Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

I will make much effort. How is his water?

Dr. Hollister takes a seat on the settee, the fingers of both hands laced on his head. Looking like a hot mess, overcoat still in place, blanketing his body. Sweat outlining his cleanly barbered hairline. The moisture has decreased some, but fortunately there’s still a valuable surplus. The orbs have not deformed any and are effectively preserved inside the chambers.

So there’s still a chance for sight?

Very much so.

Dr. Hollister’s diagnosis — Tom’s pickled eyes biding time — was opposite that of Dr. McCune’s. He can detect some light, Dr. McCune said. But expect no improvement in his condition. The orbs will slowly putrefy. However the experts differed, upon first meeting she impressed Dr. Hollister with her interest in and understanding of the facts and details of ophthalmology, all she had gleaned from Dr. McCune in their rounds at the Asylum.

Continue to keep the orbs moist.

I should by all means. His seriousness imposes a silence on her, on Tom, and she senses that if anything important is to get said it will have to be said quickly. Someone was here.

Dr. Hollister ceases to move, sits rigid for a few moments, as though making any motion at all might be of unintended and dangerous consequence. She sees the way age has set into his skin, a map crumpled and creased, folded too often, overhandled. When?

I’m not sure.

You’re not sure?

I received a report.

The Doctor does not appear startled, as if in the common ease of these surroundings nothing can put danger in the front of his mind. And when was this report received?

It takes her a bit of calculating to arrive at an approximate date.

Yes, the Doctor says. I see. So then you were actually away?

We were away. Foremost in her thoughts facts she decides to withhold: A Negro. Two.

Yes, the Doctor says. Yes. Who could it have been? He cracks for her benefit a small understanding smile. Why shouldn’t he? At this late time the watching eye and listening ear know better than to expect any upheaval that would end up leaving things radically different from the way they are. Well, send word if you have to.

Certainly, Doctor.

I should say my good-bye. He gets to his feet, puts away his instruments, shuts his bag, touches Tom, bows his farewell. Remember his appetite.

Certainly, Doctor. Certainly.

A door open and shut, and already the strong smell of damask roses is taking over the apartment. Each breath brings with it a smell of flowers. The smell lifts the corners of Eliza’s mouth.

Tom moves the vase one inch to the right in obvious irritation. That inch won’t do so he moves it another.

She sits down on the settee, trying to conceal her uneasiness, hands clasped together in front of her.

Tom tries the vase an inch or two more, in one direction or the other. And she searches his face for something she didn’t know was lost until then.

We can place them elsewhere, Tom.

You, Miss Eliza, you keep them there. This is my piano.

Wasn’t that nice of Mr. Hub? Mr. Hub was only trying to be nice. The roses. And fish, too.

I’m Blind Tom, he says. I’m one of the greatest men to walk the earth. Nostrils flared, he goes about in the shadowed cool sniffing the room, from corner to corner, length to length. Dressed by his own hands today, a finely tailored suit, the wale in his pants close together as if stitched by miniature fingers.

He removes his jacket, revealing the harness of his suspenders. Folds the jacket across the settee at the end opposite her and resumes his walk, moving quickly and lightly about the room, with his hands wrapped around the shoulder-looped straps of his suspenders, navigational tools directing him this way and that.

Tom—

I have dominion over my life.

Tom, if you will—

Now he begins to parrot every word that comes from her mouth, having an easy time of it, an exact reproduction of all the nuances of diction and tone of voice. Strange to hear yourself coming out of another person’s mouth, that person of the opposite sex, and a full-blooded Negro.

She gives up trying to engage and distract him. Later he will be all softness and apology, but she’ll make him pay. All she can do for now to maintain a fruitless distance, sound cutting the air in half. Rose petals shudder with the piano’s vibrations. Move like little knives in the air, trying to cut free.

Vexed, Tom measuring her wants against his, showing and giving her a sampling of his worst, but not the worst he is capable of, the store of inflictions he directed at the manager Warhurst. Tom readily accepted Sharpe’s authority but was every bit the disobedient child with Warhurst. A terrible irony since the manager, unbeknownst to Sharpe, indulged Tom in ways that would never have met with Sharpe’s approval, honoring every demand, only for Tom to repay this gluttonous generosity with resistance and outright refusal — in the end the reasons for Tom’s recalcitrance are unclear, stemming from more than the mere consequence of age, Tom’s youth — until Sharpe, shouting, shoving, stepped in to exercise the restraining hand.

He thinks you’re a nigger, Sharpe said.

A nigger? Warhurst said. He has Coachman for that.

You work like a nigger. And you worry like a nigger.

I do my job.

Yes, you do your job, but you take everything for a sign.

She wakes up feeling tired and at fault. Feet aching as if she had spent the night walking sleep. Tom had done the walking. Roving about the apartment all night. (What she heard.) Why the sudden restlessness?

He drinks his milk after it cools to the right temperature. Replaces the stagnant fluid in the vase with fresh water. Despite the dominant scent the roses are already wilting, becoming less noticeable, like a flag receding in size and color with distance. The vase (glass) seems to be decreasing in size too. Losing to the piano’s black shine, hard-set radiance.

The piano is growing, subtracting the world around them. A little more each day. She fears that it will soon take over the parlor. Dead center in the room now, so that you can’t help but see it, have to walk around it to get from one side of the room to the other. The furniture redefined, going miniature, one object crowded up against the next, some actually forced out into the hall.

Little by little. The universe constricting in front of her eyes.

Tom is seated on the bench with his legs spread wide apart, the expansive globe of his belly propped on black wood, hands serving a supportive role at his sides, some upset nesting in the hollows of his abdomen. He sits that way for a time, a pattern of dying light stretching across the ceiling.

An owl night, he announces. Sitting on a tree.

Having enough of the dark, she strikes a lamp, the smell of kerosene weighing down upon them. Tom’s mouth cannons open and before long his entire body is erupting into convulsions, retching up a stomach-warm lump stillborn inside an orange-yellow puddle.

Takes her some time to move, since she is in no great hurry to clean the floor. Fears that any movement will touch off his belly again. And even after she performs the task she takes the precaution of preparing a tablespoon of cod liver oil to help settle his stomach.

Heavy with the oil he sits for a time before joining her on the settee, stomach noisy. Twists his fingers into hers, her smooth pink hands and his smooth brown hands forming a single fist. His face stunned and drained, yellow flecks of vomit in the corners of his mouth. She has of necessity to clean his face too. Already pitched beyond her limit. (Isn’t it enough?)

Dr. Hollister arranges his gauges and instruments on top of the piano.

Here you are at last, Tom says.