Or this: Standing still, taking pleasure in the idle noises his shoes make. Steps can form whole words. But the words do not move his feet forward. In the shed a cow with a large belly standing as cows do, standing and staring stubbornly. He stretches out his arms to caress her muzzle, saliva collecting on his fingers, tongue lolling in its mouth. Admirable!
General Toon beckons her to sit. Her legs will not move at first, fearing they have misunderstood his command. He points at a chair. She sits down.
Your boy, General Toon says.
Thomas?
Her glance briefly meets his steady gaze. Her eyes fall.
Your boy, Thomas. Grant her this. Can you explain it?
Thomas knows what he has to do, suh, she says. He is smart, she thinks. He clacks a little, she says.
You call that clacking?
Here comes trouble, she thinks. Thomas is out to expose them. No, suh. Some of my other ones had it, she says. What she doesn’t say: she even stammers herself sometime. Certain words drawled strangely. So she’s been told.
You call that clacking?
Yes, suh. I mean, no, suh.
Little Thomas’s body is renouncing speech while amplifying every other sound that enters him. Unusual—she will admit that.
Miss Toon wants answers, too—of course, Miss Toon also gives advice; she is anxious about Little Thomas—her interest and concern amounting to a challenge. But the questions don’t annoy or anger Charity—they are decent enough questions—for the light in her mistress’s eyes, the other woman’s pure excitement, is enough consolation. Tom issued from her body. No denying it, no changing it.
But more and more in the days and weeks that follow her meeting with the Toons, Thomas deserts them to spend all his days in the mansion. Tom, where you at? They summon her again.
The culminating structure of the house, set in this landscape, a natural part of it, no other place it can or should be, rising white out of the ground like a mushroom. She stands wincing in the light. Takes a deep breath, fills her lungs. Call it a gathering of courage. She hesitates to go in. General Toon looks bad-tempered, the room otherwise cool and pleasant. Only an accident of timing has allowed her to get here now, late as it is.
No one to blame but herself if she is here standing before him yet again, if she hasn’t already figured out a way to tell him once and for all what he wants to hear and in so telling put an end to the accusations. Not that she is eager to aid him. Of course, she has thought it over, she is prepared, armed with excuses, ready to count the hours and the days, sketch in what only exists for him for them in shadow outline. Easier said than done. Already her story starts to lose coherence.
He looks sourly at her. Instructs her to bring Tom to the house in the morning to begin daily obedience lessons. As well, he details a list of chores he expects the boy to perform. Starting tomorrow. Bright and early.
Sit, Tom. Good.
Stand, Tom. Good boy.
Be quiet, Tom. Quiet down now, Tom. No blubbering.
Good.
They are walking briskly now, a constitutional, under the elms at the edge of the garden. A walk seems to help settle him, make him easier to cope with for the day. Mary Bethune always takes the lead, with him behind her, though they take turns at varying the pace, a shifting distance. A hot day, and the air so still that it seems to absorb all sound of their footfalls. Then something changes. She isn’t sure who first steps up the pace, only knows that she turns to see him following her as fast as he can, arms pumping, head bouncing, a charging bull. She picks up speed, and so does he, matching her pace. It is not unlike watching your shadow following you. And she will admit that this unsettles her. For she has reason to believe that the skin of another is no barrier against his advances. In fact, there are times when she swears—has seen it with her own eyes—that he assumes the look of other persons, their stances, their gestures, their posture, his face a mask of theirs, changing expression when theirs did, their bodies and identities like clothes he can hang on his person, a total embodiment. Where some see the presence of the supernatural in his feats of imitation, feel a foreboding, the first elements of some danger to come, she seeks a physical cause that will—she is sure of it—eventually reveal itself. (Although she is a believer in both the Man Above and the Man Below, she is not inclined toward either fundamentalism or superstition.) Granted, she will admit that his behavior on occasion unnerves her, but these occasions are rare. She is perfectly at ease around the boy and finds a certain comfort in his presence. They leave the shade of the trees, bright light now, sun in every step. Perhaps you don’t need to see a thing to be it. (Can she help it if she thinks this?) After all, this boy is bonded to sound. There must be some way that his ears are able to register and measure the exact rhythm of her footfalls and his. An interesting notion, even moving in a way. She turns her head to look back at him and sees him take one step, two, before he also turns his head and looks back over his shoulder.
Steeple. Church. People. The congregation is in step with the church and the church is in step with time. After service ends the lead deacon comes out front to give poor farmers and such unlikely beings to understand that the pastor does not converse with ordinary mortals. They must put everything in writing—ask the impossible—and hand him a note the moment he leaves the church. He never leaves through the front but goes through the back. Where Negroes push and shove each other amid a hubbub of noise and gossip while they wait for the pastor to appear before them and lend an ear to their secrets and complaints and mouth opinions and advice, usually in the form of biblical scripture but sometimes in plain English if you are lucky. When he appears in the doorway, the world draws to a hush. Ritual perfection. He holds up the bottom of his black gown to avoid tripping over it as he comes down the stairs. One after the next they begin to pour out their sufferings. She hears him say to one man, But after all, who is your father? Moves on to the next person. She thinks she is going to faint, everything whirling around her. Does her best to breathe the air at calculated intervals. Deeply moved, he squeezes one woman’s slender bony hands. As the solemn moment draws near she quiets her breathing. He puts a hand on her shoulder, leans forward some, and turns his ear toward her face to hear what she has to say. Saying done, he draws back and looks at her with a stern expression. You ought to be ashamed to ask me such a question. How is it possible for a mother to pray for the peace of a living soul? It’s a great sin, I tell you, and it is forgiven only because of your ignorance. Your son is alive, is he not?
The Doctor has an inkling. Once, not many years ago, he successfully treated a three-year-old Negro for this same incurable and often terminal affliction. The boy had poked himself in the eye with a twig, what at first seemed a minor injury, a scratch, a doctor’s poor diagnosis setting the stage for greater injury. A week later the eye became infected. After a second week the other eye became infected, both eyes causing the onset of brain fever. Then he was called in. Upon a careful review of the case, he decided to remove both eyes, and remove them he did and in so doing he not only saved the boy’s life but also prevented any further physical and mental deterioration. A paper detailing the case had been published in a British medical journal.
Now he has the opportunity to study the effects of the illness in its later and perhaps even final stages. (This Bethune boy promises much. He senses it and trembles at the possibilities.) Does the fever seep down to the most profound layer of the mind, rooted, biding its time, never to rise again until the terminal moment? He can see another paper on the horizon. How he would love to deliver it in Paris, or at some other open and welcome gathering on the Continent, before the most distinguished men of his profession who are attuned to the latest advances in science and medicine. How slow the progress here. How thick the ignorance. A matter of endless frustration for him. So good to have an ally like James in the scientific cause. But he is as much struggling to comprehend James’s uncharacteristic stealth—why had James kept silent about the boy, k
ept him hidden, and for all these many years?—as much as the strange case of this boy Tom. So unlike James to keep secrets from him. They are old friends, best friends perhaps, although he doesn’t always agree with James’s national and ethnological policies and prophecies.
He is moving briskly but not urgently, headed toward the Bethune mansion. Although he is preoccupied he makes it a point to tip his hat to all he meets, regardless of their position in life. He has yet to reach the height of his fame, but he has already developed something of a reputation as a man of science bent on ridding the men and women of their region, their country, of their faulty and dangerous notions and traditions. In particular, he sees no way of holding his tongue against the planter’s wasteful practice of forcing expectant mothers to work in the fields down to the period of delivery. No way to prove it, but he is convinced that either maternal anxieties or industry itself cause crippling and irreversible effects on the brain of the unborn. Hence, a mentally weakened infant enters the world, fulfilling the prejudiced hypotheses about the Negro’s limited intelligence. Indeed, he is convinced that the planters can do away with many of their numerous complaints against the Negroes if only they take it upon themselves to rear a better crop of workers.
Some of his beliefs rub his fellow citizens the wrong way, but his authority is too great for them to disregard his opinions.
How quickly he arrives at the mansion and how gracefully he steps down from his carriage without the assistance of his Negro driver. He arrives on the porch, out of breath, out of words. The Bethunes’ Negress Charity opens the door, and he removes his hat and bows a little, lets his hat return and says a few casual words to her, the way one makes polite conversation, before she takes him in and shows him to the library, him on guard, observing and evaluating, beginning his inquiry as soon as he is one foot inside the mansion, looking for the signs.
She wonders if she should thank the General for bringing the Doctor. (The vague hope that the Doctor may reveal something useful.) That is, she wonders if she should feel thankful. Even if she decides that the General’s action warrants her appreciation—she is only beginning to mull that over, hasn’t had long to think about it, all so unexpected and sudden, in a rush of minutes—how can she voice the words? Not her place to. And even if it were, she doesn’t think she could bring her tongue to do so.
No, it doesn’t surprise him, for the Negro, like his Anglo-Saxon superior, is an imitative being. How wrong of them to sneer at any act of simulation, no matter how peculiar or extreme. Might imitation be proof of buried intelligence, the first stirrings of coherent function and knowledge that, when thought and deed come together in noble agreement, form the basis of culture? The question warrants further investigation.
His thoughts on medicine mingle with the voices of fellow doctors and surgeons he has reviewed the case with, all rank outsiders in matters of research. So easy for common eyes to refuse to see what they should see because they don’t wish to see it, for common mouths to parrot the same reductive beliefs in the same old weighted language. Freaks of nature. Oversights or accidents of God. He longs to get the examination under way. He has never been so upset by waiting. The thought hardly out of his mind before he feels something shift around him. It takes him a moment to locate the subject, sitting still and quiet on the sofa, blending in. How had he missed the boy’s entry? Might he have been here the whole time? As impossible as it seems, he senses that the boy had deliberately tried to catch his attention only moments earlier, for he sees a definite alertness in the face. (Later, he will recall having heard a noise—a cough or a clearing of the throat—a sound coming before the sight. This addition.) No doubt about it. The boy is listening and smelling.
That’s when it hits him. This is the boy. The other’s dark complexion glows before him, mingling with the light and odor of candles, body and face causing him to draw back as before a vision of rare life. What difficulties an artist would have in painting his portrait. His physical advancement, certain aspects of his appearance—the bulging forehead, his ample mouth and cheeks, the wide neck, his broad shoulders, the height and strength—evidence of the vital spirit within. In the struggle to survive his illness the strong thing within has stripped him of all unessential thoughts, hindrances to living. Confined as he is to his world of darkness, is he even capable of detecting the ailment present but hidden within his person? How difficult to get to the ordinary life behind a thing.
He can scarcely sit on his chair. The skin is not that different from any other he has touched. He runs his fingers across the ridge over the brow—a feature common to the African species—testing the strength of the skull. The eyelids are impossible to lift, dead weight, even against maximum force of the fingers. The ears show no sign of under-or overdevelopment. (Some wax inside.) Two rows of shining teeth—he has never seen such clean teeth on either Negro or Caucasian—well enameled and formed. The spine seems somewhat soft to the touch, like a plant’s lacy skeleton. He lifts one arm by the wrist—he can both hear and feel the patient’s breathing change. The lips move. Is it a strange wild smile or a silent conversation? He puts a hand on the knee and feels a softening then opens his bag and takes measurements with the latest instruments. Takes in his entire form and structure.
James enters the room, working his noisy canes, a smile spreading slowly over his goateed face. He holds back on reporting his findings, asks that the boy be removed from the room and the parents brought forth. A short time later, they appear before him—ah, so she was the Negress who had answered the door—heads bowed, hands cupped. Both before he begins and after he finishes interviewing them, he and James talk in low tones and try not to look at Charity and Mingo. (Those are their names. So James informs him.) He does not rush his questions. Had he fallen into some calamitous illness? Suh? A calamity? They look at one another. Yes, suh. Thomas did indeed suffer a serious injury in childhood. A fever? They look at one another. Was he weaned on a cow’s tiddy? Did they bathe him in homegrown wine? (Both are practices he has observed firsthand.) Did he crave the thick taste of goat’s milk? He awaits each answer, looking at them, openly evaluating. Their awkwardness causes him to feel embarrassed. (He considers himself a quiet champion of the Negro cause.) He can see plainly enough how hard it is for them to respond to his unusual inquiries and suggestions. His feelings of sympathy offset by a certain anger as he senses that they seem determined to keep the full facts from him. (How foolish his fellow white men to trust every word and smile and expression of glad thanks and plea of innocence or ignorance from their slaves.) If only they could understand that a full confession might aid him in a precise diagnosis and an effective course of treatment and possible remedy for their son.
Satisfied that he has elicited the best answers he will ever get, he dismisses the parents. He returns to his original place on the couch, while James remains standing, leaning forward over his canes. He drinks in all of James’s concerns, matters more troubling for Mary, he suspects, than for James himself. Tom might wander into serious harm in a barn or under the wheels of a speeding carriage, stumble into a well, or come to accident by fire. He sits passively and digests the information. From James’s lengthy report, it is clear that this matter has been troubling them for some time. (They already have enough trouble with their son Sharpe, who is constantly on the go, running here and there. Away. Always away. Cooking up reports for the newspaper. Brought him up the best they could, although he had been a handful and still is. Trouble spares none of us.)
The end of obedience is protection, James says.
How poorly his good friend understands that the dangers within are the ones he must fear most.
Would this have been the moment when Mary entered the room?
Dr. Hollister.
Still formal after all these years. Her hands spilling from the sleeves of her dress, pale against the cloth’s dark shine. Her skin toneless, almost gray, the color of stone, a heavy contradiction given her slight figure. She still looks young if
you catch her in the right light. (The wrong light now.) He recalls the one time he saw her with her hair down—what circumstance made that possible?—black strands falling freely to both sides of her face. The novelty of that sensation as she stands before him now hair fixed in place and dressed as he usually sees her in plain unassuming garments. Despite her noble stature and bearing she is not a vain woman; nor will she allow James to be carried away by exaggerated feelings of self-importance.
James, he says, why don’t I have a look at your legs while I’m here? His offer is an excuse to push Mary out of the room. They all know it. She won’t stay around and watch her husband with his trousers down around his ankles before a third party. No fool, she knows that the men want to be alone with the boy, and she will concede, as a woman of discretion and taste should.
Without a backward glance she reaches the door and goes out. James begins again, but he holds up his hand in a gesture of silence. I’ve seen this many times before, he says. My own person has treated many a case. You should have spared yourself any feared embarrassment. Where had they kept the boy hidden these many years? Why didn’t you call me sooner?
James does not answer.
He drops a knowing smile. Don’t vex yourself, James. He has already formulated some very precise ideas about the nature of Tom’s improbable condition. Through research and meditation had sought out and outlined the etiology of a vicious disease and discovered that it is numbed here but not quelled completely, and that it still roams free in the jungles and deserts and savannas of Africa. If I were a man who had not been out in the world, he says, you would find yourself hard put for answers.
James looks at him, measuring the words. What can you tell me?
The organs learn to adapt themselves to an existence that at first sight would appear to be utterly impossible, he says. My own eyes have seen it. My own hands have examined it.
Song of the Shank Page 18