On Night's Shore Page 10

  “Please,” Irving said, “let us not descend into hostility. Perhaps Mr. Poe would care to join us for a while. A friendly discussion between fellow laborers in the vineyard.”

  Poe was too quick, I think, to take a step forward. Cooper held up a hand. “Hold off. I would first like to hear his response. How is it, Mr. Poe, that you alone, in all of America and abroad, fail to be charmed by my friend’s tales?”

  “I have a great deal of admiration for the narratives,” Poe argued. “I find them in part quite good.”

  “In part?” said Cooper. “You cannot commend them as a whole?”

  Mr. Irving said, “He is an honest man. In what narrative can every word be praised?”

  “Some are especially graceful,” Poe said.

  “Some,” said Cooper. “In part. Please, sir, for the sake of the poor man’s art, and for the sake of his illiterate readers and publishers, edify us. Where in particular do his powers fail?”

  “James, please. Enough of this. I take no pleasure in inciting a riot.”

  “This is not riot, Wash; we are conducting a literary salon. Though perhaps Mr. Poe’s legendary frankness is not so easily summoned when the subject of his attack sits but an arm’s length away.”

  At this Cooper jabbed his pointed chin even higher and glared down the sheer slope of his nose. I, for one, was standing with fists clenched.

  But Poe’s hands remained loose, his left hooked limply over the fly of his coat, the right fingering the tobacco pouch. By the time he spoke, the color had returned to his cheeks.

  “In many of your narratives,” he said and delivered his remarks with a smile to Washington Irving alone, “in many, the thrust seems to come apart in the end. The interest, though honestly achieved in the beginning, is frittered away. Because the conclusion of the tale is insufficiently climactic.”

  Irving’s only response to this was a slow closing of his eyelids, as if he were falling asleep. Two seconds later his eyes half opened and he looked at Poe and offered his own wistful smile.

  Cooper sneered. “You would not place him, then, along with myself as a ‘merely popular’ writer?”

  “By which I meant a writer whose work can be read with pleasure by the masses.”

  “But not admired!” Cooper thundered. “Do not forget the caveat, Poe. To be read with pleasure but not with admiration!”

  If the glare of heat emanating from Cooper’s eyes were meant to blanch Poe, it did not succeed. Instead, he drew himself up taller. “If only the sharpness of your memory for criticism could be transferred to your memory of historical facts,” he said.

  Cooper’s head snapped forward. “Perhaps my many thousands of readers have a better grasp of my work than you do, sir.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps Monsieur de Tocqueville’s assertion of our country’s enthusiastic embrace of mediocrity can account for those numbers.”

  By this time Mr. Irving had a hand on Mr. Cooper’s arm. Cooper, simmering, seemed about to leap up from his chair. “How is it,” he asked, “that a man so singularly gifted now finds himself doing hackwork for the Mirror?”

  It was Poe’s turn now to react as if slapped. “I am employed in the gathering of honest facts,” he answered, “that will lead me to an accurate and logical observation. Unlike others present—yourself excluded, Mr. Irving—I have a high regard for these elements in my writing.”

  “You are fortunate, sir, that the duel has been banned in this city.”

  “Seeing as how I can shoot off the tip of a sulphur match at forty paces, I would say that I am not so fortunate as others might be. Good day, gentlemen.”

  With that, Poe turned toward the exit. I unclenched a fist and yanked upon the door and nearly climbed onto Poe’s heels as we made for the unfiltered sunlight.

  10

  We were several yards down the street from the tobacconist’s shop when I, nearly breathless from trying to equal Poe’s sharp pace, said, “How about teaching me to do that too?”

  He did not answer.

  “Shooting the head off a match at forty paces,” I said. “Can you teach me how?”

  Without breaking his stride he held out his right hand, palm down. He had the worst case of sudden palsy I had ever seen. “With this hand,” he said, “I would be fortunate to merely maintain my grip on a pistol.”

  “But if you wasn’t shaking so.”

  At last he began to slow his lightning pace. We turned the corner, and here he stopped. “When not shivering like a hairless puppy in an icy rain,” he told me, “then yes, I am a fair enough marksman. At forty paces I could in all likelihood strike, for example, the Astor house. As for the head of a match…”

  I could not believe my ears. Could not believe, in primis, that my new hero was incompetent in any regard, and could not believe, in secundis, that he was admitting to it. “What if he had called your bluff?” I asked.

  “Then, sir, you would be hurrying off on your own to relate to my loving family the sad news of my untimely demise.”

  I stood there staring up at him with my mouth agape.

  “It is the imp of the perverse,” he said. “My father was so possessed, and I am likewise.” He chuckled to himself, then looked down at me. He laid a hand on my shoulder.

  “There is one thing, Augie, that you can always count on me to do.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “To say the wrong thing at the worst possible time.”

  “It’s almost like you’re asking somebody to take a shot at you.”

  “It is a strange thing indeed. To love life so. While so vigorously baiting death.”

  I was too young then to explore the condition further, to probe the gray overlappings and ambivalence of existence. And so I returned the discussion to Mary Rogers and asked if he had learned anything useful from the tobacconist. Poe was most intrigued by the revelation that her recent absence from her workplace was not an exception. He suggested a leisurely stroll to Mrs. Rogers’s boardinghouse. I suggested that we first fortify ourselves.

  “I’m afraid that I expended the day’s allotment on a pouch of Mr. Anderson’s goodwill. I’ve nothing left for food.”

  “Meet me in front of the Tontine in three minutes,” I told him.

  “And where are you off to, Mr. Dubbins?”

  “You want to eat, don’t you?” Before he could answer, I had hightailed it back around the corner.

  Three minutes later I met up with Poe in front of the coffee house. From inside my baggy shirt I produced a small loaf of dark bread and a warm apple dumpling.

  He eyed them critically for a moment. He then gazed up the street in the direction from which I had arrived. “May I assume that these savories were acquired by legal means?”

  “As legal as the wind,” I told him. “And as far as I know, there ain’t no law against the wind blowing, is there?”

  The melted sugar on the crust of the dumpling had smeared across my stomach. I scoured at the sticky spot with my shirt front.

  “I will perhaps sample the loaf,” Poe said.

  And thus we strolled to Mrs. Rogers’s rambling clapboard boardinghouse, myself quite happy that I had done my bit for American journalism.

  Poe had made Mrs. Rogers’s acquaintance days earlier, but he nonetheless began to reintroduce himself after she responded to his knock at the front door. She cut off his introduction with a wave of her hand and a rush of words, most of which amounted to an insistence that we come inside for tea. I offered no resistance and ducked under her arm and headed for the scent of the kitchen, thereby rendering Poe’s protest moot.

  She led us down a darkened hallway to a sun-bright kitchen. There she bade us sit at the table. She set a kettle on the stove and tossed a stick of wood onto the coals. Then she filled the table with a block of hard cheese, a crock of pickled eggs, another of sauerkraut, a
nd a shank of cold roast beef. I wondered if this frenetic little woman was perhaps Mrs. Clemm’s long-lost sister, so similar was their hospitality.

  But whereas Mrs. Clemm was large and cumbersome, this aging cherub of a woman stood only an inch or two taller than me, but thrice my girth. She moved from place to place with the alacrity of a water bug, now here, now there, and produced a soft shuddering inside the cupboards with every footfall. In no time at all, her nervous energy had me tapping my toe against the chair leg.

  “Nothing’s more beautiful than a woman working, isn’t that right, Mr. Poe?”

  “It is indeed,” he said.

  “That’s an old Dutch proverb, you know. Learned it from my husband, I did, may he rest in peace. Who wasn’t much for work himself but took no end of pleasure in seeing that I kept busy. And I’ve been working ever since. What else would please you gentlemen, some biscuits maybe? I have some sourdough biscuits left over from breakfast, I think.”

  I started to nod my head yes, but Poe, who had not yet seated himself, pulled out a chair for her. “But the proverb continues, does it not?” he asked. “Nothing’s more beautiful than a woman working unless it is a woman at rest.”

  “He never told me that part,” she said. “My guess is it never existed until this very instant.”

  “Please,” said Poe and drew the chair back for her.

  “In a minute, in a minute.” She went first to the bread box, then the washstand, then busied herself with rearranging the cutlery in a drawer. “It helps to keep busy, always did. Keeps my mind off things, you know. It’s even worse now with my darling sweetheart gone.” She stood still momentarily and shook her head. “What those beasts done to her, I can’t stand to think about it. I can’t sit still for a minute now, never could before either but now it’s even worse.”

  Hearing this, Poe gave up on her and settled in the chair himself. “I have just a question or two, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “It’s a good thing I’ve a houseful,” she continued. “There’s no end of work when you’ve got a houseful. Though they say no woman can be happy with less than seven to cook for and I’ve never had more than six. Never more than six and only five now counting myself. But it’s true, I suppose, for I haven’t eaten a bite since my darling beauty was taken from me. I hope that beef isn’t too fatty for you, Mr. Poe. Your young lad there seems to find it to his liking.”

  I grinned and nodded, my mouth stuffed full.

  “What I hope to ascertain,” Poe said, “if you would indulge me in your grief, is something of your daughter’s habits. Any one of which might shed a bit of light on the particulars of her tragedy.”

  Over the next half hour he was able to put to her the same questions he had to Mr. Anderson. She answered, in a fashion, between homilies:

  “A woman can throw out with a spoon more than a man can bring in with a shovel, isn’t that right, Mr. Poe? Upriver, did you say? From the waterfront? I once had a boarder from that area, a drummer he said he was. But that was four, five years ago now. Haven’t had a sniff of him since.

  “Other people’s bread always tastes better, doesn’t it, lad? And then you get used to it and you want your own bread back; it works that way too. But as to my darling’s absence from work, Mr. Poe, the earlier one, not this last, yes, she was ill, she was ill indeed. But it wasn’t with the catarrh, as I recall. She sent word from her Auntie Sarah’s; she had gone there of a Sunday morning, then was taken ill that afternoon, a stomach ailment I was told, a case of the gripes, and she ended up spending all of Monday and half of Tuesday in the care of her aunt, my late husband’s older sister, may he rest in peace.”

  “And who was it brought you word that she would be staying over with her aunt?”

  “Who was it? Well I scarcely remember. Except that now I do, yes—it was Mr. Andrews of course. He had run across her returning from church, as I recall. Out riding, he was. It was he, he said, advised her to take to bed immediately and not bother making the long walk home.”

  “The same Mr. Andrews who is a boarder here?”

  “He is, he is. For more than two years now, I might add. Far longer than most, who come a fortnight or two and then disappear never to be seen nor heard from again. But not our Mr. Andrews. As neat and proper a man as you would care to meet. The military does that to a man, you know. You have something of the bearing about you yourself, Mr. Poe, if I am not mistaken.”

  “I spent some time at West Point when I was young.”

  “It shows, it shows indeed. The lad there needs more tea, don’t he? Yes, it shows, your military bearing; there’s no concealing where a man has been in his life. He wears it in his eyes and in the way he carries himself.”

  “As to Mr. Andrews,” Poe said, his eyes suddenly alert, his posture very straight, “he is with the navy, I assume.”

  “He’s every bit a navy man, our Charles is. An officer of the first rank. A lieutenant is what he is. Junior grade.”

  Poe nodded to himself. He picked up the cheese knife and sliced a sliver off the block. “And is Mr. Andrews well acquainted with Mr. Payne?”

  “How could they not be well acquainted, let me ask you that. When right out there at that table they share their dinner every night.”

  “Is either of the gentlemen presently to home?”

  “At this hour of the day? My boarders are every one of them honest and hardworking gentlemen, I assure you. Just like yourself, Mr. Poe. But dinner is at seven, and Mr. Andrews for one will be here promptly.”

  “But not Mr. Payne?”

  “I think he cannot bear the change,” she said, and now she looked into the distance and she wobbled like a great heavy top that has spun itself out. “Without her there to serve his soup and to take her seat beside him,” she said. “He feels the pain as surely as her mother does. He would rather die now than to take his dinner without her.”

  And suddenly I felt piggish and small, stuffing myself while this woman’s terrible grief wrung every drop of joy from her soul. Her round hot cheeks were slick with tears now, her mouth stretched wide in a down-turning line. She stood there by the table with her eyes squeezed shut, fists clamped hard to her breasts, knuckles white.

  “Kissing wears out, I always told her, but cooking don’t. That’s what I always told my lovely sweetheart, Mr. Poe. I always told them both. But what with her looking the way she did, my dear sweet beauty. How could any man ever think a thought about her without wanting to take her in his arms?”

  She turned slightly and gazed through the open archway and into the dining room. “Every day I see her sitting out there, Mr. Poe. Every day I see her there.”

  Empty of words finally, hollow of all but despair, she began to sob now and to sway forward and back. Poe gave me a quick nod as he rose and went to her. I scrambled to my feet and retreated down the hallway and outside I went. I waited at the gate with my back to the boardinghouse. I expected to hear at any moment a great crashing sound as she collapsed in grief, but heard only the clip-clop of hooves on stone, the droning clack of wheels, the shouts and discourse of other lives passing in public view, where private miseries are seldom seen.

  Poe joined me there a few minutes later. He had the look of a man fresh from a funeral, dazed by the proximity of death, half blinded by the sunlight. He laid a hand on my shoulder, then stood there motionless, squinting at the traffic.

  “The things we do to each other,” he softly said. “The evil we do. It is beyond my ability to comprehend.”

  11

  From Mrs. Rogers’s home, we walked, if more heavily now, the short distance to Wall Street. In the bank where Mr. Payne was employed as a clerk, Poe was informed that another investigator had bested us by an hour. Mr. Payne, in other words, had been taken off to the Tombs for questioning by one of High Constable Hays’s leatherheads. These leatherheads, or watchmen as they were sometimes called, were al
l we had in those days as a police force, other than the private squads of head-busters employed by various big bugs throughout the city.

  But it was the high constable’s force that ruled the Tombs, and Poe considered it imperative that he interview not only Mr. Payne but Mr. Payne’s interrogator as well. He suggested, however, that the Tombs was no place for a boy.

  “Ain’t no way I ain’t going with you,” I told him. “I’ve been wanting to see inside that place long as I can remember.”

  “The building has existed for only two years, Augie.”

  “So I have a short memory. That don’t change the fact that I’m going with you. Even if I have to go alone.”

  He laughed to himself but did not send me away. And now it was I who set the pace, as quick as a dogtrot, so eager was I to get my first look inside those forbidding granite walls.

  It was not long before the main entrance on Centre Street loomed before us like the jaws of Hell itself. Up the broad flight of steps we went, the stones as dark as despair, my knees suddenly atremble, heartbeat ticking in my throat. Between the four huge Egyptian columns we went, over the portico, through the heavy door, and there we were inside it, just like that, into the place I would never have dared venture if not bolstered by Poe’s own boldness.

  Inside a cavernous entrance hallway, we blinked and stood quiet for a moment while our eyes adjusted to the dimness. The place was as full of muted conversations as a nightmare, with sudden sharp noises as of a door banging, a mysterious metal clank. At any one time a dozen people could be counted hurrying from one side of the hall to the other. Every footstep echoed like a dull blow. Every breath sucked in the smell of rot. There were shallow pools of water everywhere one looked, as well as dark trickles of water sliding down the stone walls. The place stank of disease and mold and awful mystery.

  Because the Tombs had been built on the site of the Collect Pond, a veritable marsh, the building had been sinking and shifting since the first days of construction. The floor and walls were warped, and even in the uneven lamplight I could make out wide cracks in the mortar. I almost expected to see a sulphurous glow oozing up from those cracks.