Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

Mind your feet, Perry Oliver said. He might have said more. But he understood that little minds mistake strength and action for beauty, are crushed by pomp and spectacle. Why bother challenging such vulgar perceptions? Seven had many other annoying qualities that caused Perry Oliver greater distress.

For a respite from the heat (the sun at least) and the travel, Perry Oliver decided to take the boy for dinner inside the station diner. They had their choice of a table since few patrons were inside, mostly men traveling alone who would walk up to the bar and order a beer or whiskey before taking a stool and struggling out of their jackets and vests, which they threw across their laps. Perry Oliver ordered the special. The boy wanted hard-boiled eggs and lemonade. They took their time about eating. Trains came and went. They lowered their napkins and left them behind on the table, then returned to the platform, feeling all the better for it.

Nigger porters were busy, attending to luggage and freight, some carrying trunks, boxes, or crates on their backs and showing remarkable speed despite their top-heavy condition. (Many riders were returning from vacations, bearing magnificent purchases.) One older porter sidled over to take their bags. Seven glared angrily at the nigger when he reached for his suitcase. Perry Oliver had witnessed this struggle before. It was not so much that the boy believed the porter a thief but that the relinquishing of his bag lowered his own sense of self-importance, for he feared that his fellow citizens would observe his luggageless condition and label him as another anonymous urchin, a hanger-on awaiting a handout, or even worse, a conniving thief or troublemaker.

Allow him to perform his job, Perry Oliver said. Go fetch us a taxi.

The boy hurried off under his ill-fitting beaver cap, which looked like some mad animal that had seized his skull. He stopped to peer into one carriage only to pass it up and run up to the next, where he stopped and stared in. He approached every carriage one and all in such fashion. Then he returned to Perry Oliver with his head lowered.

Where is our taxi?

None were suitable, sir. They got niggers doing the driving.

He had to restrain himself from slapping the boy. (He had slapped the boy once or twice, always with good reason, a calculated chastisement, and never in anger.) They were in public. Don’t be stupid, he said. Niggers are the best drivers.

Seven looked at him, surprised by the words. He did all their driving back home.

Please go and fetch us a taxi.

Moving at a much slower pace than before, the boy went to fetch a taxi.

Time and again, Perry Oliver reproached himself with the question, Why did I settle for this boy instead of another? And why do I continue to put up with him? He did not know the answer. True, the boy was a loyal and dependable driver. (Driving their old carriage was one of his few chores that Perry Oliver would gladly admit that the boy performed with remarkable skill, totally to Perry Oliver’s satisfaction.) And the boy had one other good quality: he needed little beyond what he already possessed under Perry Oliver’s service — food, shelter, and his beaver cap. However, he had continual reason to wonder if this boy could be left to supervise a peculiar nigger pianist (his eventual duty), since these past two years (three?), not one day had passed without some upset. I’m sorry, sir was a ritual habit. He certainly felt no pity for the boy — in fact, he had no feeling at all for the boy; well, perhaps he had to admit he had some — and he certainly felt no parental obligation or duty to keep him fed and employed. (Perry Oliver was almost thirty and still did not know if he liked children or if he would want to father and raise a son or daughter himself someday.) So it pained him, made him feel serious disgust for himself, that he tolerated this boy. Seven had no idea why he had come into this world, why he had been created. He could only visualize himself in the future as rich and important. What are your plans? Perry Oliver would ask him.

Be rich and handsome. And I will have a strong body to carry all of my riches.

Perry Oliver strongly believed that Seven was set for a life of repeated mistakes and constant suffering. Perhaps he should be looking to replace the boy? He told himself that he could do better. He had to do better. The boy’s days were numbered.

These were his thoughts as the taxi driver helped him and the boy into the hooded space of the carriage. By the time he took his seat the fabric of his pants had gone wet against his skin, the cotton hot and sticky.

Without even remembering the how and when, Perry Oliver was awakened from a nap with several knocks on his door and a voice telling him that the innkeeper Mrs. Rudge was calling him down for supper. He pulled the door open to find her curious nigger servant standing there with his head wrapped in a bonnet and his body strapped in an apron, and with Seven at his side, looking rested.

The hand Mrs. Rudge gave him was plump but weightless. A fleshy petal, the red-painted nails like shiny beetles stuck to a flower. She was extremely thin and extremely ugly in both shape and face. Even her eyebrows looked deprived, like two thin columns of ants lined up on her pale and powdered skin, powder that helped her countenance none. She seated them at the largest table Perry Oliver had ever seen, one that could easily accommodate twenty people, already laid and glittering with linen and silver. Seven got up from the chair where Mrs. Rudge had placed him and hustled off to the end of the table farthest away from Perry Oliver.

Perry Oliver took his time about finishing his plate. If the food was not bad enough, his napkin — the cheap material stiffened with too much starch — was rough against his lips. Once he placed his napkin on the table, the nigger in the white bonnet and apron cleared away plates, bowls, cups, and utensils then made a pot of tea. Mrs. Rudge took the kettle and poured out three glasses. Standing, drinking her tea, she turned her talk to matters of the city, the estates and the harvests, the people of consequence, local men of great importance and the noticeable men of lesser importance. Perry Oliver was quick to realize that the conventional, definitive nature of her views and convictions was a barrier between him and the truth. Nonetheless, he tried to learn what he could about General Bethune — she had mentioned him time and again — without being obvious about it. The General had done a great deal of good in that city and the people loved him. He dispensed charity without stopping to consider whether he should or not. Paid poor schoolboys’ fees. Took coffee, sugar, and molasses to widows and old ladies. Gave indigent brides dresses, and grooms tails. Found homes for niggers who had unexpectedly lost their owners. What she told him confirmed another one of Perry Oliver’s theories: the city valued the part of General Bethune that he himself valued the least.

From what Mrs. Rudge related, in the final months of his wife’s lengthy illness General Bethune had to hire a man to handle the daily operations of the newspaper, a task that would have fallen to his son Sharpe, who was away from the family for recognizable periods of time. And then too, General Bethune had the additional concern of his three daughters. After the loss of their mother, the girls spent their waking moments walking about the mansion and grounds, prayer books in hand. Mrs. Rudge went on to narrate a detailed account of the wake, funeral, and burial. We are all saddened by his recent loss. Such a noble woman. I counted her among my oldest and dearest friends. From the time she was a child she had a heart of glass. General Bethune gave permission for anyone who so desired to attend the funeral, even farmers and niggers, on condition that they did not wear mourning clothes. He himself came in uniform, his military outfit from twenty years earlier freshly tailored to account for new flesh and pounds. The girls were terribly overwrought at the loss of their mother, but Sharpe was hit especially hard. He had actually dropped to his knees at the gravesite. Otherwise it was a quiet and beautiful gathering, as an appreciative city had put forward the money to have the grave dug with silver spades, and to have the pallbearers lower the fine casket into the earth with golden chains.