POE MUST DIE (20 page)

Poe yielded to the terror of the grave; he punched the coffin until all feeling left his bloodied fists. “Air! For God’s sake, air! I beg you, someone help me! I am buried alive! Aliiiiiiiive!”

“Alright, squire, alright. It’s alright now. Come on, wakey, wakey. Mr. Poe! Mr. Poe! It’s me, Figg. Let’s see both yer eyes. Open wide. That’s it, that’s it.”

Poe looked up from his bed to see Figg sitting on the edge, a worried look on his bulldog face. Figg handed him a towel. “You been nightmarin’, squire. Tossin’, turnin’, yellin’ yer fool ‘ead off. ‘Ere, dry yerself. You’re wet, all in a lather like some race horse whats done its best. Woke me up, you did and probably the rest of the bleedin’ unfortunates in this bleedin’ hotel. You always carry on like this when you’re ‘spose to be sleepin’?”

Poe, bare-chested, heart racing much too fast, quickly sat up.
Nightmare.
He pressed the palms of both hands against the sides of his head. “Need a drink. Rum, whiskey, anything.”

“Nay to that, squire. Alcohol puts you too much sleepy bye from what I can gather and I can’t ‘ave that, no sir. Got some water in the basin over there and I can open the window and bring you a handful of snow. But you ain’t touchin’ spirits whilst you and me is associated.”

Poe hung his head and inhaled deeply. “The thought, sir, of continued association with you is most unpleasant.”

“Awww now, squire, that don’t come from the heart. You and me is on the same quest. Ain’t it me what’s woke you up? You were carryin’ on like a man possessed.”

“I am indeed a man possessed. I need drink, sir. I need stimulants. I also have need for stimulating and intoxicating conversation and again you offer me abstinence, forced abstinence, since you, sir, are an exceedingly unphilosophical man.”

Poe, tensed face shiny with perspiration, let his eyes get used to the dim gaslight. A look at the curtained window told him it was still dark outside and that he was still in a room at the Hotel Astor with Pierce James Figg. He took a deep breath, held it, then exhaled. He was calmer now, but he didn’t want to go back to sleep. Not just yet.

There were always nights like this, nights when his fears mounted a deadly attack on his sanity. Poe feared everything: a hostile world that had rejected and impoverished him; the insanity that had already laid deadly hands on members of his family and could well reach out for him. He feared the demons lurking in his tortured mind, that spewed forth the incredible imaginings no American writer had ever produced. He feared loneliness, he feared dying without ever having been recognized for being an original talent. He feared being buried alive.

But he did not fear Figg. Not anymore. Figg was beneath poe, a brute masquerading as man, something barely animate that smelled of sweat and cheap food, a thing that lacked intelligence and culture and whose thick skull contained a barren void posing as a mind.

He glared at the boxer. “I need relief sir, from myself, from you.”

Figg grinned. “Now that’s all of us what’s in the room, ain’t it. Mr. Poe is displeased by what he sees in God’s universe and would the rest of us in the world kindly leave and allow Mr. Poe to carry on by his lonesome.”

Figg stood up, yawned, stretching his arms towards the ceiling. “Dear me, ain’t life hard. Mind what I said; your lady friend, Mrs. Coltman can stand a bit of lookin’ after, ‘cause if Dr. Parrididdle—”

“Paracelsus.”

“Yeah him. If him and Jonathan is one and the same, well your lady is close enough to this particular fire to get more than her pretty little fingers burned. I know you ain’t happy with a common man like me tellin’ a scholarly gent like yerself what he should be doin’ and all, but you just give some thought to Jonathan carvin’ on the widow Coltman. Heart cut out, liver cut out, oh me, oh my!”

Poe snorted. “Aut Caesar, aut nihil.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Latin. Uttered by Cesare Borgia. ‘Either Caesar or nothing.’ To modernize it, “follow Figg or travel not at all.’”

“Yes sir, I can see where you would say that. I ain’t askin’ you to grieve for my dead. All I wants is for you to help me somewhat and I will be puttin’ things right meself. But you, Mr. Poe’s You be a most proud man, now that’s a fact. Ain’t nobody goin’ to tell you what to do or order you about, no sir. Been that way all yer life, I bet.”

“You seem to disapprove, not that I give a damn about your opinion.”

“Tell you a little story. Back in the days when I was likely to shake a loose leg, meanin’ I did a bit of travellin’. I was with this fair that went up north of England. Small towns we played, puttin’ on a good show for the folks. Tumblers, acrobats, fat ladies, horse racin’ and gypsies what could tell yer future for a bit of silver.”

Figg nodded, remembering. Poe watched the boxer’s right hand go to his bare chest, the back of his hand stroking three six-inch scars on the right side of his rib cage, scars that were now a faded white. In the flickering gaslight, Poe found the scars on Figg’s face, chest and arms repugnant as well as fascinating. For brief seconds he empathized with the pain the man had obviously endured in his miserable existence. But he forced that small bit of compassion from his mind and resumed listening indifferently to what Figg was telling him.

“Now this here fair I was with was nothin’ like the elaborate establishment of Master Phineas Taylor Barnum, which we visited tonight. Master Barnum has done himself most splendid, but let me tell me own tale—”

“I am all agog.”

“Now I had me a little booth, see, just like me father and his father and his father before him. Nothing different. I charge a few pennies to teach a man the use of knife, cudgel, broadsword and towards the end, see, I puts up a pound or two as prize money and I says that any man in the crowd what feels he is able, let him come forward and challenge me in boxin’. Two rounds, no more. Usually there is some local boy what thinks he is good with his fists and his friends encourage him to try his luck. But the lad don’t last long ‘cause it ain’t just what you do with your body, see.” Figg tapped his forehead with a thick finger. “Man got to use his mind in the ring.”

Poe said, “For the present, I shall take your word that anyone stepping into a prize ring is possessed of a mind. Do continue. I find this account of your past life most entertaining.”

I crave drink, thought Poe, and instead I get a pugilist reeking of sentiment. So desperately did he crave alcohol, that Poe would gladly have downed a cup of
New Jersey Champagne,
that putrid concoction of turnip juice, brandy and sugar. A disgusting blend enjoyed by those with puny purses and little pride in what they swallowed.

Still sitting up in the bed, Poe clenched both fists under the sheet and wondered what harm he had ever done to Charles Dickens to deserve such a fate as Pierce James Figg.

“Now, Mr. Poe, I am comin’ to the point of this story. There was a very important man in England, or so he believed himself to be. This important man owned a huge circus and ofttimes our small little fair would be in competition with him. It was always a race to see who would get to a town first, him or us. Whoever got there first, naturally got the customers’ money first.”

“I am impressed by your logic. Do go on.”

“Well, one day we gets to a town up north near Manchester and we makes our pitch, we sets up camp. We got a good spot but it is a spot that this important man wants for his very own circus. So what does he do? He sends his wagons speedin’ down a hill and crashin’ into ours, damagin’ our goods, our property not to mention our very lives.”

“Not to mention.”

“So what do we do to this most important man what has got a lot of pride?”

“Ah, now I see. The story of a proud man brought to heel.”

“Indeed, Mr. Poe. What do we do? Now you gots to understand that the travellin’ life ain’t for the timid soul. It is a hard existence and them what takes it up ain’t your every day petunia pickers. What we do is we get some clubs, some tools and we sneaks up behind the wagons belongin’ to this most important man and we gets to openin’ them. We starts to let his animals loose. Lions, leopards, elephants, we opens a few locks and before you know it, this most important man is weepin’ and wailin’, not to mention bein’ somewhat terrified ‘cause now some of these very valuable and I might add, very hungry animals, is strollin’ about the countryside.”

Poe found himself smiling.

“Now Mr. Poe, this very important man, him and his henchmen are forced to stop whatever they is doin’ and set to work recoverin’ all these very valuable—”

Poe chuckled in spite of himself. “And hungry—”

“Indeed, sir. And hungry animals. Need I say we never had anymore trouble with that most important man, leastwise whilst I was with the fair.”

“Those scars on your rib cage, were they—”

“Ah Mr. Poe, Master Charles Dickens was correct, sir. You are a most observant gent. These here scars decoratin’ me body was a present from a lion what I turned loose that day and by way of thankin’ me he waved a cheery bye. Except he has got these claws, see, and each one is as sharp as a Jew’s nose for money and I failed to remove meself from his way of passage at the precise moment the lion would have preferred I so move.”

Poe fell back on the bed and roared. He cackled, he shrieked. Figg’s silly story released the tension caused by bad dreams and fear, tension over concern for Rachel Coltman, tension from a growing fear of the mysterious and deadly Jonathan.

Pierce James Figg and his lion.

Phineas Taylor Barnum and his bald eagle.

Leaving the Astor Hotel earlier tonight, Poe and Figg had plunged into the Broadway crowds, joining them in making a precarious trek across muddy Broadway jammed with horses, sleighs, carriages. Humans and vehicles all seemed to be heading to Barnum’s brightly lit American Museum which shone in the darkness like a five-story jewel. Here Figg hoped to find those associates of Jonathan he had pursued from London. Poe, who had a slight acquaintance with Barnum, was to make the introductions.

Phineas Taylor Barnum, the man who had made the American Museum the number one entertainment attraction in all of America, as well as one of the wonders of the world, agreed to meet the two men. But he insisted that business not stop because of mere conversation. Barnum, American’s first and most bombastic showman, worked seven days a week promoting both his exhibits and his ego, an ego Poe found too large to be contained by the huge museum, which Barnum claimed housed over six hundred thousand examples of the freakish and outlandish.

Barnum was an amiable fraud, a champion hoaxer and humbug specialist who always managed to entertain and therefore offended no one. He took your twenty-five cents at the door and delivered illusions, jokes, songs, dances and the most interesting nonsense available. He had created what he called “the show business,” none of it as impressive as Phineas Taylor Barnum himself, a man who had made self advertising an art form. He was world famous, wealthy and a believer in his own maxim that “There is a sucker born every minute.” He should have added, thought Poe, that there is also a Barnum waiting outside of the womb to fleece the newborn fool.

The thirty-seven-year-old highly successful showman was 6’2”, fleshy and running to fat, with a nose the size of a potato, blue eyes, full mouth and fast disappearing curly hair. Tonight he wore a suit of bright pink squares outlined in dark green, a frilly yellow shirt, red cravat and his squeaky voice hit Poe’s ears like an icicle, particularly when the squeak was intense, as it was at this particular moment.

“The goat is shitting!” Barnum’s heated squeak was aimed at a pockmarked blond youth who cringed in the doorway of the small basement room. “I know goddam well the goat is shitting! What I summoned you down here to learn, most callow youth, is
why
the goat is shitting and what is being done to stem this particular tide.”

“Mr. Barnum, we have tried everything imaginable to get the goat to stop—”

“Dear Homer. Tonight on the five stories of these very premises are thousands of Americans, a goodly portion of whom will undoubtedly repair to the lecture hall where they will expect our goat to tap out a lively, though simple tune on a toy piano. Now get upstairs and do not reappear in my presence until you are able to assure me that the goat will not fail those Americans who have come to expect P. T. Barnum to deliver in full.”

As the young man turned and fled up the stairs, Poe watched Barnum give his attention to a pair of Negro men who sat at a long wooden table stuffing a dead bald eagle. The smell was horrible; the stench from the dead bird along with the elements used to preserve his carcass threatened to mangle Poe’s nostrils and leave him prostrate on the floor. Neither of the coloreds, each of whom wore a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, impressed Poe as being speedy at his task, which is what Barnum was exhorting them to be.

“Hannibal and Job, may I be allowed to inform you pair of stone-fingered Africans that you are faced with
one
eagle, not a flock of same. Cease handling the deceased as though it were made of porcelain. Stuff, then sew. Stuff, then sew. And you will both receive your reward in heaven, if not on this earth.”

Barnum touched a handkerchief to his nostrils. “Damn bird is more offensive in death than he ever was in life. I pay these darkies four dollars a week and it’s rare I get as much as twelve hours a day out of them, let alone more.”