Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

With cognition of his presence the room plunges into complete silence. He walks briskly to his usual place at the table, although he knows that there is no reason for him to hurry. Why are you hurrying? And before he has even gotten fully comfortable in his seat he is wholly given over to their troubles — it would seem that the city has demanded that they relinquish their arms — all talking at once — in their urgency they forget to thank him for coming — voicing ideas that strike him as unacceptable.

He feels a little dizzy with the cacophony and also because the table has been wiped down (polished) with kerosene to keep the flies away. (This act performed much earlier in the day, for surely they know that flies don’t fly at night.) The entire room smells like fuel, like burning, smoke, fire.

Wait, someone says. God damn it. I said wait. Have you loss your hearing or something? Well, shut your goddamn mouth.

Around the table all of the men in uniform follow Drinkwater’s lead, hands gathered together on the white surface of the table along with the bottles and glasses. Although he is a lieutenant, Drinkwater is a man of silence who is happier listening to others than leading the conversation himself. He accepts a glass of whiskey — emancipated from some dead Confederate’s pantry (the planters are all dead) —and seeks the face of the soldier who puts it in his hands.

You think I want to sit here listening to all that jawing and whining? Sound like a bunch of women. I want to hear what Reverend Wire has to say. But yall carry on if you like.

Drinkwater is an intense young man but pleasant usually, easy to see how he became a lieutenant.

Now that Drinkwater has commanded silence, the veterans are all waiting on him, Wire, so he says, Do I have to be the one to say it? then frowns noncommittally.

Yes, Reverend, you do. Deacon Double looks him in the eye. Several of the soldiers nod their heads in approval. Until that moment the Deacon had escaped his notice, just another shadow blending in with the other shadows on the wall, but sitting there now — his sun-touched skin and his hair close and curling as if he has all he can take. Is there any reason why you should not?

In the expression on Drinkwater’s face Wire detects a hint of unease, as if Double’s question conceals some other question, both provocative and wounding.

He wants to give wise advice without forcing it on anyone. Be that as it may, he says, because they have already inked it into law. They did not deliberate. They did not survey our thoughts and recommendations. Because they know full well that we can put up no challenge to their laws since they hold suzerainty over all articles and declarations and ordinances and codes and decrees.

With his impassive face Double looks like he has nothing better to do than to sit there and listen to him say what he already knew he would say. Does any man here care about their laws?

God damn they law.

Spit on every one of they laws.

Piss.

Shit.

What law?

I got they law. I got they law right here.

And they are all talking at once again. He tries to think above their shouts to and at each other. He goes deep into himself for a visit to his own knowable connections to them. (Move in memory.) Even in later years he will encounter by chance some man of the Race who will stop him on the street and remind him that it was he, Wire, who had recruited him to the war cause so many decades ago. The campaign to put men of color in uniform and on the battlefield had required herculean efforts, a crusade sown with false starts and sidesteps and humiliations and betrayals and failures.

Mr. President, in order to prevent enrollment of Negroes in the rebel services, and induce them to run to, instead of from, the Union forces, the government, you, Sir, must undertake the commissioning and promotion of Negro men now in the army, according to merit. How, you might wonder, can you overcome the inevitable objections of white officers and conscripts to the commissioning of Negro officers? I have the remedy, Mr. President. It is my most important suggestion to you. And I think it is just what is required to complete the prestige of the Union army to penetrate through the heart of the South, and make conquests, with the banner of Emancipation unfurled, proclaiming freedom as they go, sustaining and protecting the freed men, leaving a few veterans among them when occasion requires, and keeping this banner unfurled until every slave is free, according to the letter of your proclamation. I would also take from those men already in the service all who are competent for commissioned officers, and establish at once in the South a camp for instructions. By this we could have in about three months an army of forty thousand Negroes in motion, the presence of which anywhere would itself be a power irresistible. Mr. President, you should have an army of Negroes commanded entirely by Negroes, the sight of which is required to give confidence to the slaves, and retain them in the Union, stop foreign intervention, and speedily bring the war to a close …

Yours, subscribed ,

Penning and talking the flashy errands of his dreams into existence. (Word anything into being.) A thousand bodies he made active by one slogan or another— White people must learn to listen. Africans must learn to talk —although, truth to tell, the men he had approached required little persuading. In the future when he encounters a man that he had recruited, he and the former soldier will exchange the usual kind of polite talk before the latter begins to interrogate Wire about his present life — a doctor still? a man of the cloth? the name of his church? wife? Seed? grandseed? names, ages, and number? — at which point Wire will find some reason to excuse himself. Not that he will feel either guilty or ashamed about his past actions and deeds. Indeed, he will still be able to hold his head high about the things he had tried to do.

So how can he back away, back out of this now? Up to his eyes in it. I have heard a lot of talk, he says, plenty of talk, although in theory he has nothing against talking for the sake of talking. You have to know how to look even if you don’t know what you are looking for.

Go tell them no, we won’t give up our arms.

Yes, Reverend. Put it to them.

I ain’t givin up what’s mine. I don’t care what their law say.

Yeah. They want my rifle, let them come here and take it from me.

He notices a murky exchange of glances between Drinkwater and one of his men, his second-in-command.

What about my house? Drinkwater says. I haven’t heard them say one word about that. They want my rifle, they give me back my house.

Our day is our loss, Double says.

I understand how you feel, Wire says. I know what you feel. You don’t think that I feel the same way? I feel the same way. Am I not one of you? I am one of you. But you know these people. I don’t need to tell you, I don’t need to tell any man seated at this table. You know these people. They will invoke some statute or decree and demand notarized deeds. He can see his gloomy words move like black slugs over the bodies of the men seated around the table.

So we invoke, Double says. We demand. We bargain, exchange.

The right to return.

What they took from us. What they owe us.

You put it to them, Reverend.

Eyes bright, Double is looking with a question, a challenge, as it seems he was born to do. Always both for you and against you at the same time. A contradiction.

Wire hears in the silence that follows their desire for his approval and thus his support, advocacy, agency, his willingness to author acts on their behalf. Who will speak for them (us) if he doesn’t? He belongs to them.