Imp: Being the Lost Notebooks of Rufus Wilmot Griswold in the Matter of the Death of Edgar Allan Poe

by Douglas Vincent Wesselmann

  The pharmacist clucked his tongue in disapproval. “I thought you said he was your property. I suppose you have the money. Or do I ask the spade?”

  “I assure you,” I replied impatiently, “I have the money, good man. Just dispense the medicine and refrain from commenting on my or my servant’s quality.” I slapped a twenty-dollar gold down on the counter.

  “I beg your pardon, sir. I meant no offense.” He turned and disappeared behind a tall shelf-case of dark wood. “It’s just that you can’t be too easy on them.”

  “Them?” I asked.

  “The blacks. You can’t go nice. There’s too many of them. Hell’s buckles, there must be a thousand freemen in Baltimore city alone. And of course the shackled horde.” There was a clatter of glass as he mixed and filled my order. “All them damned slaves, they can get ideas. Don’t you think they can’t. Some say they’re ignorant, stupid, slow even. Those folks aren’t thinking right. That’s the danger. These niggers, like yours there, they’re smart enough to see when there’s weakness in their betters. The white man has to be firm. Show the whip hand and use it. It’s for the best. To keep the peace. Lord knows what would happen if they…” He reemerged from behind the shelving carrying four brown glass bottles. His words were inaudible for a moment over the clatter as he set them down. “…Just saying they can smell the fear, so you’ve got to be standing over them all the time.”

  “Yes, thank you,” I said.

  “That’s eight dollars. I’ll get your return, sir.” Back he went behind the wood shelves. Best to keep the cash box away from the public, I assumed.

  “Bring me the bottles, Griswold,” Jupiter called from the front of the store.

  “Of course.” I obeyed without hesitation.

  Jupiter was kneeling in front of Poe, who was as limp as a cornhusk doll in the leather chair. “Give me one.”

  I handed the small brown bottle to him, and it almost vanished as his thick fingers wrapped around it. He grabbed the cork stopper with his teeth and pulled it free. At that point I noticed a small bowl that he had placed on the arm of the chair. Sitting on the bottom of the white porcelain dish was some fine blackish powder.

  “What’s that?”

  He didn’t answer. Carefully pouring out one then perhaps two ounces of the laudanum into the bowl, he let the mixture sit for a moment until of a sudden it began to bubble. Tiny, energetic bubbles speckled the surface, then died away. Jupiter raised the bowl to Poe’s lips.

  “Surely, you’re not giving him half a bottle. That will be entirely too much of the drug.”

  “Be quiet.”

  I was quiet. I watched as the viscous liquid leaked into Poe’s flaccid mouth. First his mouth twitched, then his eyes opened. Half a sip later, he grabbed at the bowl and downed the remainder. Poe stood up so suddenly that I fell back and bumped into the potbelly stove behind me.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!! An unholy scream escaped Poe’s mouth – a scream from the depths of his soul. The glass doors on the apothecary’s cabinets rattled.

  Then silence.

  “What in the name of God...” The proprietor looked on in amazement from behind his counter.

  “In the name of God!!!!!” Poe yelled out the words. The volume was deafening. That a man who only moments ago could not hold his eyes open could produce such a sound was incredible to me.

  “Poe?” I tried to calm him.

  “Poe! Poe! Poe!” He screamed his own name.

  “Jesus preserve us,” said the apothecary.

  “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” Poe stood with his eyes unblinking, his arms thrown back, and his back arched to the point of breaking.

  “I’m going for the constable if he doesn’t be quiet.” The proprietor moved towards his coat.

  I backed away from the screaming man, afraid that he may begin thrashing about. Only Jupiter remained calm. Sitting on his haunches directly in front of Poe, the Negro made no move to restrain the raging poet. He just watched calmly, as if measuring the effect of the laudanum and the mysterious powders he had administered.

  “Jesus!” Poe’s body started to twist.

  With a careful, calculated motion, Jupiter reached to his jacket lapel. He pulled his fingers away slowly, and I saw that he held a long, thin needle – like a hat needle. In fact, it appeared slightly longer, but not unusual in any way – as a needle, that is. What was unusual is what Jupiter did next.

  Poe screamed again, “Jesus!” and twisted back towards the black man.

  With a swift, fluid motion, Jupiter plunged the needle into Poe’s chest. I was amazed. At first I did not trust my own eyes. But I had seen it. The needle had pierced his vest, his shirt, and certainly, inches of the steel had penetrated deep.

  “Jesus,” Poe said. He did not scream the name. “Jesus.” He looked down at the needle protruding from his body. “Jesus.” He sat down slowly in the leather chair. “Jesus.”

  I was horrified by the image of the needle’s exposed tip, pulsating in rhythm with Poe’s struggling heart.

  “Is this cure or crucifixion?” I shouted at Jupiter. “Spare him! Spare me!” My eyes lost focus.

  Jupiter turned towards me – his eyes brown and flashing with a glint of jasper. “I can spare no one.” His voice was almost a whisper, but it shook me as if he had shouted. Then with a slight smile and almost a chant, he intoned, “Similia Similibus curantur.”

  “Cure the bite with the fur.” I understood. That is, I chose the rational over the miraculous. This was no resurrection. Surely, no holy stone was rolled away. I grabbed at the acceptable. “Such a drunkard’s cure,” I muttered, under what little breath remained in my lungs. “A drunkard’s cure,” I repeated, as if to say the thing made it true.

  Jupiter took his eyes from mine and looked again at Poe, who gave one final shudder. Jupiter reached over and pulled the trembling needle free in the same swift motion he had used to place it just so, in the center of Poe’s body.

  Poe stared at the black man. His eyes were now clear, open, and alert. With a birdlike suddenness his head snapped towards me. Poe cocked his head. He spoke.

  “So, Griswold, you’re here. Good.”

  Chapter 8

  September 28, 1849 6:35 p.m. - The Essence of Phrenological Combativeness -

  Having witnessed such a maddened scene as might have been found in Radcliff’s haunted Mysteries of Udolpho, my state of mind was agitated. As I watched Jupiter pierce Poe with the needle, I was overpowered with vertigo. When Poe spoke, I felt a foreboding pass through my body like a frozen specter, and the cold claustrophobia of a poor, cursed man who awakes to find himself naked in the center of the labyrinth.

  “So, Griswold, you’re here. Good.”

  “Poe?” I saw him clearly. Yet the sense that the poet had changed, been transfigured, if you will, was inescapable. It was Poe, of course, but his eyes were wide and free of his characteristic leer. His prominent forehead was as pale as a pearl, and his dark brown hair had become pit-black. The lips were rose with warm blood and affected a smile that was not reflected on the whole of his face. His moustache had been snipped at by an awkward scissor and ran uneven beneath the thin, purpled veins visible on the tip of his nose. Yes, it was Poe.

  “Griswold, are you all right?” It seemed incongruous, but Poe asked me that question. “Griswold, are you all right?”

  “Poe?” I was supporting myself with my elbows, lying on my back on the tobacco-stained floor of the apothecary shop.

  “Ah, my cane, you have salvaged my cane. Very good.” Poe picked up the walking stick from where I had left it, leaning against his chair. He stroked the silver seraphim on the handle and muttered, “We’ll have need of angels.”

  I was still more than disoriented. My voice cracked. “Poe?”

  “Oh, do compose yourself, Griswold.”

  “They said you were murdered.”

  “Sailors are prone to tales, Griswold.” That was the totality of his response to
his shrouded removal from the Pocahontas. Poe turned to Jupiter. “So here we are in Baltimore, I assume.”

  “Yes, here we are in Mobtown,” Jupiter replied, while returning his envelope of powders to his pocket. “That was the deal.”

  “Such an Eden on Earth, don’t you think, my good man?” Poe ran his fingers through his hair. The tremor I had observed three months ago in New York was not in evidence.

  Jupiter snorted. He made no pretense of servility or even gave the slightest hint of his lower status. “We have work to do.”

  “Yes, of course.” Poe straightened his cravat. “You heard the man. Get up, Griswold. We have work to do.”

  Still in a somewhat disoriented state of mind, I gathered myself as best I could, while Jupiter purchased some odd herbs and leaves from the poor, intimidated owner of the shop. I cannot recall all the ingredients he procured, save the curious mention of some leaves of the Erythroxylon Coca bush.

  Thus provisioned with remedies and laudanum, we were soon back on Calvert Street and were making our way up the incline towards Barnum’s. The War Memorial column now towered ahead of us in the square. I was looking forward to the civilized retreat that my hotel would offer. Poe was seemingly recovered from whatever injury he may have sustained, and obviously Jupiter and he had some business to be about.

  Much to my consternation, Poe led us to the east off of Calvert Street. “But the hotel is just ahead,” I protested.

  “So it was,” replied Poe.

  “Then where are we going?” I asked.

  “Where the tale leads us,” laughed Poe.

  “Where you promised to go,” said Jupiter, walking close, half a stride, behind Poe.

  “Indeed. Indeed.” Poe’s eyes darted left and right, and he dashed across the street, turning us south again. “Where I promised to go.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked again, struggling to keep up and dodging a Landau that rattled north and splashed my pant leg with mud and worse.

  “Women.” Poe sniffed at the air, waved his cane in front of him, and picked up his pace again. “The women of Baltimore are known for their beauty, Griswold. Handsome women with secrets await us.”

  The daylight was fading fast. A lamplighter with his poled wick ignited a streetlight. The town-gas wrung from heated coal sprang to a blue, then yellow, and finally white light behind the glass lens at the top of the fluted iron pole. The pride of Baltimore, the “hydrogen” lamps, were being lit up and down the main streets.

  Poe stopped suddenly, mid-step, and began to shake. A tremor that began in his legs, rippled up to his trunk and to the very tip of his head. Jupiter, who had been walking on Poe’s heels, stumbled as Poe’s unexpected convulsion threw the big man off balance. The Negro regained his footing, and Poe settled again as his body calmed.

  Poe took a halting step and then another, but he was unsteady. Eyes half-open, the poet’s head was turned to the side, and he stared blankly at the people in the crowded streets as we passed. Jupiter had his hands on Poe’s shoulders, and he guided him like a mother pushing along a recalcitrant child.

  The pedestrians were somewhat less polite. The sight of a disoriented white man being so directed by a black man as if he were fetching a wheelbarrow full of buckwheat to the mill attracted no small number of curious looks from the passers by.

  “What’s your business, boy?” A man in a mud-speckled stovepipe hat asked.

  Jupiter didn’t slacken his stride.

  “My slave, sir,” I explained. “And a sick friend.”

  At the mention of the word “slave” Jupiter glowered at me. At the mention of the word “sick” the Baltimoreans gave us leeway.

  “Have the courtesy to keep your cattle off the sidewalk.” The man covered his mouth with a silk kerchief. He gave us a look of open contempt.

  “My pardon, sir.” I thought discretion was required.

  The summer had seen another outbreak of the cholera. They might be unconcerned walking through the runoff from the pigs in the alleyways or spit tobacco juice on their own shoes, but the thought of cholera gave them pause.

  We crossed the chaotic bustle of carriages, wagons, pushcarts, and mobs on Pratt Street, and Jupiter steered Poe, with his watchful eyes, and me, with my laboring lungs, into an alleyway. The smell of the harbor began to fade as the butt-to-jowl, brick and frame buildings in various states of repair all produced their own stronger odors of industry, sewage, and cramped human habitation.

  We made our way with as much dispatch as was possible in the unmarked narrow side streets, though the press of bodies made every step a calculation.

  Poe planted his heels. Jupiter was again brought up short. The Negro stopped pushing on the poet’s shoulders and we stopped, lost there in the dimly lit mews.

  “Here?” asked Jupiter.

  Poe’s voice was weak. “I don’t know. It’s been so long. I don’t know.”

  “You must do what we have come to do.” Jupiter’s words were a command.

  I was about to remonstrate with the African and demand he show more respect when the tow-headed boy who had bumped into me on Calvert reappeared. The lad was perhaps fifteen-years-old and husky. He had a droopy left eye and a small iron billy stuck in his rope belt. There was no smile on his face now as he stepped in front of us, and he was not alone.

  The nature of city streets is akin to the nervous system of a man. Subtle signals are sent by the humors that flow through the lymph ducts, and the body becomes aware of a biting mite, an ember on the back of the hand, or the stench of the plague. So must have the news of our strange fellowship spread ahead of our progress – for the city prepared us a welcome. A pack of young boys, poorly dressed in common-patched cotton, wearing cheaply-dyed flop hats, seemed to materialize out of the air itself and gather all about us.

  “What’s that nigger doing?” The tow-head shouted and pointed at Jupiter from a mound of stone coal that almost blocked the sidewalk, such as it was. “The nigger’s got a sick priest!” The tough pointed at Poe, clad all in black with a face as bloodless as dry whitewash. The boy called to his fellows, “A sick priest, boys.”

  Jupiter kept his stride and, with a swing of his left arm, swatted the boy off his perch with Poe’s small steamer trunk.

  “Hey!” The boy tumbled off the coal and landed flat on his back in a pile of scrap wood. “What?”

  “The nigger knocked Country!” yelled a dirt-crusted scamp in a tattered, red-striped shirt. “The coon knocked Country, boys!”

  We kept moving, even picking up the pace if that was possible. I hurried to stay close to my allies. Poe took a quick, ineffectual poke at one of the boys with his Malacca cane. There was no doubting the hostility in the air.

  We found ourselves in a narrower but no less busy mews that twisted one way, then the other. I trusted in Jupiter’s native sense of direction and, after a few turns, the alley opened onto another street that headed north again towards the square and my hotel.

  Or so it might have, had the scrappers not reappeared, as if by magic, in our path. Led by Country, now with his iron billy in his hand, the boys, armed with various sticks, boards, bats and even bricks, poured out of a leatherworks dock door and formed a line.

  “Time to answer us, nigger.” Country didn’t shout. His face was bent with anger, and his eyes looked older than his face. “Time to answer.”

  Jupiter backed up. I looked around for a way out, but on turning, there were more of the street boys behind us. Altogether a dozen or more surrounded us.

  “Don’t want no sick priests here in New Market territory,” said Country. “Don’t want no Africans acting with your fucking cheek, boy.”

  I stepped between Jupiter and the ruffian, thinking that reason might defuse the situation. “Now see here, we want no trouble here. We wish merely to go to our room at the Barnum.”

  “You can fuck yourselves and your fancy coat,” said Country, and he handed his hat to a smaller boy who was the last to emerge from the leathe
rworks. The towheaded tough had a misshapen skull, as if he’d had his head placed in some cruel vise and the injury had never healed. “This is New Market talking to your fancy arse…”

  “New Market?” came a voice from a shadowed doorway to our left. “You say it’s a New Market quarrel?” A big man in a frock coat with a velvet collar stepped out into the alley.

  The tow-headed gangster, who had been ready to step forward and make use of his iron billy, stopped dead in his intentions. “Billy Dick?”

  “Aye, Little Country.” The man sauntered into the space between myself and the mob of boys to my front. “Billy Dick it is. Big Billy Dick is here.” It was an announcement such as a medieval herald might have made. “Big Billy Dick is here.”

  “Mr. Dick, if I might ask…” I hoped to interject some reason into the situation. My voice quavered, and even in the cool cloudy late afternoon, I was perspiring.

  Jupiter had set down Poe’s luggage and, stooping a bit, assumed what I judged to be a fighting crouch, ready for any attack. Poe stood stock still, his hand on the silver angels of his cane.

  “Mr. Dick?” I stepped forward.

  Big Billy Dick didn’t look at me, but he did reply rudely, “Shut your flaming hole.” He hooked his thumbs into the side pockets of his vest. The fabric was worn silk with faded violet flowers worked across the swatch. The butt of a small pearl-handled pistol stuck in his waistband was revealed. “So, Little Country, where’s your brother? Does he know that you’re playing on my streets?”

  “He’s at the firehouse, Dick.”

  “And that is where?’

  Little Country was backing up a bit by that moment. Billy Dick kept moving towards him slowly. “On Eutaw Street.” The bravado was gone from the boy’s voice.

  “Which ain’t near here, you little piece of shit.”

  “New Market runs this side of the Falls,” came a voice from behind us.

  Dick spun around. “Oh fuck they do. Who thinks that? Step forward, you son-of-a-bitch. This is Regulator ground.”