Song of the Shank

by Jeffery Renard Allen

  Now a dhow was on the lake, its triangular sail slanting forward like an oversized shark tooth cutting through water. She was disappointed—why?—to see a second then a third sleek brown-white form on the lake. Watched the sharp sails drifting by and thought how fragile they were, not in the least knowing if this were true.

  Some yards off, an animal came to the water to drink.

  I expect to be anywhere but here when my father arrives, another state, another country, circling the rings of Jupiter—anywhere other than here when he starts making a fool of himself with his war talk. One should know how to behave in another’s house.

  So there was a rift. Was she ahead of herself again? Pardon my mentioning him, she said. Of course, his reputation is so often put before us. The entire city is awaiting his arrival.

  You are innocent of any wrong. I would be suspicious if you had said nothing. He dropped his head and stared at the ground with an expression of immense satisfaction. She was only now noticing the strangeness of it, how awkward he looked sitting there, his collarbones jutting out like mountain peaks. For as long as I can remember, my father has sought secession, separation. Five years ago, before anyone was talking war, talking seriously about the possibility, he raised the first regiment in our state out of his own pocket.

  So you’ve heard much more than we have.

  Yes, and for far longer.

  The lake was bringing a change, making them lower their voices with the feeling its sight and presence stirred in them.

  Had he wanted, he could have formed an army before I was born. Does that sound so impossible?

  She watched a smile pull his mouth up at one end, a derisive look.

  Well, it isn’t. My fellow countrymen suffer the pathology of ignorance. How easy it is to pull the wool over their eyes. All it takes is some savior or devil cleverly done up as a man of the people, an otherwise average man of learning and consequence who has been unjustly wronged and has no choice other than to fight for self, family, and country. If such a man told them the pope was an Israelite, they would believe it.

  She didn’t know what to say. Could only imagine how hard it must be for him. Although she could not recall ever having seen his name or image in print—he remained ghost, operated from behind the curtain—the name Bethune surely fitted him like trouble, given his father’s celebrity and notoriety.

  The hand (troubled) in closest proximity had found his hat, one finger flick flick flicking at the brim, as if testing if the hat were alive or dead. She wanted to reach out and touch it, to lift it off the grass and position it in place, then draw her hands away and let it settle onto the shelf of his forehead.

  Where will you go? she asked.

  Good question. Better near or far? What do you recommend?

  She thought about it for a while, pretended to.

  Perhaps I shouldn’t be so eager to run. After all, his stay will be short, three days. That’s really not so long, is it? I might simply hide away, go underground. This city is vast.

  She smiled. Well, if you do you can gain some practice in being my neighbor.

  Yes I could.

  They sat looking out at the lake, lost between sentences. Yet another vessel had taken to the water, a gondola, its driver aiming and sinking the long skinny oar, gliding gradually forward to join the other vessels, the lone canoe and compounded dhows. Almost as if the five vessels were competing, three totally distinct forms pitted against one another.

  She wondered, where was the boy Thomas, Tom, in all of this? From what she had gathered Sharpe saw the boy as an entity that existed only in relation to the family. What did the boy pianist think about it all? What does Tom think about it all? Does he know his value, worth?

  Will the boy come with you or stay behind with your father?

  He comes. No two ways about it. He has come so to rely on me.

  Ah, so that was it. Sharpe weighed down with dependence. Another life. (Was that it?) He was in charge of Tom’s life.

  Of course, Warhurst could assume primary responsibility. He would, gladly. But I can’t fathom the rightness or wrongness of such an arrangement.

  She worried; if the boy was so delicate, who was looking after him at that very moment? Your concern is perfectly understandable, with such a special case.

  Another animal had come to drink. A bird had taken to the sky, branch vibrating. And what were the vessels doing now, moving into some sort of authoritative formation?

  She said, His blindness, that’s always been the great cause of debate. As I remember from the reports, he was without sight at birth. She tried to make it sound more like an assumption than a question. Whichever, she saw nervousness on his face—she was asking him to uncover a secret; no, another source of discomfort—and something else she was not sure of.

  That lie has served the interests of publicity. In fact, he was born with sight, and he had sight when my family purchased him. He quit his fussing (energy, trouble) over the hat. He was the cause of it.

  It was not what she expected to hear. If he hoped to shock her, he had succeeded. How so?

  He gave her a report.

  We were not planters. We had no fields to plant, no crops to harvest. In fact, we kept in minimal communication with planters and farmers, did not buy from them or barter or trade or hold or engage in any significant transactions with them that I am aware of. So, at Hundred Gates by age three or four when a servant—slave, she thought, slave—should assume the responsibility of labor, Tom should have settled into a quotidian life involving random chores about the estate or a more active assignment in town at my father’s office or his press. But when he achieved that age (four? five?)—he was less than a year old when my family acquired him, a babe of six or seven months—he still had not gained the ordinary abilities, talking and walking. (Speech, she thought. Does that include all speech? All movement?) In fact, he showed no signs that he understood the purpose of either. He could not follow instructions. But my parents decided to keep him on rather than abandon him, having little either to lose or to gain by his presence—his absence would have devastated his family, mother, father, siblings (sisters); Ah, so he has had a family, she thought—since our commerce did not depend on free labor. He was given each day to use as he pleased. Let me tell you how he spent his time. Sharpe measured what he was saying, as if trying to remember whether anything had been left out. He passed most of each day sitting out in the open, under the sky, with his face upturned at the sun, and with his eyes fully open. He screamed, kicked, and punched if you tried to pull him away, into the shade. He crawled after the sun as its position shifted in the sky. Then in the evening, when there was no more sun to be had—the moon did not seem to interest him—he would sit before the hearth all the while passing his hand rapidly before his face.

  And this is how he went blind? She could ask.

  We believe it was the cause of origin. Greater damage came. He began forking his fingers into his sockets.

  My God, Eliza said.

  That’s not all. He began digging into the sockets with sticks and stones and anything else he could find.

  That was worse, hearing it, seeing it. And nobody stopped him? she asked. (She had the right.) No one stopped him. Why did no one stop him?

  I would have, had I been there. And my father would have, my mother. Would have. Anyone there. Would have. None of them. None of us. We are not cruel people, whatever their faults or our vices. But Tom largely saw after himself, as I understand it. I was not there. To stop him.

  Where were you? She could ask this.

  Even then I was circling the globe, pursuing stories for my father’s journal, doing my part to see that it remained a vital publication, among the best in our country—the South, he meant, his country—if not the best. She heard his explanation as best she could, her mind pushing out, exploring, formulating, but he kept speaking, speaking before she had a chance to locate her words—a few brief illuminated thoughts—without giving her an opening to sur
ge forth in response, overtake.

  You must understand, the family doctor determined all of this many days after the fact, weeks even. For quite some time the mutilation went on daily without our notice. Then one evening the boy’s mother came crying into the parlor before my father, carrying him in her arms, the boy, carrying the boy, and the boy trying to fight his way free, and the father trying to keep him still. Fresh blood covered his face, so much of it that they could not locate the source. All thought he had only then injured himself. Dr. Hollister, our doctor, was sent for. The eyes could not be saved.

  She took this to mean that the sockets were empty—in fact, as she discovered several months later, the orbs were (are) very much present, intact, although useless. How it all might have gone otherwise if this Dr. Hollister possessed talent equaling Dr. McCune’s. More often than not in his examinations, Dr. McCune found that the orbs—afflicted, damaged—could be saved, and he made every effort to achieve such preservation, the question of whether or not vision could be restored in whole or part notwithstanding, for he knew—she knew too—that the presence of orbs makes all the difference to the structure of the face, rounding it out rather than flattening it, and thereby maintaining a deep inner structure, those few ounces providing (proving) by their mass and weight an addition amid the loss, a measure of hope, however false.

  Dr. Hollister speculated that the boy had acted out of curiosity, a curiosity brought on by mental incapacitations, or vice versa. Whichever the first.

  Eliza lifted her hand so that she could feel the breath inhaled and exhaled by her nostrils. If only she possessed the ability to breathe out of every pore.

  And given the severity of these injuries, the Doctor estimated that the mutilation had been going on for quite some time, for days, or weeks, months even. Right under our noses. Tom had outwitted all of us.

  The lake crawled in the direction of the drinking animal.

  We were able to draw much after the fact, although little good it did us. One sister—his?—had observed the poking, while another sister—his?—had chanced upon the prodding. The parents too had noticed some minor cuts and scrapes, which they chalked up to normal roughhousing and mischief. Innocence cannot be expected to save innocence.

  Word-done, Sharpe returned to toying with his hat’s stiff brim. They sat lost between sentences, Eliza trying to follow the features of Sharpe’s face, bushes cooing and whispering behind her. What was clear, he had not seen it for himself. What was lacking: music. Music had to figure in there somewhere. (Stories await the telling.) Where was music? She could ask him. The mother, no, mistress, that was the word; the mistress, Mrs. Bethune, had been a music instructor, information she had gleaned some time ago from reading a racy exposé about the family. (True, not true.) Of the many stories she could construct, the easiest has Tom drawn to the piano after the world goes black. Who can stand vacancies? Tom gives himself up to Music. (How close is this to the official account? She tries to remember.) The world for him now no wider or taller than a piano. What it takes to get through the dark succession of constricting years. The story she invents, imagines. As good as any. Why not simply ask? She could ask. But the questions would have to take different form.

  She adjusted her legs—numb, sleeping—to be sure that they were still functioning. Her knee brushed against his shin—no memory of the feel of his skin—but they were both quick to recover.

  Dr. Hollister has him on a regular schedule.

  He’s still not done talking. She will have to say something.

  But if there’s no hope—

  Tom seems to derive pleasure from the visits. Is that why we carry on with it? And the Doctor. Is that why he carries on with it?

  Your Dr. Hollister sounds like a thorough and exhaustive type.

  Yes, he is.

  He puts me in mind of someone. I wonder if he has ever crossed paths with Dr. McCune. Here she was again, wading out of her depth.

  He keeps active company with the living and the dead. Sharpe released the hat. Healing would be their sole affiliation?

  Yes. He is another eye man. Perhaps he could examine the boy. The words took a long time coming from her mouth. A voice her own but outside her, speaking something that she was only thinking. She was still watching the distant shore, certain that Sharpe was watching her. Her offer not so surprising really. For—understanding everything—she felt an unspecified sense of duty—sight slowly fading from memory, images dissolving one by one, like wafers in water—although she didn’t know the boy and she hardly knew Sharpe. (Was just getting to know.)

  What good would it do?

  None. But what harm? The doctors one and the other will have much to talk about.

  Who is he?

  Eyes, hands, she gave up water—the lake is still there unchanged—and trained her attention on him. A colored man of distinction that I work under at the Asylum.

  He turned, leaving water, looking at her—what we do to resolve blur and disbelief—so she could see her words reshape his face. How she had phrased it—work under—was that it or instead the meaning of what phrased?

  Said (asked), A Negro doctor? A nigger doctor. And shook his head as if to empty it of her suggestion. Imagine how that would fly with the family.

  They needn’t know.

  They wouldn’t know.

  A difference. A quiet disdain in the way he stared back. He was taking her offer as an insult. She knew that he wanted to rise and walk away, but he had the grace to continue sitting quietly (keeping quiet). Easier in fact if he showed his anger, but it is as though he thinks her unworthy of even that. For whatever reason, his stifled passion doesn’t sit well with her, doesn’t settle on her stomach but rises. (Jesus.) For a brief irrational moment, she wishes she could (rise) walk away from him. Need grants him power without his trying, deserving it. The color of his statement has moved something in her long forgotten. The weight felt.

  How would this play out in the South—give hate a proper home—that land decimated by the plague of slavery, all those black skins caught, actively trying either to run away or to stay put? She’s never been there, but even here in the city she has witnessed certain Negroes, decent people, with money in their hands and pockets and purses and minds, has seen the way these dignified types, of unquestionable repute, shirts buttoned to the throat, shoes polished and glistening like fish, will drop their heads in the presence of a white person, or cross to the other side of the street to avoid direct contact, staying away (this corner, that street, those wards), or give up a place in line and let the white person behind move ahead, use the side entrance/exit to circumvent unnecessary attention, thank the clerk who cheats them out of a few coins, that mortuary stiffness and fear, which make them smile peace at their disappointments, smile and forget everything else.

  Over the lake, the wind rises—a commotion rising in the water, a current—and catches a bird by surprise, shaking it, tossing it. Somehow its song gets out.

  You only want to help, Sharpe said.

  A bee tried to pull nectar from a flower, petals swaying, drunk.

  That was horrible of me. I’m sorry.

  You think so? I wouldn’t accuse you of any disrespect. Those words. The offers that come pouring in, all the time, from every corner. He looked at her in a way that softened his eyes.

  She recognized at once what he was putting forward, no denying the source of the tongue—the South, a Southerner—that made it. What had she done to earn the dramatic reappraisal? Nothing really. No, he was showing her another dimension of self. This is me too. Generous. Ready. No closing off. Now, in the strain of the moment, she feels as if she has been found out in a weakness beyond remedy. He has opened up the chance for her to make amends, to win back his attention, make a full return. What to do? She needs help understanding exactly where it is she can’t go. Eliza, matron of the Asylum, as used to throwing things away—baby, bathwater—as she is to salvaging.

  But in this short time I’ve gained enough of
you to understand that you place trust in the expense, he said, his tone gently teasing.

  Those words. She felt grateful that his bluntness gave her no space for self-pity, gave her nothing to hide behind. But she said nothing, knowing that she would sound stilted. Looked and discovered that he was at the hat again. Actually had picked it up and fitted it on his head and remained there hunched forward, rocking with some indecision—the doubt of shoulders—near to panic. He seemed to be looking beyond her to some private trouble of his own. And he was including her in his worry. She could speak now.

  I shouldn’t be volunteering his services. He keeps his own calendar.

  Kindly arrange it if you can. He rises to his feet, uprooted, making ready to go. She comes up too, light with relief, their past dispute put out to sea (so to speak), oared along until it falls over, out of view. (Water and its ways.) They reach the (closest) park exit without having said a word. So much in so short a time. Enticed by what she barely understands. Tom—the words used on his behalf—lurking vaguely in her mind in the days to come. What was so terrible about the world that he stopped himself from seeing it?

  Sharpe signals a taxi in the queue. Look at the hour.

  Time well spent.

  Indeed. Horse harness hooves arriving. So you’ll let me know?

  She has to tilt her head to look at his face. The sun has shifted position, shining from behind him, right into her eyes. Yes.

  Edgemere. A mile or two out in the ocean—waves lengthen and shorten, the lull and pull of distance, water that finds a way—nothing beyond it, horizon’s fuzzy edge. Sister isles—Hart’s, Hunt’s, Tipping Point, Nanatucka, Fool’s Favorite, Shoisfine, Wanstaten, and others whose names she can’t recall, words hard to pronounce even if she could, that fuse with the tongue—certain but hard to make out, a bump here, a lump there, positioned with the proximity of knuckles on the hand. Or is it that vision has grown so weary it cannot hold anything more? Sea caught in glass. Framed. (What’s kept in, what’s kept out.) The window she stands by a clean rectangle of light overlooking shimmering blue, lines of white waves sliding along surface in rhythm, like a stitch traveling to its proper place in patchworked cloth. Appearing and disappearing. Weaving a bright thread of constancy through their lives. Even as the island shrinks daily. Dwindles. Something eternal at work. Something forever undone. Gaps where the water can’t come together, can’t rise high enough to submerge that row of hard buttons, black islands knotted into position. Her unfastened blouse exposing a triangular channel of hot skin as she stands on display, propped at the window, mounted on land, bust flaps waving against five-storied sky. This sea ruthless, empty of witnesses. Years since she’s seen a dhow on the waters. (So she believes.) The lateen sails. Can she even remember what one looks like?