The Rift

by Walter Jon Williams

  First he called the state police, told them of the situation, and asked them to get a roadblock put up south of the parish line, turn new refugees back before they entered the trap. Omar was told that the staties were fully occupied dealing with aftereffects of the quake, but would set up the road-block as soon as they had the personnel to do it.

  As soon as they get their asses into their white Crown Victorias, Omar thought. He did not have a great deal of confidence in the staties. For one thing, they couldn’t even decide what they were called. They had State Police on the rear of their cars, State Troopers on the front fenders, and Louisiana State Police on the front doors.

  How could you trust these people for anything? They didn’t even know who they were. So Omar directed Merle to set up a roadblock on the far side of the Bayou Bridge and to turn people back there. It took an hour and a half for one of the patrol cars to get that far south, and the officer reported that the Bayou Bridge had lost some of its superstructure in the quake, that it trembled when they crossed, and that they were worried about getting back safely.

  “I’ll get the bridge inspected when I can get someone from the parish down there,” Omar told them. “Just keep people off it, for God’s sake.”

  “That’s going to be a tough job, Omar,” Merle said. “Some of these people abandoned their cars miles back and are coming in on foot. The rest say there’s nothing behind them but wreckage.”

  “There’s nothing but wreckage here. You tell them to wait there, okay?”

  “Ten-four. I’ll do what I can.”

  Omar kept on working. In the pale twilit hour just before dawn, Omar felt the bang, then heard the onrushing-train sound of a quake, and as he stared for a horrified moment at the wall of his office, he remembered the cracks he’d seen in the thick courthouse walls, and then adrenaline slammed into his body and he dived under his desk.

  The earth groaned for a long moment, shaking the court-house like shrimp in a pan, then fell silent. Omar stayed motionless for a moment, waiting for the roof to come down as he listened to the light fixture overhead creak as it swayed back and forth, and then he crawled from cover. His limbs shivered. He reached for the radio receiver behind his desk, turned up the volume to listen to the reports. The Bayou Bridge has fallen, Merle said, along its entire length, cutting Omar off from the southern quarter of the parish and the five hundred or so people who lived there.

  The center part of Spottswood Parish was now an island, with hundreds of strangers trapped by the flood, and no way to get them off.

  “Old River’s gone?” Jessica said. She stared blankly into the red dawn rising east of Vicksburg as she held her Iridium cellphone to her ear. “What do you mean, gone?”

  “Low Sill, Morganza, Auxiliary Control came through okay,” her informant told her. “The Murray hydroelectric plant’s rode it out, too, but it’s offline because they lost too many transmission wires, and they’re losing water pressure through the turbines. The river went around the systems built to control it.”

  “God damn,” Jessica said. Fury burned along her nerves. She took off her helmet, flung it on the ground. The ballistic material bounced well on the springy Mississippi turf.

  Old River Control. The Corps of Engineers’ greatest project, its greatest fortress against the enemy that was the river.

  But when the river attacked, it hadn’t attacked the fortress, it had gone around. Bypassed the frontier fortresses and struck directly into the heartland.

  Jessica kicked her helmet toward the communications tent. She told her informant to call her as soon as he had any hard information, then put away her cellphone.

  “I want all chopper wing commanders here ASAP,” she ordered. “We’ve got a lot of rescue missions to run.” She looked at one of the radio operators. “Get me the jarheads and the swabbies,” she said. “We’re going to need their copters, too.”

  “Mr. Hallock reporting, General,” said another operator. “From Poinsett Landing. He wanted to speak to you.”

  Jessica picked up the radio receiver and blinked. Stars shot through her left eye. Ever since Pat had elbowed her eye during the quake, she’d both been developing a magnificent black eye and seeing flashes.

  It was probably all right, she thought. Stars were what you were supposed to see after being hit in the head. Right?

  “Mr. Hallock?” she said. “This is General Frazetta.”

  Larry’s New Mexico drawl hissed over the speakers. “I’ve inspected the auxiliary building,” he said. “We lost some of the scaffolding in there. Otherwise things are stable for the moment, ’cept that we’ve sprung another leak. Or maybe that ol’ leak we could never find got bigger, I can’t tell. Anyway, we’ve got the pumps going, and we’re keeping the water and boron levels high.”

  “Roger, Mr. Hallock. Good work.”

  “We’ll look for the leak and patch it if we can. But your port is a real mess, ma’am, and my people are afraid to go out on those quays.”

  I don’t blame them, Jessica thought.

  “And,” Larry went on, “we checked the containment building. It’s listing at another two degrees.” Jessica took a slow, careful breath. Two degrees… A two-million-ton reactor leaning like the Tower of Pisa.

  “Roger that, Mr. Hallock,” she said, her mouth dry. Star shells flashed in her left eye. The last two problems—the fragility of the temporary harbor and the dangerous position of the reactor—could be fixed by accelerating Operation Island. Keep the big Sikorsky helicopters dropping tons of rubble twenty-four hours per day. Build a real harbor, make the reactor complex part of something solid.

  But that meant the helicopters would not be free for other tasks, such as searching for refugees. People could die if she kept the heavy-lift machines moving rubble from one place to another instead of helping the victims of the quake.

  But that’s what she had to do. A worst-case accident at Poinsett Landing could poison the Mississippi for the next five hundred years.

  “Mr. Hallock,” she said, “I’m going to accelerate Operation Island. I want you to move your personnel out of the area, except for those you need to fix the leak and to keep the auxiliary building stable.” There was a pause. “Roger that, General.”

  “I’ll see you later, Mr. Hallock.” There was another pause.

  “Good luck, General Frazetta.” Jessica nodded.

  “And to you,” she said.

  He had to put them somewhere, all these refugees. There weren’t many choices. And so Omar found himself visiting the Reverend Dr. Morris.

  Dr. Morris preached at the African Methodist Episcopal Church of Spottswood Parish, and was a white-haired black man of unimpeachable rectitude and gravel-voiced eloquence. It was fortunate for Omar that few people had listened to Morris at the last election.

  Morris knew that Omar was coming—one did not do these things unannounced—and waited for him on the front lawn of the ruined brick California bungalow that had once been his parsonage. Next door, his church, of frame construction, had largely survived, though it had lost its steeple, most of its shingles, and all of its windows.

  Dr. Morris was surrounded by his family and several of what Omar assumed were his parishioners, forming a half-circle behind him, like a bodyguard. Morris, or his friends, wanted witnesses to the meeting of their parson and the Kleagle.

  Like Omar was going to go berserk and start throwing fire-bombs. These people, Omar thought, should know better.

  Gravel crunched as Omar turned into Morris’ driveway. He stepped out of the car, adjusted his hat, tried to mask his unease. He was here in the role of a supplicant, and he didn’t like it. He walked toward Morris, and behind his sunglasses he scanned the silent, hostile black faces that surrounded the minister. “Dr. Morris,” he said, “Miz Morris,” and touched the brim of his hat to the reverend’s lady.

  “Sheriff.” Morris nodded. His wife gave a nod that seemed civil enough, though her unblinking eyes didn’t leave Omar’s face for a second.


  “We’ve got a lot of refugees in the parish,” Omar said. He turned, scanned the cars lined behind them on the road. “You can see that yourself. We’ve got to put them somewhere until they can be evacuated. I thought that the land where you hold your camp meetings might be suitable—you have facilities there, yes? Toilets and water and such?”

  Dr. Morris nodded. “Yes. And we have grills for outdoor cooking, and a kitchen to serve hot meals. Though I don’t know whether the cookhouse survived last night.”

  “Can you open the property on short notice, Doctor? We’ve got to put these people somewhere before they start keeling over of sunstroke.”

  The preacher nodded. “I can do that, Sheriff,” he said.

  “Thank you, Dr. Morris. I’ll tell my men to give you an hour or so before they start sending people over.” Dr. Morris nodded. “Very well, Sheriff. We’ll have the place open, and we’ll do what we can for the people.”

  Omar touched his hat to Mrs. Morris again, then returned to his car.

  All summer long, the A.M.E. ran camp meetings at their site north of Shelburne City. Whole families of black people from all over the South-Central U.S. drove to the meetings, pitched their tents, and spent their money at the Commissary and the local BBQ and burger joints. It was one of the few mainstays of the local economy that hadn’t gone to hell in the last twenty years. Even the Klan was happy for the addition to the revenues of the parish.

  Camp sites, toilets, running water. Exactly what the situation called for.

  Omar was less happy with the subject of his next visit. Mrs. LaGrande Davis Rildia Shelburne Ashenden, the last member of the family that had run the parish for the last nine or ten generations, and—he suspected—a far more dedicated and skilled political opponent even than Dr. Morris. The river was all over the goddam place. Stars flashed in Jessica’s left eye as she peered down at the flooded Atchafalaya country from her seat in the Kiowa. She was on a personal reconnaissance, and it was as bad as it could get. It was 1927 all over again.

  And on her watch. She tried not to think about that.

  Before M6, Jessica had every expectation of penning the runaway river in its proper banks somewhere north of Vicksburg. Except for a few places like Poinsett Landing where the river had found a new channel, the levees were mostly intact from Vicksburg south, and Jessica had made certain they were inspected to make certain they would hold, and any weaknesses shored up or repaired. Any water that got behind the levees could be siphoned off by the various winding bayous, like LaFourche or Boeuf, that paralleled the Mississippi, then drained off into the Mississippi or the Red. But M6 had wrecked that. Jessica had to get the river back in its banks somewhere south of the Old River structures in central Louisiana, which meant that the whole focus of her effort had shifted a couple hundred miles south of where she’d intended.

  Goddam goddam goddam. She’d had to give up everything north of Baton Rouge. Her jurisdiction—the part of the twenty-three-hundred-mile river that actually obeyed her commands—had shrunk to the two hundred and fifty miles north of its outlet. A little more than one tenth. The rest was flood and swamp, refugees and ruin.

  “Please sit down, Sheriff Paxton,” said Mrs. Ashenden. “May I offer you some tea?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.” He hitched his gun out of the way and sat carefully on an antique rococo armchair.

  Mrs. Ashenden sat opposite Omar on a matching loveseat. Its curved legs were in the shape of animal legs, each clawed foot holding a carved wooden ball. Mrs. Ashenden was in her sixties, with white hair, a soft, languorous voice, and piercing blue eyes that glittered like diamonds. Her age had not dimmed her mind, and Omar imagined that her control of Garden Club politics had not weakened at all.

  “We have our own blend that’s come down from the Rildia family—we have it mixed in San Francisco and shipped here. Would you like to try it, or would you prefer Earl Grey or, ah, something else?”

  “Whatever you’re having, Miz LaGrande,” Omar said.

  Mrs. Ashenden turned to her maid, an elderly black woman named Lorette, and said, “The Rildia blend, then. And some of the macaroons, please.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Lorette said.

  While Mrs. Ashenden spoke to the maid, Omar glanced over Clarendon’s front parlor. The big house, with its heavy post and beam construction, had survived the two big quakes very well—Miz LaGrande’s ancestors—or the two hundred slaves they owned—had built for the ages, had hauled huge cypress-wood beams to the building site and dug them deep into massive foundations. Other than broken windows and a couple of fallen chimneys, Clarendon had done very well. Even the front portico, with its four mis-matched pillars—why did he remember the term distyle-in-antis?—still stood to proudly greet Omar as he drove down the live-oak alley toward the house. The oak alley itself had not done nearly as well—at least half the trees were down.

  The interior appeared to have come through the quake intact. The mantelpiece and tables seemed a bit bare—presumably they had been cleared of breakables, either by the quake or by the housekeeping staff. But the furniture looked unscarred, and the cut crystal of the overhead chandelier seemed to have survived without a scratch.

  “I wanted to say,” Mrs. Ashenden said, “how much we enjoyed your Wilona, when she called the other day.”

  Omar looked at his nemesis and smiled. “She told me how much she enjoyed the visit. It was very kind of you to invite her.”

  Mrs. Ashenden tilted her head, gave Omar a birdlike look. “I’m surprised we haven’t seen you here, Sheriff Paxton.” Her ice-blue eyes glittered.

  “I’ve had no reason to take your time, Miz LaGrande,” Omar said. No reason to crawl to Clarendon for favors when he could take what he wanted by other means, he meant. He let Mrs. Ashenden absorb this for a moment, then glanced deliberately around the parlor.

  “You seem to have weathered the quakes very well,” he said.

  “Yes. Mr. Oliver Shelburne built well when he built this place.” She smoothed her lap. “I won’t be able to serve you off the Wedgwood, I’m afraid. We had too many pieces of the creamware broken in the first quake, and some of it is impossible to repair, so we put everything in storage until the danger is over. It is fortunate that the pre-1830 Waterford came through all right, though some of the more modern crystal was damaged.”

  All our McDonalds cups came through just fine, Omar was tempted to reply. Even the Darth Vader. But he just smiled and told Mrs. Ashenden that she’d been lucky.

  “Yes. Particularly during last night’s horror. I understand many in the parish have lost their homes.”

  “Yes. And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Ah. Here’s our tea.”

  Lorette arrived with tea on a tray and poured. Omar asked for sugar, no cream, and got a sugar cube dropped into his cup with silver tongs. He stirred the dissolving lump into his tea—he knew from Wilona that his silver teaspoon was to a pattern made exclusively by a firm in Vicksburg since the 1840s—and he glanced at his cup as he raised it to his lips. Even if this was the second-best china, it was still impressive enough: thin and delicate as the petals of a flower, gold-rimmed, with a design of a shepherd frolicking with a shepherdess. Omar could crush it to powder by closing one hand, and for a moment—

  only a moment—he was tempted to do so.

  Mrs. Ashenden had seen him study the cup. “It’s Sevres,” she said, “but it’s soft-paste, not porcelaine royale, and our set is incomplete.”

  “It’s very fine, ma’am,” Omar said. Mrs. Ashenden was lucky she had inherited the porcelain, the silver, and Clarendon, too, because if she hadn’t, she might well be wandering the parish bereft as any refugee. Her husband, the late Herbert Temple Ashenden of Fort Worth, had gone through their combined fortunes like a hailstorm through ripe wheat. He had lost most of their money in the oil business, and then dropped the rest in a scheme to turn the Shelburne cotton fields into an exclusive hunting resort here in Spottswood Parish, a
place carefully groomed to support quail, deer, duck, trout, and who-knew-what. He’d built a lodge and preened the country, and imported or otherwise attracted the game, and then found that no one came.

  Rich people, it seemed, had better places to spend their time than Spottswood Parish. The scheme leaked money like a sieve. Ashenden, along with his blond girlfriend, a former Miss Concordia Parish, died in a car crash in Mississippi. Most of the old Shelburne plantation had been sold to pay his debts, and now belonged to Swiss Jews who had demolished the lodge, chased off the wildlife, and put the land back into cotton.

  Omar had heard that Mrs. Ashenden had a hard time coming up with the taxes on the property she had remaining, but had made an agreement with a cousin, one of the Davises, to leave Clarendon to her in return for having her taxes paid. Rogers Wilcox, who worked at the courthouse, claimed to have seen the legal documents when they were filed.

  It was hearing this that had determined Omar to run for office. Mrs. Ashenden couldn’t back her political favorites with money, only with words and sheer force of habit. It was time, Omar thought, that the old habits died.

  Omar put his cup into his saucer. “What I wanted to talk to you about, Miz LaGrande,” he said, “is the homeless people here in the parish, and the casualties.”

  Concern entered Mrs. Ashenden’s voice. “Are there very many injured?”

  “There are some who really need to go to a hospital,” Omar said, “but we don’t even have the clinic anymore. Dr. Patel’s offices collapsed last night. I know this is an imposition, but we need a place to put the injured, and this is the safest building in the parish.”

  “Of course you may bring them here,” Mrs. Ashenden said. “We have always done our bit in an emergency. We sheltered a great many people during the Flood of 1927.” She gave a little smile. “It will be like the War Between the States, I fancy, when so many of our homes were turned into hospitals.” A troubled look crossed her face. “But I don’t have the staff here to care for people. Just Lorette, and Joseph, and the gardener.”

  “Dr. Patel and his nurse will be here,” Omar said. “And we hope that the families will pitch in.”