Rails Under My Back (61 page)

Hell nawl. My old lady Martha live right down the hall. She got a big apartment. If my dick get hard, I go down there and do my business. I got enough respect for my wife.

Hatch thought about it. If it came down to it, he said, I bet you’d go back to your wife.

Pool grinned. Once, a husband jumped in the sea to drown himself. The wife pissed in the sea. Every little bit helps.

MY OTHER OLD LADY live out there in Crownpin, a few blocks from my oldest daughter, the one from my second wife. I was coming from down home and met her on the bus. She say, I’ll be your wife for a day. I go to her house and we get naked and get in the bed. She keep her hand over her pussy. She got one of them little skinny dogs runnin around.

A Chihuahua?

Yeah. So, I pat the dog. I tell her. I’m gon get next to you the way I got next to this dog.

I used to take my kids to her house. They ain’t speak nay word to my wife.

Yes, I’ve had my fun, even if I never get well no mo.

I used to have this one lady come over and I take her down in the basement and fuck her while my wife was upstairs washing dishes. You know, we didn’t take all our clothes off. She wear a dress and I unzip my pants and bend her over the couch.

Battery acid flooded up from Hatch’s groin. Trickles of heat in his legs.

You know, my wife could of caught us. All she had to do was leave the water runnin and sneak downstairs. Pool shook his head. Man, if I died today I wouldn’t need nay more pussy.

Back home, I used to fuck these two sisters, Clara and Annabelle. They ask me, Which one of us got the best pussy?

I used to have this one girl and we’d go out in the field and screw in a cotton sack. Her father knew too. He knew I ain’t walked no five miles for a kiss.

I used to work at this bakery. There was this white girl from Buffalo. A bookkeeper. It was her uncle’s factory.

Bakery.

She used to come up to me. Pool, you know what I want.

White men thought I was screwin her. I look at em and say, You crazy?

WEBB’S PORTABLE RADIO scratched from the windowsill.

Hatch hummed the melody. He didn’t know the tune. He didn’t go for the churchy stuff. But this song wasn’t bad. Something about it. The choir inside the radio. Singing out. You like the blues? Hatch said.
All down-home folks like the blues.

Never liked it. Nothing wrong with it. But I never liked it. Used to sing gospel, though.

I’ll record you some tapes.

Thanks. You look bout as hungry as I feel. I’ll cook us something.

Yall got any good Chinese food around here? Hatch asked. I could buy us some Chinese food. You like Chinese food?

I don’t eat in restaurants. I used to work in one. We used to spit in the soup. Piss in the stew. And those white folks be, My, they got some good-cookin niggers here.

Hatch laughed.

I make you some fish, but you got to help me clean them.

Okay, if you show me how.

You ain’t never cleaned fish?

Hatch shook his head.

Boy, where yo folks from?

Hous-

Don’t nobody in yo family fish?

My Uncle John. He like to go down to the Kankakee River.

What he catch down there?

I don’t know.

Trout. Probably some nice trout.

And he fish in this little pond out behind his house, well Gracie’s house—she my aunt—Gracie’s house on Liberty Island. He catch these little catfish.

Bullheads.

He put one on a log. Drive a nail through its head, then pull the skin off.

Ain’t much to eat, is it?

Nawl. Uncle John a fishing fool. Just like his mamma, Inez. She my grandmother. She gave me my first rod and reel.
To replace the bamboo pole that Uncle John had bought you, like the identical one he bought Jesus.
Well, she and George. He my grandfather. Well, my stepgrandfather. Sheila—she my mother—she say Inez used to fish all the time. Georgiana—she was my—

Don’t tell me who nobody else is. I’m old and slow. Can’t keep up.

Well, Georgiana used to be a fishing fool too. So I heard. She and Pappa Simmons used to vacation in the Ca’linas, and they rent a boat and do some deep-sea fishing. Hatch had never seen the sea, but he could imagine it. Unrelieved blueness and a white, formless harvest of waves. They say she could catch crabs, shrimps, squid, scallops, clams, and oysters. Oysters and vodka was her favorite dish. She used to have it on her birthday, on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Labor Day, and Lincoln’s Birthday.

Well, Inez—she my grandmother—they say Pappa Simmons—he my great-grandfather—he died before I was born—they say he like to fish. Maybe—

Webb put on his shorts and went into the kitchen without the aid of his cane.

You ain’t got to do that, Hatch said. We both men here.

That ain’t got nothing to do with it. I never enter the kitchen in draws.

Hatch followed Webb into the kitchen. Webb stooped and pulled a large bowl of fish from the refrigerator. He seated himself on a high stool positioned between the steel sink and the stove. His long arms reached into the steel cabinets above the sink for all the items he needed.

Be sure to cut from here. Webb held the fish with fingers gnarled beyond years. Dug the knife in. The asshole. That’s why I don’t let nobody clean my fish. Lotta people don’t clean out the asshole.

A long-dead memory stirred to life. Knuckleheads in the Boy Scouts would catch lake fish and try to fry it. You found your teeth chewing on sand, grit, and—
now he knew
—shit.

Hatch saw the fish swim red in the silver-colored sink. I didn’t know fish could bleed.

Bleed just like a stuck pig. Webb hardly had to lean forward. His long gorilla arms and hands did all the work.

Hatch watched and remembered. Studied the rhythmic sense. You don’t have to skin it?

These is porgies. You don’t need to skin em.

Porgies?

Yeah. You ain’t never had no porgies?

Hatch shook his head.

Ocean fish. From the east coast.

Ain’t never heard of em.

Sweet too. Now put flour in the bag, and some cornmeal, a little, but mostly flour. Shake em up good in the bag. Befo you put em in, make sure yo grease hot. The grease sizzled up. And be sure to use a spatula to turn em. Not no fork. Use a spatula to keep em whole.

I like smelts, Hatch said.

Smelts? Those nasty little fish?

Yeah.

Nasty.

Taste good, though.

You know, Jews eat filthy fish.

I know. Hatch grinned.

I mean, they got a fish they call filthy fish.

Oh, Hatch said. You mean
gefilte
fish.

That’s what I said.

POOL, YOU CAN BURN.

Got to learn how when you got to eat what you cooks. Was gon open me a restaurant too.

Why didn’t you? Hatch leaned forward on the night-stained couch, fish taste in his mouth.

Well, when I was in the army, I sent back all my money to my wife. My first one. We was gon open up a restaurant cause she could cook good too. She spent my money. She and one of her niggas. Or maybe all of em.

Damn … You sho can burn.

Can’t be that good. You act like you ain’t never ate no down-home fish.

You sho can burn.

When I was in the army, them crackas cheated my grandmother and my uncle out of the farm. See, they come along tellin black folks bout oil rights. My grandmother owned the farm. Bought it for a dollar an acre. We grew everything but flour, sugar, and salt. So we always had plenty to eat.

Peach, pear, and plum orchards.

The locust grove bloomed in June.

Many a day, I got up and hunted my breakfast. Possum is good and quail and pheasant—if you cook them right. Get that wild taste out of them. Lard quail with salt pork to get that wild taste out. And you got to boil pheasant in cream.

I used to cook for a man and his family but I couldn’t eat with them. Seem like any son of a bitch could eat at our house but I couldn’t eat anywhere but home. When I was older, my grandmother explained it to me. If you cook for one child, you can invite a family over. But if a family have six or seven children, you be eating their food.

Hatch stretched his legs. The plastic-covered couch moved beneath him. He said no more than he needed. Webb smoked cigarette after cigarette.
His lungs are black. A coal-town alley.
His words were Hatch’s words too.

See, back home, we’d slaughter a hog and cook it in the earth. Dig a pit. Fire some hot coals. Man, that be the sweetest-tastin hog. Real barbecue. You ever had real barbecue?

No.

Hatch, you need to go down South.

I been—

We used to have everything on our land. My grandmother sold rabbits to white folks. Frogs too.

Yuk! Taste like chicken.

I go out to the pond and catch them for her. Hunt the rabbits. You ever been huntin?

Hatch shook his head.

See, rabbits hear you comin and jump up, run away, run in a circle back to the spot where they jumped. All you got to do is be quiet and wait for em. You ain’t never been huntin?

No. But my Uncle John and Spokesman—

Hatch, I done hunted me some of everything. I’d shoot me a deer and drag it behind my truck to skin it. Ever have any venison? In Tennessee, I’d hunt me a bear. Little black bear. Skin it. Cut it up. Put it in my suitcase and fly it home on the plane.

But you need a good huntin dog. I used to have this dog that bark and twitch in his sleep. He dream about huntin. You know he gon catch something. But he liked to bite everybody. I put a bell around his neck to warn people he comin.

OKRA?

You don’t like okra?

Hatch shook his head.
Okra trees harbor red ants.

Boy, what yo mamma feed you? Down South, you better eat you some okra. Sorghum too. Bet you don’t know nothing bout sorghum, do you?

No.

Up here, food just ain’t the same. Can’t find no good grapes. Now, back home, you chopped through the cudgery to find the scuppervine and muscadine.

What?

Grapes. Scuppervine these white grapes. And muscadine. You ain’t never been down South?

Yeah, I—

I built me a grape arbor in Crownpin. Scuppervine. White grapes.

YES, I USED TO WORK HARD. If a donkey’s ass was a Kodak, my picture would be all over the world. But I knew how to work and how to make money. I used to steal cotton seeds. They paid fifty dollars a ton. I had a thousand dollars in my pocket when I went in the army. I had the first sergeant in my belt.

I first worked loading ships. Then I drove a truck on convoy. We drove bumper to bumper at seventy or eighty miles an hour on these mountains. Didn’t need the clutch either. We had our own signals. That was the only way you could stop in time.

We only lost one guy. He drove right off the mountain. All you could see was fire and smoke. We retrieved his body. The fire had melted his dog tags.

We drove ammunition to the front line and carried back a cargo of bodies. Many were headless. Couldn’t identify them. So we used to get a tractor and dig these big graves.

We had to clean up at Hiroshima too.

Pull the other one. Radiation. Cleaning up radiation ain’t like wiping off yo shoe.
What yall do for protection?

We wore goggles.

Goggles? Hatch rolled his eyes.
Goggles.

Spent some time in Europe too. The French women thought we had tails that came out at night.

PASSING THROUGH TEXAS those crackas threw rocks at you. Spit on you. You wanted to shoot them.

What about the officers? Hatch said.

In the States they treated you like shit, but overseas you were their brother. Many of them officers didn’t come back.

YOU EVER KILL ANYBODY?

Like I say, we drove convoy. Now, at times—You ever seen a bayonet?

Yeah. At the Armory museum.

I mean really
seen
one?

Hatch said nothing.

They were sharp as razors. I could throw a bayonet so it twirled only once.

WEBB’S SNORES fell and rose.

From his distance, from this plastic-covered couch that would serve as his bed, Hatch could see four-leaf clovers sticking from between the pages of Pool’s Bible.
Southern folks do that. Four-leaf clovers. Lula Mae.
Hatch opened the Bible. Someone had written on the white of the inner jacket,
“Miss Addie Lee Webb was borned June 15, 1900. Departed her life June 21, 1956, at 4:10 a.m. Age 56 yrs.”

A thin strip of paper poked out from the gold-trimmed edges. Hatch removed it. An old newspaper sketch. Hatch’s age-fearing fingers gently held it up to sight. Beneath a tree in full bloom, a topless Eve—ugliest Eve he ever saw, with her hard man’s face and buck wild hair—holds a branch to hide her vaginal bush.
Eve holding her twat.
A lion rests at her feet. Mouth-startled, Adam is drawing back, a firmly rooted shrub relieving him of the need to palm his privates from the viewer’s eyes. In the distance, a deer drinks from a pond.

Hatch flipped the sketch over, like a hamburger on the grill: