Fiction: From Chapter 6: New Orleans (Part 5)

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Though their union engendered a baby, her child and Walt’s was not born. At least not for well over a hundred years. She was to suffer miscarriages, intensifying her longing for a child more than for fortune or for love, which never was what she wanted it to be. She hoped she’d made more than love with Walt, on that March morning so inhospitable out of doors but so cozy in front of the blazing fire with the rum filling her with golden warmth, with this man who was not as old as he looked but seemed so avuncular, or even grandfatherly, he seemed, but how would she know what a grandfather was like? So safe, that’s what he was; that made her so happy. He deserved good love, and she was good, when she was loving, giving to one deserving, poor, lonely man. From that union, a magical thing happened, unique in Nature. Maybe. Or what if it happens all the time? If a child was conceived, not in the womb, but in the blood or genes or in the psyche or maybe in the hope, her hope for the child but also in a greater hope too much for her to think about, it lay dormant through many long generations, waiting to be born, when the time was right, when the need was greatest, when it could be of most service, when a great battle was prepared that only it could win. There would come a first battle to be fought over the slaves from Africa, and another over the far vaster race of slaves of all nations.

“This city rattles! It rumbles and shakes”

    The next day, Walt showed up for work at the newspaper office, announcing in a boom, “This city rattles! It rumbles and shakes. Makes one aware of the electricity coursing through the blood to make the soul incandescent! Quick! Somebody write that down. Who’s got a pen?” To his brother Jeff: “Did you get it?”, and he declared that today was his last day with the paper, and he laid down a sheaf of writings on the desk of the publisher, went to work at his own desk, wrote, and, at closing time, declared that if anyone wanted him, he could be found at the Old Absinthe House, and, if nobody wanted him, to Hell with them; he’d see them all in Hell.
    But he felt cast down when Edgar entered his office, ostensibly to ask for an extension of the deadline for his current article, though really to sell his idea of publishing political and social inanity under a pseudonym. Walt had no choice but to agree, so Poe handed Walt a sample to read. Walt read it, found it obviously inspired by the Rebecca letters, and mildly embarrassing.

“Lemme write that down”

    “Even if the slaves get freed,” Edgar was saying, “any man with half a brain in his head—hmm! Lemme write that down. ‘The Man with Half a Brain.’ Where’s a pen?” He grabbed one from in front of Walt, and thrusting it hastily into the ink, tipped the pot, which was not so full as to slosh, though Edgar blackened a forefinger, which he wiped on his waistcoat as Walt handed him a rag. “Well, that’s why I try to wear mostly black vests,” thought Edgar to himself. Probably no one would notice, but he would know. “I can just get a new one,” he continued thinking, but panic had already set in that he was soon to lose this latest position, after he and Malinda had been rather liberal in their eating and drinking and lodgings, and he wanted more than anything to buy her a fine, light new frock here for summer wear, and whatever pair of shoes she wanted.
    Edgar said, “Let’s go back to Aleix’s. The heat is stifling here. Last night I froze. Did you?”
    Walt replied, “No! Not two days in a row!”
    “Bullshit!”
    “Okay. Let’s go. Yesterday was fun. Aren’t you afraid of becoming addicted?”
    “Too late!”
    A few days later, she asked, “Are you avoiding me now, Walter?”
    “Of course not! Darling girl! Why would you say that?”

“This room smells like a lot of fucking has been going on”

    “Well, for starters, because you’ve been avoiding me. Oh, and also because this room smells like a lot of fucking has been going on.”
    “I suppose I can’t deny it. You remember the large Creole woman in the market, with the coffee concession. I love her. I do.”
    “Really?! That’s just super! Tell me everything!”
    “I happened by some mere chance to pass her stall just as she closed up her business for the day; I helped her pack away her things. And she, by the merest chance of luck, accepted my invitation to imbibe just a little reviving something, here in my rooms, the toil of the long, humid day having markedly reduced her spirit and her person.”
    “And then?”
    “Then it may be that our refreshment stretched itself more languorously than either of us had foreseen, thence turning into one of those rare encounters between two souls who have nothing in common and find themselves quite drawn to one another!”
    “I’ll say!”
    “Finding the midnight stolen in upon us, I couldn’t think of turning her out into the dark street, with her heavy burden on her back.”

“Of course not!”

    “Of course not! You being the soul of chivalry.”
    “After much of my imploring, she did agree, in an extremity of fatigue, to pass the night in my lodgings, the sole bed providing more than ample space for two; perhaps, in my drowsiness, an arm chanced to drape itself across her bosom, to which action her sleep itself caused her to settle her spacious rump backwards into me. Surely you well imagine my astonishment at the state of arousal to which I awoke sometime thereafter.”
    “Surely.”
    “And the rest, as we all say, is history. But let me assure you that, had circumstances been anything less than unimaginable, I would never.”
    “You should do some dirty poems, Walter!”
    “I?”
    “Sure! Why not? You’d be great.”
    “It would be fun.”
    She went in the morning from Walt to Edgar. “You sure have been quiet the last few days,” she said.
    “I suppose.”
    “I feel like everybody’s avoiding me lately. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been doing these last few years?”

“I thought you’d be my book”

    “Well, I’ve started a number of large projects, but I’ve not been able to see one through to completion. Remember when we left the pirate captain and went to France? Immediately I took up a subject I had begun long before: the tale of the drowned cigar-store girl in New York. Now I set it in France and called her “Marie Roget.” But in spite of my zeal to have the tale told and published and justice done, I couldn’t finish it til I knew what the ending would be. But then you and I grew closer, and I thought you’d be my book. Then you left, and I had to earn a living and got distracted. As the end of Jackson’s term neared, I thought the time might be fit for the book I had promised Mr. Eaton, and I wrote to him in Washington. He promised to send me something to cover my expenses, but apparently forgot me, and I figured interest in the topic would wane, as well, but I had already written quite a bit, and maybe I could win some favor of the new president, so on and so on, but really, as I wrote about her—Mrs. Eaton—she reminded me of you, and I was overcome with melancholy. Though I continued to produce short, inconsequential pieces with ease, to myself, inwardly, I believe I vowed to dream no longer of delivering an extended work of any sort, or even any work treating of a woman in any meaningful way. I had no longer the temperament, the expertise, or the experience.”
    “Oh wow. What happened to you, Eddy?”
    “Life is incompatible with Art.”
    “Did you make that up just now?”
    “Just now!” They laughed, and all the tension was gone, along with all the intervening years. Edgar knew at once that he was under her spell again, and he performed upon the monitory voice of caution as soon as it appeared an act of defenestration.
    But when they had more time over the next few days, she asked for the whole story.

Edgar decided to  kill the killer of  Mary Rogers or bring  him or them to justice

    Edgar had sat down in November of 1842 to write the story of Mary Rogers, on which he worked during the sea voyage to Europe and off and on when he could afterwards, but after they had become separated, remembering his promise in the Scottish woods to Malinda to tell the story of Margaret Eaton and his promise to her husband John to commemorate her, he decided at once to write that story instead and then in real life to kill the killer of Mary Rogers or bring him or them to justice. He jotted down a few memoranda of what he’d heard at the Hermitage and subsequently, each one leading him to recollect details he thought he’d forgotten. This was the phenomenon he welcomed, the one that indicated a fury of composition loomed. He cleared a space on the hotel-room desk and hurried to the front desk to procure some ink and an inkwell, which he left on the front desk when it occurred to him to fetch some sherry to aid in composition.
    “Start with the ladies,” he told himself.

Copyright © 2022 by Pat Hamilton Pat Hamilton has written three novels, hundreds of songs, and a handful of book reviews for the papers. He taught College English for 30 years, which helps him blend popular and classic literature in his writing. As an Army brat, he traveled the USA and Europe before settling into the beauty of Tennessee, but the rock star he used to be still lives on inside him.