Song of the Shank

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.

His hands came flickering up through the light, like dark moths, as if they would tell her something. They didn’t.

She told him, If I could have a word.

Put one question after the next to him. He told her nothing. But she had better say the words while she could. No intention to speak them ever again. (Too hard with words.) Truth to tell, weren’t the questions a form of avoidance? What she had been moving along to in her mind was this: What will I do with the boy? But she was too balled up with comforting him — mothering? — to think past this moment. (The future sensed beneath the present.) What would come later she could think about later. The last thing she wanted to do was think, acknowledge the sum of what was, Sharpe, her marriage. Could she have changed the outcome had she accompanied them to the concert?

Separate from Tom, the piano looked like something foreign, something that didn’t belong, a sea creature washed up onto a beach. She remembered herself. Thought about the trapped bones of her own body. In the months to come, she would have plenty of time to weigh both her suffering and her hatred, for wishing damnation upon the sea. (There to remind her, the city’s sins resurfacing in the water, never under for long.) Right here, right now, she was content, taken with the strangely tangible impression that something had come to an end. She could feel it in her face. Knew that she and Tom were either at the start or finish of a life. Eliza and Tom, new to each other.

Tom sits at the piano in postsupper stupor amid long shadows in the gathering dusk, tugging at his belt, trying to wrestle his waist in place, a body slumping at the edges, slowly losing the pattern of its own dimensions.

The windows glitter with faint fluorescent shapes, lines of fading sunlight shimmering on the walls like the red strings of a guitar. The piano holds the sunset’s color. She hears light drumming on the keys now, like shells rattling in a boiling pot. Thousands of tiny tinkling hollow echoes. The boats seem to move in time to the music, at the mercy of the rise and fall of Tom’s hands. They continue their forward advance, moving farther and farther away until they are about to fade from view, an ever-widening wake, but they will never arrive, reach their destination, caught, under Tom’s control. Must slumber a new course. That sonata he is playing, each controlling finger made to lift alone. She listens with inward breath to the way he pushes deeper into the keys, so many notes overlapping in this room, so that no note ever sounds alone.