On Night's Shore

by Randall Silvis

  The walls were gray granite, and the floor also but much darker and smoother, polished I suppose by boots and dirt and spit and in all likelihood a fair measure of blood. Many of those stones had come from the Bridewell and so had already witnessed a generation of agonies. Light pushed in dirty through the few windows and lay like dirty water on the floor. Where sunlight fell on actual water, the effect was kinder and sometimes there was even a rainbow sheen to the pool. The shafts of light themselves appeared nearly solid with dust and smoke, like solid bars whose insides were alive and wild, squirming every which way to escape the confines of the shaft, not knowing that to be outside of the light meant being invisible and forgotten.

  On all sides of the entrance hall were rooms and offices, the residence of various officials, the Police Court, and the Court of Special Sessions. While I stood in the center of this hall and gawked, my heart thrumming with desires too dark for words, Poe set about discovering the whereabouts of Mr. Payne. He spoke to a half-dozen men before ascertaining the room in which Payne was being questioned. I followed him then to a room at the rear of the entrance hall, from which point I could gaze out an open rear door to a wide expanse of sunlight, a courtyard.

  If any one place in the Tombs was my objective, this courtyard was it, for it was possible from here to view the two prison buildings, one for females and one for males, the latter connected to the main building by a span of stone, a walkway known as the Bridge of Sighs, the condemned man’s last stroll between his cell and his grave.

  I left Poe standing close to the closed door of the interrogation room while I was drawn to the courtyard. I assumed that he would knock politely, introduce himself to all inside, and ask his questions. Meantime I exited the building’s rear door and stood in the sunlight as if in the gaping wound of that vile place, and there tried my best to see through the walls of the men’s prison.

  My father would not be housed on the fourth and highest floor of cells, I knew this much from talk overheard at the Brewery. The fourth floor was reserved for men serving short sentences or for those few muckety-mucks who had been unable to bribe their way out from under a felonious charge. The next floor down held burglars and larcenists and other middling criminals. The second floor, a general assortment of firebugs, thugs, shanghai artists, and murderers who had perpetrated their acts with sufficient class to warrant mercy. The first floor, damp and foul, sinking ever closer to the bottomless pit, was the purview of men whose only future lay either in gradual decay or in a short drop at the end of a rope. Here my father would be passing his days, if indeed he still existed. I had no choice but to believe that he did, and to believe too that his fate would one day be overturned, that he would be sprung by an angel or demon, I did not care which, but that he would walk free, stroll outside, and find me waiting, and off we would walk together, allied forever against all mankind.

  I must have stared at those stone walls for a quarter of an hour before something clicked in the back of my head, some turn of recognition, a realistic thought, and I lowered my eyes. The gloomy reality of the place sank into me, I suppose, and extinguished my small flame of hope. How could I look upon the thickness of those stones, their imperturbability, and fail to see the truth? And the truth was this: I could not stare through granite, and I could not drive my fist or my heart through it either. Today would not be the day of my father’s freedom. And if I continued to pin my own independence on his, I might never be free.

  And so I turned back toward Poe. He saw me coming and put a finger to his lips. Only then did I observe that he held the door to the interrogation room open by a few inches and was standing off to the side so that he could peer into the room unseen. I eased past him like a shadow, then had a peek myself.

  A gentleman in a dark suit, Mr. Payne, sat weeping in a straight-backed chair. He had his head down and his hat lay several feet away on the floor. His hair was mussed in a way that could not have been accomplished by a stray breeze. Standing behind him was a leatherhead in a rough black suit, a horse-jawed brute who stood there breathing heavily, massaging his right hand with his left.

  A moment later, Poe eased shut the door and stepped away and motioned for me to follow him to the exit. I did not speak until outside the heavy door, where, as soon as my face hit the air, I gasped as if suddenly remembering how to breathe again. The weight that had been pressing on my chest, squeezing my lungs the whole time I had been inside, now began to relent.

  Finally I asked, “So what did you see in there?”

  “Enough to know that there is no need to trouble Mr. Payne further.”

  “That leatherhead work him over?”

  Poe held his tongue as we came down off the wide entrance steps and stood again on Centre Street. His brow was knit in that curious way of his, one corner of his mouth curled up in what others often thought a sneer, but which was, to my reckoning, a grimace—a reaction to some inner discomfort.

  Again it was necessary for me to prompt him. “So what did Payne have to say?”

  “Hmm? Ah yes, well; his responses revealed little of interest. What intrigues me more was the line of questioning pursued by the constable.”

  “Looked to me like he was doing most of the questioning with his fist.”

  “There was a fair share of that, yes. At all other times, however, he seemed most concerned about how Miss Rogers spent her leisure time.”

  “Come again?”

  “One question he repeatedly asked. When Miss Rogers was neither at work nor at home nor in the company of Mr. Payne, where was she? What, he wanted to know, did Mr. Payne know about that?”

  “And what did he know?”

  “Only that she visited her aunt on occasion and that she maintained the usual feminine interests. Otherwise he appeared confused by the implication.”

  “No kidding? And what’s a implication?”

  “In this case it seemed a suggestion that the constable knows a bit more about the young lady’s activities than does her fiancé.”

  “How could that be?”

  “Again and again the constable inquired as to Miss Rogers’s relationship with the other boarders. Was there anyone among them of whom she seemed most fond. His emphasis upon the last word fairly dripped of innuendo.”

  The matter of what in-you-endo might mean, and how it might be made to drip, was too unpleasant to contemplate. I responded only with a questioning look.

  “The query was so pointedly made, and so relentlessly, that finally Mr. Payne uttered an answer, albeit with great reluctance.”

  “The lieutenant, I’ll bet.”

  “In Mr. Payne’s words, ‘Charlie. Charlie Andrews.’ And with the next breath sprang to the lieutenant’s defense, vouchsafing him as a brother in spirit.”

  “And you think the leatherhead knew what the answer was going to be before he even heard it?”

  “He was fishing for one trout in particular, yes.”

  “Maybe you should have a talk with the leatherhead then. Find out what he knows.”

  “Unfortunately I failed to sense in the man a forthcoming nature. Circumspection, dear Augie. That, in the end, shall win us the day.”

  We then walked a bit, though it was clear to me that Poe had no particular destination in mind—none of geography, in any case. He moved because he could not stand still—that was the gist of it. And with every passing minute, Poe’s manner informed me that he now wished to be alone. He increasingly drew in upon himself, every nod and gesture small, every word a shadow. So that when he suggested that perhaps I wished to be free of him awhile, I did not protest, though some pale premonition whispered that I should.

  My mother would be worried about me, he said. No matter how harsh I thought her, he said, a mother’s love abideth strong. Also he suspected himself of some vague impropriety in involving a child in matters such as these. The morgue, the Tombs—where would he be dragging me n
ext? he wondered aloud. Go off and play awhile, he said. Find your cronies; have yourself a swim. Wash what I could of this nastiness away.

  I did not tell him that my cronies were thieves and muggers and filth-stained boys who would as soon drown me for my new livery as swim with me. I merely nodded my assent. As for himself, he would now pay a visit to the aunt. Then return to the widow’s boardinghouse of the evening to interview Messrs. Payne and Andrews in a setting more conducive to candor. The latter’s affiliation with the navy he found most intriguing, even culpatory. Thanks, he said, to my own perspicacity.

  Of course I did not know the word, but I enjoyed the sound of it, the way he bestowed it upon me with softened eyes and a melancholy smile.

  If I wished, he said, I could meet him at the noon hour tomorrow on the Bowling Green. If all went well, he would treat me to my midday meal.

  He patted me once on the shoulder and then trudged off. His stride was foreshortened now, and I, only beginning to experience the enervation attendant to a clairvoyance of doom, could merely think to myself how tired he appeared, how wan, how overly weary for the middle of the day.

  12

  The remainder of the day passed uneventfully for me. In my clean clothes and with a dime in one pocket, a half dime in the other, I strode like a princekin from Broadway to the Bowery. I considered splurging a few pennies on a pastry dripping with white icing, but my belly was still full, fuller than it had ever been, and the sweet hardness of the coins when I wrapped a fist around them gave me a satiation no mere pastry could equal. Once spent, the money would forever be gone. Hoarded, its potential would not fade.

  And so I did without the pastry. Without the lively Bowery show as well, whose raucous music enticed when I ventured near the theater’s doorway. I did without a carriage ride too—another indulgence long promised myself—and without the wooden locomotive painted red and black and all but crying out to me from behind a shop window.

  I did without all the things I craved and could now afford—could afford not because I had a couple of coins in my pocket, which was nothing new, but because I had begun to view myself as transformed, remade in the eyes of Poe and Mrs. Clemm and Virginia from a clod of street dirt to a boy with true potential, with a future higher than the gutter. In some, this transformation would have engendered impulses of munificence, but not in me, so long used to deprivation. I did without the reward of buying anything for myself, a wooden stylus for Poe, a lace handkerchief for Virginia, a bag of gumdrops for Mrs. Clemm. I suppressed all impulses, hedonistic as well as altruistic, in favor of the miserly.

  By nightfall I found myself within view of the hulk I called home. What inclination dragged me back to the Old Brewery, I wish I knew. Some desire to gloat, perhaps. To flaunt myself, my elevation to a world of less despicable beasts. Or perhaps a need to display myself as not so contemptible as my mother routinely announced me to be. Was I so naive to imagine that Poe (who for all his youthful losses never suffered from a lack of at least a surrogate mother’s adoration) was correct about my own mother’s love, that my face scrubbed and pink would sweeten her tongue and decalcify her heart?

  Here is another mystery: the more you beat a dog, the more it grovels at your feet.

  I strolled into the rancid building and up its foul stairways and through its despoiled halls. I moved quickly, purposefully, so as not to provoke more than stares and a few coarse insults from those wasted spirits I passed. Then into the oblong room which, in the thirty-six hours since last I had been there, had taken on an insufferably squalid air, was suddenly rank to each and every of my senses, so that my first thought was to turn and flee.

  But I did not. The room was dark as always, with but a stub of candle burning on the table, emitting a greasy light. A man I did not recognize sat in our only chair and slumped over the table, sleeping or passed out with his cheek stuck to the wood.

  My mother lay on her pile of rags in the far corner, legs splayed out, bodice drooping to her waist. She was not quick to react to my entry. She turned a lazy head my way and halfheartedly covered herself.

  “What’d you bring?” she said.

  No mention of my absence of the night previous, no recognition of the passage of time. Had she displayed but the least concern over what might have befallen me while we were apart, had she asked “How are you, child?” or even “Where you been?” I would have emptied my pockets for her.

  Instead I chilled at the gravel of her voice. And answered icily, “Not a fip.”

  This, at least, roused her into a sitting position. Her feet smacked the floor with an outhouse sound. “I know your filthy tricks,” she said.

  “Not a Bungtown copper,” I told her and was struck again with the realization of my error in coming here and turned to look back at the door.

  “You’re a lying little rat bastard is what you are.” She heaved herself up. She groaned once as if she wanted to vomit, then made a gurgling sound in the back of her throat. She took two quick steps and had me by the collar.

  “What’s this you have on?” she demanded. “Whose clothes is these?”

  “I pulled them off a wash line.”

  She dragged me nearer the candle. In so doing she banged me into the man asleep at the table. He mumbled a curse and turned his head the other way.

  “Every word comes out of you is a dirty lie,” my mother said.

  Her scent sickened me, the sourness of her breath, her rank body. Two days earlier it would not have registered on me.

  “Can’t you ever even wash yourself?” I said.

  She drew back and blinked as if she had not heard me right. Then came the sting of her hand across my mouth, knuckles cracking my lip, and my legs went out from under me and I landed hard, tasting blood. She shoved me flat to the sticky floor and knelt with one knee in the middle of my back and ran her thorny hands over my clothing, searching for booty. The shirt tore. The sound of buttons popping and plinking to the floor was more painful to me than my split lip.

  Then she shoved both hands into my trouser pockets. She touched the coins and froze.

  “You deceitful little rat bastard,” she hissed and yanked her hands free, my pockets pulled inside out. She stood and thrust both hands out to the candle and examined her find.

  She did not look at me again, not immediately, but turned back toward her bed and grabbed the rotting leather strop she kept there and came back to me and stood over me and swung until she grew tired of it. She sprayed me with spittle and curses and damned me as a vermin and cursed me as my father’s son.

  I felt the spittle flying from her mouth, heard her farting from the violence of her strokes. All the while I lay curled into a ball, arms wrapped about my head. I said not a word. Only silently blasted myself for being such a fool.

  Within a minute or two, her stroke weakened. She paused, summoned enough energy for one more lash across my shoulders. Then she staggered away. She fell onto her bed and lay there breathing heavily, wheezing. For a while afterward, she continued to curse me with mumbles.

  Not until she was snoring did I begin to unwind myself. By degrees I lifted my head, eased my legs out across the floor. From arse to skull I felt scalded, still burning. Every movement provoked another stab of pain.

  I tried for the longest while to make not a sound, to give her no indication that she had in any way touched me. In the end I failed, for despite myself I began to sob. I sobbed until breathless and gut sore, and then I whimpered until worn out utterly. All the joys I could have bought with my money, all the pleasure, now gone. At long last a kind of sleep came to me, sweet annihilator, and I lay with my cheek stuck to the piss- and tear-slimed floor.

  • • •

  Deep in the night I awoke. The candle had burned out. The old building was alive from ground to rooftop with snores and grunts and nightmarish moans. My first waking thought, complete and resolute and as cold as the la
sh wounds still stinging my skin, was this: you are done with this place.

  I arose on tiptoe and crept to my mother’s side. She lay on her belly, one arm stretched out across the floor, the other impossibly trapped beneath her body. I sank to my knees and squinted close at the exposed hand, but it was knotted in a fist, my sliver of silver clutched tight. I tried inserting a finger in her fist, but all I accomplished was to provoke her to drag that hand too to be buried beneath her belly.

  Just go, I told myself then. Fifteen cents—it’s a small price for freedom.

  I looked once at the leather strop lying like a shadow snake where she had dropped it, and I envisioned what I might do with it as a way of bidding farewell. In my mind I watched it whipping down on her, laying open the flesh between her shoulder blades. I envisioned it cinching around her neck, her face going red, eyes huge.

  This was my only revenge available, a fiction of the mind, but a composition all the more satisfying than the real because it prompted no recriminations or rebuttal. By the time I made the door, my eyes were hot with tears, but I was at the same instant smiling.

  Down the stairs and out then, through the greasy warren of wasted lives, the labyrinth of squalor. In my mind I was shedding it all with every step, the stink and violence, the suffocating vulgarity of noise, the obscene smells that clotted like phlegm in the throat. I was quitting it all, peeling it off a layer at a time so as to stand like a shorn lamb in the cool stillness of open night.

  I felt as tender as a shorn lamb, I can tell you that. The air stung fiercely on my welts and lacerations. But did I feel cast out or alone? Abandoned? Bereft? Just the opposite. I felt strangely reconnected to the world at large.

  I knew there were gangs out in the shadows who would take me in, make me one of their own. Any number of pimps and ponces and thief masters willing to grant me a shilling of succor in exchange for a pound of my devotion. But first I would try it on my own, that was what I told myself. And started walking uptown with no destination in mind.