Crescent Gorge

  #

  Greg locked the door, as Bill pulled his coat hood up. It was getting bitter cold, as the sun had set long ago, and the passing rainstorm left patches of ice on the ground. Yet Bill could see the three girls standing on a nearby corner, lighting up what smelled to be a few joints, before they headed back to school.

  “Kinda funny ‘bout people,” said Greg, as he waited for the metal security gate to scroll down over the store front. He only put it on last year, after a few college kids threw stones through his window after being refused a keg of beer.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re the lucky ones, going to college, with friends. And yet they’re standing on a street corner smoking pot. Two of ‘em might give it up when they graduate, but I’ve seen a lot of kids go by, and one of ‘em’s gonna end up doin’ the hard stuff, fuckin’ up her life somethin’ pretty.”

  Bill saw what Greg spoke of but also saw, in the dim light of the stars and the moonlight faintly passing through the stormclouds, something he could only call beauty. He saw them smoke the refers, with a quick inhale them long, slow exhale. He saw them giggle and guffaw at boys they remembered, or girls they hated. He also saw them smile with a radiance he seldom saw. He saw their camaraderie, their joy in life, their hope for the future. He saw the balance in them was tilted more with goodness and life, then hate and death.

  Suddenly a small motorcade pulled up in front of the deli, just as rain started to fall again, comprised of two large, bulky SUVs and a long limousine. A tall, burly man dressed in a long wool coat hurried out of the black limousine now directly in front of Bill and Greg. The man opened an umbrella, then opened the rear door, and the tallest woman Bill ever saw came out, holding her head proud and high.

  “Is this the deli?” asked the man in the overcoat.

  “Yeah,” answered Greg, as the cold rain started to come down harder, turning quickly to sleet. He motioned both of them under the awning of the deli, and Bill came there as well. “But we just closed.” He took another look at the woman. “Hey, you aren’t—”

  “Yes, I’m Senator Ford. I thought you might still be open—we heard you’ve got the best sandwiches for a hundred miles!”

  Greg looked perplexed and confused for a moment, his mind racing. On the one hand, he wanted to open up, but on the other, he knew too many things were put in storage to get them something to eat quickly. He stepped forward.

  “If you want it, I’d be glad to make you a sandwich.”

  She smiled, and shook her head in the negative. “I couldn’t put you through that trouble. You had a long day, just like we did.” She glanced over at Bill, whose eyes were glued on her. “I guess you’re a little too young to caucus?”

  “Yeah,” replied Bill, his mind racing for something better to say. “I wish I could—I’d vote for you!”

  Senator Ford laughed, and reached over to put a hand on Bill’s shoulder. “Thanks for the kind words, young man. I certainly could use all the help I can get.”

  “I caucused for you!” cried Greg, as the sleet fell harder on the awning, bouncing off in a spray of white. “You’ve had some kinda life, Senator. I know you’ll be a great President!”

  Bill glanced over at the three girls on the corner, noticing they were focused on him, for a change.

  “Friends of yours?” asked the Senator.

  “I wish,” said Bill, quietly.

  “Don’t mind him, he’s still figurin’ out how to be a man,” said Greg, as he playfully pushed Bill. “But he’ll learn.”

  The Senator came closer to Bill. “This life’s a hard one, young man, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you’ve gotta take all you can." As she leaned forward to speak, the rain turned to hail and it settled into her hair, as her bodyguard was lax in shifting the umbrella forward. For some reason, Bill wanted to grab it from him and protect her himself, as if he owed her that and more. "No matter if it isn’t offered to you, you’ve gotta grab it and take it and call it yours. Never, ever do anything wrong, but too many people will tell you that going for something and taking it is wrong. Those are the fools of this world, and they will never mean anything to anyone.”

  “Don’t you . . . don’t you worry about losing?” tentatively asked Bill.

  “No!” She laughed, and it was the most delicious thing Bill ever heard. She had a low speaking voice, but a musical, soprano laugh. “Honest! Look at the other people running. Look them hard in their eyes, and tell me they don’t know that they will lose. They have the stink of indecision on them. I know I will win. I spend all I can and more to get there, because I know I will get there.”

  Bill looked up into her eyes, and felt something . . . strange, for a moment. He felt as if there was something just out of sight, out of touch, that he needed, that he wanted. The girls on the corner suddenly seemed terribly small and unimportant. He shifted his vision ever so slightly, and caught a glimpse of Greg, and in that glimpse he saw all the petty sins that clouded up his life. Bill felt then that something was waiting for him, expecting him, at some point in the future. He looked back up at Ford’s eyes, and smiled a knowing smile.

  “I think I’ve reached you?” she asked coyly. “Well, it was good to meet you both. We have another long day, and I need my rest.”

  Bill watched her climb back into her car and drive off, out of sight. Greg playfully punched him.

  “I think she liked you.”

  4

  The local Shop-N-Save reeled in the aftermath of the presidential caucus like a young girl that had too much to drink at Prom. In short, it was an utter mess; a store that had been used and abused then discarded for someone else to clean up. Confetti littered the parking lot, sticking to the silver street lamps and the employees’ cars. Inside, the white tile floor was a brown shade of grey, with half-drunk bottles of pop strewn like so many pins after a one-two split at a bowling alley. There was a small platform from which Senator Ford spoke, on which even now a few of the last, lingering employees took pictures as they stood at the dais acting like someone who mattered.

  The bakery had been on overdrive for the past few days, getting all the bread for the sandwiches made, crackers for the hors d’oeuvres, and two dozen cakes, including a massive four foot long one that bore Ford’s likeness. Lizzie had worked side by side with Elma, the baker, in crafting the confectionary gem, and it paid off, with several pictures taken of Ford admiring the cake. But most importantly, to Lizzie that is, is that she got to take home a great deal of the leftovers.

  To say Lizzie was fat would kind. Lizzie aspired to being ‘fat.’ She was sloppily obese, a girl who couldn’t seem to keep all her flesh tucked into her clothes. Ever since her father was arrested for molesting her and a friend in sixth grade, she put on the weight without even looking back. She always felt she made her father do it, that she was too enticing a young girl, and her mother never helped matters. Her mother didn’t even believe her at first, saying; ‘maybe he was trying to pull down your shirt—I told you not to wear one that short.’ Or even; ‘I told you not to bend over in front of him all the time! He’s been having it tough at work, and when he gets home he’s real tired.’ The way her mother looked at her was burned into her mind as if she was the criminal, as if her mother had done the foul deed. Her father always seemed absent when she touched him, as if he was going through the motions that someone else dictated.

  Regardless, by seventh grade she had put on thirty pounds, and the way her mother treated her was noticeably different. Her mother wasn’t fat, just somewhat overweight; 'curvy,' by modern standards. She couldn’t play tennis, but if she ran for her life she wouldn’t die from exhaustion in the attempt. But beside Lizzie she was rail-thin, and always got the eye of men who came near the two of them. It never occurred to her that she was jealous of her daughter, or even how wrong it was to compare the physique of a thirty year old to that of a thirteen year old. All she cared about was how men now looked at her instead
of Lizzie, the quick glances back from men in the stores they shopped, the extra little attention she got from a tall, big man that worked at the diner. Her mother could go out in public with her again and not be worried about who was getting what attention.

  She fed her daughter mercilessly, putting more and more butter into cakes and cookies, buying two liter, then three-liter plastic bottles of pop. And when she opened them, she would chastise her daughter for not drinking them quick enough, for after a day or two they would start to go flat.

  So by tenth grade Lizzie was fat enough to officially warrant constant teasing from her classmates. It was as if she inherited the mantle of class buffoon, best loser in class, and most entertaining spectacle to jeer at. Her mother finally mentally woke up when she found her daughter trying to cut her wrists in the bathroom. Luckily they were so fat, she couldn’t slash down deep enough to reach an artery. Her mother pulled her out of Dubuque High and put her in Alliance, hoping she would lose some weight—but not too much.

  The first few weeks were scary ones for Lizzie, being confined to the school meal plan. Then job assignments came, and she drew the luckiest straw of all—assistant baker at the Shop-N-Save. Not only did she get to take home the two-day-old pastries, but for some reason the rep who serviced the chip and pretzel aisle thought she was a little cute, (in a maternal, barefoot and pregnant kind of way) and gave her a few of the expired bags of her favorite nacho chips when he came to damage them out. As she was heading out now, even after three days of work that would have seen other people lose weight, she had gained five pounds and had enough cake and cookies in her bag to give another couple more.

  With so much confection in her belly, arms, and legs, you would think her disposition would be similar, but it was sadly the opposite. She was bitter to a point that to taste her would pucker one’s lips to the wryest of smiles. And yet, for one so large, she was usually unnoticed by her coworkers. Even though she fit in with the others, as they also were mostly morbidly obese, they wanted nothing to do with her. She spoke like an Easterner, calling pop ‘soda,’ pronouncing the ‘ow’ in ‘yellow.’ but more than that, she dressed as a Goth, almost always in black (except for Halloween, when she purposefully wore a yellow and white dress with lace), with platform shoes and piercings in her nose and lower lip. She had a foul smell about her, one of musk and oil. At first most of them though her to be a little dim, but soon they learned she was amazingly quick and smart, just with a penchant for self-mutilation and immolation.

  She stood at the front door now of the Shop-n-Save, waiting to be let out. The store officially closed at eight, but stayed open until eleven for the caucus festivities, and it was now 11:15. For a while Lizzie was more than happy to stay in the store, chatting gossip with Elma. She and Elma had got along pretty good since she started working there, especially since Elma didn’t care how many day-olds Lizzie took home. But Lizzie just got a text on her cell, and after saying good-bye to El (no one but the manager called her Elma) she ran to the front door, waiting for someone to let her out. Her temper grew short, so she kicked at it with her thick black platform boots.

  “Come on!” she yelled, the switch having been thrown within her, taking her from calm and cool to a white-hot rage in under ten seconds. “I gotta go!”

  “Now don’t you go ruinin’ a fine day, little girl,” said the manager, as he sauntered up the aisle, jingling his keys. “We’ve all worked hard, and I don’t know ‘bout you, but I’m all tired out.”

  “But I need to get back NOW!” she yelled, and kicked the door once more. The faintest sound of glass cracking could be heard, and Lizzie went white as a sheet as the manager came up beside her, and examined the door.

  “See what you almost got yourself into?" said Charles, the General Manager. An obsequious sycophant when his Regional Manager was around, he blamed any and all problems on his staff and wouldn't hesitate to fire an employee if it made him look better. But he was an able manager, and had a knack for hiring talented people who could put up with his particular brand of shit. "If this glass had broken, this would’ve been your last day, your last night here.” He grabbed her bag and shook it at her face. “And where would you get all your little treats from now on?” He rustled through the bag, picking up a foil-wrapped hunk of cake, a small, clear plastic bag with over a dozen cookies. “Where would you get all this free stuff?” He picked out a king-size bag of the new flavor of the month of nacho chip that had expired two days ago. “Think ‘bout that next time your little temper goes flyin’ for no good reason. You’re hooked, just like a damned junkie. And if I fire you, you’ll never shop in here either. So the only other place in town to get your little ring-dings and cherry pies is the Costsaver,” he said, chuckling to himself, "and you and I both know that manager hires all the cute little girls from Zorrell. You think you'll make the cut?” He handed the bag back to her, and she snatched it from him. “See! That’s what I mean. Now what should you say?” he asked like someone’s mother, leaning in to her face with his ear. “What do I need to hear?”

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

  He beamed like the new day sun. “Maybe you’ll last a little while here, after all, my little piggy.” He only called her that when they were alone, when he knew no one could hear him. “One day, maybe you’ll even squeal for me.” He opened the door, and she rushed out into the cold air. “Bye-bye!”

  She ran across the parking lot, and down a small side-street that was her usual short-cut back to Alliance. Her face was a twisted cacophony of anguish and shame; at once bemoaning her bloated body, and hating the man who seemed to have such a firm grasp upon her. She stuffed her hand into the bag, and brought out a clump of cake and icing.

  “Damned fucking PERVERT!” she yelled to any that would hear, though none would. The streets were totally deserted—even the moon hung alone in the sky, with no clouds to keep it company. The storm was a fast moving one, ushered out with a blanket of cold that squatted over the town, intent on a long stay. Lizzie licked her fingers, then shut the bag, spinning it a couple of times to seal it, so she wouldn’t be tempted to ruin the fun of eating it all once she got home.

  Suddenly a dog barked at her from behind a fence nearby. She was walking down a dirt road in the back of a row of houses, and though she tried to move quickly and quietly, she was too big not to be spotted.

  “Damned dog.”

  She kicked the fence with her boots, with such force that even though the dog jumped back, her foot and fence got him in the nose. It was a small terrier, with more bark than bite, so it yelped and ran back towards the house. Lizzie went white as a sheet again, her little brown eyes darting up to the windows above the porch, but thankfully no light came on, no window opened.

  “Dumb ass dog.” She trudged on, finally coming into the small city of Crescent. The Shop-N-Save was a half-mile outside of town, just far enough that it didn’t threaten the small, local grocery store – the James Madison – that had been in Crescent since it was rebuilt back in 1955. Lizzie had stopped by the James Madison on one her first trips outside of Alliance, drawn by the thick smell of chocolate chip cookies that would blanket blocks of the town around mid-afternoon. She had a long three weeks of dealing with the food from Alliance, and the small bakery at James Madison was like an oasis. She bought thirty dollars of cookies that day, all chocolate chip—her favorite. But just as she opened the door to leave, she heard the clerk, a woman looking to be in her seventies, make a comment to her coworker.

  "Damned shame—such a fat, little girl. I feel guilty just selling her those cookies."

  And that was it. Lizzie hated the James Madison, and would only shop at the Shop-N-Save, even though its pastries were pedestrian at best, its pies too doughy and its cookies flat and listless (she knew she could bake circles around their baker, but just never felt like getting involved). No one there chastised her for eating too much. They just left her alone, and let her be.

  So she always passed by the b
ack of the James Madison on her way home. After all, they couldn’t sell all their cookies in one day. And even when they were cold and a little stale, they were the best in town. After a few circumspect glances, she pushed open the metal lid of the small dumpster that she probably knew better than the trashmen. Leaning in, she had to push up on her bosom, so she could clear the lip. It was loaded with bags, all covered with flour. She angrily tore through the plastic, glancing up now and again to make sure no one was coming. Finally, under ten others, after almost giving up, her hand ripped open a small green bag, and the faint smell of chocolate reached her nose. She rustled through it in the dark, brushing aside cakes and crullers, pies still in their aluminum pans and brownies that were hard as bricks. A wide smile settled on her face as she clutched some cookies. She pushed aside the other bags, then hurriedly cherry-picked out over a dozen. A few even had bites taken out, but she didn’t mind. Her stomach could withstand almost any assault, bacterial or otherwise.

  “You damned, stupid bitch!”

  She froze in the dumpster, cursing that she dug her hand back in one last time. The voice, clearly a man’s, was a little ways off, but Lizzie couldn’t tell in what direction. She strained to hear something more, scanned the intersection nearby, trying to see movement in the shadows.

  "-- but I always used protection!" screamed a girl's voice, one Lizzie swore she recognized.

  Then, she heard a sound that almost any human instinctively knows. It was of a fist hitting a head, and of that head breaking free from the neck that held it. Lizzie knew in an instant whomever the man hit was dead, and his next word confirmed it.

  “Shit.”

  Slowly, she withdrew her hand from the dumpster, and lowered its metal lid carefully, trying not to make it squeal. She wiped her hand on her pant-leg, then crouched next to the dumpster, in the shadow, and listened.

  She heard a grunt, then a few footsteps, leading away from her. She tried to think of what was nearby, and could only figure that the man was somewhere near the Drug store, the Deli, or the Music store. She guessed the man went down the narrow alley between the Music store and the Drug store, for she heard a car start, then drive off.

  “Wonder who that was?” she muttered to herself, as she headed back on her way, digging in her bag to munch on a couple of cookies. She shrugged her shoulders. “Doesn’t matter to me.”

  5

  The night may have come to a cold end in the town of Crescent, but throughout Zorrell College, things were just getting started. The past three months had been building to this day, the caucus, with various lectures and seminars not only on the political process, but on the ramifications of the presidential election at this time in history. The new president could make a profound global impact, building new relations with many the outgoing head of state let cool. And with Senator Ford as an alumnus, many rallies and voter registration campaigns were waged by the students. So, with the caucus over, and the results still a few hours from coming in, it was time to celebrate.

  The campus was packed, with even the most reclusive of students out and about, looking for a drink, some pot, or an easy score. Seniors from Dubuque High were also infiltrating the campus grounds, eager to party, but most of them were eager to see The Mars Volta, who were playing in the Hubert Center. Even a few strays from Alliance were trying to look old and mingle.

  “Did you hafta wear that?” angrily scolded Heather, as she, Rachel and Adrian made their way up the main hill separating the campus of Zorrell from the town. The trees were thickest at this point, and the dorms were on the far side of the campus, with the three main academic halls closest. The lights were all but gone, and dozens of shadows could be seen in the distance, pressing forward in their own battle plans. The grass was still wet from the earlier rain, and though the temperature had dropped quickly, it hadn’t yet frozen the mud. Rachel had worn flat canvas sneakers, and was determined to keep her feet dry. “I told you to wear your boots.”

  “Do you think the college kids are gonna wear rainboots? They live right next to the Center.” Rachel paused, then jumped to a series of flat rocks. She was a rail-thin tall girl, with thick red hair that was almost larger than her head and feet seemingly longer than her forearms. “Why’d you guys even wear coats? You know we’re gonna hafta ditch ‘em once we get there.” Rachel jumped to another rock, then suddenly stood still, feeling a chill come over her.

  “What is it?” asked Adrian. His eyes were always on Rachel, hoping to catch an errant smile or glance. No matter how inane the errand, he tried to always accompany her wherever she went, even if it made him look like less of a man. Rumors floated around Alliance as to his sexual preference, and though he had some disturbing dreams on that very subject, the one thing he was sure of was his attraction to her.

  Rachel glanced around her, suddenly drawn to the black trees bereft of leaves, dancing in the wind of winter. Robbed of sound, naked and cold, they seemed knit together by their shared condition, as a chorus signaling danger and death. Rachel brushed away the omen, and smiled back at Adrian.

  “It’s nothing—I guess I’m colder than I thought.”

  After a few more minutes of creeping through the trees, they came upon one of the main parking lots. It was filled with trash; everything from campaign flyers to beer cans, and even a few empty kegs lying around the side of the road. Senator Ford made her opening remarks from that parking lot, holding an impromptu press conference from one of her buses. Now, it was filled with dozens of mini keg parties as college kids and their dropout friends sat on the hoods and roofs of every manner of old car imaginable, each blaring music louder than the next.

  “We gotta go around,” fearfully whispered Rachel, terribly intimidated by the old college boys. “We’ll never get through all them.”

  “Come on,” said Heather as she pulled at Rachel, diving headlong into the lot. Heather was like a mirror image of Lizzie; both overweight, both with skin issues and thin, unkempt brown hair, with most people who met them for the first time calling them sisters. But while Lizzie was morbidly obese, Heather was more of a large per shape, with relatively thin shoulder and a petite bust that lead down to a spreading stomach and wide hips. In jeans, she could catch the eye of a few guys who were into 'curvier' women, but her abrasive attitude usually pushed them away. “It’ll take too long to go ‘round.” Adrian followed, and they all tried to act old and cool, keeping their eyes to themselves, Adrian bopping his head to the beat of whatever music they passed by. Most of it was Mars Volta, but a few were playing heavier stuff, showing they were too cool even to play any Volta.

  “Ain’t you a little cute thing,” said one of the boys they passed. He was leaning against an old dirty red Dodge Neon with dozens of small scrapes around its fender. A few of his friends sat on lawn chairs around him, while he leaned back and forth on one of the car’s doors, enjoying the squeal of the door desperately trying to break free of its hinges. He looked like the other guys seated around him, but if one gazed deep into his blue eyes, one would find a darkness devoid of life. “You should come party with us!”

  Heather giggled, just like she had seen her mother do a million times, then realized it wasn’t her they were looking at.

  Rachel nervously smiled, unused to so many male eyes on her.

  Orionblues was on their stereo, that is, their iPod hooked up to a docking station, connected to their car speakers.

  "Lonely livin', on backs of fools,

  lonely drinkin', down in a pool of booze . . ."

  “You like this song?” asked another of the other boys, his beer sloshing in his hand as he lumbered to his feet. He wore a pale yellow shirt that read ‘Fuckin’ the World, One Bitch at a Time,’ though it was stretched to the limit around a stomach that looked to be hiding a dead body in its depths. They all laughed behind him. “You even know what it means?”

  “Come on!” shouted Heather, dragging Rachel away. Adrian followed, keeping his head down.

  “Such
a damned waste,” said the boy leaning against the Neon. “Gay guy with that cute thing. I woulda been all over her. Maybe one day, one day soon, I'll get my chance . . .”

  They laughed even louder, as Heather led Rachel onto the path leading out of the lot. They stopped for a moment, so Rachel could collect herself and Adrian could catch up.

  “And why are we here again?” pouted Adrian, his ego bruised, but unable to vent on the college boys. “I think this was a bad idea.”

  "Oh please, Adrian, you’ll be one of 'em in a couple of years,” rebuked Heather, as she grabbed Rachel’s hand. “You alright?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” She straightened up. “Come on; we’re gonna be late.”

  The moved on, but Adrian was still in a foul mood.

  “How are we even gonna get in?" he whined. "Won’t they check ID’s, or somethin’?”

  “I know someone,” said Heather proudly. They rounded a corner, and for a moment, they all stood still, almost in shock.

  Hubert Center was a mob scene, swarming with kids making their way inside. The Center itself was lit up brighter than usual, with two enormous spotlights at the entrance banking back and forth, illuminating the night sky. Around the periphery a few fights could be seen flaring up, the inevitable result of having a polarizing candidate like Senator Ford on the campus for even a short period of time. The liquor flowed freely as the sun set, washing away responsibility and circumspection, fueling the mindless, pathetic rage of the college student.

  A few police cars could be seen arriving, as the campus police began to break up the fights and put the most egregiously drunk in handcuffs. As one of the cars passed by, Rachel saw what looked to be a twelve year old boy in the back seat, his hands still in cuffs behind his back. His face was covered in sweat, and he was bald—another thing she thought was terribly odd. As the car sped by, his expression was imprinted on her mind, as surely as if it were a billboard for all to see. He wasn’t just scared. He was terrified, his eyes betraying an utter hopelessness, as if he was being carted off for slaughter. She felt he wanted to cry out for salvation, but something he had done earned him that place in the car, sealed the doors shut for his journey into a waiting hell. Rachel suddenly felt it difficult to breathe, as guilt over past transgressions resurfaced in her mind, threatening to drown her very soul.

  “Where should we go?” asked Adrian. “We can’t get caught by those cops.”

  “The south entrance,” stated Heather triumphantly. “Just keep it cool, and we’ll get into the Center.”

  “They don’t even call it the ‘Center,’” whined Rachel, with a mocking laugh, as she shook off her unease. “They call it ‘Hubert.’”

  Heather harrumphed, and led them through the crowd. A couple of kids glanced at them, but for the most part everyone was too involved with each other to even take notice. They smoked their pot, popped their pills, giggled, danced, leaned against the cold air with faces of resignation and indifference, and preened in the best their mommies and daddies could buy them, railing against the unseen, unknown world for perpetuating the same old ills they knew nothing about. They stood as the inheritors, the motivators, the small, petty engines of tomorrow, waiting for their guilt to fade so they could use and abuse what of the world is left to them. Behind their overgrown stubble and matted-down dreadlocked hair lay eyes filled with fear, shrouded in a blazé swagger every high-schooler found irresistible. Heather looked on them with awe, Rachel fear, and Adrian with a blush of defiance, reluctant to become one of that particular herd.

  Finally, they got to the entrance, taking their places in a line that stretched out from the Center to the outer doors of a nearby dorm.

  “Almost there,” whispered Heather in Rachel’s ear. “Aren’t you glad you came?”

  “Yeah,” she whispered back. “Still, I just—” suddenly her cellphone went off, with her ringtone she downloaded from the Hannah Montana website. Rachel cringed in embarrassment, hurriedly fumbling for it in her jeans’ pocket. She opened it, and read a text message, going white as a sheet.

  “We need to go,” she said.

  “Oh, no, we came too far for this!” yelled Heather, not wanted her fun spoiled. She hoped to be right next to Rachel all during the concert, and if she could get her a drink, all the better, for she was working up the nerve try to kiss her, or at least figure out once and for all if she even liked other girls. “We’re almost in!” She frantically looked around, and saw the junior at the door, who waved to her. “We’ll never get this chance again!”

  “We’ve got to go,” said Rachel, unperturbed. “Philip’s dead.”

  Heather snatched the phone from Rachel and read it herself. “Fine time for him to die," she snapped, swiping off the phone. "Alright, let’s go back.”

  6

  Alliance was one of the most reputable boarding schools in the country. That is, few people heard of it, because of how little trouble seemed to happen there. It was a small campus, with a central building for classes and two dormitory buildings adjacent. One of the dorms suffered a terrible fire a year back, and as a result, all of the juniors and seniors lived in ten houses one street back. They tried to rush construction, but for some reason bad luck seemed to inhabit the new building. The foundation was found to be ruined, as it turned out that in the old town of Derrymore there was an oil storage facility that leaked most of its tanks into the ground during the devastation of 1933. So it took eight months for a hazmat crew to soak up all the oil, and declare it safe. Then, as soon as the plumbing was laid, it ruptured during the first winter, destroying the concrete that was poured.

  Devastations seemed to be the story of life in Crescent, or 'Derrymore' as it was once called. Small catastrophes happened prior to 1933, involving tornadoes that seemed to skip every other town but hit squarely on Derrymore, or floods that could be contained except where the Iowa river passed through the town. But 1933 was by far the climax of the town’s woe. A cluster of tornadoes—thirteen in all, pummeled Derrymore, in advance of a massive series of thunderstorms. The tornadoes leveled over half the buildings in the town’s small center, then jitterbugging over the residential section. A heating Oil company was spared, only to be hit repeatedly by the approaching lighting storms, setting off a series of massive explosions that triggered a fire that ended up engulfing the entire town. Out of the forty-five hundred residents, two thousand and fifty died in the cataclysm.

  When the ash settled, it had to be decided whether or not to rebuild the town. Derrymore had no investments to speak of, and the primary carrier for most of the residential and commercial insurance folded shortly after the Great Depression. The town sat as a stain on the Earth, until shortly after WWII.

  General Motors bought a parts supplier near Dubuque, and decided to rebuild Derrymore to house its workers. The name was up for debate, as those who survived the devastation of 1933 claimed the name brought bad luck. So the town was named after the only canyon in the state of Iowa, which lay just outside its border—Crescent Gorge. GM, to great fanfare, resurrected the town within a year, christening it Crescent.

  Sadly, times changed, and parts could be had cheaper across the border. GM sold rights to the town to a union of meatpackers. They, in turn several years later, sold the town to a Steel conglomerate. Crescent faded quickly from any national headline, and sometime in 1996 it was sold again, this time to parties unknown. Minor disasters still occurred within the town’s borders, but something seemed to be appeased, and lay slumbering, only waking intermittently to exact some small penance.