Walter Williams - The Rift

Marcy went down the stairs and touched the man on the arm. “Please go in, sir,” she said. She saw that the nearest tram had two women already seated. “Those ladies need someone to look after them, okay?” she said.

“Hm?” he said, surprised. “Why yes, all right.”

He allowed Marcy to lead him to the tram. She seated him between the two women and returned to her station. She closed the doors and set the little train rolling downward.

She picked up the phone and called to let someone know the tram was on its way, but there was no answer. What were they all doing? she wondered.

Or maybe, she thought, they were all dead. The huge concourse and museum beneath the Gateway Arch were below ground level: what if the roof had fallen in? What if a pipe had burst, or the Mississippi found its way in, and the whole place was flooded? What if she was sending the visitors to certain death by drowning?

No. She had been on the phone with people since the quake. The concourse was above the level of the Mississippi even at flood stage. Nothing had happened down on the concourse except that people were very busy dealing with damage to the exhibits and to people.

Marcy turned to her remaining visitors. She counted nine, including the man who had panicked and run rather than board the tram.

She took a deep breath and began to argue. The trams were safe. She’d run them up and down twice and no one had been injured. The power supply to the Gateway Arch had multiple backups and had never failed.

Her heart sank as she spoke. She didn’t convince a one of them.

*

No pencil can paint the distress of the many movers! Men, women and children, barefooted and naked! without money and without food.

Russelville, Kentucky, February 26,1812

Nick and Viondi stood by the Oldsmobile. The car was in the crevasse, pitched over at an angle of maybe forty degrees, rear wheels still on the road with the tail in the air, the grille rammed into the side of the fracture. The front wheels hung in air. Something had cut Viondi, and blood ran down his face- the car had an air bag only on the driver’s side. Nick and Viondi had got out of the car by climbing over the front seats into the back, and then leaving the car by the back doors, from which they could take the long, nervous step to firm ground.

It was hard to say how deep the crevasse was. The water table was high here, and water had filled the crack to within ten feet of the surface. The water was far from still- a storm of bubbles rose to the top, and foam was beginning to gather in stripes on the surface.

“Earthquake, I guess,” Nick said, gazing down. His heart still throbbed in his chest.

“New Madrid fault,” Viondi said. “Shit.” He wiped blood from his face. “I gotta get back to St. Louis. Gotta get to my family.”

“At least my family’s well out of it.”

Viondi gave him a quick glance, blood dripping down his face. “You sure about that?”

Nick hesitated. “The earthquake couldn’t hit Toussaint that hard.” He hesitated. “Could it?”

“We get out of here, then we’ll know.”

Nick looked at the car. “Wherever we go, it’ll be on foot.”

“Give me the keys.” Viondi opened the trunk, took out Nick’s suitcase, his own box of clothes, and the silver samovar, which he jammed down on top of his clothing.

“You’re not going to take the samovar, are you?” Nick asked.

“Shit, man, it’s solid silver. I’m not gonna leave it in an abandoned car in Buttfuck, Tennessee, that’s for sure.” His grim look grew more thoughtful. “Besides, if we can find drinkable water, we’re going to need something to carry it in, and this is all we’ve got.”

“Let me try to stop that bleeding before we go anywhere. I’ve got some Band-Aids and stuff in my bag.”

There was nothing to clean the wound with, so Nick ended up using one of his T-shirts. He had some disinfectant cream, which Viondi patiently let him smear on the cut, and then he tried to close it with the adhesive strips. The cut was big, and blood kept pouring out while he was working, so Nick ended up using three different strips to try to hold the edges of the wound together. The adhesive strips, which he’d bought on sale, were what used to be called “flesh,” meaning a light tan color intended to blend in with the skin of Caucasians, and it contrasted strangely with Viondi’s black skin.

The strips also had little green dinosaurs on them.

At least they stopped some of the bleeding.

“I guess we might as well go,” Nick said. He put his satchel on his shoulder, picked up his soft-sided suitcase, then turned north.

“Hold on there,” Viondi said. “We ain’t going north. There’s nothing there- we’re miles from the highway or any big towns.”

“There were some farms,” Nick said. “And that restaurant.”

There was anger in Viondi’s look. “You want to bet that restaurant ain’t floatin’ down the Hatchie by now? And those farms- whoever lives there ain’t gonna be in any better shape than we are.” He pointed south, across the crevasse and the soybean fields. “Memphis is down that way. It’s a big city. We can find a tow truck there, and people to help us.”

Nick was confused. “How are we going to get over the crack? I can’t jump that.”

Viondi slammed the trunk with his big hands. “We got a bridge right here.”

Nick was dubious, but Viondi put down his box, put one foot on the rear bumper, and climbed up onto the trunk. Nick held his breath, expecting at any second for the car to pitch nose-first into the crevasse, but all that happened was that the back of the car sank under Viondi’s weight. Viondi crawled onto the roof, reversed himself, then slid his legs down the windscreen and onto the car’s hood.

“There,” he said. “Now pass me the box and the bags.”

Nick put a foot on the rear bumper and passed Viondi their gear, and then Viondi belly-crawled backward down the length of the hood until he could stand on the other side of the crevasse. “Your turn,” he said.

Nick felt his stomach clench. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

He crawled slowly over the car, his heart giving a leap every time it shifted under his weight. But the bridge remained in place, and when he backed his feet to the broken pavement on the other side of the crevasse, he felt his breath ease.

Viondi handed him his suitcase. “Let’s get moving,” he said.

A shadow fell across the sun. Nick looked up, and was surprised to find how much of the sky was now covered with dark cloud.

“Maybe it’s going to rain,” he said.

And then he followed Viondi down the lonely, broken road.

*

The interior of the Gateway Arch was airless and musty and at least a hundred degrees. Sweat dripped from beneath Marcy’s Smokey Bear hat, and her thighs ached. She’d been going down stairs forever.

“Careful,” she told the people behind her. She pointed her flashlight. “The rail here is a little shaky.”

There were 1076 steps altogether, one of those facts that Marcy had been obliged to memorize as part of her job. She hadn’t bothered to count them as she descended, and she was glad. She didn’t want to walk to the point of utter exhaustion and realize that there were still 600 steps to go.

The monumental skeleton of the arch loomed around her. Massive I-beams, giant stanchions, cross-braces of steel. The stair that wound its way down the arch rested in part on the framework itself, and wasn’t going to move unless the arch itself gave way.

So far the stair had been safe enough. It was the little things that had been damaged. About two-thirds of the light-bulbs had shattered, leaving the stair a passage through gloom and shadow. The handrail had given way in places, and Marcy cautioned her visitors about putting their weight on it. Some of the smaller fixtures had fallen- bits of steel mesh, some cable, the lighter crossbraces. These could be worked around, with care.