Lenore does not simply smolder away. It’s true, she ceases breathing, her pulse stops ticking, and a shadow passes over her face—a shadow that seemingly surfaced to her skin from the arctic depths of her core, sealing her flesh in a lavender layer of frost. She relaxes out of my arms and spills across the bed—again, like a shadow—and yet she still exists here in body. A cold, corporeal reminder of what John Allan took away.
I carry her to the shop of the nearest undertaker—a pasty-faced specter with a skeletal head who appears less alive than my muse. He lays Lenore down on a table in the middle of his stacks of empty coffins and touches the shorn black hair that covers her head.
“Where’s her hair?” he asks, his eyes turned my way, the whites huge compared to the mossy greens of his irises. “And why is she so painfully cold to the touch? Even if you kept her on ice . . . something doesn’t seem right.”
I lay a hand on the chilled fabric of Lenore’s left sleeve. “There’s nothing wrong with her. But does she seem truly dead to you? I can’t bear the thought of accidentally burying her alive if she’s merely fallen into a state of catalepsy. I know that’s a hideous situation that sometimes, too frequently, occurs . . .”
The undertaker peels open the lid of Lenore’s right eye, revealing a lusterless pool of dried ink where her pupils once blazed.
He clears his throat and says, “She appears sufficiently dead to me.”
I bow my head, and my teeth begin spontaneously chattering—clattering with such violence that I bite the tip of my tongue. And yet I’m unable to cry, which I’m certain would astound, and perhaps even in this situation, disappoint John Allan.
The undertaker rubs his hands together to warm them from Lenore, and he blows his hot breath against his thumbs.
“Can you afford a coffin, young man?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“I’ll wrap her in a winding-sheet, then, and we’ll carry her out in a temporary coffin for the funeral. I’ll allow you a day or two to make arrangements with the guests and the church, if this is to be a religious burial . . .”
“No. I alone will be in attendance, and I’ll require her burial to occur in a public plot, with no stone marker. But, please, let us still allow at least one day more in case she awakens.”
“We’ll wait two days before sealing her up in the ground, just to be certain, since you seem so anxious—and since she’s so well chilled.”
“Yes—well chilled,” I say, for my mind fails to yield any other words, even though the phrase rots on my tongue.
I bend down and kiss Lenore goodbye, and when my lips touch hers, I endure the sensation of falling into a wintry shadow. I hear not one breath of poetry from her.
The following forty-eight hours pass in a pall of solitude.
I do not write a single word, nor do I care to.
The funeral falls in the hushed morning hours of a Monday, the most pessimistic of days. The air tenses with the threat of rain, but the sulking clouds, for all their brooding and swollenness, refuse to weep a single drop. The undertaker assists me in carrying my muse to the pauper’s corner of a cemetery in a temporary pine coffin. At the graveside, we lift the lid, pull her shrouded body from the casket with movements slow and gentle, and lay her down in the ground without any wood to protect her from the soil and the inevitable worms. The gravedigger waits in the shadows of the charnel house, while I stand at the edge of that gaping hole, breathing the vapors of the opened earth. Words fail me. Lenore receives no eulogy. I grab a chipped piece of stone from the grass and mark an L on the brick wall beside her.
No more than a minute after I depart the graveside, the gravedigger saunters over with his spade and covers my Gothic Psyche in piles of dirt that slap against her shroud.
On a brighter morning in early May, Garland O’Peale stands on the sidewalk beyond the iron gate of the boardinghouse in which I’m lodging in one of Boston’s lesser districts. He wears an ashen coat and a matching hat, both smothered in ratty old mockingbird feathers, and his face has turned so frightfully wan and emaciated that his cheekbones protrude above sunken cheeks. The green-tinted spectacles continue to conceal his eyes.
He crams his hands into his coat pockets and waits for me to approach.
I dismount the last step of the boardinghouse porch and meet up with him outside the gate. “What are you doing here?”
“Do you remember me, Poe?”
“Of course, I remember you, Garland. What do you want?”
“She’s gone, isn’t she?”
Without answering, I sweep past him, my hands also stuffed in my pockets. I tromp off to the office of some obscure newspaper that’s offered me a position after a run of bad luck with employers not fond of paying their employees.
The imp follows. “I’m speaking of the lost Lenore.”
“I know. Why do you care about her? And why are you suddenly here? I thought you abandoned me for Upton Beall.”
“Ah, yes, Mr. Beall.” Garland falls in with my stride. “I’ve come to realize, Poe, that the vessel is far more important than we muses often think. Beall lacks your meticulous care with language. Feeding inspiration through him felt like writing in plain ink, whereas speaking through you feels like burnishing a manuscript in gold.”
I whip my head toward him. “That almost sounds like a compliment.”
“Oh, it’s more than a compliment. You’re an exceptional writer, and I’m your wayward brother in literary arms who’s come to apologize for not realizing your full worth. Besides, Upton Beall seems to be developing a muse of religious inspiration—a flickering little upstart that sings from his candles. Beall lost interest in associating with me.”
“Ah.” I nod. “So, you’ve returned to me because Upton won’t have you.”
“I searched for you in Richmond and learned through some sort of judgmental owl lady that John Allan shot Lenore. Is that true?”
I swallow, but still, I do not weep. “I buried her in a cemetery here in Boston.”
Garland comes to an abrupt halt. “You buried her?”
I stop and pivot toward him. “She died, Garland.”
“You buried a muse?”
“She ceased breathing. What else was I supposed to do with her?”
“You can’t bury a muse in the ground, Poe. She’s either gone for good or you’re ignoring her . . . again!”
“I didn’t know you cared anything for Lenore.”
“Lenore inspires your heart to beat faster, my friend. She awakens your spirit and allows you escapes into the fantasies you so desperately require in order to survive. I didn’t realize before precisely how much we both need her.” He straightens the hat on his head. “But I need you to live, so I may keep living. I need her darkness to inspire my wit. Go and dig her up!”
Passersby turn their heads.
I cringe at their expressions of disgust.
“She’s dead, and I’m late for work,” I say, and I reel around and leave.
Before I can reach the end of the block, Garland wraps an arm around mine and steers me across the street toward a park.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He quickens his pace. “I want you to meet a fellow who’s also new to Boston. If Lenore, you, and I are to work together as a grandiloquent trio, then we’re going to need readers.”
I shake my elbow but can’t break free of him. “What are you talking about, you aggressive ass?”
“Ah, there’s the Edgar Poe I know! Curse at me. Ridicule me. Slay me in rhyme.”
Garland drags me to a street called Washington and stops me in front of a brick storefront with the name “Calvin F. S. Thomas” painted on a black-and-gold sign hanging above the door. Beyond the beveled windows, a copper-haired fellow no older than myself arranges metal type in a composing stick for printing. The steadiness of his fingers reminds me of the surgeon’s in Richmond. The inky blood of his trade stains his hands.
Garland opens the door and pushes me inside but does not enter the establishment behind me.
“Good morning, sir,” says the young compositor in a Virginia drawl that soothes me in an instant.
“Good morning.” I remove my hat. “Pardon my prying, but are you . . . did I just hear a Virginia accent?”
“You did, sir.” The fellow cracks a wide grin. “I was born in New York but raised in Norfolk. You sound like a son of the great Commonwealth of Virginia yourself.”
I offer my hand. “I’m Edgar A. . . . Perry. Born here in Boston but raised in Richmond.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Perry.” He wipes the ink from his fingers onto his black apron and shakes my hand. “I’m Calvin Thomas.”
“The pleasure’s all mine. Does your family own this printing office?”
“I own it. I’m trying to earn money for my education.”
“Ah, as am I.”
Calvin swings back around to his towering cases of metal letters and returns to arranging the type. “Do you need something printed?”
I run my hands across the unvarnished grains of the front counter and inhale the scent of the ink, intermingled with the sweet pulp of papers hung up to dry. I envision “Tamerlane” set in type on a golden-brown sheet of parchment.
“You’re blushing, Mr. Perry,” says Calvin. “Are you in need of a wedding invitation?”
“Call me Edgar, please. You can’t be any older than I am.”
“I’m eighteen.”
“As am I.” My blush runs hotter when I realize I’ve just repeated this same phrase from before, but I’m suddenly at a loss how to articulate my ambitions in front of this kindred Virginia dreamer. I tuck my hands back into my coat pockets, where my thumbs snare on holes, and debate if I should dare ask a question that now lingers on my tongue.
“If you have no money”—Calvin eyes the shabbiness of my coat, which isn’t any worse off than his own patched-up jacket, I realize—“I may be able to arrange for you to pay on credit.”
“Do you print books?” I ask with the release of a held breath.
“I haven’t yet.” Calvin clinks a letter into the upper case and saunters back over to the counter. “Why do you ask?”
My eyes water. From six hundred miles away in the capital city of Virginia, John Allan must be listening, for I feel his gaze scorching the back of my neck. He’s waiting for me to answer like the industrious Southern gentleman he raised me to be.
“Do you aspire to be a writer?” asks Calvin.
I shake off Pa’s grip and lift my head. “No. I am a writer. I have been since childhood. It’s how I intend to make my living.”
“Ah, that’s fascinating.” Calvin leans an elbow on the counter. “What is it that you write?”
I clear my throat. “I have a collection of poems I’ve been penning for years. It wouldn’t be a long book . . .”
“Bring the manuscript to me. I’ll let you know what I can do with it.”
“Would you?”
“Of course. You might help me expand my business if I add book printing to my repertoire.”
“I need to head off to work, but I—”
“Bring the pages whenever you have the time, Mr. Perry.”
“Thank you.” I reach out and shake his hand again. “You have my deepest gratitude, sir. I’m much obliged to you for your kindness.”
“I can’t make any promises as to the beauty of the binding. It would be more of a pamphlet . . .”
“But it would at least be a start. It would get my work into the hands of readers—allow it to be seen. Thank you.” I fit my hat back over my head. “I’ll return this evening to show you the pages.”
“I’ll look forward to it. Thank you for stepping into my shop.”
After work, I return to my room and proofread the poems most ready for publication: “Tamerlane,” “To — —,” “Dreams,” “Visit of the Dead,” “Evening Star,” “Imitation,” three untitled poems, and “The Lake.”
I wet the nib of my quill with fresh ink and pen a title page:
Tamerlane
And other poems.
By a Bostonian.
“Young heads are giddy, and young hearts are warm,
And make mistakes for manhood to reform.” —COWPER
“‘A Bostonian’?” asks Calvin upon my return to his shop.
I slide the manuscript across his countertop. “I prefer to remain anonymous until I’m freed from the troubles of my youth.”
“Ah.” He nods in understanding, asks no further questions on the subject, and we come to a financial agreement for the book’s publication.
By the time I leave the printing office, twilight dyes the sky in a dusky shade of rose. Beneath a smoky lamp waits Garland O’Peale, resting his spine against the black metal of the pole. He’s a mirror image of me, I daresay, if I were to wear a hat run amok in mockingbird feathers and green-tinted spectacles.
I approach him without hesitation—without fear.
“Come join me in the cemetery,” I say.
He pushes himself upright. “Is it time?”
“It’s past time—but, oh, God”—I loosen my cravat—“let’s see if we’re not too late.”
Up in the cemetery, the cold Lady Moon casts the tombs in a haze that chills my heart, but I ignore my fears and superstitions and obtain a pair of spades from the gravedigger’s shed. Garland and I weave our way through crooked trees and the stones marking the lives of Bostonians from centuries past, carved with skulls, and bones, and angels’ wings, until we reach the pauper’s corner—a desolate patch of unmarked graves. An owl trills from a branch in a tree overhead, but the only other sound I hear is the darkness.
The soil has settled, and yet the faint L on the wall allows us to find the place where I laid Lenore to rest. I stare down at her bed of dirt and inhale a deep breath, my hands gripped around the coarse wood of the spade’s handle.
Hope is nothing more than folly, said Pa on the night I fled the house. Hope wastes time. Hope refuses to face truths . . . Hope inevitably leads to disappointment . . .
“Discouragement be damned!” I say in a voice that echoes across the graves—a voice that I hurl south to John Allan’s ears in Moldavia—and I drive the blade of the spade into the earth.