Song of the Shank

The rain stops. There is a smell of donkeys and some other very sweet scent. He can see the stones of the gate, the trees by the window, the dark sea. He feels that everything is looking at him and waiting.

Yes, things have gotten out of hand. But can you blame us for trying? The essential things in history begin with small convinced communities. So, the church begins with the twelve Apostles. From these small numbers came a radiation of joy in the world.

But it’s your church, Wire. Why are you giving them, these deacons, this Vigilance Committee, Double — why are you giving them all the power?

Every church in the South, every church in the city, every church in the nation, indeed every church on earth, must, by and by, become nothing but the church and renounce all other aims that are incompatible with the principles of the church. Our only enemy is sin.

But it’s your church.

I know. At least I thought I did. But God has become an exile to Himself. I want to believe that we can save these Freedmen. Lifting as we climb. I want to believe that we can save all of us. But Satan has made his way into our temple through some crack in the roof or some open window.

Urchins shelter in the lee of a crudely constructed command post, while their cohorts taunt and tease the horses, hitched to posts or braced to wagons along the main street, attempting to blacken hooves with their rags and brushes. The horses jerk in their traces.

Their loud overjoyed laughter.

Jay-bird sittin on a swingin limb

Winked at me and I winked at him

Up with a rock and struck him on the chin

God damn yer soul, don’t wink again

One blacker screams at a cohort, I ain’t tellin, Magellan, then jumps out of reach before the other can connect with a lunging punch. These shoe blackers — audacious, fearless, and self-contained. (Mischief always holds the seeds of further disruption and destruction.) Only yesterday Tabbs had declined their barefoot offers with a quick dismissive wave. Blackers with no shoes themselves. Now one points at him with perfunctory disdain. He sees a second’s brow rise and the corners of his lips fall. The boy who approached Tabbs yesterday seems more relaxed today, the look of panic gone (disappeared) from his face, replaced by a flat hurt look. Tabbs somewhat ashamed of his refusal. He should show the urchin some kindness. The boy looks Tabbs’s way, sees that they know each other. He smiles, the sound of sea waves coming at him clearly from the right, but the latter turns his face away, a quiet face, without any of yesterday’s irritation.

Tabbs feels he should amend, pay off this small debt. (No, he is not under sway of doing good deeds, nor the motive of unattributable guilt, the erasing of daily sins. Only wants to make penance for yesterday.) Though he believes that begging is undignified, he pulls a dollar from his pocket, silver big and round, and quickly presses it into the boy’s hand. I don’t need the blacking, he says. Share it among you. Only upon his taking his seat at home thirty minutes later does it occur to him that a few coins would have been sufficient, both to feed and to teach the greater lesson.

Holy bejesus, the boy says.

Hot damn.

Hey, what you got?

Half-change.

A case quarter.

Yall niggers don’t know nothing. That’s a dollar bill.

Gon buy my way into heaven.

Black-robed deacons approach. The coin-wealthy boy pops alive, sees them, and dashes off. Shiners and dancers alike, a few of his cohorts notice his hasty departure, turn to see the why, and off they swoop. Then the remainder of the group — slow learners — catch wind and rush off at breakneck speed.

Take me to her.

I sent her away. And she hasn’t come back. I’m sorry. I sent her to the city.

I can find her if you take me off the water.

Tabbs almost laughs.

Where we were living before.

What.

With the piano.

You’re asking about the Bethune woman?

Bring me to her.

Is that who you mean? Tabbs understands. Tom wants the Bethune woman.

Take me to her.

Tabbs sees three girls, strays, contraband, dressed in black, seated out in the open, light rising up from under them as if they are sitting on top of blankets of sunlight. As he passes them, a woman comes over to take him by the elbow to halt him. She speaks but he understands nothing of what she is saying in her irritable quick patter.

Flying their rags at the end of broom handles like the standards of an impoverished army, the shoe blackers shuck and jive. Juba it up, clapping and singing.

One mornin Massa ready to head out the door

And gon away

He went to git his coat

But neither hat nor coat was there

For colored gal, she had swallowed up both

Then took her nap in the chair