Wakening

That familiar rise in the road loomed ahead — the one that seemed to bridge the two massive parts of the tandem mill. He could see the lights of the stadium off to the right where they had been for fifty, no, maybe seventy years. The lights had been there for as long as Marc could remember, but it had been years since he had seen them all lit.

He could not see all the stadium lights from the road. The towering roofs of the tin mill still blocked the view of the ones on the west side. The foggy glow from the stadium created an eerie effect as the darkness of the mill and the rising hillside behind the stadium dominated the scene and dampened the bright lights even though they reached eighty feet into the air. The lights were only visible for a few seconds as his car reached the flat peak of the overpass and started down the incline on the other side towards the town's main thoroughfare.

An unmarked mill gate on the right side curved towards a large corrugated building and back again under the bridging road. The landscape was dark and haunting. The blue-gray coating of a steel mill talcum powder bath had fallen on the buildings and roadway at the gate for many years giving the scene a touch of homeliness and despair. How could anything be that dusty? It was a bleak, three-dimensional lithograph of the industrial revolution.

It hasn't changed, Marc thought. It's still the same as it was in the late 50s. The short stretch of four-lane road — about two miles — still merged into two lanes as he reached the number five-mill gate and the start of downtown Weirton. Downtown? Yes, this was downtown Weirton. A row of one-, two-, at most three- story buildings on the west side, and the mill, — rising like a big, dark mountain of steel, mortar, brick, and fencing on the east side.

Could Marc find his way to the football game? He turned off Main Street at Virginia Avenue, and then drove up the hill for a few blocks to the high school. Well, it's no longer the high school. Marc wondered if there was anything still there. At one of the class reunions a few years ago, he had bought a brick, supposedly from the old school. At the time, it was being torn down, and Chris Barrie had brought some souvenirs from the demolition site. Marc had paid $10 for what he trusted was his piece of Weir High School history.

Virginia Avenue was still there; however, there were more empty lots, boarded-up buildings and parking lots for mill employees than Marc remembered. The area looked old, real old. There was the telephone office. He remembered the telephone "operators" who would go in and out of the building as he came and went from the high school. The young women in their nylons and high heels enchanted him. At the time Marc regarded them as women because they were older and out of high school — women who worked at the "romantic" job of telephone operator. All around the dilapidated telephone building, which now had a sign indicating the ISU (Independent Steelworkers Union) occupied the premises, was the discarded and unusable waste of a struggling industry and its people. Obviously, the telephone company had long since moved.

Marc reached the end of the next block. The pitch of the road was steep, at least that is the way it seemed tonight. When Marc drove these hilly streets at sixteen, they did not seem to be any more than slight rises in the road. It's all what you get accustomed to, he thought. Now his Jeep Grand Cherokee seemed too big for the road let alone being able to make the turn into the parking lot outside the stadium. Marc suddenly stopped the light brown Jeep. He was confused and unsure of himself and felt he was driving into a tunnel as the road ahead grew narrower and darker.

The parking lot was gone!

No, it was just so dark that at first glance he didn't see the barrier at the entrance: a rickety, one legged wooden horse holding up a partially broken two-by-four.

The lot, or what appeared to be the remains of the parking lot, was packed with cars, trucks, and buses parked haphazardly. The few gray cloudy figures standing behind the temporary gate were simultaneously motioning for him to turn away and go down the street to his left or continue up another block to the very top of Virginia Avenue. Marc was confused by the traffic controllers. He knew that climb ahead was steeper yet and he didn't want to take that vertical trip.

He turned the steering wheel sharply left, but he was already committed to pulling into the lot. He hit the brakes to avoid going any farther and in fear of the unknown darkness. As the Jeep came to a sudden stop, Marc shifted into reverse. Before he could start to backup, a horn honked and honked again. With a jolt, he slammed the brake pedal down with a forceful drive of his right foot. The red glow of the Jeep's brake lights mixed with the headlights of a car behind created a murky violet-gray collage that made forms and objects indistinguishable.

"Hold it — you can't back up. Give him a chance to get out of the way," a sharp, husky voice called out coldly and somewhat angrily from the rear.

Marc sat still for a moment as he realized that a car behind him was going to be allowed into the parking lot. The barrier was being moved aside and the car turned right into the lot and proceeded down the narrow drive between uneven rows of parked cars, pickups, and school buses. With the gray darkness hanging over the passageway through the motionless vehicles, it reminded Marc of a quick view of a cemetery corridor of large crypts.

"Okay. Come on back. Cut it hard. You have plenty of room," the rough voice said again.

Marc did exactly that. He continued at a slow, cautious pace until the voice yelled, "Okay, okay."

Marc stopped. Why is it so dark? He wondered. "I can't see a damn thing. Are my headlights on? I see fine in front. Must be these new glasses — damn bifocals. It gets worse with every new prescription."

He turned the Jeep into the side street running ninety degrees off of Virginia Avenue. The road was narrow with cars parked on both sides of the street; there was only room for one car in the center of the road. This is like driving through the hedgerows of England all over again, Marc thought. The one lane created a tunnel effect that the night darkness only intensified. If he met someone coming from the opposite direction, it would be a game of chicken to see who would back-up first to an unoccupied area and pull out of the way.

"God, this street hasn't changed either," Marc mumbled to himself.

The small houses seemed tinier than he remembered. But their appearance of clinging to the side of the hill was still the same. Their fragile foothold left the impression that they could let go any minute and tumble down the hillside in unison.

On the right side of the street the houses were well above the road level and towered over everything on the downward side. They seemed to hang on edge and lean unstably forward. The slightest disruption of their perch would cause them...