The Saint Louisans

by Steven Clark

  It certainly helped his ambitions, and Vess’s stock rose. He went to tailored suits, ready to run for mayor. Until one night … the night old Vesuvius and I crossed paths in the ER.

  We were piled up like the top forty of human suffering. Moving past rows of sick and injured, Norine, my hefty fellow nurse, rushed to a DO two friends dragged in. When asked for information, the ‘friends’ split. The DO sank against the wall. Our last available orderly rushed to Norine’s side. Before I could assist, red lights flooded the doors as paramedics wheeled in Vess. He was flanked by cops, his clothes bloody and ripped where medics applied dressings. Hemmings was the chief medic, pug-nosed and built like a bantamweight. On breaks between action, we did movie trivia and notes on bars.

  “Two shots,” Hem said as we trotted to the OR, “foot and chest.”

  “Blood?”

  “Needs transfusion. He’s lost fifteen pints.”

  That could kill. I was already shouting for plasma. Vess’s eyes were pale. “Mutha … mutha …” was all he could mutter. He was going into shock. “Come on, Moot,” I said, “stay with us.”

  “Yeah,” Hem was quick, “You’re a badass. Trashed the Prophet. Sent his veiled ass packing.”

  Vess uttered a low grunt, then opened his eyes. We’d called him back. The OR was waiting as Hem and I did the one-two-three and lifted Vess onto the table. Hem and I walked out as the OR team huddled over Vess.

  “So,” I rubbed my hands, “did you get a chance to make it to Squeaky’s?”

  “Did I ever,” Hem smiled as a man was wheeled past us into the oxygen unit. “They got Raki. Turkish hooch. You gotta serve it with water and milk, then it turns white. ‘Lion’s Milk,’ they call it.”

  Hem had been stationed in Izmir. I nodded as I wrote on the clipboard. “Good buzz?”

  “Best, but it takes a while. Anyway, the joint’s another Cinderella.”

  Back then, St. Louis bars closed early. Late night boozers had to cross the river. I nodded to Hem as he jogged to his partner, another call crackling on their radio.

  “Off to the races,” he called back.

  A day later I went into Vess’s room to check his chart. Tubes were attached to his arms and chest like plastic roots. Vess’s eyes opened slow and mean, like Gort’s slit in The Day the Earth Stood Still.

  “‘Ey. Nur … se?”

  He talked like a record on slow speed. I smiled. “Good. You’re talking. You’ve been out of ICU for two hours. The chest wound wasn’t that deep.”

  His chest heaved. “Fo …”

  “No. Only two shots.

  Vess blinked. “Fo.”

  “Tunnel vision. Gunshot wounds do that. You took one in the chest and foot. Reports said eight shots were fired. Good thing whoever fired had bad aim and not tunnel vision.”

  “So … I gonna … ’kay?”

  “Not yet. Bullets have a lot of bacteria. You’ve got a real chance of sepsis. We’re fighting that.”

  “Sep—” Vess swallowed. “Sepsis? So foot … ’kay?”

  “No.” I fluffed his pillow. Vess nodded thanks. “Foot wounds are worse because feet are delicate. They don’t heal easy. If gangrene sets in, you’re in trouble.” Vess frowned, forcing himself to listen, to become the mighty force he was before the shooting. “If it’s any consolation, getting shot in the ass is better. It’s nice, fleshy, and away from any vital organs. Makes our job real easy.”

  Vess sunk back and almost broke into a smile. “Ass. Yeah. Nex’ time …”

  “Let’s hope there won’t be a next time.”

  A long sigh. “Yeh. We on … same page.” His eyes studied a medication chart like it was a message from Mars. “Why no doc?”

  “I’m telling you what the surgeon told you three hours ago, but the anesthesia hadn’t worn off, and you were still wonky.”

  Vess blinked. “Honky?”

  “Sorry. Docs tend to shoot the info by you, and scoot. Nurses, Vess. Our role is Miltonic. We explain the ways of God to man.”

  He pointed to the pitcher. I poured a glass of water, and held it as he sipped, his eyes rolling in relief. I continued, “We also explain the ways of man to God. The cops want to talk to you. We’re giving them five minutes.”

  After I checked his bandages and leakage, I pulled up the bed pan. “I bet you’re ready. Good interrogations always do well on an empty bladder. Usually aides do the scut work, but I’m your angel, and I’m in the mood.”

  I slid the pan under the sheets.

  I was back in present time, and beheld Vess as he was now. As he talked on the telephone. No man is a hero to his valet, and it’s ditto for nurses. Vess’s eyes shifted as he hung up. His once slender, Malcolm X frame was now portly, a U-boat turned cruise ship now covered in a tan suit. He was adorned in rings, bracelet, and designer watch. If there had been sunlight, he would have glittered. Vess’s smile to me was perfunctory, an obligatory small glass of sherry offered the visitor, the good stuff saved for those with power and money, of which I had neither.

  “Well, Nurse Lee. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a chance to catch up. Happily.”

  I nodded, remembering his speech a year after he was released from my ward. ‘You see, my role is like that cat Milton. I explain the ways of God to man. I explain the ways of the Man to God, ’cause what the Man does don’t make no sense to anyone’s universe.’ Recalling this cheerful paraphrase made me smile. Vess didn’t.

  “This is about the mansion. And Juneteenth.”

  “Vess, why does it have to be there?”

  “Of course, since you’re a brand-new Desouche, you’ll fight me.”

  “There are many places to build Juneteenth.”

  “Places where people of color stay where they belong.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Look, Lee. This city has been divided into strict lines.” Vess reached for a dish of M&Ms on the desk, clawed a half dozen, and popped them into his mouth. Swallowed. “You know about redlining. Where bad areas were written off to be bulldozed. Most of them African American. I’m sure Saul filled you in on that, like he does everything.”

  “Yeah, I know. Saul’s a good filler-inner.”

  “Segregation was extended to the hospitals. Back then, patients of color were kept in basements.”

  “So you’re using your muscle to settle scores? That’s not righteous. Look, the mansion is an anchor for the neighborhood.”

  “Sure, for one rich family. You’d want to do what, restore it? Live there?”

  “I’m not going to live there. The mansion could be a focus for the community.”

  Vess almost chuckled. “We don’t need a museum. We need land. Anything you or Saul want are band aids. It’s an ER situation for our community.” He leaned back. “Forgive my using that term.”

  “It’s a good term, and I didn’t sue you for copping Milton.”

  A hearty laugh came from Vess. Outside the window, I saw four crows soar, knowing where they would go. Shifting his weight, Vess continued.

  “A long time ago, you nursed me back to health. Now it’s my turn to be nurse, and it’s for the city. It needs Juneteenth.” He steepled his large fingers, fingers happiest when they grasped, pointed, made fists. “If you fight me, you’re fighting a cure.”

  “You’re calling me a reactionary.”

  “I’m saying you’re on the wrong side of history.”

  “Okay, Vess, but I’m curious. Why an alliance with Smatters? Your interest in Sonia and her Corn Mother gig?”

  “Does that surprise you, Lee? That I’m interested in history?”

  “Corn Mother is an excuse for wrecking the mansion.”

  Vess picked up a newspaper on his desk, folded to page three reporting Sonia’s theory. “I’m no scholar. I’m the first to admit that. But I like these Cahokians. They were also people of color, and were here a long time before—”

  “Whitey?”

  Vess’s smile was a steaming hot corn muf
fin with lots of melted butter. “Western Civ. We’re so obsessed with it. Your people see all these new types drift into the city … Mexicans, Asians, Bosnians … they see less white, and to many, it’s decline and fall. Maybe St. Louis isn’t ending.” His eyes brightened. “Maybe with the end of white dominance and a world of diversity, the history of this city is just beginning. God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and light illuminates, gives birth to color. You see, history starts with color. As it always has.”

  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.”