Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

One evening, Tom had dropped into the waste he had created and remained seated there, Perry Oliver knowing that the boy could hold out no longer from food but also fearing he would not be able to eat, that after so many days, hunger had possibly settled like a weight that might permanently keep him to the floor. Seven prepared victuals and drink, and Tom, weakened, took his first meal there in the corner, Seven feeding it to him one bite at a time, taking care to keep safe distance between his fingers and Tom’s teeth. (What did the repast consist of? Yams — yes — three or four miniature plump and naked women lying on his plate. And slimmer strips of bacon.) Several hours later, Perry Oliver instructed Seven to leave Tom’s next meal on the table. Tom would have to come and take the plate if he wanted to eat. He did. Came and took it back to his corner. Then for the third meal Perry Oliver went even further. Tom would have to sit down and eat at the table. Another battle ensued, Tom resisting, even though his stubbornness meant that he would go hungry. But once he took his first meal seated at the table, Perry Oliver believed the full exercise of his control was soon to come, a matter of hours rather than days. Strategizing, he would allow Tom to carry a plate back to his corner for one meal, only to deny him this privilege at another. From his corner how eagerly Tom’s face — nose — followed the steaming food, from the place where it was taken, to the exact spot where it was set down on the table. His mouth would open, his teeth and tongue would move, then a flash of white bone, a trickle of saliva, his muscles and organs rehearsing the act of consumption. Along with this anticipation, he would speak a single perplexing sentence, the only words Perry Oliver could recall hearing issue from his mouth in those first days and weeks. My taste gets worse every day. Perry Oliver has never been able to figure out if it was the table Tom was resisting or the food itself, or some combination of the two, refusing one on a given day and the other on another. And what exactly was the nature of this resistance, conscious revolt or some form of muscular denial? Which would be the easier of the two to defeat? Would body eventually overcome the obstinate resistance of his mind, or vice versa?

Seven seemed far more capable of winning Tom to the table. After the first taste of food and water, a slow and gradual erasing of distance, signs of increasing and mutual trust, Tom permitting Seven to come closer and even closer still, to take his hand, lead him to a chair, seat him and put a fork between his fingers, indicating that it was now okay for him to begin tackling his plate. What had been unusual only a few days earlier assumed the character of normality, Seven masking his mouth and nose with a handkerchief before kneeling down in the most rudimentary way to clean up Tom’s waste, then thoroughly scrubbing his charge’s arms up to the elbows until finally he felt obliged to happily seat himself beside Tom, a warmth that Tom seemed to return, the black contours of the one face not unlike the lighter contours of the other. Their eating a noisy and spirited ritual, a touching of elbows in the working of fork and knife, a knocking of knees beneath the wood.

Perry Oliver could scarcely believe Seven’s generosity. He could remember precisely the moment following one meal when Seven, clearing away the soiled plates, carrying them over to the sink, was heard to mutter with back turned, Our Tom.

I didn’t buy him for you, Perry Oliver said.

Seven stopped in the middle of the room and turned his head to look at Perry Oliver over his shoulder, his body seemingly paralyzed with an odd stiffness.

In fact, I didn’t buy him at all.

Seven looked at Perry Oliver for a moment longer with blank attention then, changing up, began observing him with a relaxed astonishing ease that startled Perry Oliver. Composure recovered, Seven took a seat next to Tom at the table. (Perhaps they meant far more to each other than Perry Oliver had been — and is still? — willing to admit.) Perry Oliver took some time to explain why Tom was here.

He’s the General’s nigger?

Yes.

We are serving under the General?

Perry Oliver had never thought about it that way. How had he thought about it? And had his feelings changed with the passage of time? In fact, as he looked at the table attempting to summon up the correct sequence of events that had brought Tom to his present station in their lives — of course, the larger it , the past, is never whole, never totally retrievable once the actual events solely exist in the reduced confines of memory; if only his cheap pocket watch could magically wind (skip) backward and return him to the far-off scene; the world awaits a capable invention — he realized that he had left out one important detail — that moment when water first touched Tom’s skin. Logic if not the far less objective demands of comfort and decency had required that Seven bathe Tom right there in the corner before he escorted his charge to the first defining meal at the table, otherwise both Tom’s appalling odor and equally appalling appearance — after days of neglect, the boy’s hair was a piecemeal mess, resembling a hastily constructed bird’s nest; as well, brown stains ran in stripe-like patterns down from the seat of his pants to both ankles — would have been too much of an affront. Indeed, Perry Oliver’s timing was off — inevitable lapses and alterations, forgetting the B preceding C — but one thing he knew for certain was this. Once it had become clear to Seven that Tom was willing to take his meal at the table, he had taken it upon himself to forestall Tom’s hunger until he could properly clean up. The usual industriousness opening out of him. He secured his handkerchief around his face and with both hands lugged a pail brimming with cold water over to the corner — he dare not drag it across the floor — set it down before Tom, then proceeded to remove and bundle up the soiled clothing, and scrub and clean him right there in the corner. (Surprisingly, Tom did not shudder at the first slap of cold water against his skin nor flinch at the abrasive knot of soap.) He toweled Tom dry and helped him into fresh clothes. His charge done over, Seven carefully secured the towel around the bundle of clothing, isolated these items from the other laundry, emptied the dirty water, and returned with a fresh pail of clean water to clean the corner. Wall and floor restored. He was now free to feed Tom, his frail pail having claimed both the filth darkening in the corner and the filth clinging to Tom’s skin. Good details to forget.

After the battle over the table, the next struggle became one of getting Tom to sleep in his bed. He would fall asleep at the table like one slowly succumbing to poison. Seven would awaken him, but he would refuse to relinquish his chair, clutching it so firmly you might have believed that the wood had actually penetrated his skin and nailed him to the object. But once he became accustomed to sleeping in the bed — the room where the boys sleep is so narrow that they can actually extend their arms sideward from a prone position and reach across and touch one another up to the elbow — Perry Oliver decided that the moment had come for Tom to return to his music.

The very first time they had taken Tom out of the apartment, in the hallway he had leaned into nothing and went rolling and tumbling down the stairs. Three flights.

Seven?

Sir?

Did you see what just happened?

Yes, sir.

Do you fully understand your responsibilities?

Yes, sir.

After this exchange of words — he was hard toward Seven when it came to his wishes and expectations — he recalled Seven hurrying off while he made an effort to pull himself together. Recalled reaching the bottom of the staircase and seeing Tom all bloodied with scratches and scrapes, struggling to his feet, tottering and dizzy. He had to decide then and there if he should summon a doctor, a matter quickly resolved when the name (threat) — General Bethune — sparkled up out of his ponderings. He knew there could be no doctor.