Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

He can scarcely sit on his chair. The skin is not that different from any other he has touched. He runs his fingers across the ridge over the brow — a feature common to the African species — testing the strength of the skull. The eyelids are impossible to lift, dead weight, even against maximum force of the fingers. The ears show no sign of under-or overdevelopment. (Some wax inside.) Two rows of shining teeth — he has never seen such clean teeth on either Negro or Caucasian — well enameled and formed. The spine seems somewhat soft to the touch, like a plant’s lacy skeleton. He lifts one arm by the wrist — he can both hear and feel the patient’s breathing change. The lips move. Is it a strange wild smile or a silent conversation? He puts a hand on the knee and feels a softening then opens his bag and takes measurements with the latest instruments. Takes in his entire form and structure.

James enters the room, working his noisy canes, a smile spreading slowly over his goateed face. He holds back on reporting his findings, asks that the boy be removed from the room and the parents brought forth. A short time later, they appear before him — ah, so she was the Negress who had answered the door — heads bowed, hands cupped. Both before he begins and after he finishes interviewing them, he and James talk in low tones and try not to look at Charity and Mingo. (Those are their names. So James informs him.) He does not rush his questions. Had he fallen into some calamitous illness? Suh? A calamity? They look at one another. Yes, suh. Thomas did indeed suffer a serious injury in childhood. A fever? They look at one another. Was he weaned on a cow’s tiddy? Did they bathe him in homegrown wine? (Both are practices he has observed firsthand.) Did he crave the thick taste of goat’s milk? He awaits each answer, looking at them, openly evaluating. Their awkwardness causes him to feel embarrassed. (He considers himself a quiet champion of the Negro cause.) He can see plainly enough how hard it is for them to respond to his unusual inquiries and suggestions. His feelings of sympathy offset by a certain anger as he senses that they seem determined to keep the full facts from him. (How foolish his fellow white men to trust every word and smile and expression of glad thanks and plea of innocence or ignorance from their slaves.) If only they could understand that a full confession might aid him in a precise diagnosis and an effective course of treatment and possible remedy for their son.

Satisfied that he has elicited the best answers he will ever get, he dismisses the parents. He returns to his original place on the couch, while James remains standing, leaning forward over his canes. He drinks in all of James’s concerns, matters more troubling for Mary, he suspects, than for James himself. Tom might wander into serious harm in a barn or under the wheels of a speeding carriage, stumble into a well, or come to accident by fire. He sits passively and digests the information. From James’s lengthy report, it is clear that this matter has been troubling them for some time. (They already have enough trouble with their son Sharpe, who is constantly on the go, running here and there. Away. Always away. Cooking up reports for the newspaper. Brought him up the best they could, although he had been a handful and still is. Trouble spares none of us.)

The end of obedience is protection, James says.

How poorly his good friend understands that the dangers within are the ones he must fear most.

Would this have been the moment when Mary entered the room?

Dr. Hollister.

Still formal after all these years. Her hands spilling from the sleeves of her dress, pale against the cloth’s dark shine. Her skin toneless, almost gray, the color of stone, a heavy contradiction given her slight figure. She still looks young if you catch her in the right light. (The wrong light now.) He recalls the one time he saw her with her hair down — what circumstance made that possible? — black strands falling freely to both sides of her face. The novelty of that sensation as she stands before him now hair fixed in place and dressed as he usually sees her in plain unassuming garments. Despite her noble stature and bearing she is not a vain woman; nor will she allow James to be carried away by exaggerated feelings of self-importance.

James, he says, why don’t I have a look at your legs while I’m here? His offer is an excuse to push Mary out of the room. They all know it. She won’t stay around and watch her husband with his trousers down around his ankles before a third party. No fool, she knows that the men want to be alone with the boy, and she will concede, as a woman of discretion and taste should.

Without a backward glance she reaches the door and goes out. James begins again, but he holds up his hand in a gesture of silence. I’ve seen this many times before, he says. My own person has treated many a case. You should have spared yourself any feared embarrassment. Where had they kept the boy hidden these many years? W hy didn’t you call me sooner?

James does not answer.

He drops a knowing smile. Don’t vex yourself, James. He has already formulated some very precise ideas about the nature of Tom’s improbable condition. Through research and meditation had sought out and outlined the etiology of a vicious disease and discovered that it is numbed here but not quelled completely, and that it still roams free in the jungles and deserts and savannas of Africa. If I were a man who had not been out in the world, he says, you would find yourself hard put for answers.

James looks at him, measuring the words. What can you tell me?

The organs learn to adapt themselves to an existence that at first sight would appear to be utterly impossible, he says. My own eyes have seen it. My own hands have examined it.

What? What have you seen?

Brain fever, a cruel malady that lasts for a cruel length of time: a lifetime. A debilitating sickness that began long ago, before the invention of medicine.

James stands and listens, eyes alive and searching.

I’m not talking about this religious foolishness that so many of our people spout from bench and pulpit. That black people are children of the devil and such nonsense.

No one here is questioning your knowledge or experience, James says.

I trust you would.

So we’ve said that.

Yes.

And you will tell me more?

Yes. It’s a simple matter, really. Africa is the chief stronghold of the real Devil, those reactionary forces of Nature most hostile to the uprise of humanity.

Go on, James says. He will take it all standing. He refuses to sit down.

Here Beelzebub, King of the Flies, marshals his vermiform and arthropod hosts, insects, ticks, and nematode worms, which, more than on any other continent, convey to skin, veins, intestines, and spinal marrow of men and other vertebrates the microorganisms that cause deadly, disfiguring, or debilitating diseases, or themselves create the morbid condition of both the persecuted human being and lesser forms — beast, bird, reptile, frog, or fish. The inhabitants of this land have had a sheer fight for physical survival comparable with that found on no other great continent, and this must not be forgotten when we consider their history.

His good friend remains silent. Looks at him as if he hasn’t understood a word of it. Or was it something else completely? Perhaps James gets nothing, accepts nothing except by instinct. Or maybe it is simply hard for him to define exactly what he wants, both what he had hoped or expected to hear and what results he expected.

I suppose that’s more than you care to I know. I’ve laid out the pertinent facts.

Indeed you have.

James, we’ve known each other a long time. You trust me completely, just as I trust you. So why your delay in contacting me? If only you had called for me sooner. Much sooner. Years ago.