Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

His hands came flickering up through the light, like dark moths, as if they would tell her something. They didn’t.

She told him, If I could have a word.

Put one question after the next to him. He told her nothing. But she had better say the words while she could. No intention to speak them ever again. (Too hard with words.) Truth to tell, weren’t the questions a form of avoidance? What she had been moving along to in her mind was this: What will I do with the boy? But she was too balled up with comforting him — mothering? — to think past this moment. (The future sensed beneath the present.) What would come later she could think about later. The last thing she wanted to do was think, acknowledge the sum of what was, Sharpe, her marriage. Could she have changed the outcome had she accompanied them to the concert?

Separate from Tom, the piano looked like something foreign, something that didn’t belong, a sea creature washed up onto a beach. She remembered herself. Thought about the trapped bones of her own body. In the months to come, she would have plenty of time to weigh both her suffering and her hatred, for wishing damnation upon the sea. (There to remind her, the city’s sins resurfacing in the water, never under for long.) Right here, right now, she was content, taken with the strangely tangible impression that something had come to an end. She could feel it in her face. Knew that she and Tom were either at the start or finish of a life. Eliza and Tom, new to each other.

Tom sits at the piano in postsupper stupor amid long shadows in the gathering dusk, tugging at his belt, trying to wrestle his waist in place, a body slumping at the edges, slowly losing the pattern of its own dimensions.

The windows glitter with faint fluorescent shapes, lines of fading sunlight shimmering on the walls like the red strings of a guitar. The piano holds the sunset’s color. She hears light drumming on the keys now, like shells rattling in a boiling pot. Thousands of tiny tinkling hollow echoes. The boats seem to move in time to the music, at the mercy of the rise and fall of Tom’s hands. They continue their forward advance, moving farther and farther away until they are about to fade from view, an ever-widening wake, but they will never arrive, reach their destination, caught, under Tom’s control. Must slumber a new course. That sonata he is playing, each controlling finger made to lift alone. She listens with inward breath to the way he pushes deeper into the keys, so many notes overlapping in this room, so that no note ever sounds alone.

For a long time she goes on listening. He will play the entire night. (Let him, as long as Mr. Hub brings her no complaints from the neighbors.) Watching him, she feels as if the flow of Time is slowing down little by little. She strikes a match, igniting wet wicks, the lamps humming, coating the room with their expected flush.

Toward the end of one afternoon a week later, Mr. Hub comes for the return of his tallow candle. The missus sends me. How had she forgotten, even with his almost daily appearances at her door? The bell pulls and she opens it to find two fresh bottles of goat’s milk sitting outside the door, like mushrooms that have sprouted up through the floorboards. In his darned coat and scuffed shoes, and bearing about him a smell of lye and ammonia, Mr. Hub runs errands, sees that her deliveries are sent, and receives her mail, what little there is, from the postmaster. He has a real talent for the execution of such practical duties, never complains and will consent to any request without argument, grateful for the small fees he receives, these supplements to his meager caretaker’s salary. Standing in her doorway with a happy face, the gay animated expression of someone with fascinating things to relate, although he never reports matters of consequence. She listens with keen indifference, in no hurry to deepen her relationship with him. In fact, she senses a kind of uncertainty in him. Exactly what she can’t say, but it comes every now and then in his words or actions. She might ask him something (I don’t believe I thanked you for touching up) and a single breath will intervene before he answers (I’m not deserving), just the slightest hesitation, but in that split-second interval she senses a kind of shadow of menace or distrust.

So kind of you to do it while we were away, sparing us the inconvenience.

It wasn’t up to me, Mr. Hub says, no change in expression. A man was in your apartment.

She heard him. Had she heard him?

I was making my rounds. And I saw that the door was open. Just a pinch. You could have missed it. He was sitting on the couch like the most natural thing in the world. Gave me the scare of my life.

She waits for him to speak, waits to hear his words.

I supposed him an apparition or God knows what. But he was nothing as terrible as that. Just a colored. All dandyed up. Imagine.

She tries to.

Never thought I would set eyes on another one. Here , at least. Not in this city.

Already she is flipping through a mental index of her past acquaintances, remembered and forgotten. Could he— a colored —be someone from her past life, from the Asylum?

He didn’t bother to hide. Just sitting there, like the most natural thing in the world.

She wonders what kind of man this is who would brave the dangers of the city alone. What did he want?

Mr. Hub draws his lips slightly to one side. Your guess is as good as mine. But you can bet money, he would have robbed you blind had I not chased him away. I keep my hammer on my person. He shows it to her then returns it to his coat pocket.

Did he say anything?

Just some gibberish, trying to talk his way free. He asked for you.

For me?

He asked your whereabouts. I’m sure he took your name from the bell. He knows his alphabet, that’s for sure.

And nothing else?

He tried to hand me something, but I didn’t let the wool slip. Mr. Hub shows his hammer. Yes, he was a slick one.

What was it?

I barely looked. I figure, why stand for more lies? Given an ear, he might claim your relation. The king of England. God knows what.

The same intruder, she thinks. From the country. What can she do besides listen? A foreign body had entered their home, their space. What if anything left behind? What if anything changed?

A lot of courage that one. Mr. Hub shakes his head in disbelief, a rush of wind streaming between his teeth. You have to admit. To come here. He deserves a medal. Or maybe he’s just plain stupid, or simple. Touched.

She hears herself utter some reply.

Would you believe, there was a second one out front waiting for him? The driver. Not dressed up like the first, but I didn’t get such a good look.

Eliza has no words.

Sorry to upset you, ma’m. I had hoped to save you the trouble of worrying over it. Nothing is missing?

No.

He had mud on his feet. I thought to take every precaution. So the lock was changed, Mr. Hub says, as if this were all logically consistent. One of those gestures perhaps offered in the sure expectation that she would take comfort in it.

After mutual good wishes, Mr. Hub strides away, leaving her with the weight of words, her ears retaining their living sound. Two men, colored, her name in the mouth of one, the thing offered, mud on the feet: she had heard it all, and now comes the realization: Mr. Hub had talked his way around her question. She still doesn’t know what prompted him to paint her apartment.

Each thing accounted for — checks again — but Mr. Hub has unsettled what she thought was settled, shaken her belief in anonymity, that there’s no one in the city with a passing thought for her. The building big enough that no neighbor is near and all acquaintances are vague. Eliza a familiar face in the hallway or on the stairwell or on the street (those rare occasions), passing under a street sign, already gone, a woman without name or connections, or a woman who was only a name. Mrs. Bethune. Apartment 5B. Where the piano music comes from. As far as she knows, they assume that she is the pianist. Whatever their assumptions, she is uneasily conscious of her neighbors. More so now. (Yes, on Monday — think about it — there was someone leaning in the shadows, watching.) Who has she seen this week other than Mr. Hub? And how many of her neighbors have caught a glimpse of Tom in the past three years? Before the violence, every resident in the building knew Tom; half of them were Negro and for that reason took pride in the proximity; but who among the present neighbors — white, all of them white — can place him here, in apartment 5B?