Chapter twelve
In Baltimore the fire had already consumed a thousand 150-year-old row houses and was advancing steadily on the most elegant new motel in the United States.
The row houses, the town officials said, were expendable, but the Edgar Allan Poe Motor Lodge, Condominium and Adventure in Living, which had been erected to encourage confidence in the downtown of Baltimore, had to be saved.
“You can’t expect people to live in slums like this and not riot,” Willie told the governor of Maryland, Wilson Lee Beauregard VII, descendant of four Presidents of the United States and the nation’s leading connoisseur of the African violet.
Governor Beauregard and Willie were watching the riots from the top of the Civic Center four blocks from the Poe motel.
“Ah don’t care where they live, or how, suh,” said Governor Beauregard, “Ah don’t see what that has to do with tearin’ and smashin’ and burnin’. That motel is the most beautiful example of modern livin’ in the world, and they surely goin’ to try and destroy it, like that.” The governor clapped his hands together, making a small thunder burst.
“They don’t plan to destroy the motel,” said Willie, who had talked to the leader of the black rebels early that morning. “But the fires may get out of hand.”
“They started the fires, reverend suh,” said Beauregard. “Aren’t they responsible for what they started or am ah a lunatic?”
“What do you want me to do?” said Willie.
“Go on television and tell them the militia is goin’ in with orders to shoot to kill anybody interferin’ with the fahr-fightin’.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You condone their violence?”
“Who am I to condone or not condone?” said Willie, looking at the smoke rising from the tenements.
“That’s the sort of pussy-footin’ talk that just placates the sav—” the governor, seeing the color of Willie’s skin, broke off. He thunder-clapped his pink hands once more.
Willie said, “Maybe you should go on television. If you know how to stop it, why do you send for me?”
Shakily, Governor Beauregard lit a cigar. His mind was sore distracted. He had neglected his violets for nine days running, and it was the season they needed tenderness. He had left his plants in the care of Hilaire, his Jamaican manservant, whose clothes had smelled of smoke this morning and who was carrying on an affair with the wife of the lieutenant governor besides. The plants needed a kindly father; he was the kindly father—yet here he was, standing on top of the Civic Center with a weird priest whose color was confusing and abnormal, watching Baltimore burn.
“You give them love and they grow,” said the governor. “Give them indifference and they withah.”
Willie turned to the mayor of Baltimore, who had been praying from Simon de Montfort’s Perfect Devotion to the Blessed Virgin for three days and nights and who had promised not to utter a word to his fellow man that he did not know to be the truth—this in reparation for past sins of the tongue.
“You are the mayor. What do you suggest?” Willie said.
The man held his finger to his mouth.
Willie turned to the city controller.
“What’s wrong with the mayor?”
“He won’t answer any question unless he is sure he can give the absolutely true answer.”
“Where is the nearest television station?” said Willie.
The city controller started to answer but the mayor interjected an excited and even jubilant wave of the hand. He grabbed a telephone directory, opened it to the yellow pages, studied a column of addresses and then said clearly and distinctly, “I can tell you, Excellency, that the nearest television station from the place we are now standing, which is at the top of the Civic Center, is at the corner of Montgomery and Park, which is not less than five blocks and not more than eight, in a northwesterly direction, assuming you leave the center by the south exit and travel by cab on Ocean Avenue which is one-way, then turn onto… .”
When Willie got to the television station, the county sheriff, Archbishop Looshagger and a black civic leader named Gleason were already there.
“Those who perish by the sword will reap the wages of death, which are sin,” said Archbishop Looshagger, who had trouble remembering things and whose car at this very moment was burning in the cathedral parking lot, and the car he thought was his was being towed out of a no-parking zone by the police who, when they got the car to the station, discovered it to be a stolen vehicle.
“I don’t even know you, man,” said Gleason, “but you gotta do better than Tom-talk.”
“The dynamic of social change is dynamite,” said the sheriff of Baltimore County, a noted epigrammatist and wit.
Willie went on the air.
He asked the rioters to go home or, if their homes were burned down, to come to the Civic Center, where they could be assigned temporary lodging.
He asked the rioters to let the fire fighters come into the riot area to bring the fires under control.
He said he understood why people wanted to break things up but that it always wound up that people got broken in the process.
He asked the people doing the rioting what they won that was more precious than the fourteen lives that had been lost.
In the middle of his speech he broke down and wept because he didn’t know what to say and because he knew his words weren’t any good anyway and because on the monitor he could see the red flag on his breast and he remembered how light she had been in his arms as he carried her.
“Ah thought he was a great speakah!” snorted Governor Beauregard. “Mah God, he’s snivelin’! What you gonna ahcomplish with a snivelin’ nigra, ah ask you?”
The mayor, watching TV with the governor, put his finger to his mouth.
But the sound of Willie’s crying, which was the strangest sound that had been heard in Baltimore in many years, carried into the riot areas, and when they heard that sound, men stopped what they were doing, hands froze in the air, people carrying things out of stores stopped in their tracks as if this voice was one they had heard before, sometime in their childhood, from their mothers maybe or some preacher telling a story in a tent long ago. They stopped. And the riot too began to stop.
There was an hour or two of confusion. Then in the middle of the afternoon an explosion rent the air.
Willie went back on television, and this time he found himself unable to say anything. He was simply on camera, and some people said he was praying and some said he was weeping.
Gleason took the air.
“This man is nothing but a tool of the racist structure of this city,” he said.
Willie was still visible on camera, still silent, eyes down, weeping or praying—or was he sleeping?
“What has he been able to guarantee us? Nothing!” said Gleason.
But the people in the riot area and all over the city were watching the sad figure behind Gleason, the figure who in some way seemed not the healer of the riot but its principal victim.
By nightfall, people were beginning to show up at the Civic Center. The firemen had entered the burning areas. The riot was ending.
Four hundred twenty-six arrests were made.
Among those arrested was Archbishop Looshagger, who had come to claim his stolen car, which he said he remembered buying at the H. L. Mencken Used Car Bonanza six weeks earlier. The police found no record of this transaction and the archbishop was charged with theft.
“Father, forgive them, for I shall pass this way but once,” the archbishop said. “And if the light loses its flavor, what shall it be salted with—a reed blowing in the wind?”
The state and local officials went on television to assure the populace that the riot was over.
“Once more, we have proved that Maryland is the cradle of liberty, forbearance, peace and love,” said Governor Beauregard. “People, like African violets, need love. That is why ah am here. That is why the bishop is here. That is why the militia is her
e. That is why the Edgar Allan Poe Motor Lodge, Condominium and Adventure in Living is here.”
“Speaking only for myself,” said the sheriff, “I’d rather be merry than burn.”
“In exactly one hour and twenty-two minutes it will be
Friday,” said the mayor.
* * *
Willie stayed in Baltimore the next day and the next, helping people find the things they had lost in the riots, helping people get out of jail, helping people find food and clothing.
By the end of the second day, the Red Cross arrived with many supplies, and an emergency clean-up force set to work.
Everyone seemed happy to be cleaning up the riot area but no one talked about the things that had started the riot.
Willie had been staying in a rooming house in the riot area. His phone rang often but he was never there to take the messages. He was at the Civic Center where the emergency services had been headquartered.
On his fourth night in the city he got back to his room very late. There was a note on his bed from Thatcher Grayson.
We have a day game with the Orioles tomorrow. Can you be at the park? Been trying to reach you since you been in town doing God’s work.
The next afternoon Willie took a cab to the ball park. The cabbie recognized him.
“I remember you from the old days,” he said, squinting at Willie through the mirror. “Ah.”
“I seen you pitch many times. I seen with my own eyes.”
Willie was looking at the ruined buildings where Professor Death had been giving his lessons. People were carrying mattresses and television sets and odd bits of furniture in and out of the tenements.
“And after I seen it, it wasn’t glory no more.”
“I beg your pardon, brother?”
“What you did—it spoilt the glory. It overthrew it.”
The cabbie, stopping for a light, turned around.
“What gave you the right?”
“What right is that, brother?”
“To capsize it completely. Why—why, once I knew the averages. All of them. The ERAs. The RBIs. I seen and studied and mastered the greats. From when I was seven years old, which is now near fifty-four!”
There was a honking of horns. The car shot forward.
They drove for a block in silence through many charred instructions.
Willie tried to comprehend what the cabbie had said.
Waving his arm, the cabbie turned around again. “Overthrowing it—just like that!” He snapped his fingers. “Like it was—lies!”
“Brother, I—”
“I could recite them all. Ruth. Foxx. Williams. Aaron. The hurlers. The great moundmasters. Johnson. Matthewson. Grove. Until you!”
“I—”
“You sank it all. America’s pastime. Why?”
“Bro—”
“I’ll tell you why!” the cabbie was shouting and the car was weaving. “Because the monist conspirators put you up to it! Don’t think I don’t know.”
The cabbie braked the car and swerved to avoid hitting a parked truck. The ball park loomed ahead.
“My brotherin-law—Lawson Cudd, the podiatrist out of L. A.? He can prove it. He got the literature—how everything was faked. To wreck our traditions and tear down the country! He gave me a pamphlet—How They Are Worming Their Way In—and it is there in black and white!”
There was more honking. The cabbie was driving on the left side of the road.
“By God, the Iwo Jima Society get hold of you, you’d know, preacher, you’d know!”
Raving, the cabbie lost control of the car, which went careening into a post anchoring the main gate of the park.
A policeman approached.
“Think you can move this park with that thing?” he asked.
“Filthy monist pigs!” the cabbie shouted, and then burst into song. From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli… .
Willie tried to mollify the man but the policeman said, “You better go, Father. He’s disarranged, maybe even disqualified.”
The cabbie got out of the car, and Willie went up to him, and then the cabbie clipped Willie on the side of the face.
The policeman staggered the cabbie with a swing of his peace club. “He’ll be all right now, Father. Enjoy the game!” As the man was led away to the squad car, Willie, dazed, could still hear him singing. We will fight our country’s battles, in the air, on land and sea.
Shaken, Willie went down to the dark cellar passageway that led to the Hawks dressing room. A rivulet of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. He found a men’s room and tried to wash the bleeding away. His jaw was starting to swell. He could taste the salty blood taste in his mouth.
He went back to the passageway. It was a dark tunnel that he only faintly remembered from his playing days. As he headed uncertainly for the dressing room, he began to get the feeling someone was following him. He stopped, looked back—no one.
As he turned to go on, he heard someone cough.
“Who’s there?”
Silence.
He went on until he found an usher.
“You don’t look good, sir,” the usher said. “You want first aid?”
“No, I just want to see Mr. Grayson. He sent for me.”
The usher led him back along the same stretch of passageway to the dressing room.
When Mr. Grayson saw Willie, he cried out in the Spirit tongue.
Willie embraced him.
“Orithi turi enotho miga gula so e mizu dozon!”
“Mr. Grayson, dear friend.”
“Mer moli inga sororie orz tu pey loa laanga,” replied Mr. Grayson.
“Mr. Grayson, let’s talk in regular talk.”
“Ah, but the Spirit tongue!” said Mr. Grayson, “Surely you understand the Spirit tongue.”
Willie shook his head. “I have a hard enough time with English.”
“You’re doing the Spirit work. The Spirit is in you crying to be let out.”
The players, dressing slowly, were all looking at Willie. No one remained now from his old team.
“You have brought the Spirit to Baltimore,” said Mr. Grayson. “How the Spirit has been hungering to take up abode in this sinful town!”
“The riot is ended,” said Willie, “but the trouble underneath is still there.”
“The Spirit can give rout to the trouble,” said Mr. Grayson. His hair, completely white now, gave him the appearance of an old cherub.
“I hope I can sit in the dugout with you, Mr. Grayson.”
“There would be no other place in this stadium, dear son. And afterward, we’ll go to the prayer meeting. There are active Spirit folk here in the city.”
So Willie sat on the dugout bench and watched his old team lose to the Orioles.
Mr. Grayson paid little attention to the game, preferring to hear of Willie’s doings.
“Clio, I see, has gone in for revolution,” said Mr. Grayson.
“He is seeking justice the best way he knows,” said Willie.
“If only we had reached him in time.”
“He is doing what he thinks is right, and maybe—”
Mr. Grayson began to speak in tongues again. He had not noticed Willie had been hurt and did not notice it when Willie left the bench to find an ice pack for his jaw.
The dressing room was dark, full of green shadows, with only a small sunlamp burning at the end of a training table.
Willie found a medicine cabinet. As he pulled open the door, he became aware of a figure, enveloped, it seemed, in a shroud, sitting on a rubdown table in the darkest corner of the locker room.
The sight of the figure startled him. He stepped forward, straining to see. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw the outline of a tall man, gaunt and disheveled, dressed in a white raincoat.
“Sir?” said Willie.
The man turned his face into the glow of the sunlamp, and Willie saw a mask of such sadness, with its dead white pallor and downturned mouth, that it looked
like one of those faces of tragedy that were painted on the stage curtains of theaters.
“Can I help you?” Willie said, drawing nearer.
“No,” came the hollow reply.
“Who are you? You—seem in distress.”
“I am a friend,” the voice said. “I have been following you about, observing the progression of events.”
Then it came to Willie that he had seen the man before—on the steps of the chancery in Philadelphia. This was the man who had delivered the note from Benjamin.
“You are a member of the Society?”
“I am,” the man said mournfully. “I am Brother Herman, known to the world as Herman Felder.”
“Herman Felder!” cried Willie. “Why—that’s wonderful. I thought—well, I supposed—forgive me, Brother Herman, but I thought you were dead.”
“Many have supposed that same thing.”
“I heard from a friend or read someplace—”
“It is a common mistake,” the man said. “You are mixing me up with my father, Gunner Felder, who passed into another arrangement some time ago.”
Felder struck a match—the mask flared briefly in the dark green shadows.
“What brings you to Baltimore, Brother Herman?”
“I follow the trouble about.”
“You are practicing Recommendation 33?”
Felder sighed. “Ah no, I am not to that stage as yet. It is a different matter.” He got off the table now and Willie caught the scent of roses—that scent that he would come to know so well and that was sweeter than any of the flowers that men grew or had ever grown anywhere.
“You are the reason I am here,” said Felder slowly, as if it pained him to talk.
“You are all right, Mr. Felder? You are weaving a little.”
With a wave of his hand, Felder moved into the light of the lamp and Willie saw the face clearly for the first time. It was a face he had seen before. Not just in Philadelphia—where?
There was a touch of strength in the lines about the mouth, of brutality even. There were traces of humor and irony, and something else Willie could not name.
This strength of the face was not real but was more like the afterimage of a vanished power, and as he studied him, the more it occurred to Willie that everything about Herman Felder was like that. It was like seeing a character out of an old-time movie, but the print was in bad shape or else the projection lamp had dimmed. The delicate lines that made the character definite and fixed in place seemed on the point of disappearing.
The Last Western Page 25