Walter Williams - The Rift

The French people went from one window to the next in a group, comparing the view with a map they’d brought with them. She heard “Busch Stadium” and “Cathedrale de St. Louis.”

A lot of French people came to St. Louis, figuring that since the French had once owned the place, they’d find French culture here. Marcy figured they were usually disappointed.

The French men, she noticed, were casually dressed, but the women looked as if they were on a modeling assignment.

“My goodness!” The old lady clutched at her heart. “Is it swaying up here?”

Marcy smiled. She spent a lot of her shift smiling. It adds to your face value, her mother used to tell her.

“We sway a little bit when the wind picks up, yes,” she said. “But don’t worry- the Gateway Arch is built to withstand a tornado.”

“Pardon, please,” said one of the Japanese. “How do you get to the Botanikkogoden?”

It took two tries before Marcy realized that she was asking for guidance to the Botanical Gardens. She gave directions. Her colleague, Evan, had just brought another load of tourists up on the north tram and was urging people to stay on the yellow stairs.

One of the tourists was tilting his camera, trying to get a picture of the Casino Queen, the big gambling boat just pulling into its mooring across the river in East St. Louis. Revenues from the Casino Queen, Marcy knew, had rescued East St. Louis from being the poorest city in the United States, a position it had held for decades.

“How do you pronounce the name of the architect?” an anxious woman asked.

“I’m not very good at Finnish,” Marcy said, and then did her best to pronounce Eero Saarinen’s name.

“Why didn’t they get an American architect?” the woman demanded.

It was the first sunny day in weeks. Jason sped along the top of the levee, listening to his tires grind on the gravel road that capped its top. The ATV’s exhaust rattled off the tangle of trees between the levee and the river. The river was very high now, only ten feet below the top of the levee, and the cottonwood and cypress stood in the gray water, leafy branches trailing in the current. The mass of water, the evident weight of it, all moving so relentlessly under Missouri’s skies … it made him uneasy. What if it got higher? What if it went over the top of the levee and flooded out his house? Somewhere to the north, up in Iowa, there was supposed to be flooding. What if the floodwaters came south?

But no one else here seemed concerned. “The river gets high twice a year,“ Muppet had told him. He figured Muppet should know, and Muppet wasn’t packing survival supplies into a boat, so he supposed it was all right.

Jason was driving Muppet’s Yamaha ATV, speeding along the top of the levee with the throttle maxed out. Muppet sat behind, his butt above the rear wheels, bouncing along with his feet splayed out to each side, the heels of his sneakers just above the roadbed.

The little vehicles- essentially motorcycles with four wheels- were the passion of Muppet’s crowd, and indeed half the kids at school. No drivers’ licenses were required to run the vehicles as long as they stayed off the road. The ripping sound of the ATVs’ engines was heard over the entire district on weekends. On the far side of the levee, on the river’s muddy sandbanks, on islands made accessible by low water, and on trails beaten into the hardwood tangle, the brightly colored vehicles sped along like ants on the trail of honey.

But now, with the river high, a few rural roads and the crest of the levee were the only places to drive. Jason was determined, though, to make the most of it. At least on the top of the levee he could go fast.

It wasn’t as good as skating, Jason thought. Nothing was. But it was better than staring at the walls and waiting for his parents to change their minds and bring him back to California.

He wondered how he was going to get his father to buy him an ATV. It was too late for his birthday- his dad had already bought the present, or so he said. And Christmas was far away.

Maybe, he thought, if he did really well on his finals …

The Indian mound loomed up on the right, and below it, the row of five houses with Jason’s in the middle. Jason decelerated, clutched, shifted into a lower gear, then steered off the top of the levee and onto the steep grassy grade. Muppet’s feet flew high as the ATV pitched over the brink and accelerated, engine buzzing like an angry beehive. Jason heard Muppet give a whoop.

Jason gave the machine more throttle.

The ATV hit the flat with a bump, bouncing high and throwing Muppet forward into Jason. Jason laughed. He upshifted and felt the wheels spin on gravel, and then the cart took off, throwing Muppet back on the seat and bringing a fierce grin to Jason’s face. The ATV lurched as he corrected his course, and then he accelerated down the lane. His house came up faster than he expected and he overshot the driveway, coming to a stop on the front lawn.

“You’re getting the feel of it, all right,“ Muppet said.

“Thanks for letting me drive.“ Jason put the vehicle into neutral, then dismounted. “Want to come in?“

Muppet shook his head. “No thanks. My mom is having her piano lesson now, and I’ve got to get dinner ready for my baby sister.“

“Okay.“ Backing toward the porch. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.“

“See you then.“

“Thanks!“

Muppet revved the engine and took off, making a U-turn on the front lawn and heading back to the levee. As the buzzing engine receded, Jason could hear the Huntley dog, Batman, barking like fury from his confined yard.

Jason took off his helmet- his mother had relented to the extent of giving his armor back, if not his skates- and then he turned and bounced up the porch steps before noticing the large UPS package that sat before the screen door. His nerves gave a little joyous leap. His birthday present from Dad!

He picked it up, and it had quite a respectable weight. At least it wasn’t clothing.

He unlocked the door and took the package upstairs to his study. His birthday wasn’t until Friday, but he saw no reason not to open it now, so he took out his pocket knife and slit open the strapping tape that held the box together. When he’d finally placed the contents of the box on top of his desk, he looked at it in puzzlement.