The Meq tm-1

by Steve Cash

  I thought about everything I could say, everything I wanted to say, but that would just have made everything else less clear. I still didn’t understand it myself. “Yes,” I answered. “Yes, I have.”

  She looked at me strangely, curious for more detail, but knew instinctively to leave it where it was. She drew in a deep breath, placed the photograph back on the mantel, and said, “Where to?”

  Without hesitation, I said, “Take me to Solomon.”

  “Right now?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  She looked out of the window, confused at first, then laughed to herself and said, “You’re right, Z. I’ve never been there, but sure, why not?”

  I didn’t get the inside joke. “You’ve never been where?”

  “ ‘Chestnut Valley.’ It’s downtown along Chestnut and Market Streets near Twentieth. It’s our ‘red-light district.’ ”

  “And that’s where Solomon is?” I asked incredulously.

  “Yes, but not necessarily for what you may be thinking. He goes for the gambling and the music. He knew the original owner of the Rosebud Café, ‘Honest John’ Turpin, and next door, over a drugstore I’m told, is a gaming room. He’s got a permanent seat at ‘the wheel,’ as he calls it. He hardly ever wins, but he never fails to play. I’ve heard that the music coming from next door is terrific. Honest John’s son, Tom, runs it now. Evidently, he’s a gigantic Negro man, who is supposed to be very nice and play a very wicked piano.”

  “Why have you never been there?”

  “I’ve heard that there’s a certain amount of jealousy toward me from a few madams in the area. However, it’s never been a real problem, because Solomon spends all his money there and I stay away.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh to myself. Some things, beside the Meq, never change. “How is the old man?” I asked.

  “He’s fine, but he drives me crazy. Of course, Star loves him and Nicholas thinks he’s some legend out of the Wild West. I just wish he would slow down a little. Anyway, let’s go, and go now, before I think better of it.”

  I followed her out of the door and down the stairs. She swung open the wide door at the far end of the lower level, and instead of horses inside, there was a bright yellow automobile. I didn’t quite know what to say and laughed out loud.

  Carolina looked it over with pride and turned to me. “Stanley Steamer,” she said. “It’s the latest thing, Z. But first, I have to check on Star and I want you to come with me. I want you to see something.”

  She led me to the back of the big house and a separate, private entrance. She said it was Li’s living quarters and the only place Star would take a nap. I told her I had met Li’s cousin, also named Li, in China.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really.”

  “Well, I hope he is a bit more sociable than our Li.”

  “He does what he can.”

  Carolina gave me a peculiar look and gently tapped on the door. She paused for only a moment, then opened the door. “He never says come in or go away. He never says anything to anybody, except I’ve heard him talking to Star when he wasn’t aware I was listening.”

  Inside, it was clean, simple, and spartan in decoration. Li sat in the corner as still as a stone. He was gazing straight ahead at the opposite corner. He looked like a prizefighter between rounds with perfect posture. Star lay on the single iron-frame bed against the wall. She was curled up on her side, sound asleep and sucking her thumb. Under her head, as her only pillow, was Mama’s glove.

  I watched her sleeping. I knelt down and listened to her breathing. Inside her breath, I could hear the steady clackety-clack of the heavy railroad wheels and feel the rocking motion of the car, and all the hours, and all the miles across Kansas resting in my mama’s lap with that same glove under my head.

  “She won’t sleep without it and takes it with her everywhere,” Carolina said.

  I got up and glanced at Li. He hadn’t moved an eyelash. Carolina kissed Star lightly on the cheek and we turned to leave. On the way out, I spoke without facing him. I said, “Your cousin wishes you well.” I paused at the door, but heard no response.

  Carolina cranked up the Stanley Steamer herself, put on a wide bonnet that she tied securely under her chin, and we took off, loud and elegant, through the heavy traffic of the World’s Fair and downtown to Market Street and a different world. We didn’t talk much on the way. We couldn’t, it was too loud, but I did find out that Nicholas was in Pittsburgh with the Cardinals and the next day was Star’s birthday. A big celebration was planned along with a trip to the Fair. Carolina said I had to see the Fair without question. “There are no words to describe it,” she said. “It is a visual encyclopedia.”

  Somehow, she found a parking place on Market Street. With the heat, the Fair, and all the action that follows such things, the streets and sidewalks were filled with people, mostly black and of every age from nine to ninety. Carolina shut off the engine and stepped down into the chaos as if she’d been there every day. People up and down the street took notice. Between Carolina and the setting sun glinting off the big yellow Stanley Steamer, I was invisible, or at least I thought I was.

  “Z! Hey, Z, man!”

  I heard my name being yelled from somewhere behind us in the crowd. I turned, and coming out of the shade of a storefront awning, I saw the shoeshine boy I’d seen at Union Station. He walked up to Carolina and me.

  “Hey, Z, you remember me, man?”

  “Yes, I do,” I said and turned to Carolina, who was staring at me in wonder. “Carolina Covington, I would like you to meet Mitchell Ithaca Coates.”

  He wiped his right hand on his shirt and then held it out to her. “Nice to meet you, ma’am,” he said.

  Carolina shook his hand and said, “Nice to meet you, Mitchell. How on earth do you know Z?”

  “We met this morning at Union Station,” I answered. I didn’t think this was a good time for him to tell her everything he might have seen.

  “Yeah, that’s right,” he said. “But I got one question. What are you people doing here?”

  “Do you live nearby, Mitchell?” Carolina asked.

  “Yes, ma’am, at the moment, I do.”

  “Well, Mitchell, we are looking for a place, actually a man in a place. He’s an older man. ” She paused and Mitch was looking at her blankly. “He’s a gambler,” she added.

  “Oh, you mean Solomon. Everybody knows Solomon. Come on, follow me. I know just the place he’s at.”

  He took us down the street two blocks, past the Rosebud Café and around the corner, into an alley that had a flight of stairs rising up the side of a building.

  “He’s up there,” Mitch said. “But you better tell ’em y’all are family. They’re kinda funny like that.”

  “Thank you, Mitchell,” Carolina said. “I doubt we could ever have found it on our own.”

  “I don’t know about that, ma’am. I think you might be able to find whatever you want.” He turned to walk back to the street and stopped halfway. “Tell you what,” he said, “I’ll watch your automobile for you for two bits. Make sure nobody harms it. What do you say?”

  Carolina was already three steps up the stairs. “It’s a deal,” she said, laughing.

  We walked up the stairs, and without really thinking about it, I put my hand in my pocket and found the Stone. I wasn’t expecting trouble, but neither of us had ever been here before. Carolina knocked and a black man in a bowler hat, smoking a cigar, opened the door. My worries were unfounded, because as soon as she mentioned Solomon, we were let in and told he was sitting by the back wall, at the roulette table. The man did ask about me and my youth and Carolina told him I was a foreign boy who had been left in her charge for the run of the Fair and I couldn’t be trusted to be left alone. That seemed to make sense to him and we walked into the noisy, smoky, crowded room.

  Now I really was invisible. Every man and woman in the place turned to get an eyeful of Carolina. Some of them obviously knew who she
was and the rest of them wanted to. She ignored all of them and leaned over toward me, shouting, “Do you see him?”

  I started to yell “no” and then heard a very distinctive and angry “Great Yahweh!” coming from somewhere in front of us. I pushed through the crowd, ahead of Carolina, and there he was, sitting in a straight-backed chair, leaning his elbows on the railing of the roulette table. He was laughing, cursing, counting his chips, flirting with a woman named Yancey, and trying to light a cigar. He still had a full head of hair and a full beard, all white. Even his eyebrows were white. He was sweating profusely and wearing a formal tuxedo. I smiled to myself and got an idea.

  Looking around quickly, I spotted a boy about my size, carrying a tray of cigars, snuff, matches, toothpicks, and other assorted items. He was making his way around the room, but hadn’t yet reached Solomon’s table. I glanced back at Carolina, then slipped between the tables and stopped the boy, telling him if he’d let me borrow the tray, the man at the roulette table would buy the whole thing. The boy agreed, but warned that he’d be watching me, just the same. I put the strap of the tray around my neck and made my way over to the roulette table, stopping beside Solomon and lighting a match. He leaned over when he saw the lit match, still talking and laughing, not noticing who was holding the match.

  I whispered in his ear, “You can’t beat the wheel, old friend. A muleskinner told me that a long time ago.”

  He turned, dripping sweat and dropping his cigar on the floor. Our eyes were level and we looked into each other’s eyes. “Zianno,” he whispered back.

  Carolina almost crashed into us from behind and knelt down, laughing and smiling. She looked back and forth between us. Solomon turned to her.

  “Is zis true? Is zis Zianno or an impostor?”

  “I am afraid it’s the real thing, Solomon,” she said.

  “Good to see you, old friend,” I said. Then I glanced at the table and his dwindling stack of chips. “I see you are losing.”

  He gathered his chips, put them in his pocket, rose out of his seat, and told the woman, Yancey, to hold his chair, that he would return another time. Then, he turned and took both of us by the arm, leading us out through the crowd. “I am no longer losing, Zianno. Partners know when to call it quits.”

  Carolina and I both laughed and then I remembered the boy and the tray with matches. I told Solomon the situation. He found the boy and gave him a double eagle, a twenty-dollar gold piece. The boy said that was more than it was worth and Solomon told him, “So was the surprise.”

  We walked out of the door and down the stairs, slowing a little for Solomon. He was still tall and vigorous, but time and his body were betraying him. I could tell it annoyed him more than anything else. On the way to the Stanley Steamer, he asked Carolina if her being down here was such a good idea. She said she could ask him the same thing herself. It was obvious this subject had come up before.

  We reached our parking place and Mitch was on patrol, not allowing a soul within three feet of Carolina’s property, which looked golden in the light of the setting sun. She gave him four bits, tip included, and Solomon tossed him a double eagle when he turned around. Mitch looked at me and I gave him a wink. He winked back and Carolina drove the big car away, toward Forest Park and into the last light of a long day.

  All the way home, Solomon went on about the wonders of the World’s Fair, all the aboriginal peoples that had been gathered from the far ends of the earth, the architectural and engineering feats of the canals, bridges, lagoons, and fountains, the palaces, pavilions, the ice-cream cones, and the Observation Wheel, also called the Ferris Wheel, and named after the man who had invented it, George Washington Gale Ferris. He said it was remarkable and called it “structure in motion.” He talked about Geronimo, the Igorots, the John Philip Sousa Marching Band, and the Pike with all its amusements. He said he’d leased a car all to ourselves on the Ferris Wheel, for Star’s birthday, and a private tour of Jerusalem, which he said I’d love because they made it “more real than it ever was,” whatever that meant.

  He talked and talked and the more he talked, it seemed as if I’d never been away. Not once did he ask about my sudden appearance or the reason for it. I wondered how much Carolina, or even Owen Bramley, had told him. His sense of arrivals and departures, and the trivialities attending them, reminded me of Zeru-Meq.

  After coming to a screeching halt in front of the carriage house, Carolina announced that “business” was closed for the evening. The big feast was on and everyone in the house was invited. I asked her if my presence needed explaining and she said it was not my presence she was worried about, it was my absence that needed explaining.

  She immediately began taking charge of the preparations and suggested Solomon take me on the grand tour. I asked him if he would prefer a short nap and he said, “Nonsense.”

  He took me through the big house and introduced me to all the “ladies” who lived and worked in Carolina’s home. There were five who lived there normally, but the youngest one, Lily, was visiting her ailing brother in New Orleans. They were gracious, bright, and obviously all in love with Solomon. I wasn’t sure of their ages, but none looked younger than eighteen or older than thirty. Solomon’s simple introduction to each one was the same, “Zis is Zianno.”

  He led me through all the rooms and salons, which were elegant and immaculate, comfortable with every nuance of taste and decoration, and definitely giving the impression of someone’s home rather than someone’s whorehouse.

  We ended up in his room and Solomon eased himself into a beautiful burl walnut rocker set close to the window and facing west. I turned and looked around the room. It was a good room, a warm room. I’d never known him to keep photographs, but he had two of them, framed and displayed on his dresser. One was a formal portrait of Mrs. Bennings, which I’d never seen before, and the other was a blurry shot of Star trying to keep still in the grass of the “Honeycircle.”

  I asked him how he liked living in one place for such a long time. He looked through the window first, then rose out of the rocker and walked to the dresser. He picked up the photograph of Star.

  “It is zis one, Zianno. Zis child has stolen my heart.”

  I looked at the picture with him. He was right. Her eyes were as bright and full of promise as a sunrise.

  “She is lovely,” I said.

  “Yes. yes, she is,” he said, almost under his breath. Then he smiled and said, “Do you remember your Plato, Z?”

  I laughed. “I’m not sure, what do you mean?”

  “Basically, Plato said all we really needed to do in zis life was to cultivate reason, honor, and passion. But zis one”—and he pointed at Star’s photograph—“zis one has taught me that the first two can go poof! All we need is the last — passion — and we must rediscover zis passion every day. Star does zis without effort, as every child can, I know, but I tell you, Z, every day I watch in wonder. It is such a simple thing. I think Yahweh must have meant for us to go full circle. I see zis world more and more as Star does than as Solomon.”

  He carefully placed the photograph back on the dresser, then made his way to the other side of the room and disappeared into a walk-in closet. I heard some rustling and grumbling and he tossed the tuxedo to the floor. A few minutes later, he walked out in slippers, long, loose trousers, and a black velvet smoking jacket, tied at the waist. I didn’t say a word, but smiled to myself, remembering that scarecrow I’d seen years ago in Colorado.

  “Come, Zianno,” he said. “You must eat if you want to grow up big and strong.”

  He put his arm around my shoulders and we both laughed all the way down the stairs.

  Dinner was a feast in every sense of the word. The food was delicious, the women were beautiful, the spirits were high, and the tales were tall. Much of the conversation concerned the Fair and the life around it. The women talked at length about the international fashion they’d seen and, at the same time, the lack of it. Carolina brought me up-to-date on profe
ssional baseball a little, telling of the exploits of a few players and recounting the World Series, the first one ever, the year before. Star bounced back and forth between Solomon and Li and I could see that each was jealous of Star’s affection for the other. Solomon told stories about China and held the women mesmerized. As he was in the middle of one particular tale in which he was pulling the wool over the eyes of a Chinese man, I glanced at Li, who was sitting as silent as stone in the corner and shaking his head from side to side, as if poor Solomon would never get it right.

  The whole evening was loud and lusty, and as it began to wind down, the table thinned out. The women left one by one and Star fell asleep in Solomon’s lap, with Solomon himself nodding off soon after. Li picked up Star to take her to bed and Carolina assisted a grumbling Solomon upstairs to his room.

  I walked outside through the kitchen and, without thinking about it, wandered in the darkness back to the “Honeycircle.” I took a few steps in, but stopped short of entering. I could see nothing except a faint light from above, inside the carriage house. The heavy, sweet scent of honeysuckle was overpowering. I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, and as my lungs were nearly empty, I heard in the darkness someone else breathing in. I closed my eyes and opened them again, trying to see a form. I stood silent, waiting. Then, ahead of me, inside the darkness, I thought I saw a shape, a silhouette, something. I took a few steps forward, toward it. Something was familiar, something particular was forming and coming toward me. This couldn’t be, I thought, but I could almost see them. I could see the lips, her lips, coming toward me. They were parted and trembling. Suddenly, from behind me, I heard footsteps, real ones. I turned and it was Carolina, carefully making her way through the opening.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  She took my arm and led me up the stairs to the carriage house. She showed me the room I was to stay in, and as she was fluffing up pillows and turning the bed down, I walked out to the balcony and looked down on the “Honeycircle.” I don’t know how many minutes passed, but I was lost, somewhere inside and far away. Without my knowing, at some point Carolina had slipped in behind me and was looking over my shoulder.