Free Gob's Grief by Chris Adrian Page B

Walt thought back to an instance in Armory Square when his own thumb had been cut by a scalpel covered with gangrenous filth. His thumb had swelled up like a plum, then, and taken months to heal.
    “It’s a scratch,” said the boy. Now Walt thought he was definitely a boy, not even twenty years old, though deep lines of care were writ on his brow. Walt leaned over, very slowly, to inspect the wound.
    “It’s deep. It should be bandaged.”
    “It’s not so deep,” he said. “See? Now it’s drying up.” He gave it a few shakes, and the trickling blood slowed and stopped.
    “But it was deep,” said Walt, who thought he’d seen a flash of white bone between the lips of the cut.
    “No,” said the fellow. “I think it wasn’t. And I am a doctor. A connoisseur, if you will, of wounds.” He put out his bloody hand for Walt to shake. “Dr. George Washington Woodhull,” he said, “but you may please call me Gob.”
    Walt stared and stared at him, but did not take his hand. Though Armory Square was so fresh in his mind that he sometimes thought he could still smell blood and ether in his beard and his skin, it took him a moment to place the name Woodhull.
    “Well, you are Walt Whitman. You don’t need to tell me. I knew it the very moment I entered this car. Who else, I ask you, looks like Walt Whitman? And see here, the whole city has been notified of your visit.” He moved over, sat down next to Walt, and took a copy of the Times from his coat. “‘With the advent of autumn,’” he read, “‘Walt Whitman once again makes his appearance on the sidewalks of Broadway. His large, massive personality; his grave and prophetic, yet free and manly appearance; his insouciance of manner and movement; his easy and negligent but clean and wholesome dress—all go to make up a figure and an individuality that attracted the attention and interest of every passer-by.’” Walt stared, remembering Dr. Woodhull of Armory Square, barely listening to the personal notice in the paper, though he was very pleased with it. He’d written the outline himself and submitted it to a friend at the Times.
    “Mr. Whitman,” said the boy. “I am so glad to meet you.” He put his hand out again, and this time Walt took it. It was a small hand, but strong, and the boy squeezed so hard Walt thought he might whimper. He pumped Walt’s arm and with every shake Walt got a feeling, a happy feeling, as if this young fellow were pumping him up with joy. See? Hank said. Do you see him, Walt? Do you see him?
    The next day Walt went planting in the park. While he waited for his new friend, he searched out places where he thought people might settle down for a picnic. Kneeling in a good spot on the meadow, near the lake, he tore up some grass and made a little bed of it on which to rest his book. He’d inscribed it earlier in a neat but carefree hand: For you.
    It was his conviction that he was most successful with the reader in the open air, and so he planted, certain that a person who encountered his poems among the natural splendors of this park would be charmed and changed by them. He sat down on a bench some hundreds of feet away from where he’d left his book, and watched. Opening a paper and pretending to read it, he thought not about his prospective reader, but of Dr. Woodhull—of Gob.
    Gob had invited Walt to walk with him, and walk they did, all over the city for hours and hours, so today even Walt, a perennially enthusiastic and untiring perambulator, had sore feet. Walt confessed that he already knew a Dr. Woodhull, and Gob confessed that Canning Woodhull was indeed his father, though he had not seen him since he was five years old. They talked about poems because Gob insisted that he was a great admirer of Walt’s Leaves , and they talked about politics because as night fell there began a grand Democratic meeting and torchlight procession. Democrats poured out into the street by the thousands, and the whole city was lit up