Maggie Runkel is buried near the back of the St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral graveyard at Mulberry and Prince Streets. Walt Whitman and Henry Saunders have set up watch behind a graveside tree, which affords no shelter from the swirling wind that slashes through Walt’s clothing. He cannot remember ever feeling so cold in all his life, and his father’s words come tumbling back to him: The worst is yet to come. His father the optimist.
The cemetery surrounds the cathedral—headstones jut like crooked teeth out of the gray, unyielding ground. The cathedral itself is dark and quiet, the priest having locked up and retired to the rectory hours ago.
Henry wants to go home, return tomorrow night better equipped for the weather, but Walt refuses to leave. “I need to see this through.”
“By catching our death of cold?” Saunders says. “Let’s go back to the Pewter Mug and drink.”
Walt reaches into his pocket and produces a flask of whiskey. “Be my guest.”
Henry takes the flask, tips it back. “How well did you really know Abraham and Lena?”
“Well enough.”
“Is it possible she killed him?”
Whitman glares at Saunders.
“A fair question, I believe, given our undertaking.”
“I can understand how she might appear guilty to an outsider, but you have to trust me.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
The cemetery descends into silence, and Walt can’t help but think of the deceased beneath their feet, how each of them lived as he lives, full of hopes and aspirations, and now dead and gone.
“No. She didn’t kill him.” Whitman blows in his hands. Maybe they should call it a night, try again tomorrow.
Saunders says, “I read your stories in the Democratic Review.”
“Have you now?”
“And your novel, Franklin Evans, in the New World.”
Franklin Evans has sold thousands of copies so far and has earned him seventy-five dollars, with another fifty to come.
“I’m gratified to be published in the same periodical as Charles Dickens, William Cullen Bryant, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.”
“It is quite a feat indeed.”
Whitman continues. “And the first two chapters to my next novel, The Madman, were recently published in the Washingtonian.”
“Impressive.”
“I’m determined to be a writer of note,” Walt says, fully aware that he is trying to impress Henry. “I make it a point to write every morning, first thing. The entire manuscript for The Madman will soon be complete.”
“What about your work at the Aurora?”
“That work I begin midafternoon after my walk.”
“Yes,” Saunders says, “your walks are the subject of much discussion around the office.”
“Mr. Ropes does not like them,” Whitman says. “But they are part of my process, and I get my work done.”
“Indeed, nobody knows how.”
Whitman is not unaware of the discussions he provokes, but he is surprised by Mr. Saunders’s seeming complicity in them. Walt’s methods are unconventional for sure, but the results speak for themselves. Indeed, on any given day, he authors the lion’s share of what the Aurora’s readers have come to expect six days a week. Where there is no problem, no such complaint should exist.
The two men sit in silence until Walt can no longer bear it. “And what did you think of Franklin Evans?”
“I love your poems.”
Henry’s ambivalence toward his novel cuts deep.
Whitman wants to ask Saunders to clarify, when he hears the noises—a click first, then whinnying and clomping tumbling on the wind toward them—voices, wheels scraping, and hooves hammering away at the thick silence of the night. A freight wagon pulled by a team of two horses creaks up to the cemetery gate.
Two men head for the freshly dug grave. The shorter of the two hauls a large bundle on his shoulder and drops it in the dirt. His face is concealed by the brim of his hat and a mustache. He unwraps the white bundle and spreads the canvas upon the ground, while the other man, much taller, broad-shouldered and muscular, picks up the two shovels and pickax wrapped inside. Their actions signal a mundane attitude toward the work, as if digging up a corpse is the most normal task in the world.
Walt turns to Henry, whispers: “Which one is Warren?”
“The shorter one.”
“Who is the other guy?”
Henry shrugs. “No idea.”
The two men start digging. The taller man breaks up the ground with the pickax while Warren scoops up the dirt with his shovel. They make fast progress, benefiting not only from their obvious experience but also from the loose dirt used to bury the girl earlier that same day. And the deeper they go, the easier the digging, or at least that’s how it appears from where Whitman sits.
“What’s your plan?” Saunders whispers.
“When they remove the body,” Walt says. “I’ll approach them.”
“No offense,” says Henry, “but that’s not much of a plan.”
“What’s yours?”
“I thought we’d approach him before they dig up the body.”
Whitman whispers, “That’s your idea of a better plan?”
It doesn’t take long for the body snatchers to reach the coffin, and when they do, Walt scuttles in for a better view. His knees and back are sore from crouching, and his fingers and toes sting from the cold. He finds a good vantage point from behind a tree near the disinterred grave, a spot raised by the tree’s roots.
The tall man sits on the edge of the grave, chipping away at the casket lid with the pickax, when Warren joins him with the lamp.
“. . . that’s what impressed me,” the tall man is saying. “It wasn’t just a dead body. What Abraham Stowe did to Mary Rogers was artistic.” He holds up the pickax. “He created the scene like a painter might do on a canvas.”
Warren says, “I saw the body, and it was horrible.”
“You’re a philistine, Snuffy. You have no sense of beauty. In life or in death.”
Snuffy? Walt looks back at Henry, who can only shrug again.
The man continues: “That corpse was an artistic masterpiece worthy of the pen of Mr. Poe. His most recent work is not his best, but ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’? My God, what a story.” He swings the pickax, and the tip sinks deep in the wood. “And Stowe’s wife is equally worthy of a Poe story. The way she killed her husband was elegant and well thought out.”
“Jesus,” Warren says, “watch the head. They love the head.”
“I goddamned well know they like the head.” The tall man chisels off a square piece of the coffin lid, tosses it aside. “Now shine that lamp here.”
James Warren leans over, and the lamp illuminates the young woman’s face: her black hair, white skin, sunken eyes—
The sight of her lifeless face takes Walt Whitman’s breath. The poor girl. So young, and now dead. His thoughts turn to his sisters, Hannah and Mary. What if it were they who had died only to have their bodies stolen?
“I don’t pay you to stand there, Snuffy,” the tall man says. “Now get the fucking hook.”
Warren trudges to the wagon. “Get the fucking hook,” he mimics.
When Warren returns, the tall man takes the enormous hook from him and slips the tip into the skin just under the girl’s chin, pulling the hook upward so that it lodges between her neck and jaw. He tugs the rope to make sure the hook is secure, her teeth clacking together, and then he climbs out of the grave, tosses the other end of the rope over a low-hanging tree branch—not the same tree Walt stands behind but near enough to unnerve him—and pulls downward with his whole strength.
But the girl doesn’t move.
“Come on, darlin’,” the tall man says, “rise and shine.” He yanks the rope again as if ringing a massive church tower bell, and this time the corpse does move, rising up out of the coffin, standing upright for only a moment as if resurrected, before flopping onto the ground.
“She’s a real cherry.” An animated Warren unwraps the shroud like a child opening a gift. “And she’s mine!” He lifts the white dress over her head, then lowers himself on top of her.
And that’s when Whitman has seen enough. He charges Warren and kicks him in the side. “Have you no respect?” He kicks him again, and when the man attempts to stand up, Walt knocks him down with a forearm to the chest.
“I was only joking,” Warren manages to say. At the sight of Walt, he seems confused, and in the middle of coughing, he spits out, “Who the fuck are you?”
Whitman thinks about kicking him again but holds back. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“I am,” Warren says, “most of the time.”
It isn’t that Walt has forgotten about the tall man, but the adrenaline of the moment has taken over, and he stands over Warren in the afterglow of his attack. When he hears a click, Whitman turns around to find a shotgun pointed at his chest.
“I’m with Snuffy,” the tall man says. “I’d like to know who the fuck you are.”
Walt stands up straight, reaches out his hand. “Walt Whitman. Reporter with the Aurora. And I’m doing a story on the glorious underworld of body snatching.”
The tall man doesn’t shake his hand. “Who sent you?”
“No one sent me.”
The tall man aims his shotgun at Walt’s chest. “I see it on your face. Tell me.”
But before Walt can respond, the man strikes him in the head with the butt of his gun. A bolt of pain bursts from his nose to the back of his neck, and his eyes water.
“Now, how does that help anything?” Whitman says. “Nobody sent me—”
The man raises his gun again.
“I came on my own, as I said, to do a story on body snatching.”
The tall man lowers the gun. “You’re really a goddamned reporter?”
Walt nods. Blood trickles out of his nose, over his lips, and into his beard. He bends over to catch his breath. The pain is thick and heavy. He wipes his nose with his sleeve. “Did you have to hit me?”
“Spying on folks in the middle of the night is a dangerous business,” the man says.
Whitman hears Warren stir behind him, but it is already too late. Warren tackles him and comes to rest on top of him. “You son of a bitch.” He raises his fist.
“Snuffy,” the tall man interjects. “Get off the poor gentleman.”
“But—”
“No, your actions were highly inappropriate and this man had every right to kick the shit out of you. It’s something I’ve been meaning to get to myself.”
Warren reluctantly releases Walt, curses under his breath. “I’ll kick the shit out of you.”
“Now, sir,” the tall man says, “let me help you to your feet so we can do this interview for your newspaper.” He reaches out his hand. “I’m a reader myself; just read this amazing book that changed my life, and I am more than happy to help a reporter get his story, contribute to society and what-not. I see it more as an opportunity than a duty, really—”
Whitman reaches for his outstretched hand, but doesn’t see the butt of the shotgun rushing toward him until it connects with his jaw. The pain is searing, but quick. A flash of light before the blackness.