Specimen Days

Broadway was filled with its lights and music, its departing shoppers and its glad men in hats, laughing, blowing smoke from the bellows of their chests. Lucas walked among them, looking attentively downward. He saw the tips of boots, the cuffs of trousers, the hems of skirts. He saw the little leavings that were trod upon: a cigar end, a curl of twine, a canary-colored pamphlet announcing "Land in Colorado."

He'd gone along for several blocks, twice incurring the muttered indignations of citizens who had to step out of his way, when he came upon a pair of boots that seemed familiar, though he knew he had never seen them before. They were workingman's boots, dun-colored, stoutly laced. They stopped before him.

He looked up and beheld Walt's face.

Here was his gray-white cascade of beard, here his broad-brimmed hat and the kerchief knotted at his neck. He was utterly like his likeness. He smiled bemusedly at Lucas. His face was like brown paper that had been crushed and smoothed again. His eyes were bright as silver nails.

"Hello," he said. "Lost something?"

Lucas had gone searching for money and found Walt. A vast possibility trembled in the air.

He answered, "Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, I and this mystery, here we stand."

Walt expelled a peal of laughter. "What's this?" he said. "You quote me to myself?"

His voice was clear and deep, penetrating; it was not loud, but it was everywhere. It might have been the voice of a rainstorm, if rain could speak.

Lucas struggled to answer as himself. What he said was, "The earth, that is sufficient, I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them."

"How extraordinary," Walt said. "Who are you, then?"

Lucas was unable to tell him. He stood quivering and small at Walt's feet. His heart thumped painfully against his ribs.

Walt squatted before Lucas. His knees cracked softly, like damp twigs.

"What's your name?" he asked. "Lucas."

"Lucas. How do you come to know my verse so well?"

Lucas said, "I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and fathomless as myself; they do not know how immortal, but I know."

Walt laughed again. Lucas felt the laughter along his own frame, in his skeleton, as an electrified quake, as if Walt were not only laughing himself but summoning laughter up out of the earth, to rise through the pavement and enter Lucas by the soles of his feet.

"What a remarkable boy you are," Walt said. "How remarkable to find you here."

Lucas gathered himself. He said, "I wonder if I might ask a question, sir?"

"Of course you may. Ask away. I'll answer if I'm able."

"Sir, do the dead return in the grass?"

"They do, my boy. They are in the grass and the trees."

"Only there?"

"No, not only there. They are all around us. They are in the air and the water. They are in the earth and sky. They are in our minds and hearts."

"And in the machines?"

"Well, yes. They are in machinery, too. They are everywhere."

Lucas had been right, then. If he'd harbored any doubts, here was the answer.

"Thank you, sir."

"Tell me of yourself," Walt said. "Where do you come from? Are you in school?"

Lucas couldn't find a way to answer plainly. What could he tell Walt, how account for himself?

He said at length, "I'm searching for something, sir." "What are you searching for, lad?"

He could not say money. Money was vital, and yet now, standing before Walt's face and beard, under the curve of his hat, it seemed so little. Saying "money" to Walt would be like standing in Catherine's hallway, blazing with love, and receiving a lamb's neck and a bit of potato. He would have to say what the money was for, why he needed it so, and that task, that long explanation, was more than he could manage.

He could say only, "Something important, sir."

"Well, then. We are all searching for something important, I suppose. Can you tell me more exactly what it is you seek?"

"Something necessary."

"Do you think I could be of any help?"

Lucas said, "You help me always."

"I'm glad of that. Do you hope to find this precious thing on Broadway?"

"I've found you, sir."

Walt drew up more laughter from the earth. Lucas felt it throughout his body. Walt said, "I'm hardly precious, my boy. I'm an old servant, is all I am. I'm a vagrant and a mischief-maker. Do you know what I think?"

"What, sir?"

"I think you should walk far and wide. I think you should search Broadway and beyond. I think you should search the entire world."

"That would be hard for me, sir."

"Not all at once, not in a single night. I suspect you're something of a poet yourself. I suspect you'll spend your life searching."

Lucas's heart caught. He needed the money now. He said, "Oh, I hope not, sir."

"You'll see, you'll see. The search is also the object. Do you know what I mean by that?"

"No, sir."

"You will, I think. When you're older, you will."

"I need, sir-"

"What do you need?"

"I need to know which way to go."

"Go where your heart bids you."

"My heart is defective, sir."