Song of the Shank

by Jeffery Renard Allen

  The notes lower to a comfortable audibility, reviving the light, that stub of redness reaching through the glass, sea burned by setting sun. Eliza hears the song breaking in his hands. Two-fisted snatching at the keys, rebel green thumb ripping up roots from earth. Elbows sliding along horizontal, a straight track from left to right, right to left, the arms agile, the fingers quick. Skipping from short rows of black to long rows of white. Pulling air to the bottom of himself before letting it go. Mouth opening and closing, counting so that nothing is left out, inhaling and exhaling his little triumphs. Bench sagging some—yes—but bearing the full weight of his efforts. The shape appropriate to what comes out of him. That sound. (Making.) Arms, hands, fingers sensing the weight of water. An invitation. Anything you want. Anyplace you want to go. The sea closer by every step on land. But silence marks a stopping point. The pleasure in looking ruined. Horizon gone. Vanished. Edgemere where the world ends, every time.

  The island demands contemplation. Extra. More. A bright world lost at sea. Each day, year after year, the surface strikes Eliza as new and she is refreshed by it. Could it be that ocean flows from isle, from this rocky flipped-over bowl spilling out flow, wet nourishment for all the world? Should it flip in reverse, hollow side up, the world will run dry, drained water pooled at inexhaustible island bottom. How big, how deep. Edgemere a world deeper and ampler than anything here on the mainland. City and anti-city, island and anti-island, place and anti-place, water and its negation. Once again she wonders (in her best moments, on the verge of logic, a humming coming from the corners of consciousness) if she and Tom should venture there. Across the watery wilderness. A clean start. (Get clean of him.) Escape on (in) her mind—she observes from a distance, images more so than words playing across a black screen at the front of her skull—if not on her tongue. Thinks the action, sees it even. Edgemere the city’s great unknown, dark space of silent speculation set between her and any magical possibility of relocation. Eliza thinking about flight again as she used to in the concert days, Sharpe off freely roaming the world with Tom and Warhurst—tour means gone, see you later, my heart, my love—and she left alone, here, with herself, feeling like an outsider in her (their) own apartment. (Room and its evident lack.)

  As the one who had stayed put, stayed at home, excluded from the joys and sadnesses abroad, whatever they were, only fair that she somehow be part, one of the sojourning band (birds of a feather) from a distance, so that the word overseas could appear in her vocabulary as it did in Sharpe’s. Rumor the method of passage, the Blind Tom Exhibition surfacing out of anything anyone had to tell from flat paper. Not that those distant reports ever satisfied her for long. Words slipping away, a sentence breaking, at a dead end, and Eliza feeling short-changed, starting to taste extinction, words working against her. To come out seeming solid even if empty, she found it necessary to console herself with communications put down in a clear hand—the store of fine blue-colored lavender-scented paper Sharpe had brought her from Provence, the gold stylus with the silver nib he had brought her from Marathon, the marble well filled with deep blue ink he had brought her from the Adriatic—

  Dearest Husband,

  What shall I do with Monte Cristo? I’ve abridged my reading of it until it resembles someone suffering from typhus. The first part—until the Count becomes rich—is very interesting and well written, but the second, with few exceptions, is unbearable since Monte Cristo performs and speaks inflated nonsense. But on the whole the novel is quite effective. Please send your recommendations.

  —blue ink staining her fingers whenever the need arose (whatever the time of day), when she thought it would do the most good, transport her. Fingers, wrists, eyes, back straining to yield justification. Counted on, his missives told her little, a short blocky paragraph or two that it behooved him to say and that provided nothing useful, that left her dispirited—counted out—even if she was grateful for any little crumb, not having voyaged herself.

  Until the day Sharpe would come bounding through the door, bright as an actor onstage, still enjoying his free range of the world. He, Warhurst, Tom each in a suspicious state of freshness, despite months of travel. Sharpe would pull her forcefully into his chest and kiss her, her body pressed so tightly to his that she would have difficulty breathing. Would hold her at arm’s distance—Eliza (always) conscious of their difference in height—look her over, but her eyes would stay firm, looking dead at him, for to trust him implicitly would have been a mistake. (The tour was never finished. Years coming and going.)

  And so Sharpe would start putting down on the table the first of many gifts. Sugar and spice. (Curry, cardamom, cinnamon.) Coffee from Arabia. (Plentiful in Paris.) And he would be talking, as if she had been waiting there weeks months in suspense for him to bring back a report from his travels. In the parlor—she sees it now—he sits down, stretches his legs out, long narrow boots crossed at the ankles, laughs. He seems content, at home with himself. He is. The liberties he takes, allows his person. She looks up, looks down, looks at him and looks away. Warhurst a far better study in avoidance, fixed in place beside Tom at the piano, down-turned eyes, hair combed into obedience. Coachman brings in the first of the luggage, a trunk as tall as short as he is and too heavy for him to lift. Why he drags it behind him like a corpse. He gives off the edible smell of fresh-turned dirt.

  Missus. He smiles, gone in the teeth. Bows, the top hat spilling forward like a toppled tower.

  Offering to assist the midget, Warhurst leaves when the midget leaves. With only Tom there, Eliza takes the opportunity to ask Sharpe why he has been away for so long, and walks right past him without waiting for an answer.

  Alone in the bedroom she takes a few moments to collect herself before she returns, returns only to find Sharpe gone.

  Testing Tom, she touches him on the shoulder. Who knows if he misses her in the least. Nothing from him. Not a handshake or hello.

  How about a hug, Tom?

  Any reason he should press his thin arm against hers? Chomping at the bit, ready to sit on the bench. Any reason she should stop him? Doesn’t. Already he is in position. Already his face is glassed over with music.

  Coachman, Warhurst, and Sharpe come in with the last of the luggage. (Who actually says it?) Sharpe needs to go out again. After all the traveling (ships), he has to take his legs for a walk.

  A turn or two in the park, a lazy float in a gondola along the canals. Eliza wrapped in a layer of self-consciousness, refusing to let herself be carried away from any impulse of happiness. She doesn’t let his name pass her lips. No words in fact. Just nods her head yes or no without further elaboration. Means to have no intimate talk. Must keep her pride and not cross certain lines. For his part, Sharpe refrains from pressing her. Doesn’t ask “How’ve you been?” or “How have you kept busy?”—concerns best left alone. A wound he understands he must smile through.

  Hambone Hambone where you been?

  Around the world and back again

  Presents her with more gifts from abroad—ivory combs, ebony bangles, pearl necklaces, mahogany bracelets—but neither his words nor his hands touch her, Eliza determined not to let herself slide into nostalgia and forget the real man in front of her. But nothing really goes away. Every return is just that. Feeling much more than she was able to feel while he was away. What she can do with her back facing him: tear up, spill over, wipe her face with the new lace handkerchief just given her. What she can do afterward: for the first time look directly into his face. Quick to look away, but he’s seen her, though, in that one brief moment, has seen her face change. Starts moving with all the confidence of a man who has triumphed, her resistance not an issue.

  Why slip into bedclothes only to slip out of them? (The force of routine.) Is it that a gown seals Hope in—Stay. He will stay—just like those silk lamp shades (overdressed paramours) that bowl as much light as they release? He bends to take off socks and shoes, while recounting the story of Tom and Morphy. (Who knew that Tom could play ches
s?) It sounds so good and perfect when he tells it, smooth and ideal.

  She settles between white sheets and quilts. Does not stir, afraid of what she might set loose. When he closes in, she evades him by fingering the ruffled collar of her gown. His mouth stuffed still with Tom and Morphy. The small senseless words she can offer in reply, not at hand (lack) the full range she needs to speak to him. (Who knew that Morphy could play the piano?) He bends his reaches around her and she orders herself to wait. If he is the ladder to pleasure, she should not climb. She takes his tongue, putting an end to denial. Holding herself before he enters her with a tenderness she could not expect. Fitting in, his I love yous, trying to fill the hole created by absence, distance, separation. Shaking the two of them, some of the sweat on her body his and some of the sweat on his body hers, the best part of marriage, warming up a foot of air above and beneath them, fucking when what they need is sleep, arms and legs moving through it, since what divides her from him will never close.

  For weeks after she bears him, unbears him. Two minds to leave, one to stay. His being here a time of plenty that she knows will end. A month or two. Squirrel-like, hoarding away words and pictures behind her eyes before she feels him from behind placing the softest line of kisses down her back, a wet trail over her spine. And out the door again. Gone.

  Each key has its say. Notes rising in three dimensions around and about her. Reflections rattling against glass where moon bends through. The hours swaying above water. Edgemere rocks as never before, drawing closer to shore. The air, the light, the sounds different.

  She draws back her gaze, looking away from so much water, satisfied to let the disrupting tumult of Tom’s notes throw her head clear, free her from wandering in that space between memory and Mr. Hub’s report about the two intruders. A man here. A Negro. Something at the edge of all this. Layers/levels of sound sliding together like stacked plates. Tom, spine arched, face tilted up at her, muddy with feeling. Sweat popping from his pores as if from some inner struggle he is going through, organs caught in the open. Reddish sediment collecting around the legs of the piano. Rising. Not a speck of kindness in his face for her.

  Seeing the grievance in his face, thoughts that would have shamed her on other days come with surprising ease. Get clean of Tom—why not? Edgemere looming, expectant, glistening beneath a layer of moonlight—correct this disharmony of fate, a black possibility that gushes into bright night sky. (Night can find color.) Hasn’t she already done enough? Keeping him safe, protecting him from the city, keeping him nourished and clean, shutting herself up like this, watching hands for three years. (How long?) Is this what she deserves? Is this what she’ll do, watch hands for the rest of her life? Hands cooking cleaning playing praying fanning patting slapping rubbing or caressing her whole life. Tom her inheritance, with her perpetually in this city, this apartment. Consider other avenues, compromises that might be struck. Deliver him to Edgemere where he can be with his own kind. Letting herself think it for the first time. Afraid of being discovered in her feelings. But he can’t survive another upset—she’s sure—another relocation. Besides, he has earned the right to stay. Something to be said for dying quietly, for disappearing, a victory of a kind that has earned Tom the right to be here, in the city, for as long as the hours, the days permit. Them here until she can tell herself different.

  She does not think of Tom as having desires other than those demanded by the way they live. How might Tom describe himself? (Occurs to her to wonder.) Is she promising something not hers to keep? They live reasonably well—she gets something half-right at least—their life neither complicated nor tragic. But what does Tom want? Narrow choices seem natural. Certain patterns of thought so simple and one-sided they become irresistible. You imagine you are Tom and ascribe your own thoughts to him. What does Tom think about her? How does he feel? (Wishes known and unknown. Where the heart is. Hidden beneath ribs curving around stomach and chest.) Clearly much affection but something else too, as if he is holding her up to something. She worries that she comes out lacking in his estimation.

  The melody winds down. Sparser range. Softer scales. She tries to speak. Voice catches and the song ends. She knows exactly what Tom has in mind. (Why does a body want to be entered or embraced?) Getting him to bed will be torture. No point in insisting. She sneaks away from the chords, leaving Tom where he sits, in the shimmering distance behind her, his gold-headed cane hissing at her from its place in the corner when she passes.

  She wakes some mornings, mouth gummy, eyes filmed over with sleep, legs feeling weary and leaden, a drug-like sluggishness throughout her body, and expects to find Sharpe in the parlor. But only in death is he completely available to her—as he was not in life—moving (contained) in a certain part of her mind. Eliza free to forget or to remember, thinking about him sometimes merely for the purpose of distraction, a buzz or dim ache that seems to carry toward the past.

  What exactly has kept her from feeling more about her loss? (What plunges in the heart and is gone.) Her anger to help this thing (longing, grief) along. The passage of time putting an edge on her remorse, making her sense of independence, freedom, sharper. His broken appearances, migratory passings to and fro, rehearsals preparing her for the final sending off. So once she decided he was gone for good—three months? four?—she packed up his entire wardrobe, along with Warhurst’s—ten crates filled—and had Mr. Hub transport them to the Municipal Almshouse and the city’s other poorhouses and hospitals. She allowed Dr. Hollister to rummage through piles of souvenirs and mementos that had collected over the years and decide as he saw fit what should be put up for auction and what should be saved for posterity, these few items stored away in a single trunk that History will (might) want to know about the “Blind Tom Exhibition.”

  Loaves of bread line the counter like closed coffins. Heavy pitchers filled with water and milk rising like mausoleums from the table. Basins covered over with big towels. Five ripe apples on a clean plate. Twelve porgies fried on a platter, mouths open, awed by air. She examines the blade of the knife and at that exact moment Tom enters the kitchen.

  Miss Eliza, he says. Might I suggest we—then the words go wrong in midsentence.

  He talks nonstop for more than an hour, words flying from his mouth like directionless bats, a mishmash of centerless verbiage, bottomless sound taking over her skin. Recitations from his stage days—Half Man, Half Amazing—voices within voices, a second, low and calm, that rises and separates itself from the main, then a higher third. Entire passages of one oration, snatches of another, the words lilting, sentences curling up and breaking off at the ends. Mouthed so rapidly at times that the words lose all sense.

  What’s driving him into language? What is it exactly that comes back to find a tongue?

  He stops as suddenly as he started and stands quietly before her, expecting her to say something—ah, she knows what he is thinking: she must be impressed, she must be astonished—his hands open in front of him as if he wants to be ready to catch her first words should she decide to speak, but she is feeling vague inside, not knowing what to say and wondering whether she has any moisture left in her mouth for framing it.

  He takes her hand in his—the right palm, wet and greasy with fish—and leads her to the piano. (Not the objects themselves but the way to arrive at them.) Sits down, fingers flexing and finding themselves. (Idle hands, the devil’s playthings.) His notes are so thrilling, and his execution so perfect and so startling as to amuse every listener. The piano itself seems gifted, and sends forth in reverberation, praises, as it were, to Blind Tom. Blind Tom is the Temple wherein music dwells.

  He jerks her sideways with his always-perfect timing. Pulls her into his chest, close enough for his hammering heart to break her resistance. Pieces their forms back together in a harsh rhythm. A dance. (What he wants.) Tom free and light, enjoying his own movements.

  And that’s only the beginning. He spends the next day, sunup to sundown, running frantically about the apartment, th
rowing his legs out with aggressive confidence, his arms in the air, providing the gravity needed for country to gutter out of him in two flowing streams of sweat. And the day after that, he pursues her from one chamber to the next.

  Run, Miss Eliza. I got you, Miss Eliza. These are some fast legs, Miss Eliza. Speeding along like an afternoon breeze. Room emptying into room. And Tom on her heels. How remarkable it is to be able to do that. Whether he catches her or whether she wins.

  So it is. Back to his old self. All of his previous (summer) vigor regained. Joyful. Small chuckles converted into big laughs. Ridiculously happy. A long string of fabulous happenings. Eliza at first unable to appreciate the value of these new pleasures—the laughter has a cruel strain of its own—but with what predictability she eventually gives in.