Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

Day, ma’m. He lifts his derby then lets it settle back onto the shelf of his forehead, a certain pause in his gestures and a smile poised on his face, deliberate contrivances meant to give her ample time to return the greeting. But her voice is still trapped somewhere inside her body. I can tote them bags for you, he says. His eyes are white and quiet, staring at her. The derby softens his appearance and makes his head look like an egg lodged inside a bowl.

She looks between Tom and the other Negro in a kind of agony. Her faltering now, at this moment, can’t be a good thing.

Lend a hand, Tom says.

The Negro looks at Tom then back at her. What time’s your train, ma’m?

How can such a quiet voice come from so large a man? Perhaps he is dropping it so as not to be discourteous. She tells him the scheduled departure time.

The luggage, Tom says. He makes a pseudogeometric move with his walking stick, part circle and part directive. If the Negro feels insulted he refuses to show it. Only picks up the lightest suitcase and closes the fingers of Tom’s stick-free hand around the handle, performing this apportioning of labor with such diligence and ease that Tom makes an impatient sound — breathes deep once — but does not resist. Then in an acrobatic display, he takes up every piece of the remaining luggage, muscled out in both fists, wedged between his elbows and his rib cage, and — the largest trunk, heavy even when empty — mashed up against his chest and stomach. Leaves not a single bag for her to carry. (She’s paying after all.)

The Negro handles the luggage with assurance — moving matter — like one used to it, although it takes all of his focus to walk in a straight line, trying hard not to display any strain. She can’t remember the last time she’s seen a Negro in this county, certainly not since the days when she and Sharpe and Tom first came here together to spend their summers. Little clouds of dust rise from their shoes, reaching a maximum height three or four feet above the road, slow and lingering dust, hanging in air. Easily another two miles to the train station, and Eliza becomes aware of curious sounds spilling out from the Negro’s body — wheezes and belches, grunts and snaps. Soon — a quarter mile — he is panting furiously, his arms, legs, and back wearying down, giving way to exhaustion. The remainder of the trek is one of constant upset, Eliza fearing at every step that the Negro will lose his balance.

They have come a good piece, and the three of them show signs of it. She can hardly stand, quick to collapse on the settle right outside the door that leads into the ticket office. Tom finds the settle with his cane and takes a seat beside her, still clutching the single bag the Negro had assigned him, arm crooked at his side to keep the bag from touching the floor. The Negro lets all the bags he is carrying fall into the dirt three paces short of the porch. Leans against a vertical post to catch his breath, so tall that he has to lower his head to avoid touching the wood roof under which he shelters from the sun. In all this not a word has been spoken among the three of them. Three people walking and sitting and standing while abiding by a hard bright silence that she did not find disconcerting. (It would hardly have been fitting for her to strike up any conversation with the Negro. Knows well how to play her part.)

He looks at Eliza from under his hat — Ma’m, just giving my arms a rest — before he starts loading the luggage onto a handcart. Takes the last bag from Tom — tugs once twice before Tom relinquishes it — and stacks it neatly on top of the others. Stands there under the roof, head hanging like a horse’s above her and Tom, his face glistening with sweat of the earned type, like a polished badge proudly announcing its achievement. He wants to be paid.

Of course, the Negro will prefer banknotes to sugar. (Common sense.) Thinking such, she removes the three lowest denominations of bills from the drawstring purse she keeps on her person (dress pocket) and holds them up to him.

He throws her a hard disapproving look. No’m, he says. You ain’t got to pay me.

Hearing confounds sense. Had she understood every word, Eliza asking herself although she knows that she has, knowing bringing change. All of this is quite different from the way she has been conceiving it. He simply wants to help her (them). She continues to sit, staring up at him with an amazed and incredulous question. Why?

I’ll tote them on for you.

Sir, Eliza says, I must not detain you any longer. What she says, although she would be happy enough to accept his offer, even let him do it all again, right down to his clumsy performance at the end (luggage dropped in dirt), a mishap that she is willing to forgive, seeing that in these three or four or five seconds they have established something noteworthy between them, formed an alliance to make the best of the worst.

Ma’m, you ain’t got to worry bout that. I’ll just tote them then—

Sir, she says, I must decline. You’ve gone out of your way, her refusal almost lost between whines of gratitude. Let us manage henceforth.

His eyes dart at Tom, as if to read the meaning of what she is saying. As you see fit, ma’m. Beneath his hat he looks disappointed. I should take my leave. He seems reluctant to move. Safe passage. He lifts his hat and tilts his head.

I bid you a very good day, Tom says.

Eliza watches the Negro disappear around the corner of the station, and she continues to watch, not knowing where he has gone any more than she knows where he came from, and debating whether anyone had ever bestowed upon her a greater act of charity. She gets up from the settle, leaves Tom — The tickets, Tom, I’m off for the tickets — and walks with brisk purpose inside the station to the ticket booth, where she sucks in the dense air of the room and coughs a wave of gagging unstoppable coughs (heaves). Greets a small naked face crossed by three black iron bars. A face with too narrow a forehead; the eyes seem to be starting out of the sockets. The face sees only the one standing before him requesting two tickets, but this face does not question her purchase, bestowing the tickets on her with a courtly motion.

She returns to find Tom standing up, on the verge of panic, his cane waving about in the air like a confused insect feeler. She touches his arm and they sit down together on the settle and wait for the train. Plenty of time to kill. More than an hour. The journey here by foot had seemed slow, their own dust getting ahead of them, but it had not been, only seemed that way because (perhaps) of moving through country without another soul around.

The train is just a sound at first. Then it comes all at once, punctual to the minute, great iron wheels and rods slowing beneath the tossing ringing bell, black smoke flaring out of the stack and steam wailing through the whistle, the station full of cloud and noise, Tom moving beside her, his mouth urgent and wide.

The conductor is standing on the steps of the dining car, directly behind the engine, a heavy-built man with a red strong-boned face, bodied like someone better suited to hard labor, laying tracks rather than riding on them. For a brief moment, more a gesture than an act, he glances from his perch toward Eliza, travels on to Tom and sees all there is to see of him, then directs his gaze elsewhere, a dismissal. Steps down hurriedly to the platform and starts a slow walk down the length of the station, but there is nothing to supervise, conduct, since she and Tom are the only boarding passengers.

All aboard!

Never acknowledges her. Never collects their tickets. His dismissal multiplied by heads framed in windows, faces pressed to glass, peering out in judgment. Determined not to let the insult inside her, Eliza takes the time (seconds) to study everything that is grotesque about the conductor, irritated by her powerlessness to force the issue. She gets up easy, like she has no weight to herself, and touches Tom in such a way as to let him know she is not going far and she will not be long. Makes her way over to the handcart and takes down the first item of luggage from the mound, aware that the conductor has already reached the end of the station and started the walk back. Seeing too something else that beggars belief, the Negro emerging from around the station corner, a black mass of speed, moving determinedly with head forward and a fixed from-under stare like a charging bull’s. This entity that shoulders right past the conductor, who, startled, understanding, stops dead still for a moment, looking at the Negro, the Negro continuing on, coming straight for her.