Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

Now, if you gentlemen would be good enough to sign. General Bethune, it is only right that you should subscribe yourself first. The lawyer repositioned the stack of banknotes just enough to make room for the contract and the bill of sale, then offered General Bethune a fine-bladed pen. General Bethune took the pen, signed one (Tabbs’s) and its duplicate then signed the other (his) and its duplicate. Joy caged in his throat, Tabbs could hardly believe what he saw. (He paused to breathe.) It was as he wanted it.

And now you, Mr. Gross.

Tabbs accepted the pen and signed all four documents as quickly as he could. Then he looked up. The banknotes remained on the table.

Congratulations to you both, gentlemen.

General Bethune extended his hand out to Tabbs across the table. Tabbs accepted it — a touch he would decline — with his own, and they shook, as men should, but they did not simply shake once or twice and cease. General Bethune continued to move Tabbs’s hand — a fish trying to free itself, no luck this time — with his firm fearless grip, strong bones, pressing so hard that Tabbs felt the blood drain from his fingertips. Only then did he let go, release the other.

One difficulty remains, the lawyer said. That of settling on a pattern and date for the transfer of Tom into your custody, Mr. Gross.

Allow me to put forth a schedule, General Bethune said. He spoke for ten minutes without pause, providing a thorough explanation for why he would need a full week to hand over Tom — Tom must finish out his schedule; the professionals (Warhurst, Dr. Hollister, Reverend Frye) will need time to elucidate it all to the boy; the boy should be granted a final gathering with his kin — even as Tom was only a short distance, a few minutes away, presently in town for a concert. Tabbs took this verbiage to be a measure of the General’s own seriousness. Or so he felt he must (wanted to, did) interpret it. (How else understand it?) Then too, the General’s facts appeared reasonable. Perhaps General Bethune was a better man than Tabbs thought, better than himself in many ways.

One week from today, here at my office, and shall we say at this very same hour? the lawyer asked. Mr. Gross, are you in agreement with such designation as the appointed date?

I am, Tabbs said.

We fend accord.

Should we drink a toast? General Bethune asked.

Yes.

General Bethune nodded at the servant standing in the corner, who hurried over to a small cupboard at the opposite back corner of the room, her scarf zipping behind her like a black flag. She lifted up a silver tray holding a crystal decanter and several crystal glasses, and carried the tray over to the table. With one hand steadily holding the tray, she proceeded to pour and set down before each man a glass of whiskey, working her way around the table from General Bethune to Tabbs. General Bethune raised his glass, the other men following his lead, and all drank a toast.

The liquor warmed and brightened Tabbs like a light that wouldn’t stop going through him.

I hope you are pleased, Mr. Gross.

Yes, sir.

Just like that, only the two of them, Tabbs and the General, were in the room, a bare exchange, the other men invisible even as they were physically present.

I hope I have not disappointed you, General Bethune said, a man in mourning fumbling for words. At first I suffered resentment. However, I quickly realized that I should have no reason to be upset with you, for you are only performing your perceived duty to that world which you believe in and that you believe to be true. I fully understand your motives. Why then is it I feel the lesser man in this transaction?

Tabbs knows now but did not know then the duplicitous courtesy with which General Bethune was speaking to him. In his vanity, he had lost sight of danger, the trap already set.

Sir, Tabbs said, if anyone is the lesser, it is me. Why not say it, throw the General a bone or two? Tabbs had much ahead. What more could the General ask for, require? He should count his blessings, reaping gain for all these years to the benefit of no one — it helped no one — other than himself. Tabbs powerless to correct this man’s past even if he wanted to. When he quits the room the lights will gutter out. From now on the world will remember General James Neil Bethune as a man who could have but did not and will come to know Tabbs Gross as a man of vision and will who did.

On the appointed day, he rushed out into the street, the city solid and real about him, daylight twisting in his eyes. Hurrying to meet the moment when he would board a ferry and cross waters to Tom. With Tom— Blind Tom —his story would (will) begin in earnest.

Tom, why do you play Bach?

I prefer to live by that which I know.

In only a few short hours. Hurrying to meet that moment — I will be early, count on it — because they had kept him waiting, the promised delivery deferred, pushed back until today. Two days since he had answered a caller at his door, opened it — the bolt loud, the hinges louder — to find the lawyer, Mr. Geryon, standing there leather satchel in hand. Stunned at this unexpected arrival, all he could do to exchange the most obligatory greetings and gestures. The lawyer had stepped inside after waiting patiently for Tabbs (stunned) to make the offer, removed his hat, and sat himself in the first seat he came upon, then proceeded to remove a sealed envelope from his satchel and hand it to Tabbs, who took it, confused, his frame of mind all the worse because he was still thinking about, pondering, certain facts and speculations he had just been reading about in the newspaper. Tom— across the river —had finished his extended run at the town hall. Naturally, the journal had given high marks to Tom’s closing recital at town hall — the Negro press can’t hymn his praises enough — but it also issued more reports (rumors) about a continuing and steady decline in General Bethune’s physical well-being and the vanquishing of his professional and financial holdings, the cause for the latter: every dollar earned from both the General’s press and Tom’s concerts and publications went into the Confederate war chest. Tabbs had already grown numb to such pronouncements. What truly caught his interest was the photograph accompanying the story. Tom seated on a stool at his piano with the General posed behind him, one hand in paternal rest on the boy’s shoulder. In the photograph General Bethune did not come across as a man on his last leg, a man who was suffering daily ruin and facing an early grave. He still possessed that big-eyed look of desire, hunger, and expectation that Tabbs recollected from their two meetings. When had they sat for the photograph? How recently?

Hands in flight, the lawyer took it upon himself to explain the letter, reciting it word by word, and inserting comments and clarifications and meaningful pauses as he saw fit. General Bethune seeks an additional two days and a small change of venue for the transfer. Tabbs sat gazing at the lawyer, unable to speak for a time. As much as he tried to avoid wrongful thoughts, his first inclination was to reject the request out of sheer defiance, tit for tat. Then he thought he should practice caution, the sooner to get on, two days part and parcel of his transformation, of making anew. Clearly General Bethune had his own fears. Otherwise why had he elected to conduct private business in a public space?

Despite the early start, he arrived at the meeting place thirty minutes late for reasons that he was hard put to explain, but that he now believes were a foreboding of bad things to come. The restaurant was empty as far as he could tell. He took a seat at a table offering an unobstructed view of the door, a Negro waiter motionless at his dais, looking at Tabbs but pretending not to. Tabbs felt safer in the open air of the street. Not for anything did he want to be surprised. The restaurant was a continuous row of windows on three sides, glass glinting out onto impressive views of the town, beach, and river. Easy looking out, easy looking in. A glass crib thrust into sight. Came the thought that he was positioned perfectly for a sharpshooter’s bullet.