The Saint Louisans (29 page)

When Vess leaned back in his chair, its leather squeezed a comfortable sigh, as if a throne could talk. A quiet sigh was given by my impatience. “From what I've read, the French here really mingled with the Native Americans. It was already a city of color until the whites … the Americans moved in and swamped it with their racism. That's not me speaking. That's history. Maybe when whites become a minority everywhere, they'll have to make deals with the majority. Then we'll see equality.”

“I suppose,” I replied, “making deals with you. That would be great history.” Vess nodded, waiting for what I had to say next.

“Don't think me an enemy of diversity, but I have the will, and I'll use that to keep the mansion.”

When Vess rose, the interview was over. He offered me a planner off his desk, one of African American heroes.

“Take this. You'll need it to meet your court dates.” Even through his window, I heard the crows.

A block east of Saint Louis U. once stood Laclede Town. A new urban housing area avoiding the concrete palace of horrors that Pruitt-Igoe was, that public housing disaster where Corbusier met Frankenstein. It finally prompted a mass dynamiting, a row of modern, derelict buildings collapsing into smoke.

Laclede Town was made up of townhouses and squares. The mix of tenants eclectic. There were parties. On summer nights, you could smell barbeque, then, as it got darker, the burn of marijuana.

After I broke up with Sky I moved in, wanting to believe in a new St. Louis as I was building a new me, this makeover from Cindy Lee to just plain, sassy Lee. The Arch stood at my window, a silver rainbow. Saint Louis U. was a couple of blocks west. Across Lindell an old brick building's lettering announced: Bird Hospital. Birds Cared and Boarded.

When I was outside, crows flocked and caucused in the grassy area north of my digs. Jama wondered if they were like the elephants we imagined in Tower Grove Park. Why not? I replied.

After a couple of years, Section 8 people dribbled in next door and across the street. Laclede Town was mandated to take more excess from the projects. We had break-ins. Shootings. The flash of police and ambulance lights often greeted me when I came off shift. Jama and Pierce had stories.

And the guy who took the kid and threw her out the window.

One night, I was on the back patio. A muffled voice from behind my bushes told me to come over slowly or I'd get my fucking head blown off. I had a German Shepherd then. I called him and he bounded out, sniffed and barked. The bushes rustled, then he ran away.

Next morning, I looked for a new apartment.

Laclede Town went into a coma. Some years later I passed its boarded-up windows, smelling urine a block away from bums camping in its shadows. Finally, it was leveled and became a grassy field thriving in an odd lusciousness in the midst of the city.

Crows carpeted the field in numbers I'd never seen. I wondered if some kind of biological memory was encoded in them of this area before there was St. Louis, before there was Cahokia. Did Corn Mother see them? Would they have circled and nested on the many burial mounds in what was to be St. Louis?

Saint Louis U. bought the land, developed it as they did much of the neighborhood. Yes, like Vess said, dispossessing people of color. What was
Chez
Bridger in Laclede Town now ends in a maintenance area. Nearby, SLU's new stadium rises, a Godzilla turtle of brick and glass. All of my life there, from kids, to work, to parties and Doc … vanished. Doc. Placing himself on the wrong side of history.

A couple of feet where my apartment stood, where metal dumpsters bulge with neat, plastic trash bags—ethical garbage, if you will—crows roost and squawk. Dozens of them. When I left Vess's office, I knew the crows would circle and perch there. I thought again of my half-brother Pierre's Gesshoji, where enormous crows flock to that Buddhist temple. Pierre's happiness in his contemplation of exotic, eternal peace. The ghost world the crows protect.

The dumpster crows protect—or haunt? St. Louis.

The city has had more renaissances than Casanova had sleepovers, and for what? Memories and crows. Do we remain stuck in the past? To support Proust's conclusion that we repeat what we grew up with, aging simply variations on a theme? Are humans a high maintenance crow, winging back to what is familiar?

It was time to go West. West County, that is.

The Golden Triangle is land in St. Charles County ripe for development. It lies above the flood plain of the Missouri, ready for housing, unlike farther south of St. Louis County where rocky soil and sharp ridges make construction difficult. There, teeth of caterpillars and tractors meet the bone of the Ozarks. The soil of St. Charles is pliant. The area is, as developers say, ‘hot.' St. Charles thumbs its nose at St. Louis and its urban baggage, rejecting plans extending Metrolink to its borders. City people? No, thank you. It is
echt
suburbia.

I made my way to the new garage, a velvet rope marking it off. Velvet and concrete are usually incongruous, but it was a Dan Smatters grand opening. Speakers thundered slightly dated rock that is now conservatism's bumper music. A wide sign billowed in the wind like a sail with bright words: A Time for Heroes. Flags snapped in the breeze like gaudy handkerchiefs; not
only a grand opening, but a salute to Our Troops, the heroes of Iraq and Afghanistan, a line of them shaking people's hands as I closed in.

They wore the new camouflage uniforms, not splotches of black, brown and olive on a deep green canvas, a sort of militarized Rorschach. Now they were garbed in small, digitalized squares of gray, dust, black and green; pixels of war. The soft air of false spring tickled.

I spied Dan hobnobbing with various mucky-mucks. He held a pair of scissors three feet long for cutting the ribbon. With his portliness and thick mustache, Dan and scissors reminded me of a cartoon character ready for mayhem. A Yosemite Sam of development. I fancied a stick of hissing TNT rolling under Dan's feet.

“Mrs. Bridger? Lee?”

I turned. Kelly Fortnam, the Veiled Prophet Queen, approached, tiara sparkling in the sun. I nodded back and canceled the TNT. She was dressed in pink slacks and white blouse. California Sensible, as they say in the tonier chick mags.

“Glad to see you,” she smiled. No, beamed. “Isn't this a great day?”

I smiled back. Some girls were down to their tanks, boys in shorts. Indeed it was. It wouldn't last, of course. False spring. Make the most of it. “You're part of the festivities?”

Her eyes rolled up to her tiara. “Oh, sure. They're opening a new wing with the garage, and it's really super. A rehab unit for the hospital. The garage is nice too, I guess. But the GIs. It's really their day.”

I nodded. The ones in wheelchairs were pleasant enough. As pleasant as one can be maimed or lacking a leg or two. I thought of the war. Wars. How they go on and on. How Sky talked to me of his year in Vietnam. His staring out to sunset trees as he finished recalling a war story, his own heart of darkness. How I hated Bush for Iraq. Elected Obama, who pledged to end the war, but kept it going. I thought of Rasheed, killer and maimer of these heroes, here because of business. And war is business. For both sides. Will it never end?

“How's Margot?” Kelly asked, her smile evening out.

“She's getting worse. It's going to be slow.”

“That's such a shame. We're all praying for her.”

The speakers popped, then began a stream of chatter reminding me
of auctioneers back in Dubourg. I saw a mobile set up for KYAK. Kelly continued.

“Just wrapped an interview with Jack Mack on the simulcast. I did a great promo for the charity work the VP funded for Cardinal Glennon.”

Quick St. Louis translation: The Veiled Prophet Association funding for Cardinal Glennon Hospital … it all sounded so cozy. Kelly continued. “And Jack let me do the spot. You know …” She mugged. ‘K-Y-A-K, the voice of St. Louuuuis … blahblahblah.'”

I enjoyed her giggle. KYAK FM is the starship of St. Louis talk radio, the Jack Mack show a mainstay. At the knot of dignitaries gathered by the garage's entrance, one of Dan's flunkies waved to Kelly.

“Oh,” she said, “they're getting started. Gotta show the flag.”

“Or in your case, the tiara.”

She laughed and went to the knot. There was a brief speech, mild applause pattered, then Dan and Kelly held the scissors and cut the ribbon. A shiny Humvee drove through the garage, courtesy of one of the local dealerships, and even from several feet away I could smell the deep aroma of new tires.

The crowd and vets herded to refreshments dispensed under a tent with KYAK's aural tsunami engulfing them. I went to a smiling Dan.

“Hey there, Lee. Glad you made it. Ain't this a great day?”

“For you, certainly. If it's concrete and parking, what's not to like?”

Dan glad-handed people as we walked into the garage annex to the hospital. The concrete was pale and smelled fresh, its surface huge swirls of enormous cement fingerprints.

“Look,” Dan said, “me and Terri had a powwow.”

“I suspect this was for my benefit?”

Dan nodded to a couple in VFW windbreakers. “She and Pierre are making you a final offer. Forty percent of the estate.”

“And if I run and tell Margot?”

“Hey, nothing's stopping you, but we know she's getting weak, God bless her. My mom passed on three years ago. Breast cancer. It's not good, Lee.” He good-naturedly pointed his finger to a smiling soldier on crutches. “God, I love these guys. They're great. Lee, don't fight other people's battles.”

“But I'm a Desouche, Dan. It
is
my battle.”

“Let it go, Lee. You'll get a good seat on the gravy train, but the mansion's gonna be history.”

As always, when Americans mention history, it's derogatory. We walked back out. “Yes, Dan. History means nothing to you unless it can be sold into lots with a good sub-prime rate.”

“I know enough history that our worst war wasn't with Hitler or the Japs. It was the Civil War. Brother against brother. That's what it's gonna be if you take 'em on.” Dan sighed. “You don't want that.”

The KYAK station cut back to the studio. Jack Mack's voice floated above us in a mix of cozy and smarm, pitchman extraordinaire.

"Hey, Jack Mack here. Chances are, you're just like me. When spring vacation comes up, where're you going to go? Palm Springs or Las Vegas? Well, how about a new way to do spring before the Cards rev up? Hawaii. Right now, Comet Vacations
…"

“So come on, Lee. Join the hayride.”

“Not if the mansion gets gutted.”

“Look, it's nothing to no one. Hey, you can build a better one in the county. Crissakes, Lee. Saul and all those whiz kids he chums with could probably take it apart and put it back together out beyond Lindbergh.”

Dan referred to what I call the east of Lindbergh syndrome. Lindbergh Boulevard runs north and south and is considered the dividing line between the gracious, sanitary outer suburbs and the hopeless losers who live in the older 'burbs and especially in the city, a code word that to St. Louisans implies leprosy, as though Lindy walked a tightrope between urban and suburban. I sighed.

“It's beautiful. It stays.”

Dan shrugged, looked away, and shook hands with more soldiers. The crowd cheered as balloons floated up, a cluster of red, white, and blue balls on their way to a celestial pool table. The radio show got louder with Jack's usual mid-hour blather. Dan waved goodbye to the troops.

“These guys and gals in uniform. They're the greatest. On my home loans, vets get twelve percent off. Like the boys in World War II. If it wasn't for them, we'd be speaking German now, right?”

“This is St. Louis. We were already speaking German.”

“You're telling us this Corn Mother was a goddess or something?”

I frowned at Corn Mother making talk radio. “Look, Dan, what about you and Vess Moot? What's the connection?”

“
The only goddess, Jack. In Cahokia, she was worshiped. From everywhere. St. Louis was America's first spiritual center
.”

Dan spoke, but I didn't hear him. That was Jama's voice coming over the speaker.

“Sure. When the Cards won the series.”

“Seriously, Jack. The ninetieth parallel runs along the Mississippi, and it's one of Earth's great sources of psychic power.”

My mouth almost dropped. “It can't be.”

It was Dan's turn to frown. “Can't be what?”

“Hey, if you're just tuning in, we got Jama Bridger here from Hollywood, and she's telling us what we always knew. That St. Louis is the center of the universe. Right, Jama?”

A puzzled Dan looked up with me to the speaker. “She related to you?”

“Right, Jack. Like the Nile, the Mississippi surges with psychic energy. The Bible predicted Corn Mother. It even predicted the Gateway Arch.”

“Hey, no kidding? Come on, Jama. Clue us in.”

“It's in the book of Zechariah. Chapter four. Verse seven.”

I stared at the speaker. “Oh, shit.”

“‘Who art thou, o great monument? Before Zerubbabel …'”

Jama spit it all out in her actressy, pitch woman voice that covered it all, from con games to corporate voice overs, now grafting out our Imo's pizza night into her own spiel. She finished. Jack sighed.

“Hey. Just like the pyramids.”

“Yes, Jack. And Corn Mother is our goddess.”

Dan almost laughed. “She your kid?”

“So, Jama. You're Lee Bridger's daughter, right? Lee used to do the Medical Moment here on the station way back when. Maybe a little later than Corn Mother, but hey, a woman tells her age, right?”

I feared the loathsome Jama thoughts building in my mind.

“Sure, Jack. Mom's getting up there, but we're still a team. When I came back into town, we spent the night baking a scrumptious tuna noodle casserole.”