The Saint Louisans (33 page)

“Coal smoke killed people. Dozens just before the war. It took that to get the city to clean up. People like the Desouches … they owned the coal, Lee. They had their Veiled Prophet while they poisoned the air. While the air they poisoned killed people. People like my granddaddy.”

I saw a hand-painted sign advertising the Klara Mohammed School. The Moorish Science Temple of America.

Vess sunk into his soft leather seat. “Lee, look around you.”

I did as the fog scrolled away to roof top level, among trees that humped over, scarred from fires set or weak branches straight in the air, like they were the receiving end of a stickup. Dick Gregory Lane had a bleakness that melted into Vandeventer and Cote Brilliante, to a mural of Joe Johnson and Mohammed Ali. I am the Greatest, it boasted. Its paint was flaking off. Vess kept staring out.

“This is what Juneteenth Towne will change. I want the bread to get rid of this shit. I'll never be mayor. But I can get things done.”

“Your rep means there's dirty tricks somewhere.”

“To be black is to be criminal? Look Lee, crime is what is committed against us. Crime is subjective. If there is no law, there is no crime. If there's no justice, then crime is a matter of self-defense. Has there really been law in this country? For everyone?”

We drove past the Bee Jazzy beauty parlor, the only functioning business on the block, not counting the quartet of men scoring in front of a sign on a blackened, splintered door: No Drinking or Loitering on the Premises. There was no house behind it.

“You want to save what is wrong,” Vess said in deep judgment. “The mansion's going to go.”

“Damn it, Vess, we don't have to be enemies. Saul wants to help, he wants to plan something organic to the neighborhood—”

“I'll decide what its needs are.” Vess was a king, remote and cold. “Terri and Pierre are with me, and you're going to be locked out. When the old lady's gone, the war starts.”

My anger began to tingle, but Vess shrugged my concern away as he looked out, perhaps beyond the blight into his own past. “When I was a kid,” he said, “me and my pals got peashooters. When that VP parade rolled down the street, back in the days when it was held at night, a torch-light parade for the Prophet wearing his sheet. A little bit of KKK jazz there, hmm?” He narrowed his eyes. “We'd aim at the Prophet and his lovelies. My aim was pretty good.”

“I always thought the plastic sheet they had around them was like a jewel box.”

“Sure, nurse, you'd think that in your TV world. That plastic there was because of me.” The smile almost forming at the end of his lips was warming.

“Stop the car.”

We were at Cote Brilliante, the odd French name in the middle of a slum more known for reports on police blotters than its namesake, the mound that in the old days was said to shine brighter than the sun when the light hit it. Vess's stance almost seemed royal, resting on a long-denied throne. Another king in exile, like Saul; two men with blocked visions.

“Sonia told me about Cote Brilliante,” he said. “I never realized all of this was once sacred ground built by Native Americans. So, Lee, why can't Juneteenth be sacred?”

I sensed a slight pain in Vess that maturity barely covered, making him a man with no yesterday or today, only tomorrow. Inside his girth and weary face, the little boy with the peashooter was there, ready to keep up the fight for … the dream? Nightmare?

“I will remake this city,” he said, “and I want to help raise Corn Mother. Like Sonia. Like your kid.” His pleasantness, the wistful tone of power denied, ended. “I'd hate to see something happen to her.”

A cold chill bit my spine. “What do you mean?”

His laugh was sly. “I've spoken to Rasheed. It's all going to be nice and legal when he bundles her off, and there's not a thing you can do. We have the winning cards. Look, when I was shot, you helped me get back on my feet. I remember that. Now, I'm returning the favor. Make a deal. Do that, and maybe I can help Jama. Use some pull with Rasheed. That's my therapy for you.”

“What kind of pull do you have?”

“A hundred thousand dollars worth.”

It made me take a deep breath. I restated the terms. “Margot and her children must end their hatred.”

Vess's eyes probed and pitied. “This is one time the angel loses. Thirty percent of the estate. That's what they say. And that mansion has to go. Also, you know Rasheed will do his shit and no one's going to stop him. Go along, and it doesn't have to have a dark ending. I mean it.”

The car stopped. Vess smiled, reached over, and opened the door. “Gotta go. Don't worry.”

Vess waved, and a cab pulled up, its muffler choking like a bronchial infection, smoke puffing, probably like the old pot of burning coal Vess's grandfather peddled. He motioned at the driver. “He'll get you back to where all the white folks are. It's on the house.”

I got out. Vess closed the door and drove off. After a quick look at the dismal present of Cote Brilliante, I climbed into the cab.

A deepening anger boiled inside me as I told the cabbie to take me past the abandoned shops and weed-strewn parking lots with their cracked asphalt to downtown. I got out at Post Office Square. It's the last real city square, streets like arteries flowing to the heart of the old post office. Built in 1884, it's a gray fortress in French Second Empire style, with pillars, massive wooden doors, and a defiant eagle at its crown. Like most St. Louis architecture that is stately, inspiring, and worthy of admiration, it almost became a parking lot. In the Civil War, Union troops took over the Customhouse and moved all government money there and used it as a rallying point in case the South wanted round two. The Post Office was built with that in mind, being a point of resistance, almost a fort with moats and steel window shutters. Being built as a fortress probably saved it from the wrecking ball. It'd take a nuke to bring it down.

When the federal government moved out in the mid '60s, mayors couldn't wait to pull it down. ‘A useless pile of architecture,' cawed the
St. Louis Globe-Democrat
, our conservative rag that got dumped instead of the old P.O. which was saved, but remained empty for decades. Olmutz, one of the residents I worked back in the old days, suggested the Department of the Interior declare the Old Post Office a national pigeon sanctuary. But there was a happy ending for the building. Offices were filled by the bureaucracy, a local college, and the city library put a branch inside.

As I entered the building, I was prepared to take on the attorneys from Terri and Pierre's law firm. Dick Goetz is a man with a moderately convincing hair weave and sharp eyes that looked me up and down with a twinkle, nodded at my entrance. I smelled carryout Chinese in an adjoining conference room. A corporate lawsuit was in high gear, and it was a working lunch.

“I can guess why you're here,” Dick said. “Why don't we step outside?”

“Afraid I'll go bonkers?”

“I'd say postal,” smiled Dick. “In keeping with the theme of historical preservation.

“Of course.” My smile was immediate. For a legal eagle, Dick was approachable. His shirt striped, tie sedately gray. Our steps made echoes on the vast wooden floor of the parterre. To one side was the original eagle, its slowly rotting limestone now saved by being indoors. Above us a glass skylight with crossbar girders looked like a caged aviary. I folded my arms.

“I want to see them. Now. Tell me where they are.”

“Any business between you and your siblings,” Dick paused, “must be done with me present.”

I looked around. A young woman in a tight skirt and even tighter sweater, probably one of the legal secretaries, walked through. “I was hoping we'd be done with hall monitors.”

Dick was good natured. “Not this semester.” A regretful shrug made Dick's shoulders rise. “They won't agree to a meeting unless it's to sign over the mansion.”

“Oh, for heaven's …” I stared at the parterre. Four people paced around, all having intense cell phone chats, complete with gestures. It reminded me of exercise time in the psych ward. “This is ridiculous. What do they think I'm going to do?”

“There is that restraining order.”

I wanted to make a snappy comeback, but my wit was on empty.

Dick spoke. “Do you want to arrange a meeting?”

Damned straight, I wanted to say, but I paused. Okay, Lee. Calm down. I needed space. For now, it was more Bonsai than Banzai. “I'll take a rain check. Should I bring my attorney, so we can do a tag-team?”

Dick's graying eyebrows raised. “You'll do fine on your own. Just call me.”

I nodded. One of his interns peeked from the firm's glass doors, telling Dick he got a fax, and did he have the Kung Pao Shrimp or the Moo Shi Pork?

Dick had the pork. I didn't take him for a shrimp kind of guy. Looking skyward, past the girders, I saw wings.

While I walked to the Metrolink station, avian body parts were scattered along the way. Here a claw, there bloodied wings, and the odd head or two. An outsider might think St. Louis was in the grip of a santeria cult, but the parts were because of falcons. Peregrine falcons nest on the summits of our high rises, and pigeons were a natural food source, feathered convoys to equally feathered U-boats. When I looked up at the skylight, I saw a falcon's wings curve in the sky; low, due to the fog. God, how I wanted it to clear.

Lindbergh said St. Louis air was always the worst, with air currents forcing dips, making the last stage of a landing or a sharp dive, a finger-crossing experience. I descended into the chilly station, bothered by eagles. Recalling the grid of that skylight, as if it were my own prison.

Back in my apartment I brushed past Yul and went to the closet. Out came the plastic tub that, when opened, gave a whiff of old letters, the odor of history. I went for the ones on top.

Doc's letters. Nearly translucent airmail envelopes, blue-like squares of sky, the stamps almost the weight of the letters, their color a false gravity to words. I passed through Doc's letters to mine, especially the last. Its edges jagged. He must have opened it in a hurry, hoping I'd say yes. I sank to my knees and read it, smiling at my nurseisms, the way I carried medical terminology into my letter writing:
c
means with,
s
without,
a
before,
p
after.

Richard:

I've considered your offer, and as I write this, I recall watching the eagles return to bluffs above the Missouri. P we waited, they flew out from their nests, wings wide as Texas (Aunt Maryism there). I enjoyed seeing your face light up as they swooped to the water to hunt. A beauty S parallel, you said in that tone I love.

The river, Doc, she's mine. S parallel back at you. Oh, love, you're so right. South Africa is your country. You can't be an ex-pat anymore. Eagles need a nest. I'm tied here. I hadn't planned on it, but this river is my home. With you, I felt completed more than with any other man. But I can't leave. Richard, please come back. You can make this our world. Stay home for a year, see if your roots reconnect. If not, love, I'm here. Waiting.

When I see eagles, I'll think about you.

Love, Lee

Two months later, the letters were mailed back to me, along with photos. On the back of the envelope is a wing of dried blood. He took it to work with him, and must have read it more than once. If it had been a Bible, it might have stopped the bullet. As it was, it was only air and memory.

My heart stung, and I wiped away tears as the apartment filled with that early afternoon light that suspends time. Doc. Jama. Margot. St. Louis. All of them and everything. I had to get away, and as Yul strolled by, his tail pluming the tub, I shot to my feet, thinking again of Sara:

But when I sought the House of Dreams

To creep within and die,

The wind of Truth had leveled it,

And passed it by.

I was back at Bellefontaine cemetery with the angels. And Sara. And myself. April in Bellefontaine is not quite the cruelest month. Daffodils bloomed in canary yellow, as did deceptively snow-like patches of crocus. Both risked wilting in a cold snap, but they came forth to remind us what goes around comes around. In this case, life.

In my life, everything was stalled. Saving the mansion, reconciling Margot and my bilious half-sibs. Vess Moot and his determined call for social justice. And need we mention Jama? We need not. I was supposed to be the angel to set things right. Instead I was a jackal, preparing Margot for her end.

All of us were boxed in. St. Louis is the ultimate American city stuck in its own inertia. It's on a cosmic river (a woman's river, mind you), with ruins to the first American city up the bend, and what does it do? It stays stuck. Just like Provel sticks to your teeth.

I pondered this as I stood before the girl in the shadow box.

Bessie, she is fondly called. Eight feet tall, with a pose not necessarily angelic. Her left hand closes seductively over her throat, her right hand fingers open, as if lifting from a keyboard. Legs crossed like we do when our date is late, her gown ripples with billowing folds from an invisible, eternal breeze. Her face and figure are sensual; a Felliniesque angel.

She was a sculptor's model in Italy whom Herman Luytins, a prominent druggist from our fair city, fell in love with. He popped the question, but she refused (St. Louis druggists are notoriously easy to turn down if you're an Italian sculptor's model; there was also a Mrs. Luytins in the picture), and a shattered Herman commissioned a statue of her to keep in his Portland Place mansion. She may have disdained marriage, but not a final pose.

Her twelve-ton statue became too heavy for the mansion, so to alleviate Bessie's strain on the foundation (and no doubt Mrs. Luytin's forbearance), she went to Bellefontaine. Luytins died in 1920 and was buried before Bessie, his grave a footstool to the memory of her unobtainable beauty. When St. Louis smog and industrial grit began to peck and carp at her delicate marble body, a glass box was put over her. Luytin's grave is a shy man's bonding with his great love, much like Joseph Marconnet's shyness demanded he be mummified and displayed in his own glass case for all eternity.