Rails Under My Back (40 page)

Inez would be departing as she was arriving. She took in the surroundings with a slow familiar glance. She wanted to be a stranger to it, wanted to see it with fresh first eyes. Adventure.

How’s my granddaughter? Inez said. Porsha entered the circle of Inez’s open arms. Inez hugged her tight, then pushed her at arm’s distance for observation. Inez had a round face with a short triangular nose. Why, didn’t yo mamma dress you pretty today. Look jus like a doll.

Thank you, Inez.

Inez carried a healthy portion of yellow flesh. Not fat or skinny but properly proportioned to age and build. Gravity was doing its work. You came to go with me to church? I can’t get these two heathens to set foot in a church.

Well …

Pappa be here when you get back.

Inez, Pappa Simmons said, can’t you see that girl don’t wanna go to church?

Like I said, Porsha, Pappa be here—

Leave her alone!

Inez, you want me to drive you to church? George said. Pappa be okay until I get back. Porsha will look after him.

I can drive myself.

Okay. Inez. Jus tryin to help. George eased himself out (to the garage, to the basement, to somewhere) with his newspaper, reading glasses—thick lenses, fogged like pop bottles—and low-volumed radio whispering a baseball game or country music.
He listen to all that hillbilly music, Hatch said.

Inez gave Porsha a kiss. I’ll see you when I get back.

Okay, Inez.

Why, ain’t you pretty today. She gave a final look. Now, where’s my purse? And my keys? Singing as she searched.

Inez, Pappa Simmons said, what kingdom is that?

Read yo Bible, Inez said. Pappa, you too old to be so blasphemous. Hope you don’t find out bout that kingdom no time soon.

Red clusters of canvas and boats slow-sailed on Tar Lake. The sun projected images on the bright-covered glass. Names, locations, places. The window became a moving map lit with places she’d never been, with names she’d heard roll off Pappa Simmons’s tongue: Cairo, Gimmerton, Rains County, Thrushcross, Misketuch, Mobile, Sabine Hall. Names she could find on any map or globe and some she could not. Ah, she liked the way they sounded. Liked the way Pappa Simmons said them.

Pappa Simmons came to her now, bright and sparkling like a swimmer stepping out of a pool.

His skin was white as shell, and his eyes, completely white.

Inez, you asked, is he an Indian?

Part.

Which part?

Inez laughed.

George, you said, is he an Indian?

About as much as I am.

She liked the way white skin wrinkled at the corners of his eyes and mouth—little rivers running back to their source—probably from too much talking.

I may be white but I ain’t no woogie.

I know, Pappa Simmons.

You know why I’m so white?

No, Pappa Simmons.

I got hurt a little.

She said nothing.

When I were born.

What happened?

Aunt T saw me and ran alligator-quick to the swamp. It took them four days to find her. He paused. Mamma saw my color, and she wiped me and wiped, with a clean rag, using her spit, searching fo my color.

PAPPA SIMMONS SAT STRAIGHT AND RIGID in a cane chair on the raised screened patio downlooking the backyard, grass-covered, with a patch of vegetable garden—sun-filled furrows—parallel to the concrete walkway parallel to the garage, trees hanging in green suspension, the steady whir of insects and the birds chipping at the green marble pond, he holding a newspaper like a sacred script, lowering it and putting his intense eyes on her. She looked far into them.

Girl, get you some ah them pinder.

The air rushed in and shaped the words. Yes, Pappa Simmons. She pulled up a seat to the theatrical workings of his mind. Grabbed a pinder fistful from the bowl.

They sat very close, she in the rocking chair and he in the cane seat, his forehead shot with red veins, his breath hot in her face.

Good you come here rather than church, he said. When a man’s got the spirit of the Lord in him, it weakens him out. Can’t hoe the corn. Milk the cow. Do the things need to be done. Rains County learned me that.

Yes, Pappa Simmons.

I never been too big on ligion. Church, I mean. Now, some say the closest a nigga get to heaven is the lynchman’s rope. Some report and lie. I don’t. I ligion. But but hard onot church. Home got more ligion than church. God can hear yo prayers jus as good in the bedroom as from the church bench.

Yes, Pappa Simmons.

Christ been down to the mire

You must bow down

He studied her—she never forgot the strange excitement she felt when he looked at her—rows of lines like pews in his forehead. Don’t be ashamed, my chile, cause you was hatched from a buzzard’s egg. Inez pretty as the day is long but she short on sense.

Her sense-driven mind revolved around the axle of his conversation.

How yo mamma?

Fine.

And a fine woman too.

Thank you, Pappa Simmons. I’ll tell her.

I’ll tell you like Whole Daddy told me, Die in defense of your mother.

Yes, Pappa Simmons.

Ain’t much else worth dying for.

She ate the pinders, a handful at a time as his mind worked rakelike, combing among the dead leaves of memory.

Backthrust in the cane-backed chair—and if he wasn’t sitting, he was standing (on two vines for legs, vines hidden under the dark cloth of his pants) before a mirror, silver mane flowing down his shoulders, or sometimes he sat small under a big Panama hat, with a bright yellow band like a collar of sunlight, saying, Ernest Simmons, my God you’re a handsome son of a bitch—where cool breezes whistled through the wire mesh of screens, the old man watched her with grim and cold intensity. (Come smooth or rough, he had surely borne what he had seen.) His bow tie (sometimes a four-in-hand) motionless in the breeze. Yes, he sat very still, telling stories, only his lips moving (and hers, eating) and the cannon voice drowning the outside sounds.

He had a need to relate his life, to tell his story in full detail, from the moment he rocked the cradle up to the event at hand, but he knew how to tell stories, and you could feel him thinking, moving his mouth over the words, experimenting with them, tasting them, searching for colors strange even to him. She rode along on the endless stream of his voice. And they traveled here and there, here and there, carrying story. Lucifer and Uncle John were blessed, blessed to have lived in the house with Pappa Simmons for all those years. To shine in the treasure of his voice.

It is unwise for a man to tell more than half of what he knows.

Yes, Pappa Simmons.

From the earliest rocking of my cradle, I member Whole Daddy talkin bout Juneteenth and Jubilee and niggas pattin Juba and stompin Jublio and the flame of laughter and celebration that spread from one farm to another. Niggas drunken to a proverb. Dancin so hard the devil can’t sleep beneath they movin feet.

Whole Daddy talkin. Mamma and Aunt T rather feed you than talk. Get more words outa a dog.

A day go by that Whole Daddy didn’t talk bout it. You get him to quibble and reveal here and there a lil piece bout Rains County and Sabine Hall, then you memory and invent.

Whole Daddy was a small man, like me, wit same silver hair, wild and kinked.

Jet trail. Yo hair is a jet trail. Rocket sparks.

Sabine Hall was the only mansion in the county. Cuthbert Page had won it in the county lottery. The previous owner or perhaps the county itself had built the big ole mansion and a lil mansion the like, the cottage out back, twin in appearance, where the guests stayed.

She saw and heard. A diamond light from another time cut through the day.

Columns magnolia and white. And inside, posts walnut and newel. Oak floors that walk yo reflection. A calliope from some riverboat. Blinding silverware. And fancy paintings of woogies dressed stiff and proud and bright rivers and thundering horses.

But the size swelled and impressed. The mansion was big. One house wit a lotta lil houses inside. Nobody ever stop to count all the rooms, lacking will and time. Rumor this nigga Jupiter fled. Paddies never found him. Rumor Jupiter ain’t go no further north than the attic of Cuthbert’s mansion. Attic hide ten families and more easy. And Jupiter lived there, in one room or another, maybe comin back to the firs room and starting all over again. Lived there dead or lost. Never knowing that Cuthbert Page the father fall and Calhoun Page the son rise. Never hearing the bells of Jubilee.

Cabins stretched on both sides of the mansion like wings. Log cabins with thatched roofs. Looked like arks. Make no mistake, every cabin was a fine place to live. Sturdy built on a lot behind a rail fence and some thorn-bushes. A nice chimney and a nice fireplace. A stack of candles. Good candles too. Made from beeswax, not soap. Cotton mattresses and blankets. Page dressed his niggas in fine linen. No sackcloth but calico and cotton. Fed them well too. Plenty of food every two weeks. Good food too. (Not jus fat and meal. And none of that hardtack.) With coffee. Page wouldn give a chile a piece of bread if it weren’t buttered and sugared on both sides. Chillun used to steal chickens off neighborin farms, raid watermelon and tater patches, jus for fun.

What Page didn’t give, the land provide. See, in Rains County, the earth give off a deep redness. If you know how, you can dig down into the dirt and put a little sugar in it. Taste jus like cake.

Yuck. She had never heard of nobody eatin dirt.

Bout any food you imagine flow from the red of that land. Peaches, watermelon, strawberries—

Porsha closed her inky eyes and created night. Sketched places and faces in the black lands of her mind. Going there to know there.

—raspberries, celery, orange, grapefruit, cabbage, sweet corn, squash, turnips, cucumbers, collard greens and mustard, too, pumpkins—

Pumpkins? You mean like Halloween?
You carved and Uncle John carved. The smooth orange head felt like a warm belly in your hands.

Yes. And string beans and butter, garden peas and black-eye, tomatoes, beets, tobacca, rice, lemon, cane, and sorghum. Pecans and walnuts sprouted up wild, papershell so soft you can crack them with finger and thumb. And green apples.

In August, you hang up yo tobacca to dry. Put the peanuts on a white cloth to dry in the sun.

Each word was a perfect jewel in the open light.

But hard work to eat. Even though Page buy every labor-saving machine and then some. Sometimes the soil baked hard enough to break hoe, pick, or shovel.

And plenty of ponds, rivers, and lakes. Catfish, perch, trout, eel, cooter, gator, and what have you.

Gator?

You bet gator. Whole Daddy go git a ax handle and chase a gator when one come floppin up past de chinaberry trees at the front gate. And forests with coon and deer and possum and rabbit to hunt. You been hunting yet?

No. I’m a girl.

A girl? You mean Junior ain’t learn you to hunt?

No.

A girl or no girl. Ain’t nothin like it.

You learn Inez?

You watch the bird on the branch. The bird gets sharper by your watching and the bird not knowing.

You learn Georgiana?

Quiet and careful. What will it do? A hen you know. How it moves, how it eats, how it lays eggs, how it sleep. But a bird on a branch …

WHOLE DADDY WAS JUS TEN OR ELEVEN when he came to Sabine Hall—bout your age—and he spent forty-four or forty-five years there. Came when Cuthbert Page was leaving for the war. Last time Whole Daddy saw him live or dead. Night before Page left, Whole Daddy dreamed of him counting money. The next morning, Page gathered up his traveling shoes. And left them unworn, cause it seemed he wasn’t gone but a quick minute when the letter arrived, He dead.

Ten or eleven when he came, but his memory already long. No day dawned befo he came to Sabine Hall. He often told about his firs job where he lay on the cold floor next to his master and mistress bed. Wake them at the proper hour. Help them bathe and dress. Check they commode. Smell their waste to see if it healthy. Clean and wash the commode. When he got a lil muscle, they sent him to work the fields. He slept in a lil hut-shack. No window in his hut-shack. The only light get in when you come in or leave out the open door. Wind and rain come in and the cooking smoke won’t go out. A lil hut-shack to worry the head down on the bare floor, beaten earth, perhaps a toss or two of straw, but don’t worry that. So tired usually you eat dinner raw and sleep befo you rest yo eyes and befo yo feet member if it’s Monday or Friday. But he was honery. After they work him hard, he’d run off and hide out in the woods a few days. Then he’d come back and take his whooping. Traded him in when they got tired of whooping him. Like I said, he was honery. He never found a place to rest his hat. Farm to farm, bent over in the fields season to season, sun to sun, seasoned on one farm or another, farm to farm, a new master each year, workin side by side wit his master in the field, farms so po and shabby he be lucky if nother nigga there to pass time wit. Farm to farm, field to field, till he landed at Sabine Hall.

Cuthbert Page was the most famous man in Rains County. He once traded with this judge in Yawkatukchie a passel of crazy niggas fo a passel of uncrazy ones. The uncrazy niggas carried him home on their backs. Burpin drunk and laughin.

He work fast and hard like a reborn man. Ran rough and smooth over raw country people. From where? Rumored London, Scotland, Wales, Ireland.

She knew those places from maps.

Niggas taught him his daily bath. He repaid in kind. Any nigga could go to his back door, plate in hand. And he learned them to speak the English language without corruption. I don’t want no dummies round my son, he said. What he hear, see, speak, he learn.