Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

They do, Double says. They do.

Each day brings word of mass graves of strays sprouting up all across the city, mutilated corpses rising knee deep out of the earth with the abrupt arrival of spring, and half-fleshed corpses floating in pits filled with rainwater, fat unwholesome frogs perched atop muddy torsos and water moccasins swimming in and out of organs and skin. Stories splinter in all directions, the hurt Tabbs doesn’t see far away. Black bodies burned. Black bodies hanging from trees and telegraph poles. Africans pulled off random streetcars and mobbed to death. Bloated black bodies floating in canals, rivers, and ponds. Blood in every eye. Such stories become commonplace. Tabbs bears these facts with equanimity, nothing so barbarous that the human mind cannot accept it. He lives in a silence with noise and conversation all around him. Air thick with event. Hard to keep up with it all. Many times Tabbs will hear running footsteps, yells of fear and excitement, everybody around him trying to get to the bottom of some new tragedy, loud donkeys filling in the spaces between words. Delivered out of nothing, strays flee the city for Edgemere, the city’s African population expelled again. Ferries heavy with hundreds of the expulsed, their hulls low in the water. Uprooted. Exiled. Displaced. The land grows weary of her inhabitants. Pulled continually into their orbit, Tabbs struggles to gain a footing in the changing daily life of the island. Lives, giving his entire attention to thoughts that on the one hand grow more vague day by day and, on the other, grow more precise and unambiguous.

The strays want to forget, erase the bad old days of hunger, desire, and desperation spiriting them across the ocean to this island, dazed by their own movement, sagging, dragging. Most have no experience with money. They work hard for very little, for less than they should. And they are cheated of what they earn. The bony women with big butts always seem to be pregnant. The stunted children seem wallowed in ignorance, cunning, play, and slovenliness. Strays display their impoverishment and degradation to anyone who cares to see. Every stray he meets is named Lincoln. His life is no longer a single story but part of theirs. Tabbs Lincoln.

Tabbs wants to say to them, Tell me what it was like. (Why do you just look at me instead of telling me about your sadness?) But he rarely speaks to them — stilted and confused; downcast and dejected; their inaccurate but splendid words — content to observe them from a distance. How can he open himself to arms that will not embrace? How heal wounds that do not bleed?

Fair to say that Tabbs does not sense any changes in his own physical condition or wish for anything to be different. The world is what it is. He has to force himself to be gentle with this frailty he finds himself in the midst of.

Uncertain of clear boundaries, the exiles put up makeshift shelters in the main square, old canvas tents and burlap lean-tos flapping under the walnut trees. Their children steal from stores and grow bold enough to sneak into kitchens while their parents are out fishing or peddling firewood. And their famished dogs begin to seek out and kill chickens and goats, tearing out the throats of younger animals, and doing enough bodily harm to the larger — donkey, sheep, cow — a plug bitten out of a calf or flank, an eye lost, an ear ripped away — to make them unusable. That’s when feelings turn completely against them. Black-robed members of the Vigilance Committee shoot their dogs on sight, and tear down their ugly shelters, row after row.

Comes the day when Tabbs sees from a distance four heads set in a stationary circle around the fountain in the main square, long faces, long necks. Horses shaped out of stone. He expects water to spill from the mouths of these horses until he sees one head dip, muzzle sinking into the water. Closer, the horses prove to be strays kneeling in the grass under arrest, hands tied behind their backs at the wrist with lengths of rope. Confined to the reach of their bodies. The single deacon guarding them letting them rest some coolness back into their bodies, jabbing the air this way and that with his finger. Fountains are not for human consumption, he tells them. Each stray turns his face toward Tabbs in embarrassment, while the Deacon lifts his head and nods at Tabbs in silence.

Some get sick from tainted food and cloudy water. Die.

In this overexcited atmosphere Tabbs is content most days to let the hours in Wire’s house pass without any disruption. Other days he attends meetings with the Vigilance Committee.

Look at these poor bastards, he says.

They stretch forth their hands, Wire says. And we stretch forth ours.

You might as well appeal against the thunderstorm as against these terrible but necessary hardships, Deacon Double says.

They need light and instruction, Ruggles says. So either give it to them, or let them all starve.

I thought you were going to protect them, Tabbs wants to say.

It’ll take them time to learn, Wire says. Them chains is hard on a man. Hard.

Amen.

Many a morning as Tabbs drifts into town he notices Deacon Double moving with a look of reserve and obstinacy on his face. Though he walks with his head down, many locals will recognize him and stop to greet him, and he will glance up and smile a reply as he hurries on with the swiftness of a man who feels both humiliation and danger in recognition. He is as tall as Tabbs but thick and strong, muscled up perfectly, his threatening frame always amenable in immaculate dress, his eyes — a fleeting exchange of glances — his most noticeably attractive feature, green. The pace of those days was such that Tabbs was never able to talk to him at length, in any intimacy. He would do so today. He sees the Deacon approaching, ready to enter his office. As he unlocks the door, he turns his face toward Tabbs but not his body. He knows that I don’t like him, Tabbs tells himself. He knows that I think he is a son of a bitch. They greet one another.

I’m surprised to see you here, the Deacon says, something unnaturally deliberate in the way he utters the words.

Have a moment?

A questioning look.

He swallows dry breath, strays itching in his memory. They enter the Deacon’s office. Tabbs strives to get his bearings, for every time he visits the deacon’s office he finds that the positions of the furniture and decorations have changed. He swears that this is an actual physical fact — like some bizarre variation of musical chairs — and not simply a failing of memory explained by his few visits and the separation of time between each. He’ll make a mental map and later sketch on paper what he remembers seeing, then will use the actual drawn map to verify his suspicions upon his next visit.

He decides to be direct. I don’t know who’s in charge.

We all are. The committee.

Tabbs is absolved. He goes to the meetings not simply because he has time to kill or because he wants to study their beliefs, but because he wants to be there when they step back into the world of order.

You don’t approve?

No, it’s not that. I’m just trying to get my bearings. Tabbs sees Double clearly on the other side of the table, his handsome features, green eyes, the startling colors of his shirt. Double indicates that Tabbs should sit and he does, but Double remains standing.

Do you pray?

He takes in a grand vista of bookcases that reach the ceiling, three walls, a tall line of rifles inside each case, a fence of armaments. A window set in the front wall, where Double stands in morning light, pistols on the long table between them. Tabbs knows there is intimacy in what he is seeing. I do, but perhaps not enough.

Yes. You must ask yourself, Why did God give us this situation?