Song of the Shank

by Jeffery Renard Allen

  Was she any more than they?

  Perhaps why she hurried on, kept on her way, seeing nothing at all, unless it was the glass under her feet. Why break her eyes with all the sights? Why when she was already fully weighted with words of apology, words of guilt?

  Is she any more than they?

  Walking now, she wonders how long it has been. Too long. Stiff legs, crotchety arms, and rusty joints. (What she has lived to know.) Testing the waters. Indeed, motion brings the better. Footsteps with nothing physical in them. Just out and about. Seeing what can be gained from an aimless stroll, a brief separation from Tom.

  The first leaves to change stop her. Now all the trees pop into bright color one after the next. Autumn in an instant. Leaves in free fall. Falling about her shoulders. The colors look elegant on her sleeves. And loose leaves carpeting the ground. (Which leaf belongs to which tree?) One color giving shape to another. Twirling on the sidewalk like scraps of another world dropped from the sky. And she stumbling forward, the world beautiful again. Remembering what this feels like.

  Why has she left this pleasure until now? How easily she could have done this before, take her feet on casual stroll around the neighborhood. Take in some fresh air.

  Evening arranges itself around the fallen leaves. And then the sky blooms. She watches the stars pop out, one by one. Now here is something she has forgotten, that you can see stars here in the city. There they are, like—looking at them closely—holes punched in dark cloth so light underneath bleeds through.

  Of course she has already stayed out longer than she should have, but the harbor is just over there. All the big ships sailing to Britain and the Continent and the West Indies and Africa and South America and the Pacific. Just over there.

  Something goes skimming by her in the air. Ship blowing its horn. Much has changed, much between her and Tom. So why is she scanning ahead in her mind to find an excuse for why she has stayed away so long? What is holding her in this world?

  What if she returns home and finds Dr. Hollister no longer there? No, she will find him there—and Tom—giving her some last words of advice as useless as all the others he has given her.

  Mr. Hub calls, Tom says. He calls when you are away.

  When am I away? she says. I am never away, she says, except that one time—yesterday or the day before that, two, three days ago, four—when Dr. Hollister came. And she is thinking, could he really have missed me for those few hours when I stepped out?

  He calls with thoughts of flowers and fish.

  And where am I when this happens? Just where do you suppose?

  Mr. Hub wishes to drive you to the country. Our house in the country. With flowers and fish.

  He is slouched all the way forward on the bench, with his face turned sideways in flat repose against the strings, the piano’s cantilevered lid raised guillotine-like above him.

  But where have I been?

  So come here and sit and let’s figure it out.

  Tom must be confused, thinking her gone, thinking that she has left the apartment when she has only been spending a few necessary moments elsewhere. (Could she have missed Mr. Hub’s call?) And why shouldn’t he have such thoughts? Hasn’t she been avoiding him? Indeed she has. As of late, she finds she can’t remain in the same room with him for more than a few minutes at a time. She sees only the outline of his body or his back hunched over food when she enters a room and just as quickly leaves it. Whenever he leans for her, she leans away, until with each passing day he becomes more and more remote, disappearing into the crevices of forgetting until he squeezes through again to remind her. Who would think that he should miss her so for a few unimportant hours taken on the fly?

  Now Tom is standing firm in the middle of the room, hurting her in his way, all impatience to have her sit beside him on the bench and listen to a new song. She gives in to his excitment, not unbearably at first, pours herself into being another person since this is what he will accept as compromise, conscious to make no open display of her need for distance.

  His an expression of the most steady attention. Smiles, the shine of teeth, strong urges to burrow into her whenever she is comfortably seated on cushions and pillows. He occupies the apartment completely, from the lines of the walls to the edges of the doors to the joints in the floors. Tom brimming in the doorways. Tom stationed on the chairs. Tom framed in the windows, venetian blinds sectioning both him and time into lit rectangular hours.

  Turning on the movements of his face, the motion of his limbs, her life repeats itself every time Tom takes her by the hand and insists that she follow where he pulls her. Agitated breaths. Bumps and bruises. Sleight-of-hand reflections that go skimming over solid surfaces and disappear. Anything to keep him still.

  Why not here at the piano, where one can enjoy the firm feel of wood while watching one’s image trembling in clear particular silence, a dark glaze of laminate? Where one may study the deep hollow with strings cast in tight suspension like a fisherman’s net. More than three years now since the correcting fingers of the tuner have paid a visit, but each key sounds the pitch it should. What keeps them in tune? Some memory of the tuner’s hands caught in the layered depths of shine? Or is the piano itself the tuner’s petrified shadow (soul), severed from the flesh where it rightfully belongs and (caught) forever here?

  Slow heavy notes and stalled chords hold in the air somewhere above her head and hang bat-like from the ceiling, teaching her longing and loathing in equal measure.

  Even the music has turned against her. (No, he has turned it against her.)

  How ugly it makes her feel to be simply sitting here, doing nothing, day after day, like an anchor rusting in water. Easy to drift from one room to the next. Space before her, space to her left and right, space behind her. Her life a muddle in this way. Easy to turn a familiar corner only to lose your grasp on the known world and collide with another body coming into the room you are leaving and see your twin sitting on the floor trying to clear her head.

  Is she any less alone with Tom? How meagerly she opens her heart to him. For his own good, she must set some boundaries, limit contact to mere glimpses of his grumpy silhouette. She feels angry, capable of causing pain. Just the other day, she was sullen and spoke too quickly at him, her tone harsh, thinking it might cause some change in his manner, ease his demands and contentions, bring an end to his finding her wherever she is. He seized her by the hand, as is his custom, and generated a deep pressure on her flesh. Began touching and pulling her, and when she resisted—No, Tom—took her neck in the crook of his heavy arm and tried to wrestle her out of herself, drag her down to the floor to sit with him. She shoved her palm in his face with something more than annoyance, something closer to hatred, and freed herself, rising up from the floor, gaining the settee and hastening to the other side of the room. Then he was on her again, his hands quick and warm. She pried them from her dress, one finger at a time.

  She doesn’t want his ugly touches. So much else she doesn’t want anymore, some point of definition in the past from which she is receding, some point of embarkation in the future where she is or isn’t heading, Eliza glowing distinctly in her own lessening light, sparklingly aware of that world cut off from her. Never so alone.

  Tired of always being cooped up with her thoughts, she opens a window and sticks her head out into the open. Takes in air that brings a welcome fragrance and taste into her nose and mouth. She’ll take it, this air, take it for what it’s worth, even if it gives her trouble. Undoes what’s done. Her hair shifting sideways from the full-on breeze blowing at her. She catches up the shiny-dart strands with both hands, wind so hard she can’t see a thing, can’t keep her eyes open, hair, eyes giving her trouble. Using both hands she scoops hair forward from the sides of her face, head tilted downward. Is it that she is leaning out the window, her untended hair hanging like rope? If she extends her tresses full length she can climb down them to the street.

  Her mind furling, rolling on its own into some u
nchartable dark sanctum. Hair, eyes, mind—what are they telling her? She has taken her ease long enough. If she is to be any good to Tom, good to herself, she will have to step for a spell (again) beyond the confines of walls, no farther than the street below, into the air.

  Taking up her shawl, she quits the apartment, her desperation no less deep for its suddenness. Color is noticeably absent. Only the same brown of barren trees and gray of empty sidewalks and streets. (Autumn over already?) Still, standing here is good. Under open sky. The day overcast. Secondhand light. Dusty and old.

  Is she to trust her eyes? Since starting out, not another person has crossed her sight. Can it be that they’ve all gone away and left the city to her? Worse, some destruction has reached each and every one of them in their homes? She will continue on to the first canal.

  Advancing at a quicker pace fails to ease the sourness of her suspicion. The thought of them all dead. Hardly a satisfying outcome even if a just one given what she has endured, changes enough for several lifetimes. (The body never forgets.) Just like that the world chooses to end but not before spoiling her with a short taste of normalcy. She is like anyone else: a satisfying taste creates expectations for more. Has she not already begun forecasting, making plans? (Before the weather changes, winter arrives, each day she will have her walk, two or three or four modest hours at a time. Stroll along the canals. Through the park. Take in the museums. Where’s the harm? What trouble can Tom come to while she is away?) So what is she to do now?

  She reaches the fourth canal and still no sign of people. (Dogs yes. Cats yes. Birds yes. Squirrels and the lesser forms.) She senses the air standing out against the cloth of her shawl. What’s the point in venturing farther? Something futile. Something nostalgic. Something stupid. But she can neither stop nor turn around. In fact, the impulse to advance, push ahead all the way downtown, to the harbor, comes over her. When had she last seen the harbor, the beautiful waters and ships there?

  Soon she crosses the sixth canal, takes a corner, and chances upon a fantastic sight: a Great Wall of backs, elbows, napes, formed along the boulevard less than a hundred paces ahead. A scene that overpowers her as much for its unexpectedness as for the total un-accompaniment of sound. Thousands of people standing in complete silence, straining calves and necks to see over the heads in front of them some display of public celebration. Has her grip on time become so lax that she has forgotten this holiday?

  She has trouble making her way through the crush of bodies, four or five rows deep, but polite requests, dexterity, and force eventually gain her the front and access to an even more impressive spectacle, a slow river of color flowing southbound down the boulevard. Negro soldiers on parade. Black, brown, and yellow skin enlivened by blue uniforms, the best blues embellished with white gloves and white leggings. They step bravely, heads high, bodies stiff, displaying a dignity of purpose even when a sleeve is torn, a cap mended, a cuff tattered, or a collar worn away. Their regimental flags (colors) swaying wildly above although there is no wind that Eliza can feel, the previous breeze stilled. Some soldiers ride high on horses. Counted among the hooves that carry men those that pull along cannons mounted on wheels. And the men to a one are fully armed with muskets, bayonets in place, holstered pistols visible in the belts of a few. Altogether enough firepower to set ablaze acres of white skin.

  Her ears awaken in an explosive instant at the sound of a rifle, the first bullet fired. Surely a volley will follow. But no body falls dead. No one runs for sanctuary. And she realizes that what at first struck her as the absence of sound was only its denial, a vain effort by that white wall of bodies to cut off any and all evidence of these Negro soldiers to the listening ear and the observing eye. Only now can she hear the thud of boots, the smacking of hooves and the creaking of wheels, the straining of leather, the swishing of cloth and clanking of metal, the clatter of drums and calls of bugles and shrill of flutes.

  The last soldier reaches the end of the boulevard and slips from sight around the corner with his compatriots, and the crowd moves as one body in curious pursuit of the Negro soldiers when they should be fleeing in the opposite direction. She simply stands and looks into one face after another, trying to read the emotions stirring there, their faces radiant with panic. Charmed by the piper, the entire city tags along to its doom. Is she fated to perish along with them? For surely the soldiers are here to enact their revenge against the city.

  With no loss of speed or obvious sign of tiring, the soldiers make the many miles back to the harbor, where the big metal ships that had carried them hulk like resting whales, their guns the size of houses. The soldiers march the half circle of the harbor then start to travel north again, along Broadway, passing one canal after the next until they reach the southernmost entrance to Central Park. They enter the park and continue on to the Great Lawn, and only cease to move when someone shouts a command. A second shouted command brings them at ease.

  Now the city beholds the third astonishing sight of the day. Tents pitched across the Great Lawn. Dozens if not hundreds of them. Flapping in the breeze, they seem perfectly at home. Even their canopies were a familiar shade of seasonal green. Not hard to believe that these tents have sprouted up through the earth of their own accord.

  Then the sense of unease. She feels it, but she can’t be alone in her feeling, glad that they are feeling it too. (She sees it on them, hears it inside them, even for those who can only manage a murmur.) But it also feels good for some reason she cannot fathom to be standing as part of the crowd, as if she is one of them still. She mingles her surprise with theirs—why not?—even as she recognizes with new intensity just how alone she is, just how far the world has left her behind.

  Her arms shiver in the coolness of the evening. Bare limbs bearing their loss. She adjusts her shawl and continues up the street, shadows gathering behind her, planning ambush. All along the avenue the gas lamps come on one by one. No cause to worry.

  How will Tom greet the news? An invading army of Negroes. Victorious in one war and readying for another.

  So much around her is untried or different that it takes her almost a half block to realize that she has passed the building where she lives. Making hasty return, she finds a man sitting on the front steps, wrapped in his overcoat. A Negro. She decides in an instant to simply make her way around his person as quickly as she can.

  He takes to his feet at the sight of her. Mrs. Bethune? Eliza Bethune?

  Who are you looking for?

  Madame, I believe you are the reason for my call.

  She stands watching.

  My presence must be a surprise. Tabbs Gross. The Negro holds his hand straight out. She reaches and takes it, and he shakes her hand with the minimum of movement and force, like a bird alighting on the thinnest of branches. Mrs. Bethune, I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. The Negro eases his features into a relaxed smile. He is tall and very correctly dressed. He is calm and dignified, a man who makes himself felt at once.

  I don’t mean to excite you.

  You haven’t. She rubs her hands up and down both arms under her shawl.

  It pleases me to know that. I should make haste and explain.

  You called once before? You were here back during the summer?

  Well, I have expended considerable time and debt to find you.

  She senses that he is pleased, he is delighted, he is glad, but he allows nothing of his feelings to appear on his face. Does he expect her to make apology for his troubles in locating her?

  I’m sure you will find the purpose of my business most satisfactory to yourself.

  Yes, Mr. Gross. I feel certain of that too. Kindly inform me.

  Madame. You see, I’ve come for Tom. I’ve come to return him to his mother.

  What could have prepared her for this response? Far easier to draw upon certain acceptable assumptions that might make quick work of explaining his presence here. A journalist. A soldier even.

  You would have me believe that this mother is al
ive? He has no one, Sharpe said.

  Yes, madame. Even as we speak she is resident on Edgemere, awaiting reunion with her son.

  And she has been resident there for how long? Why is she not here instead of you? She can barely get her voice to work.

  Madame, I fully understand your concern. You see—

  She can see colors when the Negro speaks, this Tabbs Gross, colors, as if the seasons are moving in reverse and autumn is returning again. The circle ending where it began.

  She takes two steps back and falls on the curb. Sits there looking up at the man, Tabbs Gross, afraid to talk, afraid of what might happen if her words hit air.

  Moving House: Three Views of the City

  (1867)

  “God does not beget a child and then kill it.”

  SHALLOW-BREATHING BODIES SHUFFLE ABOUT, FEET MAKING a way, making way. Some feet shod, others routinely naked. Ankles made raw, skin white with calluses. Dim shapes, both fact and becoming, who feel more in control, more hopeful than their eyes suggest, eyes bright and empty, the sockets weak, the orbs so frighteningly clear that they look completely disembodied, hovering in midair, that wild unsteady look of bewilderment and doubt offset by the intentionality of their presence, tangibly here and here for a reason, for the long haul. Tabbs sees the agitation in their faces, faces heavy with an expectation that cannot be put down. So assured, so much purpose, so determined—promised (a plot so wide so long; a beast of burden so young so strong), thought capable of, expected to—To your tents, O Israeli—bringing their hands tightly together in prayer to defeat Doubt, beseeching in bodies that are designed for activity far more vigorous than this, waiting, passing time, ready for the next thing although that next thing is uncertain, so they must keep holding on to God’s unchanging hand (for now) in a world that refuses to stay still. They move with the weight and speed of their own expectations, confidence (new) in the quick movement of their legs. Their once slow tongues up the pace too, stumbling into strange conjoinings of consonants and vowels, a metamorphosis that Tabbs has heard seen with his own skeptical ears and eyes—Tom’s mother speaks at double the speed he recalls her speaking in the South—even as he gets stuck in the thick speech of fresh arrivals, those just off the boat as it were, struggles to understand their muddy English, the thick drawn-out syllables, and the way certain words sink beneath sense altogether. Listen to them. The one the many. Here those who were not now are. Strays who have drifted up from the peculiar lands, customs, and institutions of the South, otherwise know as Freedmen, the freed who feel free and think free and talk free. Ripening so fast. Even the sun seems to lighten the color of their skin—however dark their eyes—new skin for a new race.