Rails Under My Back Read Online Free PDF

in his cousin some trace of his grandmother’s appearance. Kin in will and act. Cutting the fool with John. John, bet you can’t catch us! John chased them round and round the courtyard, them running on three-, four-, five-, six-year-old legs, their screams lifting from the mouth of the copper-filled fountain. You boys scream like girls! John said, chasing them, but actually restraining himself, moving slow, cause his short bulldog legs contained a terrible momentum, the blurred speed of hot pistons. Close then. Double-teaming John on the basketball court. (John always won.) Cutting the fool in church, propelling their farts with paper fans. Or pitching and batting in the living room with a broom handle and a rolled-up pair of socks. And basketball with a bath sponge and lampshades for hoops. Standing tall in the swings, the chains tight in the tunnels of their hands, pumping their legs and knees, carrying the swings in arcs above the ground, slanting into the sky, the chains shaking and creaking. Pedaling their bikes with slim strong ankles, pedaling, fast eggbeaters, guiding the bikes zigzag through the streets, wind whistling past the ears, drawing back on the handlebars, like cowboys pulling back on reins, balancing their bikes, and the front wheel rising for the wheelie, a cobra raised and ready to strike, and the two of you rode the snake for a half block or more. And in quieter moments, doctoring the broken wings of dragonflies with Band-Aids or cutting the lights from fireflies with a Popsicle stick and saving the sparkling treasure in a mason jar. Driving down to Decatur, the speed of flight, fields of cornstalks bent like singers over microphones, the sun sinking into the fields like spilled wine, and the headlights stabbing through the darkness, and scattered trailers like discarded metal cartridges, where John bought Buddha— weed, he called it—from white trash.
    Your seventh birthday John stormed out the front door, you and Hatch two in kind, seated in a high-backed chair, clutching the armrests, Dogma the chameleon—confused about color—caged in plastic across your shared laps, and Gracie—the woman you know as mother, the woman who grunted you into this world—holding her massive Bible at her side, weight that anchored her, kept her from being swept away.
    Every hair on your head is counted, she said. Each strand has a name.
    Well, John said. You ain’t got to worry. I ain’t coming back. He let the door close.
    Without hesitation Gracie turned from the shut door and slipped into the spell of habit. Bathe, put on her perfumed gown, rub Vaseline under her nose, grease the skin above her upper lip, lotion her body for the motions of love, cook John’s favorite meal, salmon or trout, place the food beneath two glowing steel dishes for warmth, then retire—her small hesitant walk, steps of a little bird—to her bedroom rocking chair before an open window overlooking Tar Lake, her Bible open on her lap, and patient as a fisherman, waiting for her John to arrive with his Cadillac ways. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Rocking robin, rocking robin, beak-hungry for the spermal worm. Come moonlight, John bounds through the door, and a burning awakens her, wine color brightens her black berry face. John leaves quiet as dew the next morning, and she returns to her rocking chair.
    JESUS HEARD A SOUND, corn popping over an open fire. Hooded niggas circled a corner, drinking from a swollen paper bag.
    What up, homes?
    What up. He measured his words. He didn’t look into the cave of the hood.
    Want some? A hand extended the paper bag out to him.
    No, thanks.
    Yo, g. You kinda tall, ain’t you?
    You shoot hoop?
    Yo, black. Kinda red, ain’t you?
    Funny-lookin muddafudda.
    Blood-colored.
    Three quick full steps took him beyond the voices’ range. A can rolled down the gutter, its source of locomotion invisible. Red Hook shoved his head back—as if tilted for a barber’s razor,