Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

He takes her hand in his — the right palm, wet and greasy with fish — and leads her to the piano. (Not the objects themselves but the way to arrive at them.) Sits down, fingers flexing and finding themselves. (Idle hands, the devil’s playthings.) His notes are so thrilling, and his execution so perfect and so startling as to amuse every listener. The piano itself seems gifted, and sends forth in reverberation, praises, as it were, to Blind Tom. Blind Tom is the Temple wherein music dwells.

He jerks her sideways with his always-perfect timing. Pulls her into his chest, close enough for his hammering heart to break her resistance. Pieces their forms back together in a harsh rhythm. A dance. (What he wants.) Tom free and light, enjoying his own movements.

And that’s only the beginning. He spends the next day, sunup to sundown, running frantically about the apartment, throwing his legs out with aggressive confidence, his arms in the air, providing the gravity needed for country to gutter out of him in two flowing streams of sweat. And the day after that, he pursues her from one chamber to the next.

Run, Miss Eliza. I got you, Miss Eliza. These are some fast legs, Miss Eliza. Speeding along like an afternoon breeze. Room emptying into room. And Tom on her heels. How remarkable it is to be able to do that. Whether he catches her or whether she wins.

So it is. Back to his old self. All of his previous (summer) vigor regained. Joyful. Small chuckles converted into big laughs. Ridiculously happy. A long string of fabulous happenings. Eliza at first unable to appreciate the value of these new pleasures — the laughter has a cruel strain of its own — but with what predictability she eventually gives in.

Tom is quick to notice her change.

Time for our bath.

No better time to.

He stands quietly before her while she undresses him. Holds her hand in a tight grasp during the short walk to the tub, open and waiting and poised to pounce on four lion’s-paw feet balanced against the floor. The whole of him bending into the tub once the water is ready. They hunker down like two passengers setting out on a long journey, two soaking in the soft sounds of liquid prosperity, little concern for where they are headed.

From somewhere indistinct the moon begins to shine, red light thick and slow-moving on the water like wax. In a rapid sinking action Tom disappears beneath the surface, some time before he comes up again — she starts to count — choking and spitting.

They are digging a canal in Egypt, he says, water still in his mouth, shining against his teeth.

Here is the soap. Her breasts give in to the buoyancy of water, two pointed canoes riding the surface.

Two pounds of powder

Two pounds of soap

If you ain’t ready

Holla billy goat

Billy goat!

Seems to spill out of him, uncontrolled, the soap sliding over his body with a kind of furious impatience.

My mouth is closed, my ears are open, he says.

The cloth, she says.

He commandeers the cloth and proceeds to rinse the soap from his body. After a long thoughtful pause, he puts all his fingers deep into her hair and holds her head then leans forward in order to deliver his instructions, doing his best to be gentle, reassuring, his fingers moving with a bargaining touch that indicates that this natural familiarity will take nothing from her.

They stamp upon the mat to get rid of excess water. She whitens his entire body with lemon-scented talcum powder that Sharpe once brought back from Spain. Tom in her world again and she in his. Calm, helplessly so. How does it all become so familiar?

Perfectly content in the skin he calls home, Tom lives inside his body like a turtle, his world limited to the extremities of his skin. He can never escape his own head through the distractions the world offers sighted people. Perhaps he suffers from some mental deficiencies, Sharpe said. Still, I wonder how much of his mental state can be attributed to my father’s neglect. Because of Tom’s genius my father was reluctant to apply the correcting hand. But he gains much more in compensation, fortunate that his lack of sight, lack of mind does not permit him to know that he is of the despised Negro race, a former slave. Hellfire, Sharpe said. Maybe he even thinks he’s a white man.

For a time she is able to forget everything as she looks at the watery light, this sensation that the building has unmoored itself from the earth and set sail, Eliza captain at her window station, rocking between lower and higher joys of journey. Still, after days, after weeks, why is she not able to get completely used to this thing in Tom, in herself?

Tom gives a whole clear utterance, holding neither promise nor blame.

In the ashen noontime Dr. Hollister enters the parlor, dressed too heavily for the weather in an outer coat hanging over a fine woolen jacket and creased black trousers, his legs stocky, like sawed-off trunks, his feet shod in half-shoes half-boots that rise above his ankles. His white shirt seems to supply a soft light of its own, and Eliza wonders who has pressed and ironed it, since the Doctor as far as she knows travels without servants. Indeed, he is well dressed but needs some touches to be added, matters that fall under the purview of a good servant.

She hears his words but she feels nothing for the Doctor. Always this pretense once a month that he is only dropping in to visit on his way up to Saratoga Springs, where he keeps a stable of racing horses, his supposed reason for venturing here, even during the off-season. She allows that she is glad to see him. He brings her a bundle of two or three books. Lets himself express natural affection for Tom, certain in his touch that Tom can understand him.

How long was it after Sharpe’s disappearance (death) that he turned up one day, unexpected? She heard the knock, put one eye to the cold glass of the peephole, and discovered Dr. Hollister put before vision. Half a mind not to open the door since the Doctor was General Bethune’s man, and she had no way of gauging his intentions. But to deny him, she risked his return.

He walked in that first time, mouth tight, eyes cold, took her hand and kissed it, barely greeting her before he made his way across the room to Tom. The emotion brought on at the sight of Tom occupied his face for a full minute or more. He began the examination, but Tom’s skin was selfish, hugging to his frame, making it necessary for Dr. Hollister to use certain instruments again and again.

Dr. Hollister looked at her then looked past her, which she thought boded ill for Tom. He treated Tom with substances contained inside a dozen or more small glass-stoppered bottles. Tom moaned with the relief at these ministrations. He drank green liquid from a tiny urn, draining the vial. Slowly color began to come back to his skin. At the end of it all Dr. Hollister prepared Tom a bath with salt from Saratoga Springs.

Is the comfort the same, what the good doctor offers Tom and what she offers? Her arms and his, her bath and his?

Dr. Hollister pats Tom on the head. Don’t I know what you hate by this time? he says.

His leather bag is open just enough to allow her a glimpse of a caliper, pincers up. Why is it that he chooses to perform his examination, take measurements, in front of her? Why does she watch?

He furiously registers his findings—“data” he calls it, part of Tom’s ongoing “medical history”—in a vellum ledger, after writing his notes, then writing them again on cleaner paper in a cleaner hand, careful strokes, more beautiful lettering, not a single smudge.

He continues to eat well, beyond what he needs?

Eliza throws up her hands. He always has.

Well, do what you can to regulate him.