Disquiet Heart
Page 35
In the end my bag was returned to me, empty but for my clothes and the sketch Poe had made. We tried then to recover my money from the police, my life savings, but of course they insisted that no money had been found on my person or in my bag, and no amount of innuendo could convince them to change that story. The High Constable’s patience soon wore thin and he suggested that our business in Pittsburgh was complete and perhaps we had better be on our way now, back to wherever it was we called home. Home, he said, was where people would forgive you the trouble you caused. Where they might overlook your peculiar ways and let you live your life in peace. So good luck to us both, and Godspeed.
Next morning, Poe and I stood alone on Ferguson Street, not far from where it was crossed by the railroad tracks on which he would soon travel north to the Pennsylvania Pike, then eastward by coach.
“We rode into this city on a raft of coffins,” he said. “We should have taken it for a sign, and turned away without a second glance.”
It saddened me to see him leaving Pittsburgh in this manner, without fanfare, no throng of well-wishers to see him off. He was on his way back to New York City, there to try to pick up the pieces, if any remained, of his career. He looked little stronger, hardly more fit for the battle than when I had found him in Philadelphia. I might have suggested, I suppose, that I accompany him for a while. But I did not. Nor did he. He knew, we both knew, that we were on our own from this point on.
He asked, “Have you decided yet where you will go?”
I pondered that for a moment, a gutter rat once again, my pockets home to but a sheet of folded paper, blank, a stub of pencil, a tiny black feather, and the five dollars Poe had insisted I borrow from him. “Not yet,” I answered.
“Will you promise me this, at least? That you will not choose Mexico?”
I failed to respond quickly enough to reassure him. He said, “The walls of Vera Cruz fell seven days ago. Mexico City is next. The fighting is all but finished.”
“Just as well,” I finally said. “I believe I’ve had enough of carnage for a while.”
He nodded. And offered me a father’s hand. Some forty yards behind us, a steam whistle blew. Yet still he did not release me.
“I cannot help but think … ,” he said, but let the sentence die unfinished. His gaze slowly slid from horizon to ground.
Then, “I am a weak man, Augie. I’m sorry for that. Were it not for my behavior at the reception … were it not for my gullibility …”
He waited, I suppose, to be absolved by me. But how could I absolve another when so rife with guilt myself?
The whistle blew a second time, a short blast and a longer one. He lifted his eyes to mine. “Write to Muddy when you can.”
I nodded. We stood like that awhile longer, each seeing his own reflection in the other’s eyes. His hand tightened around mine. “There is no end to the misery of this world, is there, son?”
Was I falling away from him, beginning to swoon? Is that why his hand gripped so tightly?
“No end,” he said. “No end.”
Then suddenly, abruptly, he pulled his hand free. He snatched up his bag, made a quarter turn, squared his shoulders, and marched away.
I remained where I stood a good while longer, watched the train heading north, looked for him in the windows of the cars, but saw only strangers.
Afterward I faced east again. The sun was brighter now, fully half above the horizon. But not bright enough to draw me into it, to pull me east.
Then north. The Great Lakes. The frozen land beyond. They did not call me either.
The west? Back through the buckeyes? No. The child in me was buried there.
And so I slept that night on the wide Ohio, on a side-wheeler called the Brilliance. And as I slept to the churning wheel’s thrum I dreamed that I stood at the steamboat’s stern, gazing upriver into the trembling yellow light of a late afternoon. Buck came walking quietly across the deck to join me there.
Several minutes passed before he spoke. “Do you think ill of me?” he asked.
I told him that I was weary of bitterness, too tired for anger, too empty for remorse. “Besides,” I said, “I would have done the same.”
He clapped a hand against my back, but it carried no weight. “I was thinking I might ride along with you now. Could they use a man like me down there?”
“You’re used to the docks. It’s mostly desert, from what I hear.”
“They can’t use a man with a weak mind and a strong back? A mule’s a handy thing to have no matter where you are.”
I shrugged. “War will probably be over before I get that far.”
“In that case we’ll just have to start another one!”
He laughed, but when the laughter faded out, he too was gone.
I clutched the rail and leaned against it. In my hands and in my feet I could feel the hum and movement of the water, the slow tumble through gravity of every drop of river on its relentless migration to the sea. And I was reminded then of Poe’s heretical notion, now not so strange at all, that gravity is the call of the Particle Divine, the summons home to every drop and dim small wink of life.
And whether it was the faint vibration of this movement of river and flesh and stars that finally loosened my heart, or whether it was only the surging flood of sorrow in a dream, whatever it was, I took from my pocket a small black feather, and touched it to my lips. And then, with arm outstretched beyond the rail, I opened my palm up to the fading yellow light, tight fist unfurled, and I set the feather free. As it should be …
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Disquiet Heart is a work of fiction. Although I have employed the names of real historical figures and actual places, and have made every effort to portray those people and places as accurately as possible, the descriptions in this book should not be construed as biography or fact. As is the case with all historical fiction, dates have been altered, personalities manipulated, realities reconfigured so as to best suit the narrative. As just one example, the real Dr. Brunrichter lived in Pittsburgh not in 1847, as depicted here, but around the turn of the 20th century.
Few books are written by the author alone. This book certainly was not. As always, I thank my family for their succor and support, as I thank my agent, Peter Rubie, and my editors, Pete Wolverton and Carolyn Dunkley. Dr. Louis Boxer provided me with extensive information about the long-drop method of hanging as a means of execution and the possible consequences thereof. The Eccles-Lesher Library has cheerfully and unfailingly supplied, not only for this novel but for each of my previous books, numerous reference works and sources of information. My thanks to one and all.
RS
Also by Randall Silvis
On Night’s Shore
Mysticus
Dead Man Falling
Under the Rainbow
An Occasional Hell
Excelsior
The Luckiest Man in the World
DISQUIET HEART. Copyright © 2002 by Randall Silvis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
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eISBN 9781429980616
First eBook Edition : February 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Silvis, Randall.
Disquiet heart : a thriller / Randall Silvis.—1st ed. p. cm.
ISBN 0-312-26248-5
1. Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809—1849—Fiction. 2. Pittsburgh (Pa.)—Fiction. 3. Missing persons—Fiction. 4. Journalists—Fiction. 1. Title.
PS3569.147235 D45 2002
813’.54—dc21
2001058548
First Edition: May 2002
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