Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

His heart and lungs are strong, the Doctor says. Good circulation of blood. Decent musculature. A bit underweight but nothing to be concerned about. As for the condition of his eyes there’s little I can say. The eyelids are completely sealed, which might be symptomatic, an indication that disease has set in.

You can find out?

Through surgery.

Another doctor who wants to cut, Tabbs thinks. He looks into the Doctor’s face. You were his physician? He wants several questions out of the way before the Doctor leaves. The doors the Doctor’s words can open.

Long long ago. Well, not that long really. Four years. Seems longer.

He seemed happy to see you.

The Doctor secures the latches on his bag as if this is enough of a response.

An old friend might be just the thing he needs, Tabbs says. He won’t open up to me.

The Doctor cuts his eyes at Tabbs. Says, You know a hundred times what I know.

Tom is sitting on the bench with his hands extended high above the keys, as if warming them over a fire. We left the other place.

We’ll be staying here from now on, Tabbs says. Quieter. More space. No one to bother you.

God man.

He no longer has use for the house. He wants us to have it, wants you to be comfortable.

The sickroom. Tom coughs, ribs heaving, his chest exploding with a second and third cough.

You can choose any room you like.

The children.

You can visit them.

Tom lowers his hands to his lap.

You’ll like it here. Things will be much better. I promise. Tabbs sits down on the bench next to Tom. Some time before he speaks. You don’t like me, Tom?

I like you, Mr. Tabbs.

Are you sure? Have I harmed you? Have I hurt your feelings in some way?

I like you, Mr. Tabbs.

Then what can it be, Tom? What can it be?

Tom’s face brightens with some secret amusement.

What is it? Please tell me. You can tell me anything.

Three birds, Tom says.

What?

Three birds.

Tabbs turns his gaze to the window behind them, which frames a tree twenty yards away, large natural tallness, white fishing dhows docked twenty yards beyond it. Three pear-shaped birds occupy different branches of the tree, chirping singularly and collectively.

He hears Tom ask, You like the country?

Bedazzled, Tabbs looks at the boy, trying to think himself into the boy’s face, seeing in it a large number of small traits that simply cannot be real. A face with a strange distinction all its own that the mother does not share.

You were there, Tom says.

Nothing familiar, nothing Tabbs can recognize. Unknown (undescribed) the boy’s personality and his past. Nothing the Doctor could (would) tell. Had he the Bethune woman he might be able to interview her about some of the boy’s desires and habits.

On the grass.

You want to go to the country? We’ll take a trip. Just say the word. Tabbs is both drained of and filled with everything.

Tom says nothing.

I don’t understand why you want to keep yourself from the world. Doesn’t the piano give you enjoyment?

The keys are hard. Have you never touched them?

Only in folly.

If you try touching them.

Okay, so I’ll touch them now. Tabbs places his fingers lightly on the keys, ivory widening to his touch.

Understand.

But I don’t have your talent.

No. You are not Blind Tom. Tom stands up from the bench and bends over Tabbs. His mouth fits perfectly against Tabbs’s ear. Speaks what the other hears.

A woman? That’s what you want?

Take me to her.

Okay. I will take you.

Bring me her.

Do you understand? I will take you.

When can we go?

Anytime you want.

Tom lowers his head. You’d better go now, Mr. Tabbs, he says, circling the piano, in his own sphere of separation.

After all it has cost Tabbs to find the boy — the money, the miles, the years; I’ve given up everything to follow you —here the boy is, melting away, vanishing, again.

The driver slowed the horse slowed the buggy to mouth the brass-numbered address of each house lined up along one side of the tree-lined street, mumbling the way Tabbs caught himself mumbling certain tentative ideas while he was in the middle of doing something else. The unpaved bumpy road so wide — sufficient space for four wagons to comfortably pass one another — that the high canopy of poplars had no chance of providing any protective shade for any person or vehicle unfortunate enough to be caught in the road. Facing the traveler on either side a baker’s dozen of identical two-story houses with a good twenty feet of lawn separating one from the other, idyllic structures, peaceful, in all likelihood absent of human inhabitants given the wear and weathering. Barely breathing, the driver nodded his head, swung it from side to side, judiciously weighing the numbers. A single sidelong glance that he held as they advanced up the street. Tabbs leaning forward in his seat inside the black-hooded cab behind the driver, peering out from the cloth cave, mutely searching for the lawyer’s house along with the driver, but itching to take a more active part. The driver angled in his field of vision. (Tabbs sees him still.) Infected with Tabbs’s eagerness, he too was leaning forward, his upper body extended precariously over the wagon side, the shadows of horse and man blending on the road, seeing what he saw — nothing should escape his notice, nothing should happen unless he was there to capture it. But the driver seemed to grow visibly older each time he failed to identify the house. He could spell out letters, read some words, the most necessary ones, ones his profession required of him. Even though his mouth spewed out speech that didn’t quite sound like the English language to Tabbs’s ears, a world of difference between the word the driver saw and the way he vocalized it, a wide valley separating what he said and proper pronunciation, that is, the way Tabbs was accustomed to saying it and hearing it said where he came from and the many places he had traveled. With the exception of the victorious (Union) soldiers, nobody down here spoke in a way Tabbs fully understood upon first hearing. Language loose around him. Where was it heading? (He still doesn’t know, those strays with their stray speech.) Tabbs there in the shade of the cab, the driver fully out in the sun, a mile separating the two of them.

They had just driven for an hour (more) from the hotel where Tabbs was lodged. No small talk the entire way here, the driver occupied with keeping the horse at a steady gallop — perhaps he needed to concentrate on this one task, perhaps he had other needs — clicking hooves, his eyes shifting from the road to the fields to the sky, set on getting them to their destination even though he was not quite sure where it was, while Tabbs barely registered the world that existed outside the confines of the black cab, preoccupied, thinking of what to include in the story he might have to tell the lawyer. What if anything he had left out of the letter he was carrying. (What to remember. What not to.) He needed to act within a solid framework.

The driver had asked, Who you be needin? Tabbs had pretended not to hear. Later he will discover he need only have replied “Simon Coffin” and the driver would have quickly taken him there. Instead, he spoke the exact street address where he had written the lawyer two months earlier. Nothing secretive in his withholding of the name. No reason to have said more, to have acted otherwise. This driver already a relic of the past whatever the (deceptive surface) similarities between him and Tabbs. By Tabbs’s estimation he and the driver were similar in age, give or take a few years, men of the same generation and men of the same flesh — the harmony of their hair, the harmony of their skin — descendants of the same vague African fathers — would to God every person walking the earth had certain knowledge of his genealogy — and yet they came from worlds wholly apart, nothing alike. A Northern city man who had never been to the South before now, having had no good reason to do so before now.