Song of the Shank

Tabbs speaks to him, and the boy lifts his shoulders in a meaningless way, his brown eyes rippling with sun, which rises and falls inside them. When he is praised, his eyes light up with a glow of their own, red suffusing his cheeks. The afternoon sun starts to lose its harsher edge. Late afternoon light. The city calls out to them, Tom playful still, full of rejoicing.

Tom. Tabbs touches him on the shoulder.

Eliza and Tom are the first to detrain when they reach the station, Tabbs and the boy behind them. He steps down to the platform, his feet wobbly. They amble on, cautious, looking (and listening) this way and that — Tom in his gangling posture, as clumsy in his bodily movements as a child taking his first walk, a body of mixed messages — before venturing on to their southbound locomotive. They are the last to board. The train snags into motion, pulling out of the station. They weave toward the sleeping cars against the violent rattle of the train.

They walk a gauntlet, successive rows of nigger-seeking faces lifting in concert. Tabbs feels a storm gathering inside his head, a spinning turbulence that sets his whole body atremble, his eyes going far beyond what is visible, starting to water, blurred sight. Against his expectations, they reach their assigned compartment and slip into their berths. Anxious, time is transferred from one station to another with the swiftness of a thought. Now the city looks very far away out the window, and he feels achingly free of everything in it. Can it really be this easy? He fidgets in his berth. As he sees the city through the glass a smart hurt imposes itself on his mind. Something is eluding him, but what?

The boy is a need evocative of other necessities. His once terrified face loosens into a bemused grin when their eyes meet, traces of dried sweat marking the boundaries of his brow and chin. Still, there is a glimpse of self-doubt in his physical posture. Small, a pygmy to Tabbs’s manly stature. Tabbs sees him shift restlessly in his berth. What can he do to help?

He tells the boy something about the science of locomotion, about engines, pistons and pulleys, steam and tracks. He hopes in speaking this way he isn’t causing a greater shock than the boy has already suffered. He feels the words go into the boy, but the boy remains silent, his features sporting a specter of worry. Stations drone by.

Train, station, train. Train, station, train. Train, station, train. A sameness of place, sound, and motion. After a while it no longer seems to him that he is trying to put space and distance behind him or shorten space and distance ahead, but that he and the train are now hanging suspended in pure time like a single thread of spider-web. Going nowhere and fleeing from nothing. A hypnotic steadiness (seeing) of trees and towns and solitude. Eliza and Tom speak amicably. He and the boy should too, but the boy sits quietly, an expression at once fierce, wild, and tender.

I thought — Tabbs begins, but he does not say it, disappointed in his own failed and spent flesh.

Something releases in the air. Alabasters enter the compartment. Tabbs feels a constriction in his chest, a muscle withdrawing to some empty space within. Warily, the alabasters (four of them) begin making their way toward Tabbs and his party, moving slowly, closing in. Soon they are close enough for Tabbs to take in the expressions on their faces, faces registering a type of disbelief more akin to caution (fear). The figures identical, the same, in dress. We all dressed in Memphis cotton, Ruggles said. They cast their slow heavy-lidded glances upon Eliza, Tabbs, Tom, and the boy in turn, surrendering to the sight.

How you all doing?

Eliza speaks a reply.

Where you heading?

She tells him.

Is that right? … These niggers are with you? … You don’t say? That one here, she sure is a peculiar-looking one.

Yeah. What’s your name, auntie?

She can’t talk, Eliza says.

One blind nigger and one mute one. Trust my eyes. And what’s this one’s affliction?

I’m jus a nigger, the boy says.

I can see that.

The four alabasters continue to stand before them, their expressions eager, puzzled, and wild. Tabbs begins to tremble. To have made it this far. From the way that their features scramble he can tell that they are tense but undecided, as if waiting for a higher authority to instruct them. For a while the four alabasters continue to do nothing but stand there in wordless confrontation, staring with a peculiar blankness. Now all he can do is to continue to sit, weighing a thousand expedients, stippled shadows ever present, moving across his lap. Now he hears a humming cadence. Tom’s lips are amurmur with faint sounds. Talking to himself? Singing? Then Tom starts to string together phrases, a disjointed discourse. The alabasters turn their eyes toward Tom.

What’s that?

Tom speaks sings discourses on and on.

I could swear that he’s—

He’s just an imbecile, Lucky. Can’t you see that?