BLOODY ISLAND

:BLOODY ISLAND(MISSISSIPPI RIVER, 1817) At 6 a.m. on August 12, 1817, two arrogant young lawyers met for a duel on an islet in the Mississippi River channel near St Louis. One of the men was 35-year-old Thomas Hart Benton; his foe, Charles Lucas, was ten years Benton’s junior. As historian James Neal Primm tells the story in Lion of the Valley, the two men had frequently squared off in the courtroom. Benton finally threw down the gauntlet after an argument during a trial, but Lucas demurred, saying he didn’t want to be held personally responsible for things said in a court case. But passions flared again a few weeks later, and this time it was Lucas who challenged Benton. The two men, each armed with a pistol, faced one another at the agreed-upon distance of 30 feet. Lucas’ shot grazed Benton’s knee. Benton’s ball pierced Lucas through the throat. Both men survived. Evidently the mutual wounding did not dissolve the animosity. Several weeks later Lucas and Benton met again on the island, pistols in hand. This time they paced off a mere ten feet. Benton shot Lucas through the heart and killed him. Though the event marred Benton’s reputation for a time, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1821 and went on to achieve fame and distinction as an orator and staunch proponent of Manifest Destiny. The duelling ground, which came to be known as “Bloody Island,” was the site of many a lethal confrontation during the 19th century. Eventually, the waters of the Mississippi washed it away.

THE END OF SOMETHING

THE END OF SOMETHING(November 7, 3:05 p.m., Busch Stadium) No marching band, no floats, no funeral procession, no nothing. Anticlimax watered down, drizzle rather than rain -- like everything else where you expect something to happen but it doesn’t. Only digital cameras, news vans and pockets of bewildered people -- a muted collective demonstration of resigned anticipation, waiting for the stadium to suddenly collapse. Or at the very least for an enormous wrecking ball to swing from out of nowhere and smack it into oblivion. Someone has spray-painted in red on one of the concrete barricades: “BASEBALL STADIUMS COME & GO BUT THE SEA OF RED LIVES ON.” Liz speculates that the “SEA OF RED” refers to the loyalty of Cardinals fans. Probably, though at first glance it seemed a more ominous signifier. Seems that it’s always like that.

THE END OF THE WORLD IS NEAR

THE END OF THE WORLD IS NEAR(Kaldi’s Coffeehouse, De Mun Avenue, Clayton)

Anthony believes the end of the world is upon us and it isn’t even nine in the morning yet. He’s read the book of Revelations several times; he’s read it backward in the reflection of a mirror, he’s read it with a magnifying glass, in Braille, he’s read it upside-down and in a multitude of yoga poses. He’s cross-referenced it with the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle and it all boils down to one thing: The end of the world is upon us. We, all of us, have much to fear.

Now its nine o’clock; no time to be talking about the Apocalypse or Human Salvation or anything else that requires use of the uppercase alphabet, and Tyrone points this out with some disgust. “You’re always talking about this end-of-the-world shit, but it doesn’t do anybody any good. All you’re doing is spreading fear,” he says.

Tyrone’s an agnostic and a pacifist and an extremely well-groomed man. Eventually the conversation tumbles over. The credibility of the Bible as a single source is questioned. “What about other ancient cultures? Do you think about what they have to say?” Tyrone challenges. The Aztecs are mentioned, the Mayans are brought in, extinct African civilizations the names of which don’t even ring the remotest bell, are resurrected from their sleepy graves and dusted off under the syllabically heroic umbrella “indigenous peoples.” And so the argument grows magnificently verbose.

ST LOUIS BLACKIE

ST LOUIS BLACKIE(ST. LOUIS, FEBRUARY 1933) “To you he is just a bum, a bit of human flotsam drifting down the current of existence. But to a strange, derelict world of tremendous freedom, he is St. Louis Blackie, the division skipper, an aristocrat of the hobo jungles from Jersey to Frisco.”

-- St. Louis Globe-Democrat, February 12, 1933

A ‘division skipper’, incidentally, was a hobo who only rode fast trains, or ‘hot shots’.

John L. Craft was a professional upholster and an amateur painter. But in the hobo jungle of Edwardsville, a metamorphosis occurred: Craft became St. Louis Blackie, Hobo -- spending summers hopping freights and eating Mulligan stew with Circus Red, Broken Nose Brooks, Patty the Pig and Nosey Jim.

Some were there for the adventure, some to find work. And some because they were on the lam. “Fifty percent of men on the bum have hit the road because of woman trouble,” Craft estimated.

You’ve got to see the guy’s face, though, cutting right through all the years.

“Carpe Diem,” St. Louis Blackie whispers: Seize the day.

“A bearable existence to one,” he opined, “may be living death to another.”

He deserves a star on Delmar. Or his own railroad tie.

THE CIRCUS! THE TINY MEN!

THE CIRCUS! THE TINY MEN!(The Atomic Cowboy, Manchester Avenue)

That’s okay, Roy says; next time we’ll just have to remember to get some new clothes first. And he’s right: that’s how it shapes up. We’re surrounded by an amalgam of well-dressed people, looking good enough to be department store mannequins. The place is packed with them. Their mouths are moving, too – they are speaking, drinking, laughing, delivering a dizzying frenzy of spontaneous model-like poses. They don’t sweat, they produce no body heat.

A group of young men forms around a woman. The woman is older than the men. She’s attractive in an obvious way. Which means, in other words, that she’s attractively unattractive. Boringly attractive. A paragon to the effectiveness of cosmetic finessing. Still, there was something revealing that no cosmetic could ever hide. The truth, namely, which is a whining joke, a fizzling balloon reeling around the room, losing air. It’s clear that the men are pretty confident, but it could be argued that over-confidence is a form of ineptitude. Maybe they’re overcompensating. Or maybe they’re just jack-offs. Circus clowns who arrived together in a tiny car.

I am upside-down, walking on the ceiling now, falling on my head over and over again. Roy is floating around the room, capable of both walking on the ceiling and walking on the ground, a twittering, smiling cat – like this, he mixes well with people, moves from crowd to crowd. He would make a great psychiatrist.

“It wasn’t like this the last time I was here,” Roy says; “this is a different crowd.” He smiles, watches. I fall on my head.

TOYBOX AMERICANA

TOYBOX AMERICANA(GENTLEMEN CALLERS, OPENING FOR CHUCK BERRY AT BLUEBERRY HILL) The sound is early-American garage rock. They’ve even got one of those funky organs like the one you hear in “96 Tears” by ? and the Mysterians. A Farfisa, I think it’s called. The guy playing it’s got hair like a mop. Neck bounces, shakes. He dreams of becoming a clip from the Ed Sullivan Show.

Guy leaning against the stage: hair slicked back in a perfect pompadour, a comic-book homage to the duck’s ass, as if it were drawn by Charles Burns. Young Elvis Presley hair. An extra from The Lords of Flatbush. A devotee of the hundred-somethingth wave of rockabilly.

This guy, this band -- both are rummaging through the toybox of 20th-century Americana, lost in the funhouse of American swank, the Great American Theater of Pop Culture. It isn’t just a look they share, it’s the idea of a look, purchased at the same used-clothing stores, from the 1950s-style bowling shirts on down to the polished Beatle boots.

A new art form, whose method consists of mixing and matching the past like a DJ making a new song from of a collection of old records.

Enter: St Louis.

SONIC ROMPER ROOM

SONIC ROMPER ROOM(Paragraph at Radio Cherokee) At first the tornado of sound threatens to boot you back out the door and across the street. But after a few minutes you get used to it. The noise continues to tangle you into a pretzel -- it’s like getting mugged by noise, then thrown into a giant washing machine filled with musical instruments, a laptop computer and a flying saucer. But in the best possible way.

There are no chord progressions, just 4/4 time, on and on, one single song for an entire set. Someone’s blowing a trumpet; there’s a saxophone, too. They switch instruments, falling into one another, knocking over equipment.

We’re floating through chaos, reveling in it. An improvisational celebration of anarchy and sound: of noise.Not easy to tell if they’re playing their horns in the conventional sense, but still, it is music, only stretching the definition of the word a little bit. Stretching the idea of the word, into a kind of hypnosis. Meanwhile, the guy behind the counter pours coffee, quietly reads his book. Adjusts earplugs, reads book. A curious island of apparent uninterest in this sonic Romper Room.

SOUL REUNION

SOUL REUNION(1860’s Hardshell Café and Bar) Dave’s story made life easier to handle, and for a moment I almost thought he was a messenger from God, so sagelike and angelic momentarily was he, a vehicle chosen by the Almighty to repair my optimism. He told me this thing about love and human connectedness, the universe and the importance of compassion. It was profoundly important in that way that makes everything clear. But there’s a point when profound information becomes too dense for me; I can feel my brain involuntarily hardening. He saw that I was confused, overwhelmed. “Hey man, it isn’t me telling you this,” he concluded, patting me reassuringly on the back. It was the second time that week somebody had told me, “It isn’t me telling you this.” I was completely spooked.

The band rolled into a beautiful rendition of “Let’s Get It On.” Dave and I both sort of mentally retreated, turned our attention to Soul Reunion, the Thursday-night band. But as I sat there happily listening, Dave’s words continued to reel in my head. By now there was a gyrating crowd on the dance floor. A girl wearing a cowboy hat twirled and twisted with abandon. But in the end it didn’t go so well: She tripped over a speaker and fell to the floor like a beached fish.

Now I don’t remember the best things Dave said. Only the light he shone on me.

RICH McDONOUGH

RICH MCDONOUGH(Wednesday night, Beale On Broadway)

Meanwhile, the bandleader and lead guitar player is demonstrating some of the most virtuous and beautiful blues variations I’ve ever heard performed live before – jump blues, I think. Rich McDonough. My brain lights up in disbelief over what it’s hearing. You’d think he was born with some preexisting knowledge of how to work that guitar or maybe he’s just touched in the best possible of way. Or maybe this is just one of those nights when everything he knows comes rolling together like magic, and he’s not even thinking about it. Not even trying. Maybe he doesn’t have to anymore. His band follows along with equal virtuosity. I don’t know anything technical about music and don’t have the heart to pretend – I’m just glad I’m here and so is my brain.

Outside, a freight train pulls a long line of Pullmans slowly across the railroad bridge above Broadway. Out on the street, you can hear them sneezing into the night, glistening in the shallow pockets of light, and everything’s alright in the universe, or at least on Broadway, if only for a couple more sets.

BLUE FLOWER GYPSY

BLUE FLOWER GYPSY(Cemetery, South St. Louis)

She wants to find fresh flowers on a fresh grave. She has a name for them: “fresh kills.” Or maybe it’s “fresh dead.” We find a bouquet on a woman’s grave. They’re white roses, but in the light of the full moon they look blue. She becomes ecstatic, almost giddy, wants to take them all. I try talking her into only taking one.

“Why?” she asks. “She doesn’t need them.” How do you argue with that kind of logic? Then again, she believes in ghosts. “Out of respect for the dead,” I venture. This makes her pout.

She’s a gypsy. She can trace her lineage back far beyond my knowledge of such things. I’m outclassed, in other words: under-mysterious, and therefore useless in these matters. What is the difference between taking one flower and taking them all? Everything is contingent.

Suddenly I’m profoundly worried about her. Not for the moment, but for the rest of her life. Let her have her blue flowers, I think.

But she’s off somewhere else now, dancing through another part of the graveyard.

BETRAYED RESTLESSNESS

BETRAYED RESTLESSNESS( Mississippi River Bridge, Downtown)

As the train crawls onto the bridge, I hear live music echoing from The Beale and The Oyster Bar, rising above the low rumble and hiss of the lumbering freight cars. Soon the train is out of town, rolling eastward over the Mississippi - high above, surreal, unbelievable, mesmerizing, peaceful, ancient; one of the last living dinosaurs of the American landscape, with me riding on its back, a tiny and reverent parasite: A cartoon character adrift in a comic book country.

Why am I riding this coal car? To see the Mississippi River from this perspective: But the enterprise is also life-affirming, momentarily burning away those weak and ubiquitous antagonisms haunting ordinary life like burlesque but boring ghosts; I feel the vital flow of blood and rapid heartbeat that remind me that I’m fully alive, not just half-alive – not just a sleepy half-wit caught in the cogs of a meaningless life. That I’m awake, and that my minutes are fleeting and numbered, and for a moment I feel outrageous and even stupid, but at least I’m aware, paying attention, experiencing everything with unusual vividness; cognizant of the miracle of breathing, drinking water that tastes better than the best Spanish wine.

But tucked into the folds of my elation, I sense an inexplicable reservoir of depression. An aftertaste to the tragedy of desire, maybe; or betrayed restlessness, because for every intense high there is an inescapable low, and the fall always comes hard.

BETRAYED RESTLESSNESS II

BETRAYED RESTLESSNESS II (MacArthur Bridge over East St Louis) The train lumbers slowly over the Mississippi, quiet and hypnotic: chunk, chunk...chunk, chunk.... I can hardly breathe. I’m swallowed into the belly of American folklore; I am a lyric in a forgotten blues tune. Stretched out in every direction, incredible expanses of land. I see the Arch: magnificent, bizarre, something mistakenly left on the riverbank by bulbous-headed aliens. Strange how a few city blocks can manifest worlds richer than some vast stretches of geography, I think. I don’t know where the idea comes from. The train picks up speed as it reaches the Illinois side. I hadn’t anticipated that the bridge -- which has no guardrail or walkway, nor any visible way down to street level -- would extend for miles into the distance, well above the shadowy buildings. I imagine myself trapped on this coal car indefinitely, arriving in an Indiana small town by morning. If I’m lucky. Where am I? Who am I? Where am I from? It’s been so long since I’ve been from anywhere. Ghosts are everywhere now: my own personal confederacy of wicked antagonisms. What difference does it make what happens next? My grandfather was a milkman. I don’t remember my grandfather. Maybe I never had one. The train jerks unexpectedly to a stop. There’s a small grated platform protruding from the bridge, just below my car. This is my chance! I am Papillon! The train lurches forward again. Jump, Papillon! But then what? Fly, stupid!

PANDORA'S MATCHBOX

PANDORA’S MATCHBOX Cabin Inn, City Museum)

The breeze kicked up the flames magnificently as the spinners twirled around and performed acrobatics outside the Cabin Inn. One guy, who swallowed flames and breathed fire as well, demonstrated for Dave and me how he did it. The flame-swallowing was an illusion, more or less, involving a tricky breathing method -- something about pushing the fire out of the mouth with your breath while dropping the flame to your lips, creating the illusion of swallowing the flame. I didn’t get it, but it worked incredibly well when he enacted it. “It’s the same with anything: You have to practice,” he said. “You can’t learn to juggle without dropping a few balls.” Only dropping balls hurts less than burning your mouth, I thought. Then he walked out to a streetlamp in the parking lot, took a pull from his beer and spat it into the light. You could see the spray of beer, illuminated and misty. He did it again and then again, producing the identical spray each time. This is how a fire-breather creates the illusion of breathing fire, he explained: tiny pellets of lamp liquid bursting into flame. The plume of flame looked like something Godzilla would produce. That was the point of the demonstration. But to anyone not aware of what was going on, it just looked like a man spitting beer into the night.

HOOSIERWEIGHT BOXING

HOOSIERWEIGHT BOXING(February 4, Soulard Market Gymnasium) Everything got lost when a rush of excited applause rose up and the guy next to me yelled HOLY SHIT and jumped to attention: The two boxers -- a couple of wiry guys who looked young enough to be in high school -- plowed into each other from the first gong, enacting the human equivalent of a train wreck, each evidently hell-bent on the swift obliteration of the other. And they didn’t let up. No breather for either of them -- or for anybody else, for that matter. Just a mad succession of booms and belts, knocking the cognizance out of everyone, a brutal tornado that sucked the air out of the room. This can’t last, I thought. One of the two had to shrivel away, get spooked, become pulped, hamburger meat. But neither did. More HOLY SHIT from the guy next to me, only louder this time, more incredulous. Meanwhile the fighters continued their real-life version of one of those cartoons where the cloud of dust engulfs everything but flailing arms and legs, and debris comes flying out -- cats, dogs, hammers, household appliances. A real brawl. Even the ref tripped backward, and the guy with the huge tattooed arms, ostensibly another boxer, who’d been sitting quietly in waiting all night had a funny look on his face. For a moment, anyway.

ONE EXPERIENCED TRAVELER

ONE EXPERIENCED TRAVELER(Bus Stop, South Grand Blvd)

“I like to think that we are just agents of a period in the expanse of time,” he said, “ I like to think that time is not chronological, but is something immeasurable. We are here to learn, and we’ll pass that knowledge on to the next life, but in ways we’ll never realize or comprehend. We are – you and I – of a multitude of generations. In our mind is the residue of generation upon generation of knowledge and experience; and we were born with that. So the universe opens up to us, in a limited fashion…probably…but it’s there for us to absorb.”

A pause.

“Scary, eh?” he concluded.

“Yeah, but…”

“But what?”

Much longer pause.

THE PUNISHER

THE PUNISHER(Midwest Fight Fest, SBAC)

The first fighter was really winded now. His chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath. When the referee momentarily broke up the fight, he sort of wobbled in a delerium. The other fighter was still pretty clear headed, and when the first fighter moved in to throw a punch, he got overpowered and knocked around and finally thrown to the matt again. Then the other jumped on top and twisted the first fighter into an inexplicably painful position, then rapidly snapping him in the ear with quick, brutal smacks. At the same time, he jabbed in the kidneys with his knee. The other lay there, struggling for awhile, taking a nasty beating, until finally he wasn’t bracing himself for the impact anymore; his body just convulsed like a bag of sand.

Mike patted my back and said, “You alright? You’re being pretty quiet.” He had started drinking very early that morning, so by the time we arrived at the fights that night he was quite drunk and in a fine mood and speaking in a British accent. In fact, I was nauseous. Mike smiled again, almost sympathetically. “Pretty nasty, eh?” He’s much better with violence than I am.

THE FINGER PUPPET BRIGADE

The Finger Puppet Brigade(2 a.m. Saturday, Geyer Avenue between Ninth and Tenth streets)

He is an enigma, moving with cartoonish animation -- a little larger than life, even, teetering peculiarly on the curb while his entourage of giants stumbles alongside: the finger-puppet brigade. And (depending on the direction of the wind) the things that spill from his mouth, as his friends can attest, might be slanderous or vitriolic, sweet or bitter; intelligibility and illiteracy crumble into one another like a forming ruin. He is a crooner, he is a fart. His wailing voice ricochets off the red brick façades, echoing down the otherwise sleepy street at two in the morning, a prophet of garbage. He speaks of dirt and graveyards. He speaks of things that float in the toilet. He personifies the things of which he speaks. And his entourage wears expressions of encouragement: The walking dead, they are, dressed in the clothes of the dead.

I can feel the haunt of his voice squeezing my brain like a torture instrument. I will salute this hero by going mad.

CASINO FUNHOUSE

CASINO FUN HOUSE(Friday night at the President Casino)

Finally, I realize that we have blundered into a psychedelic playground, a phantasmagorical graveyard, a portal into the mind of Walt Disney if he had finally gone insane. We are inside an enormous pinball machine; we are floating in a kaleidoscope, twirling on the blade of a pinwheel, teetering on the brink of ruin. Arcade sounds and blinking lights crash into each other like a splendiferous car wreck. It is impossible to determine where any of these noises are coming from particularly – they are omnipotent: The sound of supreme lunacy. The iridescent wallpaper and garishly patterned carpet shimmer like a lenticular nightmare; the entire room moves involuntarily. For a moment, I have to focus on a single object, lest my brain get sucked into this vast vacuum of sheer carnival bedlam. I concentrate on the blinking sign above a slot machine: Wheel of Fortune. Wheel. Of. Fortune. I am captivated and horrified simultaneously.

People, all of them ostensible zombies, wander aimlessly through this anarchy, overwhelmed by the artificial brilliance. Kristen points out the ease with which some of them drop tokens into slot machines – sometimes playing two machines at once – tokens that represent one dollar, five dollars, on and on. Indeed, it’s true: They pull the slot machine arms and light long cigarettes with an implacable, hypnotic method. They dump their savings into twinkling boxes with spinning devices. And how effortless they make the procedure look, like breathing or wiping their noses. Going for broke takes no effort at all.

I try to connect the implications of all this madness, shape something useful out of these abstractions, when I’m tackled by another delirious distraction; there is always something near to snap you out of the horror of a clear thought and plunge you pell-mell back into the dreamy nonsense of ordinary events.

NEW YORK DAVE & THE SERIAL KILLERS

New York Dave and the Serial Killers(conversation at the 1860’s Hardshell Bar & Cafe, Soulard)

I’d heard a few of these strange stories before, some involving ghosts on the open road and one doozy about selling his 1955 Jaguar to post bail, but this new one was practically an outrage. It went like this:

New York Dave was hitchhiking from Las Lunas, New Mexico, to some other town when this lady picked him up. The lady called herself Jessie, and she brought him to her father’s house in Truth or Consequence.

Dave describes the big wooden sign outside the house: Park Ranger, David Ray, it read. That was the father. They let Dave stay with them for two days, until he found a cozy little place on a beach near a manmade lake somewhere in the desert. When he finally read in the paper that these two had been accomplices in a stretch of serial murders, Dave contacted the FBI and they sent over a limo.

“Did these people seem normal to you?”

“Well, you know,” Dave says philosophically, “wherever you go, people are different.”

Too true. You could establish a collection of travel books based on that very sentiment. But not everybody has a room behind a locked door where the various torture devices are kept; not everybody feeds the eviscerated insides of their victims to a pack of wild dogs in the desert. Not everybody has a book written about their exploits called Slow Death -- a book Dave can’t finish reading because “it’s hard to read that the guy gutted his victims in the bathtub when I’d taken showers in there before.”

Okay. But the day before, Dave had gotten a ride from some other guy, who kept driving down abandoned desert roads and raving nonsense about someone he called King.

“I was telling Jessie about this crazy motherfucker who picked me up between Moriarty and Santa Fe, “ Dave says. “I thought he was gonna kill me. She laughed about it. Little did I know.”