Voices in the Dead House by Norman Lock

Author:Norman Lock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press

What’s this now, Walt—an old man’s tears?

No, it is merely the headwind, freighted with particles of ice, which makes me weep.

I think you have entered the famous slough. See! from your dead lips the ooze exuding at last!

I am shivering with cold, and yet I feel sweat trickle from my armpits. Emerson hated the word, which I used in Leaves. Perhaps his are less aromatic than mine. No dainty dolce affetuoso I. Words should walk, weep, kiss, do the male and female act.

The handsome nurse with richly colored hair whom I twice saw in the wards steps from the darkness onto the dimly lighted stage of my fancy. “Mr. Whitman, you’re wanted,” she says gravely.

“Wanted by whom?” I reply with a faint, quivering intonation.

She puts her finger to her lips and bids me hush.

I follow her outside into the falling snow, where Pete is waiting with the horsecar. She climbs aboard, sits, and gestures that I should sit beside her. Gallantly, I cover her lap with a buffalo rug. The driver flaps the lines, and the horses walk on down Pennsylvania Avenue. We stop at the President’s House. Except for light flickering at the windows of his bedchamber, the house lies in darkness. The dark nurse and I hurry inside and quickly mount the stairs. Two tall candles light the president’s body, contending with the deep shadows that delineate his rawboned face. His sunken eyes are closed. Without a word, we prepare the corpse. I tie my scarf under the jaws to keep the mouth shut. Abraham Lincoln’s speech-making days are finished, unless there be secesh angels and Copperheads in heaven for him to rail against.

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