“I’ll call the caterer,” he said.
“Welcome to the observation deck of the Gateway Arch of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial,” said Marcy Douglas. “On exiting, please step to your left and make your way up the stairs. If you are waiting for a tram, please wait for everyone to exit before taking your place.” The latest group of tourists climbed from the south tram to the observation platform. Marcy noticed, among the usual ambling tourists, the parents and children and people with cameras, an elderly lady on the arm of a younger woman, a young Japanese couple in baseball caps, and a cluster of middle-aged people talking to one another in French.
The usual. Marcy evaded an impulse to look at her watch. She was on duty till ten o’clock and had many hours to go.
“Please stay on the yellow stairs,” she told the tourists.
Marcy was twenty-two years old and had worked for the Park Service for two years, since she’d given up on college. She was tall and thin and black, and kept her hair cut short and businesslike under her Smokey Bear hat. She was from rural Florida and loved the out-of-doors, and had hoped to work in one of the big national forests. Failing that perhaps in Jean Lafitte National Park—better known as the French Quarter of New Orleans—but those with seniority were lined up for those jobs, so she found herself working 630 feet above the St. Louis waterfront, shepherding tourists through the largest stainless steel sculpture in the world, the silver catenary curve of the Gateway Arch. The giant wedding ring that St. Louis had built to the scale of God’s finger.
The elderly woman put her hand on Marcy’s arm. “That was the most unpleasant elevator ride I’ve had in my life,” she said.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” Marcy said. “I know they’re crowded.” The huge arch couldn’t use regular elevators: it had special trams, trains of little cars, built to ride up the inside of the curve. Each car seated five, if the five were close friends, weren’t too large, and if none of them smelled bad.
“And the swaying,” the lady said. “I felt like I was going to get sick to my stomach.” Marcy patted her hand. “You take as long as you need to catch your breath before going down.”
“Is there another way down?”
“You can take the stairs, ma’am, but there are over a thousand of them.” Marcy tried to look sympathetic. “I think the tram ride would be better for you.”
“Come along, Mother.” The old lady’s companion tugged gently at her arm. “The young lady has work to do.”
Marcy shuffled the line of waiting tourists into the trams and sent them to ground level. She could be in nature, she thought. She could be in Yosemite.
Or she could be in the French Quarter, sipping a planter’s punch in the Old Absinthe House.
“Why are the windows so small?” a little girl asked.
“A lot of people ask that question,” Marcy said. She didn’t know the answer. Marcy stood with a couple of tourists for a photograph. She didn’t know why so many people wanted to take her picture, but many of them did.
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.
EIGHT
At 8 o’clock a noise resembling distant thunder was heard, and was soon after followed by a shock which appeared to operate vertically, that is to say, by a heaving of the ground upwards—but was not sufficiently severe to injure either furniture or glasses. This shock was succeeded by a thick haze, and many people were affected by giddiness and nausea. Another shock was experienced about 9 o’clock at night, but so light as not to be generally felt—and at half past 12 the next day (the 17th) another shock was felt, which lasted only a few seconds and was succeeded by a tremor which was occasionally observed throughout the day effecting many with giddiness. At half past 8 o’clock a very thick haze came on, and for a few minutes a sulphurous smell was emitted. At nine o’clock last night, another was felt, which continued four or five seconds, but so slight as to have escaped the observation of many who had not thought of attending particularly to the operations of this phenomenon. At one o’clock this morning (23d) another shock took place of nearly equal severity with the first of the 16th. Buried in sleep, I was not sensible of this, but I have derived such correct information on the fact that I have no reason to doubt it; but I have observed since 11 o’clock this morning frequent tremors of the earth, such as usually precede severe shocks in other parts of the world.
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 max 3d 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.