Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

Yesterday RC had actually called up Struthers, Alderman Rondo, to ask what could be done about Sloane. Smooth, smoother, smoothest, Struthers said there was replacement housing in the works, but RC asked who’d want to live in a project if they could help it, even it was a “good” project for “good” folks, like Struthers said, which was probably a lie, one way or another, knowing projects and knowing Struthers. Struthers said the new replacement housing fund would pay three months’ rent, not until February or March, but you could borrow on the chit. And RC said, “So what? We live three months in a motel. Then what? There be places to live in this city three months from now if everybody like us is in the same boat?” And Struthers said, “It’ll all work out in the end, brother. Nobody’s getting permanently shafted anymore.” Struthers, the exact opposite of Clarence, made RC hope the worst would happen. Everything was shiny as a dime in the world of Ronald Struthers, now the richest man RC knew or had ever met.

Annie and Kate were looking at snapshots out of Kate’s purse.

“We knocked down a building on Biddle on Tuesday, RC,” Clarence said, putting on his anecdotal face, the narrowed eyes, the lingering cigar. “Tuesday and Wednesday. Place was stripped as they ever is, pipes, fuse boxes, hardware, doors, and a lot of the brick. Some nice old doors, I suspect. Anyway, we made sure there wasn’t a thing worth taking or leaving, and we let loose with the ball, and what do you know if there ain’t a little basement we overlooked. One of these real old setups, dirt floor, used to keep potatoes and pickles and coal down there, turn of the century. I mean, just a little nothing hole , and what should come crawling out but a family of three.”

Clarence gave RC the awful smile he’d been smiling lately, that no-surprise-to-me. “Little lady not much older than Stanly, got a three-year-old, and a baby on her tit, sucking right while we talked.” He paused again to assure himself of RC’s attention. “These things affect me, RC. They still affect me. I backed off with the ball for a sec and talked to her. She come up in August from Mississippi, town called Carthage, never been to St. Louis for more than visits, but looking for the father of her kids. One thing leads to another, and come December she’s living in a coal cellar and eating soup-line, too dumb or too shy to do any better, and living, at the present, in a coal cellar. I said I’m real sorry, little girl, but we got a job here, and where you people gonna go? She didn’t know. She didn’t know. Off-sir. Now, not that people should be living in coal cellars. It’s that I was tearing down to make room for office space. It’s people like this exist, and there’s a winter coming on.”

RC knew Clarence. “She back in Carthage?”

“I can only vouch as to her getting on the bus.” Suddenly Clarence sat up straight, like a pointer. “Lookee here.” He nodded, and across the room, speak of the devil, was Ronald Struthers. He was wearing turtleneck and corduroy and his gold chain with the big clenched-fist medallion, and stood talking with Ernie Shea. Both faced the dais. Behind the curtains a preliminary quiet had fallen. Points of light gleamed on the waiting trap set, on stands holding saxes and trumpets without the mouthpieces. The lounge was full and restless, the smoke so thick it would have to rain tar pretty soon.

“Ooooo,” Clarence said, very unimpressed. “What’s he doing here?”

“Maybe come for the music,” RC answered, with sarcasm but also a little apprehension, caught as he was in a feud that was not of his making. Struthers and Shea moved towards the dais on a political assembly line, pausing at each table to let Struthers cop a handshake, grin and flatter. They ducked behind the curtains and became two lumps with feet. RC moved his chair back to the table and touched Annie’s shoulder.

“Mm?” she said, smiling at a remark of Kate’s.

“You see Struthers?”

“Should I want to?” She turned back to Kate.

RC filled his glass, he filled the ladies’ glasses, reached and filled Clarence’s too, and winked at a waitress for a fresh pitcher. He’d pay for this drinking at 6:00 tomorrow morning when he caught the bus to the Academy. Annie needed the car now. He’d be parched and shivering, and the new snow sharp as filings.

Steamcats parted the curtains, taking their places. The drummer, a bare-chested Rastafarian or Rastafarian look-alike, knocked off a few self-important fragments of rhythm, adjusted his chair, flipped a stick, and played a rustle on the snare, building to a roll. Out came Titus, fatter than ever, in a silver sequined tunic and a feathered headdress, Indian. He bobbed to the assembled guests, to scattered applause. But then, with a cautionary wink to the crowd, he stepped back and lunged behind the curtains again.

“He’s the cool one,” Annie whispered.

Clarence was chewing his cigar and looking ill.

Making their way through the players now were Ernie Shea and Ronald Struthers, Ernie leading Ronald by the elbow, a guide in hostile untracked territory. They stopped at the mike and surveyed the crowd. Steamcats crossed their arms, hunched their shoulders, and stared at Struthers as if he were a white bank president. The houselights were dimming. The light retreated to the dais, coalesced in a purple bath in which the Steamcats sidled and licked their lips. Shea tapped the mike. “It’s always a great pleasure,” he said, “to welcome home these gentlemen who bring back such fond memories to me and I’m sure to you. Now our star just spoiled a climax by entering and withdrawing a little hastily…”

Laughter all around.

“But we’ve got all night and we’ll try it again. Let’s do it right this time. Ladies and gentlemen, friends, Romans, countrymen, I give you Saint Louie’s own — Titus Klaxon!”

Titus came back less jaunty. Face down, he walked to Shea and Struthers and dwarfed them with his musical bulk. He stood between them. He hugged them to his sides like dolls. “Thank you,” he said when the clapping began to subside. “Thank you very much.”

People dying in that blizzard outside. Every blizzard, people died.

“I’d like to say a word if I may,” Struthers told the mike.

Silence fast. The crowd embarrassed.

“I know we’re going to give Titus the welcome he deserves,” Struthers said. “I know this because I know Titus Klaxon, I know him for a man who won’t forget his roots, and I know the same of every man and woman in this room…”

Someone snickered at RC’s right shoulder; at his left, Clarence was chewing his thumb now, not the nail, the thumb itself.

“I remember when these cats were just getting started, playing the—”

CRACK. The drummer hit a rim shot and Struthers jumped. The Steamcats looked at the ceiling.

“Well.” Struthers cleared his throat. “It sounds as if we’re all itching to get on with it, we’ll all cherish the memories tonight brings, so without further ado—” Draping an arm around Shea and an arm around Titus, he cast his smile across the room like he was fishing for photographers, and then, in a blue flash, he was photographed. Were cameras even allowed here? RC craned his neck, looking for the source of the flash. He found it. Pressed against the wall three tables over was a kid, curly-haired and white, with a camera and a girl. Young, suburban-looking. Types.

“That’s the kid took the picture of Benny Brown,” Clarence whispered.

Struthers had vanished and Shea was swimming through the tables to the photographer. They spoke. The girl looked worried. The kid took out a card and Shea nodded, but not happily.

While Steamcats screwed in mouthpieces and plucked strings, Titus took the mike. “My good friend Ronald Struthers here,” he said, “just asked me to dedicate a song to a little lady I guess a lot of you know, and this first number’s as good as any.” Titus stretched his stomach and took a huge breath, as if keeping some bad food down. “This is a brand-new song. It’s been a while since we saw the old streets and it may be — I want you all to consider — it may be that being an outsider now I can see things you all can’t. If that’s the case, I don’t apologize, because I’m glad, real glad, to be with you tonight. My rule is blues is truth, and so, my men, let’s show these wonderful people which blues I’m talking about.” The drummer snapped to. “Here’s a song for the lady in blue, it’s called”—his voice dropped down to a deep bass—“Gentrifyin’ Blues.”