Song of the Shank

by Jeffery Renard Allen

  Was it this blood commitment, the bond and obligation of Race, that laid the unspoken rule that the Bethunes would only enter his home as friends, never as patients—had he offered? had she or Sharpe?—however much the Bethunes were in perfect accord with his moral and professional life? Bound up with the Asylum, the circumstances of that life first established between Eliza and the Doctor passed on to Sharpe. Tracing back, she recognizes now that it was through her that the two men met and that she had a hand in the friendship they forged, unaware that in serving as this instrument of connection she was sealing the fate of each and forever linking her and Tom. (True, but one should beware of such judgments.) Not that the pattern is completely clear to her, the where what why and when, the x that preceded y and z, only that she is at the center of the likeliest sequence of events. Sharpe is gone now, forever, no coming back, but she distinctly recalls the morning, a few days after Tom’s benefit recital, when Sharpe called at the Asylum, his face smooth and smiling—yes—and without a word took her hand where it rested at her side and shook it gratefully. His uncalendared appearance—a new intake of feeling—the moment she pinpoints as the start of their enthusiastic days together. Sitting over tea in the matron’s office, he expressed his hope that they should again entertain the children at some point in the not too distant future. He had no sooner finished his cup than he rose to leave. Their stay in the city would be short; there were places to be. Something in his tone of voice, a glimmer beneath the words—We welcome another opportunity—in his posture and manner and excitement—partly observed, remembered, partly dreamed—occasioned in her a feeling that his linen-dressed body was a conspiratorial screen designed to mask the true intentions of his visit. He seemed to want to talk to her. (The screen too easy to see through.) A hope belief powerful enough to pluck up her courage to ask him, the caller—Mr. Bethune he was to her then—if one afternoon he might desire to leave the side of Tom and the manager for a few hours and accompany her for a walk about town so that he might embrace the good weather and see—Allow me to show you; was that it?—if not visit—yes, that was it—a few of the city’s most impressive sights, just the thing he might need to feel fortified and refreshed before carrying on with the many duties—the boy needed to be outfitted for the approaching concert season less than a month away—and blur of appointments awaiting him. Of course, for her to extend such an offer was to overstep the boundaries of acceptable behavior, action made even more brash and bold given the many speculations and rumors circulating in the journals at the time concerning the reasons why Sharpe’s father, General Bethune, several months earlier, had removed Tom’s longstanding manager and replaced him with a new one, Warhurst, and given that the General’s scheduled visit to the city in a few weeks as a stop on his national tour (Save the South!) to raise funds and supporters for the Confederacy was the talk of the town. (The stories always seemed to be accompanied by that now familiar photo of the General, posed behind the seated pianist, one hand in paternal rest upon the boy’s shoulders, the boy’s fingers—those cherished objects—fitted together in two fists of knuckles inside his lap.) For his part, Mr. Bethune readily accepted. In view of the (his) circumstances, he suggested the sooner the better. Why not tomorrow? Why not.

  They rendezvoused on an unusually fine day, one of those summer afternoons that commanded the populace out of their homes. Wherever one looked, people were pouring out of open doors. On the street, everything was rushing and physical, a light gaiety in the air. Men touching theirs hats in mute greeting, women tilting their faces forward to smile. At her suggestion, they began walking toward Central Park, the nearest lawn only a few blocks away. What better way to impress him on their first outing than with the city’s most impressive location? (He was a foreigner after all, a Southerner.)

  Once they reached the park, they started down the wide central lane, which wound five miles from one end to the other. The park was only a few years old at that point; Seneca Village, the northernmost section of Black Town, had been razed and the park constructed in its place as part of a municipal beautification project. But the Negroes had never completely relinquished their hold, sanctioning the park as their communal site. This day dozens of celebrants strolled about, a flash of unrestrained smiles and theatrical bodies done up in lavish and gaudy costumes, a hundred colors and cloths heating the holiday—John Canoe? Pinkster? Emancipation (state) Day? some Union victory?—air. Again and again Eliza and Mr. Bethune met by whistles, drums, gyrating hips and feet. Some of the celebrants made a fearsome impression with mock guns and swords, more comic the paltry contingents of horsemen with their sorrow-worn almost-dancing steeds. Then too something neither noble nor humorous about the knot of boys huddled into guards, ribbons of tree-circling summer-maiden girls, or the deputation of deer-skinned and eagle-feathered elders seated in ceremonial poses like some rare delegation of the most venerated and powerful Red Indian chiefs. All told, the holidaymakers, whether in couples or family groups, produced a kind of pressure of presence of which everyone was a part, an insider’s air of intimate entitlement that caused them to cast exclusionary looks at Eliza and Mr. Bethune. What’s your business here? Eliza and her guest did not allow themselves to be put out in the slightest by sucked teeth and jeers. Still, since the park had been seized by the Negroes, she wondered if she ought to have made other arrangements. Through her work at the Asylum, she had come to know a less-traveled section of the park, just down this path. Far away, not easy to see, but well worth the effort of getting there.

  Eliza and Mr. Bethune continued on, enjoying the walk and the view, letting the features gather. Things had been arranged to be gazed on. Endless brilliances planned, tidied up, and straightened out to the last square corner. She drew his attention to one sight after another. Slim rippling trees with heavy bunches of flowers. Sparkling lagoons. Gardens with birdbaths, fountains, and paved watercourses. A three-mile-long central lawn. Gazebos with mosque-like domes. A marble pavilion stretching almost four city blocks. A paved path, climbing in four or five levels to a shelf of pale crags. A hilltop edged with a castle, a modern structure trying to create an element of medieval intrigue, add something old to the new. This place returning to them a sense of their own motion through it, their limbs growing progressively warmer from the movement. He seemed interested in what he saw, awed even at times—was he really, or is she supplying this impression years after the fact?—but had nothing to say, at least about this. Words were bound to come. (Of course, he must take the lead, draw her into conversation, Eliza showing restraint, holding true tongue back, determined—however difficult—to move within the parameters of convention lest she give him the wrong introductory impression.) What would it take?

  They walked another mile or two before he responded to her with something more than a barely perceivable nod of the head. He asked her about the orphanage. Getting on all right there?

  Yes.

  I take it you enjoy your position?

  As much as one might.

  It’s not too much for you? It would be for me.

  It’s too much.

  So why do it? he asked. Why work there? His question was so quiet she had to watch his lips to understand. He did not wait for an answer but carried on talking. It’s too much to bear, but you stay on because of what you can produce in the children.

  She explained that the best children—those clever enough—would take up positions of indenture, mostly on farms in the city’s (four) outer boroughs, where skin prejudice held less sway. What better way for independence than through entry to a trade.

  He nodded slightly, approvingly.

  They walked over the narrow spine of a bridge. The sun shone so warm that Mr. Bethune chose to remove his hat and carry it beside him. It seemed to her of particular significance that he showed an interest in her life. Her life at the Asylum against his life abroad: the South, Britain, the Continent. Her years (twenty) against his (thirty-five, her estimation). Her innocence against his experience.r />
  A figure shot from the brush two yards ahead and stopped dead center in the path observing them. Jolted, they stopped too, registering the danger. A cur, mangy, unwashed, cut and bitten, obscene. Showing worth, it opened its mouth, flashing yellow teeth, only to sit back on its hind legs, exposing two egg-red testicles, this display of maleness portending that a violent attack might be the least of their concerns. Indeed, the animal began trembling from tongue to toe as if fully anticipating what was to come next. The muscles went still. The frame shuddered. A lengthy turd began squeezing out the rump. Eliza turned her body 180 degrees away from the sight. Only when she heard the animal lope off, panting, a sure indication that it was done, did she turn around. They stepped around the small steaming volcano, at once cautious and oblivious—cancel height, stench, texture, color—and resumed their walk.

  Mr. Bethune looked unashamedly at her and uttered something, Eliza numbed by guilt, helpless to compel an order to the rush of sounds. Took another sentence or two for her to realize that he—his sharp bright eyes restlessly on the lookout—was now talking about his vocation. The forthcoming season would carry them east for the first time. Prague and Belgrade, Kraków and Bucharest, Oulu and Ekaterinburg, Turku and Split, Tirana and Trieste, Skopje and Saint Petersburg, Ljubljana and Riga, Tartar and Tallinn, Helsinki and Kiev, Warsaw and Pristina, Gdańsk, Tbilisi, Dubrovnik, Heart, Bukhara, Sarajevo, Uzbeki, Kirgisi, and Sofia. Places on the edge of imagination. (Last year, a Mediterranean circuit—Bastia, calvi, Cagliari, Alassio, Sartène, and Sassari—streaks of color—pastel-colored stone houses, whitewashed stone buildings, blackened stone forts—dancing on waves.)

  This sudden leap to a new topic—where had they left off?—was its own explanation, for she recognized with shamed certainty his effort to allay her embarrassment. How noble, his at-the-ready responsiveness to her feelings gaining him favor in her eyes. Such luck, she said. Excitement. To be sped from town to town, city to city, adventure to adventure. (The concerts in fashionable metropolises, before fashionable audiences, including the private commissions and gatherings for city burghers; Russian czars and nobility; landed earls, ladies, and dukes; and the Continent’s kings, princes, and queens.) And the music, night after night.

  He maintained his gaze on the path before them, but his face grew active with thought, trying out one idea after another, only for him to nod his head in affirmation, giving up all hope of constructing a reply.

  Will you give me a full report? I need to see something of life.

  He smiled. Perhaps you will get your request sooner than you imagine. You might find us as your neighbors.

  Eliza made a soft incredulous noise, tagging the idea with melodramatic amazement. You don’t expect me to believe that could actually happen?

  It could. He went on to explain. Since home was now in the heart of the war zone, the family—his father, mother, sisters—had already left the main estate for another property. But what was the difference really? Commerce and culture have already vanished in the South—his sentiments not exactly in those words but something like them.

  You plan to resettle?

  Yes, we do. Tom, myself, and Warhurst, the manager.

  Was he implying some divide within the Bethune family?

  My father has his own direction.

  She felt embarrassed for bringing forth this secret. Here she was leading him to places he would not have ventured to on his own. How had she gotten so ahead of herself?

  But perhaps this is not about my father, he said, taking any accusation out of his voice. All of the traveling can make you feel something different.

  She did not understand.

  There are other things.

  When she glanced at him, she found that his face was transformed. Was he about to take her in confidence? If so, she would be careful not to accuse, to judge.

  He expressed that yesterday at the orphanage she had picked up perfectly on his desperation. How satisfied he was to abandon his affairs for a few hours, to detach himself from Tom and Warhurst, to get clear of promoters and agents and schedules and journalists and reports and wires, and join her.

  I understand something of what you’re going through, she said. It was a lie put out there to bait him. Where had she found the strength to act this way? And how so quickly, so spontaneously? Would it cost her in the end?

  Yes, you would understand, he said, given the responsibilities and directions of your work.

  Already you know me so well. Her eyes slanted upward toward him in that accepted female way considered both coy and inviting. Go further. Try more.

  He smiled. Are you telling me that I’m wrong?

  No, I cannot call you wrong. Indeed, in my position at the Asylum, there might be the chance occasion when I experience feelings identical to yours.

  But you make it seem wonderful, your work.

  Do I?

  Yes. That and more.

  Nothing is special about my condition. This is simply where life has found me.

  I would put it down to more than that. Your affairs are positive and important but fraught with worry and complication, as is any career completely devoted to either maintaining or uplifting a weaker party.

  Ah, so she had not lied. What luck. They seemed in a way to belong to the same thing, a brotherhood/sisterhood of sorts. So, is that what it is with Blind Tom?

  Thomas. We call him Thomas.

  Thomas. Of course. Tom. Of course.

  Tom is constant wonder. And trouble too, much of the time. But wonder. Charm. Magic. To be there in his presence each and every day and witness it firsthand. Those gifts. Blind Tom. Come and get your miracle. To see that. It’s everything else that turns you inside out. Spectacular disasters. Mundane upsets.

  He took some time to explain.

  Earlier that day, he had suffered through a “brunch” with the boy’s publisher. A game of extraction, he called it. The numbers never add up the way they should. One would think that Tom’s fame would be reflected in thousands of sales of his songs. But we seem to sell fewer and fewer songs each year, even as the list of publications gets longer and longer. Can you imagine the bother of trying to keep that in order, under your thumb? In fact, you don’t press for payment. You feel rather happy to be cheated. A strange trade-off.

  From what I’m hearing, much of the daily business goes through your hands.

  Yes.

  So what does Warhurst do? What is he around for?

  Sharpe said, He takes care of the performance. I take care of Tom—said, staring straight in her eyes as though expecting a response since the distinction was perfectly clear.

  She did not know what to say in return.

  Then his eyes brightened as if charged by her confusion. (He’d gotten that much from her.) You will hold this against me, he said. He turned his face away. I look after my family’s most profitable investment.

  How solicitous and civilized those words sounded despite their meaning. Until then she had never thought of him as a slave owner.

  But what am I really telling you that is news? It’s rather simple. I look after Tom.

  She could not make herself utter the words burning inside her mind. It is wrong, an evil.

  Then again I’m being unfair. They own him. My father, my mother, my sisters. Where am I in any of it? I was born into this wound.

  She was surprised at the intensity of his dismissal, dislike.

  At least that’s what I tell myself. Of course, I can reel off another half dozen ways of looking at it, all equally valid.

  Did he expect her to supply those ways?

  Perhaps I’m just a coward. A useless one at that.

  She saw the way he tightened his lips, the way words fell from his mouth.

  There is an even worse possibility. Perhaps I have the nature for it.

  Grudgingly, she took in this admission, trying to determine to what extent it mattered, how it would shape whatever it was that was developing between them. She wondered if he thou
ght his confession somehow legitimized everything. Wondered, too, if he felt entitled to her empathy, automatically expected her to forgive him his shortcomings because he was smart, rich, powerful. She asked, Where are his parents?

  He is alone.

  Wanted to ask him what exactly had happened to the boy’s parents, but she did not. What was the point of thinking about it all if the most it did was raise ugly fact or speculation? She was already considering the least hurtful way of untangling herself from the topic, not because he had won her over—too soon to say—only that what he had already said was a beginning.

  The first appearance of water halted their conversation. They had reached the man-dug and -filled lake at the park’s center and now decided they’d walked enough. (The spot she originally had in mind was still some way off.) They sat down beside each other on the grassy ground at the very edge of the water, verges churned by the feet of animals, paw impressions—trails with no beginning or end—set and hardened in evidence. (Hopefully no droppings or urine.) A good mile in circumference, the lake glistened like a gigantic silver coin, sun lying on the water in manifold glittering, water trembling soft impossible light, composed silence, no sound but for furtive cracks (trees) and urgent scurrying (animals), the smell of fish strong, leaping out at them—all told, a scene marked by expectation. Nature making itself powerfully felt.