on by teenagers with little else to do in a small town after dark than risk their lives for the sake of self-expression. Newly applied red paint advertised young love and a pair of initials I recognized.
As I considered whether I should drop in at the kids’ homes, maybe give them a lecture about defacing public property, my eyes unconsciously sought a pair of more familiar initials. B.T. C.R. Their faded paint was in two different colors. My initials, which I’d sprayed on the stone myself, were blue and stood alone, unattached. Chad’s were in black, perpetually linked with M.H., a dark-haired girl with bee-stung lips whom he’d loved passionately the summer before he’d enlisted in the military. She’d married someone else and moved away from Maryville, but her initials remained, a visible piece of our town’s history.
The ferry blasted its horn and a deck hand scurried to drape a chain across the road as the ferry’s vehicle ramp groaned upward, locking in the vehicles parked on its deck. On the road, half a dozen more cars and trucks remained, recipients of a questionable honor—they’d be the first in line for the next crossing. Their turn would come once the ferry reached the opposite bank, dropped its ramp, exchanged eastbound vehicles for ones bound west, and then made its way back across the river.
Maybe it was my presence—the sight of a uniformed cop, mirrored glasses glinting in the sun, leaning against a glossy white SUV that was topped by Mars lights and emblazoned with Maryville’s logo. Or perhaps it was simply that today’s drivers were all veterans of the process. But in either event, no horns blared, no curses flowed, and no one broke traffic laws trying to back uphill and out of line. The drivers sat patiently, most with their windows shut and their vehicles idling, burning fuel for the sake of air-conditioning.
The noise from the ferry’s powerful engines indicated that they were now fully engaged, fighting to navigate across the strong river current. I looked away from the water churning in the wake of its departure and toward the bluffs again. Up near the top, there was a section of rock that staggered outward, like a side view of a sloppy stack of thick, grubby white dinner plates. And at the very top of the stack was a flat stone, just big enough for two. Though there were undoubtedly others of many generations who claimed that spot as their own, I always thought of it as ours. Chad’s and mine.
I glanced again at the departing ferry and smiled to myself as I resisted the urge to look down at my watch. But the impulse to time the ferry’s circuit from the Illinois side to the Kentucky side and back was a strong one, rooted in the best days of my childhood.
How old had we been, I wondered, when Chad and I had first climbed down onto that outcropping, defying every adult rule about children staying off the bluffs? On days just like this, the two of us would lie on our stomachs, betting pennies on the timing of the ferry, our elbows propped, our bare arms and legs touching. Not all that many years later, we’d snuggled together on that same rock after midnight, two off-duty cops sharing a bottle of Jack hidden in a paper bag and watching the lights of the ferry moving ever-predictably between the two riverbanks. Touching then, too. But in a way that childhood had never imagined.
My mind veered away from that train of thought and I refocused on the present. Just downriver, a convoy of barges moved slowly down the Ohio, the weight of their cargo making them ride low on the water, the deep hum of their heavy engines echoing off the bluffs.
I pulled my cap from my head and wiped my arm across my forehead. For a moment, I wasted time searching the sky for some sign of a storm cloud. Then I straightened my back, put my cap back on my head and climbed back into my SUV.
For the next half hour, I drove a slow, lazy loop around Maryville. Just making sure that everything was peaceful in my town. Peaceful and—unlike my personal life—under control. Except for children, few people were even outside. No one lingered on Main Street. And even seniors like Marta Moye and Larry Hayes, who usually sat out on their porches this time of day, had retreated out of the heat and into cooler