Song of the Shank

Once they reached the park, they started down the wide central lane, which wound five miles from one end to the other. The park was only a few years old at that point; Seneca Village, the northernmost section of Black Town, had been razed and the park constructed in its place as part of a municipal beautification project. But the Negroes had never completely relinquished their hold, sanctioning the park as their communal site. This day dozens of celebrants strolled about, a flash of unrestrained smiles and theatrical bodies done up in lavish and gaudy costumes, a hundred colors and cloths heating the holiday — John Canoe? Pinkster? Emancipation (state) Day? some Union victory? — air. Again and again Eliza and Mr. Bethune met by whistles, drums, gyrating hips and feet. Some of the celebrants made a fearsome impression with mock guns and swords, more comic the paltry contingents of horsemen with their sorrow-worn almost-dancing steeds. Then too something neither noble nor humorous about the knot of boys huddled into guards, ribbons of tree-circling summer-maiden girls, or the deputation of deer-skinned and eagle-feathered elders seated in ceremonial poses like some rare delegation of the most venerated and powerful Red Indian chiefs. All told, the holidaymakers, whether in couples or family groups, produced a kind of pressure of presence of which everyone was a part, an insider’s air of intimate entitlement that caused them to cast exclusionary looks at Eliza and Mr. Bethune. What’s your business here? Eliza and her guest did not allow themselves to be put out in the slightest by sucked teeth and jeers. Still, since the park had been seized by the Negroes, she wondered if she ought to have made other arrangements. Through her work at the Asylum, she had come to know a less-traveled section of the park, just down this path. Far away, not easy to see, but well worth the effort of getting there.

Eliza and Mr. Bethune continued on, enjoying the walk and the view, letting the features gather. Things had been arranged to be gazed on. Endless brilliances planned, tidied up, and straightened out to the last square corner. She drew his attention to one sight after another. Slim rippling trees with heavy bunches of flowers. Sparkling lagoons. Gardens with birdbaths, fountains, and paved watercourses. A three-mile-long central lawn. Gazebos with mosque-like domes. A marble pavilion stretching almost four city blocks. A paved path, climbing in four or five levels to a shelf of pale crags. A hilltop edged with a castle, a modern structure trying to create an element of medieval intrigue, add something old to the new. This place returning to them a sense of their own motion through it, their limbs growing progressively warmer from the movement. He seemed interested in what he saw, awed even at times — was he really, or is she supplying this impression years after the fact? — but had nothing to say, at least about this. Words were bound to come. (Of course, he must take the lead, draw her into conversation, Eliza showing restraint, holding true tongue back, determined — however difficult — to move within the parameters of convention lest she give him the wrong introductory impression.) What would it take?

They walked another mile or two before he responded to her with something more than a barely perceivable nod of the head. He asked her about the orphanage. Getting on all right there?

Yes.

I take it you enjoy your position?

As much as one might.

It’s not too much for you? It would be for me.

It’s too much.

So why do it? he asked. Why work there? His question was so quiet she had to watch his lips to understand. He did not wait for an answer but carried on talking. It’s too much to bear, but you stay on because of what you can produce in the children.

She explained that the best children — those clever enough — would take up positions of indenture, mostly on farms in the city’s (four) outer boroughs, where skin prejudice held less sway. What better way for independence than through entry to a trade.

He nodded slightly, approvingly.

They walked over the narrow spine of a bridge. The sun shone so warm that Mr. Bethune chose to remove his hat and carry it beside him. It seemed to her of particular significance that he showed an interest in her life. Her life at the Asylum against his life abroad: the South, Britain, the Continent. Her years (twenty) against his (thirty-five, her estimation). Her innocence against his experience.