Rails Under My Back Read Online Free PDF Page B

straining the neck. Red Hook. Twelve buildings, each twenty-six stories high, a red path of brick thrusting skyward, poking the clouds, bleeding them. Each building a planet in configuration with the next, a galaxy of colors. Sharp structural edges challenged anyone who entered. Word, heard stories about project niggas throwing bikes on unsuspecting passersby. And sure-eyed snipers who could catch you in the open chances of their sight. Can’t miss me. A tall nigga like me stand out. And red too.
    Jesus spit, saw the thought rise and fall. Above him, birds cried. He lifted his face to the sky—black specks of birds high above the buildings, their cries changing in pitch as they shifted in direction—and let it crush him. The sun was almost blinding. Thick clouds of black smoke, a ship’s smokestack puffing up from the buildings. Word, used to be able to drop yo garbage in the incinerator. Every floor had one. Til people started stuffing their babies down wit the garbage. The shiny brick more like tile. A scorched dog black-snarled from the wall. In a rainbow of colors, weighted words screamed. Too much of it, lines and colors running together, a mess of messages. Inside a sickle, a half-moon, letters darkened and deformed, scrawled in a giant’s hand: BIRDLEG WE REMEMBER.
    Birdleg? Jesus inhaled the word into his lungs. Fact? Fable? Ghost? Memory was so deep as to silence his footsteps. Somewhere here was an honoring presence. Jesus felt it at his back. Shit, Red Hook! The jets! You can get caught in the middle of something. Rival crews. But he refused to allow this possibility to slow him. If it’s gon happen, it’s gon happen. His shadow swooped high and huge above him.
    He entered a vestibule the size of a bathroom. Felt it, more than saw it. A cramped doghouse of shadows. Every vestibule inch quilted with more rainbow-strands of words. Bare shattered floors. Long rows of metallic mailboxes, most broken and open like teeth in serious need of dental work. And bottled-up summer heat. A metal stairwell rigged up and out of sight. Metal stairs? A broken escalator? Word, stairwells often carried fire throughout an entire building. Jesus knew. Stairwells are chimneys. Up ahead, the elevator caved. Word, in the jets, elevator motors were mounted on each building’s outside, victim to vandals and weather. What if the elevator stopped between floors, caught in midair, like a defective yo-yo? What if flame climbed the yo-yo string? Are elevators chimneys too? Jesus entered. A hard aroma of piss. He pushed the button for seven.
    DOORS SHUT. Pulleys groan into motion. Cables whine. Tug at the muscles of his legs and belly. Rust metal walls compress on him. He extends his arms scarecrow fashion, the walls in-moving as the car rises, and water rising inside him, cold, making him swell. He shuts his eyes.
    Black weight drops like an anchor and knocks him flat.
    Just relax.
    Put your head down.
    Iron fingers mine for the diamond in his ear. Hey, he warns. Be careful. That diamond cost me … Iron fingers squeeze his throat and crush the words. He chokes. Voices spin above him. He feels caressing fingers on his back— whose? —strokes of bird feather. Easy, boy. Calm down. His hands move rakelike in Gracie’s plush living-room carpet. I said calm down. The anchor lowers. Two steel loops snap click and lock around his wrists. (He hears them, he feels them, but does not see.) Spikelike leaves rise high above him from the coffee table (ancient, he has always known it)—supported by four squat curved legs, wooden ice-cream swirls—above but close enough for him to make out small red-and-green buds. Wait, he says. I’m money. The two cops work on the pulleys of his arms—he is heavy with Porsha’s cooking and the coin of life—drawing them, lifting him high above the carpet, table legs, table, plant pot (glossy green paper), the spiked leaves—bright red on the front side, but colorless on the reverse; veined and tissue-thin,