Speakers of the Dead

by J. Aaron Sanders

  “Thank you,” Whitman says. “How are his injuries?”

  “I’m afraid his internal organs may be severely damaged,” Elizabeth says. “I gave him a dose of laudanum to help him rest.”

  Walt says, “I’ll look in on him later.”

  “He said he has no family.”

  Whitman nods.

  Elizabeth shakes her head. “Poor dear.”

  Behind them, a distraught Karina Emsbury throws herself across Lena. The other students blanch at this naked display of grief.

  Amidst the jumble of emotion, Miss Zacky approaches Walt. “Your wrists.” She takes his hands into hers. “They’re bleeding.” She slides up his coat sleeves and examines the long scrapes from the handcuffs, rubbed raw and bleeding. “We need to clean and dress these.” Miss Zakrzewska has become Elizabeth’s most reliable help, though their styles of practice diverge. She touches where Elizabeth withdraws from physical contact. She knows the power of her beauty, bewitching others with her penetrating gaze.

  Walt says, “I tried to save her—” Flashes of Lena on the platform intervene, the hood, the noose, the floor dropping away, and he grits his teeth in agony.

  “We know.” Miss Zacky pulls him close, wraps her arms around his neck. It feels good to be held like this, as Henry used to hold him, and in that moment he needs her, and so he presses up against her even more, holding tight.

  Chapter 5

  The cracked plaster on the bedroom ceiling extends like a spiderweb. The last time Walt was in this room, he was helping Abraham Stowe move an armoire, a gift to Lena for their anniversary. At one point, Abe’s foot became stuck between the armoire and the doorjamb. To get loose, he had to take off his boot, sending Walt and Lena into fits of laughter.

  He sits up on the bed and returns to sorting through the Stowes’ possessions. Inside the armoire he finds clothing, jewelry, a Bible belonging to Lena’s mother, and an old anatomy book inscribed to her by Abraham. To my darling doctor. Yours forever in science and love, Abraham. Lena’s clothing will be distributed among the students according to their need, and the rest will be used for patients. Abraham’s clothing will be donated to one of the immigrant shelters. Walt makes two piles of clothing, a third pile for non-clothing items, and a fourth for Lena’s family.

  Miss Blackwell knocks on the door. “May I come in?”

  “Please.”

  She sits down on the dressing chair in front of the mirror. On her lap is the brown leather-bound ledger for the college’s finances. “Mr. Whitman.”

  “Call me Walt.”

  “Walt, then. No one would blame you if we have to close the school. I know Lena asked you to live here, to help me run the college, but you can return to the newspaper full-time, and I’ll forge ahead with my plans to get into a proper medical school. The students will return to their families, start again somewhere else.”

  He shakes his head. “We have to keep the college open.”

  “We have money for a few months, at the most,” she says. “One of the problems is only half the students pay any tuition. I spoke with Miss Zacky about this, and she confirmed my suspicions: Abraham accepted students who could not pay, telling them to repay the tuition once they began earning money as doctors.”

  Whitman knows this too. “Abraham was terrible with money,” he says. “No sense at all.” This causes him to laugh, and it’s nice to remember his friend this way.

  Elizabeth smiles. “Apparently.” Her British accent muted now. “You know, they thought of you like a son.”

  “The feeling was mutual.” He felt comfortable around the Stowes as he never had in his own home. “Where will you go, Miss Blackwell?”

  “Pardon?”

  “If we have to close the college,” Walt says. “Where will you go?”

  She thinks for a moment. “It wouldn’t be the first time I had to leave New York.”

  “May I ask why?”

  She looks at the wall before answering. “My father’s New York sugar refinery burned down in 1836, and we relocated to Ohio, where he might rebuild his business using sugar beets instead of sugar cane.” She looks at Walt. “You see, we learned that sugar cane relies on the slave trade, and my father was an abolitionist.” She begins to cry, but catches herself. “He died three weeks later.”

  Walt says, “That must have been difficult.”

  “My sisters and I moved to Ohio to start the Cincinnati English and French Academy for Young Ladies. We were forced to close by those who feared our ideology was too revolutionary. That’s what women are up against, Mr. Whitman. Even when no other alternative exists, we are expected to mind our places.”

  “I left Manhattan in 1836 too.”

  “Oh?”

  “I moved to the city from Brooklyn to work as a compositor, and I fell in love. New York City was an exciting, dangerous place.” He pauses. “I had never seen such. One night at the Bowery Theatre, an English actor appeared on stage, and a riot broke out that left the building badly damaged.”

  “Because he was British?”

  “We’re Americans, Miss Blackwell.” Walt smiles. “We have long memories.”

  “Why did you leave the city?”

  “Same reason you did. Work was scant after the 1836 printing district fire. I moved home to Hempstead, where I began teaching at a country school in East Norwich. I’ve been back and forth a few times.”

  “You were a teacher?”

  “A poor one for sure.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “You’ll have to take my word, Miss Blackwell. I do not have the temperament,” Whitman says. “So would you try again with the school for young ladies?”

  Miss Blackwell sighs. “That’s the kicker, isn’t it? I decided to be a doctor after I watched Jane, my close friend, die a painful death. I realized that her doctor, a man, didn’t understand Jane’s body, and after she passed, it came to me like a revelation from God. Women need women doctors.”

  Walt nods in agreement.

  “Then I saw the advertisement in the newspaper for the Women’s Medical College of Manhattan, and when I saw Abraham Stowe’s name attached to it, I knew it was another sign from God. You see, one of my acquaintances in Ohio was Harriet Beecher, and she was married to Abraham’s cousin, Calvin Ellis Stowe.” She looks lost in herself now. “For all that Abraham and Lena sacrificed—we have to keep the college going.”

  She hands the ledger to him.

  “And we do have another problem to contend with,” Miss Blackwell says. “Turn to the last page.”

  There he finds the name James Warren and a series of check marks. The name rings familiar, but he can’t place it. “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Elizabeth says. “Probably a sack-’em-up. Dr. Stowe kept that part of the college private.”

  Walt nods. “He detested working with the resurrectionists.”

  “That’s why he was so grateful for your help with the Bone Bill.”

  Abraham had asked Walt to help him draft a new version of the Bone Bill, legislation that would provide a legal way for medical colleges to acquire cadavers. Up until now, medical students and their instructors had to rely on the illegal trade of cadavers. The Bone Bill, short for An Appeal to the People of the State of New York to Legalize the Dissection of the Dead, had failed to pass several times, due in large part to the real belief that a dissected body cannot be resurrected.

  Abraham approached Walt for help a few weeks after they met, having rightly guessed that Walt had reported on the increase in grave robberies. That reporting taught him that the resurrection men, once a motley group of ruffians, had become more organized and efficient than ever before, their network stretching beyond the city to Brooklyn and Long Island, even up into Connecticut and over to Pennsylvania.

  Walt says, “And you think Abraham’s murder has something to do with
the body snatchers?”

  “Abraham became an enemy the moment he publicly supported the Bone Bill,” she says. “It would end a very lucrative business.”

  “I’ll let you know what I find out about this James Warren,” Walt says.

  Miss Blackwell surveys the room, her gaze lingering at Lena’s belongings piled on the bed. “I really thought she’d come home.” Her voice cracks.

  He takes her hand. “So did I.”

  Walt Whitman sits next to Azariah Smith while he sleeps. He feels a kinship with the boy who has been forced by circumstances to grow up too fast. Walt himself left home at twelve to work and was expected to send home what he earned to his father, a drunkard and a spendthrift.

  Azariah opens his eyes. “Ah, Mr. Whitman.”

  “So how is the treatment here?”

  “Well.” Azariah takes his time. “I have three beautiful women who tend to me. I’m warm and fed. Drugged with good laudanum. How lucky am I?” He pushes himself upward until the pain becomes too much.

  Walt pushes gently on Azariah’s shoulder. “You are lucky indeed, Mr. Smith. But your job now is to rest.”

  The boy relaxes into the bed.

  “I wondered if you might help me,” Walt says.

  “Me, help you?” The boy smiles. “Sure.”

  “The name James Warren,” Whitman says. “Does it mean anything to you?”

  He’s frowning now. “We all know Warren.”

  “A body snatcher?”

  The boy considers the question. “I spend my time avoiding people like Warren,” Azariah says. “If you’re smart, you will too.”

  Walt places his hand on the boy’s forehead. He’s got a fever now. “Shall I tell those three beautiful women that you need a bath?”

  The boy smiles again. “Tell ’em I need three.”

  Walt cracks a grin. “Posthaste.”

  “And, mister,” Azariah says. “Be careful. Them resurrectionists ain’t nothing to fool with.”

  “Rest up, and I’ll check on you again.”

  Azariah nods, then closes his eyes.

  Walt returns to the Stowes’ old bedroom, where he writes a note to Henry. Meet me at the Pewter Mug in two hours, and in the meantime, find out what you can about James Warren. Then, while he waits for the courier to arrive, he stares out the back window across the street and watches the sun as it slips behind the grog house roof.

  Chapter 6

  The omnibus driver, Broadway Ike, scatters the crowd when he hits the brake just short of the sidewalk, plunging Walt into the coach’s plush velvet door. He is the only passenger in the eight-seat vehicle, painted white with red trim, and stenciled SOUTHERN BROADWAY.

  “That’s us, Mr. Whitman,” Ike shouts from his driver’s seat. He is a short, round man in a captain’s hat, with a shiny nose and a slouch. They’re a colorful lot, the omnibus drivers, with names like the Dressmaker, Balky Bill, and Old Elephant, and their knowledge of the city is encyclopedic.

  Walt’s trust in Ike is quickly rewarded. “Oh, I know Warren, the cunt,” he says, making a fist. Turns out Warren owes Ike a lot of money for transporting a couple of stiffs to New York University a while back, and he’s waiting for him to show up in his bus again. Whitman lets it be known that he has a little unfinished business with the cunt himself. Then he steps out into the night air, biting and cold. The omnibus speeds away, leaving a clear view of the tavern where he is to meet Henry.

  He has often daydreamed about their reunion. A few years ago, their friendship had developed quickly, and when it became something more, both men were surprised. Walt celebrated, but Henry hid.

  Inside the Pewter Mug, Henry Saunders has already secured a table near the back. The two men acknowledge each other with a nod, then Whitman stops at the bar for a gin cocktail. The barkeep, Tony, takes the money, wishes him a good evening, and Walt strides across the tavern, scanning the clientele. He sees a few familiar faces, mostly Tammany politicians, but no notables. At the table, Walt stands up straight, makes eye contact, and smiles. “Mr. Saunders, how nice to see you.”

  “Mr. Whitman.” Henry is clean-shaven and smells of citrus cologne. “I trust that Mr. Smith is resting comfortably.”

  Walt begins to answer, then stops. He has a question of his own. “Did you get my letters?”

  “I think of you very often, dearest Henry, and I don’t know what I should do if I hadn’t you to think of and look forward to . . . They were lovely.”

  “You might have sent even a single response.”

  Saunders shifts in his seat. “You’re right.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Walt.”

  “Just because the world doesn’t recognize what we have doesn’t mean we cannot enjoy it.”

  “It’s not only that.”

  Walt braces himself for Henry’s next words.

  “I’m sorry, but things can’t be the way they were.”

  “And how were they?”

  “Walt.”

  “Why did you come back, then?”

  “My parents need money to keep the farm. Mr. Ropes knew me from my work on the Plebeian, and when he contacted me about the Aurora editorship, I couldn’t refuse.”

  The two men sit in silence.

  “Mr. Ropes wants me to steer you away from the Stowe story,” Henry says. “He thinks you’re too personally invested.”

  “But they’re my family.”

  “Precisely his concern.”

  “I am objective.”

  Henry sighs.

  “How are the students doing?” Henry finally says.

  “They’re strong people,” Walt says. “But they’re heartbroken.”

  “And you?”

  He stifles the truth. Images of Abraham and Lena spool through his mind, their late-night dinner conversations, their support of his writing, their encouragement to mend his own fractured relationship with his father. Family is everything, Walt, Abraham said to him one evening. Life is too brief to give up on it.

  At a table near the door, a shouting match breaks out over the Mary Rogers murder case. Whitman recognizes one of the combatants as Edgar Poe, an odd-looking fellow: thin, gaunt, deep-set eyes, and the author of a recently published serial, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” in Snowden’s Ladies’ Companion. These stories comprise Mr. Poe’s thinly veiled fictional attempt to solve the cigar-girl murder case, an attempt made instantly irrelevant by the court case against Abraham Stowe.

  The barkeep, barrel-chested and unflappable Tony, easily pushes Poe and the other man out the door, to the applause of the tavern dwellers.

  Walt says, “Mr. Poe is the only person who shares my beliefs in Abraham’s and Lena’s innocence. That is a shame.”

  Saunders lets a moment pass. “James Warren is known for his grave-robbing exploits and as one of Isaiah Rynders’s men.”

  “Rynders? That is unfortunate.” Like everyone else in New York City, Walt knows plenty about Isaiah Rynders: Tammany boss of the Sixth Ward, gangster, politician. Rynders recently opened the Empire Club on Park Row and was rumored to have more power than the police—the only person with enough power in New York City to start and stop a mob. One story had it that he ripped a man’s cheek off with his forefinger just because the man owed him a few dollars. Another story had him chasing a man from a card game with a red-hot poker, and the scar across his forehead confirmed his reputation as a knife fighter. Still, Rynders is a gentleman. That is his power—he is as comfortable with the mayor as he is with, say, a grave robber.

  “Did you not have a run-in with the man yourself?”

  “More than one, I’m afraid,” Whitman says. “When he attempted to break up a meeting with Mr. Emerson in the Tabernacle a few months ago, I may have broken the man’s nose.”

  “Did he draw his pistol?”

 
; Walt shakes his head. “He attempted to land a blow on me, but I easily dodged it. He realized he was overmatched, stormed off, and the meeting resumed. Mr. Emerson gave a most fascinating oration on the role of the poet—”

  “Mr. Rynders is a gangster and a thug!”

  Walt looks into Henry’s eyes. “I will not be bullied.”

  Saunders claps him on the shoulder. “You’re very brave, Mr. Whitman.”

  Walt gets the joke. “Only when the fate of humanity is at stake.”

  The two men catch each other staring. He has missed Henry more than he knew.

  Henry breaks the moment. “You said you had more than one run-in with Rynders?”

  “I may have denounced him publicly in the Aurora.”

  “Holy Christ, Walt. It’s a wonder you are still alive.” Henry leans closer. “It’s a good thing I returned, so I can keep an eye on you.”

  “I’m terribly glad to see you.” Walt feels awkward saying so, and he worries about becoming a public spectacle. But around them, the men of the Pewter Mug remain blissfully unaware.

  “Now tell me again,” Henry says, “why all the interest in Warren?”

  “I believe Abraham bought cadavers from the man.”

  “And?”

  “He may have a connection to Abraham’s death.”

  “But how?”

  “You’ve heard of the Bone Bill?”

  “The proposed law that would allow medical schools to legally acquire cadavers? The one that won’t pass?”

  “I was helping Abraham draft a new version that he was sure would pass,” Walt says. “His suppliers were furious. Elizabeth Blackwell confirmed as much to me only this afternoon. And it was she who discovered James Warren’s name in the ledger.”

  “And in your mind, that’s motivation for Warren to kill Abraham? To protect his body-snatching business?”

  “A man who kills to protect his livelihood? Certainly.”

  Henry says, “I guess we need to find Warren.”

  “We?”

  “Given your past with Rynders, you need a lookout.”