Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

He checked his watch. The time was all wrong. Surely his watch was malfunctioning. He returned it to his pocket. But the clock fixed to the wall behind the waiter (watching) confirmed the hour. And no sign of General Bethune. Had he come and gone?

Mr. Geryon walked in, leather satchel swinging at his side. The waiter rushed forward to greet him, but the lawyer brushed past him, walked over to the table where Tabbs sat — the waiter backed away, as if from contagion, scurried return to his dais — and, without a word, seated himself on the other side, quietly positioning his worn satchel on the immaculate white cloth covering the table, draped over the sides.

Mr. Gross, he said. You are not the man you say you are. His face down-tilted toward the satchel, avoiding Tabbs’s eyes. Speaking words into leather. You will be arrested.

What the lawyer said, no mistaking it. Tabbs could hardly keep his eyes open. The moment demanded some kind of gesture, but what could he do with his body?

No, you don’t want to go to jail. The lawyer shot Tabbs a glance, flickering his fingers irritably against the table. He opened his satchel and pulled from it a crisp stack of banknotes, held together with Tabbs’s distinctive leather ties at both ends. You have violated our trust, he said, speaking to the leather again, and in so doing have annulled all contractual claims. He placed the bound notes before Tabbs. Here is a sum total of one thousand dollars, your original deposit, plus the cost of rail passage.

Tabbs out on a limb, past words.

The balance of your monies will remain in our possession, pending calculation of penalties, investigative costs, and matters of forfeiture.

The lawyer said nothing else. Enough said. Simply closed his briefcase and departed. Some time before Tabbs could do the same. See his startled angle of retreat from the restaurant, from the hotel, earth streaming away under his feet, a thick swarm of indistinct sounds pursuing him.

Some of what Tabbs did in his life for the next few days after that meeting is lost to him now. What he sees is himself leaning back into the darkness of a hallway and patiently waiting outside a receiving room after one of Tom’s concerts, listening to the invisible chatter of voices inside the room. Emboldened, he was intent on confronting General Bethune. How had he arrived at that decision in the face of the General’s threats of arrest and imprisonment? Perhaps his presence there was the sum total of his intelligence, his shrewdness, his astuteness, his courage, a man daunted by nothing. Perhaps it was precisely the time for gallant gestures. One after another the supplicants began to leave the room. Counting, Tabbs entered the room only after the last had exited.

General Bethune looked up from the table where he was seated and saw Tabbs standing, contained in a pocket of light, his appearance now, there, no different in purpose from the previous one only days before. Went rigid with surprise, unbelief. He was trapped. What is this man, this Tabbs Gross, not capable of?

Tabbs took a seat at the table within touching distance of his adversary. The General gave him a look of mild approach, then he and the General glared at each other across the silence.

I will never cease in knowing you, General Bethune said. Your history increases each day. You have murdered men. You have pandered women. You have befouled children.

From far away the thunder of a noisy sonata reached Tabbs: Tom’s encore. Feelings are ridiculous in such moments. He must not speak. Would he really be foolish enough to report his most private feelings to a white man?

General Bethune pushed both hands into his pockets, pulled free two fistfuls of banknotes. Tossed the crumpled notes onto the table, patted his pockets for more. Annoyed, as if cornered into donating charity.

Tabbs looked at the banknotes, no intention of picking them up, cast-off leprous skin. Understanding the other’s restraint, General Bethune swept the notes off the table and right into Tabbs’s lap. Already Tabbs knew: he would never see the General again. He never has.

For weeks after he did not leave his house, welcoming no callers— Ruggles, Ruggles —in his increasing dismay, forgetful of the most ordinary matters, eating (strings of onions, loaves of bread), bathing, cleaning his teeth, washing and combing his hair, shaving, passing urine, moving his bowels, instinct equating, mind skipping off, sunk in his memories of that terrible moment, playing scenes, what he could have said, what he could have done. Signs, gifts, wonders. The trick in the hand. From dawn to rocking close of day. Thinking small, thinking big, he greeted each morning with many tongues. What must I do to be saved? Sickness when there was nothing else. Sickness that made him (feel) capable of anything. (What might strong hands do?)

So one day, once he had retrieved enough of himself, he packed his bags— Fill up your horn with oil and be on your way —put on good clothes to go out into the street, and set out — he served notice to no one, Ruggles, Ruggles —following the Blind Tom Exhibition from town to town — maps make the getting there look easy — engagement to engagement, one month, then the next through the raucous scrambled world of dark streets dark rivers dark halls. Tunnels, blackness he would (will) never come out of. Iron wheels pulling in and iron wheels pulling out. The muffled strain. The jarring chord. The running smoke and heat. The whoosh and hissing. The melting in his legs. The hot puddle between his thighs. The black ink flying at angles across paper. Advertisements. Certificates of purchase. Bills of sale. A surfeit of work. The blood-stained gate. Beat by the hammer. Beat by the fist. Prodded and pushed. Nothing had the color he would expect. Always in pursuit but sometimes falling behind schedule or, worse, losing the trail altogether until he chanced upon another lead. Knocking on a door and stepping through that door held open for him. Checking in. Checking out. Stale and alone in a country busted apart. Not another summer. Please, not another fall. Then the Union instituted a war lottery (draft) and the city exploded, fire surging like a red sea, smoke in the wide sky and hot things going up and coming down that Tabbs, trailing Tom (always, because the boy was all that mattered to him), could see in his imaginings from a thousand miles away. The planters down South driven in, underground, and Tom and Warhurst and the Bethunes dropped from public view. What now? Knew he must set out again — comfort in motion, hope — but to where, what the port of call? How would he fish up Tom out of a deep dark unknown?

For the next three years (almost), he lived with his anxious ear pushed up against the world, traveled — no end to it — from one city to another across the North tracking any mention of Blind Tom — Tabbs time and again clutching his ever-hopeful ticket of passage — some supposed sighting of him here, some supposed recital he was to give there. Rumor, all rumor. His dream deferred. Biding time until the war ended.

And so it was that the war ended, and he found himself deep in the enemy’s country, determined to unearth Tom. See him thus: exhausted and bewildered, he walked right into the hotel restaurant without taking the time to wash up first and settled on a table. Sat right down, knotted his napkin around his neck, took up utensils crafted from pure silver, and waited, the rattle of a hungry body in a room that smelled of salted cooking grease. Little astonishments going off all over the restaurant. What remarkable things these chefs could do with cowpeas, peanuts, greens, rice, cabbage, and potatoes, Tabbs partial to the food here — rib eye, roast, tenderloin — taking all of his meals here each day— You shall eat the fruits of this world —morning, noon, and night, although to sit down to a meal with the other guests was to dissemble, Tabbs dining dumbly, rolling wine in his mouth, even when the guests, all men, all alabasters, all Northerners, would sit down at his table and try to make small talk, engage him in conversation above the soft clattering of plates, the scratching of silverware on porcelain, and the clinking of glasses, trying to gain a sense of Tabbs’s feelings about the war and the reconstruction of the South, taking his hand in greeting, the hard power of their granite grips crushing his skin.