Not Quite Dead

by John MacLachlan Gray

  “What are the straps for?” asked Eddie. “In case someone might make a run for it?”

  As one who encounters death on a daily basis, I reserve for myself the right to gallows humor. “Not run for it, no,” I replied. “But a cadaver can suddenly sit bolt upright. Or it can throw up a stiffened hand or a leg, injuring the mortician. Or, when the body cavity has been opened, a surprising amount of fluid can issue forth, drenching everyone in the room …”

  “Quite so,” he replied, and said no more.

  Blinking like nocturnal animals in the intermittent glare and shadow of institutional gaslight, we faced four waist-high tables against the far wall, set between alternate pillars. Each of the tables contained an inert form beneath a graying sheet; in each case the sheet had slipped somewhat, revealing a portion of the occupant’s face or leg or torso.

  On the far left rested a black-bearded gentleman in his late twenties, with Byron-like curls and a bullet wound in the chest—self-inflicted, to judge by the gray-black discoloration from burning, and the powder tattoos on the fingers of one hand. (He was left-handed, seemingly.)

  In the event that his relatives fetched and buried him, his obituary would refer to the death as “sudden,” as though somebody had sneaked up to him and said Boo.

  However, reclamation of the cadaver was most unlikely. The better families of Baltimore did not expect members to end up in the morgue, and if this were to happen they did not really want to know. As for identification, it was all but certain that he had arrived without his pocketbook—indeed, it would not be unusual had the mortician relieved him of it himself.

  “Do you think he resembles me?” asked Poe.

  “Why on earth would you ask?”

  “No particular reason. Do you think he looks the least bit like me?”

  “You flatter yourself,” I replied. “He is younger, taller, and but for the fact that he is deceased, in better condition.”

  “I see,” he replied, and appeared discouraged.

  On the table next to the suicide lay a young shaver who had run into the street near the merchant exchange and was kicked under the front wheels of a freight wagon. The sheet had slipped down to expose his face, which I quickly re-covered while Eddie looked the other way.

  Of the two remaining cadavers, one was a stout farrier with liver-colored jowls, whom I remembered having suffered a fit of apoplexy while racing to catch the B&O train.

  Lastly, we faced the exhibit Eddie had brought me to see: a girlishly slim female in her twenties, wearing a torn evening dress, with extensive bruising about the torso, and on the neck, indicating strangulation. Her facial features had frozen into an expression of pleading. I began to cover her, but Eddie held me in check.

  “Have you seen her before, Willie?”

  “It was a police matter, I believe. A prostitute from Fell’s Point. We get a lot of that sort.”

  “Do you suppose there is a record of who brought her?” he asked.

  “The police, I imagine. In any case, I do not intend to involve myself by asking. And if it is all the same to you, I would prefer that we left before the mortician returns.”

  As Eddie observed the corpse it gave me no little satisfaction to see him extract his handkerchief and wrap it over his nose and mouth. For my part, having breathed the stench of a battlefield hospital tent, a morgue is no more unpleasant than a fertilized field.

  Removing his handkerchief from his face, Eddie reached into an inside pocket and produced a pewter flask. “I think a sip of brandy is in order.”

  “Thank you, no.” I refrained from telling him that I was a member of the Temperance Brotherhood, for it would only invite ridicule.

  After drinking deeply, he peered down at the wretched face and bare, luminous shoulders, with an expression of such sadness that I could hardly credit his next utterance.

  “Open her mouth, Willie.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I said, open her mouth.”

  “What the devil for?”

  “So that you can see for yourself. That is my evidence, suh.”

  “I assure you that rigor mortis has taken place. The jaw will not move in the slightest.”

  “Open just the lips, then. Do it now, damn it!”

  The latter request contained such a note of preemption that I could not but obey. Doubly grateful that the mortician on duty had absented himself for a very long luncheon, I reached down and with my fingers pulled apart the two dry flaps of skin, revealing a set of gums like strips of overboiled beef.

  “Do you see that?”

  “What are you referring to?”

  “She is toothless.”

  “My dear fellow,” I said, “I would hardly expect one of her class to possess a full set.”

  “She has no teeth at all, Willie.”

  “Are you sure?” I bent down to peer into the empty hole and, sure enough, there was not a tooth to be found. Even more curious, on closer inspection it appeared that the gums were dotted with dry, bloodless wounds, indicating that the extractions had occurred after death.

  Poe reached into his coat pocket, extracted a square envelope, opened it, and turned it upside down. The teeth clattered like tiny bullets on the cobblestone floor.

  I do not remember what happened after that.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  * * *

  Philadelphia

  Text of a speech delivered by Mr. Finn Devlin of the Irish Brotherhood to the Hibernian Society, Moyamensing, Philadelphia County:

  American Friends, never let it be said that England did justice to Ireland. The little freedom we have achieved was extorted by force, from men opposed to us on principle.

  Before God, I speak only of what I myself have seen. In Ireland, I watched the most absurd, disgusting tyranny. I have seen troops practicing the most cowardly oppression upon civilized men of all ranks and conditions. I have seen twelve men hanged in Dublin for sedition—not against Ireland, but against England. In my county, Tyrone, I have seen thirty houses burnt in a single night.

  Oh, I met with Napier Tandy

  An he took me by the hand

  He said hows dear old Ireland

  How now does she stand?

  She’s the most distressful country

  That ever yet was seen

  They’re hangin’ men and women there

  For wearin’ o the Green.

  My fellow Irish: we have bought Ireland with our blood.

  Ah, say the holy fathers, but ye must nae shed blud.

  I tell you, gentlemen, if it were possible to collect all the innocent blood shed by the imperial beast in one great reservoir, the queen and her council might swim in it.

  I swear by the blood of the murdered patriots who have gone before me, had I one thousand pounds, one thousand men, I would be in Erin today. But like you I have been forced to seek a more friendly port.

  And so I came to Philadelphia, home of the Liberty Bell. And what have I found?

  I found a little Protestant London made of red brick. With public buildings that are bad imitations of their British counterparts. Stately homes that would not look out of place in Regent’s Park.

  I have seen your fetid, squalid courts, your alley hovels and whorehouses in Port Richmond, Southward, and here in Moyamensing—a faithful imitation of the Seven Dials and the slums of Whitechapel.

  And everywhere I have seen the same prejudice: a bigotry every bit as foul. No white men in America are so stigmatized as the Irish—we foreign paupers, we motley multitudes, we white niggers of America.

  As every Irishman knows, there are two landlords to oppress you—the landlord who owns your land, and the governor who owns him.

  I swear that we of the Irish Brotherhood were summoned by Almighty God for one purpose—to carry the battle for freedom to the New World, that we might give voice to the question: By what right does England rule Ireland? And by what right do the Protestants rule Philadelphia?

  Fellow Irishmen, I wil
l now pass among you with my hat outstretched. I beseech you to think upon your homeland and what she has suffered, and to give as your heart and your heritage dictate.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  * * *

  Baltimore

  Do you have any brandy Willie?” “I am a Son of Temperance. I thought I told you that.”

  “No, you did not. Well, you’d better have something. Merciful heaven, do you have these seizures often?”

  I opened my eyes. We seemed to be in my rooms. I seemed to be lying on my couch, before my fire, with a pot of tea on the serving table.

  Surely one would remember having climbed five sets of stairs …

  “You are drifting again, Willie. Take some tea.”

  “How is it that I am here?”

  “In the morgue you took some sort of fit. You have been in and out ever since.”

  I peered at my dusty objects and lumps of furniture. In my customary chair lay Poe’s walking stick and valise: therefore, we must have stopped in his room on the way here. Idly, I picked up the walking stick; to my surprise it was of the type that concealed a sword. Despite everything, a part of Eddie Poe was still a West Point man.

  “Did you make tea and set the fire?” I asked.

  “No, Willie, you did. Do you not remember?”

  “Of course. Of course, I remember now.” This was emphatically not the truth. “Would you pass me my case, please?”

  I opened my alligator bag and extracted a vial of tincture of cocaine. Taken with tea, the medicine soon improved my level of alertness and my nervous tone. As I moved to a seated position, I saw Eddie take several drops for himself.

  For a moment it occurred to me that every word he said thus far could have been, and probably was, a lie. Even having suffered a delirium it was not beyond my notice that, for a patient in the throes of a nervous mania, Eddie seemed remarkably lucid and canny. In fact, somehow we seemed to have switched positions, with Eddie the doctor and I the patient.

  Again I remembered having experienced a similar sensation at the age of twelve—that Eddie might be leading me into a world I did not wish to enter, just to see what might happen.

  “Answer me truthfully, Eddie, if that is possible: What do you want from me? What do you want me to do?”

  “May I conclude, suh, that you no longer think me insane?”

  “To the extent that you are capable of rational planning—or should I say scheming—yes. Yet a man can undertake a rational plan for irrational reasons.”

  “True. At the same time, you must admit I am at an unfair disadvantage, trying to prove a negative. How does one prove he is not abnormal? What could I possibly say to reassure you?”

  “You might begin by telling me how it is you find yourself here. How you came to be lying in the gutter in front of Gunner’s Hall, on election night, in an apparent condition of nervous collapse.”

  “I am being pursued by Fenian Irishmen. They are trying to kidnap me.”

  “This happened in Baltimore?”

  “No, in Philadelphia. It was in connection with a piece of work I am ashamed to talk about. I came to Baltimore to escape them, and to view the evidence in the morgue with my own eyes.”

  “Do you suggest that she was murdered by the Irish?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Why?”

  “Because someone paid them to. Surely you do not think the Irish capable of planning something as insidious as this.”

  “Something as insidious as what?”

  “The process by which I am to be ruined.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand you.”

  Poe looked at me with pupils like plates: “My dear fellow, do you think that I do?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  * * *

  Philadelphia

  Text of a speech delivered by Mr. Finn Devlin of the Irish Brotherhood to the Philopatrian Society, Philadelphia:

  My friends, as a newcomer to your country it has come as a shock to discover that there has been no American Revolution.

  You may laugh, but it is not a joke. The imperial presence occupies America as completely as in 1775. In 1849, America is a shell of a republic. Put your ear to her, and you will hear “Rule Britannia.”

  For a sense of America’s true position we have only to look to France, America’s sister in freedom, whose citizens have proclaimed a New French Republic and rid themselves of the autocrat who stole the throne.

  Or let us look to Prague, Rome, Berlin—where the spirit of liberty has set explosions in the streets. Or Vienna, whose emperor fled in terror and whose serfs have been set free.

  As Mr. Washington said, Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

  But how thrives liberty in the United States of America? What can one divine about a republican government led by a party whose members unashamedly refer to themselves as Whigs? And how thrive the serfs on this side of the ocean— America’s niggers, black, red, and white?

  Tyranny, it seems, when it begins to take root, is also a plant of rapid growth.

  Irish-Americans, you were taken to these shores by Almighty God for one purpose—to kindle the New American Revolution. That is the meaning of our suffering. That is our God-given task.

  My associate, Lieutenant O’Reilly, will now pass among you. Think upon your homeland and what she has suffered, and give as your heart, your courage, and your patriotism dictate …

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  * * *

  Baltimore

  It has been observed by Gerber, among others, how a sudden injury or shock to the system can strain the mind to the point of delirium—symptoms resulting not so much from the disturbance itself as from the subsequent flight of the imagination into realms of terror that have little to do with the instigating event. This, and the concentrating effect of the cocaine, would account for the behavior of my friend: long stretches of total lucidity, followed by a sudden collapse into delusion and disarray, like a man in a whirlpool.

  “Forgive me, Eddie, but you have spent the past hours dropping dreadful hints, with no evidence other than a nameless female cadaver and a bag of someone’s teeth.”

  “I was about to explain when you collapsed. You really must have that seen to.”

  “I shall see to myself if you don’t mind. This is about the cadaver and the teeth.”

  “I warn you that it is horrible …” His face briefly assumed the expression of a man in the throes of great distress, genuine or not.

  “If you are going to become fevered and excitable, as your doctor I cannot permit you to continue.”

  Nodding agreement, he produced from his valise a number of envelopes, in bundles wrapped with twine. He opened one bundle and extracted an envelope. Opening each envelope, he withdrew several squares of newsprint, which he carefully unfolded and laid out on the tea table side by side.

  “What is this, Eddie? Are you about to tell my fortune?”

  Poe shook his head with a bitter laugh and turned one of the clippings to face me. It was from the Baltimore Sun. “Read this, and tell me if you see any mention of missing teeth.”

  BODY FOUND

  FELL’S POINT—— The corpse of a woman was discovered Wednesday morning by workmen in an alley near the City Dock. It has been learned by the Church Times that the victim was a “fallen woman” and that she had been “interfered with.”

  “A most disturbing incident,” said Constable Dilts, the officer at the scene. “And a reminder of the wages of sin.”

  On the back of the clipping had been written, “Berenice”—the title of one of Eddie’s more tasteless efforts, in which a monomaniac becomes obsessed with the teeth of his once-beautiful, ailing wife, and pulls them out while she is in a cataleptic condition and he in a trance. Reading it caused the hairs on my arms to stand on end, and for a time I developed an unhealthy fascination for women’s teeth.

  “Answer me this, Willie: Who would know about the poor woman’s missing teeth, other than her mu
rderer?”

  IT HURTS A man’s dignity to think that a friendship (or a marriage for that matter) can endure simply for lack of an alternative. Yet that is possibly what determined our long-standing association, at least from my point of view.

  I had no boyhood companion other than Eddie Poe. Were it not for his company I might never have left the house. Part of my attachment must have stemmed from simple gratitude, for including me in the Butcher Cats; and I can still summon up a lingering aftertaste of the elation I experienced, the day he swam from Ludlow’s Wharf to Warwick.

  Yet I despised him too, and not only for his theft of Mother’s affection. When I was not blaming myself for her death, I blamed him. Nothing in our house—certainly not Father nor I—inflamed her imagination the way Eddie did. Except for Eddie, our house was a model of restraint and responsibility and self-control. He was the rat in the henhouse, the one who created chaos.

  Yet our association continued through school, and though he graduated a year before I did, we exchanged letters thereafter and remained, outwardly at least, the best of friends; so that upon my own graduation I joined him at United States Military Academy, West Point, where we arranged to room together.

  However, only a few weeks into our first term I began to observe an alteration in my friend’s temperament, and from that point my spirit struggled to wriggle free of his grasp.

  During our year’s separation Eddie had acquired an overbearing sense of his own intellectual superiority. In conversation, his manner was aloof and dismissive. He delighted in gulling anyone he regarded as his inferior (there were many), and was soundly resented for it. For a time a rumor circulated about the college that he was a descendent of Benedict Arnold, such was the popular estimation of his character.