Two Autumns, Saint Louis

Now do you know where you are?

—C. D. Wright

Calvary Cemetery

Driving up Union to get there, all the yard signs saying, We Must Stop Killing Each Other—

A sign blaring CRISPY SNOOT—

An abandoned two-story with the windows blown out—a cooler and a bucket on the porch roof outside a second-story window—

At Calvary Cemetery, Groundskeeper Lambert "like the airport": What are you looking for? Tennessee Williams. Say it again?

We asked to see the graves of Tennessee Williams, Dred Scott, and Kate Chopin; he obliged with the first two but as to the third, he hadn't heard of her.

On his own he showed us four things:

        The hill where all the priests are buried—

        The large hill empty of markers—                "That's where the mass graves are, cholera, diphtheria, real Wrath of God stuff, we don't dig there—ever."

        A giant wasp nest hanging in the crook of a cross-shaped headstone—house of hearts militant—                "How close do you wanna get?"

        The tomb where that old Saint Louisan with the two names is buried—                How she had been in cotton and asked to be buried on the tallest hill overlooking the river, so she could watch the loading from on high—

Later, Janet says, "I can't find any record of that."

Lucas-Hunt. There had been copper siding on the entry to her tomb but thieves took it and sold it for scrap.

So too the giant Lincoln penny medallion set in a nearby obelisk; some groundskeeper had even seen the man prying it out—stashed it in his backpack and took off running. You can see the empty circle and where the crowbar went in.

Janet says, "So someone steals a giant penny but other people leave real ones on the headstone of Dred Scott."

The stones signify someone visited. Also flowers, beer, money, photographs, marijuana, toys, jewelry, clothes. People steal it, or it's picked up every two weeks and thrown away.

Animals that live at the cemetery: raccoons, coyotes, squirrels, hawks, foxes.

"Paul," who comes every day and stays for hours, pulling flowers from the trash and redistributing them amongst the dead—

Fiery plastic flower adorning the stone of his sister, Rose—

Later, talking about Ferguson over mussels at Peacemaker's, not a single black person in the room.

A Parade of Horribles

        Pulling up to Cherie's and startling a deer grazing in the yard—when it looked up, the shock                                of a long white arrow shot through its cheeks—

        Shot clean through. As in the prank genreArrow Through the Head.        And the deer's face—you could tell—had just

        healed around it, it sought to walk peaceably                                                                        through the green corridors—                                        . . . and it is hardly consistent                                        with the respect due to these States,                                        to suppose that they regarded . . .

                                        or, that when they met in convention to form                                        the Constitution, they looked upon them . . .                                        or designed to include them . . .                                        It cannot be supposed that they intended                                        to secure to them rights,                                        and privileges,                                        and rank                                        in the new political body . . .

                                        It cannot be believed . . .

                                        For if they were so received it would                                        give to them                                        the right to enter every other State                                        whenever they pleased,

                                        singly or in companies,                                        without pass or passport,                                        and without obstruction,

                                        to sojourn there

                                        as long as they pleased,                                        to go where they pleased                                        at every hour of the day or night—

                                        and then it was gone, the wound and its arrow,                                                                                vanishing back into the suburban bracken—                                                                                Dred Scott v. Sandford, 1857: 60 U.S. 393

Commerce

On Halloween, you don't get any candy until you tell a joke.        Why did the clown go to the doctor?                He was feeling funny.

        Why did the skeleton go to the barbecue?                He was looking for spare ribs.

        Have you heard about the guy who got his whole left side chopped off?

John Wright, former assistant superintendent of the Ferguson-Florissant school district, remembers a chain stretching across a...