On Night's Shore

by Randall Silvis

  He inhaled deeply, but with a grimace that suggested the acrid sting of the air he breathed. He placed his hands on his knees, leaned forward as if to stand, and looked Hobbs square in the eye. “The authorities may not believe me, it’s true. Nor will the confessional stutterings of your Josiah Tarr sway many opinions. But perhaps the word of Jacob Van Rensselaer will carry some weight among—”

  “Van Rensselaer is a lickspittle and a sodomite! Is that whose side you choose?”

  “This has nothing to do with sides—”

  “Balls, you say!” Hobbs’s face was bright with blood. When he spoke again, all but hissing, he had to lick his lips to grease the words. “I have heard a great deal about this contrary nature of yours, Poe. Have you no idea what you will bring down upon yourself?”

  Poe stood. He straightened his trousers. “Is it contrariness to want what is right?”

  “Right? There is no right, man. Right is the crutch of a crippled mind. There is no right; there is only progress or the lack of it. There is only growth or stagnation. Choose the latter and I warn you… Choose the latter and you do so at your own peril.”

  “Good day, Mr. Hobbs.” Poe started for the door.

  “Don’t be a damn fool, man!”

  I had my hand on the crystal doorknob an instant before Poe reached out for it. I gave the knob a twist, and that was when the wine glass shattered against the wall just inches from Poe’s head. Poe flinched. A moment later he plucked a fragment of glass off his cheek, but he did not turn around.

  Hobbs’s last words were like something seeping up from dark soil. “No one can beat me,” he hissed.

  Poe placed his hand atop mine and turned the knob and guided me out the door.

  44

  The walk from Hobbs’s club to Van Rensselaer’s office was not a long one, but Poe seemed in no hurry to get there. He must have viewed Van Rensselaer in a different light now, as I did, a man just as capable of murder as Hobbs, just as ready to destroy others in pursuit of his own needs. To enlist the help of one in bringing down the other…it was like using a porcupine to beat a cobra to death, or vice versa. In either case, you were not likely to stroll away unscathed.

  “What is it you miss from your old life?” Poe asked me as we walked. He was constantly surprising me with these non sequiturs, these notions out of nowhere. “Is there anything you miss?”

  “A couple of friends, I guess. Boys my age. Not really friends but…fellas I knew.”

  Poe nodded. “I miss my manuscripts. I miss the paper and pen. The quietude of my own thoughts. I miss that life as if it were taken from me ten years ago, and not but one week past.”

  He laughed softly then. “The peculiar thing is, they are of small value to anyone else. One dollar…three dollars…at the most they might garner four dollars each. Four dollars for a full month’s work.” He shook his head. “All that work. More chaff than wheat. To labor half one’s life and produce only that—barely enough wheat for a small and bitter loaf.”

  It is thoughts like these that destroy men. Unless they are blessed with a perversity of spirit, as was Poe. A writer of Poe’s ilk sees in his toil not the grain of wheat itself but the spirit of the wheat, a spirit that dwells inside the chaff as well. To a true writer, and Poe was nothing if not the truest of the true, principle will always be more nourishing than bread, no matter how much butter and meat you pile on. It is a kind of perversity, yes, a disdain of or even contempt for what most of the world knows as real. Thank heaven for men and women so flawed.

  • • •

  This time there was no guard stationed outside the Merchants’ Exchange building. We strode into the central hall, and there amidst the echoing footsteps and the hollow reverberations of a hundred voices, I pointed up to the mezzanine and singled out the door to Van Rensselaer’s office. Without hesitation but with a dogged resolve, Poe went to the stairs and climbed and I followed silently behind.

  The door to the anteroom was open but the room was unoccupied. Poe went straight to the door I pointed out as Van Rensselaer’s and tried the knob but the door was locked. He rapped on the door with his knuckles, rapped a second time, and having received no response whatsoever, he put his mouth close to the wood, to the crack between door and frame, and spoke clearly.

  “The matter is finished,” Poe said through the door.

  There was no answer from inside the room, no sound at all, yet I felt Van Rensselaer’s presence as surely as Poe felt it, a holding of breath, a damming back.

  Poe pounded on the door with his fist. “Would you rather I go elsewhere?” he demanded. “Would you rather I take my information, all of it, to the Boston press?”

  Almost immediately there was a scuffling sound from the other side of the door, agitation, hurry, a chair being moved. This was followed by ten seconds more of silence. Then the lock clicked and the knob turned and the door came slowly open. Glendinning stood there on the threshold, his face a blank wall, as expressionless as granite. (I could not help but look to his fists, those wondrous fists, quiet now, open, such miracles of destruction.)

  He gazed steadily at Poe, then looked at me by his side, looked to see that the anteroom was otherwise empty. He then strode past Poe to the anteroom door and pulled it shut and turned the lock. He came back to stand to the side of the door to Van Rensselaer’s office, and there held out his hand, then turned it palm up as a signal that we should enter. He followed us inside and closed that door as well.

  The man himself sat in a windowless corner behind a plain wooden desk, looking for all the world like a pious deacon in a black suit and calfskin gloves. Other than the desk, a brass floor lamp, and an extra chair positioned to face Van Rensselaer from some six feet away, the room was bare. It gave off an odor of lye so strong that it stung my eyes and burned my nostrils.

  Van Rensselaer nodded toward the empty chair. “Have a seat, Mr. Poe. Make yourself comfortable.”

  Poe remained standing behind the chair. “Comfort is precluded by the subject of my visit.”

  “Life itself is uncomfortable. Sit, sir. If you will.”

  And so Poe sat and wove his tale. To my ears, he spoke with too much concision and with insufficient oratory, providing for Van Rensselaer what amounted to a bloodless summation of our work, the conclusions we had reached, conclusions we thought irrefutable.

  I could almost feel Van Rensselaer’s heartbeat quicken as his imagination filled in those details that Poe, in his sense of delicacy, had glossed over; I could certainly see the excitement in Van Rensselaer’s eyes. “It was at his own hands then?” he said. “You are sure of this—she died at his own hands?”

  “Lieutenant Andrews is convinced of it.”

  “Very good, very good.” He sat there tapping his fingers against the edge of the desk, a repetitious thud muted by the gloves he wore, a stingy and effeminate gesture. “Very very very good, sir.”

  He thought to himself for a while. Then said, “This barman, however. I am concerned about this barman. Why would he direct you to Miss Blaine? What would he gain by the betrayal of his sweetheart?”

  “Miss Blaine is…in hiding. She has disappeared from all she knew, including him, without word of her current whereabouts. I suspect that he believes, though erroneously, that Hobbs is behind her disappearance.”

  “And yet you managed to find her.”

  “I did.”

  “I would like very much to speak with her. To send Glendinning—”

  “It isn’t possible.”

  “You protect a whore, Mr. Poe?”

  “From a murderer? Yes.”

  “I can provide better protection from Hobbs than you, sir.”

  “And who will protect her from the protector?”

  The blood that rose in Van Rensselaer’s cheeks looked unnatural there, nothing so common as a blush, but venomous, unhealthy for all concerned.
“Are you making an accusation against me as well?”

  Poe said nothing for a moment, then turned to face Glendinning. “The watchman I will allow as an accidental death. Or necessary. In any case, he needed to be subdued. In any case, for that, I thank you for your intervention.”

  Van Rensselaer said, “As well you should. In fact you have more for which to thank Glendinning than you might know.”

  Poe turned to him again. “I know enough, sir. I know, for example, that the man I met at the Velsor Club, Hobbs’s witness, the man who might have testified as to the lieutenant’s relationship with Mary Rogers, I know that man ended up with his throat split open.”

  “I have no knowledge of this individual.”

  “Or of the Bank of New York watchman who killed him?”

  Van Rensselaer said nothing. His hands were still, eight fingertips perched on the edge of the desk, his thumb tips touching.

  Poe continued. “The very same watchman who was stationed outside this very same building the last time I attempted entry here.”

  Van Rensselaer did not even blink. Nor did Poe. Half a minute passed. Finally Van Rensselaer drew his hands away from the desk, slowly, almost morbidly slowly, and rested both hands atop his thighs. Without moving his head, he looked to Glendinning.

  Glendinning came forward then and stood beside Poe’s chair. He removed a wallet from inside his suit coat and opened the wallet and lifted out a two-inch stack of banknotes and placed them on the arm of the chair.

  Now it was Poe’s turn to remain motionless. If he moved at all, it was only to look sideways down at the money, to glance at it as something foul or dangerous, something one dare not look at directly.

  Van Rensselaer said, “The paper is good, Mr. Poe. If you wish, you can exchange it for gold downstairs.”

  Poe leaned forward with a slowness to match Van Rensselaer’s and put his hands on the arms of the chair so as to push himself forward even more. In doing so, his elbow knocked the banknotes to the floor. He did not watch them fall but said, “You are a panel thief, sir. You hid beneath the bed of Mary Rogers. You employed her as a prostitute to procure the information—”

  Glendinning dropped a hand onto Poe’s shoulder. I flinched.

  Van Rensselaer held up a gloved hand to Glendinning.

  And Glendinning lifted his hand away.

  Van Rensselaer tried a smile then, but it did not seem to fit his face. Very softly he said, “You were rescued twice from imminent danger, Mr. Poe. Have you forgotten that?”

  “I forget nothing,” Poe said. Whether it had been the money, or Glendinning’s touch, or the insult of not being treated with absolute candor, he was angry now, he was shaking with anger. He pushed himself to his feet. “Nothing.”

  Van Rensselaer held fast to his fraudulent smile. “Nor do I.”

  Poe turned on his heels and strode to the door and seized the knob, then yanked open the door and marched into the anteroom. He must have sensed my movements in Van Rensselaer’s office, however, for my hand had not yet touched the banknotes when he turned and barked at me, “Augie! You will not.”

  And so I backed away empty-handed; I crept backward toward the office door, momentarily unable to lift my eyes from those banknotes scattered over the floor like leaves shaken from the money tree. When I did look up, just before stepping into the anteroom, it was to take one last glance at Van Rensselaer in the far corner, rigid in his chair, calfskin gloves gripping the desk, his smile as sharp as a dagger.

  45

  Nothing could keep Poe from Fordham now. I kept pace with his gallop for the first quarter mile, but all the way the gold eagle in my pocket kept slapping against my leg, begging, Spend me! Spend me! Perhaps it had something to do with all that money I had been unable to grab in Van Rensselaer’s office, but whatever the reason, my earlier inclination to hoard was being expelled with every huff and puff. Money does not last, enjoy me while you can! I finally halted to listen more closely to the eagle’s song.

  Poe looked back at me, and I waved him on. “I’ll catch up! Don’t wait for me!” It was all the assurance he needed to leave me behind.

  The next few hours were the best of my life, and the best for a good many years afterward. Poe was not yet as far north as Bleecker when the cab I had hired pulled alongside him. “Care to ride awhile?” I asked, like a smug little potentate. On my lap sat a cake box. More packages were stuffed beneath my legs.

  Poe, red-faced and breathless, perspiring like a fat man in a Turkish bath, began, almost, to giggle. He climbed up beside me and slapped me on the knee, and we both set to giggling in earnest. It was a rare and delicious feeling we shared, to be so stupid with relief.

  The joy of our homecoming (of Poe’s homecoming; I was but an addendum) gilded the remainder of that day and night like a page from an illuminated book. I was passed from one set of feminine arms to another and even spent several jarring minutes bouncing on the knees of Mrs. Curran. I was petted and hugged and stroked so frequently that by nightfall I felt my skin glowing from all the polish.

  We feasted on the delicacies I had brought and on others from Mrs. Curran’s cupboards, and we feasted on each other’s smiles and scents. The women, able at last to let go of their anxieties, to admit their exhaustion, retired to their beds not long after nightfall. But Poe and I found ourselves too enlivened for sleep. We sat together on the side porch where we could watch the sliver of moon make its way up the sky. He held Asmodaios and Aristotle, I cradled General Tom. The profound sense of fraternity I experienced in his company that night, as soldiers who had weathered a terrible battle side by side—I have not before nor since felt such comfort in being a creature of this earth.

  I did not at the time understand the attraction that drew me to Poe, did not understand it for the longest of times. In the years since, however, I have watched his reputation as a writer grow large and have seen his ratio of admirers to detractors reverse itself from those bleak days, and I think I have a better notion now of the quality in Poe that speaks to us. We are drawn by his darkness. Because darkness is beguiling; it whispers and beckons to our most primitive selves. By which I mean not the base or animalistic but the ancient, primordial—the elemental. Such darkness is exciting; it enlivens the mundane and suggests exotic possibilities. And only in darkness, only in darkness complete and total to all the senses, a darkness impermeable, only in anticipation of this finality can we derive our surest hope for peace.

  I asked quietly, “What’s going to happen to Hobbs over this?”

  He watched the moon and smoked his pipe. Then, “Nothing ostentatious, to be sure.”

  “He won’t be arrested?”

  “He owns City Hall,” Poe said. “He and his cronies.”

  “You mean he’ll be allowed to get away with what he done? Won’t nothing happen to him at all?”

  “Something will,” he said. “Something will. In time.”

  He knew a fact that had not yet occurred to me, and he was drawing his comfort from it, his vindication. I, on the other hand, had to content myself with the purr of General Tom, the sibilance of smoke being sucked through Poe’s pipe, the long deep darkness, and the tiny slice of moon.

  For that night, at least, it was sufficient.

  • • •

  We remained at Mrs. Curran’s farm for two more days. Each morning after breakfast, Poe asked if I would care to join him in a stroll, and we walked as far as the East River, leisurely, as if that were not in fact Poe’s goal all along. Once there, we stood about pretending to be purposeless until a ferry arrived and on it a boy hawking the city’s papers.

  “As long as we’re here,” Poe then said, “I might as well see what’s happening in town.”

  And finally, on the second morning, the news he had been waiting for was delivered. The first article appeared on page four, the second on page ten.

  Gotha
m is saddened this day to be bidding adieu to one of the most favored of its favorite families. Mr. and Mrs. Johnston Hobbs have announced that they have taken a cabin on the SS Josephine, which will be departing for the French port of Bayonne at the stroke of midnight this Friday evening.

  According to Mrs. Hobbs, the couple expects to travel by coach throughout southern France during the remainder of the summer and fall, enjoying at this most pleasant time of year the splendors of Marseilles and Nice, to name just two stops along their itinerary, before taking up residence in Tuscany for a Mediterranean winter.

  As to Mr. Hobbs’s many civic interests, most notably the Croton Water Project, he has with a mixture of emotions turned over all authority to the Common Council, who will be aided in their decision-making by Jacob Van Rensselaer, named yesterday by Hobbs as the new chairman of the Croton Aqueduct Commission. Mr. Hobbs further wishes it be known that he has complete and total confidence that these two entities will continue to see the project through to the betterment of us all.

  Mrs. Hobbs could not say with any specificity when she and her husband might return to our environs, but suggested that a change of climate was what both she and her husband now crave, each being depleted of energies from their many years of unstinting social and civic service. To this we can only say Bravo and Bon Voyage, and wish them both Godspeed and an expeditious return to the bosom of a grateful city.

  The second article was far less wistful in its prose. It did not mention Poe’s name, but it was about him all the same.

  High Constable Hays reported yesterday that all investigations into the death of the cigar-girl Mary Rogers have been concluded. The constabulary is now quite satisfied that the young lady’s demise was brought about by accidental means, namely that while walking alone along the banks of the Hudson River, she slipped into the water and was drowned.