for ferry fare. He would make his way somehow from railroad junction to boat quay, even if he had to walk. He was a good walker. He had walked before.
The train, steaming over the flatlands, past Camden, past Trenton, is dark in the afternoon with the day’s ill weather. Night is descending. As it grows darker still, the cast of oil lamps behind sconces festooned on hardwood paneling causes eerie shadows to play.
His notebook is open. All around in the dim light his fellow passengers pore over the penny papers, the popular magazines. Women knit, crochet. He waits for the music of the muse to seize his hand, his ear, his heart, to drive him down, down into his seat, with his pen, the paper, the pot of blood-colored ink laid out in front of him, and to lead him, rescue him from those death bells clanging. What tale of terror their turbulence tells!
The brain, that organic jelly that resides inside the skull at its core, this is his difficult organ. His head is oversized. Outsized. It is literally a great thing. A massive entity unto itself. It resides on a slender stalk, a slender neck upon a slender body. The head a great weight. If only the stem and root were stronger. He falls into a deep slumber.
Sometime later, confused and disoriented, he is awakened by the booming voice of the conductor, a bewhiskered man in pressed blue serge, announcing the station stop, “Paterson!” and without thinking he scrambles to his feet and abruptly gets off from the coach.
He stands on the platform and peers into the darkness as the train steams away, leaving him with dense unrest and the clattering din of iron wheels.
Standing in the cold and damp, breaking away from the long empty tracks, he surveys the road. He looks for what? A dray operator or teamster who will be good enough to carry him to the Colt gun factory.
This, he suddenly realizes, is the reason he has come awake in this desolate town. Here lies Colt’s Paterson factory, the manufacturing plant of the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company, holder of Colt’s patent, maker of the Colt Paterson revolver. If Samuel Colt is on premises, if he will listen to reason, perhaps, just perhaps, he might increase Poe’s rate of remuneration for the word portrait of his brother.
As if in a sign that all is right, a wagon turns onto the street some one hundred yards away.
Poe starts. Signals.
The driver, a gaunt man in black, head like a skull, stares at him as he nears, reins in, says nothing at first, just staring, and finally says, “Going up the Old Gun Mill,” his voice a deep resonance. “If you’re getting in, get in. Don’t have all day,” showing teeth like tombstones.
Poe throws up his satchel. Dust rises and falls. He climbs up, takes his place next to the man. He says, “Thank you, thank you. You are very kind,” in his soft Virginia accent, looks back over his shoulder at the empty flatbed, save now his cracked leather bag, the patina of dust settled back down.
The wagon lurches forward.
For a good long while the two ride in silence, their eyes fixed in front of them on the four roan horses’ undulating haunches, the steam rising from the old animals’ faded strawberry flanks.
“Picking up a load a them there revolving guns,” the driver eventually says. “Bring ’em down Bayonne. Then back up the block cutter to Weehawken. Pick up a load of cobblestone.”
Poe brightens. “Weehawken? Would you object, sir, if I were to ride with you as far?”
“Don’t mind if you don’t.”
Colt’s gun works occupied a group of buildings, an old silk mill, on the bank of the Passaic River at the intersection of Van Houten and Mill streets.
To Poe the factory seems surprisingly quiet, but then again it was late in the day, after 7 p.m. Poe enters the general reception area, where he is met by a clerk. He requests Colonel Colt and is asked his name. Poe gives it. A few moments later the clerk returns and leads him upstairs to a large office overlooking the river. Several pistols and muskets adorn the wall.
Colt is on his feet. “Mr. Poe? My pleasure. Have we met, sir?” He is a big man with abundant facial hair and shaggy muttonchops, holding a big segar, although it is not burning. His eyes, deep-set, are somewhat crooked in their twin sockets. Poe has the curious if uneasy sense that Colt is making use of these gleaming twin orbs in some undescribed, aggressive pursuit. To peer inside him?
“No,” Poe says, “we have not met. But you know who I am?”
“But of course. My brother holds you in such high regard. Anything I can do for you, Poe. Anything. You are on your way to see John right now, is that it? I know he has been expecting you.”
“Yes, I am. Sir, this is embarrassing, forgive me,” he says. “I understand we have made an agreement, and I am very grateful for it, and, I assure you, it is not my habit not to abide by the agreements that I make, but in this case, is there any way you can see in your heart, Mr. Colt, to improve my contract? Monetarily, I mean. You see my wife is ill, and right now I am to be paid fifty dollars for my work, which I emphasize is a fair price, but fifty more would make life that much more easy for me at present given my circumstances. I am sure you see.”
Colt laughs. The mention of money has drawn his attention. “My dear Poe,” he booms. “Money is the bane of us all, is it not? Our scourge. Never enough. Never.” He laughs, good-naturedly, a bass crescendo. “You do know, sir, that I am in bankruptcy?”
Poe’s eyes widen, turn down. “No, I did not know.”
“If it was a gun you were after, a fine repeating revolver, nothing would be easier. I’m sorry to say money is another story. I thought I would have a fat contract with the army, but it has all gone to hell.”
He shakes his large head sadly.
“I’m on the verge of going under here, Poe. To be frank, your timing could not be worse. What with John at the hangman’s door, and my munitions business what it is. I’ve been blowing things up since I was a boy, Poe. You’ve probably been writing them down just as long. How does that strike you for irony? Look here, Poe, this is the complete outfit.”
On his desk he opens a cloth-lined wooden case. Inside, the blue-finished gun is held in place with small wire loops. He removes it. In script is marked on the barrel: “The Patent Arms M’g Co. Paterson, N. J. Colt’s Patent,” and on the cylinder “Colt.” The only adornment Poe can see is an engraving around the cylinder. “We offer two choices of etching,” Colt explains. “The first is of a centaur with two revolvers in hand, killing two horsemen, as you see here. The other depicts the scene of a stagecoach holdup. When you buy the gun, you get a complete case outfit. Here a combined bullet and powder flask. It loads five measured charges of powder and five bullets simultaneously. In addition there is a magazine-capping device that holds fifty percussion caps that feed singularly, one at a time. Also included is a bullet mold, a brass cleaning rod, and this tool that combines several uses, including screwdriver, hammer, and rammer. All of that plus an extra cylinder to be carried ready-loaded, thus giving ten shots without reloading.”
“Ingenious.”
“I can’t give them away. You, sir, won’t even take one.”
“I have no one to shoot.”
“Come, come, come, there must be someone,” Colt booms.
“I would
