Walter Williams - The Rift

“Fine.”

“By the way,” the Grand Wizard said, “I saw that new sign- Hess-Meier Plantation Farm.”

“Inc.,” Omar added. Then, “Jews. Swiss Jews.”

“They buy the gin, too?”

“Of course,” Omar said. “If they took their cotton to someone else’s gin, they wouldn’t make so many sheckels.” Omar shrugged. “Well, at least there’s another gin in the parish, down to Hardee, and that one’s American.”

The Grand Wizard shook his head. “Wrightson couldn’t at least sell out to Americans?”

“Hess-Meier was top bidder. Now half the agricultural land in the parish is owned by the fuckin’ Swiss.”

“It isn’t our country anymore.” The Grand Wizard sighed.

It never was, Omar wanted to tell him. It’s always been owned by the wrong people, who traded land and money back and forth within their circle, and the people who lived on the land and worked it never figured in their calculations.

Omar and the Grand Wizard walked up to Ozie’s back door. Wilona was there, a plate in her hand. She was talking to Deb Drury, whose husband ran the towing service. “This fruit salad is so special,” she said. “I can taste something different in it.”

“Black cherry Jell-O,” Deb said. “Fruit and pecans, and Co-Cola.”

Wilona leaned close to Deb and lowered her voice. “I don’t want to impose,” she said, “but could you send me the recipe?”

Omar looked at his wife and gave her a wink.

Just treat the people like they actually exist, he thought, and next thing you know, they put you in charge.

Jason craned his neck up at the water tower and pushed his helmet back to give himself a better view. It looked much bigger now that he stood at its base, a metal mushroom that bulged out over Jason’s head, blocking out a sky filled with low dark clouds. Its surface was painted a glossy shade of vegetable green that Jason had never seen on any object not owned by the government. It was as if Cabells Mound had tried to disguise their water tower as something natural, as a peculiarly shaped tree, and failed miserably.

The tower stood in a soggy little park planted with overgrown hibiscus. Pumps whined from the cinderblock wellhouse next to the tower. There didn’t seem to be any human beings in the vicinity.

Jason hopped off his bike and examined the metal stair that spiraled to the top of the tower. A tall metal pipe gateway stood at the bottom of the stair, with a gate made of chain link secured by a padlock. There was a halfhearted coil of barbed wire on the top, and more chain link on the side, obviously to keep someone from climbing over the lower part of the stair.

Nothing that would stop a determined, reasonably agile young person. Jason had always thought of chain link as a ladder. The barbed wire had not been extended along the side of the stair, in itself almost an invitation. And from the state of the chain link, it was obvious that he was not the first person to think of climbing the tower.

That gate and the barbed wire, though, would complicate the dismount at the end of his ride. He couldn’t do a fakie or anything fancy at the bottom, he’d just have to jump off the rail. And he’d have to jump off onto the stair, because if he jumped off onto the soft turf under the tower, he might get hung up on the fence that was draped over the side of the stair.

Jumping off onto the stair might be a good thing, he finally decided. He could use the mesh of the gate to brake his remaining momentum. It would be like running into a net.

Jason parked his bike under the stair, hooked his skates around his neck by the laces, and then swarmed up the chain link and dropped onto the metal stair. He ran a hand along the pipe of the guard rail: smooth, round, painted metal, a little scarred by rust. Nothing he hadn’t coped with before. He hiked up the first fifty feet or so, took the rail in his hands, and shook it, tried to find out if it was loose. It was solid. It would make good skating.

Jason’s heart was racing as if he’d run five miles instead of climbed fifty feet. A delicate sensation of vertigo shimmered through his inner ear.

He took a breath and looked out over the town, laid out in perfect, regular rectangles that marched down to the levee. On this dark, cloudy morning, Cabells Mound looked drab. The older buildings were frame and often set on little brick piers, and the newer homes tended to be brick and set on slabs or conventional foundations. There was a little trace of the South in the white porticoes with their little pillars that were grafted onto the front of otherwise unremarkable buildings. Elms and oaks stood in yards. The river ran right up to the levee here because there was a landing, and because a little to the north there was a lumber mill that loaded its product onto barges. The river was an uneasy wide gray mass, very full, at least halfway up the side of the levee. Jason realized with a touch of unease that Cabells Mound, were it not protected by the levee, would be under water.

Because the river was so high it was carrying a lot of junk with it, and Jason could see an entire cypress tree floating past, a splayed clump of roots at one end and still-living foliage at the other. Three crows sat in the green branches and watched the world with curiosity as it moved by. Black against the opalescent surface of the water, a tow of sixteen barges made its way in the opposite direction, heading for St. Louis.

There were very few people to be seen. It was Saturday morning, and many, perhaps most, of the residents were off at the shopping malls of Memphis or Sikeston.

He turned south, saw the green of the old Indian mound beneath its tangle of timber, the peak of his house above the line of trees that marked the end of the cotton field.

Jason was above it all. His heart was racing in his chest like a turbine. He looked down at the ground below, and though he wasn’t even halfway up the tower, the green turf seemed a long distance away.

Maybe, he thought, the very first time he went down the rail he shouldn’t start at the very top. He could start partway down, just to get his reflexes back and make sure he could handle the curve that would tend to throw him off the rail as he gathered speed.

He went down a few stairs, until the distance to the ground did not look quite so intimidating, and then sat on one of the metal steps and took off his sneaks. He leaned around the metal center post of the tower and threw his shoes to the bottom of the stairway. They hit the mesh door at the bottom in a ringing splash of metal. Jason checked his skates, make sure the wheels spun freely and the brakes worked, then laced them on. Stood, adjusted his knee, elbow, and wrist armor, put a hand on the rail so that he’d know where it was.

Usually, when he was going to ride a rail, Jason would start on the flat, get some speed and momentum, and then jump onto the rail for his grind to the bottom. But now, on the tower, he was going to have to jump straight up onto the rail from a standing start, which meant that his balance was going to have to be perfect right from the beginning.

His pulse crashed in his ears. His vision had narrowed to the length of that metal rail that spiraled down out of sight to the bottom.

A gull sailed overhead, cawing.

Jason bent, jumped up, kicked. Landed on the rail- yes! — clicked in! — back foot athwart the rail in the royale position, front foot bang on the center of the rail, arms out for balance.