Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

What could he see in the spaces between the trees? Cemeteries in abundance. Fresh graves with plain wooden crosses to identify the occupants. (This country was growing the dead.) Would harvest a new generation from the old. Lesser life-forms hold little interest in the most recent of the dearly departed. Famished pigs (boars) and bearded goats grazed among the plots, while chickens flapped over the tombstones as if engaged in some athletic tournament.

Less than ten yards away, soldiers were mustering strays in a small muddy treeless break adjoining the road, grouping them into neat rows, only for the commanding officer to change his mind and mold them single file into a long crooked line extending well into the forest. The soldiers motioning and directing with their rifles, showing their irritation, their mounting disgust. The strays moving as one brown body, something large and hungry. Since his arrival in town ten days ago, no morning had passed that Tabbs had not seen them. They kept coming, a brown caravan. A brown sweaty stream, ill-smelling, off-putting to sight and nose — the strays, outfitted in rags, strips of torn cloth, feet shod in leftover leather or canvas, or no shoes at all. The little they owned — scalded pots and skillets, walking sticks, fishing poles, a coat or shawl here and there — in a jumble at their bare feet. The brutal stories he had heard fugitives tell back home on the podium or in the pub seemed so farfetched, much more so than even the most fantastic medieval romance or history. (The published narratives paled in comparison, no more unnerving or shocking than a good children’s bedtime tale.) But seeing these people he could believe they actually lived this history. One thing he could say in favor of his Race: they are a rugged people. A state of being and becoming unknown to him. (And for that reason, better than him, at least in certain respects, nobler, more courageous.) To never have quite enough, hunger growing, satisfaction that never came (comes). Futures denied. They greedily fell (fall) upon every cup of milk offered them, each loaf of bread. Yearning. (Life piled on life.) They will not — even now —settle in his mind, his thoughts. Is it for them that he was here? To build a better day? (The soon-come day without the nigger.) Assured, for mankind always sets itself only such problems as it can solve. Looking closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material and practical conditions for its solution already exist or are in the process of formation.

Aware that he stood out for any casual observer who took the time to look, knew he was a foreigner, not from here. (I was not from there, the South.) Full of the sap and sense of life, he stood out, handsome tall well-made — he had engaged in hard labor with Ruggles and others when life had required it of him — always with the clearness of health in his face and vivacity in his eyes, and always neatly dressed, neither elegant nor flashy, but suitable and dignified. (Why in the estimate of a man do we prize him wrapped and muffled up in clothes?) Barely twenty-four years into this world but already a man of independent income — that is, he worked for no man other than himself — with expectations of much more. He had to put up a bold front. (Alabasters are a fact. What can you do with them?) Until a few weeks ago, as far as he was concerned, this small Southern town — not surprisingly, the Anglo-Saxon natives fancied it a city, one of their country’s most important, the hub, the center; wrong here as they had (have) been wrong about so much else — didn’t exist, and if it did, only as a word in a newspaper or a dot on a map. But now — what difference a day — he was caught, in the grip of this thing. (Going to see the lawyer, no turning back.) Moved along a muddy winding road in a country crossed with many such roads, sunken or stamped-in paths (nothing paved, engineered, constructed) surrounded by composed and watchful trees, endless branching. (What loomed on the other side of those darkened and charred trunks?) Clear and careful — feet on the ground, head out of the clouds — he looked for omens everywhere, fearing a chance medley of possibilities and occurrences. This was (is) the land that General Bethune had built, the land that General Bethune once walked. So let him walk it. Not really his normal fluid self though. Easy to understand his cautious gait — he actually counted each step, no false or sudden moves — his hesitation. Nervously anticipating, he tried to sense and scent prey. He sidestepped passersby even before they come into eyeshot. (No matter how broad the path, an alabaster must never give a Negro the right-of-way.) A habit he had developed since arriving in town.

Hard not to worry. Terrible things could happen like this: A Negro woman stands on the hot awningless platform not far from him waiting for the train, three children of various ages seeking shade in the folds of her ankle-length dress. From her appearance, hers and theirs, she can ill afford a ticket, but there she is, there they are. Her white bonnet glows like a halo in morning light. From somewhere — Tabbs still hasn’t puzzled it complete — a white man runs up to her, lunges, and punches her in the face, reams of blood spilling red to the earth. A punch so sudden and wild that he loses his balance and almost tumbles to the ground. Solid, she doesn’t buckle, only brings both shocked hands to her mouth, loose teeth spilling out between the joints of her fingers like lumps of sugar. The children cry. Almost instantly a soldier rushes up to the man, shoves the end of his rifle barrel between the man’s eyes, and blows his brains red white and pink out the back of his head.

Tabbs recognized that he took a big chance traveling here, the soldiers, occupying army, the only force that stood between him and those who had lost the war. He had already escaped injury or death more than once: The natives yelled things at him, and the soldiers aimed their rifles and ordered them to move along. Everything he saw, has seen, bothered (bothers) him. Such squalor. Natives — men, women, and children — living in little crooked-planked cabins, ramshackle eyesores, alongside their few animals — hogs, cows, chickens, oxen, and goats, broken-down mules and horses — in unkempt filth. All the towns seemed run-down, the farmhouses had all been ruined, old windows replaced by new, or no windows at all.

Now on the plateau a soldier told him to hold up for a moment. Indeed, he had been stopped more than once his first two or three days in country, free passage since. Reasonable that they had grown accustomed to him. (He stood out. One of a kind.) He walked over to the soldier — a problem if a soldier had to walk over to you — and produced his pass, a quarter-folded sheet of paper, without hesitation. Fully three-quarters of the pass offered a poorly rendered drawing of his face — the right skin tone, the wrong features — with an official stamp in the corner, and a caption under it reading Northern Negro. He held out the pass for the soldier’s scrutiny, and the soldier moved one hand across his body to clutch the strap shouldering his rifle then bent forward to peer closer — he did not take it, touch it — and measure with successive glances back and forth Tabbs’s face against the drawing. How hard was he really looking? Barely studied it for five seconds. Satisfied, he drew back into his erect soldierly posture and emitted a short sentence in soldier’s language — perhaps he said nothing at all — indicating that Tabbs was free to continue.

Tabbs noted a measure of difference in the way the soldiers treated him and the way they treated both strays and natives. When they weren’t shouting orders or instructions they spoke like fops, barely deigning to articulate their words. But they accorded Tabbs a measure of respect usually reserved for white men of importance, a quality of treatment that he had experienced only on chance occasions. They even took the trouble to question his well-being and to warn him about places he should avoid and places he might see. That bend has the best perch you’ll ever taste. And the swimming ain’t bad if you can learn the current. He took it all in as if he was truly eager to learn and understand. Still, their facts caused him to wonder. Were they aiding him or manipulating him? Did they order him? Control him? And it was hard to say if he was obeying. He wanted to (needed to) follow his own orders (plans) so there was a good chance that at some point his will would (had to, must) collide with their wishes.