Song of the Shank

Still, to your credit your illusions and confidences and deceptions are of sufficient approximation to confidence most people, especially those least in the know.

It’s up to him now to talk this nigger preacher out of whatever it is he thinks he believes. Reverend—

Your present condition comes as no disclosure. We have to know what we want from the start. Already as children we have to be clear in our minds what it is we want, want to have, have to have.

Reverend, perhaps we could visit your church? Seven sees the old woman in the oil canvas behind the preacher, her hands stiff on her lap, the skin pale, the hurtful rheumatic veins — life as it is. Given the vagueness of this black body, this Blind Tom, surely the preacher is only drawing upon all he can remember or guess.

Out the mouths of babes, the preacher says. Do you really think so little of me?

It is hot inside the hallway and quiet, the air full of thoughts and things to say. Seven stares into the preacher’s impassive face. Gives the signal for Vitalis to take Juluster down to the driver and the carriage, but Vitalis does not move, only looks at Seven as if he has never seen him before. Stands there looking like a damn fool, with that tear-shaped rush of hair rising skyward from his forehead, six inches tall at the tip. Then Wire smiles as if to encourage Vitalis to follow Seven’s instructions. He touches Vitalis’s back, quick firm pats. Vitalis and Juluster hurry purposefully ahead. Juluster, his movement constrained by the weight of Vitalis, accelerates to escape his navigator, and they disappear from sight, leaving Seven and the preacher staring across confrontational space.

Now Wire starts to walk away too, huge and lumbering, a black moving wall, and Seven sets off after him through the grandest structure in the city, all pristine neoclassical stone with an interlacing arcade. A marble labyrinth of stairways and galleries, gangways and corridors, pillars and porches, halls and dead ends.

I see no reason why you can’t revive the name of Blind Tom on every tongue in the civilized world, Wire says, for the replica in your charge is no person of ordinary means. He is an extraordinary talent, the genuine article. Perhaps the spirit anointed him in this purpose. So I ask you, is it for me to stand in your way?

Words vie in Seven’s mouth. No, he says. But you want something.

They exit the building and come down the wide grand staircase situated like a series of descending bridges between two stone lions, the memory of roar and kill long drained from mouth and claws. Walk past a little booth at the foot of the staircase, where earlier that evening hundreds had purchased tickets. Seven’s body acts without him.

Yes, I do.

Here it comes, Seven tells himself. He is leaning toward the idea that this preacher will take him for all he can.

In the receding light, crowds of people walk in small groups by the sea, some of them holding hands. All of their movements seem identical, the same pace, the same stride, arms swinging. A dream. If anyone knows if Tom is alive or dead, this preacher does. He is sure of it. He feels powerless against this unforeseen enemy. The preacher’s mind remains against them, against him and “Tom.” Nothing good can come out of their time together.

And you will want to know that I seek nothing for myself since my private needs are few. However, the needs of my collective are wide-ranging and extensive, and will require means of both a material and an immaterial nature, in the present moment as well as long term.

It is more than Seven expected, too much. No two ways about it, he must lie to earn the preacher’s trust and to win himself more time to devise a true course of action.

But already I am at fault in assuming that our goals are not at cross-purposes. Ignorant of your character, I should not pretend to understand your motives behind this venture let alone assume that we can arrive at a meeting of the minds.

The sun coming through the branches of the trees makes the sidewalk look reddish, like a river.

I will do all I can, Seven says.

The big nigger preacher looks down at him with eyes the size of plums. No, Wire says. You will do more than that. You will do whatever I tell you to do.

Seven hears the words like something coming from very far away, from the top of a hill or mountain. Thinks: Things can change in a day. Beneath history is another history we’ve made without even knowing it. Blind Tom is a name that he can no longer claim, a name that perhaps no one can claim or that everyone can claim. A million Blind Toms.

Later, he will think that this nigger preacher was worth killing.