Rails Under My Back

49

WHY YOU ALWAYS BE WEARIN RED?

Family stuff.

Which family? No Face the Thief speaks as if through an oxygen mask.

You wouldn’t understand.

No Face studies Jesus with his one blind patch and his one seeing eye, the eye rotating like the steering wheel beneath Jesus’s hand. His breathing fills the quiet spaces between the music. Then the eye spots a freak in bikini top and biker shorts, the sun oiling her skin. No Face rolls down the window. Leans his head out. Yo, bitch. Somebody got a big booty around here. The freak flicks her tongue at him, fast and dirty. Good goobly goo, he says.

Damn you stupid.

Hey, I’m like a squirrel tryin to get a nut.

Stupid.

I’m jus tryin to represent.

A retard.

Red Hook produces few gentlemen.

On they roll at the same unchanging speed. Each window of the red Jaguar alive with a frame of moving morning space. Many people wildly busy, coming and going. Vehicles stream like confetti. Tracks gleam. All the windows are eyes, watching in wait.

A strong sun pushes through the windshield, bright, burns through Jesus’s eyes. His hand reaches inside his red blazer pocket and caresses the.9, warm and black, a bird hidden in its nest. His joints ache with wandering. His desire prickling, irritating his eyes, nose, and throat like a seasonal allergy. Shoving him through streets. Days had passed, much like one another. Searching. The city’s rivers tilting into map shapes, reversing, evaporating. Days feeling the whole city around him. Flight-sense filling his nerves. Him at the wheel and No Face beside him, his copilot. A second shadow. No Face had refused to quit his side and Jesus had allowed his refusal. Fulfilling a promise, a prediction. You said you gon put some weight in my pockets. You remember? You said that. You did. No Face maintained a steady diet of oysters and hot sauce. Cried in his sleep; Jesus would slap him awake.

I like this suit, No Face says. It feels alive on my skin.

First thing this morning, Jesus had taken him to Jew Town — time to rename it; the Jews had made their money and moved on; slopes, Pakis, and A-rabs had moved in on hot curry wind; sat on high camel humps behind their cash registers; paid the winos a dollar to shovel up water buffalo shit steaming beneath the shade of (real? artificial?) palm trees — got his ear pierced with a diamond stud twin to Jesus’s own, bought him two new eye patches — white patch one day black patch the next: domino dots — and had him fitted for a fine ocean blue suit. Jesus could no longer stand to look at or smell the dirty warm-up gear, half-moons of sweat under the armpits. But No Face is like a child, the tailored suit jacket already wrinkled years beyond pressing.

Freeze wanna see you.

Freeze’s name fell on Jesus like a thunderclap.

Freeze?

Yeah.

When you speak to him?

I spoke to him.

Jesus now has to think the obvious: over the previous days Freeze had come to believe that Jesus was buying time or, worse, that he had failed in his mission. Empty, the mission had filled him like city wind. And he expanded from within, for Freeze had chosen him — truth to tell, it is not clear to him if either of them had made a choice; circumstances had chosen them, commanded them — faith in knowing he would never disappoint. And he felt the gathering, his moving toward, growing closer toward his terminal point, where choices of destination narrowed to one, and where all possible movements and gestures became a single definitive act. He smiles more now than he had in the year previous, though he knows that he has done nothing to earn joy. He will. Better days are coming. Never has he been so certain about anything. Certainty moves red through his body like lasers.

He spoke to me.

Okay, Jesus says. I heard you. Powerless. The world is made of stone: paper, water, wind, and flame can do nothing against it.

Let’s go.

You better not be lying.

Man, you don’t know me from Adam.

If you are … I got to find a garage where I can leave my car.

No you don’t.

You is stupid. You expect me to drive there? In this.

He ain’t at Stonewall.

Where he at then?

He somewhere else. I’ll take you.

No Face navigates to the location quick and precise, the red lines in his eye like map routes.

You bring me way out here to the boonies?

This where he at.

Jesus watches him. He better be.

Man, you don’t know me from Adam.

An old red ambulance — white crosses on the doors — stretches long before the building, the silent siren like a half-buried missile in the roof. Jesus reads cursory letters printed in a glass arc above the door: Hundred Gates.

Are you sure this is it?

Damn, No Face says. Damn. He giggles uncontrollably, slobber flying everywhere, a dab catching the center of Jesus’s forehead. Jesus wipes it away. Makes a mental note to wash his contaminated hand at the first opportunity.

They rise in a whining elevator commanded by a uniformed attendant to a room free from the day’s heat.

Keylo hits No Face upside the head with his open hand, a loud and terrible blow.

Damn, Keylo. No Face rubs his head. Why you always be fuckin around?

Cause I want to, bitch. The straps of Keylo’s bomber helmet dangle about his face like girl pigtails. Who suit you steal?

Jesus hooked me up.

His face the color of a sweet potato, Keylo looks at Jesus.

We tight like that, No Face says.

Tight like yo mamma’s pussy, Keylo says.

Not as tight as you mamma’s.

Keylo jerks his shoulders in a threatening manner. No Face starts. Keylo laughs.

Nawl, No Face says. You ain’t scare me. I wasn’t scared.

Jesus. Freeze emerges out of the well-lit but somehow shadowless interior. Extends a welcoming hand. Jesus takes it forcefully and without hesitation. He and Freeze shake hands, businesslike, professional, nothing like niggas on the street.

Have a seat.

Thanks.

Jesus seats himself on a white leather sofa. Keylo shoves No Face onto the sofa next to Jesus. Sit next to yo daddy!

He yo daddy.

Least I know mine.

Me too.

The apartment shows both a female and a professional touch. Light colors, a deep white carpet, a bubbly fish aquarium, decorative paintings, vases, books, aesthetic furniture.

A woman comes out of the bathroom, holding a man’s shirt across her breasts. Something catches between Jesus’s nose and throat. She glances at him from the corner of her eye and quickens her steps. On the sly, he tries to see her ass beneath the shirttails as she disappears into another room.

How you makin out? Freeze to Jesus. Disappointment in his bearing, the line of mouth.

Fine.

Glad to hear it.

The woman returns fully dressed now. Thin braids sculptured in circles around her head. Gold door-knocker earrings. A sleeveless top. Excessive baby powder on her neck and bosom forms a white bib. Discreet shorts. She rushes forward, silver bracelets flashing, and hugs No Face like a close relative. Her bare shoulder blades rise like wings. She pulls back to take a full view of him. You look nice.

Yeah. No Face fingers his suit. Jesus hooked me up. He smiles at Jesus and she does too.

Hi, I’m Lady T, hand extended.

Jesus. Looking at the hand, barely touching it, avoiding her face.

Jesus — Freeze begins.

Oh, Jesus said, could I use your bathroom?

Without speaking, Freeze points with both hands like a runway signalman. Jesus rises from the couch and moves past Lady T. Their bodies casually touch.

Excuse me, he says.

She smiles a smile, polite or genuine he can’t tell which.

He pushes on to the bathroom, shuts the door behind him. Puts his ear to the closed door. Voices in the other room, the closed door muffling their meaning or the voices themselves deliberately low, secretive. The faucet rumbles, spills water into the clam-shaped basin. Dissolves the voices. He scrubs his hands with perfumed soap under warm water before a row of mirror that multiplies his red image. Leaves dirty residue. He pulls the stopper. The water drains quietly, dirty rings rotating, concentric fashion, circling, wheeling, whirling, pulling, drawing, force forcing him to feel their power …

He circles into the center of a conversation. Lady T is nowhere in sight.

No Face, what happened? Why you fuck up?

See—

Did you get hungry? Try to eat those rats?

See—

You musta tried to eat those rats. That’s why you fucked up the job.

The gat jammed.

What?

The gat jammed.

No it didn’t. You forgot to take off the safety.

No I didn’t.

Stupid bastard.

How you know?

Retard.

Keylo laughs and laughs. Jesus doesn’t think he will ever stop laughing. Mechanical hyena.

Jesus makes himself comfortable on the couch. Here now, here, and prepared for the clear mission.

So what you got good to tell me? Freeze says, white, Lula Mae’s color. Another day or two, Jesus says. At most. He clears his throat.

So what’s up then? Keylo says.

Broken words speed through Jesus’s mind.

You ain’t worried, are you? Homes, it’s easy. Keylo demonstrates. Like using a cigarette lighter.

Keylo, Freeze says. Go easy.

I coulda done it myself, Keylo says. Days ago.

Go easy. Jesus has his own way of doing things. Am I right? Freeze turns to Jesus. Puts the question in his face.

Yeah.

See, Keylo, like I said. He got his own way of doing things.

Keylo watches Jesus, bomber helmet straps in motion.

I’m here to help, Freeze says.

Thanks.

Don’t mention it … Anything I can do?

No.

You sure?

Yes.

Freeze studies Jesus in silence — Jesus does his best to look him in the eyes, not turn away, show the steel he has inside — bright light crawling like ants over his bald head. I got some information that I want to share with you.

Yeah, No Face says. Yeah. He laughs, slapping his body at the private joke.

Freeze shuts him up with one look. He returns to Jesus. Is that okay with you?

Yes.

Your family is back in town.

Jesus’s life flares backward.

Yeah, Keylo now. Saw them at the airport.

Freeze nods. No doubt.

The knowledge moves through Jesus’s body. There. Freeze had done it. Bound together the hour and the fleecy sky.

Your lucky day.

I jus wanted to tell you that.

Thanks.

Don’t be offended.

I’m not.

Look, I’m not tryin to push you or anything. I just want to speed up things, that’s all.

Thanks, Jesus says. Thanks. So they decided to return. The bird thieves. Lucifer and John.

Let’s just try to get this matter taken care of quickly.

I will.

Because, you know—

I will.

I’m glad to hear that. I took the trouble of getting you a car.

Yeah, Keylo says. Any fool know you ain’t sposed to use your own.

I tried to tell him that, No Face cuts in before Jesus can reply and defend himself. He don’t know me from Adam.

Keylo will drop the car off.

Where?

No Face laughed. Jesus took the laughter for a knowing answer.

And the keys?

Don’t worry … Well, I think that’s about everything.

Do it, Keylo says. Gather up your own.

Don’t worry, Freeze says. He will. He will.

He will, No Face says. He got me. He got me.

And yo mamma’s nasty draws.

Yo mamma’s.

YOU TRYIN TO MAKE ME LOOK BAD BACK THERE?

Nawl, No Face says. I wouldn do that.

So why you was talkin all that shit then?

What I say?

Jesus speaks in a mocking voice. I tried to tell him this. He got me. I ain’t gon let him fuck up.

I ain’t say that.

You did.

Man, you don’t know me from Adam.

Jesus says nothing. Feels red Jaguar motion.

We gon do this thing, No Face says.

No. I’m gon do it.

I’m with you. You know that.

Jesus says nothing.

You ready to do this?

Jesus lets the words pass in and out. Tell me about Lady T.

Lady T? You tryin to step to Freeze’s bitch? You want them big draws, huh? Man, don’t you know—

Jus tell me bout her.

No Face says nothing for a while. Breathes. That bitch had a rep. Word. Befo she start kickin it wit Freeze, she ain’t give no nigga no play. Straight up. She go to a club, see a nigga she like then take a jimmy hat out of her purse like this. No Face pulls a condom from his blazer pocket. She be like, You think you can handle it? Then she slam the jimmy down pow! No Face slams the condom down hard on the dashboard.

The steering wheel jumps directionless under Jesus’s hand. Damn! Is you crazy?

Sorry.

I ought to beat you down for that.

Sorry, I was—

You one stupid motherfucker. Know that.

Sorry.

Jesus shakes his head. Lets motion take the anger from his body.

She got pregnant.

Freeze got her pregnant?

Nawl. One of them ‘Rabs.

An A-rab?

Yeah. She be fuckin em.

Jesus considers the likelihood of this. Can’t picture it. He rides the silence. Hears No Face’s whistling lungs. What happened to the baby?

What you think?

I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.

No Face laughs. Man, you don’t know me from Adam … Stay away from her. Word. She an intersexual.

How you know?

I know.

YOU WANT TO GET DIPPED?

All the time.

Jesus opens a full bottle of his best and pours No Face glass after glass. It doesn’t take long.

I’m higher than a motherfucka, No Face says.

I can see that. His skin is actually glowing with moonshine.

Jesus puts him to bed the moment he dozes off. His snoring mouth roars ocean, screams wind. Jesus removes his suit and shoes, covers him, and tucks him in.

HIS CITY REFLEXES, cunning, direct (tell, instruct) him to park his red Jaguar on a shady side street five blocks from Hundred Gates. He heads for the building, afternoon sun staggering along behind him. A truck’s motor snarls somewhere and he wobbles. Calms himself. Continues. He feels Hundred Gates before he sees it. The building rises to him — it looks much larger than before, larger than it should — across yards of trees. High above the sharp roof corners birds wheel in a sky yellow and even. The old red ambulance is no longer parked out front. A good sign.

He melts ghost-fashion into fine glass and brick, vanishing. He isn’t two steps inside when he pulls a deck of bills from his wallet and offers them to the uniformed doorman with a knowing smile. He rides up in the elevator confident that he has taken all the proper precautions, covered his tracks. The quiet hall fills him with quiet inside. He loses it all the moment Lady T opens the door.

Oh, is Freeze … is Freeze here? It comes out less than calmly.

Nawl.

Ah, um, when will he be back?

Lady T studies him — her eyes forcing nervous motion on his body — for a long time, as long as she pleases, a stone configuration. I don’t know. You can wait. She pulls the door wide enough for him to enter.

Thanks. He enters the apartment with a tight turn and stands with back against the wall, stiff rods holding him in place.

Have a seat.

Thanks.

He sits down on the couch and unbuttons his blazer so he can move. You got a nice place here.

Everybody say that.

He tries to force his tense face to smile.

Can I get you something?

No, thanks. I’m straight.

You sure?

Yeah.

You thirsty?

A little.

Lady T gives him a glass of water made from honey. Thanks. He holds the drained glass out to her.

You welcome. Jus sit it on the table. Here. She positions a coaster near him on the marble coffee table. He places the empty glass squarely down on the coaster. Legs crossed on the love seat, she watches him from the other side of the table. Her eyes pry him away from a lifetime of certainty.

That’s a nice suit, she says.

Thanks.

Nice color. (His usual red.)

Thanks.

Different.

Thanks.

She watches him. You bald as a stone.

Thanks. Saying it but unsure in the saying.

Is that all you know how to say, thanks?

What you want me to say?

You don’t know how to talk to a woman? Beneath the T-shirt, her breasts move deep and full.

What makes you think that?

Lady T says nothing, visibly annoyed. The white baby powder has disappeared (evaporated? blew away?) from her neck and shoulders since he last saw her an hour or so ago.

What time do you expect him? Jesus studies the slim curve of her waist. I ain’t.

Well, Jesus says. Well …

You ain’t got to leave. Chill for a while.

Thanks.

She sighs. Ugh. Thanks.

Sorry … So, how did you meet him?

The same way most people meet.

What is it that you like about him?

I don’t know. Why do you like me?

The words rub hot against Jesus’s skin. You seem like a nice person.

I am.

I mean it.

I do too.

Jesus doesn’t know what to say.

You know why?

Why?

Cause I’m from the old school.

What school is that?

I stay home and protects mine. Back in the day, you had to stay home and keep it together while the man be out there kickin up dust. Now we be out there too. That’s why things be the way they be. Fucked up.

Jesus thinks about it. It’s like this, he says, what you do one day parlays into the next.

Lady T watches him: understanding, agreeing, admiring, confused, annoyed — he can’t tell.

You have your own way of saying things.

I do. Factual, not boastful, but pleased that she finds him pleasing.

I heard about you.

Me?

You. You famous.

Jesus grins. Pokes out his chest. I maintain.

Lady T smiles.

I heard about you too.

Oh yeah. What did you hear?

Without a thought, Jesus tells all No Face had told him.

You believe that?

That’s what he said.

If she sees something else in his face she ignores it. No Face is stupid.

Yeah, I know.

Stupid.

You from here?

No. Red Hook.

Oh. Jesus doesn’t know what else to say.

You ever been there? I’ll take you, she says before he can answer.

Take him, as if to Paris, Rome, some faraway place.

She taps his arm, a single detonation of touch. Let’s go.

He rises and follows. Where?

To Red Hook. I gotta show you something.

Now?

Yes.

Oh, okay, he says, catching the drift. Show me something. So they would do it there, get mad busy. His safe sense shouts inside, tries to lock his feet. What about the car? She expect you to drive it to the jets? You can’t drive no car like that to no jets. But why not show him at a quick and safe hotel? He wants to ask her. Can’t.

Don’t worry about yo car. I know a good garage.

TWO DOGS MEET, and a third. Lips curled, white fangs watering. They bark off after gray squirrel motion. The air is coming awake. The afternoon is drawing on. Human shapes flash in the streets. Lady T’s eyes move about without real interest on faces, faces nearly invisible in the hot haze. Twelve red buildings rise like missiles against the red summer horizon. Ash images of burned-out buildings and houses here and there. Red Hook. The world is made of stone: paper, water, wind, and flame can do nothing against it. Like Red Hook itself. Inevitable. Indestructible.

Jesus moves heavy with omen. Unsure if he is safer with Lady T, a Red Hook homegirl, or more vulnerable. He doesn’t want to be here but can’t pull back. She speaks to no one. Heads straight for Building Six. He thinks he hears someone calling him through the cutting bitterness of the wind. Lady T’s sandaled feet kick garbage out of their path. Beer cans crushed into the shapes of women. Diapers like padded boxers’ helmets. Condoms like old, worn socks. He follows her inside the building, around one corner then another, down one hall and up a flight of stairs, through one door and out another. They edge through a rusted opening. Footsteps ring down metal stairs. Echo after them. They descend into darkness. (Her white blouse like a torch before him.) Travel down a long hall. He has to walk in a crouch, keep his head low. Smells bore through him: old storms and garbage, mildew and rot, sewage and fuel. This is the basement, he thinks. They are beneath Red Hook, all that life above. Trust leaves him. They could bury him down here, the world none the wiser.

Do we have to do this? he says.

Come on. It’s not far.

They clamber up and over a ledge. Jibe left, right. Ascend level by level, story by story. The climb nearly chokes the breath out of him.

Is this necessary? he says.

Lady T laughs across the darkness.

He follows at a run, accelerating down a sloping corridor. Unsure that he can find his way out if he were to turn back.

Light finally. Light but no bulbs Jesus can see. A maze of plumbing, windowless walls, bright trash remains. Puddles where rats swim like fish. The farther they walk, the deeper, the thinner the air becomes. Ten miles high and rising. The thin air carries with it something else, something that cuts through all of what is tight inside. On they walk, the light forever changing. Light and air thread through him. Weave wish and weariness. He is actually enjoying it now, this journey, pleasure in each step. Adventure. He could stay here forever, wandering, opening doors.

Now another turn, another hall. A double row of runway-like lights leading to a white square up ahead. Closer now, he sees that the square is actually a room, lighted space.

In here, Lady T says.

He complies before the words are fully out of her mouth. Bright light comes slamming in out of the darkness. Holds his eyes hostage. He shades them with both hands. Stands waiting, white waves. Rinse open. The room spangles aflame. He feels he is at the bottom of a new steel pot. Circular steel. Walls so smooth that they show twin reflections of him and Lady T.

This is it, she says, twin voices of her, echoes.

Damn, he says. Hearing himself say it again.

The floor shines slick, clean, and bare. The walls flare and change colors like great curtains. His eyes slowly follow the walls up, the ceiling high above and almost lost in shadow. Stars blink in and out.

Look, Lady T says. Her pointed finger directs him.

Damn, he says.

Directly in the center of one wall, a circular cluster of TV screens, like a large eye pieced together with dozens of smaller eyes. Intimate images of people sleeping, eating, kissing, killing, getting juiced, pissing, shitting, fucking.

Is it real? Jesus says.

I guess so.

Now each screen starts flickering images so quickly that vision blurs. It actually hurts to watch. Burns. Visual torture. Jesus turns his eyes away.

Damn!

It does that …

A maze of levers, buttons, gauges, meters, dials, switchboards, keyboards, runs the length of the room. Amazed, Jesus walks over for a closer look.

Don’t touch anything, Lady T says.

I won’t. He pulls back, hands out, under-arrest fashion.

What does it do?

I don’t know. I ruined yo suit.

Jesus examines his suit. Oh, that’s okay. He dusts off his sleeves and pant legs — yes, it is ruined — turns and notices that Lady T shows no sign of travel: no dirt, no sweat, no rubbing of tired muscles. Why you know bout this place?

I found it a long time ago. Playin down here. When I was little.

Why don’t they keep it locked up or something?

Lady T says nothing.

Sunlight comes in through small holes above, an iron grating in the rectangular shape of a window. Jesus can see shadows pass by. In the corner of his vision, he catches a flutter of red. He turns. It is gone.

Lady T holds out a steaming pipe. Jesus can read patterns in the fire. He takes the hot pipe, pulls smoke into his lungs, holds it in, feels it travel through his body, then he blows it out, a dragon. This is the bomb, he says.

I told you.

The bomb. He passes her the steaming pipe. She takes it slowly, making sure that their fingers touch. Sucks light into it. They share it back and forth, weave a braid of black-red smoke between them. With each hit of the hot pipe, the world melts away.

So is all that stuff true?

What stuff?

That No Face said.

Well, what do you think? Ask yourself. You know me now.

Do I?

Don’t you?

Their voices arc through silence and solitude.

You should.

Yeah. I should …

Smoke carries their voices up into darkness. Jesus’s bright reflection in the walls blinds him with color. Brightness bounces up and down once or twice before it settles in. Jesus realizes that he has experienced this before. Deep steel space. The captured German submarine at the Museum of Science and Industry from his childhood. Black torpedoes cut through ocean like great fish. Depth charges explode in silent water and crush hollow metal.

What about you? Lady T says. Is all that stuff about you true?

Who told you?

Everybody.

What did they tell you? No, don’t tell me. You can believe it if you want.

Light in Lady T’s hair like black doves. You want me to?

Yeah.

They walk and talk, enjoying the cycling of light and heat. Bounce into their own echoes. Light comes in from above and below at the same time so that they have two shadows. It is not clear if the light beneath his feet is true light or only reflected light from above.

You ain’t scared of me no mo?

No, Jesus says.

When you first came to the apartment. I mean the second time, when you came back.

You could tell?

Lady T tightens up her body in imitation of Jesus. They share a good, long laugh.

He cranes his neck and sees a rainbow high above on the edge of darkness.

BIRDLEG RIP WE REMEMBER

You’re easy to talk to, Lady T says.

Oh yeah?

Yeah.

So you enjoy my company?

Yes.

Good. Good. He stares into the colorful blackness above, feels the emptiness surrounding him, touching him with gentle, careful strokes. He feels his body expand, swell, the same feeling he felt when his dizzy form bumped from wall to wall, reached for a doorknob that was not there, fell into hard space, and crawled out of his mother’s front door never to return, belled hope inside, free to begin again, to create himself.

Tell me something, Lady T says, almost laughing the words.

Tell you what?

Tell me something good.

Rainbow blinks color into Jesus’s eyes. Rainy, vision washes in and out. I’ll tell you about Birdleg. Images tumble downward through his head.

Birdleg?

Jesus nods. His finger points a straight line to the rainbow tattooed in steel flesh.

Birdleg?

He’s inside of me, Jesus says. Right here. He rolls up his red sleeve and holds out his forearm as if for an injection, allowing her to witness rail-like scars, running, waiting.

Ugh.

Yeah, I know. Nasty-lookin, ain’t it?

She does not answer.

Birdleg. He shuts his eyes. (So he loves the world, in darkness.) Calls all within. We remember. Red images flicker on his blind lids.

FAST-CLICKING TRACKS. Air rushing in at steady rhythm. The glare of passing stations. Metal walls closing in, squeezed in somebody’s fist. The train curves through subway, tossing light then shadow. Explodes through the black tunnel, a fist shoved into a dark glove. Now, high above the expressway, zooming cars small beneath you. Spit you into light.

Wells Street. Next to the river. (One of the city’s twelve.) Burned-out buildings and collapsing porches, rubble of ship frames and rusted pieces of rigging. An old black streetcar like a lost lump of coal, the streetcar that Birdleg said once ran the old trolley lines, then was converted into a restaurant, then a barbershop, then a health-food store, then this—junk. Hang a right. Brown water pooled before a red fire hydrant. Brown mud flowing from white diapers dumped in green grass. Seven sets of yellow brick buildings (grouped three to a set) rise like missiles above the horizon—nuclear bombs stored in the basements, Birdleg said. That’s why the jets look like filing cabinets. Cause they got nuclear bombs filed away in em—each set opening onto a concrete park, steel swings, monkey bars, and metal slides like great silver tongues, and a basketball rig or two like skeletal robots guarding over a court. Stonewall. The jets. Sun behind a blue curtain of sky, drawing this world in a net of light. Building A. Birdleg’s building. Birdleg formed an A by curling his index finger into the base of his thumb, an A missing one leg. We the Stonewall Aces, he said. Leaning on the corner of Wells Street, ready to fall like a drunk into the river. Let your sight curve with the river. Let it find Red Hook two miles or so upstream (downstream?). Stonewall’s red metal twin. Stonewall. Red Hook. The jets. End of the road, end of the road, end of the road for nigga trash.

A swan-white sun floated radiant feathers down to the basketball court. You drove the ball to the hoop, only to let some nigga half yo size steal it from you, yes, snatch the pill from your hand and rob the pharmacy. This short nigga, guarding you, like white on a maggot, eating up the ball, forcing you to take shots. Flapping the wings of his arms, beating up a white blur of motion. Game point came before you knew it.

The swan flapped its wings, rippling wind. The short nigga rode white wind. Dropped the ball like an egg in the basket.

Damn, see the thread on that ball?

Yeah. Nigga must think that’s his mamma’s sewin basket.

Good game, homey, the short nigga said.

Thanks, Hatch said.

Thanks, Abu said, his fat titties bouncing better than he could bounce the ball.

Right, Jesus said.

Yo.

Jesus saw a belly, pushing at and poking through spaces of the shimmering chain-link fence which divided the court and the sidewalk.

Yo. Come here.

Jesus headed straight for the belly.

Jesus stopped before the fence and looked into the boy’s chalk eyes. He looked something like a Halloween pumpkin. Though he wasn’t orange enough. Sure, yellow, like the candlelight that illuminated pumpkin skin. A banana-colored nigga. Dark skin is not darkness. Nor is fair skin illumination. No, skin the color of Gracie’s weak Chinese tea. Speckled brown like a butterfly’s wing. Shiny as wax fruit. Knife-slit eyes. Hard and white like the river stones down South. Softened by sweat. Nigga must have a water fountain hidden beneath his bald head.

Yo. Try putting a flick in yo wrist, the round-bellied boy said. You know, like a fag. The boy demonstrated, raised hand curled, a praying mantis. And shoot in an arc. Like this. You’ll never miss a free throw. Guaranteed.

Chirped words blew straight at the nests of Jesus’s ears. He wanted to speak, but his own words stuck on his tongue.

And why you run around like somebody short?

What?

Learn to use your height.

Jesus felt the stabbing sunlight. Held up the basketball and watched his reflection, rippling, in shiny leather. One of those rare things that happen two or three times a summer. The ball gets stuck between the rim and the backboard and somebody has to unstick it. Get Jesus, cause he can jump up and punch and blacken both the moon’s eyes before he comes back down. Who you?

Birdleg.

Birdleg? I ain’t never seen you round here befo.

I ain’t from round here.

Where you from?

Stonewall.

Nigga, stop frontin.

Do it look like I’m frontin?

It didn’t. Birdleg’s eyes were chalk-white, and his words were whiter, scrawling themselves across Jesus’s chest. Learn to use your height. Stonewall. Jesus knew, Birdleg might know a thing or two about basketball since Stonewall was but blocks from the Stadium, where His Highness, Flight Lesson, the basketball king, flew and ruled. How you get here?

I walked.

Walked? Sounded crazy to Jesus, but anything was possible: Birdleg came from Stonewall.

Stupid—

The white ice of the word put a cold pick in Jesus’s heart.

— walked. I gotta go.

Wait. I wanna go.

Birdleg began walking, wide-legged and slow, like a pregnant woman. Jesus watched him through the cone spaces of the fence.

Hey — he shouted at Hatch and Abu. Come on.

Where we going?

Stonewall.

Nigga, stop lyin.

Yeah, Abu echoed, nigga, stop lyin.

Come on.

Hatch and Abu dragged their tired kicks from the court and followed. Birdleg’s kicks never touched a court. His white eyes watched from the sidelines. Walking was as physical as he ever got.

You walked.

If Birdleg stood still too long, his string-bean legs might root in the ground. He liked to walk. Once Abu saw him sprout wings and fly home, and Hatch saw him gallop off into the horizon on a pit bull’s back. His toes cut through his kicks and tracked claw prints in grass, mud, dirt, snow.

We the Stonewall Aces, Birdleg said.

The what? Hatch said.

Yeah, Abu echoed, the what?

The Stonewall Aces.

I ain’t no Ace, Hatch said. I’m a spade.

I’m an Ace, Jesus said.

Yeah, Abu said. A red one. An ace of hearts.

Yo mamma like it.

You walked. Birdleg pointed to white smoke lifting from a manhole. That’s smoke from the underground city.

From where?

Ain’t yall never heard of the underground city?

Sure.

You walked.

Birdleg, what’s that? You pointed at a blue-black bird with red bandannas around the wings.

Stupid. That’s a redwing.

You walked.

Birdleg proudly carried his round belly, a real potbelly, steel, iron, cause you could hear the metal ringing when he walked. He smelled like food, like sugar, though he ate scabs candy-quick, scabs saved in an old M&M’s box — plain, not peanuts; I never eat peanuts, specially peanut butter, cause just look at it. It ain’t nothing but shit, just like I never eat scrambled eggs, cause just look at it. It ain’t nothing but somebody’s brains. All that food and belly and smell balanced on two stick legs. Two string-bean legs filled with pus.

You walked. Followed Birdleg through Central. Birds perched on spiked steeples and steel window ledges. Streets awash with people, merging into eddies and disengaging other paths, and the boys like slits in the swaying mob.

You walked. A lot bright with red dirt. That’s the old negro cemetery. Yall heard of negroes?

Sure, Hatch said. My great-granddaddy was a negro.

Mine too, Abu said.

You walked. Summer burned in your lungs. You saw a pond with lightly starred lilies. You crossed a narrow dry gully. Followed a trail of yellow leaves. Heaviness hung low in the trees. Birdleg overturned ancient stones, exposing green worms wiggling in the footprints of Indians and dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs were birds.

Birdleg, Hatch said, you crazy. Dinosaurs were lizards. Reptiles.

Yeah, Abu said. Giant lizards. Reptiles.

Stupid. Dinosaurs were birds.

How you know?

I know.

You walked in heat without a breath of air. You reeled under the dazzling weight of the sun. Distance melted.

It was moving day. The afternoon white and pure. Birds black and light as smoke in the sky.

Yall wanna see some black squirrels?

Nigga, there ain’t no such thing.

Follow me.

You walked. Birdleg’s legs made a sound like twigs breaking. And when it got cold, his legs would curve into a broken circle. You walked for three days. Damn, Birdleg. We gon walk to China?

Shut up, stupid. We almost there.

Damn. Jesus sparkled, body glazed in warm sweat.

A bridge lifted above a black river. Birdleg started across, the wood creaking, sagging under his footsteps. Jesus put his feet down slowly, unsure if the planks would hold him.

Damn, Birdleg. You tryin to kill us?

You scared?

Nawl. I ain’t scared.

The sun hung low in the branches. Slow shadows on the leaves. Points of grass directed Birdleg to his left. There it was. A little path.

Look. Birdleg stopped, bent his knees a little — a bridge’s creak; no, a rusty sound, like Lula Mae’s lawn chairs — and pointed a chunky finger. A black squirrel.

What’s that black bird?

That’s a buzzard.

A nasty ole buzzard?

Yeah.

Why it nasty?

Cause it full of spirit.

A day bright and clear as the leaves on the green plants which grew low and close to the ground. Dandelions clustered like stars. And the white Afros of milkweeds. Children filled the afternoon streets with their shouts. From the height of the park benches, the Stonewall Aces watched butterflies in the bright colors of girls’ clothing and their floating cheeks. Hair braided tight with colored rubber bands, rainbows.

Man, I’m tireda watchin these silly girls, Jesus said.

Help me down from here, Birdleg said.

The Stonewall Aces stepped down from the benches. Made a net of arms and carried Birdleg to the ground. The Stonewall Aces stretched out in the grass, arms behind heads, watching the treetops, feet to feet, like bookends. The leaves were green and quiet, shimmering in a touch of sun. Jesus stole glances at Birdleg. Birdleg was sitting in his usual position, upright, legs forming a V from the center of his body, his pudgy hands clasped over his preposterous paunch like a protective shell. His mouth was twisted open and his breath came hot and short. Jesus wondered if he were asleep. He slept sitting up. Had to. Cause the stomach could crush him. You imagine him sleeping like normal people, his fat belly rising above the bed, a fish belly-up in the bowl.

Man, I’m tireda watchin these trees.

Okay, Birdleg said.

The Stonewall Aces helped him to his feet, Jesus and Hatch hooking on either arm and Abu shoving from the back. Birdleg moved in the hard afternoon light. Air bright and blinding. The boys followed. They walked along the old tracks. Alert to an occasional train, glittering silver between slices of light. They kneeled low in the green bushes, listening to the asthmatic poppings of pistons when a string of loaded freight cars came pounding along. Kneeled, because, at a distance, freight trains and commuter trains looked the same. Those commuters are deadeyes, Birdleg said. If you got heart and you look hard and heavy, you can see their gun glint.

My Uncle John was a deadeye, Hatch said. Still is.

Yeah, Abu said. He my uncle too. Hatch’s best friend, he was proud to claim blood not his own.

He won a lot of medals.

Yeah? Who he shoot?

Gooks.

The train extended its streaked motion. The tracks curved off into the horizon along a long, white, hot sand road that split the flat green. They followed Birdleg’s scrawny-legged walk through the flying landscape. The beaks of the road ate up the rubber soles of their kicks and unknotted their shoestrings. A stinging thirst clawed their throat.

Damn, Birdleg. We walkin to the moon?

Yeah, Birdleg. Where we goin?

Birdleg stopped, knelt forward, bowed down in exhaustion, hands supported against the forked branch of his bended knees. Pain squeezed the skin tight against the bones of his face.

Birdleg, what’s wrong?

Nothing. Just tired.

Tears ran from his eyes, white, spilling sticky to the concrete. After six or seven hard breaths, Birdleg raised himself and pushed forward.

They walked to the end of a bridge. Climbed down a path under a small trestle where a creek had backed up to form a small pond. Fifteen feet away, a small shanty — a sloping, tar-paper roof, partly hidden by the low-hanging branches of a tree whose name Jesus didn’t know, sycamore, Hatch said—shone white as a bulb.

Who made this shack?

That’s fo me to know and you to find out.

Tell us, Birdleg.

The Stonewall Aces entered the shack, lit by light through holes that peppered the roof. The shack straddled a grass-filled ditch. Each boy made a seat on spike-shaped leaves on the ditch banks. Something was scratched into the wood walls — a fantail connected to a sphere? a fish? Jesus couldn’t say for certain. Tall white sentinels, milkweed watched him from the grass.

Hey, Birdleg, why they call it milkweed? Jesus saw milk in Birdleg’s eyes.

Stupid, Birdleg said. Don’t you know anything?

Jesus studied the milkweed.

Yall loves milk?

Yeah, Birdleg.

Jesus saw flocks of clouds through breaks in the roof.

I loves milk like I loves white folks like a dog loves hickory.

What?

Why you love white folks? Hatch said.

Birdleg looked at him.

Damn, nigga. You got some funny-lookin ears. Jesus cocked his fingers and popped Birdleg’s rabbit-long ears.

Bitch!

A bitch is a dog.

And you a bitch. Listen. Birdleg raised his palms. Yall know how white people got white?

Jesus watched the shack walls, twigs and splinters. A chill wind swept wide through the ditch, penetrating his feet and hands. But the ground was hot under his butt and the grass warm to the touch. And you and Hatch sat fishing before the Memphis River. Feel water thundering near your feet. Hear fish invisible in the water, their shadows rising and turning into thick waves. Hatch afraid to touch the electrified worms.

How?

From drinkin too much milk.

Above the roof, the sun blinked bright, immersed Jesus in a cascade of light. Pearl after pearl. Like the way you cast sinkers of light into the Memphis River.

How you know? Hatch said.

Yeah, Abu said. You lyin.

Straight up, Birdleg said.

ONCE YOU WALKED to the keen edge of exhaustion. Walked until the sun took on strange shape and color. And Sheila met Hatch at the door, squeezing an ironing cord in her angry fist. The sky rained boulders of ice and Birdleg demonstrated how to use a garbage-can lid for a protective shield. Use it as an umbrella — hard iron rain struck lid and ground with a hollow sound. The ice thinned to rushing water. And when the rain stopped, you as a team collected drowned birds. Like the snails you collected in West Memphis. You and Hatch pulled them skinny from their shells. Held the shells to your ears and heard ocean. Frogs burped, drunk.

Birdleg, where rain come from?

Stars. Stars are holes in the sky that let the rain through.

That’s not right, Hatch said. Rain falls from clouds.

Yeah, Abu said. Rain falls into the clouds way up from Mars cause the devil be beating his wife and God squeeze the rain from the clouds.

Clouds ain’t no sponges, Hatch said.

Know where babies come from? Birdleg tested.

From they stomach.

Out they navel.

Out they testine.

No.

Where, Birdleg?

A bubble of water. Inside a bitch’s stomach.

BIRDLEG WOULD CLEAN HIS HANDS in dog slobber. Walk right up to a dog and put his hands under the slobbering faucet of mouth.

Damn, nigga. That’s nasty.

Shut up. Know what’s really nasty?

What?

Blackbirds. Buzzards. They drip vomit. That’s why you always see them flying in a circle.

Why?

Stupid. Ain’t you never looked in a sink and seen a drain? The water flying in circles?

What?

Birdleg had a way with dogs. His footsteps summoned them like drums. One snap of his fingers could make a raving dog heel. Two snaps could sic the dog on an enemy. Bear witness:

Stonewall Aces rolled proud and true through the red valley, the jets above reflecting menacing shadows. A rival crew rolled forward, six or seven big boulders, and blocked the path. Red-tied bandannas, threatening, gallows rope.

Damn. What yall sposed to be?

Natty lump lump lump.

Bitch plus three.

The four tricks.

So, nigga. Speak up.

Yeah. Represent represent.

Represent.

Well … Who yall—

Yo mamma, Birdleg said.

Bitch, I’m gon kick yo ass.

Birdleg stooped, rested his palms on his bent knees. Jesus must have blinked, because when he opened his eyes a pit bull shot out from between Birdleg’s skinny ankles. Destruction took over. A black blur of violence, snapping teeth and crunching bones. Like a matador’s cape, red bandannas bringing out the anger bringing out the hate bringing out the violence in the pit bull. And red blood drew more attacking teeth.

Stupid. Bulls are color-blind. All animals are.

Dogs too?

That’s right. Yo mamma too.

The red boulders dissolved into black dust that took to the air, filled the sky. Justice done, the pit bull ran for Birdleg’s skinny ankles and disappeared, yo-yo yanked back up into Birdleg’s stomach.

WHO YALL REPRESENT

Sciples.

A laugh let go Birdleg’s mouth. Stupid. That’s a set.

Vice Kings.

Stupid. That’s a set too. Not the source.

Who you callin stupid?

Don’t you know what a source is?

I’m BP Nation. Chapter One.

Me too. Chapter Thirteen.

AK. Aerosol Kings.

TNT. Too Terrible Testaments.

Killer C’s.

Cobra B’s.

Stupid. Stupid. Is you People or Folks?

Jesus searched the faces of the circle of boys, seeing his face in theirs. Blinked into Birdleg’s bold black outline.

Stupid. People and Folks. That’s the source. Sets come from them.

Yeah, Jesus said.

How you know?

A timeworn train clanked in the distance.

Yeah, Birdleg, how you know?

Birdleg looked at Jesus, unblinking. White eyes. Frozen milk. Yall ever heard of Fort?

Yeah, Jesus said. The words flew from his mouth instant like vomit.

Hightop?

Yeah, Jesus said.

Sure, Hatch said.

Sure, Abu said.

Fort from Stonewall—

What was his real name?

Stupid. Fort, he from Stonewall.

Yeah?

Well, he ain’t from nowhere. He dead. But he lived in my buildin. Buildin A.

Nigga, you lyin.

Let him tell it, Jesus said.

And Hightop from Red Hook.

Something ran a course, through, under, around, behind, and between the words. Crickets hummed. Grass whispered.

They were cousins. And they were sanctified.

The words fell to the bottom of Jesus’s heart and what was at the bottom came out, swirling, turbulent. Sanctified?

They went to church eight days of the week. Sometimes nine.

What you talkin bout, Birdleg?

Yeah, Abu echoed Hatch. What you talkin bout?

Why you talkin bout church?

Yeah. Church.

Hatch scrunched up his face. You tryin to Bible me? The words blew hot as steam. Steam lifted.

I like the Bible, Abu said. I’m a Christian.

Jesus wet his tongue. Gripped his elbows to keep them from flying away.

Stupid. I said they were sanctified. Didn’t say they stayed sanctified. Birdleg revealed a fan-shaped row of teeth. Stupid.

Why you always callin somebody stupid?

Shut up. I’m tryin to learn yall something. Do you talk in school?

What?

I say, do you talk in school?

No.

Well shut up then. Light caught the white in Birdleg’s eyes. Fort and Hightop, they was way back in the old days. Way back. When niggas used to be sleeping on lawns in the summer and cookin in the snow in the winter. See, Fort and Hightop, they used to dance every Sunday in church. Then they started dancing at sets. Everybody knew these niggas had the best steps, so everybody get them to dance gainst one another. Course Fort had the best steps. This one time, he pulled his do-rag off his head, jumped way up in the air, clicked his heels twenty-five times, and polished his shoes befo he landed back on the ground. And he land on one toe and he hold his ground for an hour. He looked like a statue, a stone.

Damn.

Hightop tried to be like Fort. He jumped up and fell down. Well, his toes stuck right into the floor. Yeah, he standing up there on his tippy toes stuck in the floor. Like one of them ballerinas. Five big niggas had to pull him out. People be like, what kind of step is that? Hightop flashed the V sign. He yelled, Vice Forks Love, but everybody thought he said Folks. But since Fort held his ground, he yelled Power to the P-Stone Nation.

How you know?

Stupid, I know.

Jesus was saturated with a soft feeling. He didn’t believe.

What the P stand for? Birdleg tested them.

P for people.

P for power.

P for peace.

P for prayer.

P for pussy.

P for punk.

Words disappeared in the sheen of sunlight.

Okay, pussy, punk. Better not let no Disciples hear you say that. They ain’t as nice as me.

Hatch and Abu sat picture-still. Silent.

Who you represent? Birdleg blinked.

What? Jesus said.

Who you represent?

Well …

What bout you, Hatch?

…

Abu?

Damn, yall don’t represent?

Friends.

Forks.

Persons.

Stupid. It’s People and Folks. I’m People.

Then I’m People too, Jesus said.

I’m Folks, Hatch said.

Yeah, I’m Folks. Me and Hatch. Folks.

YOU KNOW KEYLO? Jesus asked. He remembered the name from the TV news.

From Red Hook?

Yeah.

Keylo. Big hat, no cattle.

What?

Stupid. He ain’t shit.

How you know?

Stupid, he didn’t even whack the raper man who sexed with his sister.

Ain’t what? The green earth stole Jesus’s words.

Now Fort changed the nigga that stomped on his sister.

He had a sister?

Yeah. She married this nigga. He made her stay in the house all the time.

Used to invite his friends over and beat her up in front of them.

Damn.

Then he threw the baby food out the window. Then threw the baby. Fort threw him.

Damn.

What happen to the sister?

She jumped off the buildin.

Damn.

My buildin.

Damn.

Buildin A.

Damn.

My buildin.

Why she do that?

Why you think?

Damn.

And Fort shot the raper man who sexed with Hightop’s sister.

What? But they—

Was enemies. Yeah, they was. But she was his cousin too.

What? Jesus said. What?

Whose cousin? Hatch said. She was whose cousin?

Yo mamma’s, Abu said.

Yo greasy grandma.

Chill. Birdleg’s glue-white eyes sealed lips. Listen and learn.

But they was enemies, Jesus said.

Who was enemies?

Yo mamma.

Stupid. She was his cousin. Cause this one time, Hightop’s father, who was his uncle, he slapped his daughter who was Hightop’s sister, he slapped her fo stayin out all night, and Fort happened to be there and Fort, he slapped him to the ground. Fort be like, Don’t disrespect yo daughter.

The sun stroked a place deep under Jesus’s heart and put all of his feelings to sleep. What Hightop do?

Shot Fort in the chest. Right here. Birdleg patted his heart.

Man.

Dag, he ain’t have to do that.

Fort ran to the park. He took a ball of milkweed and stopped the wound.

The words poured into Jesus’s ears.

Stopped?

Yeah, stopped?

Next day, Fort cut up Hightop. Hightop came stumbling back to Red Hook with his guts in his hands.

Jesus pictured tangled fishing wire. Barking dogs and anxious rats. Why he do it? he asked.

Stupid. Why you think?

They enemies.

Who enemies?

The raper man and Fort.

What happened?

Stupid, this raper man sexed with Keylo’s sister and he let it happen and ain’t do nothing.

Damn.

The coroner, he be like, Hightop died of natural causes cause he got changed by a natural man.

Aw, nigga, Hatch said. That’s corny.

Yeah. Natural. That’s corny.

Natural, Jesus thought. Like a ‘Fro.

Stupid. Yall corny. Yall weak, like Keylo.

Ain’t what I heard, Jesus said. He changed a Roman with a long extension.

Yeah, he changed one, but he ain’t do it wit no long extension.

How he do it then?

He threw a bathtub on him. Pushed it from the roof of Buildin C.

Damn.

Now, Fort was my nigga. Birdleg’s eyes were big and wild and eyes reached a place in Jesus where the tongue could not. Fort changed this one Roman with a long demonstration. Changed this other Roman with a Jap chop.

Uncle John know karate. Learned it in the army.

He my uncle too.

No he ain’t.

He is too. He said so.

No he didn’t.

Jesus ignored Abu and Hatch’s exchange. Hung to Birdleg’s last words. How he do that?

Fort chopped and chopped. Birdleg mimicked the motion with the edge of his hand. And he kept chopping and chopping and chopping. Man, he sliced that pig up like a loaf of bread.

Hatch and Abu squealed laughs. Jesus sat silent, waiting for the words to return, continue.

Yeah, cut that nigga like a deck of cards. Then he shuffled and shuffled and shuffled that nigga.

Man.

Jesus remembered. Fort and Flight Lesson were partners.

What?

Shut up, Jesus.

Stupid. He’s right. Yeah. They grew up together in Stonewall.

How come you don’t know him? Cause Birdleg showed you the alley with the fence behind the Stadium where you could see Flight Lesson and the other game-tall niggas lean into their low fancy cars. Where you shouted for an autograph but they couldn’t hear your little shouts, mosquito buzzes to their giant ears.

Am I supposed to know him? See, Fort—

I love you, baby

Stay with me, then you’ll see

Birdleg waited for the song to melt away. You know the rest.

Jesus remembered the TV news. How Fort studded the teeth of his women with diamonds. Built an opera house on Wells Street.

What happened to Fort?

He dead.

Birdleg, I know that, Jesus said. Why he dead?

Romans shot him up.

That’s right, Jesus thought, mind working.

Fort knew the Romans was after him. Think he cared? He walked around with his chest stuck out.

Like a shield, Jesus thought. A shield ready to bounce some bullets.

He went into the crib and waited. Number 111. Waited. The Romans told him to come out. Think he cared? He just laid back in the bed with his hands behind his head.

A confetti of bullets preceded the confetti of the parade on Wells Street. The sky filled with white birds, slow-falling wiggly sperm.

Yeah, Jesus said. He remembered. Found so many holes in him the undertaker thought it was buckshot. Nawl, the undertaker thought somebody had stabbed the muddafudda wit an ice pick.

Man.

Damn.

They buried that nigga in a gold Cadillac, Jesus said.

Nawl, Birdleg said.

Did too. Jesus remembered the news.

Gold-trimmed. And it weren’t no real Cadillac. It only shaped like a Caddy.

Damn.

Yeah. Damn.

What happened at the funeral? Jesus drew up images from the well of his memory, dripping, wet, and blurred.

Everybody in Stonewall went to the funeral. Caribe Funeral Home. Everybody and they mamma and they grandmamma. A whole bunch of niggas squeezed in. Birdleg spread his arms wide. Almost knocked over the coffin. All the bitches—

Don’t call them bitches, Hatch said. My sister Porsha say women ain’t—

— in black miniskirts and fishnet stockings, crying, wetting up Fort’s pink silk shirt. Them bitches went home and filled up they bathtubs with they tears. They bone was gone.

Man.

Damn.

Jesus let Birdleg’s voice seep into ears. The words sank into him, spreading out, massaging his chest. He saw tears reddening the bitches’ soft-talking eyes.

They buried him out there at Woodlawn Cemetery.

I know where that is, Jesus said. Knowing but not knowing why he knew.

Pushed him in the dirt. Then them bitches watered his seed with they tears. But Fort — Birdleg raised his shoulders like two pyramids for emphasis — that nigga, he remember everything.

BIRDLEG ANGLED HIS CANE POLE over his shoulders, guided them through blood-drawing thorns to the Tongue River. (One of the city’s twelve.) The four boys frog-filled the muddy riverbank. It rained frogs in West Memphis. And snails. And sometimes snakes. Hatch screamed running crying and Lula Mae got the garden hoe and with a short quick downstroke chopped off the snake’s head clean and neat. Bees buzzed overhead. Hatch and Jesus sat proud on the bank with rod and reel Inez and George had given them. The running river washed ocean waves. When the waves were still, Jesus could plainly see round rocks on the bottom, covered with red seaweed and looking as though they were floating close to the surface.

My daddy John like to fish.

Yeah? Birdleg said. He had bought a loaf of bread for bait. John used worms and honey. Put you and Hatch in his boat-big car and drove to the Kankakee River. A silk line — glistening like spider spit — like the silk from his suit. Filling up basket after basket, stealing all the fish from the river. Cept the one time Dave came and poured E&J in the water and catfish and perch jumped up on the bank, burping and singing. What he catch?

White perch.

Them taste good?

Yeah. The waves swelled, throwing shadowed patterns and refracted froth over the submerged red rocks. My grandmamma Honest—

Inez, Hatch said. Her name Inez.

— go fishin all the time.

Yeah? Birdleg said.

And me and Hatch used to fish down South, Jesus said. He could feel the river thunder. Feel blind subterranean fish, pulse and beat through smoky glass-water. West Memphis, he said. Two birds left a limb in the same instant. Circled the still air.

At our other grandmother’s house, Hatch said.

Lula Mae.

She my grandmother too, Abu said.

No she ain’t.

She is too.

The sun glowed on the stones, lit everything with color, drank up the water from the earth, played with the shining air that played with the leaves.

Birdleg, why they call it a bank?

Cause water is gold. A rich river flow into a lot of fields.

Birdleg, let’s go, Jesus said. Ain’t nothing biting. His line was motionless in the water.

Stupid, we only been here a few minutes.

So. Nigga, we sposed to be flying that kite.

Yeah, Abu said. He sat rubbing his hands and legs together like a fly.

That’s some pussy stuff, Birdleg said.

Nawl, I wanna fly that kite. Forget this fishin.

I got one, Hatch said. Invisible, a fish tugged his line below a small circle formed on the water, tugged, and the rod bowed like a wino’s head. Wind folded the grass into itself.

Uncle John can show us how to fly it, Abu said. He watched Jesus.

He ain’t yo uncle, Jesus said.

But I got one, Hatch said. Wind clawed the water.

Okay. We’ll go see your uncle.

But I got one.

Nobody like this fishing, Jesus said.

Damn, Birdleg. Do we have to walk?

Stupid. We gon take the train.

But I got one.

Yank it, Jesus said. So the hook catch in his mouth.

But we never take the train. Cept when we coming to Stonewall, or leaving.

Who got some money?

Birdleg reached beneath his stomach. His hand emerged, shining coins.

Birdleg led you to the subway. The train penetrated you like wind. One of those old trains. Green with a white roof. Not the new ones. Silver, blue, and red. Tour guide, Birdleg pointed and gestured. Tanks used these tunnels in the last war.

For real?

Word.

You mean my Uncle John’s war?

Stupid.

The train slit the rail’s throat. The rails screamed. The train rocked, swaying commuters from side to side like church choir singers. Sewer-smelling wind ripped from the tunnel’s mouth and blew Jesus’s cap off.

My cap.

Leave it.

Birdleg, my cap.

Leave it. You gon crawl down there and get electrocuted?

Jesus looked at his cap red on the rails. That’s not the third rail. I can climb down and—

Leave it, Birdleg said. That’s where it’s meant to be. Didn’t it fly down there?

Emerged from the subway, clouds crawling over the sky. Hatch led them to the depot. The bus gathered its wings, and swooped them through streets — Places, more Places than streets in Eddyland — like a hawk. That cold wind off the river. That cold wind that liked to sneak into Gracie’s house on Liberty Island across the lake. Like a stork that knew the exact location of its delivery, the bus set them right before the Funky Four Corners Garage. Grime caked the car windows in the lot.

It was a strange establishment. An old Edsel perched on the very roof of the garage. The roof slanted inward with the pitch of the rafters—like Lula Mae’s attic; Lula Mae carried a kerosene lamp in one hand while crawling like a fireman up the ladder to her attic—and the Edsel slanted all the way forward, a brim on a nodding junky’s head, threatening to fall. Smelled like rubber from loops of fan belts hanging from the ceiling. Crowded with cases of motor oil stacked in front of the counter, coated with a film of dull oil, the desk behind the counter covered with yellow and pink slips of paper, and a red Coca-Cola machine that dropped bottled pop.

Flyin home

Fly like a motherfucker

Flyin home

Fly

Flyin home

Fly like a motherfucker

I said, flyin—

John looked up from his song, eyes slowly rising from the counter like a plane on takeoff. Slid over Jesus’s face like a searchlight. Well, he said. Well.

Hey, Uncle John.

Hey, Uncle John.

Hey.

Hey. John grinned. Yall thirsty?

Hell nawl, Hatch said. Looked at Jesus. Private joke.

Jesus smiled. Remembered car-crazy Ernie. In John’s Recovery Room, Ernie would slide a shot of gasoline to a parched customer. Ernie’s Special.

Uncle John, this Birdleg.

Birdleg? I heard a lot about you, Birdleg.

Birdleg showed his white teeth.

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.

50

SOUND OF LIMB AND MIND, I leave:

My heart to my mother (Hope you deserve it)

My feet to my brother (Errand runner, keep humping!)

My penis to my wife

My mouth to my son (Sing poems)

My eyes to my daughter (See wisely)

My arms (for strength) to my grandchildren still unborn

My head to my sister-in-law (sorely in need of brains)

My teeth to my nephew (Eat and put on some meat)

My nose to the taxman (no other use for it)

My ass to a casket

51

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.

The Genealogy Record Family Register was blank, untouched.

At the back of the Bible, at the very top of the page, written in blue ink in Lula Mae’s hand:

She turned two pages.

Read from page bottom to page top. Reversed the book’s direction. Read. Page bottom to page top. Read. None the wiser. Flipped on. Maps of the Holy Land, past and present. Faraway lands charted, penciled, reduced. Journey on, eye and hand. Journey to the final page. Find there written in blue ink:

She lifted the NAACP receipt attached to the page by a baby’s safety pin and revealed the name beneath: Cynthia. Cynthia? No name she recognized. No fact in her memory.

She worked her way backward through the Bible, hovering and hesitating, small strips and squares of paper positioned between pages, and small sheets of paper with handwritten verse headings, Lula Mae’s private index. She closed the Bible. Enough for now. She had years to read it. Years.

LOOK, GEORGE, Inez said. It’s Junior’s wife. She spoke through tight teeth, teeth clamped down on invisible hairpins. Watched Sheila with a face framed in smooth yellow.

No it ain’t, George said. That’s Sheila. You remember Sheila. That’s your other son’s wife. Lucifer.

I know. My daughter-in-law.

Sheila could see through Inez’s body, wax paper, see her cloudy insides. She was disappearing, disappearing into the same invisible space where John and Lucifer had gone.

My daughter-in-law. Gracie.

How are you, Inez?

Inez stared into Sheila’s eyes. I think I’m dead.

Here, Inez, George said. Why don’t you come on in here and lie down. He took her by one thin biceps, holding it like a broom handle, and guided her to the bedroom.

George, you want me to take her?

No, Sheila. You set down and relax.

Sheila pulled a chair out for herself and sat down at a small round glass table on the screened-in patio that overlooked the backyard and the garage with its own screened-in patio. She relaxed in the cool shade unbothered by summer insects. So long since she had been here. So long. Her eyes moved over the world map on the wood-paneled wall, red thumbtacks indicating all the places George and Inez had traveled.

How are you, Sheila? George stands in the raised doorway on a foot of concrete, waiting for her answer. He wears a pair of brown slacks that she recognizes from thirty years earlier. The years have taken away none of his sinewy muscle — he was always active, in motion — only weakened his eyes, dimmed them. He strains to watch her, as if she were far away, and his hair is grayed with a painter’s touch.

Fine.

That’s good. George steps down into the patio. Comes forward and seats himself on the opposite side of the table.

When did you all make it back?

Last night.

Everything go okay?

Yes. The way she wanted it.

That’s good.

Yes.

So everything went okay?

Yes.

That’s good. Everybody’s okay?

You know. Sheila gestured.

Yes. Give it time. Give it time.

What were yall doing today?

Oh not much. I made us some breakfast.

I guess I should have called first.

No, Sheila. You know you don’t have to call. We weren’t doing nothing. I was jus about to turn on the news. George lifted himself from his seat, his strong arms trembling with age.

I can do it.

No, Sheila. That’s alright. You set there and relax. He came forward and past her. Clicked on the television, an old black-and-white, the volume low. He had always preferred his hand-sized radio to the television. It lay quiet on the glass table. George passed her and retook his seat with the same trembling effort.

The television flickered light in the patio. Outside, the yard glowed with the brightness of the hot still hour.

George, the garden looks so nice.

Thanks. I try to keep it up.

What did you plant this year?

My usual stuff.

Well, it looks really nice.

You want me to get you some tomatoes to take home?

No, George. Don’t bother.

Oh, it’s no bother.

Maybe later then.

The television made small talk and small pictures about something or other.

You remember how Porsha liked to play in that bird pond when she was little?

Sheila chuckled. Yes.

Wasn’t she the cutest thing?

Yes. Sheila saw Porsha bright and happy, her charitable hand holding out bread crumbs (Inez’s leftover biscuits), waiting patiently, waiting, but birds flying in safe range on a steady sweep of wing, and Porsha crying out in anger and frustration, tears dripping into the marble pond.

Don’t cry, John said. Try a mouse. Birds like mice.

And Hatch liked to sit out there on the patio by himself and read.

Yes. Sheila’s fingers moved over her dress, followed the long black scar that ran up her belly. Rocking and reading, she said. Her vision was instantaneous. Hatch barely visible behind the garage’s screen, rocking and reading in a rage of curiosity, his private hours at the helm of some great imaginary ship, glancing up now and again at the screened-in patio.

And that Jesus.

Yes, Jesus. She pictured Jesus’s sharply cut features, then shoved the image out of her mind violently.

She had enjoyed coming out here as much as Hatch and Porsha. The moist air. Shadowed figures in the garden. The quiet and clean assurance of nature. The circular stones where—

You see that? George said. He directed her attention to the television news.

The anchor team reported the latest facts about the recent flood. A billion dollars in business losses. The threat of lawsuits. Another billion dollars in damage. The costs of repair and cleanup. Shifting blame.

Look at that mess, George said. Somebody screwed up.

Yes. They think they know everything. More than the man upstairs.

And no one wants to take the blame. No one wants to take the blame.

Organizers of the antiwar demonstration and Washington police claimed that the demonstration was the largest in history, at least 1,350,000 people. But the reporters estimated only 75,000. Camera angles made the demonstrators and counterdemonstrators look equal in size.

You heard from your brother?

Yes. He’s fine. I haven’t seen him in years. He wants me to visit him out there in California. But I can’t leave Inez.

Why don’t you hire a nurse.

You know how much they want? An arm and a leg.

You have the money.

And I’m not going to put her in a nursing home. At least right here with me I know she’ll be alright.

I could come out and stay with her.

You don’t have to do that.

I could.

Thanks, Sheila. You got your own concerns. Don’t worry about us.

An unidentified man had been gunned down in a drive-by. Many clues but no suspects. Gang-related. Drug-related.

Look at them dummies, George said. Killing up themselves.

It’s sad.

Dummies. Some of them young punks tried to steal our car.

Sheila’s mouth opened in shock. When?

The other day.

From the garage?

Yes.

Did they—

That wasn’t the first time either. So I sold it. I sold the car. Too much trouble to keep it. My eyes ain’t what they used to be. And Inez can’t drive anymore.

Well, I could come out and help you with Inez.

My niece stops by a few times a week.

Sheila said nothing.

This whole thing didn’t surprise me.

What?

Inez. George spoke at the television. I married someone who couldn’t help me. I was home from the war. Excited, I guess. And she didn’t know why she was marrying. Excited about the uniform, I guess. I guess she fell in love with a uniform.

Sheila turned her eyes away from George’s face. In all these years, she had never seen him lose his surface. She had come to expect of him words clean in remembrance.

I didn’t even have a job. The army paid me a dollar and fifty a day since I was a noncommissioned officer. (Privates got a dollar.) I borrowed money from my best buddy to report to the base the next morning.

Sheila felt anger at the angry words. What gave George the right? What had pushed him so far? Why was he expressing such rage against Inez now, now that she was down, now that she wasn’t here, wasn’t able either to respond or to retreat, fight or defend herself?

And look at that Junior. She ain’t his mamma. Ain’t never been. He never called her Mamma. Old lady Simmons was his mamma.

Sheila weighed this against all else.

Her parents never taught her anything. Never made her go to school. She grew up like a weed.

Sheila stiffened with a sudden vibration of loyalty, duty, and courage. She opened her mouth to speak, but there was nothing inside her to measure and meet him.

Junior never was worth a damn. I knew that from the moment I saw him. I always thought that Lucifer had some get-up-and-go about himself. I guess he ain’t worth a damn either.

THE TRAIN SHAKES HER to prove its force. Tracks whine down in stillness. The smells of the stockyards reach her now as they had long ago on her arrival in the city. Many years gone. Many. She remembers. Cows rode trains, passengers, rode them here to the country’s bumping swinging heart, rest stop, where they were slaughtered and butchered, a single cow cleaved into a multitude of choice parts and cheap cuts, then shrouded in cellophane and reloaded on trains that drove them to distant reaches and anxious stomachs. The city didn’t smell like promise.

52

OH, HI, MRS. STERN. How are you? Yes, I’m fine. I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to come to work today. Oh yes, I’m fine. Jus a lil tired from the trip. No. That’s okay. Please don’t. I’ll be in tomorrow. Give my regards to Mr. Stern. Thanks. Bye.

She returned the receiver to its cradle, then lay back on the tumbled pillows in the very center of the high white bed. The night had been hell and now the morning was no better. She would never get used to this. Never.

Gracie studied Lula Mae’s photograph on the front of the funeral program. That looks like me, she thought. Death blackened her. That could be me. Black in death. She looks like me. She is me.

She reviewed the obituary facts. Name. Place. Date. Marriage. Survivors. Name and number. She added. She deleted. Corrected.

Sweet chariot had opened up its doors to her, wet in the Memphis heat. Shut its doors and leaped into the white world above. Sheila, Porsha, Hatch, and herself — all sat as strangers, swinging through the clouds. Her Bible (the funeral program buried inside, interred) weighing down her weightless knees to keep her firmly in her seat. Both the pages and her knees wet with Lula Mae’s nonstop voice. Swim out from my body. Search out your own water. Sweet chariot swung her low to this city. The first to come. Called among the birds. Her fluttered pulse.

What did you come out of the wilderness to see?

She flew to her house on Liberty Island with its ancient implications of order, her rage at Sheila, so hot in West Memphis, already cold, drowned by the rushing in her skull. She emptied out Sheila and filled herself with John.

It belongs to both of us, she said. We both made it. Don’t you want to touch it? Her palm moved in circles over her ripe belly.

John stood, the question holding him in place.

Touch it.

John blinked.

Touch it.

Okay, John said. He didn’t move.

Put your hand here. She reached for his hand and he moved it beyond her reach.

Okay, he said. Okay. I’ll touch it.

She eased her aching bones out of the bed, knelt in yellow sunlight, and mouthed silent prayers. Somewhere in the room, her Bible trilled tongues. She raised her head. Opened her eyes. Cookie’s baby bonnet spread on the carpet like a discarded parachute.

She rose to her feet and went heavily down the stairs.

The morning air received her. Lake shape lying and lifting under a cupping sky. She moved in its direction. She felt her way easily. She had often walked here.

John met her on the path with only the crudest of necessities — a clean shirt, fresh socks, a change of underwear, razor and shaving cream, toothbrush, deodorant — in a flight bag. I’ll be back in a day or two.

She refused to look him in the face. Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips, and how then shall he hearken unto me?

Don’t act like that, he said. He stood there, eyes shining like brown diamonds. Don’t act like that. I got to handle my business. It’s only for a few days.

She heard silent prayer in the words. Yes, she said. I’ll be here when you get back, she said, confident that he would return to her. He would often leave his body all over the place but he always returned to her, flight bag in hand. She wasn’t much to look at and had little to say but he had an eye to see and an ear to hear.

Whenever he left her, she kept the pain of his absence locked up in her chest. But she could open it anytime she wanted, like a jewelry box, and watch the pearl-sparkling images inside. Her buried life.

Her thoughts were in advance of her body and she quickened her steps to overtake them. She found a quiet tree and stretched out beneath it, her back against the hard, rough trunk. Her bright red sandals and scarlet stockings made her thin legs look bigger. Two red rails that ran to Tar Lake. Trunks and trees made a black lacework around the island. Gray shadows and morning leaves. Silent light in shafts on bright grass. The morning sky bloomed above the blue horizon where black-bodied buildings formed a jagged wall. The city. Babies leaped high in the water, high above the city, like black dolphins. Birds studied their reflections in black water. For a long time she sat thinking.

It had been a week now since John had stepped out of her life forever (never to return), made her a ghost in a strange house where she would spend her remaining hours and days wandering. Perhaps she had driven him too deep inside herself to bring him back.

How slowly the water appeared to move. Lagging. Three steps behind the world. She recorded things never before perceived. The veining of each leaf and babies upon them like black locusts.

John gripped the steering wheel like an eagle gripped captured prey, Jesus and Hatch chirping in the back seat of his fast-flying red Eldorado. Flustered and afraid, she fluttered about with protecting wings.

John, please slow down. Can’t you slow down?

Who driving?

I’m gon be baptized, Jesus said.

Why? Hatch said.

So I can save.

Save what?

Reverend Sparrow lifted Jesus high into his arms, kneeled down before the claw-foot bathtub, and leaned the boy across his arms, light, a shovel slanted above dirt. Except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he said, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. He dipped Jesus into the water.

He heard his pleas even before his face broke the water’s surface. John, help me! This preacher tryin to drown me.

John rushed forward and shoved Reverend Sparrow against the wall. The water sucked Jesus in. She heard the separate sounds of the water work on his body. John swooped him up kicking and blowing and blinded. She watched the clean waters, unmoving in the tub.

THE TREE LEAVES were too far apart to give any shade. The sun stood still and burned. Her black skin took on the orange glow of coal. Wet wind crawled off the ocean. Her body felt like dry ice, hot and cool.

A spirit must answer to his right name. Gracie tested the belief. She called John by his true name.

What? He put those brown eyes on her. What you call me? he said.

Nothing. She alone understood John’s secret forms and transformations. And he made her part of that secret world.

I ain’t think so. Deep eyes now upon the deep water.

She walked over to the railing and stood gazing down at the lake, gray, and slightly choppy in the wake of a distant tug. The lake was like a vast stage under the glare-filled sky above, and the boardwalk and beach, seating for the audience. She was unaware of the blazing sun, absorbed completely, caught up in the play of the washing waves.

Look, he said.

She looked. Saw what he saw, what he wanted her to see. Lined up like train cars, several objects rushed through the water below.

Rats, he said.

Vile, she said. Vile. She turned her eyes away.

He chuckled. For a long time he watched the water and said nothing. You know what?

What?

Dave, that sonofabitch remember everything. You know what he told me?

What?

Dave, well he told me that him and Sam drove out there to California to pay R.L. a visit.

Don’t believe nothing Dave says.

So they visit him, thinking that ole pretty R.L. was fast enough to keep one foot ahead of the fast life. No, Dave said. That wasn’t the case. Caught. His whole world tied up, tied up in Christmas tape.

Gracie listened with greedy ears.

All scarred up.

Scars?

Yep. His arms.

Gracie said nothing.

So Dave said. So there was ole pretty R.L. all pretty and fancied up and ditty-bopping down the street out there in pretty California and noddin so bad he couldn keep his hat on.

TAR LAKE MOVED with laser swiftness. Babies swam, raising their legs like powerful oars, the rush of their bodies parting the rushing water. Black riders came in off the lake beckoning for her red toes. New waves rose wildly, their height massed against the horizon, against the city. She could hear a battle far off, thunder and shouting. She could smell the ride of sin. Babies ran up trees, black squirrels. Shall two know the same in their knowing? All her life, she had believed that no two were closer than she and John. He had brought her into the world and she him. Entire with each other. Now she knew, their lives had never really touched. She was alive without equal.

She starts for the house in the serene extinction of light at sunset. The ground grows lighter and her feet move to meet it in the air. John passes up the white, wide walk, flight bag in hand. He looks at her with his marksman eyes. Touches her on the face and hands. She opens her mouth to speak, but he sends an answering smile before she can form the question.

The house receives them. Light, creaking, a house of twigs, a bird’s nest. The floor rises under her feet. Rolls and pitches, rocks, a spray of witch’s feathers. She sinks back, wet, weak and trembling, head expanding, the carpet moving under her feet. Pushes herself up to try again.

53

DEATHROW STANDS in the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria holding his penis.

Why are you holding it? she asks.

I thought it was my shadow.

THE PARTIAL VIEW can reveal the strongest colors of the whole. North Park quilted in deep green through the window. Cloudy trees arching high in air. Huge bird nests built like penthouse apartments in tall treetops. She thinks she can see all the way to Red Hook. Buildings small, red, and hard in the distance. Fossils.

Red flickered in her eyes. Candle flame memories of Deathrow. She thought of herself, there (Memphis, West Memphis, Fulton, Houston, the South) and here, as holding on to him. She concocted scenarios where they would meet again. So certain that he would return to her on her return to the city.

Should she even be thinking about love now that Lula Mae was gone? And how should she feel about Lula Mae’s death? How had it changed her? Did it diminish her life or increase it? She greased her hands with Vaseline and slid them prayer-fashion into the Lazarus 1 patent pending, thinking that she might have gained the power to levitate.

She had not.

She cleaned her hands, grease-free. Pressed a button on a mummy-shaped remote control and popped on her bubbled black TV, bright sight and sound. A drive-by shooting, the flood, the storm overseas. Hammered cadences ripped at her as masked and camouflaged entities transformed the desert into a huge movie set. Scaffolding, prefabricated structures, false fronts, precise machines. Rockets springing up over the horizon like toy snakes released from a can. Ah, here was a possibility. Perhaps Deathrow had been drafted — Do they still draft young men? — and stamped into a soldier.

With the television for company, she flipped through her stack of unopened mail. Bills, announcements, invitations, catalogues, and more of the same. A glossy postcard glowed like a priceless tempting jewel.

Decided on Bahamas instead. The water is green. The sand is pink. I’m chillin. Enjoying conch fritters. Fried plantains. Strawberry daiquiris tall as mountains. Yum. Yum. And riding John Canoe at every opportunity. Need I say more?

Nia

The postcard caused Porsha to remember the two letters she had found in Lula Mae’s lil house. She opened her purse and searched through the contents. Receipt for the plane tickets. Boarding passes. Reverend Blunt’s business card. (She put it aside for safekeeping. You never know. It might come in handy someday.) Funeral program. (Some extra copies for friends.) Rusty horseshoes. (She would need to mount them above the doorways for good luck.)

Finally the two envelopes. Why had she kept them for herself, not revealed them to anyone else, secretly lifted them from the shoebox and slipped them down her dress and between her breasts like a thief?

She quickly removed the letter from the first envelope. (The spine had been neatly cut with a knife or opener.) The envelope was stained and faded but the letter was not, the sheet of blue-lined notebook paper whiter than white after all the years.

Dear Mamma:

Having many things to write unto you, the story of a man is lost and the story of his image loses a little interest every time it’s retold. So I would not write with paper and ink: but I trust to come unto you, and speak face to face, that our joy may be full and the story complete.

I have many things to write, but I will not with ink and pen. I trust I shall shortly see thee, and we shall speak face to face.

Greet the kin by name.

Yours.

The second envelope was much heavier than the first. She examined every detail before opening it. Size. Shape. Texture. Color. Two spots on the triangular flap. Like eyes. (Could it be watching me? He be watching me?) R.L.’s tears? His spit?

She removed the letter from the envelope. Fine stationery. Several folded pages — as many folds as a navigation chart — all unnumbered, no heading, no subscription.

Brothers here, brothers there. Often did I think of the inhabitants of the deep much happier than myself.

Words shimmered and wavered. Folded, collapsed into one another.

To give an account of all I’ve saw, a thousand tongues would be insufficient; so please excuse my humble hand. Resolve as one may to keep to the main road, some bypaths have an enticement not readily to be understood.

She stared as if staring would restore the words to sight.

Though I am not present before you, my story wears an honest face. In the time of our fathers, writing was the voice of an absent person, and that absence bespoke another voice, the only voice.

She told herself out loud, How am I sposed to read this?

Read my little tale with reverence. Today, as I write it, all is quiet within me. You can see by my penmanship that I am not scribbling as I usually do. I’m not blessed like you. You could always write a pretty hand.

For a moment, she imagined that the letter was written to her.

All my life I’ve been absorbing bits of people around me. I have had business and conversation with wise folk, churchmen, laymen, fools and the like.

Her fingers dream moist on the paper.

It should be easy to follow the thread of my story.

The moist pages move with wave rhythm in her fingers.

The seams show.

Words lift on light wings and settle like colorful butterflies on common objects in the room.

Nobody can write their own life to the full end of it unless they can write it after they are dead. Some other must always judge us.

The television wavers in the distance like far-off smoke.

The pen employed in finishing my story and making it what you now see it to be has had no little difficulty putting it into language fit to be seen and read.

She sees R.L.’s one surviving photograph, the crumpled black-and-white which gives up his form, his color, his hazel eyes.

As you know I came out here for fresh fields to plough, new pastures. We martyr to motion. So here I am missing the changes of season.

She sees his long legs sheathed in shining cowboy boots.

What I have written is written. I drink this cup full to the end. And the water is sweet. I read. I think. I sleep. I read some more. God, enable me to proceed in this labor in the whole task so that when I render up at the last day an account of the talent you gave me I may receive pardon for the sake of Christ our Lord.

She looks up from the letter and sees Deathrow in her window, his face a reflection of eternal dreaming life.

SHE LEFT HUNDRED GATES for the summer’s first heat. Summer was already doing its work, for an old red ambulance, a long and low red hearse, was parked in front of the building, anxious for the sick or the dead. She drifted like a candle flame through the heated haze.

Taxi!

Where to, ma’m?

She entered the taxi to a humming air conditioner.

Where to?

She told him.

The cab pulled away under a sky that demanded to be noticed. Slow constellations wheeled overhead, fat swollen stars she had seen for twenty-eight years; none had any name or meant anything by shape or brightness or position. Thick trees bloomed on both sides of the expressway. (She’s intensely alert to trees tonight.) The air rippled like camouflage. She said his name: Deathrow. He was somewhere definite, a dot on a map. She said his name: Deathrow. If voices had legs, they could crawl into all sorts of places, unexpected, unwanted perhaps, uninvited guests, willing and hungry. Deathrow.

She settled back in speed. Monday. The past week had rushed like a torrent. The flood had forced the new Cotton Rivers to reschedule the Great Awakening for today. (The media had it that he would declare Monday the new Sabbath.) And he had moved the location from downtown south to Woodlawn, to Mount Zion Baptist Church, which Reverend Tower had built and raised, a church high enough that every lowlife on Church Street could watch it from the deep gutter, Deacon Rivers his right-hand man, his first mate who took the helm when Reverend Tower died, directed a church where he was also to die and be remembered.

The thought sends her.

One, two, three, four

Snap, snap, back, back

Put yo hands on yo hips

And let yo backbone slip

Shake it to the east

Shake it to the west

Shake it fo the one

You love the best

How many years had it been since she’d lived in Woodlawn, lived where the Stone Park Rangers and the Crazy Insane Disciples waged war with death-hard fists, sharpened switchblades — steel drinks blood in the darkness — and single-shot zip guns? She remembers, they — Uncle John and Gracie, she and Mamma and Lucifer — shared a two-bedroom apartment (or a big one-bedroom that served as two) in a courtyard building on Sixty-third and Kenwood, a cramped, cavelike apartment with batlike moths, scurrying mice, slow arrogant roaches that ran antelope-quick at the sight of Mamma’s curving broom, where the old, the original Cotton Rivers’s tall pointy church rocked across the street, the church that King Kong climbed once in broad daylight, gnatlike fighter jets pestering him, while you watched from the living-room window. When you were alone, ghosts would flit across the ceiling, bump into walls, get tangled in the curtains, and tiptoe from room to room. One night a spaceship circled the building, spinning its rainbow of interplanetary lights against the drawn shades. Little men moved against the white shade screens. You threw the bedcovers over your head. Prayed for Uncle John’s return.

Each afternoon, Uncle John would meet you in the schoolyard — Andrew Carnegie Elementary School — with the red wagon.

How was school today? Uncle John asked with his daring grin.

Fine. You always said fine.

What they learn you today?

How could you answer? Did you have a century to tell and he a century to listen? I don’t know, you said. Your hands went quickly for Uncle John’s pants pockets to discover the treasure of gold and silver coins hidden there.

What you want to buy?

Some potato chips and sunflower seeds and a 3 Musketeers bar and Now & Later and some wine candy.

The usual.

With his muscular stride, he pulled you and your sweets up and down Church Street, up and down Sixty-third Street, all over Woodlawn, all over the South Side, along the shores of Tar Lake, that great horseshoe curve west and east around most of the city, all over Central (Central was yours, belonged to the two of you, and would be yours forever), and backward and forward in time.

See that dead dog there?

Yuk.

I bet you it’s a male. Dogs get run over crossin the street chasin after that stuff.

What stuff, Uncle John?

You know what stuff.

Perhaps to prove to you that he was as gallant with non-kin as with kin, he would offer other little girls a ride in the red wagon.

Two can’t fit in this wagon, you said.

Share, girl. Learn to share.

To ease your jealousy, he would lift you above the wagon and bounce you in his arms.

Throw me in the air too, Uncle John, Nia said.

Don’t throw her, Uncle John. She might float away like that big blimp.

A CONSTELLATION OF SIGHTS AND SOUNDS. A few hundred people were all trying to push through the wide church doors at once, their loud voices anxious and angry in the night. Long-headed TV cameras walked about freely like alien beings. Microphone booms floated above like black kites. Maybe she should turn around and go home. Besides, she wasn’t feeling her best. Round and heavy with heat. She looked around and found that she had somehow waded into the crowd, surrounded, mosaic eyes. No turning back. Besides, what did she have to fear? The organ came from inside, a raised hand directing the visitors inside the church. Progress was slow. She floated through the doors, bodies and machines brushing against her, driving her, tossing her.

The church was large and high enough inside to hold every animal on Noah’s ark but all the pews were occupied and people stood in double rows against the walls. A kind reporter gave her his seat.

Thank you.

My pleasure.

If this was the old Cotton Rivers’s church she didn’t recognize it. Built by an architect with the will to adorn. Frescoes and murals of biblical scenes. Every board and beam gleamed. The oak pews greeted your backside with red cushioned leather. And the path of plush red carpet saw to it that you would never fall. Openmouthed speakers hung high off the walls like gargoyles. And blinking white runway lights directed your eyes and feet to the faraway chapel, a tree-trunk-thick podium on a stage of veined marble under three lean windows, moonlight swimming in colors through the stained glass.

The walls spoke: Please settle down and be seated.

Silence closed over the room.

I thank yall for coming. It has been a long time.

The podium was so far, far away that she could not identify the speaker. It has been a long time. On a wood beam above her the New Cotton Rivers spoke and moved on a stained-glass TV monitor. She studied his live double in the distance. The New Cotton Rivers was shorter than she had imagined he would be. And thinner. Barely enough skin on his face for a mustache. (How old is he now anyway? Fourteen at last count, last she remembered.) His white robe billowed like a sail.

Amen.

It’s good to see so many of you here today though I know some of you are here for the wrong reason.

Tell them about it!

Though some of you did not journey here to worship in the Lord’s house.

Tell the truth!

You are welcome. Keep coming back. God always got mo room for one more soul.

The congregation laughed long and deep, then laughter diminished, trickled down.

I welcome you.

She could not help thinking, Did the thin young body on the monitor truly house the booming voice? A voice heavy with age and insight. A miracle. The old Cotton Rivers was making himself known through his son’s lungs and mouth.

Yall gon help me preach this morning?

Yes.

Said, yall gon help me preach this morning?

Yes!

Praise the Lord …

She praised him.

We are gathered here today in unique purpose. But let us remember, it is his loving kindness that has allowed us to be here.

That’s right.

Some of yall don’t realize that.

Yes!

I think I should say it again.

Say it!

I say, a lot of yall don’t realize that. The preacher’s voice searched out every corner of the church. Only his loving kindness, brothers and sisters. Some of us forget bout his loving kindness.

Tell it.

Don’t lie.

He woke us up to glad daylight this morning, but some of us forget.

Teach.

He casts rays of pure joy over our problems and pains.

I know he do.

He bore us through the floods, kept us in a high dry place at his side, and still we don’t thank him.

No we don’t.

He fed our souls. He gave us children. He made us music. He gave us dignity. He bought our freedom.

Yes indeedy.

Why is it, brothers and sisters, that we don’t thank him?

Why?

I say, why is it that we don’t thank him?

The congregation waited in silence.

I’ll tell you why.

Tell us.

I said, I’ll tell you why.

Tell us!

Cause we are blind!

You said it.

I say we are blind.

Yes we are.

All things were made by him and without him was not any thing made that was made. But the world knows him not.

Tell it, brother.

It don’t know him.

I said, he is in the world and the world was made by him but the world knows him not!

That’s right, brother!

Did not Eve taste the sweet red skin of the apple?

Yes she did.

Did not Eve taste the sweet red skin of the burning apple?

Yes she did.

Why did she bite of the forbidden fruit?

Why?

What drew her lips to fire?

Tell us.

She thought she was safe in the garden. Did she not see the bloody footprints of the first remorseless soul thief?

No!

Yes, the Snake was in Eden before Adam.

You said it, brother!

Just like today. The Snake is here today.

I see him.

I said just like today!

Yes!

Hiding in the apple like an innocent worm. Isn’t that always how he is? Satan waits in the shadows engineering his horrible plans.

Oh life is sweet!

Engineering his horrible plan to destroy the Lord Christ.

Sin!

So what did Eve do? Eve ate the worm-wet apple. And she knew she had done wrong. Yes, I say she knew she had sinned, for the devil’s spit embittered the sweet waters of life.

Yes it did.

And Death stretched its dark wings over the land. God put Adam out of the garden. I said, Gawd — the boy preacher was humming the words, singing them — evicted Adam from the garden. Gawd looked at him and said, My son, I said, my son-on-on, you shall bear children the rest of your days.

Yes he did.

Bear children the rest of yo natural bawn days.

Yes he did!

And you know what? Brothers and sisters, we are all Adam in that garden.

We know it.

We are all sinners.

Um huh.

I am telling you that we all are sinners, so don’t you ever think you can walk away from sin.

No.

I said, don’t you ever think you can hop free of sin!

No, Lord.

The New Cotton Rivers began to hop around the stage, robe sleeves curved like a double-headed ax. He hopped back to the microphone. After all, how far can an apple fall?

A thunder of clapping hands.

I say, how far can an apple fall?

Preach!

The Lord says, The soul is a charioteer.

That’s right, brother!

Preach.

The soul is a charioteer. See these two muscled arms — the New Cotton Rivers raised his thick curved robe sleeves like threatening scimitars — driving two horses, driving two horses. And you know what, brothers and sisters?

What?

One is ignoble—

Say it.

— and the other noble. I said, one is ignoble and the other righteous!

You said it!

The righteous learn to stay the hands of Satan.

Yes they do.

The righteous know that good and evil square off every moment.

Yes they do.

The righteous will fight for the big prize.

Fight!

Cause the children of light are wiser than the children of the earth.

Yes they are.

And the Lord tells us, Everyman is my name.

Everyman.

Everyman-an-an is my name!

Everyman!

In every breast my father planted the seed of me. A small seed so that you may gender gain and grow to seek salvation.

Tell it!

Don’t lie!

Gain and grow-ow-ow to seek out your Lawd, huh!

Yes!

So place your salvation at the feet of Gawd, huh! Place your salvation at the feet of Gawd. Place your salvation at the feet of the Lord, who can wipe your sins away, huh! Cause your soul-oh-oul dangles over the licking fires of hell, huh! I said your heels-eels-eels pull away from the scorching fingers of hell, huh!

Yes, brother! Yes!

Take him, you wretched for good.

Take him, you starved for food.

Take him, you thirsty for your cooling stream.

Take him for your joyful theme.

Lay your complaints at his bosom.

Put your burdens on his breathing chest.

If you will walk in Grace’s heavenly road, he’ll make you free.

If you walk the righteous path you’ll know

Gawd is the only stability.

That’s right, brother! That’s right!

Because his power brings you power, and your Lord is still the Lord, huh! Give your life to the Lord; give your faith to the Lord; raise your hands-ands-ands to the Lord.

The church exploded in deafening applause. Porsha put both hands firmly on the pew in front of her.

The New Cotton Rivers raised his robe sleeves and dropped silence. His eyes opened terror-wide in farseeing vision.

Moses lifted up a people and tore a nation bawling and bleeding out of Pharaoh’s side.

Yes he did.

What could ole Pharaoh say?

What?

What could ole Pharaoh do?

Nothing!

Cause Moses had fire in his head and a cloud in his mouth, huh! I say, Moses led the pilotage of a whole people, of an entire race, through the quicksands and breakers of spiritual degradation, led them-em-em, huffing and puffing, up to the plane of righteousness, huh! led them-em-em up that mountain salvation-high, huh! high and calculated to heighten the pulse and quicken the brain, huh! led them to cool soul-cleansing clouds, cool to the sweat of a hot brow, for the soul’s-ole-ole’s salvation is hard work which calls for the coolest head, huh! So do not fear Satan, the Prince of the Power of Air, I say do not fear Satan, for God is the true power, Gawd-awd-awd, the sun radiating out the palm of his hand, huh! Gawd-awd-awd lifts all, huh! And know ye that neither the terror that flies by day nor the terror that walks by night shall overtake us.

The congregation rose from their seats, their praising hands blurred with speed, quick dizzy machines. Arms raised and extended like an Olympic diver, head thrown back, face lifted to the heavens, the New Cotton Rivers saw, and seeing, made the world shine. The brightness caused Porsha to shut her eyes for a moment. She felt a power, growing from the nexus of her belly button and radiating bright streams through the entire length of her body.

Gawd put reason in the head like the stars and planets in heaven!

Yes he did!

He put the passion in the heart and the heart in the chest like angels in the air!

The congregation stamped their feet.

He put worldliness in the kidneys, worldliness in the intestines, and worldliness in the abdomen like he put man on the earth.

The organ hit a heavy beat.

But the Good Book call chillun a gift from the Lord, huh!

The church grew suddenly hot. Porsha crossed her legs and her skirt stretched, revealing smooth brown thighs. She drew her skirt down like a shade. Her breasts shifted about in her blouse. She could feel her insides kicking out, kicking with guiltless violence, furious at the cramped heat. Then the church started to rock, tossed, a hot biscuit in cool hands.

Years have rolled on, and tens of thousands have been borne on streams of blood and tears to the shores of eternity. Years have—

Porsha felt the rocking increase steadily around her, gearing up, preparation.

For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

A wave rose from her stomach to her lips. Rafters arrowed into the black sky. Water came.

54

STRONG-BLOODED, he quickens to the challenge. Rears back against the sharp veil. Constricts. Thickens. Cuts deeper. His throat swells. Once twice three times thicker than each cord of the veil. Forces his soft dry tongue — the tongue of a parched traveler — through hard dry teeth. Lashes along his body, lines, red paths that cut in all directions. And up above, way up, beyond and through the starlight-fine—

Sharp horns curve through the drawn curtain. He wakes with a sour taste in his mouth, like metal. Hot steel pokes from his pajama fly. He raises himself to the bed edge and sits in thin sharp light, he and the bed one. The pillowcases and sheets clean and new and scented with the fragrance of fresh powder. (Sometime last night before he’d retired, Sheila had entered his room and changed the linen.) The sheet smell, the early morning quiet, and the green trees waiting outside the window bring back West Memphis. Movement plays at the edge of his vision. He looks up to discover a mobile spinning in silent space. Half-moons tracking new half-moons, turning new sickles of light. A long apple peel that spirals the round rhythm of Elsa’s walk. Turns Elsa’s hot image over and over in his stewed skull.

A mobile? Where had it come from? Sheila had placed it there. That was the only possible answer.

He washed and dressed quickly. Left his room and filled the hall with his voice. Sheila! Sheila! No answer. He banged on her closed bedroom door, banged against blind wood behind which Sheila and Lucifer shared their bed. Sheila! Sheila!

He hurried downstairs to the kitchen, almost expecting to find Lucifer standing above the round table. Expecting to see him drink his coffee in six scorching swallows, jam four slices of toast down his throat then rush out the house.

Sheila! He waited. Let the words carry. Sheila! Sheila!

White paper beckoned to him from the refrigerator door:

I went to Inez. Be back later.

Make you some breakfast.

Mom

Damn!

He returned to his room, stuffed a carefully chosen assortment of compact discs, cassettes, and books into Mr. Pulliam’s green army bag, and quit the house.

Knife-edged. Everything sharp, brilliant in the light. Cooler than yesterday. But less breeze. The air soft under hurrying clouds. (Hard to believe this the city of icy lake wind.) Birds drew heavy lines on the sky and the sky swayed with their loud noisy weight. A bird broke the line and dropped, stunned to the porch. Deceived, it had flown into the porch window that held the sky’s reflection. Damn. He wanted to kick the red bloody thing but his shoes refused. His feet required motion.

A radio whined on the horizon.

Have you heard

The rumors the wind’s blowin round

Tewenty thousand miles up in the shy

Something’s going down

Get out of your grave

Dance in the street

Get up and go, learn more than you know

Practice what you preach—

Somebody’s bustin Jimi, he said. Somebody’s bustin Jimi.

He danced, marched to the beat, both asleep and awake. (John said that grunts learned to snooze between footfalls.)

He had sat up most of the night and watched dawn define the city with disconcerting swiftness. Sat, wavering between one plan and the next, his thoughts like loose shots. In the morning, he would ride out to Eddyland to see if John’s cab was parked in his driveway. Check the garage. Break into it if he had to. An image floated up and remained like stagnant water in his memory: Jesus’s teeth marks in the leather dashboard of John’s gold Park Avenue. The shape of anger and absence. He would ride to Union Station and talk to T-Bone. Better yet, he would return to Red Hook and—

He tries to recall the plan now, a course of action as sure and certain as a man-made river. That river had dried up and evaporated in his sleep. He can see and feel it around him, ticker tape on cool city wind. In the city today, everything is new: hotels, clubs, restaurants, stores, and the buildings that house them, streets and the markers that name them. New. He can find few spots he knew only a few days ago. He remembers the city small and unreal inside the small square window, like a miniature model of itself. He remembers slow descending circles.

The roar of the engine brought a hot flush of relief. He was leaving Memphis, the South, for good. The plane taxied. Pure speed. The rush of takeoff. Try as he might, he could not help grinning broadly, broad as the plane’s wingspan. Pure speed and the plane lifting into the air. He kept his open eyes trained out the small square window. Amazing how the large world shrinks in seconds. The plane found its altitude, leveled off, settled, cruised. Its shadow rippled over the white clouds like a black twin. A plane in flight offers the illusion of stationary life. You don’t see motion. Your body feels it. And when you do see the motion, you act under the illusion that the plane flies slowly. White and distant, the sky moves and remains. This surprising lesson flew home with him.

Memphis last night and the city this morning. He had few facts but many feelings. There remained no trace of the former wish to see and save. The old desire like an early dream from distant centuries. No will to pursue and no fear of being pursued. Faith and intuition were both useless. What was left? A sense of flying longing. John had sailed off the edge of the world. Lucifer and Jesus had followed him. Not the smallest part of their existence reached him this morning.

ABU PEERED THROUGH THE ANGLE OF OPEN DOOR with yellow eyes, eyes topaz from the smoke of Boy Scout campfires.

Damn, nigga. Why yo eyes so yellow?

What? Abu rubbed them, his round belly bouncing once, twice.

You still sleep or somethin?

Nawl. I was — Smokin some weed?

Ain’t had none in a while. So you back in town?

Nawl. I’m still gone.

Funny. Real funny.

We got in last night.

Good. Abu looked like he wanted to say more. He didn’t.

So, what’s up?

Oh, same ole. Hey, you know the concert still on?

What?

Spin.

Word?

Abu nodded.

Man, I had forgot all about that.

They canceled it last night because of the flood. Now it’s tonight.

Word?

Word. They even added an act. Klanfeds. That country rap crew.

So you got the tickets?

Right here. Abu patted his shirt pocket.

My nigga.

On point.

How much I owe you?

Abu told him. He gladly paid it.

He followed Abu down the hall. His mind moved. He wanted to ask, You heard anything? — meaning You heard anything about John, Lucifer, Jesus? Wanted to ask but how could he? For all he knew, Abu was none the wiser. He had to keep it that way.

Damn, where you get that bag? Abu’s yellow eyes looked with high interest at Mr. Pulliam’s green army bag.

From my grandmother’s house. Ain’t it the hype?

The bomb.

Hatch held the heavy green canvas bag to his chest and patted it like a burping baby. I brought some joints I want you to hear.

Cool …

They continued down the hall.

Your folks here?

No.

They at work?

No. Darnell here.

Darnell?

Abu nodded.

In all the years Hatch had known him, Abu hadn’t spoke more than ten words about his father. Darnell traveled the country selling sports gear from his car trunk at rock-bottom prices; he came to the city once every two years or so, bringing Abu a pile of jerseys, T-shirts, caps, warm-up suits, gym shoes, you name it, bringing the old, scarred broken words of his life.

The long hall opened into the living room, where Darnell lounged on the couch with his woman (a girl really, Hatch’s age or a little older), a baby snug in her lap. Darnell was just as Hatch remembered him. Youthful face. Thick arms and a tree-trunk neck protruding from a Cubs T-shirt. A tight Bulls baseball cap trying to contain his thickly wrinkled, near-bald head.

Hatch, what’s up? Darnell rose from the couch.

Hey, what’s up.

Don’t I get a hug?

Sure. Hatch leaned in for the hug. Darnell squeezed him powerful and tight.

Darnell pulled back and opened the circle of his arms. Son, how bout another hug?

Abu gave him one, like a sigh, no force behind it. Darnell slapped him heartily on the back with his big-ass hands.

Hatch, it’s so good to see you. You look good too.

Thanks.

Giving the women hell, I bet.

Hatch smiled. So when you make it in?

We arrived in town last night. Stayed at the Zanzibar.

Oh yeah? How you like it?

It did the trick, cause we went there for only one thang.

Darnell, stop, the woman said.

Damn. How was it?

Well, round one went quick. That first nut always quick. Niggas lyin talkin bout they went two hours. Yeah right, two minutes.

How many rounds yall go?

Well, round two, she had me on the ropes—

Darnell, you so nasty.

— but I came back, wit one of these and one of these. Motioning and twisting his hips. Now, round three—

The woman held up the baby to shield her embarrassed face.

— she got the better of me. I tried to run, but she wouldn’t let me out of bed. She said, Come back here.

You got any children? Hatch asked, changing the subject, immediately realizing that he’d asked a stupid question.

I got more than Moses.

Hatch forced a laugh.

Let’s see, I got six by my first wife, five by my second, three by my—

Damn, Hatch said. Darnell glowed like a mythical being in his eyes.

— third. And Junior. Darnell nodded at Abu.

Abu, Abu said with clear malice.

Abu there.

Thanks, Abu said, his fat lips forming a sarcastic pout.

Least those the ones I take care of. See, my first wife had two from another—

Okay.

Well, and this other one I don’t even count.

Why not?

Cause he got a stupid mother. I go over there to visit him and she talkin bout, I ain’t gon let you see him cause all you gon do is have him sittin up round yo other woman. I say, So goddamn what? Then she call me at work, Darnell, I jus got outa jail.

Jail?

Yeah, jail. Police arrest me cause Jim ain’t been in school. He didn’t have no shoes to wear to school. I tell her, What good that nigga you messin wit? She talkin bout, Bring me some money or you never see Jim. So I told her, Fuck you, fuck Jim, fuck yo mamma, fuck yo daddy and yo whole fucking family.

Hatch, Darnell, and the girl all started cracking up with laughter. Abu remained quiet.

Whose baby is that? Hatch said, settled now, directing the question to both Darnell and his woman.

The woman grinned.

His father dead, Darnell said. He’s a bastard.

The woman cocked her eyes. Don’t call my baby no bastard. You no good rotten—

Girl, keep yo panties on. Don’t you know the meaning of the word?

She sat there, eyes smoking.

See, I’m honest wit her. Darnell nodded at his woman. She know I ain’t gon leave my wife for her.

The woman smiled.

My oldest daughter called me the other day. Seventeen. She been going wit this boy for a while. So I tell her, You jus finished school. You doing well. I be glad to have him as a son-in-law. She say, Daddy, I don’t know about him.

Why not?

He ask me for some.

What?

He ask me for some.

So I say, Damn, baby. Give him some. Yall been going together now for—

She live here? Hatch said.

No. In Yazoo.

Yazoo, ‘Sippi?

Yeah.

My folks out of Houston.

I know where that is.

I jus came back from there.

Well, I hope you had a good time.

Microphone check one two

represent

Microphone check

represent represent

Microphone check one two

represent

Microphone check

represent represent

Three four

Open up the door

Kid Attack is back and black so open up for more

I say I’m all that

Smooth and phat,

Lyrically developed, I’m like John Henry droppin the funky tracks

You can’t sweat me

but you might catch me

See me perspirin

No I ain’t cryin

See me flyin high like my man Flight Lesson

Don’t mean to brag but you should see me confessin to all

these bytches I be stressin

Ah um

Listen to this lesson:

honeys be scheezin, honeys be weavin, honeys be schemin

The honeys who be abstract be givin up the ave

That’s pretty good, Abu said.

It’s a little something I been workin on.

What about your guitar? You got some new phat licks? I bet you ready to tear—

Not really. Man, I ain’t played in days. Hatch wiggled his mute fingers. Don’t feel like it either.

Abu thought about the words with a disbelieving look. You’ll be back. You’ll play again.

Hatch said nothing.

The whir of wing in sudden flight. Birds lifted to the sky to join an eternal black stain that circled the horizon.

I been thinking, Abu said. Thinking. We should change the name of the band.

Oh yeah?

Yeah. How bout—

That’s good.

The yellow day opened before them. They walked, their unlaced athletic shoes flapping about their ankles. Defeated, Abu took a while before speaking again. So what’s up with Elsa? You talked to her since you got back?

Here, Hatch said. He shoved Mr. Pulliam’s green army bag into Abu’s chest. Carry this for a while.

Damn!

Yeah, I know. It’s heavy.

They descended into the breathing subway. Enclosed behind a lengthy picture window, a subway map glowed like a great magical web. Steel rivers, red, yellow, blue, black, green. Sticky magnetism, spinning above, below, and through the city. Fast train wind blew loose flyers down the platform like racing horses.

DO YOU WANT TO DIE OVERSEAS?

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

END U.S. IMPERIALISM!

HELL NO! LET YOUR MAMMA GO!

MOTHERFUCK THE WAR!

Hatch hummed a melody and swayed, fire-blue depths.

You’ll get it back, Abu said.

A mouse scuttled into a crack of the tiled wall.

Ever notice something? Hatch said.

What?

How a mouse look like a Tampax.

Nigga, sometimes you think of some weird shit.

Seriously, his tail look jus like the string. And his body—

Okay, I get the picture.

YEAH. THERE WAS THIS LADY WIT NO HANDS AND NO FEET DRIVIN A CAR.

Nigga, you lyin, Abu said.

Straight up. One foot on the gas pedal. One foot on the steering wheel.

You lyin.

On the TV. In West Memphis.

No way.

They can do shit like that down South. On this other show, this man wit no hands and no arms was playin the drums.

Impossible.

That’s cause you ain’t never been down South.

Sure. Anything you say.

A trickle of water rolled down the train window. A second trickle staggered down as the train sped through the black tunnel.

You’ll be back, Abu said. Hatch turned to see the other studying him with true concern in his eyes. Abu leaned over his stomach, leaned in close. You’ll be back, he said. He lifted an invisible glass into the air, toasting to many more talented days.

Hatch allowed his eyes to travel the car. Look at that old motherfucker, he said, nodding at a white jackal who sat across the aisle intent on his newspaper.

Abu said nothing, clearly shocked at the swift shift in subject.

Man, jus look at him!

Ah, he’s old.

Yeah, but I bet he’s done a lot of damage.

At the next station, more jackals boarded the train, a pack, foul with the bowels of hell. Hatch pinched his nose.

What’s up with that? Abu said. Why you pinchin your nose?

I can’t breathe with all these jackals, Hatch said, nasal. He continued to pinch his nose.

Many of the jackals exited the train at the next station.

Good, Hatch said. He released his nose. Now we can breathe.

You too much, Abu said. Too much.

A nigga bopped onto the train. He walked stiffly on bowed legs, a cardboard skeleton, hinged limbs moving limply from side to side. He sat down and immediately fell asleep. The train pulled into squealing shaking speed.

That’s No Face the Thief! Hatch said.

Where?

Over there.

That ain’t him.

That’s him.

Hatch recognized the black eye patch. Pin-striped like his tailored pinstriped suit.

He sure is funny-lookin, Abu said.

Yeah, Hatch said. He studied the sleeping No Face, nervous inside with secret knowledge.

The train slowed to a stop. Union Station. The doors ripped open.

This our stop, Abu said. He bounded to his feet.

Hatch remained in his seat, studying the snoring No Face — the eye patch a target, a map destination — between open spaces of the detraining commuters.

Come on! Abu said.

Hatch was still watching No Face, thinking, weighing.

Come on!

Abu’s command pulled Hatch to his feet. A sea of arms pushed them onto the subway platform, their legs hardly moving. Hatch rooted himself on the crowded platform while Abu continued. The train began to pull away. No Face the Thief opened his one sleeping eye and winked at him. He shuddered, shocked. Watched the speeding train disappear into the curving tunnel.

A CLUSTER OF BRIGHT SHOPS branched about them. The Underground. Their rubber heels made dull bouncing sounds on the escalator’s steel stairs. Hatch looked with hatred at the happy shoppers. Look at them, he said.

There you go again, Abu said.

I bet you they all Jews.

Now you gon start that Jew stuff.

They like mushrooms. Wherever you piss, they sprout up.

Abu shook his head.

Many jackals paraded outside the shops of Circle Square, spears rising like spokes from their snapped briefcases. Calling him. Mocking him. Defying him. Challenging him. Bums begged on the concrete sidewalks in the open heat, like lizards baking on a rock.

Kind sir, could you—

Not today, Hatch said.

Light breaks, red and pure. Night comes quickly. The sun falls like a cannonball and a red moon takes its place.

I knew we came the long way, Abu said.

Suspended on iron stilts, the elevated train led its passengers through the promised land of perspective.

I told you, Abu said. See, I told you. We should have taken the El.

So what, Hatch said. Stop bitchin.

You jus hate to be wrong.

Sabine Hall stuck up above the horizon like a needle point, downtown behind it. Buildings stacked up and arrowing toward the sky like chevrons. And Red Hook in the far distance, both splendid and monstrous, red bones glowing beneath its transparent skin.

A haze moved slowly in toward the horizon. Glazed it over, white sight.

Let’s go.

I told you.

Hatch and Abu moved on through the shape-shifting night. A block or two later angry words came pouncing up the street to greet them.

What’s going on? Abu said.

I don’t know.

They continued.

Holy shit!

Abu and Hatch stopped, stood, and surveyed the scene before them.

Blue wood horses shaped the street into a massive boxing ring with demonstrators boxed off inside it. Cops in beetlelike armor crawled about the perimeter.

Come on, Hatch said. In one swift clean movement, he ducked under a horse. He would not be denied. He had paid an honest price.

Wait, Abu said. Wait.

Come on. Don’t be a punk.

Hatch and Abu waded into the wet mob. Hatch left off thinking and let his body do the work. He tried to push forward — Excuse me. Excuse me. Coming through. Excuse me — push through the mob, push on to Sabine Hall.

Wait, Abu said, following behind him. Wait. Where are you going?

Faces turned to watch them with angry curiosity. Bodies closed around them. They could go no further.

Damn! Hatch said. Fuck! He stood sorting the city and Sabine Hall from his eyes, from the air, the night.

Dressed in colored spangles, the demonstrators knock him about, unbalanced, unsteady, left right, bell, pendulum. Their commands and demands on walls, windows, hands, backs, faces, bobbing in the air, spit into ghostly acts on the night.

The cops open their mouths to say, Come on, come through me. Their teeth are gates.

Hatch feels air damp with anticipatory sweat.

God cannot lie, Abu says. He stands trembling like a terrified tourist in a big, notorious city. God has no reason to lie.

Moonlight falls with a tarnish. The moon (or the fallen sun) holds like a red bull’s-eye. Patterned stars dangle weblike in shafts of moonlight. Clothe bodies in subtle threads.

The demonstrators open their lungs to dark fire. One short rebel runs forward, throws a burning something, then darts back. The cops do not move or react, their foundation built of fire-resistant materials. Hatch wonders at the beauty of their blue bodies in the black night. Blue bodies proudly bearing new uniforms with blue crossed suspenders.

The demonstrators move forward without fear. The days cannot touch them. Hatch hears anger and repeats its sound. He absorbs the beautiful scent of standing, belonging, purpose. A light goes on in him, somewhere, inside. His call of discovery.

The lead officer shouts health-giving words through a bullhorn, voice crackling with feedback. The demonstration leader answers in words seasoned with salt. Hatch follows it all, enjoying himself, chuckling, taken from high moment to high moment.

Cops red-stain faces with straight-beamed flashlights. Blinded, Hatch brings language rightly to his tongue. You fucking pig!

The blue wood horses gallop off into shadows. The blue cops scuttle forward. The square street breaks into shapeless chance. Hatch stands silent and even, breathing in and out, staring at waves of cops. Uncertain. Possibilities flying apart at the speed of thought.

Butcher-fashion, a cop chops downward at Hatch with his billy club. Hatch meets the hatchet with Mr. Pulliam’s old army bag. The nightstick recalls its circle and sets out again. Hatch can see the cop clearly before him, gnats crashing into his glass face mask. His eyes turn into stars. Hatch keeps his shield high and searches about him, searches, needing, hoping, wishing for more invisible darkness.

Abu!

He waits for Abu’s returning touch.

Abu!

The crowd is half running, half flying like chickens. Pecking at the cops. Scratching. A nightstick settles red like a bird on some guy’s face.

Hatch stumbles through the dizzy dark. Lives tumble into him. The doors go shutting in the distance, knocking like bowling pins. All the windows are webbed over. The city opens around him. The earth hanging in nothing.

55

SHOULDA SEEN THAT dog come flyin outa that burnin buildin. One of those ugly pit bulls, runnin red and wild and fast wit a fiery leash round its neck. Barkin flames. White foam drippin from its fangs like beer on tap. But Birdleg didn’t run. Couldnah run even if he’d ah wanted to. Damn cripple. Nawl, he didn’t run. Hell, he didn’t even walk. He jus stood there framed by fire. Jus stood in his window looking out, calm, unmoving, unhollering …

You approached the closed casket, cautious, keeping your distance, your body refusing to get close. You stood, your mind moving, telling you what you had to do. Pay respect. Pay homage to a fallen flyer. You took one step, two steps, and another. Closer now. You felt faint heat, like the warm hood of a recently run car. A sugar smell lingered in smoke scent. You leaned forward and placed your palms on the closed casket. Fire moved through the touch lines. Traveled up your arms. You pushed the casket open. Rising steam drew you back. He, the remembered, the departed, sloshed around, a soup of ash, shit, and blood.

Night birds cut the air to rags. He walks, breathing in the broken spaces, the memory that was more than memory, the image that was no longer image, sealed up tight inside him like preserves in one of Lula Mae’s mason jars.

Voices around him like crickets. Strollers here and there, soft, fuzzy, out-of-focus flowers in the galloping world. And cops with snail-like faces retracting inside helmets.

He makes no attempt to hide himself. Safe in something better, greater than himself.

His clothes sag with the weight of blood. I’m here, he says, wanting to hear the sound of his own voice.

He sees stars lensed in perfect stillness. He can see clearly the way his invisible wounds are shaped. Shaped in the light of the likeness. Birdleg.

Gooseneck streetlamps drop nooses of slow swinging light. Mosquitoes pop and ping against hot, illuminated glass. The sun is still hours away. He will be gone by then.

Memory ambushes him, a drama of familiar names, faces, and scenes, which he translates into fact and feeling. He sees his own birth, the first flash of being, emerging from red ‘Sippi clay. He sees his lungs, great bellows, stoking his first fiery words. Sweat gathers next to his eyes. Quickening moisture. He counts every hair of his former sickness with mathematical precision. Carries it all back to the old place, a distant well. He will not remember. He will not dream.

Entire, the Red Hook buildings stand close together like friendly neighbors. He is surprised at the ease it takes him to return to Birdleg’s secret nest. A maze before when Lady T brought him here. A map now. He finds clean clothes — red — on the bare steel floor, neatly ironed and folded, waiting for him. He removes his old clothes. No use to him now. Naked, burns them in the center of the steel floor. Blood angers the fire. Flame rises tall and ragged, bear and claws. His body swells into open space around him. Red giant.

He wraps himself in the new clothes. They become him. A good clean color. His reflection wiggles and waves through the walls, red fish. He chuckles at his ability to multiply. A single red wave reinforced by another red wave and that wave reinforced by still another and on and on. All possibilities and probabilities.

Miles of switches, wire, and cable promise a glad net for the master fisherman. Glittering dials and buttons watch him like big frog eyes. He watches back with a renewed force of vision. Metal rubs against his hands, persistent and teasing, hungry dogs. His hands respond with heavy grace.

His naked feet rumble. Fire. Flame. Force. Foundation splinters. Concrete powders. Motion overpowers his stomach. He steadies himself. The city’s roar sinks away, subsumed by silent rising. Birds arrow by, shaking space easily from their wings. He waves his hands at stars that begin to show over the trees. He directs his eyes down at the lamplit city miles below his bare powerful feet. Tar Lake no larger than a tear. Twelve rivers all threadthin. Rhythmic cornfields like yellow waves.

Red Hook pulls away from the earth.

12/12/90–3/6/98

New York, Chicago, New York