Disquiet Heart

by Randall Silvis

  We had a ham and cabbage soup that first night, I think, with carrots and onions, the broth thickened by potato starch. Surely there was bread as well. Cider and tea. I paid little attention to the food, for I had no attention to spare.

  Susan was pleasant enough to me at first, friendly right from the start, though it was clear she viewed me as some harmless mongrel who had followed her father home because his hands smelled of fish. After all, here was a girl who counted a professor among her beaus. What would she want with a farm boy with callused hands?

  For the most part I kept quiet and listened to their conversation. My training as a child—the backhanded slap, the snap of the leather strop—had taught me the virtues of holding my tongue. Occasionally, when I gleaned an interesting bit of information from the shorthand talk between father and daughter, I would hazard a question, politely, intending to display my inquisitive intelligence yet not too soon reveal my desperate desire to know every aspect of Susan’s life.

  She worked weekdays at Miss Jones’s School for Young Ladies, located on Hand Street, under the bridge, no more than three blocks from where my feet had first touched Pittsburgh soil. She was an instructor for the younger girls, and in general an assistant to Miss Jones herself.

  Buck wrinkled up his sunburned nose when the headmistress’s name was mentioned. “‘We must have decorum,’” he said through his nose, his voice in falsetto, a nasally whine. “‘Decorum must be maintained.’”

  “Papa, you promised,” said Susan, but with head turned so as to conceal her stifled laugh.

  It was all the encouragement Buck required. “‘Miss Kemmer, is this your idea of decorum? That child’s hair is mussed, is it not? And that one—Child! Remove your finger from your nose at once! And the doorway, Miss Kemmer. There is a brutish-looking man on the threshold. Order him to leave, please. I will not have men gawking at me as if I am disrobed!’”

  Susan giggled. “That man is my father, Miss Jones.”

  “‘Your father! Oh my. He is a handsome brute, isn’t he?’”

  “She did not say that, Papa.”

  “You can bet she was thinking it though. I seen the way she looked me over. Every time I come by the place, in fact.”

  Susan rolled her eyes at me. “My father suffers from the delusion that he is irresistible to women.”

  “It is not a delusion.”

  “Which explains why there are so many of them lined up at our door.”

  “There’s none there, little miss, because I’ve worked so hard to chase them all away. I only need my one girl to make me happy.”

  She answered with a smile.

  I asked, “Is it only the two of you then?”

  She made no reply to this, nor did he. Some memories, no matter how old, always give us pause.

  I told her, “I lost both my folks a good while back.”

  “Gus,” she said, “I’m so sorry.”

  “Truth is, I never really knew my father. He went into jail for murder, never came back out. Was probably done away with in there himself. As for my mother … When I was ten I saw a man slit her throat.”

  She stared at me, horrified, her lovely mouth slightly open. Her father stared at me as well. I have to admit that I relished their horror.

  “I ended up killing that man myself,” I told them.

  At this her gaze softened. “You’re making this up.”

  “Oh, I killed him all right. Ran him through with a sword from a rich man’s house. He was after me and Poe, wanted us both dead. So really, I had no choice in the matter.”

  I could tell by the flicker of lights in her eyes that she did not believe me. “Poe?” she asked.

  “Edgar Allan Poe, the writer. He’s here in Pittsburgh, you know. We came here together from Philadelphia.”

  I thrilled to the way she looked at me now. “Gus, if you are making this up …”

  “I swear it’s true. We’re both staying with Dr. Brunrichter, up there in his castle on Ridge Avenue. The doctor set up a reading for Poe a couple of days ago. Today he threw him a picnic, which is where I was too before I came into town.”

  She put a hand to her bosom, that delicate but lovely bosom, and patted it as if to ease her breathing. I suppressed an urge to do the same, for I, too, just from looking at her so long, was very nearly out of breath.

  “She wanted to go to that reading,” her father told me. “Kept after Miss Jones to try to get them an invitation. Even asked her professor to try, didn’t you, Susie?”

  “He is not my professor, Papa. Though he might have been if he had been able to secure an invitation.”

  “I’ll take you to the next one,” I told her. “It’s this Saturday. At the Old Drury.”

  I should probably have felt guilty for waving Poe in front of her like a fat worm before a hungry bird. But love is its own excuse and its own forgiveness.

  Of course they insisted then that I recount the entire story of my relationship with Poe, including my mother’s death, which I relegated to a kind of footnote to the investigation Poe and I had conducted seven years earlier in New York City. I told them how I had found the body of Mary Rogers under a Hudson River pier, had shown it to Poe, and how that discovery then led to at least three more murders, plus very nearly mine and Poe’s.

  By the time I finished the tale, I sensed that I had grown immeasurably in her eyes. All the better. For what good is history if we cannot elevate ourselves by it?

  This story was followed, at their insistence, by a chronicle that I tried to limit to a mere summation, if for no other reason than to create an endearing illusion of humility, the story of my years between then and now.

  “And since coming home from Ohio,” Susan said, “you have been employed as Mr. Poe’s assistant?”

  “Not really his assistant, no. Though I do help him out when I can. Plus, he helps me with my own writing, you see, and together we—”

  Again she interrupted, too startled for silence. “You intend to be a writer?”

  This was precisely the opening I had been waiting for, had in fact been maneuvering toward since I’d found my way into the conversation. “In fact I published my first piece just recently. In the Daily Chronicle. It was about some elephants that drowned in Philadelphia.”

  “She read that to me!” Buck said.

  “And as I recall,” said Susan, “it was not authored by an individual named Gus.”

  Suddenly I did not like the name Gus any longer. From her mouth it emerged sounding homely and dull, a clunker on her tongue, and not the name of the solid, honest and erstwhile fellow I had aspired to be just yesterday.

  “When I write I use the name James Dobson,” I explained. “My real name is Dubbins. August Dubbins. Some people call me Augie.”

  “Augie is much preferable to Gus,” she said.

  “I like Gus,” said her father.

  “In any case,” said Susan, and leaned back in her chair, and crossed her arms, and fixed me with a sidelong gaze, “you appear to be too many people for one individual. How can we be sure that it isn’t all a fairy tale of sorts, intended to beguile a slice of pie from me?”

  “We having pie?” Buck asked.

  “Rhubarb, Papa.”

  “Well trot it out! What are we waiting for?”

  “We shall have pie when the table is cleared.”

  He shoved back his chair and stood and whisked my soup bowl out from under my hand. In the meantime Susan and I continued to smile at one another, she waiting for my response, me savoring her attention.

  “How about this?” I asked. “Two things. First off, my real name, August Dubbins. Being as how you claim to be an admirer of Poe’s work, maybe you will recognize that name?”

  She gave it some thought, then answered, “I do not.”

  “He named his famous investigator after me. The one from The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Auguste Dupin.”

  “Or,” she said, “you named yourself after him.”

  “All right
then. Consider this. I have written a second piece, also under the name of James Dobson. Tomorrow I will deliver it to the Chronicle. With luck, you will see it published there in a day or so.”

  “Is this your proof, Gus Augie August James? The promise that the writer named James Dobson will one day publish again?”

  “I will bring it to you first,” I told her. “You can read it. Before I take it to the Chronicle.”

  She eyed me suspiciously for a few moments, but her eyes were twinkling. “That should suffice,” she said.

  I felt huge with happiness.

  “Where in God’s name is that pie?” Buck asked.

  16

  CAN A morning tremble? Can the air itself hang almost giddy with excitement? Something peculiar was afoot, to be sure, for there I sat on an empty crate on the Allegheny waterfront, close to the aqueduct, near where only recently hundreds of citizens had perished from cholera, and where seven young women yet remained missing, either kidnapped, shanghaied into prostitution, or dead—there I sat with both feet tapping the cobblestones, and thought this disorderly city, though clamorous and stinking, the finest place in all the universe. Let others enjoy their tobacco and applejack and rum and opium, I’ll take love every time. Such sweet hallucinations of thought! Such tantalizations of the sublime!

  Until 7:30 A.M. or so I indulged myself in every conceivable fantasy, every variation possible on the theme of marriage and perpetual bliss. Twenty minutes later found me pacing in the dooryard of Miss Jones’s School for Young Ladies, a sheaf of rolled papers in my hand.

  Twice I noticed Miss Jones observing me from a first-floor window of the large brownstone. She was tall and willow thin, dressed in a faded black frock and a collar that looked tight enough to choke a fishing worm. She had a head of wild gray hair, nearly all of it pushed or brushed or perhaps growing only at the very top of her head as if trying to escape from her scalp. She looked to me like nothing so much as an old cattail whose seed top has gone to fuzz. But I waved to her all the same, both times, and when, the second time, she did not draw away from the window afterward but stood there trying to evaporate me with the glare from her eyes, I broke into an impromptu jig on the hardrampled lawn, just to show her there were no hard feelings on my part, that I was too happy to be slain.

  The door burst open midway in my jig and out she marched onto the doorstep. “Stop it!” she shouted, her voice even more nasally than in Buck’s impersonation, and as shrill as an ice pick. “Stop it this minute!”

  I stopped dancing. Then flashed her my most fetching smile. Held out my hand and took a step in her direction. “Would you care to join me?” I asked.

  She snatched a broom from behind the doorway. When she thrust it out in front of her, I had a hard time telling the two of them apart. “You get away from here this minute! I’ll not allow drunken louts like you in my dooryard. Not now nor anytime!”

  “I am not drunk, madam.”

  “Pixilated! I know it when I see it! Now get away from here and shame on you. You are a disgrace to your mother!”

  That took some of the starch out of my smile. I considered informing her that my mother had been a whore and a drunkard whose greatest joy was in robbing me of my pennies and then beating me with a leather strap, but, for Susan’s sake, which for the moment seemed inextricably entwined with mine, I did not.

  As soberly as I could I answered, “I apologize for the dancing, Miss Jones. A tune came into my head all of a sudden. It won’t happen again.”

  She brought her broom back to parade rest. “Be off with you now. My young ladies will be arriving soon. And you are not a fit sight for them to see.”

  “I have an appointment with Miss Susan Kemmer,” I said.

  “She has no time for that.”

  “Two minutes of conversation is all I require. And then I’ll be gone. And with the humblest of apologies to you, Miss Jones, for disturbing your morning.” I capped this last statement with a low bow.

  She gave me a lingering glare, followed by a Hmmmpf! Then turned and entered the building and slammed the door.

  She soon appeared again behind the window, arms clamped over her bosom, which, as far as I could tell, was not quite as prominent as the buttons on her dress. I kept my back to her after that and remained as still as I could muster, though the urge to throw a jig step or two was strong.

  Fortunately Susan arrived within minutes. She was still some forty yards away when I spotted her, but even from that distance I recognized her immediately, aided by that peculiar telescopic sight that love often produces, a keenness of perception that goes beyond the merely physical. I hurried down Penn Avenue to meet her.

  She smiled at my approach. “Have you brought it?”

  I handed her the papers.

  She paused there on the street, unrolled the papers, turned slightly so that the sunlight fell over her shoulder, which seemed to me the loveliest of all shoulders possible, so delicate and yet strong, so shaped to the curve of my palm, if ever my palm should be so lucky.

  She read, “‘A Hanging. By James Dobson.’” Then she turned her eyes on me. “A common enough start for a forgery,” she said.

  “I am not lying, Susan. You know I’m not.”

  “I know no such thing.”

  “Yes, you do, I can see it in your eyes.”

  “You see your own foolishness.”

  “Is that what it’s called? Then yes, I do see it. And I see yours too.”

  “Hush,” she said, and blushed a little. “Let me read.”

  I watched her face as she read what I had written, watched her lovely eyes taking in my words, watched her lovely mouth soon lose its smile, turn gradually down, the lips forming into a slight pucker, her lovely smooth forehead furrow.

  Finished, she said, not yet bringing her gaze to meet mine, “It’s so horrible, Augie. Such a horrible thing.”

  I felt kicked in the stomach. I might even have moaned out loud.

  “Oh no, I didn’t mean—” She put a hand on my arm. “I mean the hanging itself. The awfulness of it. The way it happened. That poor man.”

  “He was a murderer,” I said.

  “I know, I know. But the way it happened. His head …”

  “There’s more to it that I didn’t even write about.”

  “It could not get more horrible than this.”

  “The night it happened,” I told her, “Dr. Brunrichter grabbed Poe by the arm and pulled him up out of his chair. Right up to the gallows. Brunrichter put his ear to the man’s chest. Then he seized Poe and tried to make him do the same. When Poe resisted, the doctor took Poe’s hand and pressed it over the man’s heart.”

  “Why in the world … ?”

  “Because the heart was still beating.”

  “No!” she said.

  “The doctor seemed so excited by it. He turned to all of us and said, ‘It does not yet know.’”

  “And he was referring to the heart?”

  I nodded. “The heart did not yet know that the man was dead.”

  She squeezed shut her eyes. A shiver ran through her, so that I ached to put my arms around her, hold her close, warm her with my strength. But of course I could not. Still, when she leaned toward me a little, I put out a hand and touched her lightly on the arm, and felt all of life coalescing where we touched, all contentment flooding in.

  She opened her eyes again. “Is it true that he is out there now? In a gibbet on Maynard’s Island?”

  “Rotting away,” I said.

  She shivered again, and I felt it in my hand, all the way into my chest, and deeper still. “I shall have nightmares tonight. Thanks to your Mr. Dobson.”

  “I am James Dobson, Susan.”

  “I know you are,” she said.

  And so, it was a hanging, another man’s grisly death, that first brought her close enough to touch. Would that it had been my own.

  17

  FROM MISS Jones’s schoolyard, and with a heart as light as cloud wisp, I went di
rectly to the Pittsburgh Daily Chronicle. My editor there, Mr. Lovesey, did not fall into my arms with rapturous gratitude after reading the piece, but he did sit quietly afterward, lips pursed, before telling me in his monotonic mumble, “We’ll run it tomorrow.” Whereupon he offered me a regular assignment of two pieces per week, to run each Wednesday and Saturday.

  “I’m not sure I can find two stories every week,” I told him. “These first two just sort of dropped into my lap.”

  “Are you a newspaperman or aren’t you?”

  “How about if they were to run on Monday and Friday? Gives me more time in between.”

  “Monday and Friday then. And while you’re at it you can keep a sharp ear for any bit of news about those missing girls.”

  “I could talk with the families, I suppose.”

  “The families have been talked with to death already. Nobody knows a thing.”

  “Then … ?”

  “Just keep your eyes and ears open, that’s all you can do. Sooner or later some fella’s going to start bragging about what he’s done to them. It’s human nature.”

  I was reminded of Mr. Vernon’s braggadocio at the picnic. Might it be less empty and frivolous than it had seemed?

  “It’s agreed then,” Mr. Lovesey said. “Eight-fifty a week to start.”

  “But you paid me five for the first piece. Shouldn’t it be ten dollars a week for two stories?”

  “Drowned elephants pay extra. You won’t be writing about drowned elephants every week. Nor even about men getting hanged.”

  “Does that mean that a hanging pays five dollars? Same as drowned elephants?”

  “Three-fifty. Which brings you up to the sum we agreed on, eight and a half a week.”

  “The man’s head came off,” I said.