Now, breakfast over and contest done, they listened with one side of their ears and talked with both sides of their mouths.

Dallas wiped the bottle on his shirtsleeve, Nigga, I don’t want the sweat of yo lips fo bread.

Jus hurry up wit that taste.

Dallas took a swig. Blood of the lamb, he said. He wiped his long, narrow dog face across his sleeve. Blood of the lamb. He handed the bottle to John.

That’s right. Let a man show you how to do it. I hold suzerainty over you. So let me wrap my dick like a leash round yo neck.

Nigga, why you always gotta preach when you get drunk? Ain’t signifyin enough?

John worked the bottle on his shirtfront, as if polishing silver. Is tiddies enough, without the pussy?

Dallas said nothing.

John drank, throat working. Brothers and Sistahs, he said, spreading his arms wide, we are gathered here today … He drank. Passed the bottle to Dallas.

John and Dallas shared the last inch of fire wrapped in the brown paper bag. Lucifer waited for chanted phrases of song and sermon. Dallas wiped his lips on his coat sleeve, wiped the mouth of the bottle, then took a taste. He extended the bottle to Lucifer. Lucifer looked at it.

Nigga, you act like you too good to drink wit us, Dallas said. Or maybe you jus too good to drink.

Nawl, I jus
—

John slapped Dallas on the back. Forget it. He jus a little square. You know that. He took the bottle and drank. Aw. Blood of the lamb, he said.

There it is, Lucifer thought. I knew he would say it.

John passed the bottle to Dallas. Dallas killed the fire, the stars blinking black for a moment. He flung the empty bottle from his lips without lowering it, the glass spinning and glinting in faint starlight.

We jus gon shoot the breeze. John spoke through a bright uproar of voices and a clattering of salad forks.

Spokesman gon science you to death, Lucifer said.

Man, Spokesman’s cool. John held his cigarette in the scissors of two fingers, smoke rising lazily. He took a deep drag, exhaled smoke in rapid streams from his nose and mouth. Don’t let his science fool you. If you coulda seen him in the shit you’d know. A very fine individual.

Lucifer watched John’s face go red, animated with memories from a quarter-century ago. The drinks were doing their work. Lucifer shook his head to free his ears of water. He sho is a good salesman. He became deaf to the noise of the bar. He thought about the awards and the New York promotion Symmes Electronics had bestowed on Spokesman. Shit, Spokesman could sell dog shoes to a cat.

John’s eyes watched Lucifer through the spectacles. I’ll drink to that.

They lifted their glasses in toast. Their eyes met in the mirror. Immediately, John downed his drink and ordered another. Even with the spectacles, it was impossible to mistake John for someone else. As always, he was clean—a black blazer heavy for such a hot day, and white slacks with sharp creases.
He was his sharpest the first time he went to Gracie’s house, his bad-ass suit cutting air as he walked. (Wind, step outa the way, Jim.) Even had a tie knotted round his neck, noose-squeezing the flesh.
The boy John happily darted around tree trunks but even happier to dive into the freshly ironed, stiff warmth of his Sunday service clothes—Yall come get dressed for church, Georgiana called, clothes ready. That was the sole reason he liked to go to church. Later as a teen, John would go to Jew Town and get good deals on the latest fashions and tailored fits.
Going to Jewrusalem to pick up some threads.
The Jews would chase you down the street and force you to buy something.
Come on, buy. You want that I should suck dicks?

John’s lips tightened on the pretzel, a woman’s tongue. You know why they call it the Big Apple?

Why?

Cause
they
bitin a big plug out of it.

Who?

You know who. They never stray far from their nature.

You got something against—

No. I love bitches.

Lucifer fired down his drink. He saw Sheila’s body reflected in another body. Tell you now—leaning over the table—got to have a lot of bucks in New York. Some expensive women there.