Song of the Shank

The boy holds out his hand, then opens it to reveal the coin Tabbs gave him yesterday glinting with sweat in his palm. It’s okay if I come to your hotel room with you, he says.

What?

It’s okay if I come to your hotel room with you.

This boy — Tabbs had not asked his name — with his flushed face, shining eyes, and poorly obedient tongue. He takes Tabbs with his other hand, the hot little dirty coinless one, this final action — Tabbs thinking, I will never see him again, I never saw him again.

In the ocean air his thoughts play. Strangely peaceful here, the water glowing and rippling, and light hanging in the sky like trailing silk. The night cooler than you might imagine, out in the open like this, all those stars freezing above.

An ungodly man diggeth up evil, and in his lips there is a burning fire. So is the tongue among them, that it defileth the whole body and setteth on fire the course of nature. Double is quick and alive, full of energy and expectation, his movements strong and excessive as he strolls back and forth along the water’s edge, which is like the spine of some colossal animal, strolls before the men assembled one and all in white robes along the shoreline, the men perfectly calm and relaxed in their garments as if these robes are simply another feature of this landscape, shawls of sea fog. He is part, one of those white-robed men, and he stands waiting and watching and hearing the low buzz of the other men breathing alongside him.

I was there at the beginning, Double says. I remember the cold hold where together we were held in shackles and wallowed in filth and stewed in disease and pondered the worth of life and the finality of death as the chains rang and echoed and the ship creaked.

And when we spoke out, they tried to remove us from speech and exile us to silence.

The Deacon puts one hand on Drinkwater’s shoulder and exerts downward force until Drinkwater drops into the wet sand, porous beach dented around his knees.

And he has to consider his own weight, all of that sinking softness beneath him, wet and black and full of shapes.

In a barely audible voice Double asks Drinkwater to open his mouth. Drinkwater opens his mouth. (Small teeth.)

O sons of Israel who feed upon suffering and who must quench your thirst in tears, your bondage shall not endure much longer, for there is something in us that cannot be outside us and thus will be after us though indeed it hath no history what it was before us, and cannot tell how it entered into us.

Double’s left hand arrows into the opposing sleeve of his robe then angles free. The glinting object he now clutches in his hand he holds out for all to see, a glass vial filled with red liquid and secured with a bone (ivory?) cap carved in the likeness of a fish. Even from a distance of several feet in the fading light, he can see that the cap is so finely and intricately detailed that one might mistake the cap for an actual fish shrunken into miniature.

Behold. Consecrated blood.

Double unscrews the cap and allows one drop of consecrated blood to spill onto Drinkwater’s tongue then three additional drops to plop onto Drinkwater’s forehead.

Do not mourn. Each of us is a celebrant here. In the times to come we shall know each other by bloodstains.

Double moves on to the next man, who kneels down before the Deacon and opens his mouth without the Deacon having to first instruct him.

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and goodwill shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And so stand with us, poised at the entrance to our suffering. Leap for our islands, our towns, our cities. Leap for our seaborne ships.

No one comes in, Tabbs says. And you don’t go out.

Yes, suh. The top end of his black boots rise well above his knees, like strange appendages, new growth, the boy’s body rising plant-like out of each leather sleeve. (Boots full of sound. Whenever he walks, his footsteps are hollow in sound as if there are hidden cellars under the floorboards beneath him.) And the shank, a sharp shiny addition to the belt around his hips, with its long wooden handle and equally long blade, also seems too large for this boy.

Do you understand?

Yes, suh.

Tom is beside them before Tabbs notices his presence. I got stories to tell, he says.

The way I feel this morning we might witness a miracle today. Double looks at the Bible on the dais, gets momentarily lost in admiring contemplation of the pages, then turns his gaze back to the congregation. Sermonizing, he keeps one hand on the Good Book. Are you all with me?

Yes!

I thought so.

Excited laughter and exchanges from the congregation.

I’m gon say something that yall don’t want to hear today.

Uh oh.

We are not worthy of this island, Double says. I don’t think yall heard me. I said, we are not worthy of this island.

Silence.