Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

For some time — an hour or more? — Tabbs sits in the slow-rocking compartment and tries to lose touch with the world around him, looking with hope at the boy’s and Tom’s faces every now and again. Then the conductor calls out their station, and Tom rises up out of his seat. Debarked, Tom resumes his frantic push for the Bethune woman’s country house. Spills forward without hesitation, his legs running ahead of his speed-shaken body.

The thrill and terror that get knocked into Tabbs when he sees the house. He wants to say something but can’t, opening and closing his mouth as he takes in the full aspect of the sight blooming up before them, as they draw the house closer to them. The grounds are a jungle. Grass overgrown. Tangles of vines climbing up to the roof so it appears the house has grown hair. Wind banging and loosening a roof tile, trying to unpeel it. And Tom is already banging on the door, the boy twenty feet behind him, unsure what to do next, watching Tabbs, who nods to acknowledge that everything is all right.

Tom, let me.

With Tabbs’s concerned hand on his shoulder, Tom steps back to allow Tabbs access to the door.

He sees her face, unbelieving, baffled. Startled, she backs away. He simply walks into the waiting silence behind her, the politest entry he can make. Enters into stunning emptiness. A room that holds nothing of interest except for a settee and a few chairs made soft by embroidered pillows and antimacassars ready to soak up pomade. The room bright and hot, sun streaming in, revealing all the dust in the air. Tom and the boy follow, and he watches pure surprise (fear) slide into her face. His hands work quickly, removing the dark head covering and the bright coloring from his face, no more need to hide and deny.

You.

The whole of her person shaped now into an accusation that drives her confusion into him. There is no wish in him to be here.

She stares at Tom long and with so much concentration, like a person taking a farewell look. She looks exhausted, face and body drawn out. Tom takes her hand and holds it, caressing it. He moves closer toward her, bringing his excitement. She does not seem able to say anything. Tabbs watches them with far-off curiosity, and so watching, feels himself receding from the scene.

The room appears to have suffered a flood sometime recently, the walls mildewed with dampness and ocher in color, a far wall taken up by the large pattern of a watermark seeping through from another world, spreading in the shape of stupendous buttocks, the windowsills and the wainscot deeply outlined by dark liquid. Thin white curtains like a thin glaze of water across the windows — light free, light that is not blocked out by the huge oak looming in view outside the window behind Eliza and Tom and extending upward out of sight, a good ten feet above the house itself.

He takes a seat, as dusty as it is. Something new — a kind of fascination, vitality — has entered her manner, a mischievous glitter in her eyes. She looks at him and smiles, waiting for something. Tom is holding her hands and pressing them with a desperate intensity. Tabbs sees her troubled look, but she turns her head away. He casts his gaze over to the piano, tempted to rise to his feet and go over to it. Instead he looks around in amazement at all the dirty things in the room, dismayed. That is a beautiful instrument, he says.

She glances doubtfully at the piano and laughs self-consciously. Tom touching her hair. But why are you here?

We’re here for you.

Me.

You.

She does not push him to answer any more questions.

We have to leave.

She just watches him.

It’s the only way, the only way we can be safe. We can go to the South where the soldiers can protect us. Our only guarantee of protection.

I’m not going anywhere with you.

Eliza, Tom says. Miss Eliza. Stroking her hair.

The boy standing by the door in speechless astonishment, something loosed in him at the sight — disdain, desire, resentment, a yearning for identification. For his part, Tabbs resents the boy’s squeamishness but says nothing.

You’re asking me to pack up my belongings.

No need.

But then I’ll have nothing.

I’m not the one asking.

Her head slightly inclined in the attitude of someone who is hard of hearing. Tom leaves her side, his movements quiet as the night, and while the Bethune woman, Eliza, stands considering, Tom circles the room, once, twice, stopping before the piano on the third pass; he rounds it once, twice. A pageant of odors invades Tabbs’s senses, mildew and much else. No way he can (will) leave this room without her. He is ready to say more, but what more can he say? What does she want him to say? Unwilling to let go, he can only hope that she will press him for details, a reasonable explanation. That she will share her worries.

Tom kneels down on all fours and crawls under the piano. Then he tries to grunt upright into a standing position, tries to lift the piano, hoist it onto his back.

Take me home. Tom speaks over his shoulder to Tabbs. Tom is sitting rather solidly, not a care in the world, Eliza seated beside him, Tabbs and the boy — all seriousness — in the seat behind them, the compartment empty except for the four of them, together, a solitary quartet. Take me home. I don’t want no trouble. No thirty pieces of silver.

Okay, Tom. Okay. Thinking, Please cease your babbling. A woman again, Tabbs had secured his scarf and applied ample portions of Eliza’s face powder and rouge before they set out, his head abuzz with the task before them. So far so good, although the journey here was not without challenges, Tabbs reliving the moment when Eliza encountered the startled expression on the face of the station clerk; not until they were almost upon him did he notice them, the ancient alabaster awakened by this odd pairing of a white woman with three Negro traveling companions. Tabbs was glad she had done the speaking to the station clerk since his voice was wanting in firmness, its quality unsteady. But his troubles weren’t over. The entire time in the station, he stared in dumbfounded frustration at Tom hanging about the woman, cooing, wanting to tell her something. Doors cracked open in Tabbs’s head, releasing a fresh fit of panic. No way of knowing what trouble Tom might bring forth, the havoc he might cause.

Tom and Eliza engage in a whispered conference, while Tabbs sits watching the boy in appreciative quietness and listening to his halty breathing. Side by side, he and the boy are nearly touching. He wants to make conversation. The boy’s lips move. If they manage to formulate the faintest of sounds, Tabbs doesn’t hear what they say. Tabbs requests that the boy repeat himself. Listens with all his body, searching for clues, but the boy is having difficulty getting his words out, his eyes feverishly active, fear the source of his discomfiture. Now Tabbs starts to worry again too, fresh unease, not that he had ever stopped. They will need to change trains in the city.

Tabbs speaks to him, and the boy lifts his shoulders in a meaningless way, his brown eyes rippling with sun, which rises and falls inside them. When he is praised, his eyes light up with a glow of their own, red suffusing his cheeks. The afternoon sun starts to lose its harsher edge. Late afternoon light. The city calls out to them, Tom playful still, full of rejoicing.

Tom. Tabbs touches him on the shoulder.

Eliza and Tom are the first to detrain when they reach the station, Tabbs and the boy behind them. He steps down to the platform, his feet wobbly. They amble on, cautious, looking (and listening) this way and that — Tom in his gangling posture, as clumsy in his bodily movements as a child taking his first walk, a body of mixed messages — before venturing on to their southbound locomotive. They are the last to board. The train snags into motion, pulling out of the station. They weave toward the sleeping cars against the violent rattle of the train.