Song of the Shank

by Jeffery Renard Allen

  Yes, sir. He left quite an impression.

  General Bethune looked up at Perry Oliver as if in seeing him so clearly now he couldn’t doubt his presence two years earlier. He returned the invitation, and Perry Oliver returned to his seat. Then you met the family?

  Yes, Perry Oliver said. It was strategic common sense for him to avoid inquiring about the son or daughters’ well-being. Familial matters formed no part of their conversation. The two men were feeling each other out for worldly motives.

  Cholera laid out half the porkers in this county dead, General Bethune said, and almost as many niggers. And my wife too.

  Such misfortune, Perry Oliver said.

  General Bethune frowned as if Perry Oliver had cast a deliberate slur against his family. Life would withhold no misfortune from any man. Perhaps you’ve been spared your due up to now. I’m convinced that defeat starts from inside. It has to first get inside you before you can be conquered.

  I suppose that’s why I’m here, Perry Oliver said. We both want the same end. War.

  How often have I urged this very same thing.

  When the day comes, you will have public duties to perform, even if they are not directly on the battlefield. You can do without needless distraction. As for your son, he being one of same blood and like mind and disposition, he will feel compelled to serve. In fact, we must all contribute to our cause. Our niggers should not be free of these obligations.

  Go on, General Bethune said.

  At the least they should earn their keep. Niggers are built for work, not charity. You expressed this very same sentiment only moments ago. As he spoke, Perry Oliver struggled with a somewhat comical sense of embarrassment and shame at such (his) obvious spectacle and manipulation, squeezing out the words with jerky constraint.

  You have no idea what you’re asking. Though we’ve been hard at training him, Tom is only a few degrees from the animal.

  I understand fully, sir.

  I doubt that you do.

  Trust me, sir. I’ve given it deep thought. I have at my service expert men of music, Europeans, who will help to the extent that it is possible to polish and develop Tom’s crude skills.

  General Bethune was quiet for a moment, thinking it over. Let me ask you something.

  Sir?

  Even if all you say is true, what makes you think that you are the most capable man for the job? Do you not think that others have approached me with the same offer?

  Perry Oliver could think of nothing to say at first. This General Bethune was sharp. Perhaps the injury or illness that hastens the aging and deterioration of the body retards and preserves the mind. Perhaps he had underestimated his opponent and left himself ill prepared. How many hours had he rehearsed this meeting in his head? Working under such difficult conditions he had experienced one hour’s labor as two or three. Perhaps the hard work made him feel that he had put in more time than he had—reality remains reality, an hour is only an hour—as each task a man completes is like a whole lifetime and with each little life a man pieces together an entire history. So he sat in silence, half in desperation, half feeling like giving up.

  I am putting myself at your service, he said. If you know of another who is both capable and willing to take on this task, I will respectfully withdraw my offer.

  What are the terms? General Bethune asked.

  The question took Perry Oliver with shock and surprise, coming as it did so quickly and so casually after the General’s former hesitancy, these feelings thrusting outward into something else, excitement—yes—as if the doors to a treasury were suddenly thrown wide open to him. He sought to ease his body and slowly withdraw the expectant look from his face—a tremendous undertaking. I will pay you fifteen thousand dollars over a period of three years, at the conclusion of which you will be fully expected to review my performance so that if my services have failed in any way you will be free to cancel our agreement.

  With clear disbelief, General Bethune smiled into his face. Who was this far-fetched and shameless confidence man? Such nerve. Such gall. He would not have been surprised if this other demanded he produce two coins of silver as proof he was not a total pauper.

  I am prepared to pay you five thousand dollars upon signing of the contract, even should that signing be today.

  General Bethune seemed to study those words carefully. Perry Oliver felt triumphant, knowing fully well that only a fool would turn down five thousand dollars for a blind, crazy nigger.

  You have done an excellent job in laying out your case, General Bethune said. It would be uncouth of me to refuse you. Come to the offices of the newspaper tomorrow. My lawyer will be present. We will sign and notarize whatever documents are necessary to put Tom at your disposal.

  With those words some force in Perry Oliver’s mind absorbed, reduced, and crystallized all that had preceded into a black reflection casting a single image, the only image he could see later whenever he gazed at it, always there in the dark of his memory: General Bethune struggling to position his black canes and raise himself out of the chair, like a fledgling bird leaving its comfortable nest to test flight for the first time. Sound came from far away like a lost language, nonhuman speech: I will have Tom delivered to you in accordance with a mode of transportation you find suitable.

  With that General Bethune turned with a distracted air—perhaps this too was recorded for posterity—like one who suddenly remembered something that needed immediate attention, and left the room. Perry Oliver stood up from his chair, unsure at first what had just happened. His visit was clearly at an end.

  It would figure that he and Seven left the house and headed for their taxi, still waiting on the road. We met a general. Even under the high columns of oaks the sunlight fell so strongly that he narrowed his pupils and saw nothing but glare. Little did it trouble him. We met a real general. In fact, light and heat began to dissolve into fragments and sink into the ground. Seven entered the taxi but Perry Oliver did not, somehow forgetting that this was an action he should also perform. He continued on through the wooded area on the other side of the road, seeking an explanation from the trees. For he could not explain it, did not know how to explain it. What he had planned came to be. It was flatly inconceivable. Nothing like this had ever happened in the world before. He touched his body all over, sensing a new anatomy. Felt two hearts beating inside his chest. He took pleasure in the discovery. He went around the trunk of one tree, raised one foot—left or right?—to step over a log and found himself putting it back on a moving floor, seated as he was beside Seven in the taxi, experiencing pure joy as he traveled along the hard road in late autumn, in an uncomfortable bumpy carriage.

  I met a general, Seven said. It’s only the beginning. Just watch. He gazed off into the distance. One day I’m gonna come back and buy this city and stuff it in my shoe.

  Seven had been cutting marks into the table again. Only yesterday with tremendous effort of wrist and elbow Perry Oliver had managed to sand the previous marks away, and applied a touch of varnish to restore the original appearance, and now they were back, deeper, plainly visible from across the room where he stood. A long splinter of wood had actually come off from one corner. Despite what he saw before him now Perry Oliver was willing to give Seven the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the lines (figures?) were accidental, the necessary product of Seven’s daily cleaning and tidying up, like the smudges he often noted on the surface of the few other items of furniture they possessed. Perhaps he was not standing close enough to the table for an accurate assessment. He spit on his thumb and tried to rub the marks away. No doing. Incisions indeed. Permanent.

  He had only just entered the apartment, greeted by the sound of Seven’s excited voice reciting the latest newspaper dispatch humming with the distant and happy echo of Paul Morphy’s victories from across the Atlantic. Seven and Tom remained seated at the table drinking hot chocolate, candle flickering—all things are born of a single fire—shadows booming up behind them, the boys lit less by th
e small candle than by the shimmering surfaces of cup, plate, and spoon. They did not acknowledge his arrival, although they must have heard him enter, heard lock opening and door closing. Seven partially hidden behind the open halves of his newspaper, and Tom plainly in sight next to him. Only when Perry Oliver reached the corner of the table, angling into Seven’s line of vision, catty-cornered, no mistaking him, did Seven look up from the journal, long enough to pause in his reading, but he evidenced his employer without surprise or astonishment, observed him walk to one corner of the table to inspect it, and simply went on with his monologue, voice rising and falling, hurrying up or slowing down, in a haughtily adult tone to an apparently passive and indifferent (we assume) Tom—so still he could be asleep; in fact, he often fell asleep in this position, especially after a meal (usually a heavy supper, several helpings of meat and milk), fully dressed, and sitting erect at the table, head held up, until a telling flutter escaped his lips, and Seven roused him enough to lead him off to bed—who remained perfectly still, eyes closed and face free of expression, as unknowing as the objects before them on the table.

  Perry Oliver listened to Seven, each word an unmooring, taking him further and further away from his own thoughts that he wanted, needed to hold on to. (Words would keep him.) Nothing he required more than some silence after a full day of planning and work. (In his dealings with the world the two were the same.) But every evening when he returned home Seven wouldn’t afford him such escape, intent on sharing with the world (Tom) the latest news about the “New Orleans Sensation,” in a voice that gave glory to a flesh-and-blood deity constructed out of black ink crowded onto cheap paper.

  All in all, Seven took great delight in delivering news good or bad. He would have wrong news rather than no news at all. The afflicted had sought out Perry Oliver to inform him that Seven, upon reaching his destination to deliver a message, would draw out the pleasure by asking the recipient teasing questions or, to the recipient’s considerable surprise, bowing his head in concentration, pretending that he had forgotten the message, or by searching his pockets, having (pretending that he had) misplaced or lost Perry Oliver’s note. Once the maneuver took effect, he would finally get around to relaying the message. And at those times when he returned home with a reply to the original message, he tried to hold on to it for as long as possible, searching his pockets—now, where did I put it?—until finally turning over the note trembling in his hands.

  He had to resign himself to Seven’s quirks and concerns, and his occasional lapses in performance—the logs had been crudely hacked despite their deceptive arrangement into neat stacks; the outlines did not hold—and disturbances and delays. Even on the rare occasions when the house was noticeably untidy he voiced no complaint, for Seven tended Tom with expert care, with knowledge and command, perfectly present right down to the hands-on and messy task of regulating Tom’s hygiene, not the easiest of jobs.

  Seven wasted no time in offering his opinion of the improbability of Morphy’s ever losing a match.

  Fire, Tom said.

  No, Seven said. Not that kind. A contest. A tournament. A series of games. He returns to his reading.

  Though the ward where they lived was colorless and dull, for Seven the large bright world began only a few blocks away at the general store where he purchased the newspaper, the Watchman—cities of glittering words—each afternoon. It had taken him only a few minutes of reading to discover how Paul Morphy was connected to his life. In Morphy Seven discovered the model example of an intellectual and social development he admired, and given favorable circumstances, he himself might one day achieve. Paul Morphy the destiny he had assigned himself, the appointed end. He was always speechless at first after he completed his reading of the report and his patient inspection of the illustration. With somber authority he would place the journal flat on the table and raise his head and stare off into space. After some moments of this he would look down at the journal, studying it like a map. A prearranged and agreed upon action, clue (Perry Oliver suspected) that always set Tom’s mouth moving, elicited a flat and spiritless recitation of the dispatch word for word. Then talk came more easily, Seven asking (demanding?) that Tom recite the report from the day before, and the one before that. Paul Morphy, Seven, and Tom—a drawn-out affair. Day in and day out, the boys under Morphy’s spell.

  It turned out, Perry Oliver felt strangely touched to see them together like this. At moments he observed them bent over laughing together at the table, laughing as only boys can. More than once he had seen them embrace like brothers, Seven taking the lead, leaning into the other under his charge. And he often spied them sitting conspiratorially, showing no regard for the man who fed them both. (It is one thing to provide food for another person and quite another to be faced with the sudden, complex, and increased responsibility of providing for two additional mouths.)

  Why can’t we get us a nigger? Seven said.

  We can’t bear it.

  I want me a nigger.

  Can you feed one? Clothe it?

  But he took continual pleasure in Seven’s development, his increased independence, the sharper differentiation of his mental apparatus into various agencies, the appearance of new needs (food, chess, Paul Morphy). Seven employed precisely the energy Tom had set free in him. (What those under our care bring out in us.) How to repay that?

  My dear chess master Herr Löwenthal, Seven said to Tom, your play is very good, and worthy of a great master, but as to beating Morphy, don’t dream of it.

  Tom didn’t seem to hear or notice.

  You must have too much time on your hands, Perry Oliver said, if you can find nothing better to do than sit there babbling nonsense with Tom.

  Seven didn’t respond to the accusing observation, both of them aware that his hands held plenty, time included, that he put in a full day’s work—Perry Oliver had made it clear that Tom must never aid him in any form with the household chores—and this form of play—whatever you might call it—was a necessary pause, a gathering of strength for the other chores to be done around the house today and the next day. With the exception of the three or four hours when Seven guided Tom down to Scaldy Bill’s Drinkery and Eatery to play the piano—the nearest piano Perry Oliver could find, a fortunate arrangement as owner William Oakley charged him nothing, their patronage (breakfast, dinner, supper) of his establishment pay enough—Seven and Tom remained indoors. Perry Oliver insisted on it. (Assume that Seven followed his instructions to the letter. No evidence to the contrary.) As much as possible, Tom should stay within the confines of their apartment—confined? he couldn’t call it that—so as not to offend the sensibility of other persons in their house or on the street. Look at that misery. But by the grace of God, that could be me. Blind and a nigger. Count my blessings. Perry Oliver was not insensitive to their misfortune, but this is the way it must be. (Soon enough the public would get to see as much of Tom as they could stomach.) Before he departed each morning, Perry Oliver reviewed the measures Seven should take in the event of his unexpected or prolonged absence or in circumstances of injury or illness. But even this review was grounded in the many months of thorough preparation that preceded Tom’s arrival from Hundred Gates. Perry Oliver had put Seven through a rigorous apprenticeship. As a rule, each morning he would assign the boy a lengthy and detailed series of errands and tasks to train his memory, put it to good use. A test for the body too. (Fair to say that he was the first person to introduce Seven to axe and saw.) Put Seven out on a limb, to both measure and increase the level and range of his ingenuity and skill. Would he fly and survive or would he fall prey to either earth below or danger from above? Undeterred by his tough initiation, Seven never uttered a word of complaint about hard work—he still didn’t—saving his back talk for other matters.

  When we gon get us a nigger?

  Seven, you make my head ache with your voice. Kindly close your mouth and let the hammer talk.

  Perry Oliver seated himself at the table, sharp pulses
from his lower regions making themselves felt. He removed some money from his purse—the exact amount, down to the penny—handed it over to Seven with instructions for him to run down to Scaldy Bill’s to pick up their daily supper, a whole leghorn hen. (The killing of a fowl does not give in itself a positive or negative answer.) Seven set the table before he departed, light and rapid as a bird. At once Perry Oliver regretted his absence—too late to catch him—as he was now left alone with Tom, his black skin part of the darkness, so that Tom seemed knitted into place, black threads. Often Tom assumed a pose of absolute stillness and silence, his face like some dead object on display, two closed eyelids carved in stone. And you the observer were a mobile subject before an ideal artifact (object). (Did Tom feel the full weight of observation? The object in all of its unappeasibility.) This was how you might see him sitting at the piano, so straight and still before he began playing. (The stability and strength of the spine.) And that was how he sat now. Or perhaps not, because Tom seemed to lean back into the darkness, plenty of space behind him, and it was only then Perry Oliver noticed that the table had been beautifully laid, glass and silver sparkling in the candlelight, as if in leaning back Tom had somehow pushed these objects forward into vision. Pitcher, candle, blue enamel pot unadorned (the barest table, no cloth to cover it) but striking and noticeable in their arrangement. Peach, pear, and plum in a bowl, each shape and color distinct. Seven was organized, not subject to improvisation, but his newfound knack for table design was almost certainly a talent he had inherited from Mrs. Rudge, although their stay at her hotel had been short.

  Perry Oliver leaned forward in his chair and studied the grain of the wooden floor. Oak. Each knot in the wood like a miniature island. Isolated and alone. Was it this visual promise of solitude—the altering eye—that caught his attention, attracted him, drew him in? His line of work didn’t permit the possibility of severing oneself from the world. The fleshy cord never gets cut. The other’s skin was always linked to yours. Stay connected or die. A necessary dependence.