By Stefene Russell From 47 Incantatory Essays On New Year’s Day, a day I spent stuffing straw into a Styrofoam cooler to shelter a feral cat, a man died in a Dumpster three blocks from my house. He died in the Dumpster behind the old Falstaff Brewery Apartments. People knew about it in England because it was reported on the BBC. America has already seen its first cold-related fatality of the year, as a homeless man in St. Louis has frozen to death in a bin. He thought getting out of the wind would help. Tat the insulating power of plastic trash bags would help. He was 53. Right before Christmas, a man froze to death downtown in a Port-o-Potty. He lived in it, after the city shut down New Life Evangelistic Center and opened a shelter in the old Biddle Market with 98 beds. When people couldn’t get in they just walked around all night. The night time temperature in St. Louis between December 2017 and January 2018 hovered around minus 6 degrees. The police removed his belongings: shoes, umbrella, bottle of orange juice, empty beer can, jacket, $25 Panera gift card, plastic spoon, and a debit card bearing the name Grover Perry. He was 56 years old. At the foot of the Port-o-Potty, some- one left a poinsettia, the kind you get at the drugstore with petals edged in red glitter. On every block in my neighbor- hood, three or four orange cats shelter under cars, or in empty buildings. My neighbor M. calls the empty house on Knapp the cat factory. Terry Midnight squatted in a little building on the other side of Florissant and every day fed orange cats, more than 20. They still don’t know who shot him but the day he died his daughter came and spray- painted RIP DAD/SHINE BRIGHT on the front of the building and leaned on the building and wept. Every day, people came and added something. Midnight’s photo in a silver frame. Silver balloons tied to the railing, sunflowers in juice jars, grocery store roses, candles. People sat in chairs in front of the building for hours in the cold. If I were mayor, I’d make sure every bullet was made out of rare silver and cost $10,000. The grief became a silver music and rose like notes. It rose like notes made from smoke and silver roses and glittering light, a hymn for Terry Midnight. J. feeds Midnight’s cats and P. feeds Midnight’s cats and the guy who drives the mobile dental clinic feeds Midnight’s cats. The cats have so much food the raccoons come out at night and eat the leftovers. An address is just an address, how does it magically make you a human being? My neighbor who sees ghosts said the dead don’t go anywhere. Right now there’s a lady here named Fran who grew sweet potatoes in her garden, she said. An older guy with a limp, he says his name is George, she said. He’s friendly, he says he’s a protector. So many ghosts, she said. They’re sad about the falling-down buildings and they’re sad about us falling down too. The dead grieve, she said, just like the living. A whole choir of mourners, visible and invisible, heartbroken together.
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