Rails Under My Back (29 page)

SHEILA FISHED IN HER PURSE for a quarter, and in that moment before she placed it in his hand, everything in the world grew quiet but his heart. Something catchy about a woman almost tall as you. A slight downward tilt of your face into hers and your lips touch. He had loved her for as long as he could remember, smooth-skinned woman—
and after the years, her caramel skin sweet as ever, her figure taut and fine, in both his memory eyes and his real eyes
—who chastised him in church, her perfume close and heavy.
His mental hands were forever hunting, trying to lift up her skirt and touch.
Later, a man, he told her, I used to come to church every Sunday just to see you. He spoke truly. He had bowed his head and mouthed prayer, while his inner mouth hummed another wish.
God, give me this woman.
He had placed his pumping red heart across his humble kneeling knees.
White red green orange or purple swirl in the dress that balloons around her stockinged legs.
Sheila mostly dated men from the church—Mount Zion Church, rows of varnished benches hard to the butt, steeple-shaped windows, stained-glass Christ with a flowing river of golden hair and two blue doves for eyes—and her sister, Gracie, was dating John.
Rumor had it that back home, down South, Gracie had, well, you know. Cause there was Cookie, the daughter. Rumors warn, John would eventually learn that Gracie’s love never did anybody any good.
One day when the apple trees were heavy and white, Lucifer felt her move like the smallest of earthquakes—
his skin slippery against hers
—felt her heart beating under his lips.

You don’t want that woman, Dallas said.

Why not? Lucifer said. He sensed a slight possibility that Dallas knew something he didn’t.

Women are excess baggage, Dallas said.

Dallas would think that.

Sides, you don’t want
that
woman. Been so long since she had any, I bet you her bed buried in cobwebs.

Lucifer looked at him, mouth hot and tight.

Dallas blinked, catching the sun directly. Man, those McShan bitches stuck up, got their asses way up on top of the church steeple.

Nigga, John said, you jus mad you ain’t got nobody.

Dallas flinched at the words. He musta known it was true, cause Gracie said (and Sheila told) that he’d talked to the double preachers, Cotton Rivers and Cleveland Sparrow, about his trouble with women. Gracie would know.

Have patience, son, the patience of an angel, Cotton Rivers said. For centuries, Cleveland Sparrow added, they’ve been waiting to try out their wings.

Dallas had surrendered to his problem, settled for the whores on Church Street—the ones he could afford and the ones who would accept his money. He still talked a good game.

Man, I went to the Coal Bin last night.

Whoopedoo. What else new?

Picked up this fine woman.

Nigga, you couldn pick up a spoon.

Nawl, I picked her up. Little Red Riding Hood.

What?

You the firs nigga I ever heard of jerkin off to a fairy tale.

Nawl, that’s what she called herself. Little Red Riding Hood. Had on this red cape. It stop right here. Dallas placed the edge of his hand beneath his groin. Man, I tore that pussy up.

Nigga, stop selling wolf tickets.

I ain’t
—

Did you touch it?

What?

Did you touch it?

Course I touched it. How else I’m gon get it in.

Dallas held bright in Lucifer’s memory, a young fat face shadowed under a hat’s brim. So you gon lead Gracie? Dallas said.

John didn’t look at him.

Nawl. She the woman I’m gon marry. And later, he told Inez, Mamma, these the women we gon marry.

Junior, Inez said.

But we don’t have no money fo the wedding.

Rivers and Sparrow don’t come for cheap. And they charge more for a wedding than a funeral or a baptism.

Junior.

And that’s what she said at the wedding, the handkerchief wet in her hand, Junior. Pappa Simmons holding her up and George holding him up. A joint wedding, a joint ceremony, a joint sermon—Cotton Rivers and Cleveland Sparrow, silver-voiced; every time they opened their mouth, a coin fell out;
Christ is the stone the builders rejected, the spiritual rock from which the water of life springs. This stone is extracted from you, for you are its mineral
—and a joint line of twenty-five or twenty-six fancied-up cars—JUST MARRIED—Lucifer’s car in the lead—well, Ernie’s car that he’d borrowed, a rambling, slow, beat-up green thing, destined for the junkyard—since he was the oldest, and John’s Eldorado (the mighty red machine) and the other cars honking behind him, slowly moving down Hayes Street, a bright and noisy procession of vehicles with tin cans rattling in tow and backstreams of fluttering crepe paper. He would not enter a church for fifteen years (Cleveland Sparrow’s funeral, same year Hatch and Jesus were born). Cotton Rivers put pennies over his dead partner’s eyes—the double preachers were double no more, the once blazing rails now a single track—tears streaming from his own. The congregation shut their eyes in prayer. When they opened them, the pennies were gone.

KIND SIR, HOW BOUT A NICKEL THEN? Even a penny would help?

Lucifer fished in his pocket for change. Tossed a quarter into the black-veined net.

God bless you.

THE UNDERGROUND housed exclusive shops. Lucifer entered the low red building separated from Union Station by a covered walkway. The Underground grew from the stone innards of the station, a Siamese twin. Eight levels of interchangeable structures—skywalks and skyboxes, catwalks and treadmills, marble waterfalls, silent escalators, glass elevators like transparent cocoons, layers of shops like the tiered galleries in a coal mine—that did not quite connect. Air itself was an invisible web holding it all together. Robotic surveillance cameras trawled the crystal floors, portaging live images. Lucifer plied their tracks. Hovered in one beat and out the next. His reflection was fresh and new in the shopwindows.

TWO COPS LED A BOY OUT OF A STORE, sunlight glinting on the handcuffs that bunched his wrists. Sunlight crawled yellow spiders up the boy’s bald head. The boy offered no resistance. Lucifer studied him—some sign of familiarity? a boy Hatch’s age, Jesus’s age; other signs of familiarity?—and he watched Lucifer back, throwing the hard stones of his black eyes. Red Hook eyes. Stonewall eyes. Project kids stared at you that way. Tough kids that the Blue Demons basketball program hoped to soften. You officiated a call, using the fingers of both hands, forming them into a triumphal arch. They’d say Shit! or Fuck! or Damn, money. Can’t you see?

Look, I’m jus tryin to be fair.

Fair? What’s up wit that? Fuck fair.

And their eyes said more.
I’ll beat you down. Steal yo money. Cap you. Pop yo life and yo wife.
Many a time, Lucifer clenched a red angry fist, ready to break and bruise some punk’s face. But his anger met a wall. His skin.

The morning’s alcohol flooded down from his brain into his eyes.
No mo drinkin wit John. I’m too old.
The boy’s face shifted before him, two cloud-thick puddles. Lucifer flexed and unflexed his fingers to rid them of stiffness. The boy stiffened and drew back, a muscleman tugging a train.

THE TRAIN SHOT THROUGH THE LONG GRAY TUNNEL into an even blacker dark. In the car’s unstained light, Porsha shook, a reed in the wind. Times like this, she wished she had driven. The city shouldered a notorious reputation for its thick traffic, scant parking facilities, and maniacal drivers. She never drove to an assignment. Watched the dingy windows of the train each day. Her green Datsun 280ZX that Mamma called a
man’s vehicle
—

Mamma, everybody drives cars like this now. Why don’t you retire and get you one.

Daughter, I ain’t ready to retire.

Think them Shipcos care?

I ain’t ready to retire.

Ain’t you tired?

Mamma said nothing.

Why’d you do it? Why’d you do day work all yo life?

I always knew I had a job

—was parked safely in the garage on D Street at Hundred Gates, where she lived. She’d caught hell the last time she’d driven it.

The day has claimed her with its demands. She parks at the corner store, Cut Rate Liquors, goes in, and comes out with bath beads. She is thinking about the night ahead, a hot bath and Deathrow’s hotter touch. She puts the gear in reverse, is about to turn her head back over the seat and back out of the lot when some young short punk—even today, here on the epileptic train, his face was a blur; they all look the same, baseball cap, Starter jacket, ankle-high gym shoes—some unsuspecting life moving in the darkness, approaches her car. He stoops to line up his face with hers. Hey, baby. Can I get a cigarette?

I don’t smoke.

He looks at the paper bag on the seat beside her. You lyin bitches ain’t shit. He raises up. She eases the car back. Feels a burning sensation in her nose. Ribbons of blood spray from her face, red-wetting the green leather steering wheel, the green leather dashboard, the rearview mirror, and the windshield.

Damn, homeboy. Why’d you hit that bitch like that?

Don’t fuck wit me.

She brakes the car, throws it into park. Picks up the chunk of red brick lying next to the paper bag. In one motion she clicks out of the car yelling Yo, homeboy; he turns; she fires the brick whistling at his teeth.

He got the worst of it. No stitches for her, only a nick over the bridge of her nose. Some swelling for a few days—the second and third days were the worst, the bridge so puffy and swollen she could barely see—but nothing to rob her of bread and butter. If the brick had hit some other part of her body, another story. Cause her body was the only story that mattered.

Her beauty ran south of her neck. She thanked God and Mamma. Mamma had made her wear a girdle as a growing girl, as Mamma herself wore one.
Had Lula Mae started this family custom? Aunt Beulah?
Keen insight. Prophetic. The sacrifice had paid off. She made her living as a body-part model.

The train’s lurch shifted her head to Deathrow’s remembered shoulder. Her mind full of last night’s argument.

They had horsed around, then lay resting, the two of them, under the sail-white canopy of the bed, continent-wide, limbs tangled, the second wind in their channeled muscles—sailors recovering from a shipwreck.

Clarence?

You know my name.

I don’t like that name.

It ain’t bout what you like.

A lump of words congealed in her chest. Dammed her breath. She forded them. She and Deathrow made up in bed. Deathrow took her to new heights of feeling, his lips smacking the waters of her thighs, his tongue propelling her clit, then diving into the well of her asshole. She arched, sending rivers of shivers through her body.

Yes. Yes. Eat it, motherfucka.

Afterward, he lay on the bed. She moved her hands over his body. It was like iron. She could find no softness. She nibbled at his boomerang-curved dick. What’s this?

If it looks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, if it wobbles like a duck, it is a duck.

Quack. Quack. She nibbled some more. Blew hot air past the hollow eye of his dick, making it whistle.

Aw, baby. Don’t tease. Smoke my pole.

She went hard at the words.

He sensed her stiffness. What? He raised up on his elbows.

She watched him, hard.

Yo pussy ain’t no mo important than my dick.

Huh, well maybe I should be giving my pussy to someone who thinks it is important.

I didn’t say that it ain’t important.

What are you tryin to say?

Drop it. Jus drop it.

No, I want to know what you meant.

Drop it.

She did. She had learned to put up with his tongue. Red Hook had woven him. Judge the sample by the cloth.

He settled off into the first flutterings of sleep, a curved shape. She squeezed her eyes shut. Slowly, her body faded away, dissolved into the white sheets.

The next morning, he was quieter than usual. What to make of his silence? His sharp features often made his moods look worse than they were. She tried to conversate while they bathed and dressed. He would nod or mumble a word or two. She would bounce back with a question. There followed a long elastic silence. What should she do next? She knew how to handle his bad mouth: with a thick titty stuffed in it. But how could she break his silence? She decided to harbor her words and release them in the full light of day.

The sun was ripe. His sudden and harsh anger last night had set a warning in the sky. Something red and hungry hung in the air.

She hooked her arm in his and guided him toward the subway station. Are you mad at me?

No.

You’re mad at me?

No.

How come you so quiet then?

I jus don’t feel like talking right now.

Why not?

I jus don’t.

Why not?

I would have to talk to explain to you why I don’t want to talk.

She thought about it.

The day formed a red tube of silence that shuttled them to the subway station.

Okay, he said. We’re here. I’ll see you tonight. He put both hands on her shoulders and pulled her forward. Kissed her light on the lips.

What kind of kiss is that?

His eyes, full of hardness, held her. Loose paper curled in its own turnings. He pulled her close and gave her a wet searching kiss.

That’s better, she said.

Have a good one.

You too. Off to work?

Nawl. I gotta go home first.

Home?

Yeah.

She knew
home,
Red Hook, boiling with life and trouble. She wanted to say, Be careful. She prayed for him silently.
God keep and protect.
You want me to drive you?

Nawl. You be late fo yo assignment.