Song of the Shank

by Jeffery Renard Allen

  Aware that he stood out for any casual observer who took the time to look, knew he was a foreigner, not from here. (I was not from there, the South.) Full of the sap and sense of life, he stood out, handsome tall well-made—he had engaged in hard labor with Ruggles and others when life had required it of him—always with the clearness of health in his face and vivacity in his eyes, and always neatly dressed, neither elegant nor flashy, but suitable and dignified. (Why in the estimate of a man do we prize him wrapped and muffled up in clothes?) Barely twenty-four years into this world but already a man of independent income—that is, he worked for no man other than himself—with expectations of much more. He had to put up a bold front. (Alabasters are a fact. What can you do with them?) Until a few weeks ago, as far as he was concerned, this small Southern town—not surprisingly, the Anglo-Saxon natives fancied it a city, one of their country’s most important, the hub, the center; wrong here as they had (have) been wrong about so much else—didn’t exist, and if it did, only as a word in a newspaper or a dot on a map. But now—what difference a day—he was caught, in the grip of this thing. (Going to see the lawyer, no turning back.) Moved along a muddy winding road in a country crossed with many such roads, sunken or stamped-in paths (nothing paved, engineered, constructed) surrounded by composed and watchful trees, endless branching. (What loomed on the other side of those darkened and charred trunks?) Clear and careful—feet on the ground, head out of the clouds—he looked for omens everywhere, fearing a chance medley of possibilities and occurrences. This was (is) the land that General Bethune had built, the land that General Bethune once walked. So let him walk it. Not really his normal fluid self though. Easy to understand his cautious gait—he actually counted each step, no false or sudden moves—his hesitation. Nervously anticipating, he tried to sense and scent prey. He sidestepped passersby even before they come into eyeshot. (No matter how broad the path, an alabaster must never give a Negro the right-of-way.) A habit he had developed since arriving in town.

  Hard not to worry. Terrible things could happen like this: A Negro woman stands on the hot awningless platform not far from him waiting for the train, three children of various ages seeking shade in the folds of her ankle-length dress. From her appearance, hers and theirs, she can ill afford a ticket, but there she is, there they are. Her white bonnet glows like a halo in morning light. From somewhere—Tabbs still hasn’t puzzled it complete—a white man runs up to her, lunges, and punches her in the face, reams of blood spilling red to the earth. A punch so sudden and wild that he loses his balance and almost tumbles to the ground. Solid, she doesn’t buckle, only brings both shocked hands to her mouth, loose teeth spilling out between the joints of her fingers like lumps of sugar. The children cry. Almost instantly a soldier rushes up to the man, shoves the end of his rifle barrel between the man’s eyes, and blows his brains red white and pink out the back of his head.

  Tabbs recognized that he took a big chance traveling here, the soldiers, occupying army, the only force that stood between him and those who had lost the war. He had already escaped injury or death more than once: The natives yelled things at him, and the soldiers aimed their rifles and ordered them to move along. Everything he saw, has seen, bothered (bothers) him. Such squalor. Natives—men, women, and children—living in little crooked-planked cabins, ramshackle eyesores, alongside their few animals—hogs, cows, chickens, oxen, and goats, broken-down mules and horses—in unkempt filth. All the towns seemed run-down, the farmhouses had all been ruined, old windows replaced by new, or no windows at all.

  Now on the plateau a soldier told him to hold up for a moment. Indeed, he had been stopped more than once his first two or three days in country, free passage since. Reasonable that they had grown accustomed to him. (He stood out. One of a kind.) He walked over to the soldier—a problem if a soldier had to walk over to you—and produced his pass, a quarter-folded sheet of paper, without hesitation. Fully three-quarters of the pass offered a poorly rendered drawing of his face—the right skin tone, the wrong features—with an official stamp in the corner, and a caption under it reading Northern Negro. He held out the pass for the soldier’s scrutiny, and the soldier moved one hand across his body to clutch the strap shouldering his rifle then bent forward to peer closer—he did not take it, touch it—and measure with successive glances back and forth Tabbs’s face against the drawing. How hard was he really looking? Barely studied it for five seconds. Satisfied, he drew back into his erect soldierly posture and emitted a short sentence in soldier’s language—perhaps he said nothing at all—indicating that Tabbs was free to continue.

  Tabbs noted a measure of difference in the way the soldiers treated him and the way they treated both strays and natives. When they weren’t shouting orders or instructions they spoke like fops, barely deigning to articulate their words. But they accorded Tabbs a measure of respect usually reserved for white men of importance, a quality of treatment that he had experienced only on chance occasions. They even took the trouble to question his well-being and to warn him about places he should avoid and places he might see. That bend has the best perch you’ll ever taste. And the swimming ain’t bad if you can learn the current. He took it all in as if he was truly eager to learn and understand. Still, their facts caused him to wonder. Were they aiding him or manipulating him? Did they order him? Control him? And it was hard to say if he was obeying. He wanted to (needed to) follow his own orders (plans) so there was a good chance that at some point his will would (had to, must) collide with their wishes.

  Many such thoughts flashed in him now—foolish to come here—but he did not dwell on them. Stubbornly avoided the details. Without the details everything is clear, inviolable. He had full clear hopes, as must any man who had come several hundred miles or more. General Bethune had (has) been cheated of what is rightfully his. That is why he was here. He had suffered setbacks before—what man hasn’t?—but nothing of this nature or this magnitude, for up until this point in his life he had risen much unaided. (Credit the Pygmy. Credit Ruggles.) Almost two months ago, before the war ended, he realized that the future held for him the absolute need to visit a prominent lawyer. He had written the lawyer seeking representation, and the lawyer had wired back a response for him to come. He had taken no one else into his confidence. In fact, he was sustained by the hope that that this lawyer, Simon Coffin, might be the one person in the entire country (nation?) who could aid him.

  Old Teaberry Lane?

  No, suh. This here ain’t it, but gon and follow it up till you see the well.

  Thank you.

  Much obliged. The boy continued on, the brim of his hat wider than the entire circumference of his body, his snazzy grosgrain band less adornment and more necessary tool to keep the hat squeezed on his substanceless head. Equally if not more astonishing the boy had actually called him sir. Suh. For so many years—all his life, or at least since his first awareness of slavery—Tabbs had believed these natives were monsters, so it surprised him that even monsters can be polite. So many crimes to pay for, too many to count, but now that the war was done and the monsters tamed, he was willing to let bygones be bygones, if they were willing to do the same. Willing even to extend the hand of partnership—not to be mistaken for friendship, brotherhood—break bread, and work with these creatures. (Only the best need sign up.) Whatever it took to increase, multiply. (Indeed, was that not Lincoln’s idea? No one must expect me to take any part in hanging or killing of these men, even the worst of them. We must not open the gates and frighten them out of the country. Enough lives have been sacrificed; we must extinguish our resentments if we expect harmony and union.) So Tabbs thought let’s be rational and defer justice for now. (Blood should be left to cleanse itself.)

  Tabbs found the well where the driver had said it would be, conveniently stationed where the road turned left and became Old Teaberry Lane. Strays raising and lowering bucket and rope to lean into and drink or lean away and wipe mouths dry. Another two dozen or more strays circling about
the well or lingering within a few feet of it, many of them completely wet, as if they had just climbed up out of watery darkness to light dry surface. Like the banded boy, members of his own race addressed him as sir—Morning, suh. Yes, suh. No, suh. Evening, suh.—but never went further. Nothing more, even if he threw out some leading question or tidbit of talk. In fact, ten days running and not another member of his race had ever seemed to really notice him. Looked his way without seeing him, saw him without looking at him, as strays would later in the city. Not unlike their mode of interaction with any alabaster, whether native or foreigner.

  Old Teaberry Lane turned—became another?—and Tabbs went down that way, the ground passing below him, dirt and clumps of grass giving way to his boots. The morning white from the heat, burning fierce and quick as a match. Light and heat ocean-deep. He wiped the sweat from his face, causing his hand to sting as if he had just dunked it into boiling water. Right then, he felt like giving it all up. He didn’t know what put the thought in his head. (Still doesn’t know.) He looked off into the forest. Plenty of nothing out there and plenty of everything. He thought he heard water running somewhere in the distance, the barest trickle, tried to calculate the source and how far he was from it and collided right into a black cape of flying insects, buzzing inside his nose and mouth. Head and hands worked to shake and jerk free, while tongue spat the mouth clean. He patted and checked his jacket pocket to be sure that he still had the letter he planned to present to the lawyer.

  After his arrival in town he had spent a considerable part of each day at the desk in his hotel room writing a letter to Simon Coffin as he was (is) certain that he had left too much out of the first letter he had sent the lawyer almost two months ago. He wanted the new letter to be pure, no suppositions, all facts, and of the facts he separated the essentials from the nonessentials. Still, he couldn’t help squeezing in the final remnants of ideas, plans, suppositions, even suggestions for possible remedies and courses of action. How is that for contradiction? Here he was, seeking out this lawyer, because he had already exhausted all other possibilities. Who will open the doors I can’t see? Now see him on his way to the lawyer’s office with the letter securely in his jacket pocket, having finished writing it to his satisfaction less than two hours ago.

  He had drained himself of all that he did not need intellectually and emotionally for the sole purpose of this sit-down meeting with the esteemed Simon Coffin. Hoping for the best—Coffin would reveal General Bethune’s whereabouts—prepared for the worst. To get the desired result, he was willing to push the lawyer—or anyone else—as far as he could.

  He judged Coffin alone to be worthy of this knowledge. For thirty-five years or more (forty?) Coffin had been unquestionably among the most visible and influential men in the entire nation as an advocate for the Negro cause—no week passed without his name appearing a dozen times in the Negro journals—whether the bound or the free. A white Southerner whose circle of benevolence also extended to encompass many other scorned and abused groups—poor Anglo-Saxon natives, Catholics, German immigrants, abolitionists, and foreign visitors and travelers (including journalists). Known for both his bold pronouncements—The cruelest man living could not sit at my feast unless he sat blindfolded—and audacious tactics, this lawyer, more than any other man existing at that time, held the largest and most liberal view of the world, and was capable of devising the most practical and effective schemes in defense of these views. Coffin had even continued practicing his vocation through the course of the war without suffering arrest or any form of censorship or molestation. How explain that?

  The road became what Tabbs normally would think of as a residential street. Small houses jammed together. Windows moving along as you advanced. Then the road rose (leapt) impossibly skyward where it carried him up to a section of modest three-story houses. One house was nothing like the others. How fortunate it stood where it did by itself between two oak trees on a little rise at one end of the street, trees broad and wide at the base like important men squatting before an audience of supplicants. A three-story gray structure with a sloped red-iron roof—the others were flat—the exterior rather old but pleasant, worse for wear, wood showing through the gray, streaked with longitudinal cracks, and heavy porch planks of bare wood and dust and dirt, having long given up color to a multitude of shoes and boots. The door was finely carved with a raised image of a fox and an eagle against a flat detailed field—tree, grass, pond, sunlight, wind—the eagle swooping down with beak opened threateningly, while the fox, head turned and teeth bared, leapt up to meet the challenge. Plenty of varnished wood between them, as if the animals had come to an agreement that they would only get so close. From the brass doorplate, Tabbs learned that Coffin’s office was on the top floor.

  Tabbs removed his hat, pinned it between his left elbow and hip, and entered a dimly lit hall floored in elegant tile. Though he was exhausted, he started up the mahogany stairs with force and energy, the wood squishing under his feet. The stairs seemed to have suffered the worst for the humidity, soft, the wood pressing in like cake, Tabbs cautious now, unsure if the steps might not give way altogether beneath him. At the third-floor landing he saw a door left partially open at one end of the hall, and headed for it. Found a mahogany door hinged into a frame made out of cedar, with a large stained glass window depicting a coat of arms fit into the door’s upper half, and above it a brass plate engraved with the black-lettered name Simon Peter Levi Coffin IV, Esquire.

  Tabbs leaned into the angle of opening and saw fifteen feet away Coffin seated bent over, gazing at some papers on his desk, pen in hand—the figure in everyday circumstances—late-morning sun entering the large room from two ample windows facing the street. Tabbs stood watching, took the time to observe, study what he could, unnoticed. This act of exclusive and privileged seeing both natural and possible because it was well-practiced, for Tabbs did (does) not view himself as one who was conditioned by—the system, the institution of—conventional intelligence. The room impressed the visitor as a place to conduct business just as it impressed the viewer as a place to exhibit a handful of choice artifacts. Scrolls hanging from the walls and a green (jade) vase mounted on a pedestal in one corner, a red (jade?) in another. Dozens of books neatly stacked near the fireplace. And papers of various sizes and description inserted in little wooden hold-alls nailed into every available space in the walls, papers that Tabbs assumed were legal files and correspondence, letters, memos, telegrams, and briefs relating to the countless cases Coffin had represented. He leaned back into the hall and tapped on the stained glass window to announce his presence.

  Enter, please.

  He did so unmolested. (How had he even made it this far? Reasonable to expect the lawyer to be under the protection of a personal armed guard, even his own small private band of protectors and defenders.) Face raised, the lawyer watched him enter. Stood up from his desk, smiling good-naturedly, an unmistakable man of modern height with a look of the world about him, broad shouldered and rather thickly proportioned around the waist but by no means portly or flabby (fat). He was dressed not only decently but stylishly—light (material and color) summer jacket, a linen shirt under a light-colored waistcoat, light-colored and loose-fitting trousers, and cordovan shoes from New Orleans. Tabbs saw—can see still, will never forget—in his whole impeccable figure something at once noble and ridiculous.

  You must be Mr. Gross, the lawyer said with a puzzled look (so Tabbs thought).

  Yes. I’m Tabbs Gross.

  The lawyer leaned forward across his desk and extended his hand, and Tabbs leaned in and took it, catching the faint scent of sweet perfume.

  Have a seat, Mr. Gross.

  Tabbs sat down on one of two curved-back chairs positioned before the desk. Looked up and noticed a third window five feet behind and above the lawyer, lending just enough light to make visible dust drifting across the cedar panels that lined the roof.

  The lawyer sat down. Well, Mr. Gross, it was good of y
ou to come.

  Sir, it was good of you to grant me an audience.

  How else could we have it? Did you travel well?

  Yes, sir.

  I’m delighted to know that. Could I fetch you some water?

  No, Tabbs said. He really wanted something to drink, his insides on fire.

  Tea? Coffee? Lemon water?

  I decline.

  The lawyer was quiet for a few moments, maintaining his welcoming smile, a silence that gave Tabbs his first opportunity to really study the man sitting before him. With his somewhat wavy shoulder-length gray hair—waves tinged with blond streaks as if gilded, which shifted with a supple movement and brushed his shoulders when he turned or lowered or raised his head—his big-pored forehead, slanted eyelids (Mongolian fold?) that partly obscured his eyes and pupils, and heavy worm-thick lips, the lawyer looked entirely unlike himself in both the handful of well-known illustrations and caricatures—the lawyer swims the Atlantic Africa-bound with a pyramid of watermelon-eating slaves frolicking on his back—and the singular daguerreotype—that he had clearly sat for several decades earlier and that were so often reproduced in the newspapers. The way he leaned forward in his seat, his white jacket looked less like an article of clothing he wore and more like some independent object riding his back. A white impression of the kind of man he was (is), a man completely at ease here as he would be anywhere else in the known world, a tortoise-like man carrying his own white country on his back so that wherever he was he felt (and kept) quite comfortable and at home.