Song of the Shank

Tabbs crumples paper to encourage the flame. Getting to what he wants will be slow going and mostly smoke. How many weeks has he been laid up in bed now? Can’t say for sure, only knows that he was already coming down with something serious, something severely debilitating on that day right before the start of winter when Wire came to visit him, made him sit down, then spoke to him with utter directness about an imposter Wire had chanced upon several days earlier, a prevaricator going under the stage name the Original Blind Tom. Tabbs no longer recalls Wire’s exact words, but can still feel the way the words worked into his chest and moved up into his throat and face. Although the preacher’s visage (eyes, mouth, jaw) was distorted with outrage, Tabbs did not let Wire know what he was feeling—so that’s it, I’ve finally lost, it’s over now—his straining body sealed tight so that no sound or movement could escape. They sat quietly for some time in a semblance of mourning and reflection until Wire took to his feet. Tabbs saw Wire to the door and managed to remain standing until the preacher left. Then days of sickness. Fever. Chills. Thirst. Delirium.

His mind freezes on the image of Tom coming to his aid with a circle of hands and comforting words, Tabbs growing in the shade of the other male’s nursing presence. Tom so particular in his touch, Tom so familiar, so pleasing. Just when Tabbs’s recovery had appeared complete, he was seized by another fever. So he dragged his wretched body back to the safety of this bed where sleep eludes him.

Sometimes smoke rising from the kerosene lamp fools him, mirages created by light and heat, the city’s reach into his memory mapped along whatever streets he can name. Looking out through the giant glassy eye of window from his supine position on the bed, he cannot see the city. No city. No sun. Only the sky’s dull palette of gray with ocean beneath it. A dhow passes, the captain swinging the tiller from one gunwale to the other, the man looking for all the world like someone sitting in the bowels of some oceanic monster. Another man passes in the street atop his donkey, the animal’s movements at once awkward and perfectly poised in the cold. And whatever other sights distract Tabbs’s eye in drift. Such is life on Edgemere. A practical people, a sober people. They make allowances, make way with whatever measly means they have at their disposal. No crying or complaining. So why not remain here? Remain here on the island and make Edgemere home.

That’s Christmas out there, he hears Tom say.

Not for long, Tabbs says. He turns his head to see Tom standing outlined before his tired eyes, his facial movements and expressions giving a distraught impression, his shirt so dingy that it looks less like a shirt and more like milk spilled across his chest. His frock coat repulsive with its dark patches. Repulsive his whole delicate figure.

Take me to her.

Will you shut up about it.

I want to see her.

You will.

I want—

All right, you’ll get there.

Need makes us hungry, cold, afraid. (The air rolled in dirty winter wind and light.) We can only imagine what is absent. (Nothing completed, nothing attained.) Winter chill curls in around the door as Ruggles enters. Tabbs props himself up in bed. Was this his tragedy? So late in the game he is still condemned to make that effort of adaptation that he has always made, play the outward role, sometimes without being conscious of it.

Ruggles doesn’t bother to take off his hat or coat. He looks about the room as if his eyes want to glimpse nothing else. So you’re still under the weather. He shakes his head. God grant everybody such a life. He pulls up a chair, letting the legs scrape across the floor, and sits down with a grim concentrated expression. Cocks his misshapen hat.

If I could get out of this bed.

You can. All of this over some imposter? You’re just throwing dust up in the air after the fact. Ruggles looks at him with anger, face full of passion.

It is snowing now, snow whirling nimbly over the street, falling thick through the brittle air, and settling on the grassless ground, startling white against the gray day.

Let it go. Ain’t that what I been telling you all along?

Guess I never heard. Why don’t you tell me again?

Sides, this Original Blind Tom has little life left to live.

Is that so? His little life seems fine to me.

Think of a three-legged cow. The deformity is only interesting at first. Nobody wants to look at that same three-legged cow a third and a fourth and a fifth time.

Thanks, Ruggles. That helps.

Now they simply sit like members of the audience waiting for the next act. Comes the news that Ruggles has just been appointed postmaster.

Why are you always bragging on your gifts? The words are hard and icy in Tabbs’s mouth.

Me? Homeskillet, have you ever heard me brag?

All the time.

Tell him, Tom.

Tom’s face shows bewilderment (fright). A slight exhalation, lips pursed to air.