Walt Whitman's Secret Read Online Free Page B

device: a wheeling-chair, as people called it then. Later we needed to acquire one of his own. It had a wicker seat. At first he could propel himself by slowly spinning its two big wheels in such a manner as to strengthen his by then sunken chest. Later he required the assistance of pushers, including former patients in the soldiers’ hospitals, the Stafford boy(who always wore a gold ring W had given him), a sequence of paid nurses and of course yours truly. The various parts I played in his life made me realize eventually that I must leave off lithographic work and find some sensible and unfulfilling position that would be regular as to wages and hours and thus, by its very rigidity, allow me the freedom to carry out my
real
job in life, one that carried no lofty title, or any title at all, and was made up of assisting the great man in any way that might arise.

    TWO    
    I KNEW THAT BEDROOM better than I knew my own. You climbed eleven scuffed wooden stairs. They sagged in the middle from so many previous residents whose tread most likely was heavy from worry. As you went up, Missus Davis’s damned mutt would always bark at you from one of the little parlors below. Sometimes her parrot joined in. Missus Davis was a sea captain’s widow who did for W. He paid her nothing, but she got free room and board in perpetuity. Another part of the bargain was that she contributed all her furniture for their common use, as W himself didn’t own any furniture when he moved to Mickle Street. Perhaps he had never owned any, or certainly not more than a work-table. Missus Davis’s furniture was old and nicked and sturdy, rather like she herself.
    At the head of the stairs was a small window that looked out on the backyard. The window had colored glass panes that turned the light red, blue and yellow. This was the only purely ornamental touch in the little place, and of course it was one I noticed only when I visited during the daytime, when attending to our publishing affairs or bringing W the papers. Mornings were often rough for him, but he usually seemed to feel better as the day lengthened. So I usually, but not always, went in the evenings when, although his physicalenergy was likely to be low, he became quite frisky of speech, especially after escaping from a nap. In fact I frequently disturbed him when he was still asleep in the small bed with high skinny posts with fancy lathe work.
    â€œThrow your hat on the bedpost,” was what he said heartily as soon as I entered the room on the night I’ve had it in my mind to tell you about as best I can. You see, he often hung his trousers in that manner, though his own hat, the soft gray sloucher with the high crown and the sweat stains, lay as usual on the round table by the windows, holding down a stack of loose documents. W often wrote on pieces of scratch paper and the backs of envelopes, then pasted the pieces together in a string, a practice he had picked up in the newspaper offices of Brooklyn and New Orleans. A paste pot and brush for that purpose stood on the big writing-table. He had taken off his boots of course but otherwise had fallen asleep fully dressed. The evening was warm and muggy, but he shuffled across the plank floor, struck a match on the side of the stove and tossed it in the firebox. I could see the orange flame shoot up.
    â€œI fag early,” he said, “but then I rise early to go downstairs and sit in the front room and await the mail.” He wasn’t good on the narrow stairs, particularly going down. He considered the postman a friend, knew his name and his history, and the stories about members of his family, talked with him at length. The same with the neighborhood boys. The younger ones were afraid of him, but often hid their fright in giggling when they passed on the sidewalk. Perhaps their parents had told them to mind whom they spoke to.
    Missus Davis knew how to keep the little place clean and