Song of the Shank

by Jeffery Renard Allen

  They had captured a thief, a man who had been stealing from everyone on the island for months. He (West) enumerated the terrible thefts the thief had committed. (Heads nodded.) The thief would go on stealing, unless they put an end to it now. (Uh huh’s and You got that right’s.) He had stumbled into their hands less than an hour ago after time and again steering clear of their most-watchful sentinels. They had bound him and brought him here. They beat him then stuffed and sealed him up in an unneeded sack with the stolen items they’d found in his possession and were now preparing to take him out and deposit him into a deep part of the ocean.

  I see, Wire said. May I have a look at the thief?

  They brought the sack forth, untied it, and roughly drew it free, exposing the thief who had been confined inside, now seated upright on the wet ground, short of breath, eyes closed (swollen shut?), nude, his whole body slick as if dipped in some red fluid. Tabbs had seen the thief about, a boy really, a new arrival like himself.

  Wire continued looking at the thief. He couldn’t look anywhere else for a long time. Who shall deliver me from this body of death.

  Reverend. Sir. If you could—

  Time’s getting on, Wire said. He directed his face toward each fisherman in turn before his worried look settled once again on the thief. Gentlemen, I shouldn’t delay you further, but I want to put your minds at ease. (Wire looking from the thief to the fishermen.) Want you to know that I fully understand what you are set on doing. You have the right to protect yourselves. Any man or beast who would rob you of your livelihood, who would snatch food from your mouth or the mouths of those you must feed, that man or beast is doing nothing less than trying to diminish your life, extinguish it little by little. Is this not murder by another name? How can such murder be tolerated? I am impressed. You’re sensitive to have given this so much thought. Not that you require my approval. Certainly not. All will be well with you.

  The fishermen looked one to the other, hiding their intimidation in the silence they stood in.

  For we know what the Scriptures say. Turn the other cheek and suffer violence to the face, to the flesh and blood. But where does it say we must permit a strike to the stomach? Let him violate you if he must, but hunger you? Starve you? Burn your harvest? Carry off your crops? Poison your wells? I would love nothing better than to drown such a murderer myself, should I possess the authority. So wronged, I would drown my own son, give up my own father. But there is one fact you must consider. (Hear me out.) The flesh of a sinner is the Almighty’s and He can do with it as He pleases. And that life contained within the flesh does not belong to you. Broach no claims on it. Wire raised the index fingers on both hands as if measuring some distance between them, the gesture nothing more perhaps than a strategic pause (space) that afforded him time to observe what the fishermen’s expressions told him, time to register their hesitation and dismay. Protection is the province of man, Justice the province of God. Man has no claims on Justice. Understand that. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve only heard Justice here today.

  West started to stammer something, but the words faded in his mouth.

  So how can I, a man of God, let you take from Him what is His? Who would be the greater criminal? Who would be the greater thieves? As much as I want to, I cannot.

  The fishermen stood there without speaking, listening in what could only be described as attentive reverence.

  This man has wronged you and wronged God. So give him his due. (What I can permit.) Let him work a thousand days to pay back what he has stolen from you. Or simply beat him, as you have. Beat him and banish him. Wire let the words stand for all to consider. And here is one more thing you might take into account. Should you decide to give him some of God’s mercy, each of you might be blessed forever.

  Were the men nodding? Were they smiling?

  Wire took another look at the thief. Spoke to the fishermen while looking at the captive: You have already done enough. You would agree? Yes? Perhaps you haven’t. Be certain. Beat him some more. Yes, beat him some more and be done with it.

  The fishermen pummeled, punched, and kicked the thief with little energy or effort. The thief made no attempt to defend himself.

  I’m glad to see that you’re such reasonable men. Would it be too much to say that I am proud? Well, I am. Wire extended his hand, summoning each fisherman to come forward, which they did in turn. He spoke each man’s name in a matter-of-fact way then proceeded to reach into his cloth satchel and pull out a scrap of leather verse, which he lifted high into the air above his head, like one feeding fish to a seal. The befuddled fishermen cupped both hands in front of them to receive (catch) the verses. Once the man before him received his verse, Wire stared into his face and recited it word for word in an unmistakably affectionate tone, all present awed by the demonstration, more awed in the repeating. On the face of it, either the performance or the blindly selected verses themselves spoke to the heart of each would-be killer, for one after the other they dropped their heads and seemed to feel real shame.

  I’m sorry that I won’t be filling your bellies or your fists today, Wire said. But if you visit the shop tomorrow I will see what I can do. Bring your Scriptures.

  A promise he would certainly fulfill, although unclear what these men, accustomed to operating on the sea’s moving surface, would need with any implements of stationary road travel that Wire could provide from King Jesus Carriage Parts, his shop. Unlikely that these men even owned donkeys.

  Wire spoke to the thief. Take to your feet.

  And the thief did in all of his nakedness. He made no effort to cover himself.

  I should strike you too, Wire said. See what I’ve had to do. It’s improper for me to stand here putting questions to these gentlemen with their friends and neighbors looking on.

  The thief said that he was sorry, although clearly he was in pain and had difficulty speaking. And he said it again. Pain and all, he appeared happy, a bloody grin, if that’s what it was.

  You’re sorry and yet you continue to be irreverent and disrespectful, standing here when you should be on your way.

  I’ll be, I wanna be, but I ain’t got a goddamn thing.

  What?

  Said I ain’t got a goddamn thing. Standing with his hands behind his back as if still fettered, his penis all that was free, on display, black signature of skin and bone.

  Is that so? You expect me to reward you, for theft? For murder?

  No, suh. Trying to draw a breath. I ain’t asking for no damn reward. I jus need to get on up away from here. Get on up from this grave.

  Wire looked at the thief as though he had said something immensely stupid. You’re asking me to help you? He laughed awkwardly. Well, I see you expect me to take care of all of your complaints, a man able of body and mind.

  I’d be much obliged to do something for you in return. Much.

  Look at you. What can you do for me?

  Taking Wire’s answer as a refusal, the thief said nothing at first, then he was in distress, great distress, and insisted he go with Wire, a separate appeal in his expression.

  Wire asked him what his name was. He said that he had no name he could give. Speech and body residing in some undefined space between gratitude and grief. The surf breaking behind him, dhows tossing and bobbing, and waves crawling toward shore like an army silent in ambush.

  I haven’t much patience. Wire made as though to leave.

  You ain’t got to worry bout me none. I swear on a stack. Left hand on Jesus. Right hand on God.

  On hearing this, Wire approached the four fishermen. By then the four had boarded their dhow and were ready to set off to sea. Wire asked that they return to shore. (The hold he had over them.) It would be these men who would ferry the thief to the mainland, to the city. Talking quietly among themselves, it took doctor and fishermen almost ten minutes to negotiate a price while the thief waited; someone gave him garments to cover his body; someone gave him a cloth to wipe his face; someone gave him a long draf
t of water; then he spat out blood. Relieved, he thanked Wire and thanked him again and again and went off with the men in subdued silence.

  Wire and Tabbs took lunch at a café, never speaking a word about the event. (It was for Wire to speak first—That’s the way they do things here, why there are no criminals—then Tabbs could respond accordingly.) Later it occurred to Tabbs that Wire was trying to impress on him something of the true nature of his work. He had saved men from murder. He had driven other men to kill. War his to declare, his to stop.

  He can back Wire into a corner, force him to help, to give money. If you can save a thief, a nameless thief … So why does he stand here, hollow, posing? Why does he force himself to turn away from the words he would like to say and hear Wire say in return? Tabbs steps out into moon-begot shadows and light and starts for home with a reserve of animation and speed built up from hours of sitting, eating, drinking.

  Blind Tom don’t play no church music.

  Too bad. The Almighty is the loser.

  The boy would be waiting. He knew the boy would be waiting. He lacked nothing in punctuality. That’s why he was here, wasn’t it? Why he keeps coming every day, although for months the boy has been little more than a lumpen force. A few thick chords. A few loose melodies. Each sound coming out marvelously pronounced, shapely, smooth so that Tabbs feels the notes surge up his arms and enter his face and head, then sink into every nerve of his body, causing his muscles to uncoil, leaving a tingling satisfaction, a tease.

  Let’s go watch the blind nigger play.

  You go.

  I am. I ain’t scared.

  Go ahead then.

  Nawl. I don’t want to. You go.

  Scared.

  Nawl.

  He chases the kids away, but he will catch their faces peeking in, hiding under the seats, crouching behind the curtains.

  Mr. Tabbs, how come you don’t like children? The little girl stared up into his face.

  What would make you think a thing like that? Of course I like children. Don’t let me hear you say that again.

  The mother is on her knees, her head scarf knotted at the back of her neck, her knees squarely on the wet floor and her elbows and forearms covered with a white-brown mixture of suds and dirt. She looks up and catches him full in the face. A look that goes past him, dwelling, for a moment, on the chairs upturned on the table, the sconces and portraits on the walls, and the bucket filled with water and soap.

  Mr. Tabbs.

  He returns the greeting with a nod of his head.

  He steps into the chapel, his eye catching the shape of the piano on the small stage, knowing that he will find the boy seated there, onstage, at his piano. He clears the room of children—

  He crazy.

  Nawl. They took his eyes out.

  —and shuts the door. Calls the boy’s name, causing the boy’s shoulders to lift, startled. Tom had not heard Tabbs enter the room. He gets up from the bench, steps down from the stage, and takes a seat in the front row.

  He’s trying me, Tabbs thinks. I’m barely in the door and already he’s trying me.

  Should you go up? the boy asks.

  We should go up.

  You said it.

  The boy moves sleepily toward the stage. Tabbs aids him up the few stairs, though Tabbs can’t help feeling that the boy is helping him. The boy returning the embrace on his arm in such a way that he might have been the seeing one guiding the sightless Tabbs. Times when the boy allows Tabbs to embrace him. Parts of Tom’s body mingle well with Tabbs. Times too few.

  The boy goes through his routine. Fingers a passage, a slippery group of chords and notes, then he shoots up from his stool, clapping, congratulating himself, taking bows. Sits down and fingers another passage. More accolades. And so on. Months now and Tabbs has yet to hear him play a song from start to finish. A little of this, a little of that. Never a complete song. He can’t pull those bits and pieces together. Or won’t. Some failing of memory. Timidity. The melody crawling out of its shell only to, spooked, run back for cover.

  And voices (sometimes) springing up from hidden places in the room, giggling and teasing.

  See, I told you. That nigger can’t play.

  Wait till you hear him sing.

  Then the mother will sweep onto the scene like a witch on a broom. And with the switch in her hand pointed forward like a divining rod, she will seek out the mannish boys in the room, draw the dirty intruders up from the floor like spurts of dark liquid—What yall doing in here?— and steer this black sea of orphans elsewhere. Get where you sposed to be.

  Tom sits listening, but it’s quiet now, more than quiet because the music is gone. The air charged, the hum of the chords still in the room. Tabbs tries to chart the inscrutable space surrounding the boy’s body. Tries to imagine the story of this boy’s hands and feet, speculating as to the brutal geography of slavery, a life in the South under the Bethunes, vile domestic terrain.

  Tom, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Tabbs listening to the song, listening long after it’s gone. Do you wish to perform again?

  I like being on top, the boy says.

  Then what is it?

  I want her. He stands up from his seat, aware of his own length, weight, and shape, as tall as Tabbs, but broader, thicker. The air rushes away. Tabbs wonders if the mother dresses him each morning. If she is the one who combs his hair and bathes him and keeps him clean and neat, who rubs glistening substances on his face.

  You were about to tell me.

  I’ll leave you in peace, Mr. Tabbs.

  But you were about to tell me.

  Is she here? He stands there with his head upturned, noticeably swaying from side to side.

  No.

  I want her now.

  So it goes. I want her now, he says, and sits back down on the bench, hands buried in his lap, and Tabbs will send for the mother, and in five minutes or ten the boy will stand straight up from his stool at the sound of her footsteps. They will go away together, she takes him away, and Tabbs throws the heavy canvas cloth over the piano and hopes that tomorrow will be better. So it has been.

  She’s not here, Tabbs says.

  I want her now.

  She had to go away.

  Tom says nothing.

  I’m sorry. I really am. But I’m here. I’ll stay with you until she returns.

  Tom says nothing to that, his silence more absolute than ever. So quiet and still (dressed in black, his jacket, shirt, and pants glossy like rinsed fruit) he might be a shiny appendage of his piano. Looked upon. An alien and disagreeable face. The eyelids thick and firmly fastened, impossible to crack. A face that had once, before the war, moved and enchanted Tabbs. Now no face at all. Inconceivable that this boy could be Blind Tom. Black, blind, of right age but nothing else. The Bethune woman had passed off an imposter, had proved to be a liar and a cheat like all the others who took the name Bethune.

  The boy smiles. A careless amusement in that smile, gaiety at Tabbs’s expense. He stands up. Sure enough, the mother is fixed in the door, watching her son with tender respect. (If that’s what it is.) Now a deep breath activates him, making it unnecessary for her to come to the stage as she usually does. He goes to her, walking at his own pace, feeling his own time. The music following them out the door. Taken away. God knows where. Perhaps they go back together to the room they share here. Yes, she takes him away, again. Months and the boy’s desire to see her has not lessened any. At first, those many months ago, Tabbs figured he would let it run its course, no need to cut it short. Go easy and let the two, mother and son, get reacquainted, come to terms with the distances of time and geography, arrive at the place of knowing each other. And still, every day, today, I want to see her.

  The silence fills his chest. Forms reflected in the eye-watering hues of the piano’s surface. The entire island had come to watch the men unload the piano from the dhow, as if the piano were a sea monster that had chanced upon extinction in a fisherman’s net.
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  Tabbs looks at his watch to see the time on it. The open case and calibrated face (metal eye and glass eye) watching him back, reading the hour on his visage. He closes the case and time collapses, sucked in.

  The boy curls up in his piano, in himself. Waiting. Waiting him out.

  The sound reaches him before he reaches the courtyard, tearing and shredding, pellets pinging against hard surfaces, girls seated around metal tubs, shucking ears of corn, emptying fingers of beans and peas, seventy girls or more arranged in groups of ten. All those learning hands. No surprise at his entry. Unnoticed or as unremarkable as those hills of discarded green skin rising up from the floor. Or he is only partially glimpsed passing through rows of freshly laundered clothes and sheets flapping flag-like on ropes suspended from one side of the courtyard to the other. Is it her he sees just up ahead beating dust from the pillowcases? Gone before he makes it there. Moving on, courtyard and clotheslines giving way to ceilings and walls, boys young and alive in rooms, speaking at once, taking stairs headlong at a gallop, leaping over couches and chairs. And now she is with them, laying down the law, her thick gold and silver bracelets rattling as she pushes and pulls the children. She can be heard going about her labors even when the eye catches no sight of her, bracelets clattering up and down her wrists and forearms. She crosses the room jauntily with a cluster of the smallest boys about her, ready to bring the older ones to order. Motioning at this one, shouting at that one. What did I tell you? Where my switch?