Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

She adjusted her legs — numb, sleeping — to be sure that they were still functioning. Her knee brushed against his shin — no memory of the feel of his skin — but they were both quick to recover.

Dr. Hollister has him on a regular schedule.

He’s still not done talking. She will have to say something.

But if there’s no hope—

Tom seems to derive pleasure from the visits. Is that why we carry on with it? And the Doctor. Is that why he carries on with it?

Your Dr. Hollister sounds like a thorough and exhaustive type.

Yes, he is.

He puts me in mind of someone. I wonder if he has ever crossed paths with Dr. McCune. Here she was again, wading out of her depth.

He keeps active company with the living and the dead. Sharpe released the hat. Healing would be their sole affiliation?

Yes. He is another eye man. Perhaps he could examine the boy. The words took a long time coming from her mouth. A voice her own but outside her, speaking something that she was only thinking. She was still watching the distant shore, certain that Sharpe was watching her. Her offer not so surprising really. For — understanding everything — she felt an unspecified sense of duty — sight slowly fading from memory, images dissolving one by one, like wafers in water — although she didn’t know the boy and she hardly knew Sharpe. (Was just getting to know.)

What good would it do?

None. But what harm? The doctors one and the other will have much to talk about.

Who is he?

Eyes, hands, she gave up water — the lake is still there unchanged — and trained her attention on him. A colored man of distinction that I work under at the Asylum.

He turned, leaving water, looking at her — what we do to resolve blur and disbelief — so she could see her words reshape his face. How she had phrased it— work under —was that it or instead the meaning of what phrased?

Said (asked), A Negro doctor? A nigger doctor. And shook his head as if to empty it of her suggestion. Imagine how that would fly with the family.

They needn’t know.

They wouldn’t know.

A difference. A quiet disdain in the way he stared back. He was taking her offer as an insult. She knew that he wanted to rise and walk away, but he had the grace to continue sitting quietly (keeping quiet). Easier in fact if he showed his anger, but it is as though he thinks her unworthy of even that. For whatever reason, his stifled passion doesn’t sit well with her, doesn’t settle on her stomach but rises. (Jesus.) For a brief irrational moment, she wishes she could (rise) walk away from him. Need grants him power without his trying, deserving it. The color of his statement has moved something in her long forgotten. The weight felt.

How would this play out in the South — give hate a proper home — that land decimated by the plague of slavery, all those black skins caught, actively trying either to run away or to stay put? She’s never been there, but even here in the city she has witnessed certain Negroes, decent people, with money in their hands and pockets and purses and minds, has seen the way these dignified types, of unquestionable repute, shirts buttoned to the throat, shoes polished and glistening like fish, will drop their heads in the presence of a white person, or cross to the other side of the street to avoid direct contact, staying away (this corner, that street, those wards), or give up a place in line and let the white person behind move ahead, use the side entrance/exit to circumvent unnecessary attention, thank the clerk who cheats them out of a few coins, that mortuary stiffness and fear, which make them smile peace at their disappointments, smile and forget everything else.

Over the lake, the wind rises — a commotion rising in the water, a current — and catches a bird by surprise, shaking it, tossing it. Somehow its song gets out.

You only want to help, Sharpe said.

A bee tried to pull nectar from a flower, petals swaying, drunk.

That was horrible of me. I’m sorry.

You think so? I wouldn’t accuse you of any disrespect. Those words. The offers that come pouring in, all the time, from every corner. He looked at her in a way that softened his eyes.

She recognized at once what he was putting forward, no denying the source of the tongue — the South, a Southerner — that made it. What had she done to earn the dramatic reappraisal? Nothing really. No, he was showing her another dimension of self. This is me too. Generous. Ready. No closing off. Now, in the strain of the moment, she feels as if she has been found out in a weakness beyond remedy. He has opened up the chance for her to make amends, to win back his attention, make a full return. What to do? She needs help understanding exactly where it is she can’t go. Eliza, matron of the Asylum, as used to throwing things away — baby, bathwater — as she is to salvaging.

But in this short time I’ve gained enough of you to understand that you place trust in the expense, he said, his tone gently teasing.

Those words. She felt grateful that his bluntness gave her no space for self-pity, gave her nothing to hide behind. But she said nothing, knowing that she would sound stilted. Looked and discovered that he was at the hat again. Actually had picked it up and fitted it on his head and remained there hunched forward, rocking with some indecision — the doubt of shoulders — near to panic. He seemed to be looking beyond her to some private trouble of his own. And he was including her in his worry. She could speak now.

I shouldn’t be volunteering his services. He keeps his own calendar.

Kindly arrange it if you can. He rises to his feet, uprooted, making ready to go. She comes up too, light with relief, their past dispute put out to sea (so to speak), oared along until it falls over, out of view. (Water and its ways.) They reach the (closest) park exit without having said a word. So much in so short a time. Enticed by what she barely understands. Tom — the words used on his behalf — lurking vaguely in her mind in the days to come. What was so terrible about the world that he stopped himself from seeing it?

Sharpe signals a taxi in the queue. Look at the hour.

Time well spent.

Indeed. Horse harness hooves arriving. So you’ll let me know?

She has to tilt her head to look at his face. The sun has shifted position, shining from behind him, right into her eyes. Yes.

Edgemere. A mile or two out in the ocean — waves lengthen and shorten, the lull and pull of distance, water that finds a way — nothing beyond it, horizon’s fuzzy edge. Sister isles — Hart’s, Hunt’s, Tipping Point, Nanatucka, Fool’s Favorite, Shoisfine, Wanstaten, and others whose names she can’t recall, words hard to pronounce even if she could, that fuse with the tongue — certain but hard to make out, a bump here, a lump there, positioned with the proximity of knuckles on the hand. Or is it that vision has grown so weary it cannot hold anything more? Sea caught in glass. Framed. (What’s kept in, what’s kept out.) The window she stands by a clean rectangle of light overlooking shimmering blue, lines of white waves sliding along surface in rhythm, like a stitch traveling to its proper place in patchworked cloth. Appearing and disappearing. Weaving a bright thread of constancy through their lives. Even as the island shrinks daily. Dwindles. Something eternal at work. Something forever undone. Gaps where the water can’t come together, can’t rise high enough to submerge that row of hard buttons, black islands knotted into position. Her unfastened blouse exposing a triangular channel of hot skin as she stands on display, propped at the window, mounted on land, bust flaps waving against five-storied sky. This sea ruthless, empty of witnesses. Years since she’s seen a dhow on the waters. (So she believes.) The lateen sails. Can she even remember what one looks like?