Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

What had she missed sliding in and out of sleep? The room sounded soft and hollow. The world seemed to have quieted down outside her windows. Was it over? That question in her mind, she shifted her gaze to the shadow cast by moonlight striking a lamp shade when she sensed a new kind of darkness, different from the darkness she had been experiencing until that moment, bleeding into the edgy air, beginning to burrow into her consciousness. She sat up and looked around. At first she thought she was hearing the outside, a resumption of the chaos, the violence. Then in the illuminated darkness she could make out a form curled up under the piano. She went over for a closer look and found Tom wedged in the cave of space formed by the piano’s spindly legs and heavy chassis, knees tucked to his chin. She gave herself time for two deep breaths. She had not heard him enter the apartment. Back without a sound. (She had fallen asleep.) How had he found his way back? How had he gotten in? No key of his own that she was aware of. Sharpe’s key? And what about the others? Where were they?

When she spoke his name, he shuddered, stirring up the dust floating in the darkness. He raised his head in her direction, his face in the shape of a snarl.

She took in the brutal aspect of his person. She dared not strike a lamp. Only this light to prove that he was actually there. He was still outfitted in recital dress. One jacket sleeve had been almost completely ripped away. The front of his shirt had a large black stain shaped like a butterfly. And his pants legs looked as if they had been singed, one cuff nothing more than straggly ash. His head and face had been spared, except for missing hat and one ear that was aglow with dried blood.

You found your way home.

Tom remained perfectly still.

Where are they? Sharpe? Your manager? Thinking, Tom has the answers.

He let out a breath she didn’t know he was holding.

Dawn came, a tiny crack separating one world from the next. A new day began to take shape. An unbroken covering of white clouds — clouds few enough to count — hung in the sky, clear and precise, textured as never before. From somewhere smoke funneling black and back on the wind. A single gull lent its monotonous cries to the scene.

The sun angled high and struck the surface of the piano, day giving her her first clear view of Tom, throwing too much light on his form. The boy holding himself, clutching the sum of his life. Then his arm lifted, a long shadow cutting across the emptiness and venturing out toward her— Miss Eliza (did he actually say it, or is she only remembering?) — and she stepped back, out of reach, a body reaction. He opened his mouth and the sound escaping it was all Negroes in one mouth.

No, Tom. They’ll hear. It’s not safe.

Trying to quiet that sound twisting through her head. (What the human mouth can bring into being.) After a time, it weakened and finally gave out altogether, only a few clumps of noise that still hummed in his body. In the stairwell outside, someone was passing by, speaking in a loud voice. She couldn’t catch the words. She had to wait, too soon to try Tom again. So for a while he stayed put and she stayed, only three feet — maybe four — separating them, Tom hanging in her eyes, an intrusive speck that couldn’t be blinked out.

Miss Eliza, he said, almost as if he realized she was waiting for him to speak, give her a full report.

She tried her questions again.

That sound tolling a response. Enough with the questions for now. Is it that she sensed more than the tongue could say? Coated his mutters and groans with emotion, hearing them as her own?

The piano seemed to assume Tom’s shape, the flesh hiding underneath it, covering it. So it was, he believed that she couldn’t see him nestled inside the hard black excess of his containment. Tom (indeed) in a place far removed from the bounds of her consciousness. She felt both pity and frustration for this boy, hiding, with or without her, innocent of outcome. Could not recall a single instance of being alone with him, always a trio with her husband or the manager, a quartet with her husband and the manager. How to breach the divide? Sharpe had given Tom much patience and correct words. He spoke to Tom in a quiet voice that he made stern when he had to, and tolerated her awkwardness around the boy.

Before she knew what was happening, something wet streamed down Tom’s face, one long spill. On closer inspection she saw water puddling at the concave of his shut eyelids, a drop slowly separating from the lash and speeding to the floor. A discovery: the blind can actually cry. (How had she escaped noticing this among the blind children at the Asylum those many years ago?) Might it be that the images she needed, the unsayable truths — where is Sharpe, where is my husband? — were trapped inside the salty liquid, dripping to the floor, lost forever?

With her eyes closed, she saw Sharpe, the manager, and Tom leaving the apartment, their coats cut generously to accommodate them, three attitudes of self-assurance. Stacks of programs — under whose arm? in whose hand? — still smelling of the printer’s ink. Everything connected with their departure remarkably fresh and distinct to her.

Time wound around her. All right, then, she thought: here I am with Tom. Backed up on all fours under the piano, like some animal in hibernation. Still for hours at a time but for fevered motion that quaked through his shoulders and teeth. Now bent over, a praying Mohammedan, driving his face into the floor. Crawling on his bloody knees to one corner, and crawling back to his cave. Or twisting and turning like a troubled dreamer, the backs of his hands shining with bruises. Whole days of this, Eliza hovering in clear orbit above him, afraid to sleep, for without constant attention her floating body would be carried off to another world. Tethered directly overhead while the boy’s torso swelled and his limbs cramped, while his skin grew gray, his body giving off waves of stench, a sour orange-yellow smell, and the air in the room (she felt) thinning out little by little.

Then she heard something snag, and the boy let loose with a flood of urine. She watched, poured into a strange heaviness. Only the sound of Tom’s heart fluttering around inside the empty birdcage of his chest. Then nothing. Not a twitch or twinge. Bereft of sound, of movement, he seemed so far away. She knew he was dying.

She had to move her body, begin working toward some goal. She went over and touched him. (Touch is the body’s sense.) He was cold to her hand. She lifted his forearm and it flopped back to the floor. She shook it vigorously once or twice like a dog with a branch between its teeth, but even then he didn’t stir. Nothing. But she was sure she felt a current just under the skin. A stuttered beat. Which could only mean that she had to do more. Kneel now into that puddle of urine and get wet, her petticoats gathering in the warm scent of his shadow, her knees squishing, her ear pressed close to his chest — she bent so easily — a thorough examination. (How else?) In an instant, he began to warm, as if something of her was seeping into his skin. Her hands bearing down on his back. And this body that had been holding its shape unfolded, extended into the room. The heavy down-directed sun seemed to aid her, pressed his mouth open, the black inside punctuated with teeth, a heavy expression of breathing and hunger.

Before long, the first sip of water, the first nibble of bread, the first bite of an apple. Then utterances, words or parts of words, language springing back. Food and liquid reviving his tongue. Why was she so entirely agreeable to the task? And why did he accept her comfort so easily, trust in her voice and her touch?

With his damp nose nudged deep into the crook of her elbow, she began to run through ways she might gain more, what she might resurrect, bring forth from the blood, stink, and sorrow. He was and was not like what she was. (A young Negro of the male sex. A musician. A southerner.) Before anything else, she had to draw him out from under the piano. But he wanted her to sit beside him on the floor, his insistent hands stretching up to her own, and when she was there, he pressed her and touched her as if she had just returned after a long absence. He wouldn’t tolerate any separation. (This body holding her.) Came upon her like a shadow, forever hovering around, getting in her way. Whenever she was seated on the settee, he settled near her on the floor, trying to get comfortable, with his head propped against her knees. The need, attention, filled her with a strange elation.