cars had run up onto the sidewalk in front of the new capitol building. News trucks arrived close behind us. WKCL. WRND. WWWN. Reporters began to gather, clutching their sheets of important-seeming papers and brushing back the grooming hands of Make-up. They fought for position at the dais, by the mermaid-sculptured water fountain, by the State seal, any recognizable landmark to prove, via live feed, that they were in fact “on the scene.” Camera lights flooded the terrace, and everyone but the reporters was bleached into oblivion. Officers milled about in the doorway, periodically glancing back at the mob, either to spy a television celebrity, a reporter, even a weatherman, or simply to encourage questions. They carried the authority of the moment, the law. We don’t have all the facts yet, but our people are investigating.
Someone, we heard them say, had barricaded himself at the top of the capitol, inside the observation gallery. He had a list of demands that needed to be filled. First: he wanted doughnuts, Krispy Kreme, in equal parts glazed and jelly-filled. Second, pizza, anyone who delivered, for the officers forced to wait out his siege. He also wanted world peace and equality for all.
Clearly, authorities announced, they were dealing with a subversive element.
Hours passed uneventfully, until the ranks of the press finally began to deplete through attrition. Then, in the haze of late afternoon, Special Forces punctured the glass and launched a canister of tear gas. The sputtering terrorist, actually just a local junior college kid with a history of mental illness, was remanded to the custody of Mental Health. He was placed under a doctor’s care, though he fought for his right to not be forcibly medicated.
Landmarks and Monuments announced the floor would be closed for a week to remodel.
seven
From my upstairs study window I saw them coming, The van rolled to a careful stop at the end of the block and parked, and then they embarked, first fanning out, then encroaching slowly, house by house, in teams of two, three. These are the only solicitors still allowed in Magnolia Grove. They are evangelicals who come a-knocking, bringing with them their good books, their denomination-specific suits or robes, their grim certainty and the airs of right and righteousness.
The week before it had been young men in orange skirts and T-shirts, heads shaved close but not quite. Before that, the teenage boys in white shirts and ties who called themselves Elders but really just seemed so desperate to talk with anyone about anything that we barely got to religion. Today, it was a troop of elderly gentlemen in warm brown suits, inching their way up the walks. You could tell from their grim huddle and gaze that they meant business.
I let Hero deal with them when they knocked on our door and instead retreated upstairs. In the hallway outside Hero’s room hung perhaps the earliest known picture of the house. No date, but based upon the clothing and styles, it appeared to have been taken some time around the start of the 20th century. My grandfather had pointed it out to me on several occasions as he gave tours of the house. Truth be told, the building in the photo, or at least the incomplete portion that was visible, bore little resemblance to its current form. There was a porch, for one, which stretched along the face of the building and a row of evenly spaced cookie-cutter windows. The whole frontal façade was different, too. In fact, if my grandfather hadn’t been so certain, I might never have believed that this was the same house. But then, I’d since seen a map of the original footprint of the house. You could easily make out the other neighborhood houses that were at least that old. Everything around us was identifiable. Ours was something else entirely. My grandfather had explained that this was due to “The Fire,” which had taken out most of the upper floors and caused considerable damage throughout the structure. Paused in front, several black people in raggedy dress, most likely former slaves from the plantation or their children, stood cold and sullen, their eyes passing judgment, insisting we not forget.
About the house now, the Reconstruction was continuing, albeit intermittently. I’d recently hired a contractor to begin some of the more elaborate work. But as they’d begun restructuring the gables to match the original façade, they’d made a curious discovery. A kind of passageway had been walled off for decades, most likely also damaged in The Fire, as my grandfather reverently referred to it. His oddly fervent insistence that he had no ideas about the cause of the blaze had always left me with vague suspicions that he knew more than he had ever let on—and the uncovering of this secret enclosure held out promise for more revelations.
But the reality was far less interesting. Within the walled-off space, there were mounds of shingles and wood and nails—the residue of a decades-old re-roofing project. Under the dust and debris lay a trove of historical incoherence—an old washing basin and an electric sewing machine; a horse team harness and a car jack. Turn-of-the-century newspapers stacked atop a package of unopened floppy disks. Two unopened burlap sacks of pinto beans, one of flour. In the corner stood a three-legged desk, a mirror frame atop, though no glass, and an old corroded woven straw basket. Scattered about were fully intact olive jars, tins of cough syrup and soda, some lightly lacquered with the dried residue. In one corner, rolls of poster advertisements for items such as Queeg digestive gum and Legent pomade; an arrowhead, a necklace of shark teeth, a brass door knocker, and a nearly complete set of broken china. The treasures of someone else’s age.
The exterior wall was now torn away, and in its place, a blue plastic tarp was all that separated our upstairs from the elements, secured to the new gable’s wooden frame. I hadn’t seen the workmen in several days, the contractor in over a week. As I sorted through the piles of old shingles and nails that were scattered about the floor, I could vaguely hear the sound of voices downstairs. Hero was talking, the strangers answering. It didn’t end quickly. They were engaged. It sounded as if they had left the front door and entered the living room. Hero was rummaging in the kitchen. They laughed together, chatting away the afternoon.
I stayed hunkered in the debris for nearly an hour, sorting, waiting.
When I finally heard the front door open and shut and peered down to see the two men retreating down the walk, I came out. Hero was carrying drained glasses with half-melted ice back to the kitchen.
“You should have come down,” she said.
“What did they want?”
“Saving the damned. Money for their trouble.”
“Same old, same old.”
“It can’t hurt to be nice,” she pointed out.
“Sure it can.”
“My father, the heathen.”
“It’s just a waste of time. Theirs and ours.”
“Maybe not,” she shrugged, then filled the cups up and left them in the sink.
“I somehow didn’t expect you to find that kind of stuff intriguing.”
“I’m exploring,” she said “I’m at that age. I’ve got questions.”
“Keep in mind that you may not like the answers.”
“This is the Bible belt. I would’ve figured you’d be more enthusiastic. Or at least supportive.”
“I just don’t like people trying to tell me what I should believe.”
“I think you just don’t like anyone to question your faith.”
Growing up, my own family had been devoutly semi-religious. My father said we were “Periodicals,” as we hopped from congregation to congregation in no discernible pattern. Lost sheep in search of a fold. Methodists, Presbyterians. Catholics, Unitarians, Baptists,
