Song of the Shank

Rain Storm (1854–1856)

“Sure, I been ripped off. I been cheated. But they gave me a name.”

FROM THE START PERRY OLIVER WAS BOTH BEWILDERED and annoyed by the noise of the fiddles, the lamps in the trees, the chatter of smartly dressed men, the medley of gaily colored dresses — mostly white cottons and silks done up with floral patterns — the clink of bracelets, the gold crosses and lace, the niggers in white jackets and pants scurrying about serving hors d’oeuvres ordered specially from New Orleans. In this garden setting, all the women exchanged kisses in the European style — Perry Oliver had never been to Europe — while the men seemed to take pride in their provincial accents. A few guests had even brought along their niggers to fan them cool.

Perry Oliver walked the grass lawn up and down by the neat rows of flowers, hoping that the fragrances of soil and stem might drown out the powerful odors of the overly powdered women. He exchanged a few words here and there, practiced being sociable when he had to — he felt not so much antisocial or shy as careful and opportunistic — using his routine that he was a tobacco planter from Savannah. I’ve heard that’s a nasty business. Terrible stains on the fingers. You’re much too young for it. Get out while you can. But perhaps it is wrong of me to criticize. I must admit, I do like a good smoke every now and then. Even as he talked, he was careful to observe the going-ons of the party through a watery shimmer of heat and haze. Men and women alike, the guests gave their hosts, General James Bethune and his wife, Mrs. Mary Bethune, inquisitive welcoming looks, each considering it was her or his duty to make some pleasant polite remark. The couple was standing directly in front of a white trellis with several varieties of roses blooming out. In contrast to the commanding presence of her husband, Mary Bethune was small and slight, pale and thin, with protruding collarbones. She was very willing to raise the most casual remark — Are these Negroes on loan? They are quite delightful — into a conversation, while her husband was quite content to let his wife do most of the talking, smiling here and there and responding to statements directed at him with expressive movements of his mouth and eyes. Hands in his jacket pockets — he seemed to have the habit of keeping his hands in his pockets — he watched his guests with a strange glow in his face, as if he possessed a certain strength that he thought they all lacked. When he did speak — He is a soldier, his wife said, that’s all he can say for himself — he expelled words in a deep voice like some stage performer as if he expected his booming words to knock the listener off his feet.

Mary Bethune was the first person to welcome Perry Oliver. She left her husband’s side — pink, white, and red roses blooming up behind his shoulders and back — and came over to Perry Oliver and introduced herself, offering him a white-gloved hand. He didn’t have one sentence ready in case she should ask him how he came to be invited to her party. (He had not been invited.) Taking evasive measures, he tried ingratiating himself, complimenting her on the house and the grounds and the servants and the food and wine. Well, she said. You are here to enjoy yourself. Let me know if it all meets your satisfaction. For now, I beg your leave, she said, but I must pay my respects to — she soon moved off to greet other guests.

Another guest, a pretty young woman, a bright vision of elegance in her flowing white gown — some fancy drape guarding a sculptor’s prized creation — came over and started up a conversation. Somehow the talk got around to the Bethune children. The young woman raised a slender wrist sparkling with three silver bracelets of separate diameter and actually pointed out their son, Sharpe, who was standing in another segment of the garden with a circle of listeners. Is that so? He feigned interest. Took her hand into both of his own. What a pleasure this has been. She raised her chin to move her face closer to his. He let her hand fall. If you will excuse me. Freed himself of her company under the pretense that he was off to meet the son. And there she stood, smiling, while he hurried through waves of guests bustling about with cheerful faces. But he only walked far enough to observe and listen.

Sharpe was a handsome man of around twenty — some vague resemblance between him and his father, or mother for that matter, although there was more of her in his facial features — possessing that special self-consciousness that only actors have. (He was no professional actor, as far as Perry Oliver knew.) He wore a splendid shirt and tie, without a jacket. But the most striking thing about him was the exceptional length of his legs, which he displayed in well-polished knee-length black leather boots. The young women in attendance certainly seemed stirred by the style and quality of his dress, but he struck Perry Oliver as dull, colorless, and stupid, for the moment anyone started a discussion with him he would start talking about himself — what concerts he had attended, what paintings he had seen, what business he had conducted, where he hoped to travel. Otherwise he spoke about things that were common knowledge. He seemed most engaged with people of comparable age and tastes.

As though he had heard every silent word and wished to prove Perry Oliver wrong, Sharpe actually parted company with the circle and sought out a group of elderly guests to talk to. At one point Perry Oliver was engaged in conversation with another pretty young woman — about breeding expensive racehorses, a subject he cared little about — and since the lady’s perfect lips were taking too long to form a word, he turned his head to discover that Sharpe was watching him. It was hard to say how long he had been looking. He did not come over. Instead he found a group of elderly women and started kissing hands and cheeks.

The party went on this way. Perry Oliver seemed to always catch the attention of some busybody who liked to rattle on. He sometimes smiled and sometimes sputtered at a loss for words. Even found himself repeating phrases in parrot fashion. He blamed himself. What kind of feeling, what motive had compelled him to linger in this city for a full week to attend a party of posers reeking of elitism, and at that, a party he had not been invited to?

A week earlier while he was on business at the orphanage — the director corrected him, We are a Christian mission—he had overheard the elderly director discussing the party with her young assistant, holding up the perfumed invitation to the other woman’s nose. The orphanage had turned out to be of little use to him — he would have better luck finding an understudy a few days later in the next town he visited — but he did learn of this party being put on by perhaps the most powerful man in the county, General Bethune, a newspaper publisher and political player. He decided to hang around. So, here he was, thoroughly bored and wanting to leave. (He also worried at the thought of chancing upon the fragrance-awed orphanage director or her assistant. Why hadn’t he thought about this sooner?) But leaving might be awkward. So he continued to make conversation mechanically, careful not to make the error of stretching the truth too little or too much or of supposing too soon or too late. And he went on this way until they were called into the mansion.

Barely a minute after all of the guests had taken their seats, Perry Oliver saw General Bethune struggling into the room, his fists gripped around the looped ends of two black canes. (So that was why General Bethune had remained standing in one place back in the garden.) The son Sharpe was at his side, walking at a measured pace with his hands behind his back and carrying on an ordinary conversation with his father. The other guests seemed to notice them as well, and their chatter started to die down, replaced by a gradual hush. Father and son seated themselves in two of the three mahogany chairs positioned under the mantelpiece of the marble fireplace. Then the Bethunes’ three daughters entered the room, dressed in white gowns, each with a different shade of rose — red, white, yellow — pinned to her collar. All three girls wore their hair wound in a Grecian knot. Perry Oliver estimated that they ranged in age from seven to ten, which meant that the oldest of the three daughters was only half Sharpe’s age.

Mary Bethune returned to the room, with a little nigger boy walking beside her, hand in hand. She led him over to the piano, where he sat down perfectly straight on the stool and positioned it under him with the legs turned at a slight angle toward the audience. He was no more than ten feet away from Perry Oliver, who would estimate that the boy was no older than five or six (although with a nigger age was never certain). His eyes bulged as if someone had fitted stones in the hollow sockets then sealed them over. They had outfitted him in a black suit with short sleeves and pants and a freshly pressed white shirt with a rounded collar. His hair was as glossy as his highly polished shoes. There on the angled stool he started twitching his shoulders and trembling as if he were feverish. He seemed to move his head in the direction of the daughters, who giggled when they saw his curious gesture.

This is our prized attraction for the evening, Mary Bethune said, our boy, Tom. Rather than prejudice the performance that you are about to see and hear, I will ask that Tom simply begin. Mary Bethune took a seat slotted between her husband and son.

Tom positioned his small hands over the ivory keys and began playing the piano so violently that the furniture rattled and the paintings on the wall trembled. Perry Oliver kept a mistrustful ear to a melody that ran along, then jerked at intervals.

While Tom played, the three daughters remained perfectly still, only the occasional movement of an eye, a twitching of a nose, or a trickle of sweat indicating that they were living and breathing creatures. Even as he played, two niggers dressed in white top hats, tails, and gloves went about serving the guests savories and dainty glasses of French wine from silver trays. (Hungry, Perry Oliver would have been satisfied with a main dish.)

Tom sounded the chord that closed his first song. His listeners gave him generous applause, a sound that sent him into long loud fits of laughter and handclapping. General Bethune and his wife looked at each other. They seemed equally delighted to see Tom receiving such a warm response. The wife was smiling openly, and her husband showed some easing up of his habitual reticence, only to quickly resume his old expression, perhaps thinking it an improper display of affection.

As the applause died down, Perry Oliver heard someone whisper behind him, Now that’s my kind of nigger. He’ll do what you tell him with his eyes closed.

Tom began his next song. In Perry Oliver’s hearing and perception, the music broke off now and again, and the great glass over the mantelpiece, faced by the other great console glass at the opposing wall, increased and multiplied the image of Tom at the piano, until you saw the piano fading away in endless perspectives. The music knew no denial. Perry Oliver felt like a hunter being lured into ambush by some unidentified prey just up ahead beyond his field of vision. Music set the trail. Somehow in all of this he managed to study the faces of those seated around him. Their eyes were mocking, tender, clear. And perhaps their eyes showed something else that he had no name for and that they themselves would fail to name even if they knew it existed. (Best they didn’t know, for awareness negated any possibility of acknowledgment and could only bring denial under the regulatory lens of social custom.)

It went on this way, Tom fingering one song after another. Perry Oliver could not recognize any of the melodies let alone the titles because he knew little about music. His entire life he had been uncomfortable with sounds. He knew this much: the disparate lines of the party — the chattering, the laughter, each guest’s clever or stupid remark, every grace and gesture, the shoes and clothing made of the simplest materials or the most fancy, the attendees in all of their perfections and defects — took pattern and form in the melodies, chords, and rhythms of Tom’s piano. The more Tom played, the more frenzied he became. He turned his blind eyes and face to the audience and shouted “Look at me!” or “How about this?” or “Let’s see you do that!” or “Straight now!” or simply “Hey!” Perry Oliver might have been mistaken, but he would have bet money, and plenty of it, that Tom was expressing the comments for Perry Oliver’s ears only.

With a great rising, waving, and falling of his hands, Tom closed a song and immediately stood up from his stool and took a stagy sort of bow. All of the objects in the room returned to their customary place, piece by piece, as did the various layers of Perry Oliver’s skin. (A week later, two weeks, he could still hear the music buzzing softly at the back of his skull.) The audience greeted the finale with a standing ovation that caused Tom to begin bowing again and again, like some well-oiled or broken machine.

Guests began to leave their seats and gather around the performer and his master and mistress at the piano. It took some effort for Perry Oliver to take to his feet, but he worked his way around the gathering bodies to squeeze within touching distance of Tom, evening sun reflecting off the boy’s black form. (While Tom played, Perry Oliver had felt, heard, and remembered nothing of the weather.) Perry Oliver was so agitated and exhausted he couldn’t evaluate what he had heard — was it good or bad? — with a cool head. Closer up, he could see that Tom’s hands were dirty, the nails rough as if he’d been scratching and gouging the earth.

One after another the guests praised General Bethune and his wife to the skies.

What a remarkable find.

I’ve seen nothing like it.

They were skilled appraisers, knowing when to pause to let a compliment sink in.

Did you really enjoy it? Mary Bethune asked.

Why of course.

Need you ask?

I’m so pleased, Mary Bethune said.

From their place behind the piano, the three daughters rose in unison and went to stand among themselves near the fireplace then seemed to decide against standing and took the seats formerly occupied by their brother and parents.

Tom is quite something, General Bethune said. He infuses our best melodies and harmonies with a barbaric element.

Yes.

And you should hear him sing, he said. My wife prefers his playing, but I’ll take a good song any day.

Fascinating creature.

How do you explain it?

A conundrum of Nature.

God.

Or the devil.

How did you acquire him? someone asked.

Nothing in the Bethunes’ manner of expression showed that they had heard. So Perry Oliver asked, How old is he?

Mary Bethune stopped one of the fancily dressed niggers and took some old porcelain cups from the silver serving tray he was holding, then personally poured each guest in the immediate vicinity a mouthful or two of steaming tea from a silver kettle. You must really try this tea, she said.

Tom? an elderly gentleman asked. I don’t believe I recognize that last allemande. What’s it from?

Tom rubbed his knuckles against his teeth.

You play delightfully.

Other guests set about paying their compliments to Tom and his master and mistress. Tom responded to the remarks with a faint tilt of the head, a raised jaw, and random nods and head shakes directed at no one in particular. Mary Bethune put her hands on the boy’s shoulders and pulled him back into her body, hugged him as if she were protecting him from ghosts, while the daughters sat silently before the fireplace, snuggling close to each other like tiny animals feeling the cold, and watching this world of adults with amusement perhaps or terror.

A pretty young woman, earrings glinting like stars from the darkness of her tanned skin, stood smiling at the boy. His head rose as he caught her scent, and his hand rose too, reached out and touched her bare arm near the shoulder. She shivered.

Perry Oliver spoke at that moment. I really enjoyed your playing, Tom.

Tom spun around to face him. Mary Bethune looked at Perry Oliver.

Tom, she said, this is Mr. Perry Oliver from Savannah.

Her statement impressed Perry Oliver. She had remembered his name and an important particular, though they had spoken for only a few minutes.

Tom peered up, merry-looking. Hello, Mr. Perry Oliver. Tom reached out and took Perry Oliver’s hand, his own still trembling from the music. Glad to meet you. He gave Perry Oliver’s hand a painfully wild squeeze and pull. And just as suddenly threw the hand free.

The lines in Mary Bethune’s face tightened. He seems to respond to you, she said. She studied Perry Oliver’s face. Most unusual.

Whatever thoughts she was trying to puzzle together were interrupted when Tom walked off in the direction of the fireplace without warning. The blind boy moved — he walked with the same small quick steps of his mistress — without stumbling into objects or chairs over to where the daughters were seated. They stood up from their seats to greet him. The oldest girl hugged him, while the youngest rose up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. Then one of the girls said something Perry Oliver couldn’t hear. Shut up, Mary, Tom said, pushing her back. And he set off lumbering through the room, the little girls screaming with laughter as they pursued him and tried to catch him. When he neared the piano, he trotted over to it and leaned over the keys, where he did some violent hammering with one fist, as if he were trying to nail the keys in place. Mary Bethune retrieved the boy — the girls hurried off to their former seats at the fireplace — and returned him to his position beside her husband.

Once again, Tom reached out and took Perry Oliver’s hand. It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Perry Oliver from Savannah. He pumped the hand in steady rhythm.

Tom, Mary Bethune said.

He released the hand. The girls tittered and giggled.

Tom broke away from his mistress and began moving through the crowd, firmly and impulsively grasping the hand of one guest after another, and squealing (singing?), Hi, sir. Hi, madame. Good day to you, sir. How’s the weather, madame? Soon he was rushing about the room, bumping into both servants and guests and screaming, Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people. Mary Bethune’s face quivered with embarrassment. Her husband lowered his eyes to hide his feelings. With her natural quickness, Mary managed to corner Tom and calm him with one touch of his elbow. He allowed her to lead him out of the room. The three girls got up from their chairs and followed.

Not long after, the party drew to an official close. General Bethune stood by the French doors leading out of the room and offered good wishes as each guest departed, many of the women kissing his hand, as if he were some sort of holy man. General Bethune was the only person Perry Oliver said good-bye to when he left. He had so much he wanted to say to the man about Tom, but the General stood before the opened door and seemed far away in his mind and somewhat put-upon. Once Perry Oliver was in the garden, he noticed some object — gray in color? He couldn’t say with distance and the distorting light — on the lawn. He took it up, with an immediate lifting of scent. It was a perfumed invitation that one of the guests had left behind, with all of the necessary facts — date, time, location — printed in fine type on cream-colored paper — not gray — with a red border. He folded the invitation in half and placed it in his pocket.

On his way to the main road, he was surprised to discover that the Bethune estate actually had an abundance of gardens, sectioned off by wrought iron fences six feet in height, fences that were no doubt crafted by the finest nigger hands in the county. Pine trees grew by spiraling iron shafts. He wandered into one garden after another easing about, noticing but failing to truly observe the colorful flowers in fading evening light. Strolled all the way down to a pond where he sat on the bank and looked thoughtfully at the water. The gloomy pines with their shaggy roots stood motionless and dumb. After some time he crawled on all fours to the edge of the pond and dipped his face into the water and gulped the fresh liquid, his eyes open, seeing all the way down to the bottom into another better world.

Two years later, Perry Oliver boarded a hot autumn train — cloth suitcase weighing down one hand, leather briefcase weightless in the other — with his young assistant, Seven, a boy not yet a teen, to make a journey of several hundred miles for a speculative sit-down business conference with General Bethune — a man he had met once and a man he had come to despise after all he had learned since that meeting — an interview that might provide him nothing and cost him everything. He suffered at the thought of travel, for he had a theory that each mile of travel shortened a man’s life by months, even years. Distance ages us, not time.

These speculations were reason enough for Perry Oliver to remain homebound — he felt no disappointment for places he had not seen — and for him to, on a daily basis, sit and do nothing, as much as possible. He would admit that this habit of pondering disagreeable facts and suppositions — he estimated that he repeated his theory five or six times a day to an audience that was always the same, always interested: himself (curious how little the ideas of an individual vary) — always brought with it a measure of certainty and comfort, but he also believed himself savvy enough to recognize the possible limitations of his theory, to distinguish what was probable truth from what was improbable exaggeration. Any man who hoped to make his way in the world needed an ability to see both sides of an issue.

He was unsure to what extent this journey would either verify or invalidate his beliefs and principles regarding travel, but the risk of a train ride — how shocked he was to unveil the heroism that had been concealed within him for so long and that was pushing him forward into new ventures — was meager in comparison to all he stood to gain. So be it. He was in a state of becoming. In a word, Tom summed up everything he desired.

While he had made sure that both he and the boy dressed in light summer clothes — given the significantly cooler climates where they lived, this requirement entailed purchase of a new wardrobe, required his spending some tens of dollars of the six thousand or more that he had saved up over the years and that he carried on his person now — their fellow passengers were all starched and ironed. Some were red in the face from the heat and the weight and color of their dark garments. (The men had even refused to take off their hats. Perry Oliver never wore a hat and wouldn’t pretend to now.) And the numbers of bodies in the car only made it worse. Although the car was a first-class compartment, it was crowded and had been so from the start — and so it would be to the finish — three to a side with small windows — he would have preferred double — a narrow aisle, and no corridor. He had paid top dollar in the mistaken belief that he and Seven would have a compartment to themselves. A few hours after setting out, the journey began to seem tiresome and absurd, the heat uncomfortable, the smell (sweat and steam) offensive, the method of transportation violent, and the results increasingly uncertain. Seven did not seem to enjoy it any better, following the world outside the window with a sad worried expression. Every now and then he would shut his eyes and breathe desperately. He was thin and anxious — Perry Oliver often had to remind the boy to keep his hands still — and had been from the very moment Perry Oliver brought him into his service those many months ago. (How long has it been? Yes, nearly two years and counting.) The traveling clothes Perry Oliver had purchased for him did little to improve his appearance, as the new tailored order of neat angles and patterns was disrupted by the old familiar chaos of the boy’s sloppily manufactured cap. This matter of a ratty cap could easily be accounted for. The little traveling they did do by train always made Seven feel like someone important, although Perry Oliver’s custom of keeping the boy in the dark, of failing to reveal to him where they were going or why — Perry Oliver had his reasons — never seemed to bother him. In fact, it brought a lifting of spirits, a ritualistic sending-off that necessitated the donning of this favorite cap, a cheap beaver skin that fit his head somewhat too snugly. Perry Oliver wondered, had he himself purchased the ugly cap — when? where? — or did the boy already own it when he came into his service?

Seven?

Sir?

Answer me this one question. Where did you get that godforsaken cap?

From the getting place.

It was not the answer he expected. Surprised (shocked?), one mind told him to challenge Seven’s statement and press for the clarity of detail — when? where? — even if for no other reason than to instruct the boy in the proper method of answering a question—Rule number one: Always answer in a complete sentence. Rule number two … — while his other told him to let it stand, for the phrase had a certain enchantment that, momentarily at least, took his mind away from the drudgeries of travel and the mental worries of his scheduled meeting with General Bethune, as it hinted at some deeper penetration, made him ponder about what it held back. Seven’s wide serious face seemed to suggest that he was almost afraid, forbidden, to pronounce the name. All the better if the boy had thoughts and projects he did not disclose. Up to now Perry Oliver suspected (feared?) that he might be, through either birth or upbringing — Perry Oliver had few pertinent facts about either — totally empty.

He rocked to and fro — was he moving his body or was the train directing it? — half dozing, his whole mind on the contract and cash in his briefcase until the city rose up out of the landscape, a black shapeless mass that air and sky began to mold into a recognizable form with each passing mile. Even at a distance of twenty miles it was little more than a church steeple rising up from and pinning down the horizon, but as they drew nearer he could see small houses huddled on its outskirts, placed down in patches of crops, then large farmlands radiating outward from white mansions, looking down on rows of cabins and shacks like badly aligned teeth, then the city itself with its town hall and three-story buildings and stone streets. Bell clanging and steam rising, the engine pulled them into the station. Hardly had they stopped before an army officer forced his way into the overflowing car, followed by a second soldier with a rifle mounted across his chest. They moved slowly from one end of the car to the other, row by row, staring down into the face of each passenger. Satisfied, they moved on to the next car. (Perhaps additional officers and soldiers were performing this very same duty on the other cars, serial repetition and imitation.) Only then could the passengers detrain.

Even with the shade awning overhanging the platform, the hard midday light stunned Perry Oliver quiet. Everyone’s face had the longing for something cool and wet. A small group of soldiers stood posted along the stationhouse platform. Seven’s eyes widened in admiration at the sight of them. He even stopped to look. What next? Would he ask for an autograph? Perry Oliver spoke his name to move him along. Miniature suitcase in hand, Seven resumed walking, turning his head for a final look or two and stepping on the heels of the person in front of him.

Mind your feet, Perry Oliver said. He might have said more. But he understood that little minds mistake strength and action for beauty, are crushed by pomp and spectacle. Why bother challenging such vulgar perceptions? Seven had many other annoying qualities that caused Perry Oliver greater distress.

For a respite from the heat (the sun at least) and the travel, Perry Oliver decided to take the boy for dinner inside the station diner. They had their choice of a table since few patrons were inside, mostly men traveling alone who would walk up to the bar and order a beer or whiskey before taking a stool and struggling out of their jackets and vests, which they threw across their laps. Perry Oliver ordered the special. The boy wanted hard-boiled eggs and lemonade. They took their time about eating. Trains came and went. They lowered their napkins and left them behind on the table, then returned to the platform, feeling all the better for it.

Nigger porters were busy, attending to luggage and freight, some carrying trunks, boxes, or crates on their backs and showing remarkable speed despite their top-heavy condition. (Many riders were returning from vacations, bearing magnificent purchases.) One older porter sidled over to take their bags. Seven glared angrily at the nigger when he reached for his suitcase. Perry Oliver had witnessed this struggle before. It was not so much that the boy believed the porter a thief but that the relinquishing of his bag lowered his own sense of self-importance, for he feared that his fellow citizens would observe his luggageless condition and label him as another anonymous urchin, a hanger-on awaiting a handout, or even worse, a conniving thief or troublemaker.

Allow him to perform his job, Perry Oliver said. Go fetch us a taxi.

The boy hurried off under his ill-fitting beaver cap, which looked like some mad animal that had seized his skull. He stopped to peer into one carriage only to pass it up and run up to the next, where he stopped and stared in. He approached every carriage one and all in such fashion. Then he returned to Perry Oliver with his head lowered.

Where is our taxi?

None were suitable, sir. They got niggers doing the driving.

He had to restrain himself from slapping the boy. (He had slapped the boy once or twice, always with good reason, a calculated chastisement, and never in anger.) They were in public. Don’t be stupid, he said. Niggers are the best drivers.

Seven looked at him, surprised by the words. He did all their driving back home.

Please go and fetch us a taxi.

Moving at a much slower pace than before, the boy went to fetch a taxi.

Time and again, Perry Oliver reproached himself with the question, Why did I settle for this boy instead of another? And why do I continue to put up with him? He did not know the answer. True, the boy was a loyal and dependable driver. (Driving their old carriage was one of his few chores that Perry Oliver would gladly admit that the boy performed with remarkable skill, totally to Perry Oliver’s satisfaction.) And the boy had one other good quality: he needed little beyond what he already possessed under Perry Oliver’s service — food, shelter, and his beaver cap. However, he had continual reason to wonder if this boy could be left to supervise a peculiar nigger pianist (his eventual duty), since these past two years (three?), not one day had passed without some upset. I’m sorry, sir was a ritual habit. He certainly felt no pity for the boy — in fact, he had no feeling at all for the boy; well, perhaps he had to admit he had some — and he certainly felt no parental obligation or duty to keep him fed and employed. (Perry Oliver was almost thirty and still did not know if he liked children or if he would want to father and raise a son or daughter himself someday.) So it pained him, made him feel serious disgust for himself, that he tolerated this boy. Seven had no idea why he had come into this world, why he had been created. He could only visualize himself in the future as rich and important. What are your plans? Perry Oliver would ask him.

Be rich and handsome. And I will have a strong body to carry all of my riches.

Perry Oliver strongly believed that Seven was set for a life of repeated mistakes and constant suffering. Perhaps he should be looking to replace the boy? He told himself that he could do better. He had to do better. The boy’s days were numbered.

These were his thoughts as the taxi driver helped him and the boy into the hooded space of the carriage. By the time he took his seat the fabric of his pants had gone wet against his skin, the cotton hot and sticky.

Without even remembering the how and when, Perry Oliver was awakened from a nap with several knocks on his door and a voice telling him that the innkeeper Mrs. Rudge was calling him down for supper. He pulled the door open to find her curious nigger servant standing there with his head wrapped in a bonnet and his body strapped in an apron, and with Seven at his side, looking rested.

The hand Mrs. Rudge gave him was plump but weightless. A fleshy petal, the red-painted nails like shiny beetles stuck to a flower. She was extremely thin and extremely ugly in both shape and face. Even her eyebrows looked deprived, like two thin columns of ants lined up on her pale and powdered skin, powder that helped her countenance none. She seated them at the largest table Perry Oliver had ever seen, one that could easily accommodate twenty people, already laid and glittering with linen and silver. Seven got up from the chair where Mrs. Rudge had placed him and hustled off to the end of the table farthest away from Perry Oliver.

Perry Oliver took his time about finishing his plate. If the food was not bad enough, his napkin — the cheap material stiffened with too much starch — was rough against his lips. Once he placed his napkin on the table, the nigger in the white bonnet and apron cleared away plates, bowls, cups, and utensils then made a pot of tea. Mrs. Rudge took the kettle and poured out three glasses. Standing, drinking her tea, she turned her talk to matters of the city, the estates and the harvests, the people of consequence, local men of great importance and the noticeable men of lesser importance. Perry Oliver was quick to realize that the conventional, definitive nature of her views and convictions was a barrier between him and the truth. Nonetheless, he tried to learn what he could about General Bethune — she had mentioned him time and again — without being obvious about it. The General had done a great deal of good in that city and the people loved him. He dispensed charity without stopping to consider whether he should or not. Paid poor schoolboys’ fees. Took coffee, sugar, and molasses to widows and old ladies. Gave indigent brides dresses, and grooms tails. Found homes for niggers who had unexpectedly lost their owners. What she told him confirmed another one of Perry Oliver’s theories: the city valued the part of General Bethune that he himself valued the least.

From what Mrs. Rudge related, in the final months of his wife’s lengthy illness General Bethune had to hire a man to handle the daily operations of the newspaper, a task that would have fallen to his son Sharpe, who was away from the family for recognizable periods of time. And then too, General Bethune had the additional concern of his three daughters. After the loss of their mother, the girls spent their waking moments walking about the mansion and grounds, prayer books in hand. Mrs. Rudge went on to narrate a detailed account of the wake, funeral, and burial. We are all saddened by his recent loss. Such a noble woman. I counted her among my oldest and dearest friends. From the time she was a child she had a heart of glass. General Bethune gave permission for anyone who so desired to attend the funeral, even farmers and niggers, on condition that they did not wear mourning clothes. He himself came in uniform, his military outfit from twenty years earlier freshly tailored to account for new flesh and pounds. The girls were terribly overwrought at the loss of their mother, but Sharpe was hit especially hard. He had actually dropped to his knees at the gravesite. Otherwise it was a quiet and beautiful gathering, as an appreciative city had put forward the money to have the grave dug with silver spades, and to have the pallbearers lower the fine casket into the earth with golden chains.

As if to rest her voice for a moment before she continued her narration, Mrs. Rudge performed a casual turn of her head in Seven’s direction, saw the boy, and trembled with a little shock of recognition. Dear, boy, she said. You must find this talk disagreeable. How could I have lost track? Please, join me in the parlor.

Perry Oliver declined. Mrs. Rudge and Seven retired to the parlor where she promised to entertain the boy on an upright piano, while Perry Oliver departed for his room highly satisfied with the conversation if not the supper. He was not displeased at having heard the most recent details about General Bethune’s state of mind and health, for whatever he learned he could use. He was not unlike a general planning his strategy the night before a big battle. (So he viewed himself.) For this reason he couldn’t help wondering why she had omitted Tom from her narration. He had wanted to ask, And what about their strange nigger boy? Any word about him?

A month earlier while he was enjoying his morning coffee, he saw a notice in the paper about the death of Mary Bethune. He set the paper aside, even as the black words he had perused remained in his mind like a bird perched on a high limb. Sunlight caught the glossy surface of his coffee cup, and he leaned forward and perched his chin on the metal rim. Peered down into the hollow interior, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever might be hidden in the darkness feet or miles below.

He ordered Seven to ready the carriage. The speed with which he responded was astounding, as was the speed with which he drove. Their little house was a good thirty miles out from the edge of town, but they reached his lawyer’s office in what seemed a single moment of action. He hurried through the door, Seven behind him, pulled up a chair, and put forth everything directly and boldly. With attentive calculation, his lawyer took up a pen and wasted no time in drawing up a contract registering nuances both foreseeable and unforeseen.

The settling of ink brought the first moment of pause. Perry Oliver tried to remember the appropriate code of conduct and obligation. By the time they left the office with the dried contract, he had decided that such code required his wiring a few words of condolence to General Bethune. That done he purchased two first-class train tickets, and it was only his realization that they had neither suitcase nor clothes that stopped him from actually boarding the train. While his first mind told him to strike while the iron was hot, meaning arrive in time for the funeral and the burial, after which he would seek the most opportune moment to take the widower aside and lay out his proposition and produce his contract, this deficiency in items of travel afforded his second mind to direct him to wait a week, even two. Certainly that man is greedy of life who should desire to live when all the world is at an end. Yes, he would have to hold back and wait a week or two. No purity of heart motivating his decision but clear cold awareness that he could not risk being so dangerously blunt.

He spent the next week drafting a letter to General Bethune, applied himself with extreme calm and single-mindedness — he didn’t take to writing easily — to construct long studied sentences appealing to the widower’s political sympathies. Bethune’s newspaper, the Columbus Observer, made no pretense at hiding his nationalism; the General wanted freedom now, independence now: Fellow citizens, ready our sharpshooters. The best army will be the army with the best eyes—crafty calculated words that both concealed and revealed their true significance. He made himself wait another week before he mailed the letter, day after day sitting and glaring down at the contract glistening on the table before him. In the third week he got his response in the form of a one-word telegram: Friday.

General Bethune would sign. Little doubt there. Perry Oliver banked his success on a simple observation. Through his limited travels, he had come to believe that no one in the South knew what to expect or what was supposed to happen without a war. (One thing he was certain about: he would not be maimed or killed in battle since he had no plans to enlist, for he was no patriot.) These existing expectations would provide his means of winning over the General. But what would happen after General Bethune accepted his proposition? Management was an understood business, Perry Oliver’s way of earning his bread, but a raw black feeling moved through his body — charcoal clunking through the blood — whenever he tried to picture in anticipatory outline managing a peculiar talent like Tom.

He undressed at the open window, the air on his body stiff and heavy, a second set of clothes. It came as no surprise that night here came suddenly, quick as a guillotine. Followed by a soft gradual blooming as people lit lamps in their houses and on the streets. Then a smell like dead cows clumped through the window. He guessed that niggers and women were boiling wax for candles. Hardly had he completed the thought when the sound of the piano came up through the floorboards and walls as in counterpoint or accompaniment to the smell, the light, the scene. The only good thing about Mrs. Rudge’s playing was that the piano was in tune. If her hands were pedestrian, her voice was worse. She sang so loudly it was impossible to hear anything else. But without knowing why he listened so intensely it tired him out.

Perry Oliver awakened when he heard the door to the adjacent room open, then he hurried out of his room and caught Seven just as the boy sat down on his bed to remove his boots. He stood silently in front of the boy. In the lamplight the boy’s eyes were large and black. Perry Oliver was trembling with anger.

Seven.

Yes, suh.

Sir.

Sir.

Must I remind you yet again to think before you speak?

I do think, sir.

If only you did. He went over and took the boy’s face in one hand and studied it as if it were a gem. Seven.

Yes, sir.

Use this tool between your two shoulders.

Either reflection or confusion reshaped the muscles in Seven’s face.

He returned to his room, put on his nightshirt, and got into bed. He waited fifteen minutes then knocked three times on the wall. The boy answered back with three knocks.

He was so tired that his eyes closed of their own accord. Far away a steam engine whistled its cry. His last waking thoughts were about Tom. In dream or reality he heard the boy signal three taps on the wall. He did not answer.

Even in sleep he shivered now and then despite the heat. At some point during the night the cold forced him to get up and shut the window. He returned to bed and pulled the covers over his body, one layer after another, these layers that brought a force of buoyancy and motion. He felt the bed drifting on waves of black water.

Perry Oliver did not begin to feel any better until the following morning when they were in the moving taxi, the carriage squeaking and trembling on the slow uneven approach to Hundred Gates, some ten miles south of the city. And the lifting of his spirits was either so sudden or so gradual he hadn’t noticed it. He found himself reflecting on what Mrs. Rudge had said about General Bethune’s acts of charity and found solace in the reflection. (Was it something in her gestures this morning, her acts of kindness toward Seven that brought it on?) As far as he knew, Bethune made his money solely from his newspaper. (Perhaps he had some investments. Only a fool would rule out that possibility.) His charitable acts caused Perry Oliver to suspect that General Bethune might have some personal debts that he would be too ashamed to tell anyone about and that caused him considerable distress, these facts demanding the necessary cover-up and temporary relief that certain public spectacles might provide.

Their horse was actually galloping, the hooves digging like spades into the dirt road, carrying them from city to countryside, a gain in nature. Speed and rushing air brought the feeling that the winds above were racing far ahead of him in warning. Heat broke into colors such that living creatures seemed to be moving against a painted backdrop. Niggers drying fish along the riverbank, their cane poles stuck into the mud in odd formations, like impoverished tents deprived of their canvas covers. In the distance niggers struggling up tree-covered hills, baskets balanced on their heads, or wedged across their backs. Poor farmers emerging from three-windowed little houses, working small plots of land. Bonfires of manure, straw, and other refuse crackling and smoldering — human heat adding to natural heat — and every now and then niggers drifting through the smoke like shadows. Perry Oliver found no vitality or beauty in people at work. What did these planters see in it all? Why this love of the land? The whole air smelled like hard labor. He did not dare to take a deep breath. Who knew what diseases and plagues lurked in this air?

The coachman halted the horse near the main lawn of a white, newly painted and plastered three-story mansion, the very same mansion that Perry Oliver had visited two years earlier and that to all appearances was unchanged beyond new paint and new plaster. The sprawling main lawn was freshly cut. They stepped out of the taxi onto the dirt road at the gates of Hundred Gates, no gate really, but two chest-high posts constructed from a motley collection of brick and stone. The cement walkway leading up to the porch was lined with a column of oaks on either side, each tree identical to the others in width and height, forming — for Perry Oliver — a monotonous picture.

It would take them a good five minutes to reach the porch. Perry Oliver held Seven at arm’s length and took stock, noticing that the boy was already defiled since his morning wash, two white lines of dried saliva stretching across his mouth and lips. Matter-of-factly (without fuss, anger, or disgust), he retrieved his handkerchief and presented it to the boy. Nodded for him to clean his mouth. Made him remove the beaver cap and tuck it under his arm.

Do you know why we are here? he asked.

On the assumption of important business, Seven said.

Well put. Display your best behavior, as I will display mine.

Yes, sir.

Side by side, man and boy walked up the paved path toward the house, under late August light that somehow managed to find its way through the trees and slash at a low angle, almost horizontal, into their heads into their eyes. The scene presented the vacancy and hush that is often said to accompany an ambush. Of creatures human or animal, they saw but one: a little male nigger whom Perry Oliver placed in his early twenties, who was sitting under a tree outside the garden, quaking as if somebody had routed him from his warm bed and forced him out into the cold. He raised his head and looked at them wide-eyed, but he did not rise to either greet or stop them. Something in his gaze caused Perry Oliver to quicken his step and reach the porch, get out of the open and under cover. And there he stood, feeling vulnerable as he prepared to push the bell and knock on the door.

The door opened to reveal a Negro servant, roughly equivalent in age to the nigger sitting under the tree, with a black head covering knotted at the back of her neck. She gave Perry Oliver a look of recognition — he had never seen her before — and confusion. She turned her face to change her line of sight, as if she were deeply embarrassed.

Good morning, he said. She said nothing in response. I am Perry Oliver and have an audience before General Bethune.

She turned from the door without speaking to him, an action that clearly indicated she expected him to follow. And follow he and Seven did. She was slender, fine-boned, dark, but not as slender as she looked at first sight. Older perhaps too. From his vantage point behind her, Perry Oliver noted several rolls of fat on her neck, covered with the finest skin. In the rooms they passed he sought to detect any traces of grief — flowers, black ribbons or cloth, black draperies. Seven walked with difficulty on account of his effort to keep his head high in continuous observation, face turned first this way then that, only too easily distracted and impressed by every glorious adornment, almost stumbling over his own feet at times when he attempted repeated looks. In contrast Perry Oliver saw less with each step, as each movement brought an intensification of his nervousness and a decrease in his awareness so that by the time they finally stopped walking, the details of the house had barely impinged upon his thoughts.

The room she led them into was large and airy, teeming with furniture — sofas, spindly chairs and armchairs with curved backs, a chaise longue, little tables with spidery legs, and a stool tucked under a grand piano. Every surface except the piano top was crowded with objects: tall blue vases (porcelain from China, Perry Oliver assumed), Venetian mirrors with flowers, small porcelain plates with gold rims and floral designs, bowls filled with rose petals, fancy clocks, and silver-framed portraits and sweeping landscapes of ample dimensions. And there were golden cornices and polished wainscoting and mahogany chairs positioned before a large marble fireplace. Only then did he realize that this was the very same ballroom he had visited two years earlier.

You can wait in here. She walked away.

He had expected, Please wait in here, suh. Kindly inform me if I may be of service.

A general? Seven asked, rooted to the spot in amazement, his dream showing on his face.

Perry Oliver looked at the boy but did not answer him.

A short time later, General Bethune limped into the room through one of the French doors aided by his two black canes, throwing out one and then the other to pull his body forward, less an image of oddity and weakness than of comfort and habit, for he moved with an ease that showed he had grown accustomed to his condition. (Most assumed that the General had suffered a battle wound during the Indian Wars, but Perry Oliver had read somewhere that he had fallen off an unruly horse here at home several years after the war he had served in ended.) The canes were weird instruments that amplified the man in Perry Oliver’s vision, raising him up the way a scaffold might thrust one’s face into the cracked details of a painting. He was untidily dressed and poorly groomed, as if he had been awakened from a nap. Perhaps the death of his wife had pushed him to a new stage of his malady. Indeed, Perry Oliver had expected as much, knowing that the General would be vulnerable, confused even, as his wife’s death brought with it new burdens for a parent and an owner. But would it fall to his favor if the germ of infliction or grief spread victoriously to every part of the General’s body, either killing or totally incapacitating him? This would leave Perry Oliver in the less certain position of having to negotiate with Sharpe the son for Tom.

As if to relieve Perry Oliver’s worries, General Bethune looked at him quite calmly and held out his hand in greeting. Perry Oliver moved to take it, a simple action that required tremendous effort as his elbow and fingers were stiff with anxiety.

Which of them spoke first? During their meeting for the next hour, Perry Oliver would scrupulously note every detail of the room and the man, but it was such that over the course of the next few months, the field of vision and memory would draw in, so that when he walked into this very same room a year later, he would not remember it. In fact, he would have tremendous difficulty recognizing the man himself two or three years hence, upon General Bethune’s visiting them backstage following a concert. He would hear the voice and voice would bring back the man.

I see you brought someone along with you?

Yes.

And what is your name?

My name is Seven, sir.

Seven. Hello, Seven.

Hello, sir.

And Seven would be your son?

Perry Oliver had anticipated this question. Had even played over the possibilities of lying—yes, sir—but decided against it, figuring that a man in General Bethune’s position, a newspaperman, could easily investigate the facts and uncover the truth. The lie would cost him down the line. No, sir. He’s my understudy.

Your understudy? General Bethune shook his head once or twice in mock astonishment. Is that the term they use for it now? He made a gesture with his hand as if he were presenting Perry Oliver to an audience. So that would make you his overstudy.

Finger at his chin, Perry Oliver pretended to give the comment serious consideration. Yes, he said. I suppose it does.

I already supposed for you, General Bethune said. He gave Perry Oliver a measuring look, checking to see if the words offended or disturbed. Working his canes he made for an armchair near the fireplace. You will have to supply me with all of the details at a later date. Please take a seat. General Bethune eased himself into the armchair and crossed the looped ends of his canes in his lap. Perry Oliver sat down in the closest armchair near the piano, a good distance away from the General. Seven moved to take a seat.

Not you, Seven, the General said.

Seven stood like a trapped animal, unsure where to run.

The General gave him a tender and curious glance. So, Mr. Seven, how old are you?

You must beg my pardon me, sir, but I never tell my experience without good reason.

General Bethune laughed openly. Perry Oliver could not force himself to smile — wished that he could — let alone laugh, finding no humor in the boy’s ability to repeat a vulgar line used by every commoner in the street. (Pity Seven’s spirit of imitation.) Well then, the General said, you’ve made yourself perfectly clear. I won’t inquire any further. Your overstudy and I have some crucial matters to discuss. Why don’t we send you off to the kitchen for some cool beverage. Would you like that?

Yes, sir.

Unless your overstudy objects. General Bethune looked at Perry Oliver, challenging him. You obviously had good reason for bringing your boy to my house. Does your understudy need to be present for our meeting?

Perry Oliver was sure that he saw a mocking smile part the General’s lip. He judged himself from the same point of view as the General did. He said without hesitation — hesitation would kill his chances here and now — No.

As I thought. General Bethune raised his head and shouted, Charity! When the nigger didn’t appear quickly enough he took up both canes and banged them loudly against the floor.

The servant in head rag who had answered the door appeared in the room. Yes, suh.

Take this boy to the kitchen for a cool drink.

Yes, suh. She summoned Seven with a hand signal. Right this way, young master. Seven followed her.

General Bethune watched them leave the room. Then he directed his gaze at Perry Oliver. Perhaps I sent her off too soon, he said. It didn’t occur to me that you might require something from the kitchen.

No, sir.

Coffee? Tea? Lemon water?

No, sir. I am well replenished.

Of course. Mrs. Rudge. You are staying with Mrs. Rudge?

Yes.

He laughed a small laugh. How are you getting on with her? She is famously polite.

Indeed, Perry Oliver said. He noticed that shadows had collected in each depression of the man’s white face. Beyond his unkempt appearance this was perhaps the only discernible physical change that Perry Oliver could detect in the man from his previous visit two years earlier, comparing what he saw now against what he remembered, drawing up the image of the General standing in the sun-drenched garden.

And how are you getting on in the town? General Bethune raised his hand. Don’t answer. I apologize. This city is so boring. It must be murder for a man of your taste.

Perry Oliver sought some neutral response. General Bethune was hard to read. His words alone challenged, and to everything he said he added a facial expression that would have seemed more suitable for a different phrase. In the silence Perry Oliver breathed so hard he was sure the General could hear him. So to fill the void he blurted out, Thank you for taking the time to see me.

A transmutation took place in the General’s face, some blend of astonishment and anger. You are here on business.

Yes, sir.

That is why I granted you a hearing. I’m not taking time. The General’s eyes were mocking Perry Oliver, like a child seeing how far he could go. At once his presence in the house became clear like vision itself. This was stage, public performance. He had been here less than five (ten?) minutes and was already on display. Perhaps he had come all this way for nothing, thinking he had the upper hand when in actuality General Bethune controlled everything, had lured him into this trap, this elaborate joke. Here was the General Bethune that his reading and research hadn’t (couldn’t have) revealed.

He simply sat there, his back trembling before the danger of making another mistake.

Tell me, Mr. Oliver, what is your profession?

Until recently I worked tobacco in Savannah. He tried to conceal the trembling of his hand.

Tobacco?

Yes. His awkwardness filled him with disgust for his own body — heart, lungs, arms, and legs — which only made him feel more discomfort.

General Bethune shook his head in apparent (clear?) disdain. You count yourself among the common herd. Planters are a vile and filthy lot, totally uncultured. I have to deal with these types on a daily basis. That’s why this town is the insufferable disappointment that it is.

Excuse my lack of clarity. Allow me a correction. I fought down in Mexico. And then I put myself in the service of the most important tobacco planters in Savannah.

Mexico?

Yes, sir. Perry Oliver had meticulously prepared a list of battles and two or three detailed anecdotes.

If you can imagine such a thing, those Mexicans are a more savage lot than the Indians, from what I’ve heard. I’m glad I never had to square off against one.

I suffered that misfortune.

Yes, the General said. But I guess one man is as good as the next.

Perry Oliver held his tongue, unsure what the General meant.

Perhaps you can tell me all about it sometime. I’m not one of those who relishes swapping war stories or showing off injuries and scars. Each day presents us with some fresh triviality. General Bethune looked down at the floor, as if he regretted having allowed himself to even think of such matters. So now you see a need to free yourself of these planters?

Yes, sir.

You are a smart man. They fail to understand a fundamental fact. A nigger never pulls his own weight. Far be it from me to put my means of survival in the hands of unpaid servants. General Bethune spoke with a rhythm of pure certainty that required silence as the only possible response. (Thematic closure, harmonic return.) Then he went on. You are not here by accident. We’ve met before, you and I?

Yes. Two or three years ago at a party for your daughters. This much was true. I came at the invitation of your wife. This part wasn’t, but if the General caught the lie he didn’t let on. Not taking any chances, Perry Oliver pulled the invitation he had saved — it had lost none of its scent over the years — walked across the room, unfolded it, and handed it over to the General for further verification.

General Bethune looked at one side of the paper, then the other, only to repeat the inspection, looking without seeing, validity in touch and scent. That’s when you heard him play?

Yes, sir. He left quite an impression.

General Bethune looked up at Perry Oliver as if in seeing him so clearly now he couldn’t doubt his presence two years earlier. He returned the invitation, and Perry Oliver returned to his seat. Then you met the family?

Yes, Perry Oliver said. It was strategic common sense for him to avoid inquiring about the son or daughters’ well-being. Familial matters formed no part of their conversation. The two men were feeling each other out for worldly motives.

Cholera laid out half the porkers in this county dead, General Bethune said, and almost as many niggers. And my wife too.

Such misfortune, Perry Oliver said.

General Bethune frowned as if Perry Oliver had cast a deliberate slur against his family. Life would withhold no misfortune from any man. Perhaps you’ve been spared your due up to now. I’m convinced that defeat starts from inside. It has to first get inside you before you can be conquered.

I suppose that’s why I’m here, Perry Oliver said. We both want the same end. War.

How often have I urged this very same thing.

When the day comes, you will have public duties to perform, even if they are not directly on the battlefield. You can do without needless distraction. As for your son, he being one of same blood and like mind and disposition, he will feel compelled to serve. In fact, we must all contribute to our cause. Our niggers should not be free of these obligations.

Go on, General Bethune said.

At the least they should earn their keep. Niggers are built for work, not charity. You expressed this very same sentiment only moments ago. As he spoke, Perry Oliver struggled with a somewhat comical sense of embarrassment and shame at such (his) obvious spectacle and manipulation, squeezing out the words with jerky constraint.

You have no idea what you’re asking. Though we’ve been hard at training him, Tom is only a few degrees from the animal.

I understand fully, sir.

I doubt that you do.

Trust me, sir. I’ve given it deep thought. I have at my service expert men of music, Europeans, who will help to the extent that it is possible to polish and develop Tom’s crude skills.

General Bethune was quiet for a moment, thinking it over. Let me ask you something.

Sir?

Even if all you say is true, what makes you think that you are the most capable man for the job? Do you not think that others have approached me with the same offer?

Perry Oliver could think of nothing to say at first. This General Bethune was sharp. Perhaps the injury or illness that hastens the aging and deterioration of the body retards and preserves the mind. Perhaps he had underestimated his opponent and left himself ill prepared. How many hours had he rehearsed this meeting in his head? Working under such difficult conditions he had experienced one hour’s labor as two or three. Perhaps the hard work made him feel that he had put in more time than he had — reality remains reality, an hour is only an hour — as each task a man completes is like a whole lifetime and with each little life a man pieces together an entire history. So he sat in silence, half in desperation, half feeling like giving up.

I am putting myself at your service, he said. If you know of another who is both capable and willing to take on this task, I will respectfully withdraw my offer.

What are the terms? General Bethune asked.

The question took Perry Oliver with shock and surprise, coming as it did so quickly and so casually after the General’s former hesitancy, these feelings thrusting outward into something else, excitement — yes — as if the doors to a treasury were suddenly thrown wide open to him. He sought to ease his body and slowly withdraw the expectant look from his face — a tremendous undertaking. I will pay you fifteen thousand dollars over a period of three years, at the conclusion of which you will be fully expected to review my performance so that if my services have failed in any way you will be free to cancel our agreement.

With clear disbelief, General Bethune smiled into his face. Who was this far-fetched and shameless confidence man? Such nerve. Such gall. He would not have been surprised if this other demanded he produce two coins of silver as proof he was not a total pauper.

I am prepared to pay you five thousand dollars upon signing of the contract, even should that signing be today.

General Bethune seemed to study those words carefully. Perry Oliver felt triumphant, knowing fully well that only a fool would turn down five thousand dollars for a blind, crazy nigger.

You have done an excellent job in laying out your case, General Bethune said. It would be uncouth of me to refuse you. Come to the offices of the newspaper tomorrow. My lawyer will be present. We will sign and notarize whatever documents are necessary to put Tom at your disposal.

With those words some force in Perry Oliver’s mind absorbed, reduced, and crystallized all that had preceded into a black reflection casting a single image, the only image he could see later whenever he gazed at it, always there in the dark of his memory: General Bethune struggling to position his black canes and raise himself out of the chair, like a fledgling bird leaving its comfortable nest to test flight for the first time. Sound came from far away like a lost language, nonhuman speech: I will have Tom delivered to you in accordance with a mode of transportation you find suitable.

With that General Bethune turned with a distracted air — perhaps this too was recorded for posterity — like one who suddenly remembered something that needed immediate attention, and left the room. Perry Oliver stood up from his chair, unsure at first what had just happened. His visit was clearly at an end.

It would figure that he and Seven left the house and headed for their taxi, still waiting on the road. We met a general. Even under the high columns of oaks the sunlight fell so strongly that he narrowed his pupils and saw nothing but glare. Little did it trouble him. We met a real general. In fact, light and heat began to dissolve into fragments and sink into the ground. Seven entered the taxi but Perry Oliver did not, somehow forgetting that this was an action he should also perform. He continued on through the wooded area on the other side of the road, seeking an explanation from the trees. For he could not explain it, did not know how to explain it. What he had planned came to be. It was flatly inconceivable. Nothing like this had ever happened in the world before. He touched his body all over, sensing a new anatomy. Felt two hearts beating inside his chest. He took pleasure in the discovery. He went around the trunk of one tree, raised one foot — left or right? — to step over a log and found himself putting it back on a moving floor, seated as he was beside Seven in the taxi, experiencing pure joy as he traveled along the hard road in late autumn, in an uncomfortable bumpy carriage.

I met a general, Seven said. It’s only the beginning. Just watch. He gazed off into the distance. One day I’m gonna come back and buy this city and stuff it in my shoe.

Seven had been cutting marks into the table again. Only yesterday with tremendous effort of wrist and elbow Perry Oliver had managed to sand the previous marks away, and applied a touch of varnish to restore the original appearance, and now they were back, deeper, plainly visible from across the room where he stood. A long splinter of wood had actually come off from one corner. Despite what he saw before him now Perry Oliver was willing to give Seven the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps the lines (figures?) were accidental, the necessary product of Seven’s daily cleaning and tidying up, like the smudges he often noted on the surface of the few other items of furniture they possessed. Perhaps he was not standing close enough to the table for an accurate assessment. He spit on his thumb and tried to rub the marks away. No doing. Incisions indeed. Permanent.

He had only just entered the apartment, greeted by the sound of Seven’s excited voice reciting the latest newspaper dispatch humming with the distant and happy echo of Paul Morphy’s victories from across the Atlantic. Seven and Tom remained seated at the table drinking hot chocolate, candle flickering — all things are born of a single fire — shadows booming up behind them, the boys lit less by the small candle than by the shimmering surfaces of cup, plate, and spoon. They did not acknowledge his arrival, although they must have heard him enter, heard lock opening and door closing. Seven partially hidden behind the open halves of his newspaper, and Tom plainly in sight next to him. Only when Perry Oliver reached the corner of the table, angling into Seven’s line of vision, catty-cornered, no mistaking him, did Seven look up from the journal, long enough to pause in his reading, but he evidenced his employer without surprise or astonishment, observed him walk to one corner of the table to inspect it, and simply went on with his monologue, voice rising and falling, hurrying up or slowing down, in a haughtily adult tone to an apparently passive and indifferent (we assume) Tom — so still he could be asleep; in fact, he often fell asleep in this position, especially after a meal (usually a heavy supper, several helpings of meat and milk), fully dressed, and sitting erect at the table, head held up, until a telling flutter escaped his lips, and Seven roused him enough to lead him off to bed — who remained perfectly still, eyes closed and face free of expression, as unknowing as the objects before them on the table.

Perry Oliver listened to Seven, each word an unmooring, taking him further and further away from his own thoughts that he wanted, needed to hold on to. (Words would keep him.) Nothing he required more than some silence after a full day of planning and work. (In his dealings with the world the two were the same.) But every evening when he returned home Seven wouldn’t afford him such escape, intent on sharing with the world (Tom) the latest news about the “New Orleans Sensation,” in a voice that gave glory to a flesh-and-blood deity constructed out of black ink crowded onto cheap paper.

All in all, Seven took great delight in delivering news good or bad. He would have wrong news rather than no news at all. The afflicted had sought out Perry Oliver to inform him that Seven, upon reaching his destination to deliver a message, would draw out the pleasure by asking the recipient teasing questions or, to the recipient’s considerable surprise, bowing his head in concentration, pretending that he had forgotten the message, or by searching his pockets, having (pretending that he had) misplaced or lost Perry Oliver’s note. Once the maneuver took effect, he would finally get around to relaying the message. And at those times when he returned home with a reply to the original message, he tried to hold on to it for as long as possible, searching his pockets — now, where did I put it? — until finally turning over the note trembling in his hands.

He had to resign himself to Seven’s quirks and concerns, and his occasional lapses in performance — the logs had been crudely hacked despite their deceptive arrangement into neat stacks; the outlines did not hold — and disturbances and delays. Even on the rare occasions when the house was noticeably untidy he voiced no complaint, for Seven tended Tom with expert care, with knowledge and command, perfectly present right down to the hands-on and messy task of regulating Tom’s hygiene, not the easiest of jobs.

Seven wasted no time in offering his opinion of the improbability of Morphy’s ever losing a match.

Fire, Tom said.

No, Seven said. Not that kind. A contest. A tournament. A series of games. He returns to his reading.

Though the ward where they lived was colorless and dull, for Seven the large bright world began only a few blocks away at the general store where he purchased the newspaper, the Watchman—cities of glittering words — each afternoon. It had taken him only a few minutes of reading to discover how Paul Morphy was connected to his life. In Morphy Seven discovered the model example of an intellectual and social development he admired, and given favorable circumstances, he himself might one day achieve. Paul Morphy the destiny he had assigned himself, the appointed end. He was always speechless at first after he completed his reading of the report and his patient inspection of the illustration. With somber authority he would place the journal flat on the table and raise his head and stare off into space. After some moments of this he would look down at the journal, studying it like a map. A prearranged and agreed upon action, clue (Perry Oliver suspected) that always set Tom’s mouth moving, elicited a flat and spiritless recitation of the dispatch word for word. Then talk came more easily, Seven asking (demanding?) that Tom recite the report from the day before, and the one before that. Paul Morphy, Seven, and Tom — a drawn-out affair. Day in and day out, the boys under Morphy’s spell.

It turned out, Perry Oliver felt strangely touched to see them together like this. At moments he observed them bent over laughing together at the table, laughing as only boys can. More than once he had seen them embrace like brothers, Seven taking the lead, leaning into the other under his charge. And he often spied them sitting conspiratorially, showing no regard for the man who fed them both. (It is one thing to provide food for another person and quite another to be faced with the sudden, complex, and increased responsibility of providing for two additional mouths.)

Why can’t we get us a nigger? Seven said.

We can’t bear it.

I want me a nigger.

Can you feed one? Clothe it?

But he took continual pleasure in Seven’s development, his increased independence, the sharper differentiation of his mental apparatus into various agencies, the appearance of new needs (food, chess, Paul Morphy). Seven employed precisely the energy Tom had set free in him. (What those under our care bring out in us.) How to repay that?

My dear chess master Herr Löwenthal, Seven said to Tom, your play is very good, and worthy of a great master, but as to beating Morphy, don’t dream of it.

Tom didn’t seem to hear or notice.

You must have too much time on your hands, Perry Oliver said, if you can find nothing better to do than sit there babbling nonsense with Tom.

Seven didn’t respond to the accusing observation, both of them aware that his hands held plenty, time included, that he put in a full day’s work — Perry Oliver had made it clear that Tom must never aid him in any form with the household chores — and this form of play — whatever you might call it — was a necessary pause, a gathering of strength for the other chores to be done around the house today and the next day. With the exception of the three or four hours when Seven guided Tom down to Scaldy Bill’s Drinkery and Eatery to play the piano — the nearest piano Perry Oliver could find, a fortunate arrangement as owner William Oakley charged him nothing, their patronage (breakfast, dinner, supper) of his establishment pay enough — Seven and Tom remained indoors. Perry Oliver insisted on it. (Assume that Seven followed his instructions to the letter. No evidence to the contrary.) As much as possible, Tom should stay within the confines of their apartment — confined? he couldn’t call it that — so as not to offend the sensibility of other persons in their house or on the street. Look at that misery. But by the grace of God, that could be me. Blind and a nigger. Count my blessings. Perry Oliver was not insensitive to their misfortune, but this is the way it must be. (Soon enough the public would get to see as much of Tom as they could stomach.) Before he departed each morning, Perry Oliver reviewed the measures Seven should take in the event of his unexpected or prolonged absence or in circumstances of injury or illness. But even this review was grounded in the many months of thorough preparation that preceded Tom’s arrival from Hundred Gates. Perry Oliver had put Seven through a rigorous apprenticeship. As a rule, each morning he would assign the boy a lengthy and detailed series of errands and tasks to train his memory, put it to good use. A test for the body too. (Fair to say that he was the first person to introduce Seven to axe and saw.) Put Seven out on a limb, to both measure and increase the level and range of his ingenuity and skill. Would he fly and survive or would he fall prey to either earth below or danger from above? Undeterred by his tough initiation, Seven never uttered a word of complaint about hard work — he still didn’t — saving his back talk for other matters.

When we gon get us a nigger?

Seven, you make my head ache with your voice. Kindly close your mouth and let the hammer talk.

Perry Oliver seated himself at the table, sharp pulses from his lower regions making themselves felt. He removed some money from his purse — the exact amount, down to the penny — handed it over to Seven with instructions for him to run down to Scaldy Bill’s to pick up their daily supper, a whole leghorn hen. (The killing of a fowl does not give in itself a positive or negative answer.) Seven set the table before he departed, light and rapid as a bird. At once Perry Oliver regretted his absence — too late to catch him — as he was now left alone with Tom, his black skin part of the darkness, so that Tom seemed knitted into place, black threads. Often Tom assumed a pose of absolute stillness and silence, his face like some dead object on display, two closed eyelids carved in stone. And you the observer were a mobile subject before an ideal artifact (object). (Did Tom feel the full weight of observation? The object in all of its unappeasibility.) This was how you might see him sitting at the piano, so straight and still before he began playing. (The stability and strength of the spine.) And that was how he sat now. Or perhaps not, because Tom seemed to lean back into the darkness, plenty of space behind him, and it was only then Perry Oliver noticed that the table had been beautifully laid, glass and silver sparkling in the candlelight, as if in leaning back Tom had somehow pushed these objects forward into vision. Pitcher, candle, blue enamel pot unadorned (the barest table, no cloth to cover it) but striking and noticeable in their arrangement. Peach, pear, and plum in a bowl, each shape and color distinct. Seven was organized, not subject to improvisation, but his newfound knack for table design was almost certainly a talent he had inherited from Mrs. Rudge, although their stay at her hotel had been short.

Perry Oliver leaned forward in his chair and studied the grain of the wooden floor. Oak. Each knot in the wood like a miniature island. Isolated and alone. Was it this visual promise of solitude — the altering eye — that caught his attention, attracted him, drew him in? His line of work didn’t permit the possibility of severing oneself from the world. The fleshy cord never gets cut. The other’s skin was always linked to yours. Stay connected or die. A necessary dependence.

How many more addresses must he visit? How many more people must he meet? How much more in his quest to bring Tom to the stage? Walking in the street, he did not love the questions of strangers.

Excuse me, sir. Your nigger looks just like my boy Ned who expired a decade ago.

Or he heard his name from afar. Mr. Oliver.

Black buggies beetling to and fro against his crossing. White sails snapping in silence where he strolled along the bank to follow his thoughts, breeze coming off the water. Dark bordered the light’s collusive motion. What was clear in this complicated territory? (A handshake. A certain sigh.) What to guide him through the world other than his unfailing instincts?

What was keeping Seven? The mute life of an empty house. Perry Oliver whistled a tune he had picked up in the street earlier. Only his effort made the melody sweet. Tom whistled it back to him, sweeter. He leaned forward and ran his hand across Tom’s knuckles. Surprised at the heat of the other’s skin, each knuckle like a warm stone. Tom trembled at his unwanted touch but did not draw away. Perry Oliver cast a concerned glance at the child. So be it. (There is a time for picking up stones, but also a time for throwing them away.) Drew his hand back.

He tried another tune, humming this time, expecting its attenuated repetition. Once again the thought occurred to him that he would have to hire a knowledgeable musician to show Tom some tunes. A goal he was working on, little by little. (The correct words open, but the wrong words follow.) Nonetheless, he was intrigued at the ease with which he was able to enter an unfamiliar world and learn its customs and language — the random phrase, the odd word — learn who’s who, and what’s what, which authority to approach and which to skirt, this method allowing him to penetrate a little further each day. And even if he was mistaken in his evaluation, gave himself undue credit, it made no difference to the end result. A meeting was scheduled for tomorrow. Several in fact over the next few days. (Those who remain to listen. Those who remain to talk.) Though he could not rid his thoughts completely of the possibility of standstill or failure.

In this dispirited frame of mind he heard Tom’s voice, no ordinary tone, no ordinary words.

Permit me to repeat what I have already said invariably in every professional community I have had the honor of entering, that I am not a professional player, that I never wished to make any skill I possess the means of pecuniary advancement, and that my earnest desire is never to play for any stake but honor.

He could hear every word with singular clarity, but some part of him refused to allow them to register in his mind, neither the sounds nor their meaning. The conflicting feelings began to fuse — the transformative heat of Tom’s skin — causing his waking consciousness to ebb away. More than once he had lived in a house under the belief that it was the high price one paid for isolation, anonymity, and privacy, only to discover shortly after moving in that a stranger would knock on your door to welcome you or simply ring your doorbell out of casual curiosity — Who are you? What do you look like? — or wander up in practical desperation to inquire if he might water his limping horse or exhausted hounds at your well. In fact, a house is an invitation. So he had opted for this small apartment in a multi-unit dwelling, living space he leased from a landlord he never saw, an overdressed nigger, who arrived once a week at a determined time to collect the rent. His means permitted more, but this was all he allowed, all he needed. His entire wardrobe hung on pegs on a coatrack near the door, with hats, harnesses, and whips making a definite silhouette against the gray background of wall. And the few pictures he elected to hang — a watercolor depicting men and mules struggling up a mountain during the California Gold Rush, a vivid oil painting of a bloody war scene from the Mexican conflict, a sketch of George Washington crossing the Potomac — he did for Seven’s amusement. Moving through these few rooms, he felt like a tourist walking through someone’s private collection.

With practiced hands, Seven placed their simple but ample supper on the table. (The table was their base of operations.) Tom was already digging into it, all ten fingers going. Perry Oliver realized he must have dozed off — at what point? — missing Seven’s return. Took him a minute to take in what he was seeing and to understand that he didn’t like what he saw. Tom rarely received his criticism or chastisement. Why should he? By any measure, it is not fair that the mentally and physically incapacitated and therefore upright and innocent individual should pay for his capable but compromising counterpart.

Seven, Perry Oliver said, look at him.

Seven caught Tom’s fingers to slow him down.

Often Perry Oliver disdained from joining the boys at the table for supper, taking his plate at the window or in his room. But since he was already here, in this firm chair positioned against the hard floor, he might as well. He picked up his fork, the metal shuddering in his fingers.

They ate their meal in absolute silence. For the third time that evening Perry Oliver put his poor voice into song, but Tom had ears only for the noise he made as he chewed his food, steady and advancing destruction, a greasy graveyard of bones on his plate. Ready for more.

What do you want, Tom?

Food.

Seven gave him more vegetables.

Perhaps Seven’s appetite had not improved as much as Perry Oliver had supposed. He took slow gradual nourishment, picking at his food, tentative portions, close inspections, like a scientist on an archaeological expedition. Even before he had finished his first plate Tom was ready for a third.

Would you like some more food, Tom?

No.

What then?

Meat.

Seven gave Tom another helping of chicken. Tom smiled at the sound of the meat touching his plate. It seemed a happy smile, a deliberate expression of emotion, and perhaps it was. Soon came a request for milk, Tom’s first request every morning, Seven pouring him half a glass, seeing if that would satisfy him, before he gave in and poured a full glass. A simple pattern of back and forth between the boys, of mock protest and playful negotiation. Catching sight of them like this, Perry Oliver remembered Tom’s troubled entry into their apartment and their lives.

As he had wanted to surprise the boy with their new charge, he had made Seven wait behind in the apartment when he went to retrieve Tom from the station, electing to hail a taxi and relieve Seven of his usual chauffeuring of their carriage drawn by a single black horse. An hour (two?) later, he stepped through the door guiding the blind boy by the hand. Seven was kneeling on the floor, busy with the waxing and polishing of it, his rag whirling over the surface, until all at once it drew still, less in response to Perry Oliver’s return than at Seven’s noticing of two human shadows cast against the shiny floor. He raised his head and turned to look.

You got your nigger, Perry Oliver said.

Seven shot back a wide-eyed look Perry Oliver had never witnessed before, as if he didn’t know what to make of the blind nigger standing in their apartment. (Truth be told — yes, he will admit it — neither at first was sure what he was seeing.) Got to his feet and studied Tom with appropriating eyes in the dead silence. With minimum effort, Tom shook free of Perry Oliver’s grip and ambled forward, hands out in front of him, more for the purpose of throwing path-clearing swipes in the air than for guiding touches to avoid potential obstructions. He bumped into the table and continued on, knocking it out of his path as he angled into the farthest corner of the room — why this corner as opposed to another? Perry Oliver still had no answer — next to the open window — the world blowing in, bits of their privacy blowing out — and spun around facing them, his body turned toward the door. Without instruction, Seven had immediately gone over to Tom and tried to take him by the arm. Tom swung. Tom kicked. Seven did not give up, persisted in his efforts, cautious creeping, like a trainer trying to bring a stallion or bull under control. Tom kicked. Tom swung. Perry Oliver didn’t blame him, understanding as he did the economy of fear and self-preservation. (Two modes of fear: actual danger and the avoidance of it.) Tom’s lungs were hard at work, breath after breath charging in and out.

Come on, Perry Oliver said. We’ll leave him there until the morning.

Seven looked at him, doubtful.

He wondered: Would Tom sleep? Or would hunger and terror keep sleep at bay? And would morning bring an end to his battle? If not, how long could this condition last?

Over the next few days, Tom had remained in the corner, taking neither food nor water, and standing on two feet the entire time, no easing up, never once lowering his body to the floor, at least in their presence. (How many nights did it take for Tom to give in? Could Perry Oliver trust his memory?) Without warning or reason he would take a few steps forward, only to stop, as if he had suddenly lost all notion of the place where he had found himself. They maintained a careful distance from across the room, hearing Tom’s body give off murmuring surges every now and then, low noises that gradually lengthened into a continual droning — on and on — that was a bit soothing once you fell under its repetitive spell, and observing — creatures at a further remove from man — gross disturbances of this same body, strange shivers of the neck and ear and head, and motor discharges of the shoulders and feet, at almost calculated intervals.

Be still, you dinge, Seven said.

Shut up, Perry Oliver said.

Were these the tactile and general sensations his muscles and skin had preserved in the long journey from Hundred Gates? Exactly how much of Hundred Gates remained in his memory, wherever memory is stored? (What does a nigger carry with him?) No easy answers, for whatever his concerns or protestations they were confined to the dumb machine of his flesh. Easy to be fooled by this fact. How well Perry Oliver knew that words are not the only way of expressing or distilling emotions.

Seven seemed to have his own questions, the distance, the resistance, the reservations all behavior he seemed both unaccustomed to and unprepared for. (The battle was taking its toll on them both.) Far be it from Seven to give an unwelcome impression, but Tom incurred his suspicions, his first doubt Tom’s blindness. Within minutes of Tom’s being in the apartment and firmly ensconced in the corner, he spoke his first words to him. Hey, don’t look cross-eyed at me like that.

He’s not cross-eyed, Perry Oliver had said. He’s blind.

This explanation did not satisfy the boy. In those initial days and weeks, Seven would hold out two fingers before Tom’s face or wave both hands at him from across the room as if to lure him into the light that way. (Indeed, Tom’s blindness seemed to possess a particularity all its own. Something Perry Oliver couldn’t put his finger on even as he became more and more accustomed to it. Eyes completely shut most of the time, but partially open on other occasions. Involuntarily turning in one direction or another. Or glistening with tears. Nothing like what Perry Oliver imagined blindness to be, nothing like the image of the affliction floating — two dark islands — for so long in his mind. Blindness is in the first place something felt, and as a feeling it is of most obviously unpleasurable character, not that this is a complete description of its quality. Though they have lived together and worked closely for this extended period of time — how long has it been? nine months? a year? — and he felt that he knew Tom as well as anyone might, he was far from in a position to explain the boy.) Seven also began to scrutinize Tom with a disapproving air, frowning, mumbling curses, crossing his eyes, once a foul odor began emanating from the corner that the chance breeze coming through the open window would carry to even the most remote areas of the apartment, the smell of sweat, urine, and feces collecting at Tom’s feet where Seven’s rag and polish usually fell.

It was asking much. The boy found himself obligated to clean up waste spilling from another whose name he still did not know. For his part, Perry Oliver had forgotten to pass on certain facts to the boy—Tom. Seven, his name is Tom—taken up as he was (no intention, no deliberation) with the immediate exigencies of Tom’s physical presence, his being there, although it was also true that both before Tom’s arrival and after, he and Seven had rarely breathed a word to each other unless some matter of Seven’s duties or instruction needed addressing. Bottom line, Seven would wipe up the shit and piss, and he would do so grudgingly, his anger and disgust offset by the incontrovertible fact that they finally had a nigger in their possession. You got your nigger. Perry Oliver feared that a far greater challenge would be his getting the boy to understand the true purpose Tom should (would) serve in their lives.

One evening, Tom had dropped into the waste he had created and remained seated there, Perry Oliver knowing that the boy could hold out no longer from food but also fearing he would not be able to eat, that after so many days, hunger had possibly settled like a weight that might permanently keep him to the floor. Seven prepared victuals and drink, and Tom, weakened, took his first meal there in the corner, Seven feeding it to him one bite at a time, taking care to keep safe distance between his fingers and Tom’s teeth. (What did the repast consist of? Yams — yes — three or four miniature plump and naked women lying on his plate. And slimmer strips of bacon.) Several hours later, Perry Oliver instructed Seven to leave Tom’s next meal on the table. Tom would have to come and take the plate if he wanted to eat. He did. Came and took it back to his corner. Then for the third meal Perry Oliver went even further. Tom would have to sit down and eat at the table. Another battle ensued, Tom resisting, even though his stubbornness meant that he would go hungry. But once he took his first meal seated at the table, Perry Oliver believed the full exercise of his control was soon to come, a matter of hours rather than days. Strategizing, he would allow Tom to carry a plate back to his corner for one meal, only to deny him this privilege at another. From his corner how eagerly Tom’s face — nose — followed the steaming food, from the place where it was taken, to the exact spot where it was set down on the table. His mouth would open, his teeth and tongue would move, then a flash of white bone, a trickle of saliva, his muscles and organs rehearsing the act of consumption. Along with this anticipation, he would speak a single perplexing sentence, the only words Perry Oliver could recall hearing issue from his mouth in those first days and weeks. My taste gets worse every day. Perry Oliver has never been able to figure out if it was the table Tom was resisting or the food itself, or some combination of the two, refusing one on a given day and the other on another. And what exactly was the nature of this resistance, conscious revolt or some form of muscular denial? Which would be the easier of the two to defeat? Would body eventually overcome the obstinate resistance of his mind, or vice versa?

Seven seemed far more capable of winning Tom to the table. After the first taste of food and water, a slow and gradual erasing of distance, signs of increasing and mutual trust, Tom permitting Seven to come closer and even closer still, to take his hand, lead him to a chair, seat him and put a fork between his fingers, indicating that it was now okay for him to begin tackling his plate. What had been unusual only a few days earlier assumed the character of normality, Seven masking his mouth and nose with a handkerchief before kneeling down in the most rudimentary way to clean up Tom’s waste, then thoroughly scrubbing his charge’s arms up to the elbows until finally he felt obliged to happily seat himself beside Tom, a warmth that Tom seemed to return, the black contours of the one face not unlike the lighter contours of the other. Their eating a noisy and spirited ritual, a touching of elbows in the working of fork and knife, a knocking of knees beneath the wood.

Perry Oliver could scarcely believe Seven’s generosity. He could remember precisely the moment following one meal when Seven, clearing away the soiled plates, carrying them over to the sink, was heard to mutter with back turned, Our Tom.

I didn’t buy him for you, Perry Oliver said.

Seven stopped in the middle of the room and turned his head to look at Perry Oliver over his shoulder, his body seemingly paralyzed with an odd stiffness.

In fact, I didn’t buy him at all.

Seven looked at Perry Oliver for a moment longer with blank attention then, changing up, began observing him with a relaxed astonishing ease that startled Perry Oliver. Composure recovered, Seven took a seat next to Tom at the table. (Perhaps they meant far more to each other than Perry Oliver had been — and is still? — willing to admit.) Perry Oliver took some time to explain why Tom was here.

He’s the General’s nigger?

Yes.

We are serving under the General?

Perry Oliver had never thought about it that way. How had he thought about it? And had his feelings changed with the passage of time? In fact, as he looked at the table attempting to summon up the correct sequence of events that had brought Tom to his present station in their lives — of course, the larger it, the past, is never whole, never totally retrievable once the actual events solely exist in the reduced confines of memory; if only his cheap pocket watch could magically wind (skip) backward and return him to the far-off scene; the world awaits a capable invention — he realized that he had left out one important detail — that moment when water first touched Tom’s skin. Logic if not the far less objective demands of comfort and decency had required that Seven bathe Tom right there in the corner before he escorted his charge to the first defining meal at the table, otherwise both Tom’s appalling odor and equally appalling appearance — after days of neglect, the boy’s hair was a piecemeal mess, resembling a hastily constructed bird’s nest; as well, brown stains ran in stripe-like patterns down from the seat of his pants to both ankles — would have been too much of an affront. Indeed, Perry Oliver’s timing was off — inevitable lapses and alterations, forgetting the B preceding C — but one thing he knew for certain was this. Once it had become clear to Seven that Tom was willing to take his meal at the table, he had taken it upon himself to forestall Tom’s hunger until he could properly clean up. The usual industriousness opening out of him. He secured his handkerchief around his face and with both hands lugged a pail brimming with cold water over to the corner — he dare not drag it across the floor — set it down before Tom, then proceeded to remove and bundle up the soiled clothing, and scrub and clean him right there in the corner. (Surprisingly, Tom did not shudder at the first slap of cold water against his skin nor flinch at the abrasive knot of soap.) He toweled Tom dry and helped him into fresh clothes. His charge done over, Seven carefully secured the towel around the bundle of clothing, isolated these items from the other laundry, emptied the dirty water, and returned with a fresh pail of clean water to clean the corner. Wall and floor restored. He was now free to feed Tom, his frail pail having claimed both the filth darkening in the corner and the filth clinging to Tom’s skin. Good details to forget.

After the battle over the table, the next struggle became one of getting Tom to sleep in his bed. He would fall asleep at the table like one slowly succumbing to poison. Seven would awaken him, but he would refuse to relinquish his chair, clutching it so firmly you might have believed that the wood had actually penetrated his skin and nailed him to the object. But once he became accustomed to sleeping in the bed — the room where the boys sleep is so narrow that they can actually extend their arms sideward from a prone position and reach across and touch one another up to the elbow — Perry Oliver decided that the moment had come for Tom to return to his music.

The very first time they had taken Tom out of the apartment, in the hallway he had leaned into nothing and went rolling and tumbling down the stairs. Three flights.

Seven?

Sir?

Did you see what just happened?

Yes, sir.

Do you fully understand your responsibilities?

Yes, sir.

After this exchange of words — he was hard toward Seven when it came to his wishes and expectations — he recalled Seven hurrying off while he made an effort to pull himself together. Recalled reaching the bottom of the staircase and seeing Tom all bloodied with scratches and scrapes, struggling to his feet, tottering and dizzy. He had to decide then and there if he should summon a doctor, a matter quickly resolved when the name (threat) — General Bethune — sparkled up out of his ponderings. He knew there could be no doctor.

Thankfully, their destination was close enough for Tom to reach it in his pitiful condition. (How fragile we are.) Perry Oliver, Seven, and Tom — three — entered the establishment under a rusty horseshoe nailed over the door, with a small hand-painted sign — NO ONE ENTERS THESE PORTALS BUT THE TRUE IN HEART — swinging from it, and to the murmur of conversation that immediately ceased at their entrance, as if they had let in a powerful wind that extinguished sound. All heads turned in Tom’s direction.

Tom. An intimation. A signal. Every room was transformed when he entered it. (Perry Oliver recognized this fact for the second time, but only now truly acknowledged it. Tom’s commanding presence bringing back the feeling from weeks earlier when he had gone to retrieve Tom from the station, faces turning, eyes zoning in, as he led Tom to a hansom taxi, heads cocked, eyes aimed, attracting the same unthinking reaction as now.) Everything got put into the background, relegated to the shade, while this ugly little blind imbecile nigger boy became a radiant presence. The exact opposite of Perry Oliver, who all his life had been retiring and modest, keeping himself to himself.

Stationed behind the bar, owner William Oakley saw them enter and nodded welcome at Perry Oliver. He looked at the nigger and looked some more, but he said not a word, nor allowed his face to express surprise, disapproval, or disappointment. However odd or transgressive his behavior appeared, Perry Oliver had no intentions of divulging to anyone, including the owner, why he had brought a nigger into this establishment or why this nigger looked the worse for wear. One and all, his dealings with Tom made him feel supremely indifferent to public opinion at this moment and fully justified in saying nothing. Besides, whatever might be ruined now could be set right later. Comfort in that thought.

Although he and the owner had a long-standing business relationship — he rented space for his horse and carriage in a stable, Spectacular Spurs, that the owner operated up the street — he rarely set foot inside the establishment, in distinct contrast to Seven, who was required to come here at least three times in a single day to pick up their meals.

He eased Seven in the direction of the upright piano, indicating that the boy should direct Tom over to it. Tom sat down on the unvarnished bench, raising all of Perry Oliver’s expectations, and tapped out a few chords. Then he sat still, his hands folded in his lap. Like a puppeteer, Perry Oliver lifted the other’s hands and moved them over the keys. No doing.

Perry Oliver threw a questioning glance at Seven. Seven shrugged his shoulders. In the other faces Perry Oliver saw ludicrous expressions of disbelief, not that he was expecting to gain their sympathy or understanding.

You can’t blame him, Oakley said.

Why not?

It’s out of tune.

Indeed, it was the only conclusion one could draw. No doubting it, Tom knows what he wants to hear and knows how it should sound. Perry Oliver laughed at himself — the silent movement went a long way in releasing many weeks of tension — having to concede that Tom’s resistance went beyond his expectations. No, he had not foreseen in complete perspective the kinds of hesitation — five varieties? — the boy had put up, and could only assume that there might be more.

Two weeks later — three? — Seven had informed him over breakfast that the piano had been brought up to speed — the boy’s exact words — and awaited Tom’s use. The news made the food easier to digest. The moment was not far away when they could begin their work. Once breakfast was done, they hurried down to Scaldy Bill’s and placed Tom before the piano, the instrument thoroughly made over, shining with a fresh polish, and smelling all the better for it. Tom moved both hands over the ivories in a trial run. Then he picked his way through each key, first the black, then the white. Satisfied, he fingered out an entire song. And so it went. The patrons applauded after each number—What a remarkable nigger—and called out requests, but Tom seemed to play whatever came to mind. No one present was more impressed with Tom’s abilities than Seven, who remained standing near his charge, seized by the sight, totally reluctant to part from his side.

Seven heard their neighbor urinate into the same bottle the old man used to collect his milk. More than once he had considered going across the hall and telling the old man how to manage this action without making a noise. Show proper consideration for others. The neighbor’s good fortune that Mr. Oliver had already finished his breakfast and left the apartment, that he had been spared this offensive sound. Heaven knows what he might do. Understand, Mr. Oliver was a civilized man, the most decent sort, but some things he would not tolerate, especially from a certain class of people.

Seated across from him on the opposite side of the table, Tom knocked his hands several times against the flat wood side. You are hungry, he said.

What would you have? Seven asked him. Tom had a good appetite.

A little milk. A little bread.

Seven poured Tom a glass of goat’s milk, cut him a slice of bread. Despite his dexterity on the piano, Tom had difficulty bringing the glass to his lips without spilling the contents. One quick motion and the glass jerked up to his mouth, splashing milk across his face. Equal difficulty with bread. Less a matter of him biting the bread and more of him moving the bread sideways across his teeth until it all disappeared. A few archipelagoes of crumbs positioned above his milk-glistening upper lip.

Employ your napkin, Tom, Seven said.

Tom picked up his cheap cotton napkin and wiped his mouth.

Seven recognized that Tom was feeble-minded — is that how Mr. Oliver had put it? — and he tried to remember by what means he had brought Tom this far. He cast his mind back, hoping to recover an image of Tom as he was before. (Tom muffled in a worn black suit three sizes too large for him.) Yes, some progress, plenty, truth be told. Still, he had to get Tom to drop some of his ill manners, smooth out some of the rough edges, a goal he had set for himself. He had found common cause in the things Mr. Oliver required of him and those other things that he felt he should require of himself. (Principles and habits.) Only proper that he should give more, for Mr. Oliver had bequeathed him a tremendous responsibility, a laying out of trust, an investment of faith. One that posed a challenge from the first, but one he gladly stood up to since it filled him with new purpose and confidence.

Although Mr. Oliver had left the apartment physically, he was still present everywhere in the clearest way. He had moved this, had left that lying around, had not closed his window, forgotten to shut that drawer properly, left that slipper sticking out from under the bed and a half-empty glass of water at the window in his room. Seven didn’t believe these were oversights, mental lapses, but intentional disorder to keep him on point, to see how capable he was of putting each object back in its proper location. Even if he believed Mr. Oliver had no good reason for testing him this way — his skills were far beyond the basics; had long since adapted to the role of Tom’s protector and guardian, though he didn’t know the exact number of days, had known Tom all this time but had never made the effort to keep count until a week ago; give these days back, a full accounting — Mr. Oliver felt it was worth the trouble. So be it. Who was he to complain, to ask more?

Cows keep the milk down, Tom said.

No, Seven said. Cows keep the milk in. Tom turned his face to Seven in his crooked way. Seven forked back Tom’s eyelids with two fingers on his left hand, a slow revealing, like stage curtains being drawn up. The orbs were completely black and hard in appearance — should he touch them? — nothing soft about them, stone; you might believe that two objects had speeded down from the heavens above and come to a deep burial inside Tom’s face. If our eyes are indeed windows into our soul, as he had so often heard, then Tom lacked windows. Hard blackness sealed off inward entry. God had deliberately put Tom’s soul on his face.

Tom was seated in a chair identical to his — straight-backed wood, uncushioned — but Seven afforded Tom what he believed was the more comfortable of the two. His job to preserve order in the apartment’s August emptiness. His duty, sure, but he also felt a quiet affection for Tom. Tom opening up new areas of feeling in him. He could not get over the fact of how much freedom the blind give us. The closest thing to being by oneself. You can do most anything before them undetected. Not that he chose to do so, took advantage. He was always correct in his bearing toward Tom.

Absently, he passed his gaze over the surface of Tom’s face, unseeing eyes that made the aspect of him a particular delight. Sitting carefully upright in his chair during silent moments, he found himself staring into this face. Black calm. Blankness. The shiny smooth innocence of an unused stone. The most comforting person he had ever met, Tom was happy here with him (them) and he took considerable pleasure in the knowledge, as in his good handling of Tom he deserved primary credit for Tom’s state of being. Whatever he said to Tom would be heard with sympathy, with kindness. And Tom had the additional advantage of Mr. Oliver’s close and careful management.

Seven decided to leave the apartment as it was for later. Too much trouble. They should be able to depart and return with sufficient time left over for him to tidy up before Mr. Oliver returned. Time for all things.

Tom, he asked, where are you?

I’m on earth.

So you are. He stood up and stretched out the stiffness. Leaned across the table and fit Tom’s hat onto his head, flattening the thick-rooted hair, low, mashing, right down to the ridge of Tom’s brow and just above his blind bulging eyes.

Every day, Tom said, I put on a new head.

Hat, Seven said. Tom could well use a new hat. It would decidedly improve both his appearance and his existence. A good head covering — his beaver cap, Paul Morphy’s panama — provides important relief from the heat. (Mr. Oliver somehow managed without one.) He tugged on the brim of Tom’s hat, signaling that it was time for them to depart.

Tom rose up from the table, came around it, and embraced him so hard he thought he would choke in Tom’s arms. Chest constricted, breath trickling out, he allowed Tom to hug him for a considerable length of time until it was clear that Tom had no intention of releasing him. He wiggled free by distracting Tom with a tune he whistled into his ear. (One trick he had learned.) His skin felt different, as if Tom had left some element of his body behind on Seven’s. In fact, it seemed to have taken on a certain painful illumination, and he wondered now if he had wrongly sensed Tom’s embrace, the stationary hug not stationary at all but a rough rubbing of skin against skin, a hard-worked polish.

Tom had been his shadow ever since he hit town. His Tom unique, a totally new person in human history as far as he could tell, and his singularity left him unable to exist without Seven. Height against height, he loomed above Seven, a fairly sizable nigger at seven years of age — his reputed age (Mr. Oliver’s estimate), certainly (probably) far younger than Seven by several years, five at the least, possibly more, but niggers don’t develop by the calendar or the clock — tall but not excessively so. Seven was small for his age, a full head shorter than Tom, and just as slim as his younger charge, spindly, boy-skinny—Eat, Perry Oliver says. You need to eat more—but he was a force capable of imposing the necessary discipline. Easy when one was experienced in such matters. His job to keep Tom regulated, under a daily routine, an unavoidable necessity as Perry Oliver had made it clear that Tom lacked the internal clock that most of us, white people and niggers alike, are born with.

Tom unlatched the door, opened it, and made his way to the head of the stairs, then waited for Seven to help him down. They hurried out into late-morning light. The worst heat. Seven looked out at the world, a red line throbbing on the far horizon, his senses awakening, detecting. In the clear silence, Tom wordlessly clutched Seven’s hand with both of his, and allowed Seven to lead him forward. But Seven’s gaze was no longer directed upward at the much taller Tom but downward at the wobbly cobblestone road. The road seemed more even, your walk less steady if you concentrated on counting the individual stones as you stepped onto each one.

Tom sniffed the air like a hound. Raised his face — peered up; could he call it that? — as if something — a bird, a cloud — had passed overhead. The sky is so high, he said.

He often had much to say. Seven encouraged him to speak up, to talk loudly, even if he confounded sense, for he had found that much of our inability to understand Tom came from our inability to hear what he was actually saying. Hushed tones. Failed to speak at a high enough level for our ears to detect him. Speak up, Tom.

Caught in an unreal space. Heat and overlapping speech. Faces came out of the blackness to glare and shout. Bibulous types who downed hot drinks, the temperate fuel that allowed them to blow fiery words from the open furnaces of their mouths. For some reason they thought it amusing to offer Tom tobacco. Like a smoke, Tom?

Seven spoke kindly to the patrons, but he was quick to whisk Tom away, politely excusing them, removing his hat and tipping his head. He guided Tom toward the piano, scarcely registering the things around except in glimpses of single objects, as he (they) weaved between the tables, dodging a gauntlet of propositions, patrons offering Seven spirits, tobacco, and whatever else their tongues saw fit. Courteously he took the time to pause and decline to each and every one. Perhaps he and Tom were the only sane creatures within these four walls.

A man stepped in front of them, blocking their passage. His thin cheeks were badly shaven, here and there short little tufts of hair having escaped the razor. He stared over Seven’s shoulder at Tom. What’s the nigger’s name?

Thomas, Seven said.

Thomas?

Yes, sir.

Are you sure?

Seven tried to subdue his irritation. Yes, sir.

That is too much of a name for a little nigger to carry around.

Sir?

Thomas, you said?

Yes, sir.

That means twin.

No, Tom said. It means Tom.

Taken aback, the man turned away noisily in a vibration of cloth, hobbling but decisive, a fantastic construction, his image changing and reforming, by turns good-natured, crazy, and threatening, like a passing cloud.

Seven and Tom continued on until they reached their destination. Tom sat down on the long stool (bench?) positioned before the piano. Seven noticed that he was trembling. Sat down on the bench beside him, slanted, facing Tom but also able to turn his head and take in the room if need be. Not that he wanted to. He was unconcerned with his surroundings, closing in on himself, pushing the saloon further into the back of his consciousness. Tom and Seven, two plotters ill at ease in the light. Here they could unite with angles and corners, make themselves invisible to the population.

The piano was an awkward piece of work, with its tall square back and massive elephant-like legs and its cracked and discolored keys. It seemed strangely out of place here, this saloon the last place on earth where one would expect to find a piano or any other brandishment of fancy. Seven saw great meaning in this fact, knowing as he did the troubles that Perry Oliver had experienced in trying to locate an instrument for Tom. Something almost magical in all of this, as it could be this piano and no other. As if the piano had awaited Tom’s arrival, biding time, possibly for centuries. Had always been here, a natural formation like a rocky monolith, this roof this floor and these four walls constructed around it.

Where did you get that piano from? he asked.

I never got it, Mr. Oakley said. It was sitting right where it is when I accepted the deed.

The piano had become a cherished habit, the tool that would clear the way for him and Tom to develop an understanding. Seven distinctly recalled the very first time (second?) Tom touched the keys. His hands jerked back, as if the keys were some burning substance. (Seven had heard that electricity has the same hot effect.) Then again, minutes earlier Tom had fallen down three flights of stairs. Perhaps he had suffered an injury.

Seven was not sure that Tom was comfortable playing here. The tension of his posture betrayed him. His tongue came out of his mouth to moisten his lips. Then, all by themselves, without the help of human eyes, his hands began to find the complex track of chords and notes, the heart of melodies that kindled the desire to pat one’s feet, to clap one’s hands, to dance. A twist of flesh touched. Senses awakened, Seven felt his heart leap seeing this simple and wild display. Suspended. Sealed off. (Echoes and fragrances.) Impervious to time. Music glistened everywhere. Barely attuned to his surroundings, he noticed that someone had taken a seat at the table nearest them, a sun-darkened and slim man. (Thirty? forty? Age is no consequence for Seven, still new to the world.) A good-looking man, unlike the others here, a man of good standing, like Perry Oliver, very well dressed and groomed. He seemed unconscious of anything except a set purpose of staring at the table (smooth darkness) and grumbling to himself, lips silently moving. Perhaps he was drunk, though Seven saw no evidence that he had been imbibing alcohol. His only refreshment a half-drained glass of water, chunks of ice floating on the surface. Ah — looking closer — he was reading, reviewing a document spread flat across the table. Pen in hand, inkwell at the ready. He lifted his face up. Their eyes met, or so it seemed. No, he was wide-eyed as if staring at words in the air. Stared vacantly past Seven, his face relaxed and oblivious, before returning his eyes to his document, his reading and writing. A short while later he raised his face again. Yes, now he was looking right at Seven (them). Squared the corners of the sheet he was reading, then edged around the table to position himself in proximity to the piano. He said he was waiting for a friend, although Seven had no idea why he chose to relay this information. In one hand, he carried a musical score (black lines, black circles, white space) — yes, this was what he had been reading — and he had been humming it under his breath, tapping the accompaniment on the table with his fingers, even as he talked.

Tom’s hands stopped moving. I like that song, Tom said.

Do you? the man said. He looked at them from behind an almost immobile face.

Yes.

He grinned. But it’s a sad song.

No, Tom said. Niggers are sad.

Yes, the man said. They are. He introduced himself as W. P. Howard. Seven introduced them. Seven and Thomas. Is he your boy?

I’m his, Tom said. I’m his boy.

Tom resumed his playing. Shut eyes glazed. Hands moved over keys, feet worked pedals. Body rocked from side to side. Smooth steady movement. He looked less like a man playing an instrument than like a captain steering his ship. Transported.

Perry Oliver found the apartment pitch black — as well it should be, since he was late in returning, quite late, having missed both dinner and supper — with a peculiar stillness. Tried to get his bearings, half a thought ahead, half a thought behind. He lit a lamp, a flame that was not bright enough to illuminate the entire room, but he was accustomed to the parlor-kitchen lit at night by a single inconstant light, as he was reserved in the use of candle and oil. He could make out two figures dozing deliciously at the table. The pair seated side by side, a hand apart, slumped forward and face down. He stood and watched in this semidarkness favorable to spying and conspiracy, his emotions keeping him from speaking the words and thoughts that crowded into his head like a panicked herd. Such harsh language inside him that it might rip his throat apart should it come out.

He methodically went about inspecting the room.

Tea was on the table. Impossible to convey its color, its smell. Everything had been gathered up, the smaller objects placed inside the larger ones, the dirty items washed and dried, both litter and leftovers collected and disposed of. The supper — dinner? — basket was empty. Not a single remnant — shredded meat, greasy bone, bread crumb — of food.

Tom lifted his head. Come in, come in, he said. Everybody is a member. He returned to his sleep.

A trail of breath. A moan. He saw two little bodies moving forward in the hall toward the staircase. One put a foot out and stepped onto air, onto nothing. Pitched forward and disappeared as if sinking beneath water. The observer-listener shaking with fear at the sound of a body tumbling down and rattling against stairs.

Perry Oliver could feel the house shudder. The second body hurried after the first, but Perry Oliver hesitated, a quick gasp of astonishment in his mouth. His instinct had nudged him off course. His consciousness in a state of alert. (Too far away, too far behind.) His vision blurred as if he had suddenly gone under water. Once he decided to (once he could), he moved feverishly as if in a hurry to assure himself that the situation was not as dire as it appeared.

He discovered a Tom-at-rest three flights below, propped up against the banister, Seven kneeling down before him, touching his charge at the wrist. A noise came from Tom’s body. His lips moved although no words came out. At least, none they could hear. He would kneel too, but he was afraid to touch Tom. But he had gained enough courage not to deny reality, what he had just seen with his very own eyes. He did not lose his calm. He even had the presence of mind to realize that he could (should?) consider himself lucky, all things considered. Tom was alive and apparently only slightly injured. He screwed up his eyes and spoke to Seven without anger or panic.

The agonies of shame. This was why Perry Oliver didn’t speak now, why he chose to let Seven and Tom sleep. (In the morning, he would hear, he would judge, he would forgive.) The burden of words and their sounds meant to awaken the past. He had to keep his suffering intact. Would follow painful memories but only so far, a past he tried his best to confine to the long forgotten. How else to keep a tight hold on what was closest, the immediate tasks stretching before him? His mind turned wholly to the menace of the moment, the struggle that each new day imposes. Who has not tried to read the beginnings of today’s calamity — he had failed to find an instructor for Tom — in the memory of yesterday’s error? For Perry Oliver, each error was an opportunity, a stepping-stone to somewhere else. Of course, no getting around that strange fringe of uneasiness among his thoughts, muted strands of uncertainty and foreboding that were always there, that he had to struggle against. Loss has a way of creeping back. With the future crossed out, the past will become an obsession. So he welcomed what life brought each day, good or bad, and constantly strove to bring himself into a new understanding of it. The old Perry Oliver had to disappear to make room for the new one. Had to give up everything. Homes he had lived in. Books read. Places traveled. Previous sentiments and passions. Give it all up. Come from nowhere.

He groped forward, stopped to look inside the boys’ room, which was after the parlor-kitchen the second largest room in the apartment. (His the smallest.) Handheld light revealed three images hanging on the wall above Seven’s bed. A daguerreotype of Senator Douglas and one of Senator Calhoun. Since our beloved, aged defender was unable to rise and take command of the floor, Senator Mason of Virginia stepped in as his voice. And the portrait of Paul Morphy. The two beds positioned on either side of the room were exactly like his own, all three identical in shape and construction, none longer or wider than the others, and all consisting of the same make and grain of wood. Functional constructions built to last, and fully capable of supporting the plump unshapely mattresses that covered them, rough burlap amply filled with discarded peanut shells and skin (far cheaper than cotton).

Once he was in the tranquility of his own room, he barely took the trouble to undress, having survived another rough day. Tomorrow sure to be the same. He threw himself on his bed. He had a plan. In those towns and cities containing a preponderance of cultivated people, theaters do not flourish to the same extent as in locales where the reverse is true. Cultivated people have no reason to go out, already finding music at home. (The parlor piano.) Music halls in this city primarily catered crude spectacles for the lowly of life with the occasional special event or festivity that all may enjoy. His goal was to draw the cultivated out with music — Tom — they couldn’t get at home. Kindle a desire for a form of serious (classical) entertainment they had never seen before.

Though his plan required the preponderance of his time, he got away from hard work to pay attention to other things — mainly the newspaper. He preferred the Negro journals published in the North — he said and thought South without attaching any importance to it; he took no particular pride in this land where he was born and where he still lived — even maintained a subscription to the best, despite the suspicious glances of the local postmaster. More actuality — truth — in the pages mixed in among all the propaganda of racial uplift. Uplift the race. In the reporting more words than not that actually fit the occasion, rather than adorn or preach.

Noble Reader, certainly the negro is not our equal in color — perhaps not in many other respects; still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man, white or black. In pointing out that more has been given you, you can not be justified in taking away the little which has been given him. All I ask for the negro is that if you don’t like him, let him alone. If God gave him little, that little let him enjoy.

He slowly and wearily put the newspaper down. Closed his eyes the better to see with his inward gaze those landscapes and horizons where printed words carried him. It amused him to come up with a subject to reflect on every now and then, an entertaining theme that could pull him away from the present. If only refuge in the self were that easy. Something had happened that his intelligence was wearing itself out trying to define. Willingly, he let himself slide into a kind of lethargy, waiting to better understand. (In the night we move forward.)

Noises reached Perry Oliver quite unmuffled by the thin walls. The least little sound he heard (or imagined?) impelled him to be on his guard, sometimes even pulling him out of bed. Despite the heat, he closed the thick damask curtain, reinforced with a white blind behind it, impenetrable fabric that prevented any light from entering the chamber. But no barring sound. He heard feet flutter in the room next to his where the boys slept, stopping here, stopping there. No discernible pattern in the movement. Took some listening to recognize it as Tom quick’s tread. Was Tom entering the kitchen (parlor)? Now he heard voices too, snatches of murmurings. Tom and Seven? Both boys moving about? Moving and talking?

Sometimes, on a good morning, in the clear silence, he could relive the triumphs of his life. Was this so today? He peered into the mirror but couldn’t see his eyes. Gaped and gawked at his reflection, but the image didn’t improve. The mirror — polished glass, reflective capacity, the power to throw back — swinging freely on its stand. A black screen interrupted by light. He splashed water on his face and watched it roll down his reflected cheeks and chin and drip down into the basin. His mind struggled to awaken.

From the window he could see the woodshed and everything that went on in the yard. Bare-chested and barefoot, the nigger who took care of the house was putting the shed in order. The nigger had a full day ahead, a hundred tasks to complete. Now beat out rugs and mattresses, now shovel the garbage into a pile and set it aflame. And once that was done, he would be ready to clean the lavatory on each floor.

Just at the outskirts, where vision ended, he could look — and he often did — at the black city under a heavy sky. His destination today.

He went into the kitchen (parlor). Seven was still half-asleep in his chair, eyes brimming with light, heavy and comical. (Where was Tom?) He waited patiently for the boy to recover himself, his heart quick to tremble and be touched. Why bother about the boy’s feelings, about the fact that the boy worried about Tom, too, that he was perhaps three times more concerned than Perry Oliver was himself about Tom’s cares and hurts.

Seven got up from his chair and stood before him, wobbly, in respectful expectation. Beneath the harsh reflection of his tired mouth and blank eyes, his real face appeared, the face of an adolescent.

Shadows slithered in and out. Mr. Oliver was waiting for Seven to speak. Seven wondered what he should do, what response might be the least detrimental to him: call out or remain quiet? His mind was too foggy, the conflicting thoughts inside his head unable to focus or affix themselves. He stammered, got tangled in his attempt to control his voice, master his emotion, and find the right words, the expression that would be convincing. Instead, he emitted a kind of mush, syllables jolting each other and running together.

Perry Oliver listened to capture every word and pause.

Overwhelmed, Seven lowered his head, clinging to the faint hope that Mr. Oliver would understand.

And still Tom fell down the stairs, Perry Oliver said.

Yes.

You must do better.

I must do better.

Mr. Oliver walked to the door and took silent leave.

Sometime later, Seven stood on the bed admiring the summer trees. What could he see? (Squirrels change branches.) He wanted to see the world. Break away from everything earthly and set out on a great adventure. For now, he held Tom fast in one place. (If you can’t stand something, don’t do it.) Tom had to do everything in full view while Seven watched him. A bed’s width of silence separating them, between them, building a secret room. He got down from the bed and straightened the sheets. Tom popped up. More sheets to align. (Two diverging elements.) What it means to introduce another self into the equation.

What body was that, hunched and shaking at the kitchen table? He recalled (his wounded memory) a happy dinner, things as usual. He told himself that all had passed off smoothly for him and Tom until supper time arrived, when Mr. Oliver returned — he recognized footsteps then heard the door yank open — from his work and joined them at the table.

No, he couldn’t twist the facts. Yesterday (afternoon and night) had not worked out to his greater glory. A warning unleashed inside him. He was glad just to stir again. He had suffered no ill effects. (If you can’t handle the job, don’t volunteer.) It was all in his hands now. (This boy has put himself entirely in my hands.)

He comforted the face confronting him. Gave Tom tender consideration. Playfully patted his other’s cheeks, slapped him on the back of his neck. Soared aloft. Higher. And now out into the fresh air, which would make them both feel better.

Once they arrived (landed) at Scaldy Bill’s, Mr. Oakley quickly installed the two of them at the piano. Seven sat and listened. Cherished habits. But what was this he heard? The same tunes from yesterday. (So he remembered.) Tom was reciting as if by rote. (Re-creation.) He had never known Tom to be negligent about playing (practicing?). As good a reason as any not to listen, to lock out his emotions.

While Tom played, not once did Seven turn around on the stool and he did not so much as glance at the other patrons in the saloon (restaurant), as was his custom. Established a boundary that no one dared cross. He and Tom must not be noticed by the outside world. He and Tom must not notice the outside world. He sensed and felt nothing; all of his thoughts were focused on one point: Tom. No matter how hard he might try, he couldn’t hear the music now. He heard nothing. Locked out sight and sound.

So they remained for several hours, Tom playing. Then the attentive Negress barmaid came over and sat a pitcher of iced tea on top of the piano, the diversion Seven had been waiting for.

Time to go home now, Tom, he said. Time for food, he said, strategic. Long minutes had worn by; Tom would obey hunger and taste. Tom nestled against him. Tenderly close, the two of them got up from the piano and made their way to the bar. Seven received their dinner basket from the Negress. Handed Mr. Oakley the money due. The owner seemed to be giving serious thought to the changes in Seven’s behavior, today’s standoffishness, aloofness. (The mind twists and turns as it sees fit.) Seven was transgressing a simple rule of propriety with his silence. Even so, the owner didn’t express his feelings, only issued Seven a message that he instructed him to pass on to Mr. Oliver. Then he enclosed the two boys in his arms like sons, with more of the family, a sparkling pair of green glasses, awaiting their kinship on the counter.

Discreetly, Seven made as if reaching for one of the glasses and by such deceptive means managed to rearrange his limbs and create some elbow room. Tom, his welcome accomplice, was not so discreet. Dropped right to the floor free of Mr. Oakley’s skin. Seven hastily apologized — no telling what a nigger will do — then stooped down and helped Tom back to his feet in a nonclaimed space, three bar stools of distance between them and the owner. The owner showed no reaction beyond breathing. Seven mentally filed away the owner’s message, but found an excuse to refuse the green liquid, quick to forestall any objection by saying that they were already late in meeting Mr. Oliver back at their residence.

Outside, they encountered the usual stares and disavowals. Pure fantasy to expect anything less. Seven was fully prepared. These petty figures underestimated his strength. Just by looking at them or refusing to look he could switch them on and off. Tom, his natural cohort, fluttering along behind him, leaving reflections in the store windows.

Perry Oliver dreams of walking in a deserted and silent street. But the city is overpopulated, swarming like flies on kill, no matter what the time of day or what the season. It resounds with their footsteps and voices. Buzzes with their wings and working tongues. He shrilly struggles for breath. With what joy he would like to send them all to hell.

Face it, he is living among barbarians. Nothing can change that fact, alter the immovable difference between him and them. How is it that of the many people he knows in this city only Tom and Seven and Oakley meet his expectations? So many frauds, failures, and incompetents. He has come to expect the worst. (Experience is fact.) Has to be overly cautious in his dealings because the local good citizens offer the world, but what they can actually provide is insufficient to help him get on with his work. To expect good craft, care, is an excessive demand. Nothing is done thoroughly enough, everything is rushed and imperfect.

He strikes out along a new road, trying to get his bearings so that he’ll know how to behave once he arrives. Trying his best not to think about what may await him. All of his business may be there. Perhaps. Wouldn’t bet on it one way or the other. So far this has been a ridiculous, hideous, preposterous day. He no longer knows where he is, where he stands. This sense of confusion disorientation is why — no other explanation — he feels surrender rising in his blood.

And why shouldn’t he? What has he to show for his efforts? One after another he interviews those instructors whose names have been put forth. From each he gets the same response. No. Always looks so promising at first. Anxious to earn a fee, they hurry him inside their homes, but after he makes his request, they refuse him flatly, impatient for him to go. Turn down good money. So he must try another approach. If money can’t persuade them, perhaps his words can. (His mouth the organ.) He puts forward his case. (Indeed, he has learned that he can make a fine fresh impression when he pushes ahead in order to be the first to say something out loud. No matter what he says.) But they don’t care if Tom is an exception, a rare breed, a nigger like no other. You see, Tom’s skin is definitive. His blindness is end of the road. His idiocy a mockery, an insult — the brutality of fact — to culture and civilization. Perry Oliver tries again, backing up rational speech with firm gestures, raising a finger here and there to underscore a point. A doomed approach. Those who listen and entertain the possibility of Tom’s difference quickly decide this nigger boy is incapable of benefiting from instruction, and even go so far as to warn that I will summon the authorities, sensing a confidence scheme. Some don’t even consider him worthy of formal address. No matter. He knows he has to be prepared for such reactions. Not his place to argue. Silly to worry one’s head about something that can’t be changed, something beyond one’s control. Still, he is upset at this moment, tugging along, heavy with a thousand sensations. His thoughts muddled, only residual traces of the original motive. He needs to restore his confidence, faith.

When he returns to the apartment for dinner, angry nausea rising up the column of his body, he barely looks at Seven and Tom, who are seated at the table facing each other. He bypasses food (no appetite) and closes himself off inside his room, seeking ease (release) after a rough morning. Gives vent to his confusion, having lost his form, the door shut to Seven and Tom. (He will meet them across supper.) Starts to read his newspaper by candle — drapery shuts the light out — only to put the newspaper aside and reinforce his plans through the tedium of preparation. (Who will I see this afternoon? Who tomorrow morning?) The flat calm of Time that kills in silence. A silence where he is afraid that everything will remain as it is. Not that his fear alters his conviction. (Doesn’t in the least.) To cloak his feelings, he tells himself that the word no is a beginning, not an end. The start of a new conversation. His opponents cannot block his way forever. The knowledge makes him feel strangely fortified, even though his quest is undeniably something of a guessing game. He feels that he is on the right track. His daily failures, stalled efforts, can’t cancel out all that he has achieved up to this point in his life. So he must face the truth of what he hopes to accomplish through Tom, face the absolute nature of his work. In this way he can go out into the world again.

He makes his way into the parlor. An hour has passed.

From the table Seven turns his bright splotch of skin toward him and brings word that Mr. Oakley offers to sell us the piano outright, and charge nothing for its delivery.

Now there’s a thought. (Tom reaches out and chokes Seven’s beaver cap in one hand and starts caressing it with the other.) The price is fair. And perhaps it makes perfect sense to purchase the piano. The apartment has enough space for it. (Right over there.) And it would help to remove Tom from public view. But he has no desire to own a piano. Has sufficient possessions already. No, that is not quite what he has in mind.

Say nothing, he says. I will speak to him.

Yes, sir.

They have nothing more to tell each other. (Why waste words?) He leaves without saying good-bye.

Out in the street, he admits an important truth to himself. This city impresses him. That is, he is reluctantly impressed by the limits he pushes against in an attempt to expand beyond them. His mental mettle is sagging, although it hasn’t broken yet. Tense to the point of pain, of his beginnings, he is incapable of deciding what to do next and incapable of holding on to whatever he might decide. He is open to suggestions, open to anything and everything, no matter where it comes from. Perhaps Oakley can help. The saloon owner dares to do what others merely promise. He must tell Oakley about the troubles he has been having. He will seek his advice.

He approaches the saloon. Comes through the door expecting the usual but doesn’t immediately recognize the room. Has it changed, been done over? Patrons waver in one direction then another. He can’t glimpse any pattern in their wavering. Oakley’s nigger is kneeling by the bar stools, hammer in hand, nails between his teeth, installing brass cuspidors. Careful where he places his knees and feet to avoid the many pools of brown spit (tobacco juice) covering the floor around him. The owner is there too, behind the counter, talking to one of the regulars. The scar marring his face seems to have darkened in color, as black as the derby covering his head. Perry Oliver installs himself on a stool near the owner and barges his way into the discussion. (He does not go to extremes. Only right that the sober citizen should put himself before the drunk.) The regular issues no challenge — Perry Oliver has come to stake his claim — only gets up from his seat and ambles off into the smoky gloom.

He listens to the owner’s offer. He says that it is a fair price, although he knows he has no intention of purchasing the piano. He improvises an excuse for putting off the purchase for a month. The owner accepts. They shake hands on the deal. (String him along for now.) Then he starts in on his difficulties finding a music instructor.

He is no crier. (Cry and the world will pity you. He wants no one’s pity.) So how does he come to find himself seated at the bar before the owner, drink in hand, spilling liquid onto the counter? Oakley fixes his stare on Perry Oliver’s face, and suddenly the latter feels, he doesn’t know why, like placing himself in the saloon owner’s hands. Perry Oliver goes on talking for a full half hour or more, deliberately throwing in all the details and nuances. He enjoys immensely talking about all this, with the owner seated regally on his stool, silent and motionless, and staring straight into his eyes, something aggressive and challenging in his gaze. At the most intimate passages, he notices that the owner looks a bit embarrassed.

There you have it. A fair shake is all I want.

Don’t tease my brain any more on the subject, Oakley says. You allow people to treat you like that. But you do nothing about it.

Perry Oliver says nothing at first, surprised to see Oakley showing a different side of himself. Not the customary exchange of ideas, man to man. Perhaps the owner is only sounding him out. He proceeds to try to justify his actions, his doing nothing, his tolerance of injustice.

You’re going about it all wrong. Don’t be diplomatic. Remember that you are dealing with idiots. Diplomacy is beyond their understanding.

Perry Oliver listens, taking it all in.

You have to face them head-on. Confront and complain. That’s the only way.

Later, Perry Oliver will ponder what he had actually heard the owner advise (demand). Was it “complain” or “come plain”?

Make it clear who’s in charge. And if you have to, give them your boot to lick. To that, he gives Perry Oliver another round. Leaves Perry Oliver this example of everything and nothing.

But you will not have to go that far, Oakley says. I will save you the trouble. I know someone.

Seven sits at the table carefully examining every detail of the illustrations of Paul Morphy’s exploits. He would like to be made utterly immobile. To sit forever.

Tom sits too, his hands moving, feet moving, now his head. Sits, time whizzing around his urge to move. He begins to speak, to recite, giving back word for word. Fourteen games were played in all, of which two were drawn, and three won by Herr Löwenthal. so great a disproportion evidently proves the practical superiority of the victor. How marvelous, the constant magic of Tom’s memory. His tried-and-true companion. Too incredible for words. And no less grand and impressive after repeated display. Seven sags in his chair, catches his breath. At such moments, Tom belongs to him more completely than ever. A private kitchen (parlor) occurrence that compels him to project himself, safe and sound, into foreign streets and gardens (Hyde Park) and rooms — St. George’s Chess Club, King Street, St. James’s; London Chess Club, Cornhill — Tom and Mr. Oliver silently accompanying him. That’s the way he pictures it. Maybe (his wish) he will travel to such places someday.

Tom rapidly taps his chin with two fingers. Seven perks up his ears, ready for more. Tom taps his chin again. Will he say more?

Game twenty-nine, Seven says, prodding him.

Paul Morphy, Tom said, the American, victorious in thirty-four moves!

Tom’s voice rolls pleasurably across his thoughts. How relaxed he feels. He tries returning to his journal, to Paul Morphy, but can’t see what’s there. His eyes retain Tom’s image. For now, Tom’s sheer presence will suffice.

Or will it? Tom tugs, knocks, shakes. Utters monotonous sentences about heaven knows what. Agitated, he wants to leave this place. But not everyone can leave a room anytime he feels like it. Nothing happens unless Seven says so. And he isn’t saying so now. Tom will simply have to wait.

For a good half hour, Seven tries everything conceivable-humming, whistling, helpings of water and tea, further excursions with Morphy — to quiet Tom but to no avail. Tom gets up from the table and makes his way around. Halts an arm’s length away from Seven and stands there thrusting his head in the air like a bull. Seven won’t budge. He lowers his gaze, hardly looking at Tom although Tom hovers around him, trying as hard as he can to attract Seven’s attention. Seven caught in this downward act of looking, witness to Tom’s stubborn demands, the harsh tangle of his speech. Dismayed, half fearing for himself, half wishing this odd distraction shut away. Can’t avoid glancing (in his mind) sidelong at Tom and directly at himself sitting in this chair, beset with choices, weighing departing against staying. He can stand up and oppose his charge, but it is very hard to mold a nigger once he gets riled. So, with labored care, he gets to his feet and fits his beaver cap on his own head and Tom’s furless black hat on Tom’s head, even then determined that they will return before Mr. Oliver does. Restored, Tom hugs him and keeps hugging, as is his wont.

Soon they are out in the street — it couldn’t have gone any differently — where Tom trustingly puts himself in Seven’s hands. Late afternoon light finds them walking north on the cobblestone road, away from Scaldy Bill’s, Seven hoping to avoid putting temptation in Tom’s ears and mouth. Tom follows him silently. It is only as they are drawing close to the river that words start bursting out of him.

We are walking, Tom says.

Yes.

A constitutional.

Yes.

Does the body good.

Well.

Does the body well.

Tom picks up a short branch that has fallen from a tree. He throws it into the field. A few yards later he picks up a stone. He throws it into the field. More finding and chunking as they work their way across the meadows of the city, lack of destination and light-footed energy carrying Seven along, and some immeasurable energy driving Tom. Tom walks and walks and doesn’t seem to be tiring any. In fact, Seven has to work hard to keep ahead of his charge, his ears filled with the unmistakable sound of someone carrying something. It is his own breath that he hears, his lungs struggling to bear and lug weighted air, and his already heavy chest all that heavier for his long solid ribs, like a bulky load of firewood permanently sealed up beneath his skin. If he has any say in the matter they will stop and rest soon.

Tom, he says, slow down.

Yes, suh.

I’m not a sir.

Yes, sir. But Tom doesn’t slow down.

Seven stops at the side of the road. Tom keeps walking, right past him. Seven juts forward and catches him by the arm. Let’s wait here a moment. He guides Tom roadside and proceeds to seat himself in the grass. Tom remains standing. So be it. Despite what it seems, Seven is not at odds with himself. Tom’s candid face, his quietly breathing chest, the ease in his movements, all clearly indicate to Seven that no malice, spite, or guile dwells in his body. An unquestionable fact like the hard-packed dirt beneath his buttocks.

Since they’ve advanced this far, perhaps they should go for a swim. (Can the blind swim?) Or they can simply go and rest on the banks. Tom won’t have to get wet.

Seven leads Tom through the grass toward the water, where they sit down together on a grassy little knoll, fully within the sprawling ragged shadow (shade) of a large tree, Seven a few feet above and behind Tom. He’s got the best overview of the river. He’s got the best overview of Tom. After he has rested for a while, he gets up and carries a hollowed-out branch down to the river, fills it with water, and drinks himself cool. Refills it and returns to Tom, who upends the branch sluice-like to allow the water to run into his mouth. Drinking done, Tom flings the branch into the water. So they sit. Seven often touches Tom’s face without thought, running his fingers across his cheeks, around his jawline and mouth, and over his eyes, feeling the hardened lumps beneath. Tom remains undisturbed during the touching, as if these are fingers he can’t feel. Seven looks at the water now, but his eyes alight on nothing. Nothing happens, and nothing happens in Seven.

Shrieks circle out from a small source of noise. Birds. He sits observing them — the circle closing in on those who watch — these airborne creatures grounded some distance off, venturing through the grass and pecking dirt near the base of the tree. So much to see. Sees, placing every stream every river every leaf every branch every tree every stone every bird every blade of glass in its proper place.

Tom remains unusually silent and still. No humming or singing or fidgeting. A person who doesn’t speak could easily be thinking.

Do you like to swim, Tom?

The fish do, Tom says.

The pecking search for food brings the birds closer and closer to where they sit. Several of them rush Tom’s exposed ankles. Tom kicks his feet, scaring them off, flapping back to the heaven.

There go the dead arisin, he says.

Now if that don’t beat all. Seven thought that he had heard everything from Tom.

They sit for a spell in calm assurance.

Time to go, Seven says.

Time to go, Tom says. He hops to his feet. Nature is over, he says.

They return to the road with Seven in the lead, heading toward a shortcut home. He looks back over his shoulder and sees Tom hurrying off the opposite way.

Tom, where are you going? He remains there, holding his pose of entreating, thinking that Tom will come directly to him. Tom continues on. Seven rushes and overtakes him. Good lord, what has gotten into this nigger? All this time, time that he has lavished on tracking down some amusement that will keep Tom calm and content. (Approach the other with understanding.) All for naught. Is this a challenge that he detects and that he has to meet? If so, what has fallen to him is more than a decision about direction. He must exert driving force, supply a directive. They will go by the stable — their secret enterprise — even though it is quite a haul from where they’ve found themselves.

W. P. Howard—the best music professor in the country, Oakley said—lives in a clean quiet neighborhood on the outskirts of the city with houses tall and wide standing apart from squat servants’ houses, and niggers all about busy with upkeep and work. Perry Oliver addresses the opportunity with a solemnity that suggests his very life is at stake. Even Oakley’s introduction and recommendation may not be enough to guarantee Tom’s selection. All he has is a name.

A name he would rather do without. Doesn’t want to know it, doesn’t need to. (In fact, later he will almost say, “Please, sir, don’t speak your name in my presence.” Holds his hands up, warding off knowledge. “I promise not to speak mine. Let us talk money.”) The title, Professor of Music, is all he needs; in fact, it is far more appropriate than a name, for which holds the greater importance in the world, what we are called or what we do? True, a name can lift you up by the workings of social convention and ignorance. But Perry Oliver doesn’t buy into the whole principle of name and ancestry, name as designation, the linguistic path back to flesh and blood lineage, noble or otherwise. (A thousand particular stories.) By luck and chance and enterprise any white man can succeed. W. P. Howard is a name he is already trying to forget.

He arrives at Howard’s house with eagerness in his eyes, in his gait, a pretense that should provide him with the necessary deception of confidence. The decent aspect of the house — large but modest, nothing gaudy or ostentatious or overstated — brings with it the sense of a small promise renewed, revived. Still, he is leery of ringing the doorbell, leery of entering the house, but he must since he is unable to bear the tension of waiting. A nigger answers the door. Seeing the nigger is enough to awaken in Perry Oliver the value of himself as a person.

The nigger shows him into the house and they proceed down the hall to an open door, where the nigger pauses before entering, Perry Oliver behind him, looking, the open door a box of perspective, a transparent cage that illuminates a man standing in the middle of the room, man and room separating him from what is indistinct and undefined. Looking a visual purification, cleansing after the darkness outside. The man wears a jacket that is well made but long outdated, and the man stands with his feet wide apart and his head lowered. Perry Oliver thinks, is sure, that the man is muttering something under his breath. The nigger enters the room and calls out to the man. Professor Howard. As soon as the man sees Perry Oliver he literally leaps toward his visitor with his hand out in greeting, so that Perry Oliver involuntarily reels back. Howard takes Perry Oliver by the elbow and leads him over to a sofa covered with a green-gold draping, where he sits down himself, then pulls Perry Oliver into an armchair next to him, Perry Oliver easing into the unfolding dimensions of the room. Much smaller than he had at first thought, a full-sized piano taking up almost half the space. So this would be Howard’s studio, small perhaps though certainly sufficient in size for the few students he takes in — according to Mr. Oakley, Howard largely makes his money working on an as-needed basis with the city’s two schools of musical instruction for girls and with other local or county-wide organizations for the training and development of the female sex — and well designed to compensate for its extreme simplicity.

Sitting with one hand resting in the other, Howard is full of questions that alarm at first and amuse later. Perry Oliver goes with it. Easy. He hears himself say, Yes, a boy approximately seven years of age. Yes, more than a handful. Surprised that his voice carries any sound.

With deliberate ceremony the nigger serves them coffee. That is exactly what Perry Oliver needs, to be accommodated, to belong to this little world.

Professor Howard smiles at his servant. Roman, he says, I no longer require your services for the day. You may be excused.

The servant bows and leaves hurriedly, giving a backward glance as he flounces away, a glance that only Perry Oliver catches.

And what is his name?

Tom.

And how long has he been playing?

Professor Howard turns his ear toward Perry Oliver, as if he is listening all the way to the other side of the city, listening to Tom.

Perry Oliver will leave no question unanswered, will omit nothing even if he has to make it up. Gives something of Tom’s history, scrambling in his mind to hold on to and remember what he is saying.

So I take it you don’t play yourself?

No, Perry Oliver says. I listen.

I’m sure you know far more than you think, Howard says. Whoever can distinguish musical sounds from their reverse is a musician. At least to a degree.

Yes, to a degree. Perry Oliver sits with a touch of astonishment and gratefulness that he has gotten this far. He has come here freely on his own. Has come to yield up himself. Shaken, breathless, he sits regarding Howard with his own terror, wondering if he might have done things differently. He had considered bringing Tom along — and leaving Seven behind in the apartment — to allow the Professor to see firsthand the project he would be taking on. Still can’t say why he decided against it.

Rest assured, Howard says. He gives Perry Oliver a little smile to put him at ease. You are doing the right thing. The South is no place for a pianist to develop. The air is too damp. It ruins the instrument and at the same time it ruins the pianist. The hands and head go soft in the shortest time.

Howard gives Perry Oliver a look, implying that they are conspirators united against a ridiculous world. However, Perry Oliver steers clear of responding, refusing to be drawn into a discussion that he knows could lead him on a tirade against their country.

See here. The instructor held up both hands palms outward, like a cornered victim going soft before a highwayman with a pistol aimed at his heart. Look closely, he said. See the ridges and grooves standing out from the skin. They help the fingers help the pianist along. They are as important for absorbing and recording our touch as they are for enhancing and tightening the grip. Music enters here through the tips of the fingers and travels up through the hands, arms, shoulders, neck, and makes its way all the way up to the brain.

Perry Oliver sat listening with bemusement at an enthusiasm he had never heard before, soaking in the instructor’s words and gestures, so much so that he missed half of what Howard was actually saying to him, afraid to move, feeling that anything he did would disturb the mood, clues to what Howard was really thinking, the hidden behind the words, held up to eye to tongue to ear.

Is he equal with both hands?

Yes, Perry Oliver said, unclear what he was acknowledging. Both hands are equal.

Forthright instruction, Howard said, is a way to learn how to play two voices clearly but also after further progress to deal correctly and well with three obbligato parts not only to obtain good ideas but most of all to learn the process of invention that is necessary to any style of playing by which to acquire a strong foretaste of composition.

He composes, Perry Oliver said. However, he has a limited program. Perry Oliver looked right into Howard’s eager eyes. Might you be able to demonstrate a full range of songs for him, as many as you know, as many as you can, and build up his repertoire? He tried to keep the pleading out of his voice, hoping to establish by his very intensity a stronger claim to the child than any could make.

Yes, Howard said, although I’m sure some exercises will be necessary. I can assure you that within a week Tom will have learned a new song.

That is quite generous, Perry Oliver said. However, I suspect that he might be capable of learning five songs in a given day.

Something in the other man’s face startled Perry Oliver. It was a look that said Howard had nothing but scorn and contempt for the man who was hiring him.

You see, he possesses an iron memory. Whatever he hears he can play. Perry Oliver never wasted time pondering the origins of Tom’s gift, wondering if Tom’s powers were evidence of the mysterious workings of God’s awful hand or some other supernatural force. Enough to accept a paradox for what it is. He is one to keep to what he knows and understands.

Yes, that is a special consideration. Howard’s eyes flashing the secret of his excitement. We should start tomorrow.

The words surprised Perry Oliver, even more than he had hoped for. Delighted that the Music Professor had put forth the request.

Please bring him here after breakfast.

It was Howard’s expectation that he see Tom as often as possible, three or four times a week — he asked double his usual fee, a sum amounting to almost two dollars per day — a proposal suggesting that both Perry Oliver and Tom would have to lift their own work to merit being in the same place with him.

A rigorous schedule should suit his nature, Perry Oliver said, for he never tires of playing.

Pianists have amazing endurance.

Perry Oliver looked at the piano, a black levitating mass.

A short time later, he emerged dreamily from the house. It’s settled. Saying it to himself, to the other houses, to fading (red) sun and the wind and the trees. Not a moment to take lightly. Even though he had gotten what he wanted, he needed to feel bigger than this man, Howard. What is it that had brought the Music Professor into his life?

He walked faster in the stiff air, trying to calm his racing mind, his eyes filling with the distance that had already sprung between him and Howard. What is this he heard from a block away? Bone-white notes. Trailing behind him, intent on following him home. He found himself standing before a haberdashery window, hats perched bird-like on their stands. Without giving it much thought he decided to celebrate his victory by treating Seven to a gift, a Paul Morphy hat.

It took Howard a week to break Tom out of the habit of simply walking over to the piano and hooking his hat onto the cantilevered lid. Could it be that he truly believes a piano is a casual object of furniture like any other? Tom would step through the door, break away from his navigator, Seven, remove his hat, angle it on the piano, then sit down and begin playing whatever pleased him.

Now Tom has quickly fallen into the proper routine. The servant brings a bowl of water so that Howard and Tom may clean their hands. Holds out a fresh towel so that they may pat their skin dry. They are now ready to begin.

So much depends on where. Start with Tom’s teeth and gums. Tom must learn to keep his mouth shut. When he plays he keeps it open like an oven waiting for unbaked food.

At first Tom gives in with no resistance. Simply goes along with Howard without his usual force of will. He is peaceful and composed before the piano. His face tilted slightly upward as he listens to Howard demonstrate a bar or melody. Mouth shut, eyes unseeing, both naive and enigmatic.

That afternoon when Howard first heard Tom has stayed with him, a sharpened echo in his memory. Clings to the present even as it ceases to make sense in terms of where they are now, of his (their) present goals. Easy enough to recall the many patrons sitting or standing in happy ignorance and a group of overseers seated together at a table with their coats off, their faces twisted out of shape with laughter. He made sure to seat himself as far as possible from them, all the way at the back of the saloon — the tables scarred with initials, the tables without tablecloths — near the decrepit piano.

That’s when Seven and Tom wandered in and took the instrument. A great deal of what followed, the musical performance itself, is lost from memory. A single hearing allows us to retain only so much. Not that he was seeking to absorb anything as Tom touched and sounded the keys, as he tapped sharp glinting notes into a wall of air, the melody rising in pitch and excitement, the cadence increasing, Tom mouth open, hammering the keys, building the song into his body.

At the very first lesson in his home less than a week later Howard learned that Tom has a good ear in the sense that he can reproduce anything he hears, no matter how difficult. But copying is cheap. The hands must engender. And the ear must reign over the hands.

Attuning. Training the ear which is a way of training the mind to hear. Can’t have one without the other. The two are inseparable, go hand in hand. That roughly is how he would (might) describe the process. The clear shape he listens for, the frame of the composition beneath the harmony, the melody, and the rhythm, the lower pattern or higher, as it were. To grow an ear for this hidden structure.

In order to prove that Tom was possessed of ordinary common sense, I asked him if he knew what key in flats was synonymous to another key in sharps. He promptly answered, “No.” I then played piece upon piece upon the piano in the key of C Major, at the same time informing Tom that by making the signature twelve sharps and playing precisely as I did before, there would be no difference in the music. I then explained to him that the key of D double flat (twelve flats), was synonymous to the keys which I had just used, when played or sung, although appearing different on paper. Tom seemed to comprehend this explanation perfectly, and when told that there was a key formed by the use of flats precisely like each key formed by the use of sharps, and vice versa, I found that he soon had no difficulty whatever inputting this theory into practice upon the piano in any key that I mentioned.

Subscribed, W. P. Howard

The title of a composition should be purely functional, factual. The composition provides all you need to know, as the actual movement of sound contains. What it evokes in you. Where it takes you. What you find when you arrive. The many colors, tints, and shades.

How does that feel, Tom?

What do you think of this, Tom?

Get your hands around this little phrase, Tom.

Howard will play a phrase three or four different ways. Which one do you prefer, Tom?

Is this the correct way, Tom?

Listen to this, Tom, how Rubinstein might play it.

From Tom’s astonished face and innocent answers, it’s clear that he seems to think Howard’s questions are a form of wit, clever riddles. Tom’s not getting what he needs most from Howard. His voice can’t get through. How to strike a responsive chord and free Tom of his ready-made notions. Help him to overcome himself. Tom, you can’t have heard that properly. A painful but challenging and fascinating task. He is entitled to be impatient with Tom. No, Tom. Listen. For Tom must realize that he is a distinctive body with attitudes, memories, turns of mind, and habits of expression.

Any command is also a release. He tries to rouse Tom to indignation or astonishment. Try it again. Slower this time. Building him up bit by bit. Until he can do it on his own. His own choices and decisions, his own way. The subtleties and give-and-take of musical instruction, of study and performance.

Tom listens on, interested, smiling at everything new.

Howard has never found the knack for composing, so he has given his life over to the proper interpretation of the Great Masters, although he sees himself as only a competent player at his best. Competent and correct. The moment he thinks he has a hold on a work he’s lost it. He is duty bound to devote himself absolutely to those composers who have brought the best music into the world. To respect the inviolable laws of the composition as penned by the composer’s hand. This is the guiding principle of his life. And the key method behind his pedagogy. He is never so cheerful as when he is playing music, even if he is playing in the service of a dull pupil.

His favorite composers have designs on him. He can’t escape their power. Their putting him on paper, what they have brought into the world. The composer speaks through your hands, lives through your hands. The performer can only be him, the composer. You create yourself so far as the composition dominates you. Obligated to the composition but free. Independent. Every note matters. Every note has meaning. No note can stand on its own. You enter the score and must find your way around. Each note is a station, a step. This way. So many bread crumbs leading you both away from and back to tonal center. Calculated coherence and balance. A unity of count. Numerical magic.

He places Tom’s hands on top of his so that Tom may feel the proper way hands should move. He sits Tom on his lap with Tom’s shoes on top of his shoes so that Tom may know how the feet properly work the pedals and how hands and feet complement one another. He has Tom touch his face — his brown hand nice and warm in its roughness — hoping that Tom may feel what he feels. (What changes underneath the skin no one sees.) Tom the shape of his own push and pull. (Bach for four hands. Four feet.) No matter how often he is put off he perseveres. He will work with Tom for as long as it takes.

Howard closes his eyes to keep from seeing Tom’s hands move. Tom is getting a better focus on matters of importance. Loosening up the reins of his imagination. Howard finds himself nodding agreement when Tom plays something correctly, forgetting that Tom can’t see him. He must speak in order for Tom to know. That he is advancing, going somewhere, although the direction is not clear. So much to glean and deduce. Glimpses through the gaps of what has been denied him, of what he has denied himself. But Howard must be careful not to say too much, to bring up everything that comes into his head without reckoning the consequences. Not to confuse Tom, tie him up. The more Tom holds on to Howard, the more Tom belongs to himself. Little by little Tom is getting hold of Howard’s way of being so open. Little by little, he’ll give up his idea that he has no life of his own, that he has never had a life of his own up until now.

The gleam of dollars, perfectly new coins. He takes the money from Seven without impatience. Seven pays him weekly, always on Friday. Mr. Oliver gains you this sum, he says. Howard has set eyes on Perry Oliver only once in his life, those many weeks ago, the sole encounter in person, in the flesh. Howard opened the door and was granted the sight of Perry Oliver’s anxious face. This solicitor had dressed with serious intention, obviously with care, like someone attending the theater, although he wore no hat. Their conversation was private and enclosed. Very quietly and without having to consider his words Oliver spoke of the child as a beloved person, almost kin. Let himself express natural affection for the child as he hinted at the stunted surroundings in which the child had grown up, not so much reared by its parents as guarded by its owners, and explained his speculations about these parents and these owners and their relationship to the child by filling out the details of its present situation and environment with him, Oliver.

Who knew if anything he said was true. Howard listened with interest and respect. The hardest thing was to keep from laughing in his face. Damn fool. Speaking in his drawn-out, carefully articulated sentences. Little did he know, Howard had already witnessed the boy for himself less than a week earlier. Oliver hasn’t the slightest clue about what he has on his hands here. Doesn’t know and probably doesn’t care. Without even thinking about it, Howard took two steps back — Oliver had been standing not farther than two feet from him — fearing contamination. Damn him and all his high-sounding words.

He cannot get used to the awe that, through no wish of his own, he inspires in certain people despite his quiet modest disposition. Even the planters are respectful in his presence, almost timid and fearful, shy. They speak little and do not say what they mean. Stare at him without blinking, as though expecting every minute that he will say something important, something infinitely significant. Their compliments bother him. He finds their unshakable convictions insulting. He believes their acts of charity are nothing more than bribes, methods of indenture. The planter will come down off his high horse and treat you with courtesy, pretend to stand equally before you all the while believing you are insignificant. They try to make the difference felt. They make it felt without trying. For they are used to dealing with plebeians who have so little that they look to the planters as the ones to serve and lead them. Damn them all. Howard thinks amicably of every kind of disaster that might befall them.

He gladly agrees to Oliver’s offer, despite the weakness of this man’s character. (Teach him all you can, Oliver says. He has money in him.) He smiles, having made a silent renewed resolution to remember his debts — the house, the servant, his publications, his books — and his commitment to the higher cause. It is (becomes) important to stand before this man with a straight face, free of anger, however difficult. Tragedy offers no consolation. No, he is not without twinges of doubt, and hatred, but he is mildly hard up and needs the money and needs this mission. He quietly accepts the banknotes that Perry Oliver hands him in advance of the first lesson. Money or no money, he can’t refuse. The weakness of others demands a greater strength from him. Tells himself that he is not so much taking on a student as taking on a moral obligation, that he is serving as someone who can do for Tom what no other white man in this city can do. This is his conviction that he will repeat and reaffirm in the months and years to come.

Can he save Tom?

The patent of nobility is the color of the skin. To the watching world it sounds like the carefully thought out result and experience of reason. But it is all too cruelly untrue. The hurt to the Negro is the wound dealt to his reputation as a human being. Nothing is left. Nothing is sacred.

He has no reservations about race. Like music, race is a sturdy armature on which you can hang all types of feeling and sensation and behavior. Our society works the theme like no other subject. The very fabric of what we manufacture, export, and breed.

Tom sniffs the keys. An animal taking outer skin in. Something heavy and skeletal. Blocked from the fleshy insides that nourish and sustain. Howard has never seen anything like it, and doubts if he ever will again. He is moved. He is profoundly grateful.

So this is how Tom does it. This is what he is after. (Squeeze yourself into Tom’s shoes.) Music slumbers in the shell, biding its time. The blind live in the world of time alone. The auditory hemisphere colonizes the visual hemisphere. And it is Howard’s belief that this metamorphosis goes further still. The olfactory enacts hegemony over the auditory. Tom smells the notes. Why his head moves when he plays, probing around, sniffing out the melody. It is there already, waiting for him to find it. What could be better, more perfect? No need for imagination, speculation, or invention. No need for study, for planning the planting of the initial seed, or for fertilizing, tending, harvesting. No. For Tom the notes are already buried inside the composition. A composition without compost. A coming to position, a bringing forth of what is already there, like a fully grown potato hidden under the soil that pops to the surface when summoned. What is already there. What is always there. Self-plenishing. Self-generating. Self-contained.

The piano for Tom is a tool of reference, not an instrument of discovery. Any other could do, might at any time be called into service. Music is the most lasting touch, awaiting him. Howard can be little more than a steadying influence. Help him to sniff here as opposed to there.

Seven has never called him master after that first day. I’m not a master. I’m no master, I don’t master. Seven small under his wide-brimmed field hat. He seemed unaware that you don’t simply walk into a house with your hat on. Take a seat on the couch or in a chair with your hat on. Sit through a musical lesson or recital with your hat on.

Seven drives Tom from a far district of the city. They enter the house shaking the journey out of their limbs. Hold hands absent-mindedly but firmly. Sometimes both boys smell of the horse and the harness. Tom’s clothes are slightly too small, cuffs and ankles (no socks or stockings) revealed, so he looks half tramp, half clown. Seven looks far more untidy and underslept. Both their shirts are buttoned to the neck, which give them the appearance of being in uniform.

Tom begins to wander about the room, but Seven stands, wordless, humble, stiff as a paper doll, seeming out of place among the cold heavy furniture. Even when he is spoken to he doesn’t raise his head (hat) to talk to Howard. Directs his words at the floor. Good afternoon, Professor Howard.

Why don’t you take a seat over there.

He doesn’t seem able to take the first little step toward the couch. And when he does, he sits down as people who feel guilty about something sit down, timidly looking about him, his legs dangling over the edge.

Howard begins the lesson. Uneasily conscious of Seven. Can’t see him but knows that Seven is watching them, him. Can feel Seven’s eyes gazing right through him. He turns and sees that Seven sits listening, his cheek on his hand. Trying to be brave, he will gaze without blinking at Howard, although it is obvious he feels a little apart from the musical lesson, feels left out. He seems unaware that he is creating a distraction. He stretches his neck like a snake out of young wheat and smiles unexpectedly, with no trace of enjoyment. Smiles, almost as if the sight of Howard and Tom at the piano amuses him. No, he lacks such pride. He thinks his goodwill is something he must establish. Smile always at the ready. Eyes cast down. Words like master in his mouth. Seeing his smile, Howard grows annoyed — He doesn’t know, Howard thinks in amazement. He doesn’t even know what I’m fighting for — and will send him into the kitchen or out of the house with instructions to feed or water himself or the horse. It takes Seven quite a while to get to his feet, to get his body to budge from one spot, moving slowly, lead shoes, heavy with shame. Then he will suddenly jerk forward and turn away as if he has been pushed, lurching through the doorway. The timid anxious glance he steals at Howard as he leaves the room. After a spell of an hour or more he returns from the horse or the kitchen and lets himself fall onto the couch. Sits, adequately nourished, quiet, indecently dressed.

Remarkable that Tom can play anything at all with his pudgy hands and fat fingers. He touches the piano as if he has lumpy pillows at the end of his fingertips. This explains why his playing is so forceful at times, during certain passages or movements, so forceful when it shouldn’t be, or less than it should be. A music of regurgitation that expels — a grunt, a shout, a fart — after being bottled up too long.

But it is well possible for someone with an inferior touch, bad hands, to develop a warm tone. Tom’s posture and hand position are far from good. (Start there.) The pianist must not allow his body to dominate his hands. (Among other things the professional recitalist must create the proper picture for his audience.) The pianist need first sit inclined decidedly toward the keyboard. (Tom sits straight up, except when he is sniffing notes.) The upper arm and forearm should be light, float in air, for maximum ease and freedom of movement. The fingers must remain near the surface of the keys so that the playing is delicate and uniform. The piano key must go all the way down. The finger, the hand, the wrist, the arm, the torso, the head (face bent forward, chest hovering two feet above the keys, a bearing that is graceful, lively, alert) — all operate in conjunction for this to happen. The whole body comes together in a rhythm that goes deep. Master the principle of moving the fingers only at the joint where they are connected with the body of the hand. Do not battle the keys, hammer them like some blacksmith. As large a surface of the fingertip as feasible must engage the key. The thicker the cushions of flesh upon the fingertips, the wider the range and variety of touch. The wrist must always be flexible, loose, sinking below the level of the keyboard. The more spring the less bump. This Rubinstein calls the pedal the soul of the piano. But a soul resides either in hell or in paradise. Fine pedaling is worthless without a sense of touch. Hand controls the foot. And brain controls the hand. Instructs hollow fingers to transmit feelings to the keys. So why this focus on the hands when so much of the body is involved? When all of the body is involved?

As little of the self as possible. The performer is a facilitator, a middleman for the — unpresent, often deceased — composer, bearing a tremendous responsibility of presenting the composer’s music to the public while staying true to the composer’s ideas and intentions, to his thoughts and feelings. But most pianists lack the faculty of actually hearing the composer, of hearing themselves as the composer, of hearing the text. (Unfortunately I have to reconcile myself to the thought that nobody will ever play my works to my liking as I had imagined them. Chopin.) Sometimes it is necessary to go far then come back. Imagine the melody as heard from an instrument of different quality from the piano, say the oboe, trumpet, flute, or French horn. But how does one teach the blind, who have no way of first seeing the text on their own, but must always arrive at it secondhand, through another? This way.

Bach. All those voices crying out. Faint floating sadness. Music is a map of the world. A map of Time. The sense of release it (he) brings. Unless his thoughts are pinned down by musical business they tend to drift off to painful matters. Second-thinking. Strain and worry. Even more reason to give up his mundane students and give all his time to Tom. Assuming of course that Perry Oliver continues to pay.

Today, he starts Tom on the Chopin études. “Aeolian Harp” étude (op. 25, no. 1). Tom is looking positively cheerful while Seven sits on the couch legs dangling, reading his newspaper, the leaves pushed close to his face. He is no longer watching us, Howard thinks. He is not even listening. He is not afraid of me now. That Howard can stand. Howard can ignore him, efface him, act like he isn’t there.

Howard and Tom, all thrill and trembling, the teaching a great source of pleasure for them both because they both welcome the unexpected, never know what will come next. Now he hears me, he thinks. He hears me. He places one round hand on Tom’s shoulder to encourage him, praise him. His words do not belong to him any more than his body, his hands, his feet. Utter them back, claim them, or they will be lost. Tom takes on the glamour of something still to come.

The instructor draws the curtain and shutters.

Have a little sun, Tom says.

The instructor opens the curtains and shutters. Tom waves his hands as if directing light over to the piano. Then his fingers descend upon the keys, descend without touching, prepared, caught in space, awaiting orders.

Tom, let’s give this a try.

Let us do the work of our hands, Tom says.

From his place on the couch twenty feet away, Seven notices how the instructor looms above Tom, closely observing Tom’s posture and hands, the awkward sprawl of his knuckles, the elements of his movement and fingering. Sometimes the instructor keeps time with his feet, throwing his hands up high. Tom firmly on track. Only when his hands stop will the instructor sit down. Right there on the bench, beside Tom, the wood whining under their weight. Four hands now at the piano. Two of each color. A white man and a black boy seated side by side on the same polished wooden bench. Where Tom is concerned, perhaps he can do nothing right, the way the instructor wants it. Seven the unmoving witness. He must sit quietly. Not a squeak or a stir lest he be banished from the room. But he is perfectly capable of being silent, figures that he can even maintain silence for longer than Perry Oliver. In fact, put to the test, he can pass days on end in uninterrupted silence — no talking, no music.

He sits under the sun’s invisible weight. Day slants through the window. But the atmosphere in this house, in this room, is still heavy. The instructor’s face set and distant. All Seven can sense from him is his anger, his dissatisfaction with things. He recalls their first introduction to the house. The instructor saw them come in, but he didn’t see how frightened Seven was. He gave Seven a little smile and tried to make small talk. But Seven could hardly hold up his end of the conversation.

Didn’t know what to say. Nothing he could say. He said nothing, tongue-tied. He didn’t want to say anything stupid. How do you converse with a music instructor? What do you say and what do you not say? So he simply stood there, praying that words would come. No wonder the instructor has not encouraged him to speak since.

That first day, he took in the dimensions of the room and its sparse furnishings and many books, his gaze relinquishing one space for the next. He made his first tactless remark. That’s a shiny piano.

The instructor actually turned to look at the piano. Then turned back to Seven, his face a thousand words, none of which he cared to sound. The tilt of his head and his expression — a curious mixture of pride and spite — brought to mind the planters and the pose they assume when they speak to their overseers, although the instructor — Mr. Howard, kindly call me Mr. Howard — is far more modest and unassuming in appearance and dress. And for this reason, he was a rather plain man, Seven decided. If he seems on in years, it is only by comparison with Mr. Oliver.

You will find the couch directly over there.

Seven sits with uneasiness. Mutely, he looks at the bookcases, at the window, at the bare walls. If he gets up to move, say to glance out of the window, or to browse at the titles of the books on the instructor’s shelves, he must do so on tiptoe. The strange sensation of knowing that he is the object of the instructor’s secret glances. Who knew that sitting could be fraught with dangers?

One day the instructor leaves Tom at the piano in the middle of the lesson, comes over to Seven, and shows him into the small dim kitchen with orders to find himself something to eat. Seven makes no fuss. Thinks little about it. He doesn’t want to be in the way. Although he is sick with shame and worry and can barely eat, no matter how hungry he might be. Soon the instructor goes a step further and suggests that Seven might prefer outside. Seven complies. The sense of ridicule that covers-uncovers him. What will he say should Mr. Oliver ask? His job to keep an eye on Tom at all times, even in the presence of this instructor. So how is it that he allowed Mr. Howard to banish him from the house? He waters and hays the horse’s mouth again and again, reassuring himself with solutions he will come up with.

Perry Oliver had made his orders clear. A plain statement of intention. Seven was to escort Tom to and from Mr. Howard’s residence, but he was also to remind Mr. Howard at every opportunity to show Tom as many new songs as possible and to keep the lessons, the training and exercises, to a minimum. Frighteningly simple. But now he doesn’t have the slightest clue if this is what the instructor is doing. Nor does he know how to ask. He lacks the courage to confront Mr. Howard. His heart is too soft. That must change. Indeed, it comes to him that he will need to voice certain words one day. (Most words are kept.) For Seven wants what Mr. Oliver wants, even when he is not thinking about him. His feeling for Mr. Oliver stops short of love.

Couch, kitchen, horse — for nearly three weeks that’s the way it goes until the day Seven enters the house with his newspaper under his arm. The newspaper (reading) appeases Mr. Howard’s desire to banish him from the house, and the couch has been his since. Not that he had planned it that way. The paper was only an accident. (His usual seeking out of Morphy.) Even so, the dishonoring memory of his feeding the horse, his feeding himself, is overtaken by the consoling image of his sitting here on the couch reading his newspaper.

Seven feels himself returned to the road of his mission. A cause for celebration. Rightfully so, for the music lessons have become point and purpose of their day. Teach Tom some tunes. In fact, the lessons come with more, are benefiting him in ways he could never have imagined. Are giving him something he wasn’t even looking for. The instructor will play four or five different notes, then a moment later play the same notes again, making them sound totally different. He plays them a third way and a fourth. The same notes for unalike ears. How is this possible? Hard to believe what he hears. Hard to believe.

Tom risks putting his hands on the keys. Fallen chances.

Wait, Tom, wait.

A discomfiting silence falls over the room. The instructor sits down at the piano, causing Tom’s hands to fly up then come to rest comfortably in his lap. The instructor proceeds to demonstrate the melody that Tom bungled. Once, twice, three times. Again and again. He watches Tom try the melody with some determination in his movements.

Wait, Tom, wait.

Tom makes an odd little gesture of helplessness.

Set in his ways, Tom clutches at playing things in the manner he knows them. Can’t seem to let go, pleasure and habit impeding his advance. Not clear if he even knows what the instructor is after. At times he doesn’t seem to understand what the instructor is saying, what the instructor is going on about. Sharps and flats. Keys and doors. Seems unable to divide one thing from another. Doesn’t even try, make the effort. He can be impatient, forever geared up to move on, to get into the next satisfying adventure, that sense of now when he is sitting at the table with his fork and spoon at the ready. No, these lessons are far from easy sailing. Quite rough at times. (No, Tom!) The first week or two Seven feared that Tom was proving to be too much for the instructor. In thought and deed Tom roamed uncontrollably, unable to halt once he got started at the piano, tearing on until the end of a tune, deaf to the instructor’s orders and directions (pleas?), as if he owned the piano and would do anything he damned well pleased with it. The instructor shouts, but Tom simply ignores him. Seven breaks in, asking Tom to behave. The instructor turns to him and brings a finger up to his lips, making it clear that he wants Seven to keep out of it. Then Seven watches helpless as the instructor’s hands swoop down like vicious talons and attack Tom’s fingers, forcing them still, killing the music contained within the worm-like fingers. It hurts Seven to see it, but he says nothing — his cowardly heart — Tom wheezes out some air, Seven watching, trying to discount his feelings of guilt and remorse because he hasn’t come to Tom’s defense. He suffers a flush of curiously mixed emotion, wishing that his own feeling could somehow make the pain less for Tom, but knowing that it will not. He is all at once overwhelmed with a passionate longing to throw his arms around his charge.

Tom puts demands on both of them. (You miss the point, Tom.) But the instructor seems to be a man who knows how to make himself obeyed. (In this house, you are my student, Tom.) Physical force is not his only means. Why should he go easy on Tom? Why should things be any different for him? Tom should be treated like any other student. Tom has a head to learn and learn he will.

He has to endure a rehearsal of all he has done wrong over the past hour. He sits listening at the far corner of the bench, his body stiff, defenseless, unresisting, everything happening at once, his hands hovering above the keys like frightened birds.

Okay, now let me hear you try it.

And try it he does, Tom’s hands slow and smooth, moving in such a way — soft, serious — as if to suggest that he now realizes he needs to curb his instincts and calm himself in the face of what he is up against if he ever hopes to play exactly how the instructor is determined to have him play. Seven shifts forward on the couch, uniformly, barely noticeable. He can see Tom’s black mind working, searching, recalling, questioning.

The instructor gives Tom a smile, perhaps to lead him away from his unhappy thinking, but of course Tom can’t see the smile.

Better, Tom, better.

The instructor’s reasons for insisting that Tom play something a certain way are so written in stone he never bothers to set them out. But steadfastness is the one thing Tom has in abundance.

Seven observes it all with a sudden idleness — the possible danger of watching — a patience that comes from a routine hungering, a hearing beyond these failed notes nicking his ears. Listening to Tom with unhesitating faith. Tom’s errors, his stammering and hesitation, somehow make him more striking, strangely heighten his endowment. (Glows.) Fragments of perfection Seven can believe in. Much still is possible, but he might be convinced — he is already convinced — to deem the continuous tapping on the keys some sort of private code between Tom and the instructor. And he is privy to it, this secret language, even if he doesn’t understand it. The little his body enjoys in this moment he regards as a privilege, for God has granted Tom something withheld from him and Mr. Oliver and legions of others: music.

On another afternoon, Tom says, We want to sing.

Shimmering in the light from the window, the instructor begins singing in a language that Seven has never heard before. Seven goes cold, an unfamiliar thrill running up and down his body. He regards the instructor’s tongue as if for the first time. He knows that mankind is an entity made up of tongues, tongues taking on names like German, French, Spanish, although the only tongues he’s ever heard are nigger and Anglo-Saxon. And Indian. (Almost forgot.) Seven pictures these tongues as so many strands of leather attached to a whip handle, thin strips of hardened skin that might all have come from the same bull, reunited after death, or that might have come from many different bulls, a hodgepodge of hoof and horn. Just as a single tongue leaves the darkness of the mouth and produces words on contact with the air, the many-portioned whip whooshes forward and snaps out a word, nine strips say, all speaking the same word in nine different languages. Snap!

Seven has even heard that it is possible to trick your natural-born tongue into sounding foreign words. But this music instructor is the first man he has actually witnessed perform the feat. Little more than a hard-to-believe rumor before now. But it doesn’t end there.

Seven witnesses something even more incredible. When the instructor finishes singing, Tom takes up the tune, singing it in the same foreign tongue while his native hands provide accompaniment at the piano. Seven sinks into serene amazement. (The instructor’s eyes go wide for a moment.) Seven can feel his heart beating, slowly, steadily. Tom and the instructor shine in the fresh light, in the brilliance of this startling peace called music. Seven studies Tom’s face for every trace of shifting emotion. He was right the entire time. Right indeed. In fact, he is quite sure that he detects a third sound lingering in the space between the sung note and the melody that accompanies it, some sound issuing forth from Tom’s body — a wheezing, a humming, a cooing, a purring — an interaction of the vocal and respiratory musculature, which mix to form a third sound combining the two. As if Tom’s tongue or lungs are stuck between one motion and another. Three sounds coming out of this one nigger body.

Tom never wants the lesson to end, the piano to cease. The instructor has to enforce a strict time frame.

I’ll imagine you want to be getting back, the instructor says. He sees Seven and Tom to the door. He leans kindly toward them and expresses one final sentiment before he lets them leave. Guidance, he says. You are in need of guidance. Hard to say if he sounds glad or sorry or worried. Seven searches his face for the fun, for the teasing that might suggest he means something other than what he says. But he is also surprised by the note of sincerity in the instructor’s voice. You have much to learn, the instructor says. How can Seven disagree?

Tom has developed the habit of throwing his hat onto the table in order to free his hands. Some days Seven will simply take the hat and put it in its proper place to spare himself the necessity of further struggle. Not today.

Tom, hang your hat on the knob beside the door, Seven says. Tom sits at the table with a look of relief spread across his face. Seven stands his ground. Tom, hang your hat on the knob beside the door. Tom gets up from the table and hangs his hat on the knob. Once he returns to the table, Seven dashes forward and fastens the inside bolt on the door. No one can get in or out without his express assistance. They sit at the table. Seven can hear the sound of his own breathing. No one comes. No feet in the hall. No one knocks on the door. No one unlocks the door — or tries to anyway — and opens it wide. Tom accepts everything and smiles and is quiet. For everyone else Tom is absent from the world at this moment.

Do you like your instructor, Tom?

I like Mr. Howard. Seven, do you like your instructor?

What he witnessed earlier causes him to wonder about the countless bones supporting a tent of black skin and muscle, the blind blood blowing through. (The light inside which he sings.) Bone and blood and flesh shown to be remarkable. Mouth and teeth that can sit here and eat food and imbibe milk like any other any ordinary mouth and teeth, while knowing — trickery, deceit — that they are anything but ordinary. He thinks he can still hear the foreign words — he has yet to assign them a name — behind the voices coming from the neighbors’ apartments mingled with many more familiar sounds. Who can hear any of it really?

Exciting flesh. Even if there is little for them to do but sit here in silence. They have fought or not fought their battle over the hat. They have eaten their supper. (The milk thick and sweet.) Nothing to do now but sit here and pass the seconds until Mr. Oliver arrives home. No telling how long he may be. No telling how long they’ve already been waiting. The mouth holds. The breath carries. He has lost track of time. (When did the room start stirring?) Fatigue comes on him with a rush. Careful or he may fall toward sleep out of sheer waiting. He keeps tossing his head to drive away drowsiness.

The best meat is sweet, Tom says.

Seven hears Tom but doesn’t hear him.

The best bread comes from the flesh, Tom says.

Tom, what are you gabbering about? I dread hearing you go on like that.

The book speaks like a nigger, Tom says.

Seven doesn’t have the slightest idea what Tom has in mind.

Jesus speaks like a nigger, Tom says. The Hebrews speak like niggers.

Seven doesn’t know the source for this sudden religious outpouring, although it is not unusual for Tom to slap the mind awake with some sudden nonsensical statement.

The pharaoh speaks like a nigger. Moses speaks like a nigger. Adam speaks like a nigger too.

One day the music instructor has reason to leave Seven and Tom in the room alone. Seven asks Tom to exchange places with him on the couch so that he may seat himself at the piano. Moves his hands and head and feet the way he has seen Tom move but without actually touching the keys or pedals, a silent mimicry.

The firewood is stacked like a fragile shrine, ready to topple, rolling gods across the floor. Laboring hands, Tom takes great pleasure in handling the logs and kindling. Arranges some of them before him at the table, as if they are his true companions, neglected and vulnerable and misunderstood. Seven’s understanding that the blind must first smell or touch a thing to know it.

Tom seems to be counting but loses track.

See this cricket in my neck, he says.

What can Seven do but service him? His fault that he allowed Tom to do something he shouldn’t have. (He gives in here and there.) He goes over to his charge and begins to run his fingers over Tom’s neck.

It’s in two shoulders, Tom says.

Seven takes his hands from Tom’s neck and moves them to his shoulders, to the afflicted spots, and massages the areas.

Damn it, Tom says. They’re in my knees.

Seven massages his knees.

Frogs in my shoes, Tom says.

Seven removes Tom’s shoes, the toes curled like toads ready to hop. He kneads and massages Tom’s feet, only for the stiffness to return to Tom’s neck. Tom’s body appears to be breaking. Seven puts in a whole half hour or more of tending, of restoring and keeping together, scurrying about from this elbow to that heel, from that ear to this toe. Frogs, crickets, spiders. Tom only stops complaining once he has fallen asleep.

Massaging done, Seven settles into his seat, hoping to alleviate his out-of-jointness before Mr. Oliver’s return. Just his luck that Mr. Oliver comes in — how did he undo the latch? — before he has gotten a breather. He steps into the middle of the room and looks around, blinking, seeing Seven but seeming not to actually recognize him, his eyes and face attesting to another hard day. He takes his chair, asks about the lessons. Seven gives him a full report, but Mr. Oliver says nothing. Is he pleased or isn’t he?

Then Mr. Oliver says, Tomorrow, I should look in for myself. He hurries off to his room.

Nothing in their life is incidental. En route to the instructor’s house each afternoon he finds time to stop the surrey and purchase the newspaper. No hurry. Plenty of time to get there. Plenty. No hurry at all. The air hangs unmoving over the streets so that the trees are gray like decaying flesh.

It looks like rain, Tom.

Rain fall and wet Becky Lawton.

Who is Becky Lawton?

Becky Lawton.

Yes, Tom.

Rainwater.

Seven lets it go. He likes to let things come out Tom’s own way. No danger in that, even if he is perhaps too long accepting of it.

Inches separating them on the driver’s platform, Seven in his place and Tom in his, two birds perched on a vibrating limb. Tom leans his shoulder into Seven. Seven shrinks back. But the second time he does it, Seven lets him. Tom requires touch. Touch settles him, a long easy ribbon of sound coming from his mouth.

Driving past the labor-loud fields Tom turns his head and cocks his face. A nigger is a fine instrument, he says.

Seven thinks about it some. Tom, how does it feel to be blind?

Some bread is better than no bread.

And how does it feel to be a nigger?

A nigger is a thing of no consequence.

Seven knows nothing about the part of town where the instructor lives. (A few half-remembered facts.) He makes it his business not to know. They ride through the streets, scattering wind, the surrey rolling them directly under the sun, Seven narrowing his eyes against one bright street after another under his Paul Morphy hat. Driving slowly to keep the dust off their clothes. Straight through the open eye Seven sees Howard’s house. Here again. He parks the surrey and hitches the horse. Tom does not step down from the wagon.

Get out of the wagon, Seven says, muttering it softly, making sure to stay out of earshot, although the instructor’s house is a good ten yards off.

Yesterday comes like today, Tom says. He gets out of the surrey. Seven is already thinking Go in his head, but Tom kneels down on all fours and starts feeling about in the dirt with his hands, like a person who has lost something.

Tom—

Looking, Tom says.

What?

Tom proceeds to crawl up under the horse. And there he remains, on all fours, his head directed toward the horse’s belly, his tongue lolling.

Too stunned for words, Seven simply stands there looking, caught up in the wrong dream. Tom.

You’d better get back, Tom says. For what I’m doing there’s light enough.

What are you doing?

Studying the niggers.

What niggers?

The only ones.

You don’t understand, do you?

I understand, Tom says. Now you understand.

I understand, Seven says. Yes, he tells himself, he understands. Voice is the sight of the person who cannot see.

Seven feels himself yielding to Tom’s way of thinking, the quick and instinctive compliance that comes when someone is shaken awake to uncertain surroundings. Recognition — plain sight — the holdout, slowing down that part of him that wants to give in. Long enough for the weight of mere witnessing to stop him altogether, cause him to disregard, to reverse his feelings. To look at Tom looking that way. This is his own hand posed to reach for Tom’s hat, for his shirt, for his collar. No, don’t touch him yet. Perhaps he should say something first. What are the correct words he needs to speak? If he understood him, he would know how to help him. He needs help. No force behind him but his own. Difficult to admit. Crying out could bring rescue, but it would also mean announcing his weakness as well. No way he can let that happen. He’ll deny what is going on here should anybody happen to chance upon them. Much of what we see is not really what it looks like.

Just then the light brightens like a compromise. He stoops all the way down and speaks to Tom and Tom crawls out cat-quick from under the horse into the new sun, the dirt where he is kneeling reuniting behind him, as if it has never been disturbed. Seven uses his handkerchief to clean Tom as best he can. Business as usual.

Tom is changing. Everything about Tom is changing — voice, posture, expression. Is that what Mr. Oliver wants?

When he pens his history in the future, Perry Oliver will withhold one important fact, that it was the Music Professor who drafted the sworn proclamation attesting to the authenticity of Tom’s genius, although his subscription was withheld, the words W. P. Howard never appearing on either the original statement or the various reproductions of it that Perry Oliver went on to have published in one newspaper after the next.

Dear Sir, The undersigned desire to express our thanks to you for the opportunity afforded them of hearing and seeing the wonderful performances of your protégé, the blind boy pianist, Tom. We find it impossible to account for these immense results upon any hypothesis growing out of the known laws of art and science.

In the numerous tests to which Tom was subjected in our presence, or by us, he invariably came off triumphant. Whether in deciding the pitch or component parts of chords the most difficult and dissonant; whether in repeating with correctness and precision any pieces, written or impromptu, played to him for the first and only time; whether in his improvisations, or performances of compositions by Thalberg, Gottschalk, Verdi and others: in fact, under every form of musical examination — and the experiments are too numerous to mention or enumerate — he showed a power and capacity ranking him among the most wonderful phenomena in musical history.

Accept, dear sir, the regards of your humble servants.

B. C. Cross

John M. Beck

K. Blandner

R. L. Stern

Paul Swann

Samuel Harris

Ross Necknor

Carl Rose

Paul Grace

J. A. Alfred

Elijah George

Witherspoon Enright

And several others.

The signers — Perry Oliver had met all of them about town at one time or another during his dealings; and despite their rebuffs and refusals he would have made a conscious effort to be cordial on encountering them in the street, raising his hat to them had it been his custom to wear one — had received a flat fee of one hundred dollars each for their troubles and the Music Professor twice that amount. Any man is worth buying, for in Perry Oliver’s eyes distinction is a thing wholly independent of social position. Several weeks earlier, he had asked Howard to approach every available music scientist in town and induce them to convene for the express purpose of listening to Tom so as to issue a notarized document of witness. The proposal — the very asking — would bring about the certainty of the Music Professor being in disgrace with his colleagues. No way around that. Although he should take some consolation in knowing that the one in a position to ask a favor holds greater power than the one who can only accept or decline, a fact that should thus enhance his prestige in the eyes of the world. (Perry Oliver feeling the need to extract this idea since he did not wish to exclude the possibility of a happy alternative.) Of course, his colleagues can like what they hear or not like it — the Music Professor has his own authority and his own views — but let’s be clear, Perry Oliver needs them to endorse Tom, to recommend him to the public. And when he had consulted with the people, he appointed singers unto the Lord, and that should praise the beauty of holiness, as they went out before the army, and to say, Praise the Lord; for his mercy endureth forever. Money might help reassure them about their choice, help them arrive at a happy medium between their bestowing praise on a nigger and any slight reduction in their racial position in the world because of it. As well — turn it around — Tom’s supporters might delight in the knowledge that they will take a mental share in Tom’s rise to prominence, should that rise occur. (It will.) A dangling carrot: the prospect of fame being of far greater importance than the fear of ostracization, a dynamic that should gratify their self-esteem, at least in the short term. He removed fourteen hundred dollars in fresh notes from his wallet and held it out, choice hovering. The situation didn’t merit much thinking, but the Music Professor made the thinking last as long as possible. Once Perry Oliver put the money in his hands, he pocketed it immediately.

He tells the Music Professor what he wants — this and that; some suggestions about the wording of the missive — guessing cleanly how far he will go. Now all he has to do is wait. The deference that he owes to Howard imposes on him the reciprocal obligation to do nothing that might render Howard less worthy of his colleagues’ regard. (Empathy in recognizing that both the asking and the accepting will open doors of suffering.) Fortunately the Professor’s colleagues had recourse to principles entirely in line with those that Perry Oliver intended (expected) them to adopt when the time came for them to form an estimate of Tom.

When Seven presented him with the letter several weeks later, Perry Oliver could not help but gaze at it with a blend of congratulation and irony. Now he can look forward to enjoying the fruits of the Music Professor’s splendid connections. Not that he isn’t grateful. Perry Oliver for weeks feeling bound to thank the Music Professor in person but as of yet unable to make the trip. Internally (to himself), he pleads the pressures of work. The moments steadily accumulate. Still so much to do before Tom’s premiere.

Blind Tom. So it came to him. He does not waste time asking himself where it came from, but is only surprised at its slowness — he stood still, unable to move — at how the first word — language the material upon which we have to work — had been so slow in appearing, as were those that followed it. How he found that the thought I must change his name was already there, the idea having traced itself on his mind much earlier, somewhere or other, his mind heavy with its half-remembered weight. Only the words Blind Tom were missing, the initial forgotten thought (idea) coming back and passing between him and the image the name conjured up when he uttered the words Blind Tom Exhibition out loud, listening to his own voice uttering the words as if they had come from someone else. How well he understands now that identity is not a disposition but an accomplishment. Tom today, Blind Tom in the by and by of history.

He hires a local printer to design a seal bearing an image in Tom’s likeness, a sparsely detailed oval that finds Tom seated at the piano, the words Blind Tom Exhibition encircling him. Also has the printer produce several reams of watermarked stationery with the same image. From this point on all promotional documents he sends out in public or private will bear the inked-in oval, just as all business-related correspondence will be scripted on the letterhead. He’s in control of what he does and what he wants. The difficulties — the lies, the put-downs, the accepting and accommodating, the laughter and complicity, the money spent or promised, the numerous rejections he has suffered in his efforts to secure a venue for Tom’s debut — he has had up to now don’t seem unfair to him any longer. His head is fully above the water, something definite bobbing into view, the surface part of the whole pattern that was once too far removed for him to bear any true conception of it, that he is only now beginning to see. (Perhaps he has always seen it?)

That afternoon a letter that he has been expecting for weeks arrives by courier. Return receipted to General Bethune, the letter is a deposition signed by a panel of medical experts, native and foreign, attesting to Tom’s mental and physical makeup. Between us we have arrived at a scientific evaluation of a Negro boy who goes under the name Tom, a slave boy who is approximately seven years of age and fraught with all of the handicaps of his race, but who can also demonstrate elevated and refined musical sensibility at the piano. He possesses the muscular ability to reproduce by hand and voice many of the finest selections from the European catalogue. This is in and of itself remarkable since the Negro’s thought-organ generally is a lifeless and submissive receptacle with no power of specific reaction to anything challenging or demanding that might be introduced to it. So much so that the Negro’s imitative abilities are usually little better than those of a parrot. Said fact, however, does not hold true for this Negro boy, Tom. What is even more incredible is that he is, in most respects, a far reduced physical representative of the Negro specimen, for his Maker has singled him out for direct burdening with a number of crippling afflictions — Blindness, Imbecility — ailments characterized by symptoms the full range of which a respectable member of the Anglo-Saxon language is both too chaste and too weak to describe in detail. It is material law that there exist points of reference the Caucasian and the Negro do not share and never will. Still, we, as men of science, shut our eyes to the known and accepted qualities and endowments of the Negro before we began our examination so that we would be fresh and unprejudiced in our deliberations. And we, one and all, agree that we are as perplexed now as we were before we began. We know of nothing out of the ordinary in this boy’s upbringing, his parents being largely addicted to the culture of cotton. So we are left to ask — Is this Negro boy, Tom, the product of Nature or intentional design, and if the latter, whose? Medical science can draw no conclusions. In fact, this Negro slave, Tom, age seven, defies the laws of medical science. Dr. Hollister is among the signers.

In this town, Culture manifests itself in a single structure, Hibernian Hall, a splendid neoclassical building, all sculptured stone and painted glass, with figures of the Greek (Roman?) gods carved in deep clefts hollowed out of the facade, summer light giving the hard pale muscles the color of flesh, and a smattering of green- or wine-colored bills positioned in such a way as to cause the viewer to lower his face from the celestial sights above and take in the terrestrial fact below, a gilded glassed-in cubicle where one may purchase tickets. The venue maintains a busy schedule hosting fund-raisers and temperance meetings, policemen’s balls, fashion displays of the latest in clerical and mortuary designs, and soirees and barbecues put on by the rich. Perry Oliver finds a keen satisfaction in knowing that the operators rarely book an appearance that might be categorized as pure entertainment, niggers — minstrels — providing what little pure entertainment there is. So some might have expressed more than a bit of surprise to learn that it didn’t take much convincing to get the operators to agree to put on an evening that differs radically from their usual fare, that Perry Oliver had completely won over Mr. Scowcroft, the venue’s director, with a terse summary of Tom’s history (supposed) and talents (actual), a booking fee of five dollars, an advance of another five, and promises of a full house, the director taken in by both the actual fact of the money and the supposed facts of Perry Oliver’s promised words.

Perry Oliver signs the agreement and waiver, surprised that Scowcroft has given in so easily, that Scowcroft hasn’t even requested an audition, the last thing he expected.

I hope you and your nigger will make them marvel, Scowcroft says, sounding quite sincere. Wind him up good.

Perry Oliver leaves Hibernian Hall, bearing away with him an acute awareness of his achievement and stunned by his sudden luck. (A date. A venue.) Everything falling into place. The biggest barriers are down. He is even further along than he had hoped. No longer that impoverished notion of chance. Can it really be this easy? He justifies himself to himself. A man moving at first with the force of idea purely. And now so much lies far behind. And still moving. Much ahead still. (Not as far perhaps.) The comprehensive gaze. “Blind Tom Exhibition” reduced for the first time to its true dimensions. The loneliness and emptiness of those short streets by which he returns home. Low-roofed houses spaced far apart, set in their appointed places, self-contained in misery and monotony. Cast in late summer light. Unsparing of his merriment, he purchases a freshly issued Paul Morphy medallion daguerreotype that he will present as a gift to Seven in celebration of Tom’s (pending) premiere. Set in a wood frame, the daguerreotype is a clever series of images, an arrangement of ovals showing varied positions of the chess master’s head against dark and light backgrounds. Eight small ovals circling a large one. A lunar cycle. A rising of planetary proportions.

He takes Tom into the tailor’s shop. Needles in her mouth, the tailor measures Tom with ruler and string. A nigger woman sits at the sewing machine. Tom can hardly keep still, keep his arms outstretched, for listening to the sound, the click and clatter.

Mr. Oliver has decided on two designs. The first a collarless jacket with a row of white (bone) buttons down the front, breeches and stockings in accompaniment. The other an Eton jacket with coordinated vest and striped pants. Both jackets in black.

The tailor puts her fingers under Tom’s shirt. Lifts one pants leg then the other. Squeezes his biceps. Kneads his chest. Touches his back, hands circling into the cotton. Tugs at elbow and sleeve. Looks at Seven in sober outrage. Can the nigger keep still?

This nigger can’t keep still.

Keep your nigger still.

She can’t quite fix his dimensions. Tries again. Now her every touch startles Tom.

They wander down one long aisle after another lined with shelves reaching all the way to the ceiling where logs of cloth are piled up. Huge spools of thread like squat trees down another corridor. Now don’t let that nigger go off and poke himself. The sound of one sewing machine after another filling the high room.

Final fitting, Tom stands before the tailor to slip into his new clothes, test them for comfort, give and grab. The usual cursing complaints. The finished product is something to behold. Two fine suits, life glistening in each button.

Everything is moving. Silent, watchful, and mobile contentment. A sense that the thing he has been waiting for is about to happen. That all the limits he needs to exceed he can and will. Now, all he has to do is open up the channels of communication. Get the word out. Get people talking on the street. Seven begins to take Tom out each day in the surrey, canvassing the city. In this way, word of Tom’s talents slowly circulates, drifting images half-developed half-finished, increasingly distorted as they pass from one mouth to the next, each witness diminishing or exaggerating the details in accordance with what his ears thought they heard and his eyes thought they saw, or as the independent heart and mind see fit. Truth often has to masquerade as falsehood to achieve its ends.

The patterns reverse. Now Perry Oliver stays home, while Seven and Tom venture out each day. Perry Oliver listening to them climb the stairs, setting their feet down softly, making an effort not to creak, stamping their shoes clean in the hall before they enter. Glad to be indoors after a long day.

Seven offers the silly suggestion of loading the piano onto a wagon. We’ll stop and collect it from Mr. Oakley, he says in a loud and confident voice, as though there can be no doubt of Perry Oliver’s answer. The idea takes firm hold of him—we could rent a buckboard—and Perry Oliver listens while Seven talks himself breathless, hoping the boy will realize on his own the absurdity of his idea. Seven is not lacking in self-assurance when a happy inspiration puts the right word in his mouth. They’ve paid for the piano but never collected it. (Where would they put it in this small apartment?) Seven believes that now’s the time to make the most of it.

Seven gazes at Perry Oliver with a look of shy entreaty that gives him a touching air beneath his Paul Morphy hat. (More than Perry Oliver bargained for: Seven never takes the hat off. Would sleep in it if he could. Has tried to more than once.) Stuck in the middle of a sentence, Perry Oliver finally concedes. Let them think as one mind and act as one body. (A house divided against itself cannot stand.) His wishes and Mr. Oliver’s form alloys of two instincts. Perry Oliver doesn’t even see Seven as someone separate from him. What Perry Oliver expects of himself is what he expects of Seven. He is part of him and Perry Oliver requires that he give himself with the same completeness that Perry Oliver gives.

To instruct Seven in the proper method of negotiating a deal, Perry Oliver had told him the story of how he acquired the carriage. Several years ago he had purchased it at ten cents on the dollar from a destitute cotton farmer passing through town, headed west. The bank foreclosed on my niggers. Hell, six months ago I had already lost half of what I owned when that cholera made them shit back to the earth all I fed them. If I had only done what my accountant had told me to do. Now this man, his advice was consistently good, told me to take out insurance on them, at least the pickneys. Never told me wrong. But a fool can’t hear wisdom. At least I’d have a bit of something. Now look at me.

They agreed on a price based upon the age and make of the carriage. Perry Oliver withdrew the exact number of bills from his pocket. But before laying out his money, he asked the farmer where he had come from and the man told him.

How far is that?

About two hundred miles, give or take. Mostly take.

Perry Oliver returned some of the bills to his purse and handed over the rest. The man was understandably confused. Perry Oliver explained that it was only right that he deduct a few dollars for two hundred miles of deterioration.

Along with bills and posters, Perry Oliver gives Seven a map, not knowing if he needs it. Seven seems to possess his own means of orientation. Seven and Tom patiently cross every ward of the city. The power of movement. Seven gains in being as he drives. The rush of things or their slow passage. Tom seems alert, smelling and listening, all of it interesting to him. His breathing even and careful. Curves and grades, major avenues streets and boulevards, dirt roads and gravel roads, beaten paths and those less beaten, logging trails and back roads. Mud on the wheels some days. Sheen on others. They put up bills on every clean and free space, bills printed on stiff paper that can withstand the weather. (Sight is never lost.) Out early, Seven rolls his sleep up as he drives, Tom seated beside him, sipping from a mug of tea laced with milk. He seems (almost) happy as the countryside spins by. They come out of the long silence for Tom to start singing abruptly, even before Seven draws the carriage to a stop. Tom sings on the busiest street corners and in any saloon, club, or watering hole that will allow them in, from the most fashionable to the least. Taking their meals where they can, whatever they can. Each evening, Perry Oliver hears them return, tired, not much strength, climbing the stairs very slowly, pausing for breath at each landing, or so it seems. Surprised him at first, as he has rarely seen either boy tired. Boundless energy. They take seats at the table and Seven begins to relate the tremendous happenings he (they) have witnessed, passionate and often confused and contradictory accounts full of detailed and persuasive description. Still enough there to allow Perry Oliver to reduce the material to an impassioned picture in his head, the story behind the story. A street-corner shyster dressed like an Oriental philosopher in turban and silk robes who hawks a broadside containing the “suppressed wisdom of the East.” A doll that talks when you pull a hoop attached to a string coiled in its back. Two niggers playing chess under an oak tree. A large grassy square where dozens of preachers assemble to outsermon one another. Preaching done, they auction off their Bibles for charitable causes, pages blessed with holy water and angel’s breath. One man of the cloth takes Seven aside and tells him, without any demonstration, that Tom’s talent was preordered.

Preordained, Perry Oliver says.

No, sir. Preordered.

It is not so much the foolish wording that troubles Perry Oliver but the sentiment implied behind. The belief. Is Seven catching Religion? Happy to report, after that day Seven makes no further mention of the matter. How pleased Perry Oliver is.

Each return home revives the sense of possibility that he feels at the sight of a face whose details he has somewhat forgotten already since that morning.

How are you today, Tom?

I’m getting there.

The days stretching out in front of him, single and yet alternative. His room is dark and Perry Oliver stands at the window waiting for lights to appear in the sky. Summer wheels slowly toward its end, but it’s not done with them yet. How much longer? He doesn’t know if rain is falling or if leaves are crumbling or if the wind is breaking branches. The upcoming performance fills his mind so completely, an all-day, all-waking wideness, he can think of nothing else. So much catching up. So much to do. He will wake abruptly in the middle of the night — in sleep each man turns to a universe of his own — with the idea that he has some task to carry out, that some matter has slipped his attention, but without any understanding what it might be.

Tom is asleep, gentle weight against Seven’s shoulder. An echo in his skin. Outside the moon is a giant lantern burning in black air. It’s all the same to Tom, for he does not know how to distinguish time in his existence. Not so for his other. At night the road replays itself in his mind. The fine excitement he feels as they drive through the streets, and people gathering round to hear Tom sing. Even when they fail to draw a large crowd, he feels a curious charm with all the people moving steadily about, worldly contact. So this is what it means.

The swiftness and ease with which Perry Oliver has accomplished these preparations give him a high he has never experienced before, possibly the peak point of fulfillment, causing him to wonder if and fear that the performance itself is destined to be a letdown. Worrying in the wood frame of his window, he tantalizes himself with varying mental pictures of its outcome.

Howard hands Perry Oliver a list of songs, a meager sampling of Tom’s repertoire, nicely and brightly inked out. Only this limited sequence of selections — every concert must tell a story, beginning, middle, and end — that he has worked out for Tom’s concert tomorrow night, including three encore pieces, should Tom need them. Perry Oliver raises the sheet to his face, muttering lines. The hall empty of people with the exception of Howard, Perry Oliver, Seven, and Tom. A single rehearsal because Perry Oliver wants it such. Isn’t this simply a way for him to manage his panic, to try to clear up gaps in his understanding of the “Blind Tom Exhibition,” notice what’s missing? An opportunity for him to shop among a host of possible mistakes, mischances of mouth and body, miscalculations of time and energy? “The Manager of the Performance” curious to see if he has what it takes to carry him through a long evening. Who is aiding whom? Perry Oliver does an excellent job of pretending he knows what he is doing, no hesitation whatsoever. Indeed, he is showing presence of mind in asking Howard to be here now, exactly twenty-four hours before the scheduled concert, a single rehearsal. Reminding himself of his own power.

Howard answers whatever questions Perry Oliver puts to him, fresh anger and regret in his voice, trying his best to mask his feelings, and doing a lousy job of it. He is a man like any other. (If a prince be outraged, can his being a prince keep him from looking red and looking pale and grinding his teeth like a madman?) But Perry Oliver is the one who will benefit from his hard work with Tom. All Perry Oliver will have to do is call out the title of each song. And now, ladies and gentlemen, Blind Tom will play for you … Howard has received triple his lesson fee to come here today. The sight of Tom onstage had on first appearance aroused the exciting thought that Perry Oliver would ask him, Howard, to guide the audience through the performance. A dream that refused to leave him even as he began tuning the piano. He regrets that he won’t be the one to introduce Tom to the public, to the world. (The planting and the cultivation are over. There remains but the harvest.) Perry Oliver has promised him free entry to the performance. No offense, he has already decided that he won’t be in attendance, come what may. To listen would be already too late. But he likes the preparation, a chance to be wrapped up in the calm that comes over Tom whenever the boy is before a piano.

How’s it going today, Tom?

Tom frowns.

Rhythm, tone, pitch — what can Perry Oliver say about these things with any intelligence or authority? The sole reason the Music Professor is here. Seven sits in the first row, a stand-in for the audience, watching and listening. Cheering and clapping. Extending the pause between songs with standing ovations. Tom seems distracted by Perry Oliver’s voice, the way he speaks the song titles, how the words come out of his mouth. And his playing seems slow and instinctive. Nevertheless, it all goes smoothly, if Howard is to be believed.

Seven helps Tom down from the stage. Leans close and puts his mouth near the fleshy shell of Tom’s ear. Nicely done, he says.

Tom rises earlier than usual the next morning and finds his way into the kitchen, seated at the table, head tilted at an angle, shoes laced and tied. Hands stalking the wood. Shoes turning circles above the floor. Seven goes over to him, sleep still clinging web-like to the corners of his eyes. Tom, he says. Are you feeling froggy today?

Tom says nothing.

Then hop.

Tom hops.

The road as bright as daylight in the unearthly glow.

Tom, are we all set about what you will play tonight?

Play what the day recommends, Tom says.

They got a late start, departed five minutes later than Perry Oliver had planned, Seven preoccupied with his newspaper at the table. Perry Oliver snatched it from his hands, startling the fingers, upsetting the Paul Morphy hat. Now he tosses the crumpled pages out the surrey window, white bats flapping against the dark.

Roam through the night in silence, the air sharp and clear, a felt exuberance although the streets are largely empty. They are following stars, leaving black earth under their wheels. The heavy scent of orchards and fields. Hibernian Hall rising out of the ground with a cold dingy glitter. Hurry inside. Don’t keep us waiting.

Backstage, he hears voices, footsteps, doors opening and closing. How many of them are there? More than a hundred tickets purchased in advance, but it is conceivable that many more people will be in attendance. He watches a parade of types into the hall, some entering to the right, others to the left, white-gloved nigger ushers rushing back and forth, opening all the sturdy doors. He has no idea how many people the hall can actually seat, but the sight of all these well-dressed people, their admiration for Tom, fills him with a sense of disbelief, the promise of music and spectacle, something supernatural, drawing them out of their homes this evening.

He performs a rapid calculation and decides there must be four hundred or more ticket holders in the auditorium, only a handful of empty seats remaining. Why not have Seven run a head count? He can trust him to perform this matter. Simply hang back and wait, expectant. Stirrings, footsteps, murmurs, sighs, a hubbub of voices, little by little all the small and varied sounds of anticipation building up to the “Blind Tom Exhibition.”

He has made all this happen, gathered all of these people in one place. Shocked to see the harmonious conciliation between his plans — his words: what he says, what he thinks, what he writes — and reality. One thing to imagine, another to witness it in actuality. Any number Seven brings him will be miraculous. Seven seems gratified, confirmed in his mission, even when he is lost from sight somewhere out there in those rambling currents of attendees.

Before he knows it (on an impulse) he finds himself walking out onto the stage. He doesn’t think it necessary to ease into this all-changing moment. The chattering voices quiet down to a hush, but language is just what he needs now. Word defines the thing attached to it. Take the phrase bare stage and its many associations. He is what is bare. And so are they. Stripped down and innocent. The gaze is innocence itself aspiring to see the world in all its nakedness. The houselights go down, leaving nothing for the brain to watch but the musician (moving or still), nothing for the brain to hear but unblemished sound. Nothing stands between spectator and performer. Nothing can protect you (us) from direct confrontation. This erasure of solitude. The real advantage of this bare exchange lies in its flexibility. The spectrum of chance and possibility. No man-made script that can fully predict the outcome, that allows for easy escape. What is there. What we expect to be there. What could be there.

He looks up dazed into the span of air and ceiling that hangs above the stage. Looks out at all those he assumes are looking at him. Scrutinizing the silence. He has come to see faces, but he can’t see anything for a number of seconds, a good minute or two, only glare, intense black streaks and gray shadows, so he stands dizzily where he is and waits for faces to appear, trying to regain his composure, too full for more, too astonished to speak. The only thing he can perceive for sure is Seven standing in the wings, large amounts of excitation pressing upon him, ready to bring Tom center stage anytime (once) the word is given. Is this an expression of surprise he notices on Tom’s face? Knowledge? Acceptance? Tom aware, ready to assume his destiny. Blind Tom starts here.

He knows the exact moment to say something, to make his move. Now as good a time as any. So why doesn’t he? Is it because he needs to see those he will address? Can’t see them but can hear them, feel the contact in the air, all those bodies pressed together in the half light. From here they look transcendent. What a shock it’ll be when the moment before him becomes brighter to his senses, the spectators slowly gaining volume, shape, characteristics, and features until they take on the full weight of existence. (How well blindness serves to protect Tom in this respect.) He might as well wait forever because he now understands that human eyes can’t fully cancel out the blurry world created by this focused illumination, these stage lights burning full and unimpeded in the otherwise dark. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Please allow me to introduce myself, Perry Oliver, Manager of the Performance. He stops for a moment in something between alarm and vexation, realizing that he has prepared no formal introduction. Never even thought about it before now. This one oversight. And here the words are, tumbling out on his tongue. You people of impeccable taste and understanding. One word answered by another. In the same hour came forth the fingers of a man’s hand. Feeling not quite connected to what he is saying—Not in a thousand years would you imagine beautiful melodies flying out from the dark cave of this Negro’s mouth—although they are his words, his thoughts. Fearless despite the sense that the sentences can go one way or another, fail or achieve. Totally unscripted. He gets to say what he wants, a string of elaborate utterances and pronouncements — a musical gem—enjoying it now, as he finds, has always found, the theatrical instinct for disguise and transformation one of life’s greatest pleasures. The audience can like it or not.

Only right that he should receive total credit for the affective force of his words, pulling Tom from the wings, positioning him at the piano, and eliciting his first round of applause from an audience even before the sounding of the first note. The hardest part over. Now he has only to take these few steps to this exact spot and introduce a song before disappearing from view behind the curtain where he stands sending searching glances at the sea of heads bobbing above all those chairs, distinguishing every fluid face in the audience. Seeing too their gestures and expressions. He knows what they are saying or not saying. All those thoughts joining and falling apart. The burden passed on to them now, as they sit listening, carried on the sound, hoping to grow accustomed to what they are hearing. Imagine all that has to happen, all that has to interconnect for the audience to be linked as one by the final number, applauding, each man or woman on his or her feet, before veering on their separate ways.

That night, Perry Oliver is careful to bury his face into the soft blind whiteness of his pillow, lest Seven hear him crying.