Song of the Shank

Yeah, Lucky. Leave the nigger be.

Still the words of this man’s cohorts do nothing to lessen his sober intent gaze, the air full of Tom’s voice, a hysterical music, roaring saliva bellowing above their heads, building in volume and intensity until ears hurt.

Lord Jesus!

The alabasters back out of the compartment. Tom continues to shout scream his gibberish.

Tom, Tabbs says.

No stopping him.

Tom!

You hear that nigger?

Yeah, I heard him. Son of a bitch.

The air falls still.

On my mother’s life.

The four alabasters enter the car again.

They’ve come for you, Tom says. You could not put it off forever.

And Tabbs hears the startled shout, There, that one there! and he feels monstrously exposed, breaking out of the limits of his body. Hurrying forward, the deceived snatch the scarf off his head and hurl it into the air, a red moth, the furious flutter of things undone.

Station!

Needing to feel superior to his attackers, Tabbs stands straight up to his full height—

See, what I tell you?

That nigger son of a bitch.

— but when the first blow comes he recoils back into his seat. He fights the air, his heartbeats coming in little waves of acceleration, knowing that he is going to fail, and he slows his body down until he is breathing with infinitesimal care while some fragment of his attention thinks soberly about the facts. A refusal to put his life in the hands of these others. If he holds his breath will he disappear? Held breath decreasing his weight and whatever space he takes up. He becomes quite still, sitting with unbreathing rigidity, listening to the sound of his held breath until he spills his air out all at once in a noisy rush. He does not even feel the boot. One minute he is in his berth, the next prone in the aisle, feeling his eye, the side of his face, his mouth, his nose, his entire head, the slow painful pounding of the blood.

You damn nigger bastard!

Someone stooping over him with the coldest eyes he has ever seen.

He hears, You did not choose me. It was I who chose you.

More hands touch him with savage interest. He hears the sound of his body being pummeled, the shock of blows about his head, and it angers him, their determination to handle him as if they own him, have a right to his flesh. He hears now the sound of his fists on flesh, hard muscles, skin, and bone shocking against his fists. Back on his feet as quick as he can be, sealed in by bodies — still four? or more now? the compartment filled with alabasters, every fucking alabaster who has ever lived and some who haven’t even been born yet — receiving their weight and laying his own on them.

He hears Tom say, Fire up that engine! then hears Eliza say something, her voice calm and sensible, without panic. Hears someone else say, You let him call you that? Sees the boy’s hand move in a lazy arc and one alabaster bring both hands to his throat, as if choking himself, a vise grip, streams of blood spurting through his fingers despite the liquid-stamping pressure he applies. The alabaster goes down with a gurgling sound.

The boy moves the shank in furious desperation at his attackers. A second falls, and a third, and a fourth. Then someone seizes his shank-wielding hand, while another jumps in to afflict damage. Hellfire, the boy says. They got me. Screaming even as he is lifted out of his berth, sound swarming into the marrow of Tabbs’s consciousness, weeping and shouting and wild talk. Tabbs feels himself being lifted, too, kicking, squirming and squiggling like a hook-baited worm but going wherever they carry him. The nerve. Off the train now. The bitching nerve of these godless people. Damn every one of them. Above ground, he sees alabasters, some of the locals, staring alert down the street or seated on benches, porches, and stoops, pulled tidily into themselves. A few smile approvingly. Tossed into the gravel and the dirt. He does not move at first because he cannot. A small shower of stones falls around him. A few hit him. Then they are on him again, fists and feet.

He half pushes and half flings an alabaster off of him, and his feet flee beneath him. In the shouting and running he has no time to stop and see what damage he has suffered. (He tastes blood.) No time. He twists quickly left, shrinks his body to push it through a hole cut in a hedge, then comes upon uneven ground running across patches of dry grass, his head light, his mouth dry, his saliva thick and bitter, sound building and breaking inside him. But the noise behind him is loud and wilder now. Looking back over his shoulder, he sees that the first of his pursuers is near. Run even if he can think of nothing to give him safety, no hiding place.