organizations, with UEP being seen as an only slightly less benign way to spend a year and a half. Widely regarded as a hardship post, ERA was the least popular of federal agencies.
This changed when the United States went to war in Central America. As casualties began to mount among American servicemen in Nicaragua, many young men and women sought to duck military conscription by signing up for the ERA. Can’t get into the CCC? Not qualified to be a UEP teacher? Want to be a badass, but you don’t want to risk getting your ass shot off by a Sandinista guerrilla? Then ERA’s for you.
Congressional critics have charged that the agency has become a pool for young rich punks with an attitude. Indeed, the number of encounters between ERA patrols and local citizens in St. Louis that have resulted in civilian casualties tends to suggest that ERA soldiers have adopted a “shoot first, ask questions later” stance toward what ERA training manuals term as “the indigenous population”-that is, whoever lives in the curfew zones.
“Look at this place,” says Ralph, a young ERA corporal who has been assigned to curfew duty in Jennings. He stands on the corner of Florissant and Goodfellow, surrounded by burned-out buildings, an assault rifle cradled in his arms. “Every night the same thing happens again … the coons come after us and every night we gotta fight ’em off. I’ve lost all respect for these people. They don’t want to help themselves … they just want more government handouts. Shit on ’em, man. They’re not Americans.”
Ralph is originally from Orange County, California, where he was the assistant manager of a fast-food franchise before he joined ERA as a way of avoiding military draft. He spits on the ground and shakes his head. “Maybe I shouldn’t be prejudiced and call them coons,” he admits, “but that’s the way it is. If I knew it was going to be like this, I’d sooner be down in Nicaragua instead, shooting greasers and greasing shooters.”
This callous attitude seems endemic among ERA troopers who are still in St. Louis, but city council member Steve Estes claims that the continued ERA presence in St. Louis is justified. “Most of my constituents want law and order on the streets, period,” he says. “As far as I’m concerned, ERA has a moral obligation to be here, and I’m behind them all the way.”
Estes, who is seen by several political insiders as contemplating a run for the mayor’s office, also wants to close down the tent city that was established in Forest Park to house the people left homeless by the quake. “The place has become a sanctuary for freeloaders,” he says. “If these people really want jobs and other places to live, then they could get them. Right now, though, it’s become another Woodstock, and I support any efforts to rid the park of these bums.”
Barris claims that all civilian casualties that have occurred during incidents involving his men and local residents have always been the fault of the civilians. “These guys are out there on their own, outnumbered a hundred to one,” he says. “When you’re cornered by a street gang and they’re throwing bricks and bottles or whatever they can get their hands on, your options tend to run out in a hurry, believe me.”
Jensen disagrees. “We see them as an occupational force. They want us dead or gone, period, so they can chase all the poor people out and build some more shopping centers. But we live here … this neighborhood may be burned out, but it’s still the place where we grew up.”
He stops talking to look around at the tenement buildings surrounding him. An ERA gunship flies low over the block where he lives. “We don’t want no trouble,” he says after it passes by. “We don’t want to go on living like this. I understand each bullet that thing carries costs the taxpayer five dollars. They want to make things better? Fine. Gimme five bucks for each shell casing some kid brings to me from the street … we’ll turn this side of town around.”
PART ONE
1
There was a man on the stage of the Muny Opera, but what he was singing wasn’t the overture of
My guess was that at one time he had been a young, mid-level businessman of some sort. Perhaps a lawyer. Possibly a combination of the two: a junior partner in the prestigious firm of Schmuck, Schmuck, Schmuck amp; Putz, specializing in corporate law. A yuppie of the highest degree, he had been a graduate of Washington University, graduating somewhere in the middle of his law school class: good enough to get an entry-level job with Schmucks and Putz, but not well enough compensated to have a place in Clayton or Ladue. So he had lived in a cracker box somewhere in the south side and commuted to work every day in the eight-year-old Volvo he had driven since his sophomore days at Wash You. Five days a week, he had battled traffic on the inner belt, dreaming of the day when he would have a Jaguar in the garage of a suburban spread in Huntleigh and his law firm would now be known as Schmuck, Schmuck, Schmuck, Putz amp; Dork, as he steeled himself for another grueling day of ladder climbing and telephone screaming.
And then the shit hit the fan last May and the bottom fell out of hostile takeovers of candy stores. His apartment house had fallen flat, burying his car beneath a hundred tons of broken cinderblock and not-quite-to-code drywall plaster, and the week after he moved into Squat City, where he had been forced to share a tent with strange ethnic persons who didn’t wear fraternity rings and to survive on watered-down chicken soup and cheesefood sandwiches, he discovered that the Schmuck Brothers had decided to let some of their attorneys go. Sorry about that, we’ll let you know when there’s an opening …
And his mind had snapped.
So now here he was, standing on the stage of the Muny, waving a black baseball bat over his head and raving like a crack fiend who hadn’t had a decent fix in days.
“When selecting a baseball bat,” he shouted, “there are five things to remember …!”
His ragged, oil-splotched London Fog trenchcoat could have been looted from Brooks Brothers. That wasn’t what tipped me off; it was his shoes. Handmade Italian leather loafers which, even though they now were being held together with frayed strips of yellow duct tape, fit him perfectly. And although his hair had grown down over his shoulders and his gray-streaked beard was halfway to the collar of his mildewed dress shirt, he still had the unmistakable articulation of an attorney, although I doubt the senior partners of his firm would have recognized him now.
“One! The size of the bat should be the right size for your hands to grip and hold comfortably!” He demonstrated by gripping the taped handle of the black mahogany bat between his fists, his anger causing the knuckles to turn white. “That means it’s gotta be the right size for you to do some serious damage to some fucker’s face!”
Scattered applause from the first few rows behind the orchestra pit. Give us your poor, your downtrodden, your teeming masses yearning to be free … and if they can’t have freedom, then there’s always cheap entertainment. Farther back in the open-air amphitheater, though, only a few people seemed to be paying attention. At least a thousand people were crammed together into the Muny tonight, enduring the cold rain as they watched the nightly parade of homeless, half-mad speakers march onto the stage. On the proverbial one-to-ten scale, the former lawyer barely rated a four.
“Let’s hear some music!” This from a woman in back of the seating area. A small group of down-and-out rock musicians stood in the wings, waiting for their chance to set up their equipment and play for any food stamps that might be tossed into their hat.
The lawyer either didn’t hear her or wasn’t paying attention. “Two!” he yelled, his voice beginning to crack. “The bat should be light enough so that you can swing it with the greatest speed!” He whipped the bat around like Ozzie Smith driving a grounder in Busch Stadium twenty years ago. “This means, y’gotta have the right instrument in order to knock their brains right outta their fuckin’ skulls!”
A few yells of approval, this time even from the rear seats. He had their attention now; nothing gets people
