by Steve Cash
Mitch went to kiss Mercy, Jack poured a cup of coffee, and Nova sat down next to Caine. Ray jumped up and sat on the kitchen counter, letting his legs dangle while he closed his eyes and breathed in every one of the mingling scents and aromas. “Ah, home cookin’,” he sighed, “there ain’t nothin’ like it.”
I asked Star, “Where’s Willie?”
“Rockford, Illinois,” she answered. “He’s meeting with some other men from Wisconsin. They’re planning an air show for next summer with experimental and vintage aircraft. He should be back in a couple of days.”
“Where’s Carolina?” I asked. “And where’s Georgia, or should I say Georgie?”
“She’s in the living room with Gran-gran,” Antoinette said. “She loves to play around the Christmas tree.”
“Gran-gran?”
“That’s what Georgie calls Carolina,” Caine added. “It’s her version of Great-grandma.” He paused and smiled. “Why don’t you go surprise her, Z? And I bet you a Budweiser beer you fall in love.”
“A Budweiser?”
“Two!” Caine said with a laugh, waving me out of the room.
I turned and crept through the dining room into the long and wide living room. A fire crackled in the fireplace at the far end of the room. Candles burned on every table and in every window, and several pieces of Carolina’s furniture had been removed to clear the way for a nine-foot Christmas tree, fully decorated and adorned with lights, ornaments, and tinsel. Gifts and presents of all sizes surrounded the tree. A few feet away, Carolina and a four-year-old girl sat on the floor playing. Carolina was wearing a turtleneck sweater and denim overalls, complete with shoulder straps. Her white hair was cut short and brushed back, like Star’s. She was listening intently to Georgie, who also wore overalls. Georgie seemed to be instructing and slightly scolding Carolina about something. There was a big three-story dollhouse sitting between them; however, there were no dolls in the dollhouse. Instead, Georgie was filling the dollhouse with farm animals and she was making sure Carolina put the pig in his proper room. For a few seconds I watched them play without being seen, then Georgie looked up.
“Who are you?” she asked, but she didn’t look surprised or confused, just … curious.
I looked down at her. She had the biggest, most beautiful brown eyes I’d ever seen, like milk chocolate, and they gazed right into mine. She was staring at me, waiting for me to answer. I glanced at Carolina and she winked.
“My name is Zianno,” I said and paused, leaning over. “You, Georgie, may call me Z.”
“Z, Z, Z,” she repeated several times, saying it fast and slow, as if she was trying it out, getting used to it. Finally, she said, “That’s a funny name.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” I said, then whispered, “but it’s my name.”
“Will you play with us?”
“All right. Sure. Where should I sit?”
“There,” she answered, pointing to my spot. “Sit there.” As I was sitting down, she added, “You’re a boy.”
“Yes, yes I am,” I said, trying to keep from laughing. I smiled at Carolina and glanced again at this little girl, and something happened. I looked into her eyes and saw all the faces of the people inside her, inside her blood, her genes, and it was amazing. I saw her mama and papa, Caine and Antoinette. I saw Antoine and Emme, and I saw PoPo, and I saw Captain Antoine Boutrain, the elder, and I saw the madness of Isabelle, Antoine’s mother. I saw Star and the tragic Jisil al-Sadi, and I saw Nicholas and Carolina, and I saw Carolina’s father, the “Whirling Dervish,” Billy Covington. How did it happen? How did all those people find their way inside this little girl? I looked at Georgie and thought of the unlikely trail of time, circumstance, love, and dumb luck that it took. I thought of my own family and my own mama and papa. I still missed them. I thought of the Meq and the others and their families. I looked past Georgie at the Christmas tree and followed it up to its top, nine feet in the air. The great tree was crowned with a cone, and attached to the top of the cone was a bright red sphere, sparkling with glitter in the light. And I thought of the Gogorati, the Remembering, and I knew instinctively and with certainty that the sphere I was searching for had everything to do with the Remembering. There was no doubt—I had to find it and I had to read it, or there would be no Remembering for us.
“You are the sheep,” a voice said.
I blinked. “What?”
It was Georgie who spoke. “Z, you are the sheep. Here,” she said, handing me the sheep. “Gran-gran, you are the cow. Okay?” She handed Carolina the cow and glanced back and forth at both of us. “Well …” she said, annoyed that we were hesitating.
Carolina glanced at me and laughed. “Moo!” she said. “Moo!”
“Baa! Baa!” I said. I laughed and looked at Georgie and I knew immediately I owed Caine two Budweisers.
Inside Carolina’s house, the holiday season of 1958 was nothing but joy. Every day was filled with feasting, drinking, laughing, singing, and sharing memories and stories, many of them told by Carolina, and they usually involved Solomon in one way or another. Her stories were always hilarious and somehow heroic. On Christmas Day, Carolina and Star cooked a dozen different Cuban dishes and Carolina blessed the meal with a silent prayer for Oliver “Biscuit” Bookbinder. And there were presents, too many presents, almost all of which were for Georgie. That Christmas, Georgie received everything she could ever want and more than she would ever need. Two weeks passed in a blur. The days were cold, but the nights were clear. Venus and Jupiter appeared close together in the southeastern sky, like a big sister and little brother carrying lanterns, lighting the way.
January began with Jack leaving for Washington, D.C., on New Year’s Day after receiving a telephone call from Cardinal. Fidel Castro and his band of revolutionaries had run the dictator Batista out of Cuba. They were now in charge of the government and Cardinal wanted Jack in Washington. Carolina kissed Jack good-bye in the kitchen, cursing Batista and the revolutionaries.
During the next few weeks Carolina and I spent a great deal of time together. On fair days when it wasn’t too cold, we took walks in Forest Park. The walks were not as long as in the old days, but in our hearts and minds they felt the same and were just as enjoyable. Carolina never once complained about her physical aches and pains or even mentioned them. I knew from Jack that she suffered from arthritis in her hips, and yet it made no difference. She always looked forward to our walks, which she began referring to as our “wanderings.” On one of our walks we encountered a woman who also was in her eighties, a woman Carolina had known for years. The woman smiled when she saw us coming. Her name was Millie Westinghouse.
“Hello, Millie,” Carolina said.
“How charming!” Millie replied. “What a gentleman you have there, Carolina. Who is this young man?”
Without hesitation or even a trace of irony, Carolina told the woman, “Why, this boy is my oldest friend, Millie … and he is not that young, by the way.” As we walked on, I glanced back at Millie Westinghouse and winked. Her mouth dropped open and she looked completely blank. She was sure she had either heard or been part of a joke, and simultaneously, she knew she didn’t get it.
Willie Croft took me flying on three occasions in January, mainly because he now owned three airplanes, including his beloved de Havilland, and he wanted me to fly in each of them. Star went with us twice and the third flight I was alone with Willie, all the way to Kansas City and back in his red Beechcraft Bonanza. Willie was sixty-seven years old and most of his red hair had disappeared, except for a little above the ears and in the back, and that had turned gray. He had enough wrinkles and lines on his face and forehead to prove that he’d had his fair share of experience. But when he was flying, none of that mattered. I could see it in his eyes and in the grace of his movements. He wasn’t just flying. He was out of Time.
Mitch Coates had opened yet another nightclub in a neighborhood now known as Gaslight Square. Gaslight Square covered the length of Olive Stre
et from Pendleton to Whittier. Mitch owned two buildings, one on Olive and the other around the corner on Boyle. The nightclub was on the ground floor of the Olive Street building, along with the Mercy Whitney Art Gallery & Studio. They lived in a spacious apartment on the second floor of the building on Boyle. Mitch said there was good live jazz in his club, and he was anxious for Ray, Nova, and me to hear some of it. We all went together the first night and stayed close to Mitch. When somebody asked who we were, Mitch said we were his bartender’s grandkids from New Orleans. However, the ruse wasn’t necessary. Once the music started, no one paid attention to us anyway. Nova and I only went along a couple of nights. Ray went on a regular basis. He asked Mitch to take him to hear the rest of the music being played in St. Louis, especially rhythm and blues. One night Mitch drove Ray across the river to a club in East St. Louis, and after that Ray couldn’t stop raving about a group called the Kings of Rhythm with Ike Turner, and a young girl Ike introduced as Tina belting out the vocals. Ray started listening to music on the radio and buying record albums. He listened to everything, but his new hero was a black, blind piano player, singer, and songwriter also named Ray—Ray Charles. “Genius,” Ray said, “pure damn genius.”
Nova began visiting Mercy in her studio and they quickly became fast friends and confidantes. Three or four times a week, Mercy held art classes for kindergarten-age kids in the neighborhood, kids who couldn’t afford art supplies, and Nova never missed a class, acting as Mercy’s assistant. I knew she loved it and she was a natural at working with young children, but she tried to shrug it off, grinning and saying, “I only do it because they’re shorter than me.”
On February 1 the weather turned bitterly cold and a razorlike wind blew in from the northwest. Everyone stayed inside and Georgie got lots of playtime and an abundance of playmates. We kept the fireplace going day and night. About ten o’clock in the morning of February 4, Ray was tending the fire, moving new logs in with the old. The radio was on in the background, tuned to KMOX. A song by The Rays called “Silhouettes” was playing. Just as they sang the line, “a dim light cast two silhouettes on the shade,” the disk jockey broke in with the news that Buddy Holly, the rock and roll star from Texas, was dead. He had been killed the night before when his chartered airplane, a red Beechcraft Bonanza, went down in Iowa at 1:50 A.M.
Ray turned to me and said, “That’s the same airplane as Willie’s, ain’t it?”
“Yes. One of them.”
“Same color, too, right?”
“Yeah … what are you thinking, Ray?”
“This is a bad omen, Z … a bad omen.”
“In what way?”
Ray paused. “I don’t know yet.”
The next four days passed and the weather improved. By February 9 it was warm enough for Carolina and me to embark on one of our “wanderings” through Forest Park. Antoinette and Georgie stayed outside all morning playing hide-and-seek in and around the “Honeycircle.” Caine was out of town, lecturing at a seminar in Austin, Texas. Ray spent the day with Mitch, helping him build a new stage in the nightclub, and Nova and Mercy took their art class on the road, spending most of the day finger painting at St. John of the Cross Children’s Home. Willie and Star had flown to Rockford, Illinois, and were due back in the early evening. Because of its speed, Willie had chosen his red Beechcraft Bonanza for the trip.
At four in the afternoon, while Carolina and I sat in the kitchen drinking coffee, Ray suddenly burst through the door, with Nova right behind him. “We got to get hold of Willie and Star!” Ray shouted. “They got to stay in Rockford. They can’t fly home tonight.”
I looked at Ray and he was dead serious. “What’s going on, Ray?”
“I had one of my ‘forecasts,’ Z. Over at Mitch’s place, clear as a tear, I saw it and I knew it.”
“Knew what?”
“A ‘big one’ is comin’, Z, and it’s comin’ soon. We gotta get hold of Willie.”
I glanced across the table at Carolina. She was worried. She knew Ray, the “Weatherman,” would not be mistaken. She had lost her sister the last time Ray had said a tornado was coming. Carolina rose from her seat and went directly to the telephone. Willie had left the number of their hotel and the number of the airport. She dialed the hotel and asked for Willie or Star. They had already checked out. She nervously dialed the next number, messing it up twice and having to start again. She got through to the airport and was put on hold for several minutes until she was finally connected to the proper person. She found out Willie and Star had taken off half an hour earlier. Carolina’s face dropped, but she didn’t panic. She asked the man if she could get a message to Willie now, while he was in the air. It was an emergency. The man told her he thought they were still in range and asked what she wanted to say. Carolina thought for a moment, then said, “Tell him Z and the ‘Weatherman’ said to turn back, do not come home. Repeat, do not come home.”
Carolina hung up the phone, sat down at the kitchen table, and waited twenty minutes before redialing the Rockford airport. Ray paced the room. When she called back, she had to wait again until the same man came on the line. She listened for a tense moment or two, then smiled and the blood came back into her face. The freckles on her cheeks and across her nose all seemed to jump out at once. “Thank God! And thank you, sir,” Carolina said to the man. “You have probably saved two lives.” She hung up the phone and told us Willie had received the message and was returning to Rockford.
“Yes!” Ray shouted. “Yes, yes, yes.”
Carolina walked over and gave Ray a crushing hug for an eighty-eight-year-old woman. “I am forever grateful, Ray,” she whispered.
Ray winked and whispered back, “We got lucky.”
Nova glanced at me and I knew what she was thinking—there could still be a tornado headed our way. “When is it coming, Ray?” she asked.
Ray walked to the window and looked out at the sky and the trees. The sky was cloudless and the trees were quiet. “Soon,” he said.
At six o’clock, we watched the local news on television, but they only expected cloudy skies and the possibility of rain in the forecast. Afterward, we played cards for a while, then watched I’ve Got a Secret on TV and waited. Antoinette and Georgie said good night and slipped off to bed. Eight o’clock and nine o’clock came and passed. On the ten o’clock news, they continued to predict cloudy skies and the possibility of rain. Maybe Ray missed it this time, I thought. Following the news, Carolina retired, thanking Ray again and saying, “Wake me if necessary.” Ray, Nova, and I stayed in the living room, watching TV. Eventually, Nova fell asleep on the couch and I fell asleep in my chair. Only Ray remained awake, turning off the television and sitting by the window, staring into darkness.
At 1:50 A.M., the same time as Buddy Holly’s plane crash, Ray tapped my shoulder and woke me. “It’s here,” was all he said.
I blinked and stood up immediately. Outside, I could hear the wind roaring through the trees, and hailstones were hitting the windows. Just then, a tree limb cracked like a rifle shot in the front yard, waking Nova up. Thirty seconds later, Antoinette ran into the room with Georgie in her arms and a frightened look on her face. Carolina wasn’t far behind, coming down the stairs in her nightgown and robe. “To the basement,” she said, “everyone to the basement. Quickly.”
One by one, we followed Carolina downstairs. We huddled together and waited. In ten minutes, everything was over. We walked back up into the kitchen. I got a flashlight and Ray and I opened the door and looked out. A light rain was falling, but the sky was quiet and the storm had passed. Tree branches and scattered debris covered the yard and driveway. We walked around the house to see if anything was broken or missing, then wandered into the “Honeycircle.” In the beam of the flashlight we saw something that only a tornado can create. Impaled on the point of the bronze gnomon of Baju’s Roman sundial was a street sign from the intersection of Manchester Road and Woodlawn. I looked at Ray and we shook our heads in disbelief at the powe
r of such a storm. We both knew Manchester Road and Woodlawn was at least ten miles away to the southwest.
I looked up at the sky and whispered, “I’m glad Willie and Star are safe … but I think it’s us who got lucky.”
Ray was still staring at the street sign. “Ain’t that the truth,” he mumbled.
It wasn’t until the morning newscast that we found out the extent of the damage in St. Louis County and the city of St. Louis. The storm path had missed us by less than a mile. The Channel 2 TV tower had been blown down, and many power and phone lines were down. There was heavy damage around Grand and Page, and entire apartment buildings had collapsed in several places, the worst being in the vicinity of Boyle and Olive. That was Gaslight Square and it was exactly where Mitch and Mercy lived.
All morning long we tried to reach them by telephone. We never got through and they never called. Willie and Star did call, and so did Caine from Austin and Jack from Washington. We assured them we were all right. Around noon, Antoinette drove Nova, Ray, and me near the neighborhood of Gaslight Square, but there was too much chaos to find anything out. Firemen and police had closed off several streets, including the area surrounding Boyle and Olive. We waited the rest of the day in Carolina’s kitchen, hearing nothing. As the sun was setting, Willie and Star finally arrived home safely only to learn that Mitch and Mercy were missing. The local evening newscast estimated twenty-one people had been killed and more than three hundred injured, and the search through the debris of collapsed buildings continued. Carolina called every hospital in St. Louis looking for them and came up empty. No one said it aloud, but we feared the worst. Then, early the next morning, Carolina received a telephone call from the police. Mitchell Ithaca Coates, age sixty-six, and Mercy Marie Whitney, age fifty-six, had been found dead, buried in the rubble and debris of their apartment building. The news was more than sad. It took the wind out of us. Carolina had known Mitch since he was twelve years old, as I had, and every one of us had been in love with the good and beautiful Mercy.