St. Louis Noir Read online

  “Hey, boy, git over here.”

  “Let the boy clean it up.”

  “Stupid boy, what did I tell you?”

  “Lazy good-for-nothing boy.”

  “Black boy . . . Colored boy . . . Nigra.”

  If truth be told, their sons were bristling to strike out, to be men and step out of the shadow that had kept their fathers patiently waiting for something good to happen. Except it never did. Not in the Ville, that section of the city that nailed them to boundaries, visible or not. Outside of the Ville, they had no names, recognized only by color or gender, or whether they walked with a swagger or looked white folks dead in the eyes.

  Wheeler was the tallest of the three, lanky and agile with quicksilver hands and a lopsided grin. “A real gone guy,” the neighborhood girls called him.

  Cohee was slower, broad shouldered and muscular with little sign of the good humor Wheeler used to edge his way out of a fix. Cohee, like his father, tackled business head on, blustering and baiting, and seemingly begging for a fight. Wheeler was slick, smooth where Cohee was rough, and light where Russell was dark. Russell rarely let on to what he was thinking; he had deliberately flunked math his freshman year in order to stay in the same class as his buddies, and never told anyone how he could calculate the problems in his head. What good would it do to triangulate the exact distance between Natural Bridge Road and Kingshighway if the Jim Crow law was always waiting for you to cross the line?

  * * *

  The city was saddled below that place where the Missouri flowed into the Mississippi, midland country that had been a trading post for native people centuries before. That river was a beacon for those who did business directly on its shores, and for those who watched for what business the river might bring them. Sooner or later, everyone found themselves on it, or near it, or fighting the pull of it. City government was planned around the river; city traffic swarmed toward its banks, and most of all, since the time of the fur trappers, the business of the river was the business of the city. A statue marking the merger of the two rivers had been erected in front of Union Station, the hub of the railroad, Gateway to the West, a constant reminder that the first business of the city was the flow of traffic through it, either by rail or the mighty Mississippi. Those leaving by rail took note of the Wedding of the Rivers fountain as they entered the station. Those with business that served them well left in first-class style. Others left with catch-as-catch-can.

  “You know what the porters say when they see hobos jumping the train?” Wheeler’s father often joked. “I’d like to stay here, but the blues keeps moving me on.”

  In the Ville, folks knew they could no more change the tide of business in their favor than they could stop the Mississippi from flooding its banks by plugging that fountain. Their sons were not yet burdened by thoughts of what seemed impossible.

  Some mornings when Wheeler watched his father take extra-special care with his uniform, making sure the seams were pressed straight, collar stiff, and shoes polished to a mirror shine, he wondered if that was all he had waiting for him, a place in the sleeping car porter’s union, a job that would take him to the edge of tomorrow and back, always returning home to the same old grind, the same old same old.

  “Bro, gots to be something better out there,” he told his friends.

  “Gots to be,” they echoed.

  Often they convened at Brick’s Garage which Cohee’s father managed, a dump of a place that looked like it had accidentally gathered old tires, a rusted hoist rack, and one lone gas pump, the old-fashioned type that had a glass container showing everyone how much fuel was available. The garage was a neighborhood institution in that part of the city where few licensed mechanics ventured. Once in a while, Harry let the boys pump gas, or change a gasket, nothing big but their hands got dirty and they walked beneath the car hoist marking the undercarriage parts with chalk. Best yet, Harry had promised his son a jalopy roadster for his sixteenth birthday, provided the engine was up and running as smooth as any 1949 model. But it was Russell’s father, John, they favored. He had fought in Luzon and had come home with shrapnel in his knee, the only colored man they knew who had actually seen combat.

  “A mistake,” he told everyone. “I could work the radio better than the white cats, so they took me.”

  “That’s where Russell got his smarts,” folks said.

  They called him Sarge, though he had not worn his uniform since the war ended four years earlier. Without thinking about it, they mimicked him, never mind that the only jobs he could find after the army were as a daytime bartender at Mrs. Scales’s Tavern and moonlighting as a janitor for the city. Weekends, all three of them might go with him to speed up the cleaning of places like the Fox Theatre on Grand Boulevard, where they could walk up and down the aisles, stroking the red velvet seats, with no one there to tell them colored folks were not allowed. And those nights when Sarge had to drain and clean the swimming pool at the white high school on Natural Bridge Road, they went along to help. Sarge taught them to swim a few laps before they started the work, but made sure they cleaned up after themselves.

  “Won’t do to let them know we been here having fun by our lonesome,” he said.

  * * *

  The year they made the varsity team changed everything. In truth, Wheeler and Cohee made varsity, while Russell was a drummer, the best the marching band had ever had by all accounts. That year, everything, for better or worse, centered around the football field. Russell lifted the harness of the big drum on his shoulders each afternoon, while Cohee and Wheeler tested their endurance on the playing field. Rumor had it that the following year, the city was going to set up the first intramural game between a white high school and a colored high school. Coach was determined their school should be the colored school in the competition.

  “You can’t be all brawn and no brains out there,” he said. “This game takes brains.”

  Wheeler and Cohee dutifully lowered their heads and pounded the practice dummy. It’s true that they wanted to impress Coach, but more to the point, they strained to impress Vera Mae Madison, a cheerleader who wanted, most of all, to wear somebody’s team jacket emblazoned with the school logo and mascot. And she wasn’t all that picky about who the lucky player would be. Vera Mae clouded their vision. Just watching her walk by made them hurt worse than hours on the practice field on empty stomachs.

  Once upon a time the goose drank the wine,

  The monkey played the fiddle on the streetcar line . . .

  The first time they saw Vera Mae, she was signifying and hand slapping, her hands moving so fast, left to right, crisscross in and out, they could barely keep up with the rhythm. She was in the center of a ring of cheerleaders, her bobby socks hanging sloppy over her brown-and-white oxfords, pleated skirt flared like a sprung umbrella away from her hips, and sandy-colored hair tamed by two cornrows that ended in thick braids brushing her shoulders. Her legs were Vaseline smooth, long and muscular, and her laugh was a short burst of energy, like the referee’s signal to start the game. Already, she was marching into the sassy woman she would become long after her encounter with them. But that day, the sun made her shield her eyes, and with the light just right, she spotted the boys and weighed her options. It didn’t take much. They were already half the way there.

  “Somebody’s nose is wide open,” Cohee grinned.

  “You the one gots your nose open,” Wheeler said.

  Russell had nothing much to say right then, but on his way home he went to Kresge’s five-and-dime and bought a bottle of Coty nail polish. “You two just flapping your lips,” he told them. Then he winked and gave the bottle of Coty’s Brilliant Red to Vera Mae. Wheeler and Cohee seemed to take Russell’s move with a cheerful Way to go, for who would not want to wish his best friend luck with a girl who smiled just so.

  * * *

  Mornings began with the screech of the Hodiamont streetcar as it veered toward the heart of the city. By the time it rumbled around the curve and pas
sed the blocks of brick tenements latticed with fire escapes, the noise had pulled everyone out of sleep. That sound was better than an alarm clock. It let them know when they were late and when they had time to linger over the bit of breakfast bread or oatmeal. When his route did not allow him to be home, Thomas made sure his son, Wheeler, had a hot breakfast rationed for him to heat and serve, the napkin folded and flatware on the table the same as he did mornings in the dining car. And he added a dash of cinnamon to the sugar the way his wife had done before the cancer took her.

  You sit down and eat, he told his son in the note he left on the table.

  But Wheeler never did. Always on the run, he grabbed a bite and latched the door, still chewing as he hit the front stoop. “Hey, bro, let’s get on the good foot!” he would yell when he reached Russell’s door.

  Their next stop on their route was to swing by Brick’s to pick up Cohee. Twenty minutes tops before heading to school. At least that was their route before they met Vera Mae. To include her, they had to detour off Franklin Avenue and cross the streetcar tracks away from the school, adding fifteen minutes to the trip. When Vera Mae started hanging out with them, no one said it was all right—but none said it was wrong either. They simply gathered her into the fold, maneuvering to be the one who walked beside her, shoving and shadowboxing on the sidewalk. Now and then, Cohee even broke into a doo-wop falsetto, “Ve-rah, be my girl, ooh-ohh-oo . . .” but she remained calm, walking at a parade pace as if none of that foolishness had anything to do with her, the morning sun adding a kind of glow to her pale skin. “Light bright and almost white,” folks said. But never to Vera’s face.

  They filled the sidewalk, zigzagging back and forth around Vera Mae, forcing anyone passing to stop as they went by. Even the smaller kids on the way to Dunbar Elementary taunted them: “Two’s a company, three’s a crowd / four on the sidewalk is not allowed.”

  Older women planted themselves firmly in their path, sucking their teeth tsk-tsk at such bad behavior. And folks who lived in the basement, in the under-stairs daylight units, could only see their legs, and banged on the window panes as their loud talk filled the entryway, their shadows interrupting whatever meager light could wander into those rooms. Their antics kept the drunks stumbling away from daylight, and scattered stray dogs scavenging for bits of food in the alleys. The more attention they got from Vera Mae, the grander the day seemed to be. To avoid being late, they had to run the last two blocks, but they usually made their first class in the nick of time, easing into their seats just as the morning bell stopped ringing. The teachers cut them some slack for being late because, after all, the talk of integrating football games was growing hotter, and the team needed all they could muster. Coach was another matter. More than once Cohee and Wheeler broke ranks to get next to Vera Mae and her cheerleading squad. It wasn’t hard to spot them. Among the dark-haired girls, Vera’s hair stood out almost gold in the afternoon light. Russell felt pushed aside, and banged his drum louder at the other end of the field. Coach even took notice, and when he paid attention, everybody paid attention. And Lord knows, the boys were getting a lot of attention hanging around Vera Mae.

  * * *

  It took some getting used to, this way Vera Mae’s crew had of swarming around her all of the time. Everyone wanted to know why they had hooked up with her, or, more to the point, why she was interested in them. More than once, Cohee almost got into a dust-up when someone walked in front of him while he was talking to her. Wheeler looked like he was about to pop at any second, until Russell started trash talking and everyone backed down. But Russell saw he’d drawn a smile from Vera. He took to having his mother make something special to share with her at lunchtime.

  “Don’t get too stuck on that yella gal,” his mother said. “You need to study to get into college.”

  “Don’t worry, Moms,” he told her. “Vera Mae’s smart. She’s gonna be right there with me.”

  His mother, unconvinced, returned to cleaning up the kitchen, humming,“Um-hum,” as if she were singing a familiar tune.

  Tired of running interference off the football field, the boys tried to take Vera Mae someplace that wasn’t so familiar. The Fish Shack? She had been there and so had her crew. White Castle? Even the freshmen class hung out there, listening to R&B on the jukebox, munching ten-cent burgers.

  Russell heard about the drummer with Count Basie’s band at the Club Riviera—“Rocking and shouting,” he said. The Riviera was the biggest supper club in the city where colored folks didn’t have to use the back entrance. Because they were minors, the best they could do was look at the fancy wheels folks came riding in on, rhinestones and silks flashing in the seconds it took to walk from the car to the door. Vera lasted about five minutes.

  “I could see this at the movies,” she said, and turned sharply as if the drum major had signaled to her. She did not look back, knowing the boys would follow. And they did.

  “There gots to be a way,” Cohee said.

  “Movies, man. She’s talking movies.”

  “Not the Antioch,” Wheeler said. “That place smells like rotten eggs.”

  Russell grunted. “I don’t mean that funky old Antioch. I’m thinking the Fox, downtown, bro.”

  “They don’t let us in the Fox, man. What you fixing to do? Walk up to the ticket box and say, I want two tickets, please, Mr. Sir? Kick your butt from here to Vandeventer.”

  “How many times we been in there and ain’t nobody kicked us out yet—” Wheeler started to object, but Russell cut him off.

  “I got it covered,” he said. “I can figure the time it takes to get in and out with nobody knowing the diff, get it?”

  He talked them through it and they slapped hands to seal the deal. But with all that glad-handing, they had forgotten one of the cautions their fathers offered: Mind where you going before you get there.

  * * *

  The movie, Road House, was playing at the Fox, and Vera loved movies with gangsters and gun molls. Wheeler set up the date, and made her promise she wouldn’t tell anyone where they were going. She agreed only if she could wear his letter jacket for the rest of the month.

  The evening they took her to the Fox, the streets were slick with rain. A downpour widened the distance between houses with eddies of water swirling toward the open maw of gutters. The gratings held scraps of newspapers, cigarette butts, the head of a broken doll, anything else that could not be immediately swept into the sewer. Even in the posh section of town, where the lights from the Fox Theatre beckoned, and each night the streets were swept by a legion of workers, trash swirled in the drains. While the rain fell, the city’s waste flowed freely, and most folks stayed inside to avoid getting drenched. Russell was counting on that when he swiped his father’s key to the service entrance. He figured that with luck, the rain would mask their comings and goings, everyone bent on getting out of the downpour, and the usual bunch of thuggish whites hanging near the entrance would head home as soon as the movie ended. Weekends, he’d watched them standing in front of the theater, talking like Archie comics, smoking Lucky Strikes, and watching the girls walk toward the corner bus stop or soda shop, more interested in keeping their hair slicked back than anything else.

  “White trash,” his mother called them. “House so dirty I can’t hardly get it clean.”

  But that evening it was raining, and as the old folks said, “Nothing’s so clean as a hard rain.”

  Russell had calculated the time they would need to get through the service entrance and up the stairs to the balcony in the dark before the exit alarm light would start to blink. In fact, he had counted the steps more than once: two right inside the door, ten to the first floor, twelve to the balcony, and two on the other side of the velvet curtain that kept light from filtering into the theater. Divide that speed by all four of them trying to make the landing, and he was sure all he needed was three minutes to get them seated at a safe distance from the evening crowd. Twice, Vera Mae had to be shushed. The first time, she
stumbled on the staircase.

  “Won’t do to have white folks thinking we in here all by our lonesome,” Russell whispered.

  They inched their way into their seats. The light from the silver screen was as strong as the darkness in the aisles. Wheeler remembered the stories his father told of looking from the dining car as the train rumbled through the countryside at night, and how, in the distance, he saw the light of a window, the darkness around it swallowing all it belonged to—the house, the barn, even trees. “Didn’t know a soul who lived there,” his father said, “but that light caught my eye and I couldn’t hardly shake it.”

  Wheeler turned away from the screen and let his fingers tell him when he’d found his seat. The others followed. Thanks to the sticks of Juicy Fruit Cohee shared with them, Vera was quiet during the movie until the end, when the neon lights announcing the Roadhouse were barely visible through the night fog, and Ida Lupino started singing about her lost lover as if the blues was the only sound she could hear: “We’ll have this moment forever / but never, never . . . again.”

  Wheeler claimed it was the sound of the rain that pulled them out of the spell of the movie, but Russell figured it was the sound of Vera weeping that startled him. No one expected that. To be sure, Vera was pretty, but in a rough kind of way. Crying was a whole new way of looking at her. Her sobs brought him straight up in his seat, muttering, “Damn!” He needed to get them out of there before the house lights came on and all the white folks spotted them. The credits were beginning to roll when he hustled them into an exit row and the pitch-black hallway. In that darkness, they could still hear Lupino crooning for her man, and they felt as lost as the characters in the movie.