A Brief Calypso
Phillip J. Stanwick was Anthony’s brother until 11 April 1842, when he finally left. And then, incidentally, he drowned.
Cairo was the town which he left–it was pronounced Kay-Ro.
In 1835, their family moved from Saint Louis, Missouri to the small settlement at the cross of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Their father had bought the town named Cairo with five others who also believed the investment would be lucrative, especially in water travels and controlling east and west trade in America.
They were wrong.
Their father, Alexander M. Stanwick was a valiant worker. It seemed to him that the small town might be put on the map as other, greater cities were. This, of course, was before the flood of 1837. After the flood, two and a half houses still stood.
Saint Patrick’s Church on Washington Street did not survive.
There were, though, parts of houses that were not terribly affected. These sections were made from oak and were quite useful for their primary purpose. The name of the not-so-badly-mangled section was: roof.
When only the roof of a poorly built log cabin is salvaged, the town’s homes would need rebuilding.
And its church.
During he flood, as the four Stanwicks waited on higher ground for seven days, the two highways impoverished the town which were supposed to be making Cairo rich. Those two highways, of course, were the Mississippi and the Ohio.
From their vantage on the only hill in the town, the Stanwicks saw the town swallowed by angry waters. The Stanwicks did not own slaves or dogs, like other Cairoians, but a canine walked right up to Phillip J. Stanwick, tongue out and drooling. It had this to say: “Roof.”
Phillip J. Stanwick was a thin young man and at the time of the flood. He was seventeen and was as rigid-jawed as he would be for the rest of his short life. He was one of few people in Cairo that could read.
His favorite author, it turns out, was Charles Dickens. The books he had read of Dickens had bypassed the international copyright laws and were pirated in America: they sold for one hundred per cent profits.
Mr. Dickens did not see a penny from such books.
So, after the waters receded, the townsmen began to rebuild, which they did not enjoy doing.
But they had land and could not afford to leave. So it goes.
Matthew Grasp was the local banker: He did not enjoy the rebuilding process. But his wife liked Cairo and they were about to have a child. He was stuck.
At the same time, on the French frigate L’Artemise, a peace agreement was made between the French and the king of the Sandwich Islands, Kamehameha III.
Shortly after the Stanwick’s had moved to the swampy-bordered town, Phillip had begun praying for a flood. God, it seemed, had tilted his head back and chuckled, pointed his long, vibrant blue finger at Cairo, and began the flooding.
God was wrongly portrayed in Cairo, as well as everywhere else on the planet. He did not care much for humans except when they needed disaster. Otherwise, he spent most of his time watching his favorite race: The platypus. His second favorite was: Dog.
For the next four years, until late 1841, God did not look in on Cairo.
December 1841:
Phillip and Anthony came home to their log cabin–built after the flood– from work and found that dinner had not been made. Anthony said, “You mind if I tried cooking, then?”
“Actually,” said Phillip, “I would.”
And just then their mother, Mary Stanwick, entered the room. Mary Stanwick was a lively housewife, always smiling. She cooked a delicious corn stew once every week which was supposed to be the night’s meal, but when she came in to the room, she wore no apron. Her hair, though tied back, was in shambles: her bangs looked as though she had fought with honey– the special ingredient in her corn stew.
“Your father is–very sick.”
Very sick, it must be said, is a figure of speech. ‘Very sick’ in Cairo meant certain death.
Ten years into the future, a writer–Nikolai Gogol, in fact– who was ‘very sick’ would say, “And I shall laugh with a bitter laugh.” He then died.
Incidentally, he did not laugh with a bitter laugh.
Had the Stanwicks had a slave, which they could not afford, dinner would have been ready. Cairo, although part of Illinois, allowed slave labor: it was cheap and cheap labor is profitable for those in charge. These ideas (i.e. cheap labor) will further be explored in the future.
Fever, which had taken Alexander Stanwick to bed, claimed many lives in Cairo. People died every day, and if they didn’t die, they probably should have, for their own sakes.
Months passed with the same thing every day: Anthony stayed home, helped with father. Phillip worked in the field or at the bank with one-legged Matthew Grasp or at the National Hotel on the riverbank–whatever money he could, he got. And every night, Phillip was too tired to help around the house.
So he didn’t.
In March 1842, Alexander M. Stanwick died.
Phillip no longer worked unceasingly and began sleeping. Phillip stopped worrying about family. He had paid his keep. Anthony no longer had to care for his father and Mary no longer had to see her husband suffer. They could do Phillip’s work.
But this was not how Anthony and Mary reacted. They were sad and asked more of Phillip than before. Phillip turned away and grunted.
In just 10 years, a man of God, Father Konstantinovskii, would tend a sick man, would force his patient to burn the second half of his last great novel. This man of God would then proceed to bury his patient– face down– alive. The man buried alive was none other then the writer of madness of man and animate noses: Nikolai Gogol.
While reading near the port, the two Stanwick brothers noticed a steamship approaching. Normally, they waited until asked for help to move, but on this day, they walked right up to the docks to offer what they could. Phillip put his copy of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens– pirated from a press in Saint Louis– on the dock to greet the newcomers. The first man to step off the boat had skin too old for his age and an extravagant blue suit, gold buttons, and to Phillip’s surprise, it was Charles Dickens!
“D—Do you need any help?”
Mr. Dickens twirled his cane, leaned on it with both hands, arrogantly. “You can get me something to eat.”
“Yes, sir! I wanted to let you know I read your books with intense liking, I’m reading this now,” said Phillip, showing Mr. Dickens the copy of Nicholas Nickleby.
“Oh, and let us see where you got this!” Mr. Dickens said, under-arming his cane and grabbing the book, opening the cover.
“We get all our books in Saint Louis,” said Phillip, still in awe.
“You Americans need to improve your sale of legitimately acquired material! I cannot believe the amount of infringements of international copyright laws!” He muttered something in a disgusting tone and tossed the book into the Ohio River.
“Now, some grub!”
Anthony came home from work to find a letter on his bed. Phillip was no longer there.
He had stowed away on a steamship and was going to New England, then to Old England. There, he would buy a new copy of Nicholas Nickleby. Anthony explained in short what happened with Phillip to his mother: “He hated it here.”
Just then, a thunderstorm in Charleston, South Carolina, lifted an alligator. It fell from the sky, through the roof of an old lady, Flora Beck. Flora Beck was Mary Stanwick’s mother.
The alligator was God’s third favorite species.
Phillip was hiding near a barrel when he was found. He was stripped, bound, and weighted, then tossed into the Ohio River.
From the boat, Charles Dickens said he had great expectations for Phillip. Drowning was the first. “Next time,” Mr. Dickens said, “Choose travel on a ship other than the one on which I journey.”
Phillip, unlike his book, did not float.
Mary and Anthony Stanwick ran outside. There was smoke and haze. They watched as their log cabin burned.
Anthony had tipped over a candle in his sleep.
The top section of the house fell in. The oak top section of the house, this time very-much-mangled, was in fact the roof.
Years later, the great grandson of Anthony Stanwick marked the final failure for Cairo. On 23 December 1922, Archie Crumbly was playing with a shotgun. The gun went off, killing Oliver Heilig.
The name of the undertaker was James Grasp. He had had his left leg amputated in World War One.