DICK MARSDEN POURED A CUP OF HOT COFFEE from his thermos and settled back comfortably in his captain’s chair. Only two cars were loaded onto the ferry that every other hour crossed from the Tennessee shore to the Missouri side of the Mississippi, then back again. It was the last run of the night. The gangplank had been pulled in and the metal gate secured across the ferry’s open bow.
They’d shove off in two or three minutes. Running ahead of schedule, Marsden had time for a quick cup of coffee.
The view from the pilothouse was impressive, even in the dark. The Mississippi was nearly two miles wide, nothing at all like it was at St. Louis. Marsden had worked on fleeting barges there for nearly twenty years. The river at St. Louis—narrow and fast flowing—was like a muddy canal.
Down here near the Missouri boot heel, it was a different story. Three miles upstream, a new four-lane suspension bridge crossed the river. Marsden could just make out the red aircraft warning lights on the top of the span’s superstructure. The bridge handled all the interstate traffic crossing from Dyersburg, Tennessee, to Caruthersville, Missouri, where motorists could pick up Interstate 55. To the south, it was 90 miles to Memphis. To the north, St. Louis was 160 miles away.
The ferry mainly served locals who worked in Tennessee and used it to shave commuting time from their homes in Missouri.
Marsden had just set his coffee mug on the instrument console when the first shock wave hit, throwing him out of his chair so hard his forehead struck the steering wheel. The blow stunned him. The ferry had risen sharply in the water, pulling at its moorings as if a giant hand were trying to pick it up. Then it fell, the hull slamming down again.
Trying to stand on unsteady feet, Marsden gripped his seat so he wouldn’t be knocked over again. He watched in disbelief as waves appeared suddenly on the river, six-foot swells rolling from shore to shore. Grabbing a pair of binoculars, he looked upstream toward the bridge. He saw the glint of headlights midway across the deck. Probably a long-distance trucker.
Then, unbelievably, the bridge’s long center span snapped in two. Marsden saw the truck, its long trailer outlined in yellow lights, plunge into the river. The deck and part of the superstructure fell right on top of it, throwing up a wall of spray.
The shaking hadn’t let up. Every time Marsden tried to stagger out of the pilothouse, he was knocked against the bulkhead.
The cars parked down on the deck were bouncing around like toys, sliding back and forth as the ferry pitched and rolled.
Only minutes earlier, a big three-decker towboat lit up like a Christmas tree and pushing a long string of coal barges had glided by, heading downstream toward Memphis. Marsden watched as the same towboat went by him again, this time heading upriver. It took a moment for his dazed mind to comprehend what he was seeing.
The current was pushing the barges and tow backward.
Across the river, on the Missouri side, large sections of the bank were falling into the water. So much of the shoreline was caving in over there that it looked like a landslide.
His deckhand staggered through the doorway. His face was pale. “The river’s full of whirlpools,” he said.
Marsden barely heard him. He had his binoculars on the towboat and barges rapidly heading upstream toward the sunken bridge. Then, as he watched, the tow disappeared.
There was no other way to describe what happened. The tow went first, dropping out of sight. Then the string of barges, the last one lifting up, red running lights still ablaze as it nosed up and vanished from view.
When the shaking finally stopped, Marsden went out on the narrow bridge next to the pilothouse. The river was still wild. The deckhand was right about the whirlpools. A big one had opened up, swirling like a huge inverted funnel just downstream from the ferry. Marsden focused his binoculars on where the barges and towboat had disappeared. It was over two miles upstream out toward the middle of the river.
Marsden saw a line of boiling white water and realized what he was looking at. It was the foaming edge of a sharp drop-off.
There was a waterfall out there.