Chapter Thirty One

I was talking to the late Hunter Thompson this morning. He is writing a new book called "Fear and Loathing in the eternal hereafterlife." He said. "It's going to be a bitch to find a publisher."

So you know, by the time you read this I will most likely be dead. As I write this memory down right now, I am very much alive.

I alluded in the past to the odd way people talk in this neck of the woods. Coach Butcher is from a town called Loogootee, that should be pronounced Lou-Goo-Tea, but instead is Low-Go-Tea. There is a town down this way called Cairo, but people here call it Kay-ro. Peru is pronounced Pay-roo. Vesailles is not Ver-sigh but Ver-sails. There is a town in Kentucky called New Madrid. There is an original Madrid and people all over the world call it Ma-drid. So you might imagine that if there is an old one then the new one should sound just like it. Au contraire. It is not Ma-drid. It is Mad-rid. I'm Mad and I will Rid myself of whatever it is that is making me so.

In the Wabash Valley/Mississippi Valley/Ohio Valley, which I believe includes every Midwestern state except Ohio, there is a fault below the crust of the Earth, that stretches across a vast portion of the eastern section of the south central region of the great Midwest. It is a little known and seldom active natural mistake, known as the New Madrid fault. It runs for 150 miles starting in Kay-ro Illinois and runs through New Madrid Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and down into Arkansas. It's what geological experts have referred to as a disaster waiting to happen. In 1812 it tore apart the Midwest and rerouted the Mississippi river. It still shakes a little from time to time, but has been of little concern to the regular folk here for about 200 years.

So we look like an army, standing on the rise just beyond the street, above the well manicured lawn that runs about 400 yards to the base of the cylindrical George Rogers Clark Memorial. We are on the street that runs west, right into the nearby Abraham Lincoln Memorial bridge. The memorial looks like a giant, slender, birthday cake made of grey limestone. There are big 3 story columns that support the structure , running every 15 feet around the monument. The overhanging stone roof is crowned with a very plain circular rise that gives the effect that another monument could be place directly on top of the existing one, like a "Lego" building block.

Just to the west of the Memorial is a statue of the French fur trader Francis Vigo. Francis is sitting in a great big stone chair, and his garment flows over the arms and onto the base. If one is to believe that this is an accurate depiction of Vigo, then he must have eaten the insides out of every fur he ever traded. He is very fat.

So there we are, a unified force standing abreast, ready to march to the battle. Dave, Candice, Carol, Dr. Granger, Louis, Louis, Coach Butcher, Russell, Cynthia, Mary Beth, Deborah, Lisa, Me, Bob, and John Cougar Mellencamp.

Bob's eyes were as big as saucers behind those magnifying glasses on his face. His mouth hung open wide, his lips were like trembling sausages. "JOHNNY TOUGER!"

"Hi" said Mellencamp as he squashed a cigarette butt with his shoe. When he extended his hand to shake, Bob dropped Oprah from his arms and embraced the rock star in a violent hug that surprised John and made all the air escape from his lungs.

"DOHNNEE TOUGAT!" howled Bob in an ever-evolving form of the performer's name. "I WUV OOH SO MUCH RODDIE COUGRA!

It's funny that as uncomfortable a situation that Mr. Mellencamp was in at this point, he didn't try and push away from Bob. He hugged Bob in return. They seemed like long separated brothers.

I never really got a chance to ask John Cougar Mellencamp what he was doing there that day. We didn't get a chance to talk. Oprah had darted towards the bridge to chase the thousands of birds that had strangely congregated on the ornate, stone and metal guardrail. He was barking frantically at them but they did not fly away. It was about that time that the New Madrid Fault heaved, and shifted. The earth began to tremble and everyone stared at the ground as if they could see what was happening. Sirens started to wail and cars collided. Lisa fell down. The feeling of standing on a fluid Earth created internal uneasiness in my stomach. I panned the world around me and it was all shaking. The bridge was starting to break into pieces and I ran to retrieve Oprah. Louis and Lisa ran behind me.

The rest of my group had their attention on the Memorial. It began to rotate like a Merry-Go-Round, sinking into the ground as it went. John Mellencamp ran toward the structure to see if there was something he could do about it. The statue of Francis Vigo toppled off of it's base and crushed the rock star, killing him. He never had a chance.

I scooped up Oprah and held him tightly. George Roger Clark was standing next to me on the bridge with his mouth agape. "Is this what you brought us here to see?" I asked him.

"I didn't know this was going to happen." He said as the memorial sunk all the way to it's roof. People were crawling from the gaps between the columns and the earth like cockroaches escaping from a bug trap. "This is a disaster!"

As Lisa took Oprah from my arms she tripped into me, knocking me into the guardrail. The section I was holding onto decided to give way as I was steadying myself and I became all arms and legs as I grasped for anything to break my fall. I quickly slipped across the stone opening and within seconds I was hanging, by my fingertips, 800 feet above the swirling Wabash River. The drop to the river was certain death. The base of the bridge, below me, was a bed of concrete and rock. My hands were raw from grasping at the stone bridge and the strength was leaving my fingers. I fell.

As I looked down to see what was going to kill me, my fall suddenly stopped. I could hear Louis calling to me. "I can't let go!...Marty...I can't let go!"

I turned my head upward and saw Louis Tooth's face, red with strain, teeth clinched, eyes watering and staring into mine. The love of a friend and confidant was never more evident. Louis was holding my arm by the wrist and screaming "I can't let go!"

The fascinating part about this was I had no fear. Everyone else's attention was focused on the sinking George Rogers Clark memorial so they didn't see that Louis was holding on to me with his missing hand. Louis appeared as if he were just lying down at the edge of the bridge with the veins popping out on his forehead. I looked like I was frozen in mid-air, waving bye bye about 2 feet below the bridge floor. There was nothing visible to indicate that Louis was stopping me from falling besides the white imprints of his phantom fingers around my wrist.

"I can't let go!" he repeated.

"You must." I calmly replied.