Rails Under My Back (25 page)

He didn’t chase the memory. Braided sun whipped the bus from side to side. Whipped him across the face.

Junior, you comin to see me?

Inez, this ain’t Junior, I’m Hatch.

You promised to come see me. Junior, you promised.

Why was he going to visit Inez? Making this long journey? Why? Well, Inez was his grandmother. More important, Inez was Uncle John’s mother. Yes, Uncle John’s mother. The why. The reason. So he must journey, must pay respect.

Junior, what time you comin?

Sun spindled light. Junior? Why she call Uncle John Junior? Lucifer was the firstborn. Doesn’t firstborn make him Junior?
I was young. I was new to the city. We all make mistakes cause when you young, you think you know everything. I wouldn’t listen to Mamma or Pappa. I met him in the Renaissance ballroom. Used to be down there on Sixty-first and Ellis, right across from the Evans Hotel. See, in those days you would dance before the men came out to play their basketball. We danced. The Turkey Trot.

Well, what was it like when yall came here?

Hard. It was hard.

Hard how?

You shoulda met Pappa. He could have told you all about it.

Pappa Simmons ain’t here. He dead.

You shoulda met Pappa.

Sun shattered in flakes against the window. Hatch blew them away. Inez. The rubbish heap of old age. He would spend all afternoon and most of the evening with her, but, by morning, she would carry no memory of his visit.

A CAR DROVE BY on muted tires. The sidewalk steered him past a weed-and-bramble-filled lot that he once had believed was an alligator-and-cottonmouth-spawned swamp. A sidewalk made all the more dangerous for its narrowness. The sidewalk opened into a quiet unpaved street. Under construction to remove the old cobblestones hollow-sounding against your heels (like horse hooves), cobblestones that hollow-held the sun’s heat and black-blistered your feet, wore down car tires (so George often complained).

Trees sparkled in the morning sun. Hedges square and trim, grass patiently mowed. A line of range houses all brick, all built for returning soldiers after the great war, the war that George knew firsthand.
He saw action. But how can anybody see action? Action something you do.
George (old and nearly blind) kept the house up and refused all offers of assistance, climbing a shaky ladder to fix the garage roof, shoveling snow from the walk and driveway, hosing watery blackish substance from the sidewalk. Hatch had never quite pieced together the chronology. The only wedding photo showed George in his army uniform and Inez in a knee-length party dress. So they had married during or after the war. Lucifer was born the year the war began. Uncle John two years later. Pappa Simmons and Georgiana took them in.

Hatch followed a short narrow cement path around the side of the house to a low white picket fence that opened into the backyard. A small patch of garden with furrows like dirt roads. Beans and peas and tomatoes and cucumbers and lettuce and turnips and mustard greens. A bird pond—
you and Jesus tried to build a birdhouse with some old sticks from the alley
—of white stone that had stood here as long as Hatch could remember. Plenty of birds today, splashing and chirping. He thought twice about it and retraced his steps to the front door.

Hi, Junior. Inez speaks as if someone had punched the air out of her.

Hi, Inez. Short, slight, childlike, her round yellow prominently boned face—level with his—and wormlike wrinkles shining between the dark wings of her hair. Her body frail as tissue paper, limbs thin sticks for a toy airplane, and you are afraid to touch her, to feel her skin, afraid that she might roll up and crumble under your hug. But you must hug her. She shrivels in your arms.

Let me look at you. She pulls like skin away from your body. So big. Ain’t you all growed up.

Yes.

How’s Lucifer?

He’s fine.

How’s your mamma?

She’s fine.

And your sister?

She’s fine.

And your wife?

You mean Gracie. She’s Uncle John’s—

How’s Beulah?

She’s fine too.

You speak to her lately?

Sheila called her the other day.

You remember that time we all drove down to her house?

Yes, I remember.

It was me, George, Junior, Sheila, now who else?

You know.

We had a fine time. I really like Beulah. She and I are one of a kind.

Why did I come here?

One of a kind.

Hatch considered the comparison.

Junior, you know anything pleasant in the world?

He ignored the fact that she called him Junior, Uncle John. Guess not, he said.

What’s wrong with people today? Her face shows pain in every wrinkle.

They stood in the small living room crowded with furniture and memories. Nothing had changed. The room had remained untouched all of Hatch’s life. On the wall above the long squat television, two glassed-and-framed prints of birds of paradise on either side of a glassed-and-framed charcoal portrait of Inez—
we got that in Mexico; he drew it for one American quarter, one American quarter
—fat-cheeked and plump, nothing like the way she looks now. On the wall behind and above the leather couch, a mosque-shaped mirror, dotted with colored glass.
We got that one in Turkey.
Two glassed-and-framed photographs above and behind the sitting chair, GOD SAVE THE KINGS—Dr. Martin Luther King and his family seated on a couch, reading the Bible;
Lula Mae got that one, I’m sure
—and CHAMPIONS OF THE PEOPLE, stills of King and the murdered Kennedy brothers.

And all these strange kinds of sex.

That’s right, Inez.

The world gets worse and worse.

That’s right, Inez.
Why did I come here?

I’m glad I don’t have long to stay.

Don’t say that, Inez.

I wade into the deep water, tryin to get home.

Inez—

And when I get there, I’ll sit on the river.

You ain’t going nowhere, Inez. You gon be with us for a long long time.

I’ll sit on the river. Let’s go out to the patio.

They did. The enclosed back porch lay in sunlight, wood-paneled walls with black knots like spying eyes. Inez and George spent most of their time here with a huge wall map, the many places they had traveled pierced by red thumbtacks.

Hatch eased into the worn cane chair where Porsha said that Pappa Simmons, who died the year he was born, had sat and told stories. She had never told him the nature of the stories, only that he’d told them and to her.

George brought his coffee and biscuits to the glass table—
you
were always afraid to eat there, the plate banging against the glass, afraid table and meal would crumble beneath you—with a small portable radio blaring out the news, his reading glasses balanced across his nose, and holding up a magnifying glass before the newspaper. He liked his coffee black; he took his first gulp, throat working, without blowing off the steam.

Pale colors ran in his eyes, fish in a cloudy aquarium. After the war, he had found work as a blueprint reader for the commuter railroad and booked passage to blindness. You could stand two feet in front of him and your face would be no more than a black balloon. Inez was losing more than her sight.

George?

Yes, Hatch. He returned the cup to the saucer with the least bit of sound.

What kind of work did you do? He could never get it straight.

Well, when I first came up from Arkansas, I got a job in the stockyards. Worked that for about two years, then I got this job workin for these two Jewish brothers.

Reading blueprints?

No. It was a machine company. We made the templates used to stamp out car parts.

I see.

Yeah. George pulled off the top of one biscuit. Steam curled from its soft white insides. It was just a mom-and-pop operation when I started. Big business now … Those two Jewish brothers smelled like dead fish, that heavy fish odor.

Man.

Back in Russia, they managed a fishery. Good people. Fair. But I also made a dollar a day. Service pay. That was good money in those days.

How’d you like the army?

George thought about it. See, it’s all about the military-industrial complex. That’s why they going to war now. George rose up from the table and walked into the kitchen.

Yo father was here, Inez whispered.

Lucifer?

Junior.

Uncle John?

Yes. He left something. Let’s go out to the garage. I’ll show you.

Hatch took Inez’s arm—light and brittle as a twig—and guided her to the garage. Partitioned in two, a space for the car (ordinary, nondescript, pale blue and gray), tools, and fishing gear, and a screened porch overlooking the patio and yard. He had spent many hours on that porch, book in hand, rocking, on a large swing meant for two people.

In there, Inez said.

He helped her into the garage proper. She took an object down from a wooden utility shelf. An ordinary basket, full of baby’s breath.

He and that woman left it.

What woman?

It’s some kind of spell. I been meaning to ask yo mamma.

Hatch recalled the time George got sick, weak in the legs, and Sheila instructed Inez to put a picture of a horse beside his picture. Horses have strong legs. And burn a candle. Red might be too strong, make his legs too powerful. So burn a red and a white candle.

Inez quickly put the basket back on the shelf and led (pulled, reined, rider and horse) Hatch from the garage.

Why would Uncle John want to put a spell on you?

She pushed him into the screened porch.

Inez? Why would Uncle John—

That man, George.

Hatch glimpsed the old swing—smaller than he remembered it—and a few old clover-shaped church fans for cooling down the Holy Ghost.

He is low. The dirt washed off turnips.

George?

Yes. That man there, George. He got powers.

Hatch said nothing.

He knows everything I’m sayin. See, he can touch something and then he sprays me with something while I sleep. George. That man there. Married all these years. Married. To dirt.

George opened the patio door. Inez’s wrinkled mouth went tight, a drawstring purse.

HATCH DRUMMED HIS FINGERS on the glass table, which yielded his reflection. He saw himself churn Inez’s ice cream. Saw himself drop fresh cream and fresh cubes into the bucket then turn the handle with all the power of his skinny kid’s arms. He saw himself skin apples for Inez’s applesauce. Shell peas for her soup.

You hungry?

No. I ate. He lied. Memory brought hunger.

If you are hungry all you have to do is speak up.

No—

But you know, I don’t do any cooking. These hands. She raised them. One day when you’re old—

Inez?

—you’ll understand. George, Junior is hungry. He want some chicken. Inez?

Some chicken. Think I can drive like this? I’m not dressed. She smoothed her palms over her white cotton housecoat. Shuffled her matching house-shoed feet.

You can stay in the car, Inez. George spoke from down the hall.

Wait, Hatch said. I don’t want any—He let it go. You want me to drive?

No, Inez said. You relax. You are a guest.

The three left the patio, walked out to the garage, and took their places in the car. Hatch in the back seat and George shotgun with Inez. She curved the car onto the gravel-covered alley. Took the alley slowly, then curved the car onto the street.

Okay, George said. Now make a left at the corner.

She did.

Stay on this street.

She did. She drove, steadily, both hands on the steering wheel, face intent on the road and George’s directions.

There it is, right up there.

How was poor-sighted George so precise? Was he speaking from memory or instinct?

I see it. She eased the car into the lot.

Park over there.

She did.

Keep the engine running.

She did. She carefully took neat, clean bills from her purse and handed them to Hatch. There you go, Junior. Buy a box.

Yall want any?

No.

Buy some for yourself, George said.

Hatch ordered the cheapest box and pocketed the change. Boxed chicken under his arm like a football, he ducked back into the car.

Now back out the way you came, George said.

But the sign says—

I’m telling you the right way to go.

But those arrows there—

Inez, just do what I say.

She didn’t.

What are you doing?

She said nothing.

Inez, what are you doing?

Shut your damn mouth unless you going to drive. She swung the car into the streaming avenue, just missing another car. She drove on steadily. Drove past their turn. George said nothing. She turned left and moments later, they were back at the chicken shack. This time she turned right, at the wrong corner. It went on like this. They circled the chicken shack again and again and again.

Make a right at the corner, Hatch said.

Okay, Junior. She made a right.

Now, there’s the alley. Turn left.

Thank you, Junior. She turned, car bouncing, tires crunching on gravel. See, they fixin the street. Junior, you see?

Yes, Inez.

Those cobblestones ruin the tires. She pulled the car before the garage. George got out. Hatch got out.

I’ll park it, George said.

Okay. Inez made her way for the house. Junior, come on.

You see what jus happened? George whispered. You see? George took Hatch’s silence as acknowledgment. She spend all her time in that garage. All her time. He blinked back his anger. Tell yo mamma to call me. I got to tell her something very important.

I will.

Be sure and tell her.

I will.

Better yet, tell your sister to come out here.

I will.

Tell her.

I will.

SHEILA LEANED OVER THE EDGE of the platform—a wood-and-iron structure rising stories above the street—to see if her morning train was coming. A yellow oval shimmered near her face. A young Oriental woman watched her, small, prim, and delicate in a red dress suit. Her hand held firm to the black leather purse strapped over her shoulder. Her eyes were sharp and curved, glinting swords.
Hear they don’t like to be called Oriental but Asian. Oriental like saying Negro. Or nigger. Bet she own a cleaners. Or a restaurant. Or a grocery store.
Turned her face away when she and Sheila locked stares.