Eragrostis spectabilis or purple love grass is a perennial warm season grass. It reaches heights of one to two feet even in the driest, poorest of soils. The seed heads bloom mid-summer in shades of light to bright purple, giving an overall purple haze to the landscape.
–Note from Dean Brigid Brenchley’s Prairie Journal
Thursday, 7:00 a.m.
One thing about the encounter with Max is that it has shaken me out of my paralysis and galvanized me into action. I have realized that I need to talk to my best advisors and learn what the people I serve make of this situation. So yesterday I asked Marianna to set up time with the Prairie Team, and Merlin to arrange time with Phil to further prepare for the board meeting. I need to warn him about Max. I proposed an afternoon meeting, but Phil asked if dinner was acceptable. Due to his court case, of course. Dinner with Phil? That sounds more than acceptable.
So, it is early morning and I am trying to cross the Des Moines River to get to the community vegetable garden. Marianna didn’t lose any time in gathering the troops, and landed on this spot. At seven o’clock no less! And of course, traffic is crawling along. Usually, Thursday is my “Sabbath,” when I rest and write my sermon. Jewish theologians have called Sabbath a cathedral in time, and I wish I could keep it, but am aware this is “just one of those weeks.”
Paused in traffic, I survey my environs. I have lived in a number of locales and cities: Colorado, Chicago, Exeter in England, the Flint Hills of Kansas. But I am endeared to Des Moines. The small city is in an era of urban renewal that reminds me of the Denver of my youth; there’s a creative, collective spirit. Also, Denver has the mountains as its aesthetic focus, and downtown Des Moines gazes into its river. Only lately have I come to see that a river can be more powerful than 14,000 feet of granite.
Behind me are a few blocks of high-rises. Across the river, which is still running pell-mell north to south, the city offices spread. The mayor’s office with two side wings sits like a benevolent lion, stone paws outstretched amidst beautiful flower beds. Unfortunately, right now those beds are like wading pools. A small team in matching purple jackets is working to pump out the accumulated water. Upstream, I can just make out Wells Fargo Arena, like a concrete whale that has pulled itself onto the bank. Beyond it winks the cut glass geodome of the Botanic Center. I can imagine Ivan inside in a flurry of activity, preparing for tomorrow night’s gala.
Downstream, the beautifully restored World Food Prize Building has a long line of middle schoolers exiting yellow buses, waiting for a tour. But there is also a long line of adult volunteers placing sandbags.
My usual route, the Grand Avenue Bridge, is blocked off due to the rising water. Some geographically misplaced gulls are happy, careening over the waves and perching on the orange barricades. But the closed bridges have messed with motorists’ paradigms and our usually modest early morning traffic is in a tangle. It is not raining, but the air is tangible, like a cirrus cloud sits on the city.
High atop the river’s eastern slope, safe from the rising water, the Iowa State Capital beckons. The building is what I would call, paradoxically, “staid-rococo”—built by reserved Midwesterners flush from the wealth of exquisitely fertile farmland. Its crown looks vaguely Slavic or Turkish with four garlic-shaped domes that stand sentinel around the central neo-classical dome.
The large community garden is in the reclaimed river bottoms just south of the capital.
Jason, one of our younger members, oversees the garden, and some others were already planning to be there for seed collection and sorting before heading to work. The community garden land, inundated by the last flood, now hosts a quilt of raised beds guarded by a strengthened levee. I am glad to see this steep-sloped levee holding fast, and that the raised beds below are thriving.
The city owns the land but leases it at low cost to Jason’s non-profit. A mix of east-side immigrants—Sudanese, Mexican, and Vietnamese—grow their favorite vegetables here, alongside the basil and kale of hipsters and the tomatoes and radishes of elderly gardeners. Organic is one rule. Absolutely no chemicals. The gardeners put money, as each is able, into a kitty. They share both seeds and produce. Membership “cards” are t-shirts or bumper stickers that say “Veggies for the People” in four languages. The group also sponsors events on the land: cooking and nutrition demonstrations, bike rides, kids’ days, fitness classes, and an occasional political candidate. As I pull into the gravel lot, I can see Jason leading yoga on a kind of terrace halfway up the levee.
Burton and Marianna have already arrived and are settled at a picnic table, eyeing piles of seeds. So is Prairie Team member Elena, an Ecuadorian student from Drake University, with her one year old baby Ana. Ana reaches her chubby hand, with its sterling baby bracelet, toward the seeds. No yoga for the four of them. I see another team member, Samuel, is with Jason’s class. Phil can’t come because of his trial. Except him, the core gardeners are here.
“What’s this all about?” Burton asks me pointedly, taking a long draught from his coffee as I join them at the picnic table. He looks tired, wrinkles across his brow. If painful for me, I realize that seven o’clock meetings may be a real struggle for Burton at age ninety.
He doesn’t wait for an answer, saying, “I saw that television deal. We want the real scoop. Best to tell us. Get it over with.”
I have been dreading telling these, some of my closest friends, about the hotel. But as my own opinion takes form, I am more ready. Burton has always been a rock of support for me. When I first came to St. Aidan’s, I did a year of home or workplace visits, making my way alphabetically through the parish directory. At Burton and Maxine’s, the one-hour visit turned into a three-hour lunch. Burton shared hysterical, and poignant, stories about being the token African-American man on the cathedral board in the 1960s and 70s, when it was still an all-male body of Des Moines’ power brokers. In those days, the Chases were but one of many such families. He said he was often relegated to play bartender. His droll storytelling style had Maxine and me crying; I could hardly eat for laughing. Maxine would say, “Oh, Burton,” and that would just egg him on to another story. A lot has changed, he told me. But not everything. He said that I was the first white priest who had ever come to their home.
Burton centers his wizened gaze on me, and Marianna and Elena look silently but keenly at me as well.
“Okay. Brace yourselves,” I reply. “But do you mind if we wait for Jason and Samuel? Is yoga almost over?”
We look over and Jason has arched backward into a bridge pose. His firm body reminds me of a piece of Jean Arp sculpture: solid fluidity.
“Have you watched Jason do this?” Burton asks me. Sometimes Burton rolls his eyes at Jason’s ideas and antics. But this morning Burton’s tone holds genuine esteem. The old man once played sports and recognizes the obvious athleticism of Jason’s poses. “It’s like there are no bones in his body. Drops forward, palms to the ground. Puts his heels behind his neck. Confess I’m impressed!”
“Like prairie dropseed,” Marianna says. “Every time we look over, they’re touching the ground with a different part of their bodies.”
As we look on, the human bridges meld onto their mats. Then they sporadically rise, gesture “Namaste,” and like the man in Jesus’ healing story roll up their brightly colored mats and start moving toward life in the city. Samuel joins us, while Jason attends to some of his student-admirers, most of them young women his age.
“Do this often?” Burton asks Samuel.
Samuel nods, “You can’t imagine what tucking a violin under your chin for hours every day does to your neck and shoulders!”
“Eagle pose,” Jason says as he walks over, “do it every day. At home, too.”
With a sweatshirt hoody tied around his waist and flip-flops as shoes, Jason’s attire evokes an Asian prince.
“So, what’s the skinny?” he asks as he sits next to me on the bench. “Something’s up. There are rumors on the street.”
Of course, if anyone would hear of the offer first it would be Jason. Not quite thirty years old, he nonetheless moves in lively social circles.
I stare at the faces around the table. Momentarily the sun has clambered up above the statehouse, imbuing the remnant fog. We sit in textured light. The I Am the Vine icon surfaces in my mind’s eye again. One fruit of prayer with icons is that the image will appear to you amidst daily life. The mystics say to take this as a sign of the Risen One’s presence. I savor the communion I share with these people. Laboring side-by-side in the prairie, we have told one another about heartbreaks, job promotions, and lost loved ones. Like the figures on the vine, our lives are connected.
Thank you for them, whatever happens next.
I have feared that this hotel offer, from out of the blue, could bring division. With my own relatives miles away in Colorado and Hawaii, these people are like family to me. I realize I have put off telling them this news out of fear—that my closest relationships could be damaged. But the time has come, and by their rapt attention the preacher in me knows there will be no rhetorical preamble this day.
“The cathedral has received an offer of $3,720,000 for the prairie garden.”
“What?!” Samuel is the loudest.
Elena raises her hands skyward, then steadies teetering Ana.
“From whom?” Marianna’s voice sounds the most indignant.
Burton simply shakes his head.
“So it is true,” Jason says. “The Hotel Savant and its shops? That was what was floating around during salsa dancing at the Social Club.”
“Yes. They need a certain amount of land for parking—city requirement.”
At the word parking, Marianna erupts, “Slather the earth with asphalt again? Send the oily water to join the nitrates in the river and help poison the Gulf?!”
“So that the One-Percent can slip between silk sheets no less. Prayer Prairie turns Trump Tower,” Jason snorts. “Brigid, the grasses and the forbs are just taking hold, just beginning to thrive. You can’t rip them out now.”
They speak what I feel. Nonetheless, I do want the proposal weighed carefully. This group is my most steady, if unofficial, counsel of advice. With trusted friends, I want to risk some transparent probing.
“You’ve seen me beg, borrow and steal for our prairie. But this is a lot of money: we could endow the building, fix the roof. Or endow the feeding program?” I say, “Burton and Samuel, you are both on the board. Would the board do meaningful things with that much money if we did sell?”
Burton, still shaking his head, does however hear the reality behind my queries, seems to accept an earnest humility in me.
“We’re all fine, Christian people, even most of us board members,” he replies. “Sure, we might do some good with it. But if we take the hotel’s cash, I can promise you the biggest chunk will go to organ pipes and champagne brunches. I’ve seen it happen before.”
“I have an idea,” Jason’s eyes light up. “A petition. Collect signatures. There are a lot of people who do understand and appreciate prairie.”
“People like to hang out there for sanity, what with frenetic work days,” Samuel adds.
“Drake students and faculty would sign,” Elena says as Ana coos. “In my grad classes we talk of how we absolutely need more green space in American cities, not less!”
“Elena and I will fly into action and have a ton of signatures by the board meeting,” Jason says. “St. Aidan’s always says it wants to connect with young people.”
“A petition might in fact have a positive impact,” Samuel tells them with middle-age moderation, “though… it’s a pretty hard-boiled group.”
Marianna just looks angry; her eyes are like a hawk’s. Burton looks like he’s having acid reflux. They don’t seem to share the wave of optimism the younger team members are riding.
“My, my, my,” Burton says finally, “I should have known. I’ve seen greed grab that place before. Same-old, same-old. The grass seed Maxine and I donated… all of Marianna’s work…down the drain.”
Burton’s bitterness punches me in the gut. As I listen to the resignation in the older man’s voice, it’s like the deck of our ocean liner is compromised and everything is sliding downward. I realize that my openness to exploring the options has him convinced that I have decided to sell; maybe he suspects the money has me under its spell. I frantically run up deck, trying verbally to rectify his misconception.
“Burton, we don’t have to sell. I was just exploring options, garnering collective wisdom. If we’re sure the prairie is the common good and God’s vision, we can fight for it! As the dean, I’m willing to say no. I hope we can count on that from you and Samuel.”
“Where the hell is Phil?” Burton asks. “Head of the board. Where will he land?”
“He’s at the courthouse. Big trial. But I think he is willing to work for the prairie, vote no to the money, too. We’re going to discuss strategies further this evening.”
Burton looks suspicious.
“Is there a prayer in the world?” Marianna asks, appealing mainly to Burton. Burton addresses us all with oratorical intention.
“Listen. I’ve served on the cathedral’s board five different times over forty years. There isn’t a chance in hell those merchants and aristocrats are going to turn down nearly four million dollars! They’ll think the old glory days are back and pull out their silk stockings and dancing shoes. Probably already have their claws in Phil.”
“Burton, you told me yourself that St. Aidan’s is a different place today,” I respond.
“Brigid, we won’t have the votes. Plain and simple. Count ‘em. Max Chase has probably already secured them.”
I blanch. My stomach burns at the mention of Max. I can’t believe he threatened me, my salary, maybe even arson.
Burton reads my reaction, “Dear Lord, he’s already shown his hand, hasn’t he?” I can’t reply, but nod.
“Well, it may be a new day,” Burton continues, “but it’s easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than to get a rich man through this scenario! Our whole neighborhood didn’t matter and the prairie won’t mean crap. Especially if Max is in the mix. Just like his father. It’s not worth wasting our time. We may as well bring our shovels down here.”
I never anticipated this. I don’t think Phil did either. We have been completely counting on Burton’s leadership if we move to refuse the offer. He is respected in the parish much more than he knows.
“Burton, what did Jesus say next?” I ask him, my voice shrill and desperate. “You know the end. With God all things are possible.”
Burton places a fist, knuckles down, into a plank of the picnic table and uses it as a prop to raise his six feet 3 inches frame to his feet.
“We have a few days before the board meeting. But you tell Philip Morrow that I want to talk to him. I want to hear from his own lips where he stands. I will also take Samuel’s advice and pray about it. Yes… we all better pray about it.”
One by one people rise from the picnic table. Workday lives beckon.
`
Thursday 7 p.m.
The twilight is velvet soft with a cool lining. The first evening in weeks it seems without rain. A waiter moves with a taper and the table candles emerge one-by-one like fireflies. I have settled myself on the patio of a favorite restaurant near the cathedral, with its green awning and its border of shoulder-high boxwoods. I wish my state would allow me to savor this evening of lingering warmth. I take a swill of cabernet and try to calm down, to lie back and disappear in an eddy of Sonoma aroma and flavors. Forget Aaron the sneering, Delilah the breaking-and-entering, Henry in harm’s way, Marianna the transplanting, Max the menacing. Forget them all! Why didn’t I become a cloistered nun?
You are such better company.
I cradle the bowl of the wine glass and dive into that eddy. But Max Chase—shimmering hair, magic-carpet-tie, and thinly veiled threats—is alive in my head. Unshakeable specter. I can’t help myself and I mentally rehearse my Max encounter. Adrenaline courses through me with a fine Quirke indignation as I remember it. I take another draught and close my eyes, trying to submerge under the notes of cherry and spice. But Max is still there, inside, leering at me. I am incredulous that he actually threatened me: “Some kid flicks a cigarette” and “I would not put faith in the staying power of grass.”
God, did Max actually mean it? Would he ever act on it?
“Dining al fresco in September,” Phil pulls out the chair and sits down across from me. “Exquisite.”
Just to see him buoys me a little.
“This trial was a bear. But we won,” he informs me. Wrinkles at the corners of his eyes show his fatigue, but otherwise he’s riding a wave of quiet ebullience.
Despite my stressed state, I am truly happy for him.
“A drink, sir?” the waiter asks.
“Tonic with lime.”
“Another wine?” I nod. “We’re celebrating… or trying to.”
Phil surveys my mood. Next to his wave of courtroom satisfaction, no doubt I am a complex coral reef. I fear the tone in which I said “celebrating” was not unlike the tone I use when announcing that I am “celebrating” a funeral.
“My intuition says it might be good to de-brief your day? Then maybe we can revel in my win.”
I give him an apologetic look.
The waiter brings bruschetta and our drinks, and I breathe for a moment. The trial-worn Phil is caste with a mellow luster from the table lamps. The ambience reminds me of Kauai at night, and I almost think I hear surf.
But then, the specter of Max appears, like a torpedo through the water, as Phil adds, “Burton Taylor-Smith called me over my lunch break and read me the riot act about this hotel offer. Accused me of greed and knuckling under to Max Chase. What’s that all about?”
“Well, Max Chase visited me unannounced yesterday. It’s the main reason I had Merlin set up this meeting. I wanted to fill you in.”
At this, Phil’s intelligent eyes cast across the boxwoods.
“He knows all about the SansCorps offer,” I continue. “Chase Enterprises is the partner to sell or lease the restaurant and shop space.”
“Holy shit. You’re joking?” Phil reads my face, “You’re not joking.” He tosses back his tonic like it’s a shot of bourbon. “Of course, I should have anticipated this, the Chases are everywhere. That does weigh down the balloon.”
We sit together in silence. The bruschetta on my plate looks like a small volcano of tomato, onion, and basil. The best in town, but I haven’t the strength to raise a slice.
“He’s threatened to stop his pledge if we refuse the hotel.”
Now Phil’s jaw looks like there is a jawbreaker rolling around inside, and his eyes inquire—the kind of scrutiny with which I imagine he cross-examines witnesses. “What do Max and Gwen give. Really?”
“Currently? $79,465. No cents.”
“What? You have everyone’s pledge memorized?”
“Just Max’s. It’s easy because he always matches the dean’s salary exactly.”
“The bastard.”
“Until today I’ve always vacillated on that point. He and Gwen give even more to the food pantry and the symphony than the cathedral. If you remember, Chase Enterprises re-built a wing of the cathedral and a whole neighborhood in Haiti.”
Phil doesn’t look convinced, mumbles something about a tax write off, and takes some bruschetta. I poke around at mine and decide I should tell him the worst.
“He’s already spoken to Hal Lehman and the Reynoldses, who will back his demands, and now, I’m not sure—it could be stress, me losing my grip—but I think Max threatened to have the prairie set on fire.”
Phil almost chokes. “Like arson?” he asks with a cheek full of baguette.
“It was an offhand comment, or that was its form.”
“He’s a master at that,” Phil says.
“He said that whereas the cathedral building was solid and should be endowed, the prairie might go up in flames at any time, with some kid’s cigarette on the way to Court Avenue.”
“Calculating bastard.” Phil downs his tonic and throws the lime so hard some ice ricochets to my side of the table. Veins stand out on his neck like a topographic map. I have transferred the tyrannizing Max-dragon to his brain.
Considering how angry he looks, his next words surprise me.
“I don’t like it,” he says, “if the fight for the prairie could put you in jeopardy. Your livelihood even. Maybe we should just accept the Savant’s offer.”
I think about all the paintings and antiques I won’t need to sell. Maybe buy a painting of my own choice. Treat Grandma Helen to an extra trip to Hawaii. But then I come to my true sensibilities.
“You know, forty-eight hours ago I would have said yes. But, I was with Henry and Nick Jones two days ago and I believe their neighborhood is truly threatened by the flooding.”
“Again?”
“It’s not certain. But the Army Corps of Engineers is worried, and I can’t quit seeing the torrent of water we’ll send back down to the river if we sell. I adore those rare plant species and I adore people in our parish in the vulnerable lowlands.”
I take a bite of bruschetta at last. Delicious. I add, “Besides, Max is starting to really piss me off.”
Phil smiles. The dragon seems finally banished. Phil seems to see only me; seems to like what he sees.
But, I suddenly realize that he might bear consequences, too, if we don’t sell. “What about you?” I ask him. “Could Max harm your practice?”
“I could lose some clients,” Phil admits. “But, I took on Rudy Giuliani once. Relatively, Chase’s reach is limited.”
“Giuliani, the past mayor of New York City?”
“As a grad student at The New School. It was land issues then too. I was heavily involved with Green Thumb and the Green Guerillas.”
I grin, “The Green Guerillas?”
“It’s a network of community gardens all over the boroughs. The plots had been leased for decades. A real boon to neighborhoods. But Giuliani gets into power and moves the properties from the Parks Department to the Department of Housing. Then moved to auction them off. Highest bidder!”
“Wow. Puts our prairie politics into perspective. What happened? Is that the end of the story?”
“People were furious. Enter Green Thumb and Guerillas. We staged protests in front of the mayor’s Office.”
With a wry, embarrassed smile, Phil reaches into his wallet and hands me a frayed photo. “You are sworn to secrecy.”
I see a younger Phil with shoulder length hair—looking very like John Lennon of the White Album period—peeking out from a vegetable costume.
“Lettuce,” Phil explains, and I laugh out loud. “We marched singing “Lettuce Overcome.” I was a bit self-conscious about that choice. Did not want to mock earlier civil rights activists. But since Lou, a peer African-American protester, suggested it, I sang, too. Giuliani was hot. Actually pulled some of us into his office and read us the riot act: ‘This is a free market economy, boys. Welcome to the era after communism.’”
“God, you really do look like John Lennon, early Yoko.” Phil looks amused. “Nice green legs, too. But they didn’t sway Mayor Rudy?”
“No. But we were a big hit with the press. The New York Times was all on the side of the vegetables! Two NGOs swooped in and bought most of the lots. The Trust for Public Land. Also singer Bette Midler’s group. Kept them as gardens.”
Hope returns. Max and his threats explode like a fireworks dragon. Our entrees come.
“More wine?” the waiter asks. I actually consider a third.
“It won’t take the headaches away, you realize,” Phil says. “Only make them more literal. Believe me, I know. I’m in recovery.”
The waiter waits, perhaps feeling awkward.
“I’m fine,” I say, and realize that I am.