Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

But all that changed when he learned how to crawl. She remembers it this way: she was sitting on a stack of logs a few yards behind the mansion, where she usually took her break under the shade of a tree, a block of time that belonged to her, short as it was, a few minutes after she had finished serving supper to the family and before she had to begin the tasks that would carry her through dinner and beyond.

She enjoyed that spot, her husband’s handiwork all about, wood he had neatly cut and stacked. Almost like an unfinished house (hers), the laying down of some promised future. Not that she ever really thought about it that way. Her break afforded her the opportunity to go slow with a coffee, provided a chance to be starkly alone with Thomas, belly down on the ground beside her, her thoughts soft, faint, and faraway. She remembers the silence of this day, just the sound of her sipping coffee, turning her little spoon in her big cup, and the usual curious noises of the boy, harsh and moist. The Bethune residence an amazing sight, as light was actually pushing up from the ground so that the mansion seemed to be floating on a blanket of illumination. She lowered her head and brought the cup to her mouth and the next thing she knew Thomas had somehow managed to climb up an inclined stump of wood to perch at the top of a pile, a deliberate elevation of self.

That was the start of it. Crawling brought a striking transformation, a living thing changing before your eyes, some lowly creature confined to dirt, his hands directly under his chest and his knees bent outward at odd angles, allowing him the sideways motion of a lizard weaving between legs and chairs. By this means achieving ambulation, however odd. And then, once more, he became unhinged from time. No slow progression from crawling to standing to the first stumbling steps with hands balanced against the wall. Instead the crawling went on for years, his legs refusing to allow him to stand upright let alone step a foot forward.

After a frustrating year or two, he somehow upped his crawl and acquired speed and lift, so that he was able to actually lope catlike above the ground.

But the miracle of walking brought new challenges. (The lineage of a thing in its later stages.) He never mastered the ability to go up or down stairs unaided, or to sit down or get up from a chair. Trying to perform one action or the other he would totter backward and forward, and from side to side, his otherwise strong legs brittle and uncertain. (Not unlike General Toon attached to his black canes.) And rarely could he put one foot in front of the other with natural recognizable rhythm and ease, his gait either so heavy that he seemed to be sinking into the ground, or so light (in Miss Toon’s presence) that there seemed nothing solid about his person.

He squeezes the pale shell until it cracks open, rubs off the crackly brown skin with a set rhythmic motion of thumb and forefinger, and tosses the nut into his mouth. The husk remains on the ground, collecting water and sound, one among many, humming gourds. A numbing buzz in his hands and feet — there is a nerve that stimulates, another that slows down — music entering him as far from the voices and fingers that made it.

The sun appears as to one looking through smoked glass.

Where is Little Thomas?

Smoke rises in shafts of pure black illumination.

Where is Little Thomas? You must keep up with your brother.

Glass glints, half smoke, half sun.

Thomas?

Why doesn’t he respond to the sound of his chanted name? Truth be told — she knows it, her whole family knows it — he is caught in the grip of a habit to flee the restraints of their scrutinizing presence — his conspirators, pigs and chickens rush to greet him — and find his way into the mansion. In fact, he can find his way all over, seemingly no place or thing he can’t pry his way into. Rambling. Has even wandered miles to trespass on neighboring farms and estates and march into people’s homes and lives. His escapes, invasions, necessitate new secrets and new lies. No one can check his ability to go sightless wherever his feet will take him. Quick and fearless like a carriage hurtling along in the darkness.

After dinner each day Mary Bethune plays the piano like a medical regime. She returns to the piano to give her daughters lessons in the long deep lull after supper and before retiring to bed. Tom leans out from between the lower levels, the legs of the furniture, the side of a cabinet. He sidles up to the piano while the daughters practice, his body writhing to the tones.

It’s okay, Charity. Leave him be.

One day like any other after she has completed the lessons, put an end to her daughters’ complaints and hesitations, and called for Charity to see them off to bed, one day like this as she is walking off, she hears the music that had just ended begin again, the same piece. She turns and sees Tom with his chin at the keyboard, his hands in their mischief toying with the keys. Struck by the moment, they all stand and look, her, Charity, and the girls.

Charity gives her an expression, half-amused, half-apologetic, unable to invent some excuse. No, Thomas, she says. I’m sorry, ma’m.

He certainly takes to the instrument, Mary Bethune says. I’ve never seen anything like it. Thinking, They surprise you this way every so often. (One day he is crawling behind her as was his habit and the next day he is walking behind her. Skips a stage in his evolution.) She picks up the blind boy, his bare feet kicking the piano keys as she hands him over to Charity.

Anything else, ma’m? Charity shifts her gaze. I best be getting these girls off.

Although the other tries to veil it she detects a bit of admiration in this event. More than a little. No doubt about it. Charity seems pleased by the look on her mistress’s face.

One afternoon not long after, she hears music rising from the room and enters it expecting to see one of her daughters at the piano. (Any excuse to avoid their other studies.) Can’t believe what she sees. What she hears. Before the moment can overwhelm her he hits another chord, tinkles out another melody. Hands flashing everywhere.

She sends for the mother, her other, who is not sure she sees things clearly. Eyeballs humming. Ears spinning. A feeling in her body, light, tilting over, all link lost to her surroundings. Ah that’s it. I’ve finally gone off the deep end. Jumped the plank.

She sets out to retrieve him.

Little Thomas drops down to the floor and embraces a piano leg. A small target of conflict. Refusing to let go. She has to pry his hands away, finger by finger. Another time he actually crawls under the piano itself, slides and burrows into the cramped space between mahogany above and pine below. Stays a long time, calm and happy.

General Bethune stares at his oldest daughter indifferently, taking in her report. It is a disagreeable feature of her character that she always seems to enjoy revealing secrets in her possession. But he hears what she has to say, half believing, and dismisses her with instructions for Charity and Mingo to appear before him immediately. Not later, now. His daughter skips off in excitement. While he waits for them he tries to reassemble the essential facts from his daughter’s garbled telling. This much he knows: if what she said is true, his wife hasn’t told him about it. Why hasn’t she told me? Not a question really, but a rumination, a reflection. How well he knows the sentimental attachments of the weaker sex.

While he is busy with one thing or another he will hear music drifting through the house. This is not listening, a conscious effort on his part, far from it, only the music’s lurking presence following him from room to room. No way he will ever sit and watch the girls and the women — his wife, his daughters, his servant — and the boy at the piano, an act of spectating that is as much vulgar as it is awkward, like spying on someone engaged in an intimate act.