LETTERS FROM HOME: IN A FOG IN THE DARK ALONGSIDE THE GODDESS OF DOOM

June 17, 1999

Dear Ken,

DC awoke me with the anxious words "I smell gas." I arose, foggily. No matter what the words are, when her voice is that fretful she won't rest until new information has soothed her.

But then, I smelled something, too. Racing to the front bedroom to see if her parakeets and finches were still alive, DC reminded me about an accident somewhere, someplace in which gas fumes exploded, flattening an entire neighborhood. I am married to the Goddess of Doom.

But this didn't smell like gas to me. This smell was more irritating, closer to the trucked-in fog that deals death to mosquitoes. DC and I went outside. The odor was wafting all about but wasn't nearly as strong in the breeze. So there we stood. She said gas, I said mosquito bomb. Let's go back to sleep.

She didn't, of course, and awoke the next morning with itching, puffy eyes.

Arriving at work the next day I discovered that very early that morning some police officers and some citizens had gotten into a nasty fight near the Taste Restaurant and Lounge. It's a block and a half up the hill from our house. Police officers and suspects were injured, rocks and bricks and cinder blocks became weapons. People were arrested for assaulting police officers and rioting. There are racial overtones.

I am still in shock. Sometimes when noise or antagonistic neighbors are irksome, I have thought about moving away. But I'm not thinking about that now. This is my neighborhood.

Some people predicted we'd have trouble before we moved here. The trouble has had nothing to do with racial conflict. Conflicts with people occur in every neighborhood in Cape Girardeau. Almost everyone I know in the white-on-white enclaves of the city has a neighbor they don't get along with.

Trouble comes when we fail to give other people respect and consideration, when we see them as stereotypes rather than unique chips off the old God-block. Lennon sang it: "I am you and you are me and we are all together."

The divisions between the races go way back in Cape Girardeau. Where we live is where they meet. What we do here will determine whether we perpetuate the old separateness or find ways to understand each other better.

The possible connection between the fight and the mysterious smell didn't occur to me until I learned the police had dispersed the crowd with a fog of pepper mace. DC called the police to ask about the symptoms pepper mace provokes. Some were similar to hers.

An officer who came by to talk to us said any mace symptoms should have gone away as soon as she washed her face. As he was leaving, he sprayed a thin line of mace in our yard as a demonstration. This is the mace officers use against individuals, not crowds. As soon as the breeze picked it up, DC and I recognized we'd been maced, too.

I can only imagine the distress of being maced point blank.

All those protests in the '60s and '70s and not one tear-gassing. Now we get it lying in bed.

A few nights ago, DC attended a town meeting called to discuss the fight on Good Hope Street. Afterward, she came by work shaken and in tears. The anger and threats expressed that night scared her. I hugged her and tried to reassure her that expressing anger is exactly what needs to happen at this point but she wasn't listening. She went to throw some pots.

The summer stretches before us, long and hot. It's time to wake up and smell the mace.

Love, Sam