Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

Everything is moving. Silent, watchful, and mobile contentment. A sense that the thing he has been waiting for is about to happen. That all the limits he needs to exceed he can and will. Now, all he has to do is open up the channels of communication. Get the word out. Get people talking on the street. Seven begins to take Tom out each day in the surrey, canvassing the city. In this way, word of Tom’s talents slowly circulates, drifting images half-developed half-finished, increasingly distorted as they pass from one mouth to the next, each witness diminishing or exaggerating the details in accordance with what his ears thought they heard and his eyes thought they saw, or as the independent heart and mind see fit. Truth often has to masquerade as falsehood to achieve its ends.

The patterns reverse. Now Perry Oliver stays home, while Seven and Tom venture out each day. Perry Oliver listening to them climb the stairs, setting their feet down softly, making an effort not to creak, stamping their shoes clean in the hall before they enter. Glad to be indoors after a long day.

Seven offers the silly suggestion of loading the piano onto a wagon. We’ll stop and collect it from Mr. Oakley, he says in a loud and confident voice, as though there can be no doubt of Perry Oliver’s answer. The idea takes firm hold of him— we could rent a buckboard —and Perry Oliver listens while Seven talks himself breathless, hoping the boy will realize on his own the absurdity of his idea. Seven is not lacking in self-assurance when a happy inspiration puts the right word in his mouth. They’ve paid for the piano but never collected it. (Where would they put it in this small apartment?) Seven believes that now’s the time to make the most of it.

Seven gazes at Perry Oliver with a look of shy entreaty that gives him a touching air beneath his Paul Morphy hat. (More than Perry Oliver bargained for: Seven never takes the hat off. Would sleep in it if he could. Has tried to more than once.) Stuck in the middle of a sentence, Perry Oliver finally concedes. Let them think as one mind and act as one body. (A house divided against itself cannot stand.) His wishes and Mr. Oliver’s form alloys of two instincts. Perry Oliver doesn’t even see Seven as someone separate from him. What Perry Oliver expects of himself is what he expects of Seven. He is part of him and Perry Oliver requires that he give himself with the same completeness that Perry Oliver gives.

To instruct Seven in the proper method of negotiating a deal, Perry Oliver had told him the story of how he acquired the carriage. Several years ago he had purchased it at ten cents on the dollar from a destitute cotton farmer passing through town, headed west. The bank foreclosed on my niggers. Hell, six months ago I had already lost half of what I owned when that cholera made them shit back to the earth all I fed them. If I had only done what my accountant had told me to do. Now this man, his advice was consistently good, told me to take out insurance on them, at least the pickneys. Never told me wrong. But a fool can’t hear wisdom. At least I’d have a bit of something. Now look at me.

They agreed on a price based upon the age and make of the carriage. Perry Oliver withdrew the exact number of bills from his pocket. But before laying out his money, he asked the farmer where he had come from and the man told him.

How far is that?

About two hundred miles, give or take. Mostly take.

Perry Oliver returned some of the bills to his purse and handed over the rest. The man was understandably confused. Perry Oliver explained that it was only right that he deduct a few dollars for two hundred miles of deterioration.

Along with bills and posters, Perry Oliver gives Seven a map, not knowing if he needs it. Seven seems to possess his own means of orientation. Seven and Tom patiently cross every ward of the city. The power of movement. Seven gains in being as he drives. The rush of things or their slow passage. Tom seems alert, smelling and listening, all of it interesting to him. His breathing even and careful. Curves and grades, major avenues streets and boulevards, dirt roads and gravel roads, beaten paths and those less beaten, logging trails and back roads. Mud on the wheels some days. Sheen on others. They put up bills on every clean and free space, bills printed on stiff paper that can withstand the weather. (Sight is never lost.) Out early, Seven rolls his sleep up as he drives, Tom seated beside him, sipping from a mug of tea laced with milk. He seems (almost) happy as the countryside spins by. They come out of the long silence for Tom to start singing abruptly, even before Seven draws the carriage to a stop. Tom sings on the busiest street corners and in any saloon, club, or watering hole that will allow them in, from the most fashionable to the least. Taking their meals where they can, whatever they can. Each evening, Perry Oliver hears them return, tired, not much strength, climbing the stairs very slowly, pausing for breath at each landing, or so it seems. Surprised him at first, as he has rarely seen either boy tired. Boundless energy. They take seats at the table and Seven begins to relate the tremendous happenings he (they) have witnessed, passionate and often confused and contradictory accounts full of detailed and persuasive description. Still enough there to allow Perry Oliver to reduce the material to an impassioned picture in his head, the story behind the story. A street-corner shyster dressed like an Oriental philosopher in turban and silk robes who hawks a broadside containing the “suppressed wisdom of the East.” A doll that talks when you pull a hoop attached to a string coiled in its back. Two niggers playing chess under an oak tree. A large grassy square where dozens of preachers assemble to outsermon one another. Preaching done, they auction off their Bibles for charitable causes, pages blessed with holy water and angel’s breath. One man of the cloth takes Seven aside and tells him, without any demonstration, that Tom’s talent was preordered.

Preordained, Perry Oliver says.

No, sir. Preordered.

It is not so much the foolish wording that troubles Perry Oliver but the sentiment implied behind. The belief. Is Seven catching Religion? Happy to report, after that day Seven makes no further mention of the matter. How pleased Perry Oliver is.

Each return home revives the sense of possibility that he feels at the sight of a face whose details he has somewhat forgotten already since that morning.

How are you today, Tom?

I’m getting there.

The days stretching out in front of him, single and yet alternative. His room is dark and Perry Oliver stands at the window waiting for lights to appear in the sky. Summer wheels slowly toward its end, but it’s not done with them yet. How much longer? He doesn’t know if rain is falling or if leaves are crumbling or if the wind is breaking branches. The upcoming performance fills his mind so completely, an all-day, all-waking wideness, he can think of nothing else. So much catching up. So much to do. He will wake abruptly in the middle of the night — in sleep each man turns to a universe of his own — with the idea that he has some task to carry out, that some matter has slipped his attention, but without any understanding what it might be.

Tom is asleep, gentle weight against Seven’s shoulder. An echo in his skin. Outside the moon is a giant lantern burning in black air. It’s all the same to Tom, for he does not know how to distinguish time in his existence. Not so for his other. At night the road replays itself in his mind. The fine excitement he feels as they drive through the streets, and people gathering round to hear Tom sing. Even when they fail to draw a large crowd, he feels a curious charm with all the people moving steadily about, worldly contact. So this is what it means.