The Meq (12 page)

“I go to my room and the door is unlocked. I walk in and there is already another man staying there. He is a funny-looking man with long, wavy hair and wearing clothes even I could not have tailored. We introduce ourselves; his name is Oscar Wilde and he says he is there to watch the auction from the window. He says, ‘Americans love their heroes and they usually love them criminal.’ I tell him yes, but zis auction, zis is bad business. I take my leave, saying there must be a mix-up about the rooms and wish him well.”

“
The
Oscar Wilde?” Carolina burst in.

“Yes,” Solomon said and continued. “I get a new room and sit down to read the letter that was left for me. It was from Jesse and dated April first. He said he couldn’t chance a meeting with me in public, but he had made a deal, through a lawyer named Hardwicke, with Governor Crittenden and the Pinkerton Detective Agency that they would let him and his brother Frank alone if they would change their names, give up crime, and simply disappear for good. However, they couldn’t take anything with them, except their immediate family and personal belongings. They especially couldn’t take any ill-gotten gains with them and that is where I came in. I was to take the keys that were taped inside the letter, go to the bank in Liberty, Missouri, and open several safety-deposit boxes using the name Solomon Barnes. Then, I was to go to San Francisco with the contents and wait for him to contact me through the Union Pacific Railroad.

“Well, I cannot believe what I am reading. I walk to the window and look down on zis ugly auction taking place, insulting my dead friend. I say to myself, ‘Do zis, Solomon! Why not? Yahweh smiles!’ The whole situation was backward, upside down. It made me think of the old proverb, ‘War makes thieves and peace hangs them.’

“The rest was simple. I check out of hotel, go to Liberty and collect $163,575 in gold and cash, catch train in Kansas City for San Francisco, and when I get there, I book passage to Hong Kong on the first steamer leaving.

“Once in Hong Kong, I ask around, find out what’s what and who’s who. I meet a French sea captain, Antoine Boutrain, who loses a great deal of money to me in a game of chance. In lieu of payment, he wishes to give me business tip, the ‘deal of a lifetime’ he says.”

The name was familiar to me somehow, then I remembered—Isabelle—Unai and Usoa. I glanced briefly at Sailor and he returned my glance with an enigmatic expression. Solomon continued.

“He says to go south to Shanghai and he will give me proper introduction to Sheng Hsuan-huai who will welcome my investment in the China Steamship Navigation Company. In two years’ time, he says, I will be rich man; he was right, except it took five. In one year, I make my money back; in two, I double it; in five, I am a millionaire. I always said the big money would be on the water, eh, Z?”

“Yes, you did, Solomon, you did indeed. But how did you meet Li? And when did you meet Sailor?”

“Ah, first things first,” he said and stopped to refill everyone’s champagne glass. He turned and looked at Li, sitting like a human stone in the corner. Solomon lifted his glass in a silent toast to him. “A few years ago,” he went on, “things began to change in Shanghai for me and for all foreign investors. China wanted in on all the action. Most investors sold out and moved on; I stayed, maybe a little too long. A comprador there, Cheng Kuan-ying, who was a liaison between the mandarins and the foreign investors, wanted me out—poof!—for good. I knew zis, but ignored it.

“Li was working as a laborer on the docks and quays of the Whangpoo River. I did not know him personally, but I knew others like him; workers who were also members of some damn crazy sect who thought they were White Lotus rebels reincarnated. They were violently opposed to the ‘Old Buddha,’ the Empress Dowager Tz’u-hsi, and all her mandarins and their compradors.

“One night, I am walking from ship to office and Cheng sends four men to take me out. Li, who was there by chance, he told me later, sees them pull out knives and clubs and steps in. Like lightning, he cracks all four of their skulls in seconds. I thank the man, try to pay him reward, but he won’t accept; he has some crazy fool belief that once you save a man’s life you are responsible for his safety until he dies; and if you don’t do zis, you will succumb to a nine-headed, soul-swallowing dragon. He is a crazy man, but as you can see, still to zis day, is concerned for my safety, even though, I am sure, he would love to see me croak and die so he can get on with his life.”

Solomon raised his glass to Li once more in silence. I looked around the table and most of the food was eaten. Ray had one leg slung over the arm of his chair and a toothpick in his mouth; he looked fat and happy. Sailor sat back in his chair holding his champagne glass on his knee. The ring on his forefinger danced in the candlelight. Carolina sat enraptured with Solomon and his life and had barely touched her meal.

“So, you and Li left Shanghai then?” I asked.

“Yes, it was a good time for leaving. For both of us. We went to Macao and I liquidated everything from there.

“I stayed in Macao another seven years, living quietly, and still making investments, only they were investments of a more high risk and, how should I say . . . independent nature.” He bent over and lit a cigar on one of the candles. Leaning back, turning toward Sailor and exhaling, he said, “Six months ago . . . we meet.”

“But how?” I asked. “How did you find him?”

Solomon leaned forward again and cupped his hands around his mouth. In a false whisper, he said, “I do not think I found
him
. I still think he found me.”

Sailor laughed and, pointing his glass toward Solomon, said, “No, no, my friend. If you remember, it was you who walked up to me.”

“You were too easily found,” Solomon said.

They both laughed and Carolina, who was sitting up cross-legged in her chair, said, “How did you meet?”

Sailor spoke. “As I remember, it was outside the Pomegranate, a Taoist refuge and restaurant, in the center of Macao. I was there waiting for someone. There was a fierce sun overhead. I was sweating and, despite the heat, felt something warm bearing down on me through the crowd. I looked among the faces and saw Solomon staring at me. I stared back. He walked straight toward me without hesitation and asked, ‘Is your name Sailor?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Do you know the family Zezen?’ ‘Yes,’ I said again, and he said, ‘There is one looking for you.’ We went inside the restaurant and shared tea. He told me of Zianno and this place, St. Louis. He said he felt like a ghost, but wished to return. I told him he was no ghost and that he should return. He agreed it was time and offered to take me with him and, alas, here I am.”

Just then, not a second apart, Ray laughed and there was a loud knock at the door. Solomon and Li rose to answer the door; the rest of us looked at Ray. He hadn’t said a word all night.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“I don’t know, I guess it ain’t really funny,” he said, rolling his bowler hat around in his hands. “It’s just that this used to be a big world. That’s all.”

Solomon opened the door wide to allow four men to roll into the room a slightly damaged, but still sound, upright piano—Georgia’s piano. We moved couches and chairs out of the way and Solomon had it positioned in an appropriate and honored place in the room.

Carolina walked over to him as the men were leaving and placed two fingers on his lips. Then she pulled a chair up to the piano and sat down. She bent over, spreading her arms and laying her cheek on the keys.

I watched her, but let her alone. She was fine. She didn’t need help, just healing.

Solomon suggested we call it an evening and we all agreed. Li began snuffing the candles and we exchanged good nights. Solomon walked Carolina to her room. As I was passing Sailor on the way to mine, I said to him, “I had a new kind of dream this afternoon.”

He smiled his shy smile and said, “You shall have many.”

An hour later, I was awakened by music. From a sound sleep, I gradually became conscious of a melody, a simple five-note melody, being played over and over on a piano. I stood up and walked toward the sound. It was coming from the big parlor, from Georgia’s piano. In the faint light, I saw Sailor and Carolina also leaving their rooms and walking toward the piano. We got there at about the same time and the melody went away.

“You heard it too,” I said, looking first at Sailor, then Carolina.

Carolina started trembling. “That was Georgia, Z. It didn’t just sound like her, that was her.”

Sailor and I held her arms and helped her into the chair she’d pulled up earlier. She tensed slightly, then relaxed. “It’s warm,” she said.

I looked at Sailor and he smiled. “There are ghosts all around us, Carolina,” he said. “Some we chase, some we embrace.” Then he looked up at me and said, “It was her touch . . .”

“It is common,” I said.

7

ARTZAIN

(SHEPHERD)

A good shepherd is a vigilant man. He is on constant lookout for danger and opportunity. To him, a shift in the wind is information; a common sound a warning; a drink of water a story of what has passed and what lies ahead.

He guides and guards his flock with patience. He endures drought, blizzard, predation, snakebite, accident, and illness—but most of all—Time.

He stops at the source of solitude and moves on, often leaving a mark of his passing. In the mountains it may be a carving on an aspen tree, a sapling that will grow and expand, bringing out his image. In the desert it may be a pile of rocks on a barren windswept ridge, “stone boys” he calls them.

A good shepherd knows Time like no other and a good shepherd sleeps well, even while dreaming of wolves.

D uring the late spring and early summer, before the real heat and humidity arrive, there is no better or more beautiful place to be than St. Louis. To the east, with the rising sun, the wide Mississippi seems even wider and more majestic in its slow roll around the city. By midday, in the heart of the city, there is the sweet scent of Forest Park. Baseball, music, laughter, and commerce of all kinds surrounds you. To the west, at sunset, the Meramec River curls below the limestone hills and cliffs like a lazy, blue ribbon. It is a place of converging waters, highways, and railroads; a place easy and exciting to live in, but during that time between seasons, difficult to leave. And yet, by the end of the second week in June 1896, that’s just what I was doing.

After the big feast, and for the next few weeks, we made a sort of home out of the Statler Hotel. We came and went like some extravagant and eccentric family on vacation. Solomon and Carolina went shopping everywhere, with Solomon tipping heavily from a wad of bills that Li carried. We all went bicycling in Forest Park many times and ate lunches on the veranda of the Cottage Restaurant. I insisted that we see a baseball game and we watched the up and coming Cardinals beat the Philadelphia Phillies. As the game went on, I explained it to Sailor and he was fascinated, especially with the fact that the game had no time limit. Ray took us to a “private” club that sponsored their own prizefighting matches. Solomon loved that, but Carolina was bored stiff, agreeing with Mrs. Bennings’s axiom, “Public brawlin’s nothin’ but bad manners.” We even went to the Grand Opera House to see Verdi’s
La Traviata
and drew inquisitive glances from all around as we took our seats. Dressed in formal attire, we must have looked like some lost cast from another opera. Sailor seemed unaware of the attention and even sang along with the aria, “Di Miei Bollenti Spiriti,” under his breath. We were all busy enjoying life in St. Louis. We were shedding skins and it felt good.

Carolina already had her plan for the future in place along with the full approval and promise of financial backing from Solomon. I found out about it late one afternoon on a bicycle ride through Forest Park, something we tried to do together almost every day. Carolina had the lead and took me through and out of the northeastern entrance, past Laclede’s Pavilion and into the “old money” neighborhoods around the northern edge of the park.

“Where are we going?” I yelled ahead. She just looked back over her shoulder and smiled.

We were in the four thousand block of Westminster, an elegant tree-lined street with one Victorian stone mansion after another. We pedaled through bars of sunlight and shade cast by the huge oaks. It was a rich and silent street; a sanctuary. Suddenly a boy appeared out of the shadows and began running alongside us. He was a handsome, skinny boy, younger-looking than I was, but somehow older than his years, and he had obviously seen Carolina before. He wore knickerbockers with a white shirt and tie and he was smiling as he ran.

“Hello, Thomas!” Carolina shouted.

“Hello, Miss Covington!” the boy shouted back as he tried to keep up. “Will you be stopping this time?”

“No, no. Now, watch where you’re going or you’ll run smack into a tree, Thomas.”

“Don’t worry about me, Miss Covington,” he yelled, but his voice was already behind us. I looked back; he had stopped and was standing in the street and staring at the receding image of Carolina on a bicycle. We rode on a bit and I asked who that was and how he knew her.

“His name is Thomas Eliot,” she said. “He’s a nice boy—wants to be a writer.” She stopped her bicycle and I pulled up alongside her.

“Well, I think you’ve already inspired him to write something,” I said.

She laughed and pointed toward the brick and stone mansion in front of her. “Look at this place, Z. Just look at it.”

I looked at it and it was magnificent, with three stories, climbing vines, big leaded windows, stone verandas, and a driveway that led under a brick arch back to a carriage house half the size of the main house.

“Thomas told me the family that owns it has it quietly up for sale,” she said.

I was still confused. “How do you and Thomas know each other?”

She leaned her bicycle against a tree and started pacing back and forth, looking over the property. “I’ve been riding through here and thinking, Z, about a lot of things. One day, he just came up to me, right here where I’m standing, and we started talking. He’s home from boarding school and I think he was just lonely. He and his family live back there where we saw him and he told me about most of the families in the neighborhood. Most of the things I need to know.”