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.