Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

They escape the park’s green trap unmolested. Up ahead a pale rectangle, the illuminated trough of the horizon, pouring bright ocean out. He is thrown into astonishment. It makes a person hungry to travel in this light.

They are bringing the dead. More each day. Carrying bodies. Growing coffins in the camps.

These Freedmen, Wire says. Arriving in the city mostly by foot. From that broken country. Frames of breath and skin. Their flesh a foot thick with diseases and afflictions. All parts of the body ready for death.

Wire speaks slowly, telling it deliberately, but without the least bit of hesitation, concern, regret. No shakes of the head. No frowns. Plain, matter-of-fact. A job like any other. Small work for a man his size. Even seated there in his chair Wire is a towering figure, his knees rising like andirons level with Tabbs’s face, Tabbs staring into the blue cloth of Wire’s trousers, as if he were holding a conversation with twins, left knee and right.

A messy line, Wire says. Crying and complaining all. Man, woman, child. Wire seated across from Tabbs black against white walls, dark skin and dark clothes, as if he is some foreign substance the wall has expelled. Hard to tell one from the next after a while. Easy to go around in circles and waste what little time there is. Hard to say who is most deserving of your attention. Who you should see right now or an hour from now and who can safely be left for a day or two.

Tabbs cannot imagine Wire treating anybody with his big hands, how those hands can touch muscle and skin, explore mouths, necks, chests without giving pain, hands that are twice the size of his own, the knuckles high and sharp, shark fins.

Without the right measures, even the most benign injuries will consume. Best to clean the wound with kerosene to kill the lice and to keep the flies away. And you learn to treat in the way of war. Amputate first if you can keep the greater life intact. Give Death nothing else to feed on. Burn or bury what you cut off, what you saw away.

Tabbs sits there in silence, thoughts lost among the watery light and the sound of waves, experiencing the feel of liquid weight — the water, the glass in his hands, the hidden channels in his body — making no effort to hide his despair.

Wire tilts his own glass forward on his lap, aiming the rim at Tabbs, the bright wine inside threatening to spill over. Tell me, Tabbs. Tell me what it is you need to say.

Nothing, Tabbs says.

Nothing?

Nothing, he says. (The weight.) I can’t get my head around it. I mean, for them to endure so much, endure until now. And to make it this far, all the way here. He shakes his head and keeps shaking it. Speaking into the darkness of the other man’s face, not sure what sort of expression of bereavement Wire expects from him, not sure really what he is feeling just now.

Why it must play out thus?

Tabbs nods.

Why they should be cheated after having won?

Yes.

Wire swallows some of his drink. These times are no different from any other. You work around whatever these white devils give you, so as not to be led into their snares.

Yes, Tabbs says. But certainly it is not as bad as all that? I mean you can do something to contain it, to arrest the dying?

Wire stares back at him. You frighten me.

Tabbs sits across from Wire in the droning light, looking into the other man’s eyes, clear eyes, trying to figure the flow of thought. So like Wire, a big man not big on coming to the point, too loud a gesture revealing his feelings and quality of character. If Tabbs needs to explain or excuse himself he can’t. Wire is a man too often listened to, big in years — on this earth twice as long as Tabbs, fifty years or more — experience, wisdom.

Are we not one and the same? Wire asks. So you recognize that certain questions a true man of the Race will never ask.

No mistaking Wire’s disappointment. Tabbs wants to get up from his chair right now and walk out of this room, a big circular room filled with Wire’s furniture. Wire unable to relax in an ordinary chair, every chair in his home wide with long legs and a high back, throne-like. His home a dark haunting place full of stale evening light. Even the brightest rooms are dark.

It’s terribly hard. In fact, the dangers multiply. More arrivals tomorrow. By mule. By sporadic horse. But I can’t stay away. I have a certain affinity. I’m here with you now, but I’m thinking there.

Tabbs ventures to take a sip from the glass of sack he has been holding in his hands. The sea beyond the windows, outside the house, will float them through this silence. Wire seated in one monumental chair and Tabbs in another, across a table pointed with a decanter of wine. From this angle there seems little demarcation between house and sea, sea and house, as if the house is a cork bobbing in the ocean. A boat might come crashing through a window at any moment.

Every day we lose another surgeon or nurse. Why do they come at all? They work in silence. They pretend to hear and see and feel nothing. Wire’s hand moves, starting the long trek to some remote part of his body. So many who wish to abscond. Perhaps I’m destined to be the last man standing. You don’t just walk away from work like this. I will go to the camps tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, trying to pull death off these bodies. The weak have need of what is strong.

Wire brings the glass to his lips, his hair and beard barbered in a collusive manner making his beard look like a halter that has been slipped over his face. The end of the glass trembles as he drinks, his eyes wet and brilliant. He returns the glass to the hollow of his lap and takes his hand away, letting the glass rest, a shiny rising above cloth, crystal silo, liquid-drowned tower.

None of it stays with me. And none ever will. I’m used to trading in sin and rot.

He brings the glass to his mouth again, keeps it there for a time before returning it to his lap, the glass giving no evidence that it has been touched, the wine inside maintaining its previous level. The glass captures light in ways Tabbs thought not possible, glass as beautiful as water.

Doing what we do there you accept the limits of your power without thought about how much you can bear. You discover the limits of what you can feel.

Tabbs hears a donkey braying in the distance. A high congested honk followed by a low wheeze. Over and over again. He follows the sound in his mind. So many sounds he has yet to get used to here on the island of Edgemere. The call of a rooster in the morning. The shouts of fishermen. The familiar whine of the ocean. And sporadic calls, sharp and clear and far but unidentifiable.

Come see for yourself.

Tabbs eyes Wire warily, knowing not what to say, no time to lie, invent an excuse. I would welcome the chance, he says. How can he refuse? Wire’s enthusiasm has to be indulged. People come to him for guidance. Put their lives in his hands. Besides, Tabbs will need to ask Wire for a money loan before he leaves this house tonight. He swallows some of his drink, hoping he has mollified Wire somewhat with his almost-promise.

How else can I convince you?

You don’t need to convince me, Tabbs says. He knows the right words, the lie leaping from chin to chest, where it works its way back in. Does he sound convincing? He sees the look of doubt on Wire’s face.

Would it that you accompany me tomorrow. Setting out before dawn. But you must take your own decision. None of your days are idle. Would it that I cause an interruption.

Would it, Tabbs says, but you can count on my joining you.

Tabbs looks into the face of the other man, waiting for him to say something, show some indication of what Tabbs’s submission has earned him. But Wire says nothing, his face impassive. He lifts up the decanter from the table and refills his glass, pouring into the well of his lap, reaches across the table — this plane of smooth wood between them a silent road, a tongue stretched speechless — long arms forming a bridge over to Tabbs. He refills Tabbs’s glass. Let me ask you something. He returns the decanter to the table and meets Tabbs’s gaze. What compels you into your trade? You feel an obligation?