Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

One by one, the children will raise their faces in sensual curiosity, exploring the glassy green air. Wire can then bring it all to an end, having succeeded in putting off to the last possible moment any mention of Tom, Tom saved for last. He will enter the chapel to find Tom seated onstage at the piano. Enters quietly, without ceremony, no declaration, no announcement, but Tom removes his hands from the keys and places them in his lap, as if someone has blown a whistle, and he will resume playing only after Wire has left.

Is it so, a Chopin polonaise?

You know perfectly well.

He sits down on the bench next to Tom.

Should I remove my clothes, Doctor?

He defers to Tom, endeavors to be positive and polite.

We miss you at the house.

I don’t know a thing about it.

Well, we do.

He tries some tentative touches of the keys, even as his words fall short.

Why do your fingers such injustice when I have a fine instrument that goes unused?

I don’t want to live in a church.

You think that I live in a church?

Tom continues to refuse him. A Tom almost unknown to him.

You feel that?

What? What is it that you feel, Tom?

God just touched you.

Now he moves away, convinced perhaps that he has to do just that.

I’ll see you tomorrow, Tom.

A lot of good it’ll do you.

Wire gazes at Tabbs with a look of (he now realizes) mistrust. Still, he finds it in himself to smile at Tabbs as he prepares to leave the chapel. Says, his back to Tabbs, That boy is full of pranks. But Wire cannot not break himself of the habit, Tom an unvarying necessity. I can have it brought from the house. No? You feel that’s too much. Well, we’ll just have to have this one tuned. Seeing there’s no other way. Tabbs attaches great importance to these visits and encourages Tom to open up to the Doctor. Do him this one favor. He would be so pleased to see you. But he can do nothing to persuade the boy.

Beyond thanking the Doctor, Tabbs has shown Wire nothing in return for his concern, persistence, kindness. (How can he really?) Small gestures are enough for him. (They must be.) The fact that Tabbs will visit Wire’s church on a random Sunday or join him at his home for dinner.

Now, Wire says to him, Why go the way you came? Use some now.

Tabbs unloosens the drawstring of the pouch and rubs some headache powder on his forehead, then on his temples, a flurry of renegade particles flaking down onto his nose.

He is already on the point of passing into the foyer — things inside the room don’t seem the same as they were earlier in the evening — when he hears Wire say, They’ve been telling me about the boy. My entire congregation. The entire island. These things get around.

The words (tossed at him) point to a truth that Wire has uncovered about Tabbs and Tom (and the mother too? Ruggles even?), a truth that he has chosen to withhold until this opportune moment when it will do the most damage. Truly hard luck. Tabbs cannot ask Wire (himself) what Wire knows— What have you heard? — without risking discovery — the arrangements he does not want to expose, the uncertain ubiquity of his hopes.

Is it really sensible what you’ve been doing?

Easy to read Wire now. Tabbs feels at once humble and guilty (humiliated) in Wire’s presence. Now every vestige of control, of sense, of thought, goes out of him. How can he formulate his demand, knowing that it will seem feeble, undeserved, that anything he might say will seem suspect? He sees now that his plan has been nothing more than a misdirected outpouring of his energies. Wire had suspected (known) Tabbs’s intentions before this evening, conspired to use an invitation to his home as a prophylactic against Tabbs’s claims, thus freeing himself out of hand of any fraternal, moral, and practical obligations.

Even here at the door money lingers among Tabbs’s hopes, comes back into the field of present and immediate possibilities — so much he needs — a final pass at the Doctor’s purse will depend on a singular contingency: Tabbs will (he must) squeeze the request into the proper moral frame, an appeal on Tom’s behalf— You must do it for the boy. Only your money can save him —which Wire can then either honor or deny, which Wire can’t deny. Your money, his salvation. Tabbs sees a necessary connection between this prospective triumph and one cruel happening dating back to his (their, three) first days on Edgemere, an afternoon when he was in Wire’s company, the two strolling about the little narrow streets of the island, sidestepping pancakes of donkey dung— shit Wire calls it — looking in on various shops, stopping for a time at the old square where men gathered around the big bleem tree to smoke pipes and arm-wrestle and play cards and chess — Wire never loses, game or challenge — indulging a coalition of views, then speaking (Wire) in the full presence of a crowd of children outside his donkey sanctuary (constructed a month after his expulsion from the city; I saw the need ; the first on the island), the most attentive children perched high on the fence where the donkeys were penned — twelve beasts under his care; Wire had said their names — praying for child and donkey alike before moving on to a more salubrious district, the market, island center, Wire passing on handfuls of spare coins to the perfumed mongers, which they accepted with hands they wiped clean for Wire to take and kiss, exchanging jokes, inquiring (Wire) about their husbands, offspring, and other relations. That day they would never get far without someone stopping to greet them (Wire), Wire and Tabbs partaking of the generosity they were given.

When they reached the main jetty (east to the city), they saw before them a crowd circled three people deep, man woman child, heads lifting eyes catching, Wire looming above all, his place in their lives such that they began parting into two banks of bodies, affording him (them) unobstructed passage to the circle center where they discovered four fishermen, each positioned at one of the four cardinal points, their tired faces directed toward the ground at some object of interest there, a long tube-like form, not unlike a caterpillar in appearance, only too large to be that, massive — this something at their feet powerless it would seem, fixed to the wet ground it would seem, under the collective force of these fishermen, who eyed their captive menacingly, while the captive struggled against itself, splotched with eye-like spots of blood — red seeing through the skin — the promised life inside determined to break free, a butterfly imprisoned inside its own oppressive cocoon. Three of the four took up the unfortunate creature and tossed it into the hollow of their dhow with an explosive thud, leaving behind the man (West) closest to Wire. Disconsolate, embarrassed, he sought to establish the moral validity of their actions before Wire took them to task.

They had captured a thief, a man who had been stealing from everyone on the island for months. He (West) enumerated the terrible thefts the thief had committed. (Heads nodded.) The thief would go on stealing, unless they put an end to it now. ( Uh huh’s and You got that right ’s.) He had stumbled into their hands less than an hour ago after time and again steering clear of their most-watchful sentinels. They had bound him and brought him here. They beat him then stuffed and sealed him up in an unneeded sack with the stolen items they’d found in his possession and were now preparing to take him out and deposit him into a deep part of the ocean.

I see, Wire said. May I have a look at the thief?