Poe shadow by Matthew Pearl Read Free Book Online Page B

doubt noted that Poe’s time in Baltimore had not seemed to be premeditated. After becoming engaged to Elmira Shelton in Richmond, he had announced his intentions of going to New York to complete his future plans. But what had been the poet’s whereabouts and purposes here in Baltimore? Baltimore should not be so indifferent as simply to lose a man, even in its dingiest shipping quarters—it was not Philadelphia. Why had he not traveled straight to New York after sailing here from Richmond? What had happened over the course of five days between leaving Richmond and being discovered in Baltimore and what had brought him into such a state that he would be wearing someone else’s clothes?
    After my visit to the burial ground, I’d been bent on directing to these questions my own faculties of intelligence, which I would humbly measure against those of any man—at least any man I had yet known (for this was about to change).
    There was that one momentous afternoon when the answers seemed to come improbably into view. Peter had been delayed at court, and our desks were empty of new work. I was walking away from the Hanover Market and was stepping to the Camden Street curb with an armful of packages.
    “Poe the poet?”
    At first I ignored this. Then I stopped and turned around slowly, wondering if my ears had been fooled by the wind. Truly, though, if this voice had not pronounced on its own power “Poe the poet” it had said something
just
like that.
    It was the fish dealer, Mr. Wilson, with whom I had just done business at the market. Our law office had recently arranged some mortgages for him. Though a few times he had come to our offices, I preferred finding him here, as I could then also select the finest fish to be prepared for supper at Glen Eliza. And Wilson’s crab-and-oyster gumbo was the best this side of New Orleans.
    The fishmonger motioned me to follow him back to the large market. I had left my memorandum book at his table. He wiped his hands on his streaked apron and handed it to me. It was now wrapped in the distinct odors of his store, as though it had been lost at sea and then pulled out.
    “You don’t want to forget your work. I opened it to see who it belonged to. I see you’ve written the name Edgar Poe.” The fishmonger pointed to the open page.
    I returned the book to my bag. “Thank you, Mr. Wilson.”
    “Ah, Squire Clark, here’s something.” He excitedly unwrapped a package of fish from its paper. Inside was a hideously ugly fish, piled upon its identical brothers. “This was ordered especially from out west for a dinner party. It is called a
dog-fish
by some. But it’s also called a ‘lake lawyer,’ for its ferocious looks and voracious habits!” He chuckled uproariously. He quickly worried he had insulted me. “Not like you, of course, Squire Clark.”
    “Perhaps that is the problem, my friend.”
    “Yes.” He hesitated and cleared his throat. He was now hacking at fish without looking down at his hands or at the heads shooting off them. “Any event—poor soul, must have been, that Poe. Died over at that creaky ol’ Washington College Hospital some weeks back, I heard. My sister’s husband knows a nurse there, who says, according to another nurse who spoke to a doctor—
demonish
busybodies, these women—who said Poe wasn’t right in his upper story, that as he lay there he called out a name over and over before he…well, that is,” he shifted to a whisper of great sensitivity, “before he
croaked.
God have mercy on the weak.”
    “You said he called a name, Mr. Wilson?”
    The fishmonger sloshed around his words to remember. He sat at his stool and began picking out unsold oysters from a barrel, carefully prying each one open and checking them for pearls before discarding them with philosophical regret. The oyster was the consummate Baltimore native, not only because it was enterprising and could be traded but because it possessed the always-present possibility of an