Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

That’s Christmas out there, he hears Tom say.

Not for long, Tabbs says. He turns his head to see Tom standing outlined before his tired eyes, his facial movements and expressions giving a distraught impression, his shirt so dingy that it looks less like a shirt and more like milk spilled across his chest. His frock coat repulsive with its dark patches. Repulsive his whole delicate figure.

Take me to her.

Will you shut up about it.

I want to see her.

You will.

I want—

All right, you’ll get there.

Need makes us hungry, cold, afraid. (The air rolled in dirty winter wind and light.) We can only imagine what is absent. (Nothing completed, nothing attained.) Winter chill curls in around the door as Ruggles enters. Tabbs props himself up in bed. Was this his tragedy? So late in the game he is still condemned to make that effort of adaptation that he has always made, play the outward role, sometimes without being conscious of it.

Ruggles doesn’t bother to take off his hat or coat. He looks about the room as if his eyes want to glimpse nothing else. So you’re still under the weather. He shakes his head. God grant everybody such a life. He pulls up a chair, letting the legs scrape across the floor, and sits down with a grim concentrated expression. Cocks his misshapen hat.

If I could get out of this bed.

You can. All of this over some imposter? You’re just throwing dust up in the air after the fact. Ruggles looks at him with anger, face full of passion.

It is snowing now, snow whirling nimbly over the street, falling thick through the brittle air, and settling on the grassless ground, startling white against the gray day.

Let it go. Ain’t that what I been telling you all along?

Guess I never heard. Why don’t you tell me again?

Sides, this Original Blind Tom has little life left to live.

Is that so? His little life seems fine to me.

Think of a three-legged cow. The deformity is only interesting at first. Nobody wants to look at that same three-legged cow a third and a fourth and a fifth time.

Thanks, Ruggles. That helps.

Now they simply sit like members of the audience waiting for the next act. Comes the news that Ruggles has just been appointed postmaster.

Why are you always bragging on your gifts? The words are hard and icy in Tabbs’s mouth.

Me? Homeskillet, have you ever heard me brag?

All the time.

Tell him, Tom.

Tom’s face shows bewilderment (fright). A slight exhalation, lips pursed to air.

Damn it, Ruggles. Now you gon get him started.

What did I do?

What did I do?

Why don’t we just get going?

Damn your meeting. I can use your meeting like spit in my face.

But you’re still going to bring yo sorry ass.

Like a new set of balls.

Sorry motherfucker.

An hour after dusk the men of the Vigilance Committee come in silence, emerging from darkness, walking toward the slim triangle of Wire’s church, Resurrection African Christian Episcopal (RACE). Inside the church they move in noise and light. Tabbs sees Wire near the front of the church, busy greeting the deacons. He waves and Wire raises his hand and continues what he is doing. Tabbs follows the men to the row of pews at the front of the church, where a circle of kerosene lamps casts yellow light, the whole room aglow with objects, fresh and bright and distinct, but the ceiling beams above them hardly visible. One after the next, the men come up in a breezy manner, shake him by the hand, and ask him how things are. You better now?

How can he tell them about what he really feels? That something has settled in him after all those weeks in bed. That he is able to settle easily enough into the way of life here on Edgemere. That he feels utterly alone whenever he is in the city, alabasters consuming him with their cold bitter eyes. He endures their finger pointing, their verbal insults, their angry bodies brushing against him, comes to expect it (the stable framework of the body and the mind), accepts the position of one scorned as if it were proper and natural. Tells himself, They think I’m a foreigner, a stray. Me. And this is my city. My city.

The soldiers — brown rifles and white hands — are supposed to watch over the strays, keep them orderly, keep them safe. Can it be they are responsible for the fact that he is still breathing? Soldiers and their weapons everywhere in the city, weapons shining clean. He feels transparent, all those eyes looking through him. So he feels thankful whenever he leaves the city to return to Edgemere. Letting the island further inside him the longer he remains here. He is immensely comfortable on Edgemere; his time here, this year, month, however many months or days it’s been, have brought a feeling of protection he has never experienced before. Saturated in blackness.

The soldiers are leaving the city. The city is sending them away.

Nawl.

They are.

How you know?

I’m telling you.

The news is an occasion for some emotion — sighs, gasps, utterances, and expressions of disbelief.

We knew that, knew that they wouldn’t stay forever.

And now is the time.

A people cannot be redeemed by military victory, Wire says, but only by the spiritual and moral rebirth of the individual and the nation.

Amen, Deacon Double says. He is the only man standing in the room, his appointed duty to see to it that every member of the committee has what he needs, whether it’s a glass of water or something more stringent like Medusa, a plain wafer or a blessed slice of bread. He is clearly a mongrel, two bloods mixing in his buttermilk-colored skin. However, brother, I can hardly see this as good news. For without the sword, covenants are but words and of no strength to secure and protect a man.

Protect Africans. The refugees.

Are you afraid? Ruggles asks. We will protect the refugees. We will protect ourselves. Why should another protect us?

Go protect them, Tabbs wants to say. Has Edgemere taken possession of him for good? He cannot leave. He does not want to leave. He must not leave. Let the soldiers leave.

Speak, brother, Deacon Double says.

Neither borrowers nor lenders be, Ruggles says. We must either stand on our own two feet or start wearing garments unbefitting a manly race. Ruggles stands up now and begins pacing. He needs to move his arms to be more forceful. God said to Moses, “I am that I am,” or more exactly, “I shall be that I shall be.” Each race sees from its own standpoint a different side of God. The Hebrews could not serve God in the land of the Egyptians, nor can the Negro under the Anglo-Saxon. He can only serve man here on Edgemere.

How did we get to God? Wire asks.

Ruggles looks at him. Well, brother, ain’t this a church?

Just go carefully, that’s all I’m saying. Go carefully.

Brother, what are you saying?

A lot of people say things with they mouth, Ruggles says. I’m not one for a lot of talk.

Indeed, Double says. What the whole body does is more eloquent than lips.

So what are you saying?

Tabbs knows that he will never forget a word or gesture of Ruggles’s tonight.

What am I saying? Ruggles says. Here is what I am saying. Every man in this room was forced from his home. Everyone here. Each one of us. Ruggles looks at each member of the committee in turn — Wire, Tabbs, Drinkwater and his soldiers, Double and the other deacons. Tabbs sees something in Ruggles that he will never fully reach.

What you supposing we do?

Yes, brother. What? The Deacon waits for an answer. We have arms, we have ammunition, safeguarded right here in this very church.

That’s right, Drinkwater says.

Now, don’t go too far, Wire says. In battle men see things they thought they’d kept hidden.