Walt Whitman – The Novel

Steve Newman

Chapter 1 – March 26th 1892

Walt Whitman had been afraid to go to sleep because when he did the young stranger came and started his damned idiotic chatter about times long gone, and people long dead, and places not seen for forty years or more, and about secrets Walt wanted kept secret; and anyways the room was too small for two people these days what with books and papers all over the floor, and plates of uneaten food – leastways uneaten by Walt but greedily consumed by the mice who were getting as big as rats but weren't rats because the rats had enough to gorge themselves on down by the wharf.

So Walt sat by the open window sipping water and brandy and listening to the night noises: the distant barking of dogs, the occasional shot of a gun, and the less occasional fight outside in the street between a couple of drunks on their way home from one of a dozen saloons, bars and whorehouses. Walt loved their idiotic insults and ineffectual brawling, liked to listen because it was his sound, the sound of the streets; and the streets were where Walt had lived and worked and prospered and added his two-cents worth and had the odd fight or two himself. Where he'd once horse-whipped a cab driver for horse-whipping his weary old horse.

And it was on the streets where Walt had heard the language of the city: the bawling of the street corner hawkers, of buskers playing on old battered army bugles, or dented banjos who sent a stream of abuse after some up-town-Johnny who couldn't be bothered to spare a dime, and would have pulled a knife or a gun if the Johnny had had the nerve to respond.

But as the dawn began to break Walt could hear new sounds in the distance – the sound of steam engines coming to life as the ferries readied themselves for the early morning shuttles; the sound of locomotives over to the west, the sound of men's iron-clad boots on the cobbles just half a street away as they made their way to the the wharfs and factories.

Then, the distinctive sound of the steam-whistle of the Brooklyn Ferry as it headed out.

Walt loved that sound - the sound of the steam-whistle. And it was then that he usually fell asleep.

'Hello, Old Man.'

To Be Continued...