POE MUST DIE (14 page)

“Stand! Everybody as you are, if you please! First man what moves a bleedin’ hair gets a ball for his trouble!”

Figg crouched at the top of a ladder leading from the hayloft down to the ground floor, two pocket pistols pointed at Sproul, Chopback and the third man, Isaac Bard.

Poe’s eyes quickly went to his deliverer. He saw a small mountain of a man in black top hat, long black coat and boots, with the face of a monstrous and surly bulldog. The face belonged to someone who ate raw meat with the run still in it. But this specimen of prehistoric man had just pulled Poe back from that greatest of unknowns and Poe accepted his deliverance from death gladly.

He stood up and watched Figg start down the ladder, moving carefully, eyes on the men below him. Figg had never seen a knife like Sproul’s before; the blade was large enough to be melted down for cannon if a man had a mind to. The one called Chopback had his axe and the third man showed no weapon, which was not a reason for Figg to play him cheap. The boxer knew that staying alive in the world meant treating all men as capable of removing you from it.

Poe used the sleeve of his greatcoat to wipe the remainder of the tobacco juice from his face. He’d never seen Bulldog Face before and insofar as he could remember had never done him a good turn. So why was he racing to Poe’s rescue?

Sproul continued to chew his tobacco, never taking his eyes from Figg as the boxer slowly made his way down the ladder. “You ain’t the stable boy, I’m thinkin’.”

“Ain’t your Aunt Nelly neither. You would be doin’ yourself a favor if you were to drop that cuttin’ tool you are holdin’. Must be a most heavy burden for such a slight fella as yourself.”

“Does what I tell it.”

“Tell it to lie on the ground. I will not be askin’ you agin.”

Sproul opened his fingers, dropping the huge knife to the ground.

Stopping his descent, Figg said, “Mr. Poe, there is a stable door in front of you direct. Use it, if you please. Outside you will find a worried lookin’ gentleman in a carriage pulled by a rather sad lookin’ bay horse. Introduce yourself and be tellin’ him I sent you.”

Poe bent over to pick up his hat and stick. Removing himself from this society of homicidal imbeciles would be his pleasure; let them all devour one another. Let them bathe in each other’s blood.

Chopback made his move. No one was going to cheat him out of what he’d come here for. He was a small, black-bearded man with the widely spaced, pop eyes of a frog and using his axe on those he hated made him feel as tall as anyone walking the earth. Chopback, who had swung the blade of his axe into the backs of a tidy number of men, thought of his dead cousin Sylvester Pier and the ugly death that had been his thanks to Mr. Poe and Chopback lifted his short-handled axe high over his head.

Figg extended one arm and fired.

Smoke appeared from beneath the hammer and from the barrel of his six-inch pocket pistol and two seconds later, there was a neat, round hole over Chopback’s left eyebrow. Dead on his feet, the frog-eyed little man dropped the axe behind him, falling backwards and on top of it.

That same shot almost killed Pierce James Figg.

The four horses in the stable—like all horses of that time—were not trained to accept gunfire. These horses whinnied, shied, kicked against the stalls and one pulled his bridle free and backed out in a panic; his movements increased the fear and uncertainty among the other three and all crashed against their stall. It was the first one, a black with a shiny coat and white, thunder-boltlike streak running from eyes to nose, who backed out of his stall and into the ladder Figg stood on, sending the boxer flying, causing him to drop both pistols.

Poe’s heart sank as Figg hit the ground, but the boxer leaped to his feet—empty handed—and sidestepped the frightened horse.

All of the horses now backed out of their stalls and milled around the center of the stable where Poe, his would-be killers and would-be rescuer were. To avoid being trampled to death, Poe ducked into an empty stall. There was no back door to the stable and between Poe and the front door were three dangerous men and four terrified horses. It was necessary to absent himself from this precarious ground but how? On his knees, he peeked out of a stall and saw Hamlet Sproul snatch up his bowie knife, then leap backwards to avoid a galloping horse. He saw Isaac Bard pull the axe from under the dead Chopback and he saw the two of them direct their full attentions to Poe’s deliverer, the man with the bulldog’s face.

Isaac Bard was a gray, squat fifty-year-old who was trying to hang on in the dangerous underworld of Five Points and the Bowery, an underworld controlled by the tough, young Irish. Bard was a member of “The Dead Rabbits,” the most vicious Irish gang in Five Points, a gang that wore a red stripe down the side of their pants and carried a dead rabbit into battle stuck on a pike. Isaac Bard hired himself out as often as he could; for a dollar he had agreed to be Hamlet Sproul’s man for as long as it took to deal with Master E. A. Poe. Bard could neither read nor write, so the fact that Master Poe was a man of letters was lost on him. The scribbler was only a day’s work; that work meant taking his life.

Poe’s throat was tight with fear. His rescuer was trapped between a panicked, whinnying horse and two armed men, each holding cold steel. The bulldog had only empty hands, not enough to keep both him and Poe alive.

Poe saw the bulldog quickly crouch, pick up the ladder he’d just fallen from and, gripping it tightly in both hands, charge Sproul and Bard, hitting both men simultaneously, driving them back, back. Both men went down and Figg dropped the ladder on top of them.

Poe watched the violence with total concentration, fascinated by it, attaching himself to it completely and losing himself in it so that he became one with all three men. Violence had always lured him and now he succumbed to it, on his feet so that he could better view the life and death drama being played solely for him.
For him.

He watched Isaac Bard die.

Bard, flat on his back, kept his grip on the axe but he was slower than Figg, whose life had been a study of combat. Isaac Bard rolled to his left side, one hand gripping the axe, the other against the ground to push himself to his feet.

His head was waist high when Figg, standing in front of him, placed both hands behind Bard’s head and pulled it down hard into his raised knee. Poe heard Bard sigh as though drifting into sleep. Bard, his nose crushed, panicked at the horrible hurt exploding in his face; he panicked because he could no longer breathe. Poe saw the axe fall, but he also saw that Figg didn’t let go of Bard’s head.

With his left hand on the top of the gray-haired man’s head, Figg cupped the man’s chin with his right hand and savagely twisted the head as though turning a wheel. Figg snapped Isaac Bard’s neck, killing him. To Poe, what he had just seen had the beauty and grace of dance. He watched with fascination as Figg dropped Bard’s limp body and Poe wondered what it would be like to lay your bare hands on a man and kill him with such arrogant ease.

Poe cringed, recoiling as Sproul, keeping the bowie knife low, inched towards Figg.
If the bulldog perishes, then my own life is forfeit.

A horse reared up on its hind legs. Poe’s eyes went to it, to the closed stable door. To get out of the stable he had to pass Hamlet Sproul and the bulldog, who no longer wore his tall black hat. Bulldog’s head, crudely shorn of whatever hair nature had seen fit to bless it with, was visible and of no beauty worth mentioning. His face was enough to scare the whole of purgatory. But he did not back up as Sproul slithered towards him like some stalking lizard. Bulldog had courage. Grant him that before he died.

The stable door slid open and sunlight entered suddenly, forcing Poe to close his eyes. When he opened them, the horses had fled out onto Fifth Avenue where they kicked up snow as they ran. There was a silhouette in the doorway and Poe narrowed his eyes and focused on it.

“Mr. Figg! Mr. Figg, are you safe, sir! I heard a shot and there was an awful noise from the horses throwing themselves against the door.” In the doorway, Titus Bootham shaded his eyes and looked into the stable.

Hamlet Sproul stopped, both hands on the bowie knife, arms extended in front of him. His voice broke with fear. “Jonathan sent you.”

Figg shook his head.

Sproul shrieked, “You lie! You are here to kill me!” He began backing away from Figg. “You will not burn my heart or nothin’ else that is inside of me. You will not burn—”

He turned and ran.

Poe watched him flee through the wide open stable door, not pausing to even glance at the short man who stood there in steel-rimmed spectacles and a black bear fur coat.
Jonathan.
Why did Sproul, a man feared by the underworld fear
Jonathan?
Did this hairless and monstrous bulldog, who now bent over to pick up his two pocket pistols and tall black hat, work for Jonathan, this Jonathan whom Sproul claimed had killed Pier and Lowery and
burned their hearts and liver.

Poe closed his eyes and his body shook. He was cold with fear, suddenly aware of a massive evil in his life, of being caught in a quicksand of events over which he had no control.
All that we see or seem/Is but a dream within a dream.

Jonathan.

Without knowing why, Poe sensed that Jonathan was very much a danger and could destroy him. The darkness that Jonathan carried with him was not that unleashed by Poe on the printed page. It was something real and never too far away and all of this Poe sensed in the seconds he stood in the stable with closed eyes.

When he opened his eyes, the bulldog and his short friend in the bear coat stood before him.

Poe’s eyes met Figg’s. The writer said softly, “Are you from Jonathan?”

Figg said, “I come to kill him.”

Poe nodded. He was not surprised.

He watched Figg slip the two pistols into the outside pockets of his long black coat.

There was no need for Poe to remain here any longer. “I thank you for saving my life. I wish there was something further I could do—”

“There is.”

“I am in your debt, Mr.—”

“Figg. Pierce James Figg. I seek your aid in finding Jonathan. I have here in my possession, a letter of introduction from—”

Poe closed his eyes and shook his head. “I fear you mistake me for someone else.”

“You are Edgar Allan Poe and I have here in my possession, a letter—”

Fear brought on Poe’s anger. “I have some small curiosity, Mr. Figg, as to how you made my acquaintance without my having made yours.”

“We ain’t been introduced if that is where you are placin’ your words.”

Titus Bootham plucked at Figg’s sleeve. “May I suggest we continue this conversation elsewhere, as I am afraid we may soon draw servants seeking an explanation regarding the disappearance of four excellent horses. Oh, Mr. Figg, dare I ask. Are those two men—” he pointed to Isaac Bard and Chopback, “are they—”

Figg kept staring at Poe. “They are. Mr. Poe—”

Poe feared the unseen Jonathan and he wanted nothing to do with this Figg who hunted him. “I have no interest in your letter of introduction even were it signed by Aristotle and witnessed by Shakespeare and the Prophet John. I seek no further involvement in this business—”

He thought of Rachel Coltman. “I seek no further involvement than I have already incurred and this is nothing I care to discuss with you.” Why hadn’t this Figg rushed out into the wintery gusts like the other animals?

Figg took one step towards him and Poe stepped back. Figg made him uneasy.

“You
will
help me, Mr. Poe. You
will.”

“I have refused you, sir.”

“I have just killed two men.”

“Are you threatening me?”

Figg’s voice was that of a man with a dusty throat. Figg’s smile was the size of a sixpenny piece and lasted no longer than a drop of water in the fires of hell. “Threatenin’
you,
Mr. Poe. Go on. Now why would I indulge in such practices, me an Englishman and all.”

“You have threatened me, sir. I know it.”

“Then know that I mean to have your help, Mr. Poe, and consider us joined by God until I completes me business or until God puts us asunder.”

“You mean until you kill whom you seek or until he kills us both?”

Figg placed an arm around Poe’s small shoulders, forcing him to walk with him towards the front door of the stable. “I am newly arrived in your country and I am sure you
will
be of some small assistance to me.”

Poe watched Figg reach inside his long, black coat. “I have here in me possession, a letter of introduction—”

Poe felt Figg’s fingers dig into his shoulder, keeping the two of them joined and in step.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing/Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

TWELVE

F
LGG CLEANED HIS
two pistols while speaking.

“Me and Mr. Bootham here, we was followin’ you, Mrs. Coltman, us havin’ come upon you at the American Museum of Master Phineas Taylor Barnum. We comes near yer ‘ouse and we spies Mr. Poe a-strollin’ ’bout his business and we sees three gents leave a carriage and drag him from public view. These gents did not seem to be clergymen. I finds me way into the stable and—”