Jeffery Allen - Song of the Shank

Many such thoughts flashed in him now— foolish to come here —but he did not dwell on them. Stubbornly avoided the details. Without the details everything is clear, inviolable. He had full clear hopes, as must any man who had come several hundred miles or more. General Bethune had (has) been cheated of what is rightfully his. That is why he was here. He had suffered setbacks before — what man hasn’t? — but nothing of this nature or this magnitude, for up until this point in his life he had risen much unaided. (Credit the Pygmy. Credit Ruggles.) Almost two months ago, before the war ended, he realized that the future held for him the absolute need to visit a prominent lawyer. He had written the lawyer seeking representation, and the lawyer had wired back a response for him to come. He had taken no one else into his confidence. In fact, he was sustained by the hope that that this lawyer, Simon Coffin, might be the one person in the entire country (nation?) who could aid him.

Old Teaberry Lane?

No, suh. This here ain’t it, but gon and follow it up till you see the well.

Thank you.

Much obliged. The boy continued on, the brim of his hat wider than the entire circumference of his body, his snazzy grosgrain band less adornment and more necessary tool to keep the hat squeezed on his substanceless head. Equally if not more astonishing the boy had actually called him sir. Suh. For so many years — all his life, or at least since his first awareness of slavery — Tabbs had believed these natives were monsters, so it surprised him that even monsters can be polite. So many crimes to pay for, too many to count, but now that the war was done and the monsters tamed, he was willing to let bygones be bygones, if they were willing to do the same. Willing even to extend the hand of partnership — not to be mistaken for friendship, brotherhood — break bread, and work with these creatures. (Only the best need sign up.) Whatever it took to increase, multiply. (Indeed, was that not Lincoln’s idea? No one must expect me to take any part in hanging or killing of these men, even the worst of them. We must not open the gates and frighten them out of the country. Enough lives have been sacrificed; we must extinguish our resentments if we expect harmony and union. ) So Tabbs thought let’s be rational and defer justice for now. (Blood should be left to cleanse itself.)

Tabbs found the well where the driver had said it would be, conveniently stationed where the road turned left and became Old Teaberry Lane. Strays raising and lowering bucket and rope to lean into and drink or lean away and wipe mouths dry. Another two dozen or more strays circling about the well or lingering within a few feet of it, many of them completely wet, as if they had just climbed up out of watery darkness to light dry surface. Like the banded boy, members of his own race addressed him as sir— Morning, suh. Yes, suh. No, suh. Evening, suh. — but never went further. Nothing more, even if he threw out some leading question or tidbit of talk. In fact, ten days running and not another member of his race had ever seemed to really notice him. Looked his way without seeing him, saw him without looking at him, as strays would later in the city. Not unlike their mode of interaction with any alabaster, whether native or foreigner.

Old Teaberry Lane turned — became another? — and Tabbs went down that way, the ground passing below him, dirt and clumps of grass giving way to his boots. The morning white from the heat, burning fierce and quick as a match. Light and heat ocean-deep. He wiped the sweat from his face, causing his hand to sting as if he had just dunked it into boiling water. Right then, he felt like giving it all up. He didn’t know what put the thought in his head. (Still doesn’t know.) He looked off into the forest. Plenty of nothing out there and plenty of everything. He thought he heard water running somewhere in the distance, the barest trickle, tried to calculate the source and how far he was from it and collided right into a black cape of flying insects, buzzing inside his nose and mouth. Head and hands worked to shake and jerk free, while tongue spat the mouth clean. He patted and checked his jacket pocket to be sure that he still had the letter he planned to present to the lawyer.

After his arrival in town he had spent a considerable part of each day at the desk in his hotel room writing a letter to Simon Coffin as he was (is) certain that he had left too much out of the first letter he had sent the lawyer almost two months ago. He wanted the new letter to be pure, no suppositions, all facts, and of the facts he separated the essentials from the nonessentials. Still, he couldn’t help squeezing in the final remnants of ideas, plans, suppositions, even suggestions for possible remedies and courses of action. How is that for contradiction? Here he was, seeking out this lawyer, because he had already exhausted all other possibilities. Who will open the doors I can’t see? Now see him on his way to the lawyer’s office with the letter securely in his jacket pocket, having finished writing it to his satisfaction less than two hours ago.

He had drained himself of all that he did not need intellectually and emotionally for the sole purpose of this sit-down meeting with the esteemed Simon Coffin. Hoping for the best — Coffin would reveal General Bethune’s whereabouts — prepared for the worst. To get the desired result, he was willing to push the lawyer — or anyone else — as far as he could.

He judged Coffin alone to be worthy of this knowledge. For thirty-five years or more (forty?) Coffin had been unquestionably among the most visible and influential men in the entire nation as an advocate for the Negro cause — no week passed without his name appearing a dozen times in the Negro journals — whether the bound or the free. A white Southerner whose circle of benevolence also extended to encompass many other scorned and abused groups — poor Anglo-Saxon natives, Catholics, German immigrants, abolitionists, and foreign visitors and travelers (including journalists). Known for both his bold pronouncements— The cruelest man living could not sit at my feast unless he sat blindfolded —and audacious tactics, this lawyer, more than any other man existing at that time, held the largest and most liberal view of the world, and was capable of devising the most practical and effective schemes in defense of these views. Coffin had even continued practicing his vocation through the course of the war without suffering arrest or any form of censorship or molestation. How explain that?

The road became what Tabbs normally would think of as a residential street. Small houses jammed together. Windows moving along as you advanced. Then the road rose (leapt) impossibly skyward where it carried him up to a section of modest three-story houses. One house was nothing like the others. How fortunate it stood where it did by itself between two oak trees on a little rise at one end of the street, trees broad and wide at the base like important men squatting before an audience of supplicants. A three-story gray structure with a sloped red-iron roof — the others were flat — the exterior rather old but pleasant, worse for wear, wood showing through the gray, streaked with longitudinal cracks, and heavy porch planks of bare wood and dust and dirt, having long given up color to a multitude of shoes and boots. The door was finely carved with a raised image of a fox and an eagle against a flat detailed field — tree, grass, pond, sunlight, wind — the eagle swooping down with beak opened threateningly, while the fox, head turned and teeth bared, leapt up to meet the challenge. Plenty of varnished wood between them, as if the animals had come to an agreement that they would only get so close. From the brass doorplate, Tabbs learned that Coffin’s office was on the top floor.