Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

Tom, hang your hat on the knob beside the door, Seven says. Tom sits at the table with a look of relief spread across his face. Seven stands his ground. Tom, hang your hat on the knob beside the door. Tom gets up from the table and hangs his hat on the knob. Once he returns to the table, Seven dashes forward and fastens the inside bolt on the door. No one can get in or out without his express assistance. They sit at the table. Seven can hear the sound of his own breathing. No one comes. No feet in the hall. No one knocks on the door. No one unlocks the door — or tries to anyway — and opens it wide. Tom accepts everything and smiles and is quiet. For everyone else Tom is absent from the world at this moment.

Do you like your instructor, Tom?

I like Mr. Howard. Seven, do you like your instructor?

What he witnessed earlier causes him to wonder about the countless bones supporting a tent of black skin and muscle, the blind blood blowing through. (The light inside which he sings.) Bone and blood and flesh shown to be remarkable. Mouth and teeth that can sit here and eat food and imbibe milk like any other any ordinary mouth and teeth, while knowing — trickery, deceit — that they are anything but ordinary. He thinks he can still hear the foreign words — he has yet to assign them a name — behind the voices coming from the neighbors’ apartments mingled with many more familiar sounds. Who can hear any of it really?

Exciting flesh. Even if there is little for them to do but sit here in silence. They have fought or not fought their battle over the hat. They have eaten their supper. (The milk thick and sweet.) Nothing to do now but sit here and pass the seconds until Mr. Oliver arrives home. No telling how long he may be. No telling how long they’ve already been waiting. The mouth holds. The breath carries. He has lost track of time. (When did the room start stirring?) Fatigue comes on him with a rush. Careful or he may fall toward sleep out of sheer waiting. He keeps tossing his head to drive away drowsiness.

The best meat is sweet, Tom says.

Seven hears Tom but doesn’t hear him.

The best bread comes from the flesh, Tom says.

Tom, what are you gabbering about? I dread hearing you go on like that.

The book speaks like a nigger, Tom says.

Seven doesn’t have the slightest idea what Tom has in mind.

Jesus speaks like a nigger, Tom says. The Hebrews speak like niggers.

Seven doesn’t know the source for this sudden religious outpouring, although it is not unusual for Tom to slap the mind awake with some sudden nonsensical statement.

The pharaoh speaks like a nigger. Moses speaks like a nigger. Adam speaks like a nigger too.

One day the music instructor has reason to leave Seven and Tom in the room alone. Seven asks Tom to exchange places with him on the couch so that he may seat himself at the piano. Moves his hands and head and feet the way he has seen Tom move but without actually touching the keys or pedals, a silent mimicry.

The firewood is stacked like a fragile shrine, ready to topple, rolling gods across the floor. Laboring hands, Tom takes great pleasure in handling the logs and kindling. Arranges some of them before him at the table, as if they are his true companions, neglected and vulnerable and misunderstood. Seven’s understanding that the blind must first smell or touch a thing to know it.

Tom seems to be counting but loses track.

See this cricket in my neck, he says.

What can Seven do but service him? His fault that he allowed Tom to do something he shouldn’t have. (He gives in here and there.) He goes over to his charge and begins to run his fingers over Tom’s neck.

It’s in two shoulders, Tom says.

Seven takes his hands from Tom’s neck and moves them to his shoulders, to the afflicted spots, and massages the areas.

Damn it, Tom says. They’re in my knees.

Seven massages his knees.

Frogs in my shoes, Tom says.

Seven removes Tom’s shoes, the toes curled like toads ready to hop. He kneads and massages Tom’s feet, only for the stiffness to return to Tom’s neck. Tom’s body appears to be breaking. Seven puts in a whole half hour or more of tending, of restoring and keeping together, scurrying about from this elbow to that heel, from that ear to this toe. Frogs, crickets, spiders. Tom only stops complaining once he has fallen asleep.

Massaging done, Seven settles into his seat, hoping to alleviate his out-of-jointness before Mr. Oliver’s return. Just his luck that Mr. Oliver comes in — how did he undo the latch? — before he has gotten a breather. He steps into the middle of the room and looks around, blinking, seeing Seven but seeming not to actually recognize him, his eyes and face attesting to another hard day. He takes his chair, asks about the lessons. Seven gives him a full report, but Mr. Oliver says nothing. Is he pleased or isn’t he?

Then Mr. Oliver says, Tomorrow, I should look in for myself. He hurries off to his room.

Nothing in their life is incidental. En route to the instructor’s house each afternoon he finds time to stop the surrey and purchase the newspaper. No hurry. Plenty of time to get there. Plenty. No hurry at all. The air hangs unmoving over the streets so that the trees are gray like decaying flesh.

It looks like rain, Tom.

Rain fall and wet Becky Lawton.

Who is Becky Lawton?

Becky Lawton.

Yes, Tom.

Rainwater.

Seven lets it go. He likes to let things come out Tom’s own way. No danger in that, even if he is perhaps too long accepting of it.

Inches separating them on the driver’s platform, Seven in his place and Tom in his, two birds perched on a vibrating limb. Tom leans his shoulder into Seven. Seven shrinks back. But the second time he does it, Seven lets him. Tom requires touch. Touch settles him, a long easy ribbon of sound coming from his mouth.

Driving past the labor-loud fields Tom turns his head and cocks his face. A nigger is a fine instrument, he says.

Seven thinks about it some. Tom, how does it feel to be blind?

Some bread is better than no bread.

And how does it feel to be a nigger?

A nigger is a thing of no consequence.

Seven knows nothing about the part of town where the instructor lives. (A few half-remembered facts.) He makes it his business not to know. They ride through the streets, scattering wind, the surrey rolling them directly under the sun, Seven narrowing his eyes against one bright street after another under his Paul Morphy hat. Driving slowly to keep the dust off their clothes. Straight through the open eye Seven sees Howard’s house. Here again. He parks the surrey and hitches the horse. Tom does not step down from the wagon.

Get out of the wagon, Seven says, muttering it softly, making sure to stay out of earshot, although the instructor’s house is a good ten yards off.

Yesterday comes like today, Tom says. He gets out of the surrey. Seven is already thinking Go in his head, but Tom kneels down on all fours and starts feeling about in the dirt with his hands, like a person who has lost something.

Tom—

Looking, Tom says.

What?

Tom proceeds to crawl up under the horse. And there he remains, on all fours, his head directed toward the horse’s belly, his tongue lolling.

Too stunned for words, Seven simply stands there looking, caught up in the wrong dream. Tom.

You’d better get back, Tom says. For what I’m doing there’s light enough.

What are you doing?

Studying the niggers.

What niggers?

The only ones.

You don’t understand, do you?

I understand, Tom says. Now you understand.

I understand, Seven says. Yes, he tells himself, he understands. Voice is the sight of the person who cannot see.