Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

Their horse was actually galloping, the hooves digging like spades into the dirt road, carrying them from city to countryside, a gain in nature. Speed and rushing air brought the feeling that the winds above were racing far ahead of him in warning. Heat broke into colors such that living creatures seemed to be moving against a painted backdrop. Niggers drying fish along the riverbank, their cane poles stuck into the mud in odd formations, like impoverished tents deprived of their canvas covers. In the distance niggers struggling up tree-covered hills, baskets balanced on their heads, or wedged across their backs. Poor farmers emerging from three-windowed little houses, working small plots of land. Bonfires of manure, straw, and other refuse crackling and smoldering — human heat adding to natural heat — and every now and then niggers drifting through the smoke like shadows. Perry Oliver found no vitality or beauty in people at work. What did these planters see in it all? Why this love of the land? The whole air smelled like hard labor. He did not dare to take a deep breath. Who knew what diseases and plagues lurked in this air?

The coachman halted the horse near the main lawn of a white, newly painted and plastered three-story mansion, the very same mansion that Perry Oliver had visited two years earlier and that to all appearances was unchanged beyond new paint and new plaster. The sprawling main lawn was freshly cut. They stepped out of the taxi onto the dirt road at the gates of Hundred Gates, no gate really, but two chest-high posts constructed from a motley collection of brick and stone. The cement walkway leading up to the porch was lined with a column of oaks on either side, each tree identical to the others in width and height, forming — for Perry Oliver — a monotonous picture.

It would take them a good five minutes to reach the porch. Perry Oliver held Seven at arm’s length and took stock, noticing that the boy was already defiled since his morning wash, two white lines of dried saliva stretching across his mouth and lips. Matter-of-factly (without fuss, anger, or disgust), he retrieved his handkerchief and presented it to the boy. Nodded for him to clean his mouth. Made him remove the beaver cap and tuck it under his arm.

Do you know why we are here? he asked.

On the assumption of important business, Seven said.

Well put. Display your best behavior, as I will display mine.

Yes, sir.

Side by side, man and boy walked up the paved path toward the house, under late August light that somehow managed to find its way through the trees and slash at a low angle, almost horizontal, into their heads into their eyes. The scene presented the vacancy and hush that is often said to accompany an ambush. Of creatures human or animal, they saw but one: a little male nigger whom Perry Oliver placed in his early twenties, who was sitting under a tree outside the garden, quaking as if somebody had routed him from his warm bed and forced him out into the cold. He raised his head and looked at them wide-eyed, but he did not rise to either greet or stop them. Something in his gaze caused Perry Oliver to quicken his step and reach the porch, get out of the open and under cover. And there he stood, feeling vulnerable as he prepared to push the bell and knock on the door.

The door opened to reveal a Negro servant, roughly equivalent in age to the nigger sitting under the tree, with a black head covering knotted at the back of her neck. She gave Perry Oliver a look of recognition — he had never seen her before — and confusion. She turned her face to change her line of sight, as if she were deeply embarrassed.

Good morning, he said. She said nothing in response. I am Perry Oliver and have an audience before General Bethune.

She turned from the door without speaking to him, an action that clearly indicated she expected him to follow. And follow he and Seven did. She was slender, fine-boned, dark, but not as slender as she looked at first sight. Older perhaps too. From his vantage point behind her, Perry Oliver noted several rolls of fat on her neck, covered with the finest skin. In the rooms they passed he sought to detect any traces of grief — flowers, black ribbons or cloth, black draperies. Seven walked with difficulty on account of his effort to keep his head high in continuous observation, face turned first this way then that, only too easily distracted and impressed by every glorious adornment, almost stumbling over his own feet at times when he attempted repeated looks. In contrast Perry Oliver saw less with each step, as each movement brought an intensification of his nervousness and a decrease in his awareness so that by the time they finally stopped walking, the details of the house had barely impinged upon his thoughts.

The room she led them into was large and airy, teeming with furniture — sofas, spindly chairs and armchairs with curved backs, a chaise longue, little tables with spidery legs, and a stool tucked under a grand piano. Every surface except the piano top was crowded with objects: tall blue vases (porcelain from China, Perry Oliver assumed), Venetian mirrors with flowers, small porcelain plates with gold rims and floral designs, bowls filled with rose petals, fancy clocks, and silver-framed portraits and sweeping landscapes of ample dimensions. And there were golden cornices and polished wainscoting and mahogany chairs positioned before a large marble fireplace. Only then did he realize that this was the very same ballroom he had visited two years earlier.

You can wait in here. She walked away.

He had expected, Please wait in here, suh. Kindly inform me if I may be of service.

A general? Seven asked, rooted to the spot in amazement, his dream showing on his face.

Perry Oliver looked at the boy but did not answer him.

A short time later, General Bethune limped into the room through one of the French doors aided by his two black canes, throwing out one and then the other to pull his body forward, less an image of oddity and weakness than of comfort and habit, for he moved with an ease that showed he had grown accustomed to his condition. (Most assumed that the General had suffered a battle wound during the Indian Wars, but Perry Oliver had read somewhere that he had fallen off an unruly horse here at home several years after the war he had served in ended.) The canes were weird instruments that amplified the man in Perry Oliver’s vision, raising him up the way a scaffold might thrust one’s face into the cracked details of a painting. He was untidily dressed and poorly groomed, as if he had been awakened from a nap. Perhaps the death of his wife had pushed him to a new stage of his malady. Indeed, Perry Oliver had expected as much, knowing that the General would be vulnerable, confused even, as his wife’s death brought with it new burdens for a parent and an owner. But would it fall to his favor if the germ of infliction or grief spread victoriously to every part of the General’s body, either killing or totally incapacitating him? This would leave Perry Oliver in the less certain position of having to negotiate with Sharpe the son for Tom.

As if to relieve Perry Oliver’s worries, General Bethune looked at him quite calmly and held out his hand in greeting. Perry Oliver moved to take it, a simple action that required tremendous effort as his elbow and fingers were stiff with anxiety.

Which of them spoke first? During their meeting for the next hour, Perry Oliver would scrupulously note every detail of the room and the man, but it was such that over the course of the next few months, the field of vision and memory would draw in, so that when he walked into this very same room a year later, he would not remember it. In fact, he would have tremendous difficulty recognizing the man himself two or three years hence, upon General Bethune’s visiting them backstage following a concert. He would hear the voice and voice would bring back the man.