Song of the Shank

by Jeffery Renard Allen

  People see me. Even when I cannot feel them. (Will you look after him? Please look after him. Please walk him back to the house. See to it that he doesn’t fall. See to it that he puts on the white suit.) I must be spoken to or touched. I must speak or move. Draw water. Drawing with hands. What is “deep”? How high is “above”? How much space is “wide”? Even there thy left hand shall lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. What is “tall” or “short”? “Ugly” or “beautiful”? Measure. What seeing is. Hot and cold I understand. Hungry and tired. Sleep and awake. They always think I am asleep. What seeing is.

  When I sit down the world stands up. Tom, the man says to me. How does it make you feel to know that all these people are here for you?

  The horses go galloping across the keys. The men pop up from the small spaces between one key and the next. Trenches. Where silence lives. The soft space. The men rush for the edge where they will fall off and die.

  Tom, the man says. What do you know about the Battle of Manassas?

  The cannons roll along too, positioned for firing. I had hot metal in my mouth, under my tongue, and I spoke it.

  I skip to one short key after the next. Toss notes into the air that the world may see and catch. The running men are blown down at the sound. I stand up and take my bow, and the seats stand up with me, hands and voices coming at me.

  Yes, I’ve brought them all here. I’ve brought them all here. With the long and the short keys. Water running down my face.

  The General cuts across the floor with his stabbing canes, a man walking on knives, shanks.

  At church one Sunday, the General slapped a planter. How it happened:

  Boy, what brings you to church today? the planter speaking to me.

  Me speaking back: Many of the first will be last and become a single one.

  The planter laughed. Said: That’s why God protects children, niggers, and the crazy.

  And that’s when the General’s hand found skin. Watch yo mouth, the General said. Don’t you ever mock anything that belongs to me.

  That must be hard to do, the man said.

  No, I said. I like to find things. I am a natural finder of things, I said, words in my mouth. Running through rain. Rain running through me.

  Blind Tom?

  Ain’t no Tom here.

  Me against the floor, against ground. Words like hard, firm, solid. Words like pain. The stabbing canes move the ground along so that the world walks when they walk.

  Eyes put light in the dark. The face is the place from which the voice comes.

  Why do you sing like that?

  A person puts all of his body into his voice.

  I hear the rain sounding upon the fence, clattering on roofs, and on nests where the birds take baths.

  Words like shallow and deep. Hot and cold. I walk wet-footed to the table.

  Lait.

  She pours. At my mouth it enters me in a rush.

  She pours when I say it again.

  Hardly had she settled in her armchair at the window overlooking the garden when she hears a knock on the door. Her skin tingles in quiet panic. Back in the days of the Blind Tom Exhibition the journalists would always speak rapidly, a thousand words a minute, so Sharpe would have to be diligent in answering their questions, making an effort to speak slowly and clearly in complete sentences. But what can her tongue do? Moreover, what reason does she have to believe that the caller is an innocent, only an annoying and innocuous newspaperman wielding words and not a brutal intruder? How long has it been since a journalist has come calling? Since anyone has?

  She doesn’t have to answer. Just keep sitting here, a secret. The pure vulnerability of an open body. Another knock. So the caller knows she’s here. She stands up from her chair, rising with a reluctance that ascends right up to her head. The doorknob mushrooms into her hand. A nigger woman appears in the doorway and stands there looking collected and very intent. Tom’s mother. (Who else?) Eliza feels a heavy uneasiness. Something has happened to this woman’s son and his mother is here to see that Eliza answers for it. Payback.

  Mrs. Bethune.

  She has seen the woman only once before. Then like now she is not bothered by their unalikeness, Tom and his mother. Indeed, they look nothing alike, but unseeing and sighted are two separate categories of existence. The blind look only like themselves.

  The mother steps into the house and two niggers follow her, three intact shapes, Tom himself (Glory!) and one she doesn’t recognize, a mere boy. She is steady under his gaze.

  Mrs. Bethune.

  What does she feel upon seeing Tom? (Glory!)

  The Negress releases her head from the bonnet, rubs the color out of her face, and becomes someone else, half woman, half deception. Tabbs Gross.

  You.

  I brought him, Tom says.

  Then they say nothing for a time, wordless knowledge. The room seems composed of impossible red and yellow hues. And it seems terribly strange to her that she should meet this man now with no anger at all, something quite different in her feelings. This new emotion, whatever it is, sternly demands that she pay no attention to him, pretend nothing has happened—I’m here to take the boy to his mother—no interest or shock, that they share no history. He seems to walk about the room, triumphant, looking and touching, his presence physical and insistent, her attention taken by his sex-changing stunt, a man fluted in a beautiful dress standing in the middle of her room. Then he goes over to examine the piano. Now Tom starts to move. For some time he strides about the room with the unnamed Negro boy following him like a clumsy devoted animal.

  She and Tom let their hands touch. Mr. Gross keeps a respectful distance, his eyes changed with reduced feeling. He seems nervous, even afraid. Then he is speaking, light bright words flying and chirping like birds in the room, busy with claims and proclamations. Here he is talking about the piano. She would have expected Tom to come upon the piano first.

  To where? Where will we go?

  South.

  Why on earth hadn’t she thought of that? Suddenly she is glad to have them here in the country with her, her buried senses unearthed. Remembering (what else?) the beautiful boy in boots—Sharpe—the black leather long and lean. And now Mr. Gross in a dress with boots of his own, dress cupping their length. He is saying something that she can’t hear. She smiles at him, wanting to get over the fact that he had accused her before, that he had taken Tom away from her at a time when she could no longer tolerate the boy’s presence, but he had done it in such a way to imply neglect and cruelty on her part. (She could say to him, I was here when no one else was.) And Tom. (Glory!) Tom who manages to veer away from the boy shadowing him and is now holding her at the elbow, hugging her, touching her hair, Eliza aware of the boy’s protective eyes taking in this moment. Indeed, she is going places that she does not understand. Fine by her. She can’t remain here.

  Tom sits on the floor, his legs spread and his head hanging from his neck like a heavy flower.

  Tabbs squeezes into the last of the petticoats. The dress will come next, cotton smothering his strength, putting male and female together to deny the one and to lie about the other. He had removed shirt, pants, undergarments—layers of events and incidents, taking on new layers, a determined creature, his face immaculately shaved, smooth to the touch, not a trace of hair. And with color at his mouth and cheeks, his face brightly exaggerated by rouge, he actually looks like a woman, a Negress. Now, a touch of perfume. Then the head scarf, the final touch. Earlier, he felt like a chicken standing there naked in the room, sunlight like hot wax unfeathering him. Through no fault of his own he has to relinquish this part of his self, conceal his sex, for the sake of practicality and safety, the closest he can come to a kind of invisibility. Figures the alabasters probably won’t attack him if they think he is a woman. Hopefully, the orphan’s youth will be protection enough for him. (Women and children.)

  I got to dress up too? the boy asks.

  No need. The boy is so thin that his
clothes seem to have made an effort to fit as close as possible to his body so as not to miss his ghostly proportion of skin and bone.

  Mr. Tabbs.

  You can’t call me that. Once we’re out there, no misters.

  Okay, Mr. Tabbs. The boy goes on looking at Tabbs, nodding at some private thought.

  You just remember to keep an eye on Tom.

  You ain’t got to worry about me. I done worked as a navigator befo.

  He will set out again. He must set out again. He sets out again—his choices are his choices—for a country estate on the murky outskirts of the city (the geometry of moving from here to there). His motives for traveling are justifiable. Fill up your horn with oil and be on your way. He will find the Bethune woman, his duty to press on, but his brain runs in the wrong direction, trying to push down, unable to push down, one grisly thought that speeds repeatedly through his head: What if she is gone for good? How then will he get Tom to budge?

  Earlier all evening he kept discovering himself stilled, unable to think. Now he must go directly toward what he fears.

  They move in thick blinks of travel to the main jetty. It will cost you to get there. He will have to negotiate with a captain the price of passage to the city—Yes, ma’m. No, ma’m, five for you each—a cost too much, but he pays it. Eyes flashing beneath his cap, the captain takes Tabbs with one hand at his elbow and the other in the small of his back and helps him down into the slightly wobbling dhow. The boy leads Tom. Four in a dhow, wind smacking the sail, waves thrusting up. The captain proves to be a good ferryman, maneuvering against the strong currents. The dhow seems to glide along of itself, the water awake and rushing now that they’ve decided to take their chances, facing into the wind, feeling the wind, grateful (Tabbs) in fact for the cool salty blowing and flapping, all of the colors you can think of sparkling on the surface of the water, a shock of bouncing brightness, only this flashing substance lying between them and land on the other side, the final crossing. The captain speaks to them calmly in a condescending language, but there is no energy in Tabbs to be angry or insulted. The captain offers them oranges and bananas, which Tom and the boy accept. Eating done, they toss the rinds and peels into the ocean, the captain unspeaking, occupied with the close focus of sea, his hands working in silent rhythm, his eyes glazed with concentration. For the rest of the hour Tabbs watches the captain’s mannerisms along with the (unavoidable) shifting of the sea, Tabbs remotely enjoying the ride, forgetting. Then the ocean changes, starts to break open. The dhow rocks and dips, wood creaking, the sound of nails freeing themselves, water splashing up over the sides, splashing over them, and Tabbs starts to rue the moment, panic in the boy’s face, the boy scooting from one side of the dhow to the other and back again in an effort to avoid the water. Quit that now. Water, get away from me. Now I said quit. I ain’t playin. He reaches as if to grab his knife, until he realizes that it will do little good to cut the water, a thing that can’t be killed. Tom tries to brush and shoo the water away from his person. Tabbs feels dizzy, sick, stupid. Have they come this far, land just up ahead, only for the dhow to disintegrate beneath them, right under their feet, for them all to sink into a place of forgetting, nothingness? For his part Tabbs displays not the least bit of panic—too late for that—hands stiff and calm, keeps his knees parallel to each other beneath his dress, while light bounces off his scarf, tries to remain as calm as the seated captain. Tom stands fully upright, shoulders squared and chin high, in self-assured defiance of the swaying, hands outstretched to balance himself, knowing without the others’ saying that they (Tabbs) are afraid, that all is not well. With gracious ease the captain works the rudder this way and that and regains control of the craft, careful to give Tabbs a look of amends. Or is it something else? Hands moving, he draws the dhow parallel to the quay. Then he just sits there, looking at them, waiting for them to quit his dhow. He does not try to hide his dismay, making it clear that he will not assist them. To his credit, the boy (wobbly) regains his composure enough to climb the stone stairs twenty feet to the pier with Tom directly behind him.

  They walk without hurrying, long slow breaths, although the streets are full of alabasters, alabasters who watch three Negroes go by, the only three, a Negress, a boy, and a blind nigger, Tabbs tense with uncertainty. The air carries to his ear sounds that have no understood meaning. Every window in the city unshut, shades lifted, curtains open. He should shrink down into himself, go back, but he cannot. Despite the heavy petticoats he feels light in his low-cut boots. The boy steers Tom away from any obstacle in his path with a slight tug of the sleeve. Tabbs realizes that they have set a course for the train station, Tom leading the way, walking more sprightly than he and the boy. Who is he that he can do this? Blind Tom can do anything.

  They move in silence, everything suddenly heavy and slowed down, until they reach the train station, shade-filled and muted in color. A strict stillness. Alabasters, their curious watching of Tabbs, Tom, and the boy. Tabbs purchases three fares. (He catches a waver in the eyes in front of him, the alabaster caged inside the ticket booth.) And they take a bench, sit down, and wait, Tom between Tabbs and the boy.

  We’re going to her, Tom says.

  Tabbs’s hand on his shoulder to quiet him, a tenderness.

  The room is so still that Tabbs hears no sounds until he thinks of listening for them, hearing calls of “nigger” and “blind.” The station towering over them so they feel they are within a deep iron well. The roof and walls rattle and shake whenever a locomotive leaves or enters the station. Caged and aging light in this echoing vault. There is no wish in him to step away from this place.

  Tabbs breathes in the forbidden atmosphere. Eyes everywhere. Has his secret been found out? He feels manically awake. Tom blind and the boy eyes wide open, swallowing everything, shank glinting in his boot. Tabbs continues to sit locating himself. Not their train. Two or three more trains are called out. He lets the calls seep into him. The boy’s head is bent down, his lips moving, as if speaking with someone. He opens his eyes when Tabbs touches him on the shoulder.

  Finally, they hear the call.

  Train, Tom says. And already he is up and walking toward the platform, the boy shambling after him. Once again, Tom is leading them—to the proper car. (Blind Tom. Half man, half amazing.) They walk the stretch of the station to reach their compartment, from front to rear, open air on either side of them, Tabbs aware of every sound as the alabasters come and go. What he wants in his life now seems a huge thing.

  Tom pulls himself up into the car and clatters about the almost empty compartment. The boy slides alongside of him and directs him to a seat. Tabbs sits directly behind the two of them, attached instantly to the sounds of the train. The alternatives that surround them. Not too late to turn back. But he understands the complications of removal. This is his whole life right here. No turning back. Soon they are pulling out of the station. Too late to turn back.

  Fire up the engine, Tom says. You will see her.

  Who?

  Her.

  Pulling into speed, above clattering wheels. Motion simultaneous around him. Tabbs nestles back into his seat, watching the boy, his face young and lean and dark, his eyes bright. Encased in the slow-rocking compartment. The train sweeps unhesitatingly into a tunnel, deep space around him. He sees his reflection in dark glass—some woman—and is shuddering in the darkness. This is when it will happen, he thinks, in the impersonality of darkness. But the train comes into daylight, his eyes inches away from the window, receiving the moments of brightly lit trees, water left behind, the city left behind, the train stirring its way up into the light, passing small towns.

  For some time—an hour or more?—Tabbs sits in the slow-rocking compartment and tries to lose touch with the world around him, looking with hope at the boy’s and Tom’s faces every now and again. Then the conductor calls out their station, and Tom rises up out of his seat. Debarked, Tom resumes his frantic push for the Bethune woman’s country house. Spills for
ward without hesitation, his legs running ahead of his speed-shaken body.

  The thrill and terror that get knocked into Tabbs when he sees the house. He wants to say something but can’t, opening and closing his mouth as he takes in the full aspect of the sight blooming up before them, as they draw the house closer to them. The grounds are a jungle. Grass overgrown. Tangles of vines climbing up to the roof so it appears the house has grown hair. Wind banging and loosening a roof tile, trying to unpeel it. And Tom is already banging on the door, the boy twenty feet behind him, unsure what to do next, watching Tabbs, who nods to acknowledge that everything is all right.

  Tom, let me.

  With Tabbs’s concerned hand on his shoulder, Tom steps back to allow Tabbs access to the door.

  He sees her face, unbelieving, baffled. Startled, she backs away. He simply walks into the waiting silence behind her, the politest entry he can make. Enters into stunning emptiness. A room that holds nothing of interest except for a settee and a few chairs made soft by embroidered pillows and antimacassars ready to soak up pomade. The room bright and hot, sun streaming in, revealing all the dust in the air. Tom and the boy follow, and he watches pure surprise (fear) slide into her face. His hands work quickly, removing the dark head covering and the bright coloring from his face, no more need to hide and deny.

  You.

  The whole of her person shaped now into an accusation that drives her confusion into him. There is no wish in him to be here.

  She stares at Tom long and with so much concentration, like a person taking a farewell look. She looks exhausted, face and body drawn out. Tom takes her hand and holds it, caressing it. He moves closer toward her, bringing his excitement. She does not seem able to say anything. Tabbs watches them with far-off curiosity, and so watching, feels himself receding from the scene.

  The room appears to have suffered a flood sometime recently, the walls mildewed with dampness and ocher in color, a far wall taken up by the large pattern of a watermark seeping through from another world, spreading in the shape of stupendous buttocks, the windowsills and the wainscot deeply outlined by dark liquid. Thin white curtains like a thin glaze of water across the windows—light free, light that is not blocked out by the huge oak looming in view outside the window behind Eliza and Tom and extending upward out of sight, a good ten feet above the house itself.