Song of the Shank

by Jeffery Renard Allen

  How many more addresses must he visit? How many more people must he meet? How much more in his quest to bring Tom to the stage? Walking in the street, he did not love the questions of strangers.

  Excuse me, sir. Your nigger looks just like my boy Ned who expired a decade ago.

  Or he heard his name from afar. Mr. Oliver.

  Black buggies beetling to and fro against his crossing. White sails snapping in silence where he strolled along the bank to follow his thoughts, breeze coming off the water. Dark bordered the light’s collusive motion. What was clear in this complicated territory? (A handshake. A certain sigh.) What to guide him through the world other than his unfailing instincts?

  What was keeping Seven? The mute life of an empty house. Perry Oliver whistled a tune he had picked up in the street earlier. Only his effort made the melody sweet. Tom whistled it back to him, sweeter. He leaned forward and ran his hand across Tom’s knuckles. Surprised at the heat of the other’s skin, each knuckle like a warm stone. Tom trembled at his unwanted touch but did not draw away. Perry Oliver cast a concerned glance at the child. So be it. (There is a time for picking up stones, but also a time for throwing them away.) Drew his hand back.

  He tried another tune, humming this time, expecting its attenuated repetition. Once again the thought occurred to him that he would have to hire a knowledgeable musician to show Tom some tunes. A goal he was working on, little by little. (The correct words open, but the wrong words follow.) Nonetheless, he was intrigued at the ease with which he was able to enter an unfamiliar world and learn its customs and language—the random phrase, the odd word—learn who’s who, and what’s what, which authority to approach and which to skirt, this method allowing him to penetrate a little further each day. And even if he was mistaken in his evaluation, gave himself undue credit, it made no difference to the end result. A meeting was scheduled for tomorrow. Several in fact over the next few days. (Those who remain to listen. Those who remain to talk.) Though he could not rid his thoughts completely of the possibility of standstill or failure.

  In this dispirited frame of mind he heard Tom’s voice, no ordinary tone, no ordinary words.

  Permit me to repeat what I have already said invariably in every professional community I have had the honor of entering, that I am not a professional player, that I never wished to make any skill I possess the means of pecuniary advancement, and that my earnest desire is never to play for any stake but honor.

  He could hear every word with singular clarity, but some part of him refused to allow them to register in his mind, neither the sounds nor their meaning. The conflicting feelings began to fuse—the transformative heat of Tom’s skin—causing his waking consciousness to ebb away. More than once he had lived in a house under the belief that it was the high price one paid for isolation, anonymity, and privacy, only to discover shortly after moving in that a stranger would knock on your door to welcome you or simply ring your doorbell out of casual curiosity—Who are you? What do you look like?—or wander up in practical desperation to inquire if he might water his limping horse or exhausted hounds at your well. In fact, a house is an invitation. So he had opted for this small apartment in a multi-unit dwelling, living space he leased from a landlord he never saw, an overdressed nigger, who arrived once a week at a determined time to collect the rent. His means permitted more, but this was all he allowed, all he needed. His entire wardrobe hung on pegs on a coatrack near the door, with hats, harnesses, and whips making a definite silhouette against the gray background of wall. And the few pictures he elected to hang—a watercolor depicting men and mules struggling up a mountain during the California Gold Rush, a vivid oil painting of a bloody war scene from the Mexican conflict, a sketch of George Washington crossing the Potomac—he did for Seven’s amusement. Moving through these few rooms, he felt like a tourist walking through someone’s private collection.

  With practiced hands, Seven placed their simple but ample supper on the table. (The table was their base of operations.) Tom was already digging into it, all ten fingers going. Perry Oliver realized he must have dozed off—at what point?—missing Seven’s return. Took him a minute to take in what he was seeing and to understand that he didn’t like what he saw. Tom rarely received his criticism or chastisement. Why should he? By any measure, it is not fair that the mentally and physically incapacitated and therefore upright and innocent individual should pay for his capable but compromising counterpart.

  Seven, Perry Oliver said, look at him.

  Seven caught Tom’s fingers to slow him down.

  Often Perry Oliver disdained from joining the boys at the table for supper, taking his plate at the window or in his room. But since he was already here, in this firm chair positioned against the hard floor, he might as well. He picked up his fork, the metal shuddering in his fingers.

  They ate their meal in absolute silence. For the third time that evening Perry Oliver put his poor voice into song, but Tom had ears only for the noise he made as he chewed his food, steady and advancing destruction, a greasy graveyard of bones on his plate. Ready for more.

  What do you want, Tom?

  Food.

  Seven gave him more vegetables.

  Perhaps Seven’s appetite had not improved as much as Perry Oliver had supposed. He took slow gradual nourishment, picking at his food, tentative portions, close inspections, like a scientist on an archaeological expedition. Even before he had finished his first plate Tom was ready for a third.

  Would you like some more food, Tom?

  No.

  What then?

  Meat.

  Seven gave Tom another helping of chicken. Tom smiled at the sound of the meat touching his plate. It seemed a happy smile, a deliberate expression of emotion, and perhaps it was. Soon came a request for milk, Tom’s first request every morning, Seven pouring him half a glass, seeing if that would satisfy him, before he gave in and poured a full glass. A simple pattern of back and forth between the boys, of mock protest and playful negotiation. Catching sight of them like this, Perry Oliver remembered Tom’s troubled entry into their apartment and their lives.

  As he had wanted to surprise the boy with their new charge, he had made Seven wait behind in the apartment when he went to retrieve Tom from the station, electing to hail a taxi and relieve Seven of his usual chauffeuring of their carriage drawn by a single black horse. An hour (two?) later, he stepped through the door guiding the blind boy by the hand. Seven was kneeling on the floor, busy with the waxing and polishing of it, his rag whirling over the surface, until all at once it drew still, less in response to Perry Oliver’s return than at Seven’s noticing of two human shadows cast against the shiny floor. He raised his head and turned to look.

  You got your nigger, Perry Oliver said.

  Seven shot back a wide-eyed look Perry Oliver had never witnessed before, as if he didn’t know what to make of the blind nigger standing in their apartment. (Truth be told—yes, he will admit it—neither at first was sure what he was seeing.) Got to his feet and studied Tom with appropriating eyes in the dead silence. With minimum effort, Tom shook free of Perry Oliver’s grip and ambled forward, hands out in front of him, more for the purpose of throwing path-clearing swipes in the air than for guiding touches to avoid potential obstructions. He bumped into the table and continued on, knocking it out of his path as he angled into the farthest corner of the room—why this corner as opposed to another? Perry Oliver still had no answer—next to the open window—the world blowing in, bits of their privacy blowing out—and spun around facing them, his body turned toward the door. Without instruction, Seven had immediately gone over to Tom and tried to take him by the arm. Tom swung. Tom kicked. Seven did not give up, persisted in his efforts, cautious creeping, like a trainer trying to bring a stallion or bull under control. Tom kicked. Tom swung. Perry Oliver didn’t blame him, understanding as he did the economy of fear and self-preservation. (Two modes of fear: actual danger and the avoidance of it.) Tom’s lungs were hard at work
, breath after breath charging in and out.

  Come on, Perry Oliver said. We’ll leave him there until the morning.

  Seven looked at him, doubtful.

  He wondered: Would Tom sleep? Or would hunger and terror keep sleep at bay? And would morning bring an end to his battle? If not, how long could this condition last?

  Over the next few days, Tom had remained in the corner, taking neither food nor water, and standing on two feet the entire time, no easing up, never once lowering his body to the floor, at least in their presence. (How many nights did it take for Tom to give in? Could Perry Oliver trust his memory?) Without warning or reason he would take a few steps forward, only to stop, as if he had suddenly lost all notion of the place where he had found himself. They maintained a careful distance from across the room, hearing Tom’s body give off murmuring surges every now and then, low noises that gradually lengthened into a continual droning—on and on—that was a bit soothing once you fell under its repetitive spell, and observing—creatures at a further remove from man—gross disturbances of this same body, strange shivers of the neck and ear and head, and motor discharges of the shoulders and feet, at almost calculated intervals.

  Be still, you dinge, Seven said.

  Shut up, Perry Oliver said.

  Were these the tactile and general sensations his muscles and skin had preserved in the long journey from Hundred Gates? Exactly how much of Hundred Gates remained in his memory, wherever memory is stored? (What does a nigger carry with him?) No easy answers, for whatever his concerns or protestations they were confined to the dumb machine of his flesh. Easy to be fooled by this fact. How well Perry Oliver knew that words are not the only way of expressing or distilling emotions.

  Seven seemed to have his own questions, the distance, the resistance, the reservations all behavior he seemed both unaccustomed to and unprepared for. (The battle was taking its toll on them both.) Far be it from Seven to give an unwelcome impression, but Tom incurred his suspicions, his first doubt Tom’s blindness. Within minutes of Tom’s being in the apartment and firmly ensconced in the corner, he spoke his first words to him. Hey, don’t look cross-eyed at me like that.

  He’s not cross-eyed, Perry Oliver had said. He’s blind.

  This explanation did not satisfy the boy. In those initial days and weeks, Seven would hold out two fingers before Tom’s face or wave both hands at him from across the room as if to lure him into the light that way. (Indeed, Tom’s blindness seemed to possess a particularity all its own. Something Perry Oliver couldn’t put his finger on even as he became more and more accustomed to it. Eyes completely shut most of the time, but partially open on other occasions. Involuntarily turning in one direction or another. Or glistening with tears. Nothing like what Perry Oliver imagined blindness to be, nothing like the image of the affliction floating—two dark islands—for so long in his mind. Blindness is in the first place something felt, and as a feeling it is of most obviously unpleasurable character, not that this is a complete description of its quality. Though they have lived together and worked closely for this extended period of time—how long has it been? nine months? a year?—and he felt that he knew Tom as well as anyone might, he was far from in a position to explain the boy.) Seven also began to scrutinize Tom with a disapproving air, frowning, mumbling curses, crossing his eyes, once a foul odor began emanating from the corner that the chance breeze coming through the open window would carry to even the most remote areas of the apartment, the smell of sweat, urine, and feces collecting at Tom’s feet where Seven’s rag and polish usually fell.

  It was asking much. The boy found himself obligated to clean up waste spilling from another whose name he still did not know. For his part, Perry Oliver had forgotten to pass on certain facts to the boy—Tom. Seven, his name is Tom—taken up as he was (no intention, no deliberation) with the immediate exigencies of Tom’s physical presence, his being there, although it was also true that both before Tom’s arrival and after, he and Seven had rarely breathed a word to each other unless some matter of Seven’s duties or instruction needed addressing. Bottom line, Seven would wipe up the shit and piss, and he would do so grudgingly, his anger and disgust offset by the incontrovertible fact that they finally had a nigger in their possession. You got your nigger. Perry Oliver feared that a far greater challenge would be his getting the boy to understand the true purpose Tom should (would) serve in their lives.

  One evening, Tom had dropped into the waste he had created and remained seated there, Perry Oliver knowing that the boy could hold out no longer from food but also fearing he would not be able to eat, that after so many days, hunger had possibly settled like a weight that might permanently keep him to the floor. Seven prepared victuals and drink, and Tom, weakened, took his first meal there in the corner, Seven feeding it to him one bite at a time, taking care to keep safe distance between his fingers and Tom’s teeth. (What did the repast consist of? Yams—yes—three or four miniature plump and naked women lying on his plate. And slimmer strips of bacon.) Several hours later, Perry Oliver instructed Seven to leave Tom’s next meal on the table. Tom would have to come and take the plate if he wanted to eat. He did. Came and took it back to his corner. Then for the third meal Perry Oliver went even further. Tom would have to sit down and eat at the table. Another battle ensued, Tom resisting, even though his stubbornness meant that he would go hungry. But once he took his first meal seated at the table, Perry Oliver believed the full exercise of his control was soon to come, a matter of hours rather than days. Strategizing, he would allow Tom to carry a plate back to his corner for one meal, only to deny him this privilege at another. From his corner how eagerly Tom’s face—nose—followed the steaming food, from the place where it was taken, to the exact spot where it was set down on the table. His mouth would open, his teeth and tongue would move, then a flash of white bone, a trickle of saliva, his muscles and organs rehearsing the act of consumption. Along with this anticipation, he would speak a single perplexing sentence, the only words Perry Oliver could recall hearing issue from his mouth in those first days and weeks. My taste gets worse every day. Perry Oliver has never been able to figure out if it was the table Tom was resisting or the food itself, or some combination of the two, refusing one on a given day and the other on another. And what exactly was the nature of this resistance, conscious revolt or some form of muscular denial? Which would be the easier of the two to defeat? Would body eventually overcome the obstinate resistance of his mind, or vice versa?

  Seven seemed far more capable of winning Tom to the table. After the first taste of food and water, a slow and gradual erasing of distance, signs of increasing and mutual trust, Tom permitting Seven to come closer and even closer still, to take his hand, lead him to a chair, seat him and put a fork between his fingers, indicating that it was now okay for him to begin tackling his plate. What had been unusual only a few days earlier assumed the character of normality, Seven masking his mouth and nose with a handkerchief before kneeling down in the most rudimentary way to clean up Tom’s waste, then thoroughly scrubbing his charge’s arms up to the elbows until finally he felt obliged to happily seat himself beside Tom, a warmth that Tom seemed to return, the black contours of the one face not unlike the lighter contours of the other. Their eating a noisy and spirited ritual, a touching of elbows in the working of fork and knife, a knocking of knees beneath the wood.

  Perry Oliver could scarcely believe Seven’s generosity. He could remember precisely the moment following one meal when Seven, clearing away the soiled plates, carrying them over to the sink, was heard to mutter with back turned, Our Tom.

  I didn’t buy him for you, Perry Oliver said.

  Seven stopped in the middle of the room and turned his head to look at Perry Oliver over his shoulder, his body seemingly paralyzed with an odd stiffness.

  In fact, I didn’t buy him at all.

  Seven looked at Perry Oliver for a moment longer with blank attention then, changing up, began observing him with a relaxed
astonishing ease that startled Perry Oliver. Composure recovered, Seven took a seat next to Tom at the table. (Perhaps they meant far more to each other than Perry Oliver had been—and is still?—willing to admit.) Perry Oliver took some time to explain why Tom was here.

  He’s the General’s nigger?

  Yes.

  We are serving under the General?

  Perry Oliver had never thought about it that way. How had he thought about it? And had his feelings changed with the passage of time? In fact, as he looked at the table attempting to summon up the correct sequence of events that had brought Tom to his present station in their lives—of course, the larger it, the past, is never whole, never totally retrievable once the actual events solely exist in the reduced confines of memory; if only his cheap pocket watch could magically wind (skip) backward and return him to the far-off scene; the world awaits a capable invention—he realized that he had left out one important detail—that moment when water first touched Tom’s skin. Logic if not the far less objective demands of comfort and decency had required that Seven bathe Tom right there in the corner before he escorted his charge to the first defining meal at the table, otherwise both Tom’s appalling odor and equally appalling appearance—after days of neglect, the boy’s hair was a piecemeal mess, resembling a hastily constructed bird’s nest; as well, brown stains ran in stripe-like patterns down from the seat of his pants to both ankles—would have been too much of an affront. Indeed, Perry Oliver’s timing was off—inevitable lapses and alterations, forgetting the B preceding C—but one thing he knew for certain was this. Once it had become clear to Seven that Tom was willing to take his meal at the table, he had taken it upon himself to forestall Tom’s hunger until he could properly clean up. The usual industriousness opening out of him. He secured his handkerchief around his face and with both hands lugged a pail brimming with cold water over to the corner—he dare not drag it across the floor—set it down before Tom, then proceeded to remove and bundle up the soiled clothing, and scrub and clean him right there in the corner. (Surprisingly, Tom did not shudder at the first slap of cold water against his skin nor flinch at the abrasive knot of soap.) He toweled Tom dry and helped him into fresh clothes. His charge done over, Seven carefully secured the towel around the bundle of clothing, isolated these items from the other laundry, emptied the dirty water, and returned with a fresh pail of clean water to clean the corner. Wall and floor restored. He was now free to feed Tom, his frail pail having claimed both the filth darkening in the corner and the filth clinging to Tom’s skin. Good details to forget.