Rails Under My Back (76 page)

John held an oily cloth at his hip like a dishrag. Watched the boys. The Funky Four Corners, he said.

Nawl, Jesus wanted to say. Not the Funky Four Corners, John, Ernie, Spider, and old drunk-ass, dog-faced Dallas.
That time John and Dave found Dallas asleep on the court, inside the rim, dunk-drunk.
Five men, a basketball team, the Funky Five Corners. So call this garage the Funky Five Corners Minus One, Lucifer. Cause Lucifer didn’t want to have nothing to do with the garage.
But he was there for the hunting trip. Remember? Ernie, Spider, Dallas, Spokesman, Lucifer, and John. A trip to celebrate the opening of the business. Remember? Spokesman’s idea. Brought back rabbit and deer from the weekend, but John sold them to the butcher cause neither Sheila nor Gracie knew how to cook them. Yes, John selling them to the butcher but saving two rabbit feet, one for you and one for Hatch. Yall stuffed them in yall pockets til John came through with his promise, gold neck chains where the feet could dangle, even run a little up and down your chest. A week later, the feet were too stanky to wear and Spokesman had to fumigate yall clothes. Don’t you know you just can’t give somebody dead feet like that? Spokesman said.

Nawl, Birdleg said. SA. The Stonewall Aces. He finger-flashed an A.

Okay, John said, amused. The Stonewall Aces.

What up, Uncle John?

In the garage proper, a car nested on the upper branch of a silver-colored, cylindrical, pneumatic dolly—black underside exposed.
The dolly an axle. Spin that car round and round. A seal twirlin a beachball with its flippers.
It was back there where Ernie had poured gasoline in a carburetor to fire up and test-run an engine—
gin, that’s what they say he called it, a gasoline gin
—and the engine had exploded in Ernie’s face. Ernie screamed his country whistle. A birdcall. The same whistle he used when he stood before Gracie’s door and yelled—
Why can’t he use the doorbell like normal people? Gracie said
—John! Yes, Ernie whistled, then carried his black face to the roof of the garage, felt his way inside the Edsel, slammed the door and locked it and locked all the other doors. John, Dallas, and Spider (and Lucifer?) banged on the window, but Ernie hammered his black face against the window again and again. Then the fireman came and red-axed the window. Too late.

Where Spokesman?

He at lunch.

He workin on that car? Hatch nodded to a car’s raised hood.

Yeah. Yall stay away from there. I don’t want nobody’s mother cryin all in my face if somebody gets hurt.

Ain’t nobody gon get hurt, Hatch said. We got this kite. He held it, wedge end pointed at the ceiling.

A kite? What yall lil niggas need wit a kite?

Can you show us how to fly it?

They insist, Birdleg said. He took a scab from his M&M box and popped it into his mouth. Chewed.

Jesus glared into the raised hood. Saw the open distributor cap. Like an intricate flower, the coils with thousands of turns leading to a handful of rubber-covered paths.

Mr. Birdleg, you can’t fly no kite?

Birdleg acted like he didn’t hear.

John shook his head. A bird in the hand is worth more than a bush.

Damn, Uncle John. Don’t start crackin on him.

DRY OAK LEAVES tangled in the grass. Jesus and Birdleg tugged at the flying string with everything they had.

Damn, Birdleg. You stuck it in the cloud.

No, Birdleg said. That’s where it wants to be. Didn’t it fly there?

It’s stuck. Jesus tugged at the string.

Go easy, John said. He watched the kite, his eyes liquid and golden brown.

Jesus tried to steady the spool of string.

Let it go where it want, Birdleg said, his breath tangled in Jesus’s face.

Damn, Birdleg.

Let it go where it want.

WORD?

Word.

Birdleg, huh?

Birdleg.

Hmm … So that’s who you represent?

Yep. From now til. The rail-like scars on his forearm disappeared into the tunnel of his shirtsleeve.

Interesting.

Yep.

Well …

Yep.

Well …

Excuse me?

Is that all?

Yep. Told and ain’t no mo to tell. Threw yo mamma down a wishing well.

She giggled. You’re funny.

I ain’t funny. Never been. Never will be.

You make me laugh.

Do I now?

Yep.

I’m glad.

Are you?

Yes.

She thought about it, watching him, inside him.

Jesus cleared his throat.

Interesting, she said.

Well, I try to keep it real.

I’m not talkin bout that.
You.
She raised up like a mannequin on a string. Me? An ax glint of light split his head in half. He could feel the silence.

Tell me something.

Yes?

She moves to put as much of their bodies in contact as she can.

HE CAN VIEW THINGS from a height. His view stretches to country distances. So he lies watching the rectangle of the high window, waiting for the glass to gray. Staring makes his eyes run.

He stares inside too, big lungs breathing in remembered sight, Lady T, magnifying her. He remembers. And more he remembers. He will say that he has seen her spoken words. He will say that she allowed him all the colors of her body. This he will say. He will also say that he had quit Lady T’s secret place to discover that little time had passed. A fall of hours.

His task looms before him. He will erase Lucifer from the earth and condemn him to the place of memory, then he will go back there, to the secret place—free, relieved of his chronic angers, cut off from the family, existing only for himself—retire, and give up the world.

Freeze had raised his final resolve into an airtight structure and driven Jesus inside. For years, Jesus had lain awake at night and breathed the colors of Lula Mae’s hair on the pillow. And for the length of this day, he heard Lucifer’s grave voice broadcasting from another world, dreamed Lucifer’s red widow’s peak, a blade so sharp it would surely wound, when he closed his eyes. Now Freeze had shown him how to circle back, circle inside his plagued sleep.

There floods on Jesus an extraordinary understanding. His blood flows through the bodies of forty-four generations. Whenever he looks at any family photograph, he sees replicas of himself, Hatch, Lucifer, and John. All from the same wet vine, the circular eye of God’s (or the devil’s) dick.

His new understanding does nothing to lessen his rage. He closes his eyes. Remembers the future that will forever erase his past. Knows that his red will put him on the map, red lines red places. Large, out there: a red astronaut cut free from his ship, enough oxygen only for himself, floating in blackness.

THE SKY SEEMS CLOSE TO THE BUSHES. A sharp sickle moon. Red at the edges. Lights spill outward into the streets. Ghosts scuttle along in bone light.

What you do while I was sleep?

A little of this, a little of that. He moves through the night streets, his mind a pile of furious red shards.

No Face leads him to the car with prophetic certainty. A brougham, long and shiny red, smoke-tinted windows. He kicks the engine into life. We gon do this tonight?

No doubt.

How?

Elementary.

Surveyed locations from recent days go ripping by in the night.

We gon do this like Brutus, No Face says, belly-laughing the words, hardly able to contain himself. In the dark, Jesus catches glimpses of his face, his insane committed eye. Soon he will have what he wants more than anything else.

It seems the most intimate moment he has ever known. He can see back through the years, far back to a time that might have been the beginning of what he was feeling now. Everything now seems disconnected from what he had done before and what he will do after.

My style is tricky, No Face says, like spelling Mississippi. Ceremonially, he guides the brougham—the air conditioner full blast on this hot night—Jesus beside him with his .9, locked deep in concentration. Surprised at his skill at the wheel.

Darkness at the edges of broken shapes. Jesus lets instinct guide him. Faith. I thought I saw him, he says. His first glimpse of the red ruling target. And this he says: Circle back.

They circle back.

His heart grows hot against him. He searches the streets for the hidden shape he knows is there. Envisions the events to follow.

A red shape flickers across his path. That’s him.

Where?

Right there.

Where?

Right there. The words fly from his mouth, magnetic, migratory.

That don’t look like—

How you know what he look like?

Man, you don’t know—

Circle back.

They circle back. No Face slows the brougham so that Jesus can jump out with the car still in motion, the gun like a heavy bird in his hands.

Do it. Put some head out. Peel his cap back.

Jesus runs up to Lucifer like an urgent messenger, close enough to recognize the bones of his uncle’s red skull. Aims. Signals him with a birdcall. He turns. Meets hot surprise.

Birds take to the sky with the noise. Bright ribbons floating on the air.

Immediately, Jesus feels a moment of release. Blood singing in his body, this day marking the beginning of his seeing the world.

SOUND OF LIMB AND MIND, I leave:

1. My heart to my mother (Hope you deserve it)
   
2. My feet to my brother (Errand runner, keep humping!)
   
3. My penis to my wife
   
4. My mouth to my son (Sing poems)
   
5. My eyes to my daughter (See wisely)
   
6. My arms (for strength) to my grandchildren still unborn
   
7. My head to my sister-in-law (sorely in need of brains)
   
8. My teeth to my nephew (Eat and put on some meat)
   
9. My nose to the taxman (no other use for it)
   
10. My ass to a casket
    

EVERY SOLDIER TUGGED HOME A THICK HEAVY ALBUM of snapshots. Horse-playing with his war buddies. Flexing muscle in the flexing jungle. Or posed proud and pensive with weaponry. Even photos of kills. John brought back few frames from the war, all black-and-whites touched up for color, like (in the old days, years ago, years gone) the photos of jazz singers fronting the nightclubs on Church Street. Lucifer’s favorite, the one angled in the corner of the bedroom mirror and so angered his wife: John arcing for a dive into ocean, arms thrown back like wings, frozen in time.

Sheila refused to look at it now. Caged her eyes and yielded to excess. Free. Vindicated. Her heart shaped something it could not utter. Her blind fingers discovered the thick world of Lula Mae’s Bible. Black surface (artificial leather) and white depth. She touched the book with a tender sense of all it symbolized. She opened the cover and her eyes.

Jesus Chapter 5?
No such thing. No Book of Jesus. Certainly in no Bible she had seen. She searched the Table of Contents to be certain. Found nothing. Hidden, protected, absorbed, she turned to the Sixth Chapter of Matthew and read to the end.

She flipped two or three slow pages. Then—

She spun the pages like a riverboat’s wheel.

Spun. Wind and water. Spun. Motion. She floated freely. An undercurrent tugged at her. Some deep weight that anchored inside her so she could not advance. Why would Lula Mae save the FBI clipping? She searched for it, waded back, searched but found nothing. She searched again. Still nothing. She was heavy with her lack of discovery, heavy but held up, light, buoyant with possibility ahead. (She would have to find it at another time, some other day, hour.
It ain’t going nowhere.
) She hurried to meet undiscovered pages.