Marc Olden: Poe must die

“Noticed that didja?” Tom Lowery sneered, then swallowed more oysters, which at six cents a dozen were among the cheapest of foods. He was a hulking, bearded man in a tattered derby, hobnail boots which he used effectively in fights and a filthy, food stained white shirt long minus its collar and studs. Poe found him to be the most stomach churning of the three ghouls. Lowery was said to have raped his own daughter, then sexually abused the small girl child who had resulted from that rape.

Even now, he looked up from his oysters and gin at the child whore who peered through the oil lamp lit darkness for customers. Sproul said, “None a that, Tom. To business first.”

Sylvester Pier said, “Paid to notice things, he is, ‘cause Mr. Poe here is a writer.” The respect in Pier’s voice was a mild shock to Poe.

“Read somethin’ once,” said Pier.

Once would seem the sum total of your attempts at reading, thought Poe.

“Somethin’ of yours, it was. ‘Bout a bird.”

“I hates fuckin’ birds.” Lowerv spoke with his mouth full.

“Mr. Poe writes good about birds,” continued Pier. “This was some sort of poem. ‘Bout a raven, I think. Yeah, a raven. Thought it was kinda nice.”

Poe pulled his black cloak tighter around him. Applause from a dullard, from a Hibernian vagabond to whom the picking of his very own nose must be ranked as a metaphysical achievement. Pier was nineteen, youngest of the three and wore the faded uniform of a commodore in the United States Navy-dark double-breasted frock coat, blue forage cap, dark blue trousers and a rusted, dull sword minus its scabbard. He was short, stocky, cheerful and reminded Poe of a hand puppet. Pier’s clean shaven and pleasant face appeared to possess what little decency existed in the three grave robbers.

Poe, observant, deductive, sensed that Sylvester Pier was a mental defective. How else to explain the youth’s choice of trade and companions. Or his eternal, idiotic smile or his wearing the uniform of an American naval officer and sitting with a gray mongrel dog in his lap. The dog’s ears had been sliced off; it was a fighter, to be pitted against other dogs with the owners betting on the outcome. The ears had been removed to prevent them from being chewed off in combat.

“Join us in a glass, Mr. Poe.” Sylvester Pier’s wide smile seemed nailed in place. It was ear to ear and indicated nothing.

“Thank you, no.” Poe’s mouth went suddenly dry and he averted his eyes from the bottle of gin in Pier’s hand.

“Come now, sir, you are no son of temperance. That’s for sure.”

Poe shook his head in emphatic refusal. Alcohol. My cup of frenzy. The smallest amount of liquor was enough to carry him into the arms of personal demons and such an embrace had always proven destructive. He always resisted, always fought the desire to rush to those devils that were his very own, but in the end he always succumbed. Alcohol had not pushed him into sorrow; sorrow had pushed him to drink, a bitter truth understood by few in Poe’s life.

He was thirty-nine, his health and creative powers waning after a life of unending poverty and personal hell and he drank because this was the only way to survive such an existence. He drank because he feared becoming as insane as his sister Rosalie, an adult whose mind had never gone beyond that of a twelve-year-old. He drank because publishers had cheated him during his entire writing career, because critics had insultingly found his work “learned and mystical,” because the American public was moronic and insensitive, a mass of idiots with tobacco juice for brains and the desire to read nothing more complicated than an Indian head penny.

He drank because it made him sick to his stomach to see fortune and praise heaped on talents inferior to his, talents which couldn’t draw a straight line in mud with a stick. He drank because he had never made more than $800 for a year’s work in his life.

Why did Poe “sip the juice”? Because his adored wife Virginia had died much too young, as had his beloved mother and his stepmother as well. He drank to forget and no man had more reason to.

But he could not forget that Rachel trusted him to settle this matter involving her dead husband. Rachel, who even now warmed his heart and gave him some small reason to hope that life held a little joy for him. Again Poe shook his head in refusal to Sylvester Pier’s offer of gin. The lower classes called the drink “Blue Ruin” or “Strip-and-go-naked.”

“Our little poet musta taken the pledge. He’s got a nice big T beside his name, I bet.” T for total abstinence. Teetotaler. Tom Lowery didn’t like little Mr. Poe of the soft voice and precious manners and actin’ like a bloody aristocrat and him all in shabby clothes, too. Lowery could squash him like a bug if he had to. Wasn’t much to the man. No more than 5’8”, 130 pounds and pale as the snow fallin’ outside.

Lowery bit into a hardboiled egg without removing the shell. Poe was sickly looking, like somethin’ that belonged under the earth and away from decent people. The poet had brown hair, gray eyes, thin lips and a long nose, too long if you ask Lowery. Shouldn’t be puttin’ it in other people’s business. High, wide forehead you could paint a sign on and a mustache right beneath that long nose of his. Lowery blinked. Poe’s unblinking gray eyes were on his.

Lowery, annoyed, stopped chewing the boiled egg. Bits of white shell were caught in his beard. “’Ere now, what the hell you starin’ at? You keep on doin’ that and I’m comin’ across the table and bite yer goddam nose off.” Gloomy looking bastard, Lowery thought. Big head on him, too.

Poe’s gentle voice had traces of a southern accent. “You eat like a Hun, sir.” Playing with violence as always, aren’t you Eddy?

Lowery frowned, uncertain, then deciding yes, he had been insulted. He grinned. “Don’t know what a Hun is, but I know what a drunk is and that’s you, me little man. Seen you in a few rum palaces, drunk as a lord and ravin’ at the top of yer lungs and nobody able to understand a goddam word of what you is yellin’ about.”

Poe pointed across the table with his walking stick. “Guard the mongrel well, Mr. Pier. You egg-eating friend may well press his sexual attentions upon it before the evening has ended.” He enjoyed the danger; even though it terrified him, he enjoyed it.

An angry Tom Lowery inhaled, his eyes almost closed. Hamlet Sproul placed a small hand against Lowery’s chest to keep him seated. “Stay, Tom. The poet’s talent for abuse is well known and far superior to yours, I’m afraid. Words are his cannon and he is well supplied. Don’t push Tom too far, Mr. Poe. He’s a violent man.”

Poe’s eyes went to Sproul. “I demand proof you have the body.”

Sproul petted Pier’s gray mongrel. “Thought you might.” He reached inside his long, green coat and took out the brooch. Opening it, he kept it in the palm of his hand, extending his arm across the table to Poe. “This here was buried with Mr. Lazarus. No you can’t have it, but you go back and tell the grievin’ widow you saw it. She’ll know what you are talkin’ about, since she was the one who laid it on his breast just before the earth covered him.”

The brooch was gold, trimmed in small white pearls and opened to show tiny black and white daguerreotypes of Rachel and her husband. “Nice little pictures of Mr. and Mrs. Lazarus.” A grinning Sproul snapped the brooch closed.

“Got more for you to look at, poet. Under the table. Go on. ‘Ere, Tom, take the lamp and hold it down there so’s the poet can see what’s what.”

Poe shifted on his hard, wooden chair. No gas light in this hell hole. Five Points had none of the modern conveniences enjoyed by the rest of New York. The grog shop was lit by sperm lamps-lamps filled with whale oil, one to a table and three on the bar. The darkness in here was like that of a mine shaft. The two windows had been whitewashed to prevent prying eyes from seeing inside and all liquor was served from a plank placed on two empty barrels. The sanded floor was wet from snow covered boots entering and leaving the grog shop and the small room smelled of musty dampness, cheap alcohol and smoke from the oil lamps.