Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

So why doesn’t she? He takes more time with the second glass, drinking and blowing melodies into the liquid at the same time. Drains the third — see, you should have brought the bottle, or made a fuss — then bites the rim in place between his teeth, the glass attached to his face like a transparent beak, both hands free to roam over the keyboard. Tom drinking milk, making an event of it.

Milk seeping from the corners of his mouth, Tom sits quietly on the bench — buttocks seesawing over the narrow mahogany edge — facing her (twenty feet — more — away), practicing gestures on his pliant face, each expression holding the burden of a moment — what is he pondering? feeling? — and not for the first time the thought occurs to her that his face is not unattractive, the skin smooth and unblemished, the hidden eyes protruding against the lids to give them a pleasant bell shape, the ears large and relaxed at the sides of his head, close and tight, the nose spread wide and clinging, a bat hanging upside down in sleep. All in all, a look of still calm that he can never fully eradicate from his face.

He’s forgotten all about the piano — the music sleeps between his fingers, which are joined together and resting atop his paunch — and is ready for something else. His arms moving in circles now, hands trawling through the air, like someone swimming. What is it that he wants? She pushes her thoughts (speculations) into his body and face. He wants her to choose a song for him to play. (Yes, that’s it.) She calls out a selection— Waltz in A-flat —but he continues to gesture. She shouts out more guesses, the two of them partnered once again in this dance of communication. He won’t simply come out with it. A game for him, having fun at her expense. Lured (roped) in, she’ll just have to play along, abet him. What choice does she have? Looking at these arms and hands moving even quicker now in strange uneven arcs, frantic, annoyed.

Perhaps what he wants involves some act where words can’t go. She relinquishes her place on the settee, rising up to meet what? And answers with a dance that moves her feet forward, two steps, three, which succeeds (at last) in eliciting a change in Tom. He hears her move away from the couch, hands waving her on. (Advance.) She stays put, and he begins a hauling motion, as if she is attached to an invisible rope. And when she still doesn’t move he leaps up from the bench and charges, face forward, body behind, Eliza startled (confess), not knowing what will happen, knowing nothing ever. Comes and takes her by the hand (left), palm up, and starts to lead her back — now she understands: he wants her to sing while he plays, though she can barely carry a tune — to the bench, where he begins to wedge her down before the piano, bending her fingers back, stretching the seams of her palms, testing the durability of the hem that is her wrist. She sits and he settles into his space right beside her, close enough for her to feel the heat come off him. Sings. (What tongue, mouth, and throat don’t know.)

Sometime later, she salts, cuts, plucks, soaks, scrubs, rinses, chops, grinds, dices, pounds, oil sizzling in the skillet, pots bubbling and boiling, her mind working over tomorrow’s departure, while Tom stands listening at her side (touching distance), swaying slightly — his body can’t keep still — mouth watering, strings of drool webbing his chest, a sticky obstruction between now and tomorrow.

She readies her knife while he hovers over the cutting stand, poking and playing with the dead thing, exhibiting the straightforward curiosity of some innocent — a puppy or toddler — unburdened by any evident capacity for prejudice or appraisal. Her hand claims the handle, blade venturing out to discover the difference between air and flesh. The pleasant rhythm, slice and clack, of the knife, hitting the butcher’s board, traveling from gullet to gut.

When she is done, Tom seizes the knife and begins running it back and forth over the butcher’s board, sharpening silence, his mouth moving, some song just beyond the ear. A short time later he rinses the knife in the sink, strokes it dry, and puts it quietly away in the cutlery drawer. Circles back to the sink to wash his hands and face, water and skin splashed and slapped. Dries himself firmly with a clean towel. She spreads a fresh cloth over the table and sets two places, and they take seats, he on one side and she on the other. He is quite capable of serving himself, his fingers drawn to steam, and already his plate is full, spongy biscuits pushed to the edge, like shipwreck survivors overcrowded into a single emergency craft. Tom bent over his plate, lips quivering — is he saying grace? a new activity for him if so — the same angle he assumes at the piano, one hand rising to his mouth.

Eliza enjoys watching him eat, the physical manifestation of a fact. But she can’t take in much, too much room in her stomach for remorse.

The darkness that comes on them is startling (her momentary blindness, her fear) and complete. She lights the lamps, releasing the smell of kerosene. Tom floats against thin white curtains hanging straight in still air, the shadows concealing, revealing nothing of his color, his or hers.

His skin is ready. He holds his arms closely to his chest as if determined to guard this limited (torso) part of his nakedness — flabby mounds not unlike (almost) a woman’s breasts, belly button in layers of abdomen suggesting the bird’s-eye view of a volcano — and wobbles toward the tub. Hauls his legs up one after the other over the high porcelain side and joins her neck deep in high islands of foam. It’s the only way she can get him to bathe, the two of them together— He never has taken much to water, Sharpe said —two huddled forms stationed at either end of the tub, face to face, an archipelago of suds between them. Two bodies peeling away, layer by layer, soap the substance that obscures when it is smeared across cheek and brow, nose and chin, before running white fingers over muscle, bone, soft places, hard places — knows them all — making it hard to tell which leg or elbow, one outside, one inside, belongs where, to whom. She reaches to slow down his wild hurried hands. Rebuffed, cut short, they go moving like dark fish through the water, swimming to another world.

She grows considerate. Guides him back, hands that work as hard returning as running away. Stroking her face. Down-stroking her shoulders. Drawing warmth across her breasts until he takes tight hold of her silent back. She lets his touch linger, feeling the power of his fingers, this body embracing her reminding her that she is not alone. He reaches up and fists a hank of her hair, letting the strands sieve through his splayed fingers. Hairs pushing against each other, flickering back and forth, a mass of flowers set afire under his water-warm touch.

Two washed bodies, light and clean — she dries Tom then herself, using the same towel made from Georgia cotton — smelling of lavender soap and talcum powder. He dresses her, she him, her form preserved under the wide heavy folds of her nightgown, Tom exotic in his white sleeping caftan and peaked nightcap like something out of an Oriental tale, Arabian Nights.

Back in the parlor she takes a seat on the settee, and he kneels at her feet, rests his head on the altar of her lap. Lets her (needs her to) massage his scalp, harvesting the naps, black buds blooming open. Unexpectedly, he pulls himself up midtouch — short season — and ambles off to the piano, where he sits on the bench, hands positioned above the keys. And he stays that way, still, withdrawn, music withheld, leaving her to measure the distance between them. It’s as if he knows that something is up. (NO, she hasn’t told him.) She feels a deep sense of gnawing discomfort but refuses to let it take hold. NO use trying to draw him in. He’ll find his way to bed. In fact, she should allow him to savor this hour, his final night here. She rises — heavy filled skin — and snuffs the lamps.