These youngsters don't know squat about the Great Chasm, old man Capital decided as he looked at the seemingly endless row of tents that lined the hole's perimeter, and at the long lines of enthusiastic patrons before them, waiting for their chance to buy a hot chocolate or perhaps a funnel cake'

(for what would a festival be without a funnel cake?, the old man mused)

'or maybe anticipating their turn to show their skills at the variety of games, the ring toss or the wheel of fortune or any number of commercial enterprises that cheapened the original occasion's sanctity.

'Humph.'�

The sound gurgled deep in his throat as he looked at his surroundings. Several children, a group of seven, pursued each other in circles, clothed in safe primary colors against the evening's deepening purples, their light, innocent laughter carrying over the divide with ease, reverberating in a slight echo and living on beyond its intended lifespan.

No, these young people didn't know squat about the Great Chasm, couldn't understand the horrible truth that hid beneath the glamorous facade. Capital had lived that truth.

Their very presence here, to celebrate an event they knew nothing of, was a falsehood. And what is the point of living, Capital wondered, if one is living a lie?

Capital walked over to a large concrete precipice jutting over the chasm, constructed at the Great Feast's inception, all those years ago, for sightseeing purposes. The precipice's architect had outfitted it with two wooden park benches and half a dozen pair of sightseeing binoculars, those peculiar mechanical purveyors of magnified sight that swiveled on their long metal supports and required a steady diet of quarters to operate. Metal guardrails, their orange paint chipped and faded, protected Capital from a certain fatal fall on the precipice's three exposed sides to the chasm. It was somewhat absurd, Capital thought: the two tiers of guardrail, with their questionable durability, represented the only true security measure against accident prone citizens.

Without question, too little. In retrospect, much too late.

He laughed, and it was a bitter, hollow sound that floated on the wind across the great divide. Capital hunched over as his laugh became a fit of coughs, and he clutched his abdomen with both hands as a vise squeezed his lungs. After the bout passed, the old man spit a thick, yellowish strand of saliva over the railing, sending it hurtling into the blackness below.

The wind screamed as it picked up speed, smashing into him, whipping his shoulder length salt and pepper hair around his lined face. The breeze was warm, dying nature having spent her last reserves of energy on this gorgeous autumn evening. Capital rose to his full height and several vertebrae in his lower back popped, groaning as they realigned themselves. Well over six feet tall, Capital towered over his surroundings. His stature was accentuated by the diminutive guard railings in front of him, four feet in height, and the mechanical sightseeing device in front of him. The only thing here to make one of Capital's size feel small, the man thought, was the large, gaping hole'almost a canyon'in front of him.

Capital stepped up against the guard rails, placing his palms over the cool metal'how it reassured the normally acrophobic man!'as he peered over the edge. There it was: a monstrous abyss set square in the middle of Vine Street, its perimeter surrounded with a thin ribbon of police tape. Residential homes and small area businesses surrounded the gap, flush against the tape. The hole was immense in size, approximately two hundred feet long by one hundred feet wide, and over three hundred feet in depth at its deepest, but local officials were quick to point out, in an almost boastful fashion, that the hole never ceased growing; small, almost immeasurable amounts of pavement and sidewalk crumbled and dropped into the depths on a nearly daily basis, constantly threatening to swallow up nearby homes and businesses, because no one'no engineer, no construction worker, no public safety official'had ever investigated the hole's potential for entropy. Capital peered at the hole's bottom, its shadowy depths impossible to judge in the deepening dark.

And the vast majority of the city's residents, Capital thought, were completely satisfied with the city's sparse security measures. They were content to believe the government's assertion that they were safe. Local government never sought an expert's opinion on the matter, as far as Capital knew, and they never offered area residents any sort of assurance as to the area's safety, or any funds to help relocate businesses in potential danger. As a result, many of the buildings that had existed at the time of the sinkhole's creation still stood on the verge of the aperture, precariously close to falling in as the hole grew with each passing day. Actual numbers varied; one unofficial inspector declared that the hole grew three inches in diameter per year; another man, a scientist of some sort, proclaimed that the hole grew exponentially, maybe three inches last year but, this year, more likely nine, as the hole's size weakened all the earth's foundation around it. This scientist had produced some sort of formula to explain the phenomenon, and, while Capital couldn't understand the calculations, he was certain it was very scientific.

The hole's increasing size and seemingly insatiable appetite threatened Capital's favorite restaurant, a small Chinese noodle house owned by several small Chinese immigrants. When the hole had first opened up, almost fifty years ago, the Chinese restaurant was several safe feet away, but, over the years, with the hole widening, the noodle house now stood on the brink of disaster, the hole situated only six or eight inches away.

While the threat of the restaurant's destruction in the coming years unsettled Capital, the hole's proximity caused only an annoying inconvenience in the present time. On every occasion that Capital wanted to eat in the Chinese restaurant, he was forced to carefully navigate the narrow strip of land between the hole's outer edges and the restaurant's front door (which, by the way, opened to the outside!), always cognizant of the three hundred foot drop off just a misstep away. Maybe it existed only in Capital's mind, maybe it was just paranoia, but with every visit, Capital thought he felt the ground growing ever weaker, threatening to cave beneath his feet as he shuffled to his destination.

Regardless of this annoyance, Capital continued to eat at the Chinese restaurant, always sitting at his usual seat at the front of the establishment, so that he could gaze out the large picture window at the chasm only feet away. The wait staff were always friendly and polite, despite the imminent threat to their well being, although Capital felt he could detect an undercurrent of anxiety in their manner as of late.

Presently, as Capital gazed into that overwhelming emptiness, a sensation of helplessness engulfed him and he became absorbed in the sheer immensity of that rift in the Earth's terra. The hole, it would seem in the evening shade, could swallow a man whole, leaving not a trace to be found, nor a remnant of his existence, forgotten forever. Capital shuddered.

A hole of this magnitude, he thought, is something to be regarded with fear. Not celebration. Not with games and 'black hole'� chocolate donut holes and a 're-enactment ceremony.'� And the homes'homes should not exist in such close proximity to this danger. For several moments, his mind struggled with the maddening disparity of it all.

Capital turned from the inky blackness below him and looked to his left, to a shabbily constructed wooden platform that would serve as the stage for the night's 're-enactment ceremony.'� A dozen rows of blue, steel folding chairs were arranged in front of the stage in preparation for the performance. A generic carnival theme, looped continually, carried across the distance, background music to Capital's musings. To Capital's aged ears, which had witnessed over three dozen of these celebrations through the years, the music had lost its novelty, now constantly recycling itself, seemingly intended to drive nearby listeners absolutely crazy after prolonged exposure.

He walked back towards the celebration, spotting once again, out of the corner of his eye, that unruly gang of children. An overinflated sense of his own importance took hold of his ego, and he suddenly saw not a group of hyperactive, energetic youths, but a potential audience. Capital intended to educate them; these children were the adults of tomorrow, and he could ensure that the Great Chasm's history'its true history, not the storybook myth those city officials propagated'would be passed on to future generations.

As Capital walked through the crowds, the smell of frying dough and sizzling lamb assaulted his senses, and his stomach gurgled in answer. He reassured his protruding waistline by patting it gently. There would be time for that later, he told himself, and felt himself propelled onward by a growing sense of duty to the truth.

The children, occupying a large space devoid of vendors and crowds off to the side, ran here and there, giggling, yelling, causing a commotion in general but not towards any particular end that Capital could see. Immersed in their hyperactivity, they didn't notice the tall old man until he had stepped within earshot.

'Children,'� he whispered. He didn't know why he whispered; he just felt it was respectful, perhaps, of his discreet subject matter to maintain a secretive, conspiratorial tone. Because of his enigmatic tone and intimidating stature, they turned to him and offered their full attention.

'Gather 'round, children,'� he breathed. They didn't.

Up to that point, he had been feeling much like a mysterious messenger in some awful short story, some elusive stranger who approaches the ignorant townsfolk at midnight with offers of the truth, starting with a small gang of impressionable, open minded children. In these stories, he thought, the intended audience would obey wordlessly, each one of them settling on the ground in a crosslegged posture, listening to the coming advice. Peer pressure and a growing curiosity would draw more and more townspeople to the conversation, winning over even the staunchest cynic, and, before long, the entire town would be seated in front of the wise old man's words. The culmination of the experience would be a grand revelation of truth to the townspeople, when they realized that their entire lives, until that beautiful moment of enlightenment, had been lived under false pretenses.

In reality, the children stared at him with an odd mixture of fear and hope smeared on their wide-eyed faces.

'We were just headed home, sir,'� a small spry fellow wearing a pair of Coke bottle glasses enunciated, squinting up at Capital against the setting sun's glare.

'Please, call me Cap,'� the old man said, his ice blue eyes twinkling in the setting sun. 'And sit. I have to tell you how the Great Chasm really came about.'�

A collective gasp issued from the children's mouths, and all eyes focused intently on Cap's deeply lined, leathery face. If Cap didn't have their attention before, he certainly had it now. The Great Chasm was a subject of constant interest to children, much like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny would be to children of our times.

'We all know the story of the Great Chasm, Mister Cap,'� another child, the would-be ringleader, said. 'We've all seen the re-enactment ceremony before, year after year.'�

This precocious and well-spoken youth wore a pair of brown corduroy pants, frayed at the cuffs, and a bright, solid orange t-shirt, spattered with dirt and a small mustard stain at the upper left sleeve.

'You've seen the re-enactment ceremony before, I know,'� Cap said. 'But I lived through those times. I was just a young boy, no older than any of you'�'here he paused for dramatic effect, offering several sample children throughout the audience a lingering look''but I remember it as if it were yesterday. And what you've seen in past years isn't the truth.

'At least, it's not the whole truth,'� Capital ended his plea, chuckling at his intended pun, its subtle humor lost on the children, who only stared at him blankly.

Cap sat down on the hard pavement, wincing in momentary pain as he bent his knees. He sat on his rump, with his soles flat on the ground and his knees drawn nearly to his chest. The children took his cue and similarly sat on the ground around him in a sloppy half-circle, ready to listen.

*

'Fifty years ago, the science of meteorology hadn't developed into the perfect art it is today. The weather forecasters'that's what we called them, in those days'would make predictions about weather patterns, based on what they thought was a sound method. Of course, if they knew then what we know now, they would've seen how wrong they all were, and things might be a lot different right now. That huge hole behind me, our reason for this celebration, might not even exist.

'Oftentimes, these weather forecasts amounted to nothing more than educated guesses, and, while they could predict a coming storm with some accuracy, it might end up coming a day or two late or we might end up getting two feet of snow where they had predicted only two inches.'�

Several children wore expressions of awe and wonderment, their brows furrowed and their mouths set in thin lines of pity. How could anyone exist in such a backwards state, ignorant of even the basic facts of their daily existence?

'Well, back in the autumn of 1962, these weather forecasters predicted a massive hurricane to hit Florida's southern tip. For days preceding this hurricane'they called it Hurricane Aristotle. I don't know why they couldn't just give storms normal names, like Thomas or Robert, but this one was Hurricane Aristotle, and for days before his predicted landfall, residents of Florida were urged to evacuate their homes and move to safer, higher ground. The forecasters anticipated that Aristotle might well flood their homes and destroy their land.

'Aristotle hit the Florida coastline with all of the force they had expected'�three days early. The area wasn't ready for it; many tourists were caught while checking out of their hotels, or in transit to public shelters, when torrential rainfalls and high-speed winds assaulted the region for four days. Trees and cars were ripped off the ground, sent flying through the air by the high-speed winds, often landing hundreds of feet away from their point of origin, sometimes crashing through homes or even landing on other people, mangling them or, more often, killing them outright.'�

The children looked on silently, in horror. A few could be seen trembling or whimpering softly at the gruesome picture that Capital painted.

'The rising waters left citizens hopelessly trapped in their flooded homes, and downed power lines left these people without electricity. Gas main breaks left them without gas for heating, or for their stoves. Water main breaks left them without water, except, of course, the gallons upon gallons falling upon them from the sky.'�

Capital knew his message was harsh and potentially psychologically damaging, but altogether necessary. These children needed to realize the brutal truth of life: sometimes tragedy occurred. Capital took a deep breath and continued.

'In one part of Florida, a security malfunction allowed all the captive animals to escape from the zoo. While most animals can naturally swim, they aren't prepared for flood conditions, so most of them died. Among the animals, however, was a half-ton alligator'that's one thousand pounds, for those of you who don't know the old system of measuring things. This monstrous alligator, known by the name of Chucky, freely swam through the flooded city streets during the hurricane while most residents were stuck in their flooded homes or lay dying in the outdoors.

'In Florida, the situation was very bleak, children.'� Capital paused and looked down at the ground, silently. Only a sliver of the sun remained over the horizon, and the sun's diminished presence cast deep, pensive shadows across the pavement, bathing Capital's face in a cold darkness that the children found eerie. 'Aristotle was a mean one, alright.

'Up here, we ignored the problems of Florida. We didn't consider Hurricane Aristotle a threat to us, thinking that the geographic and temporal distance would diminish its strength. We should have learned from what they went through. Six days later, Hurricane Aristotle hit Crestwood.

'By the time it got up here, the hurricane was greatly weakened. It had dispersed, but it was still a hurricane, and we were hit with non-stop rains for about'�about two days, if I remember correctly. We got a few feet of rain, and, in many places, there was some pretty significant flooding and power failures, but we didn't experience any of the high speed winds or cataclysmic lightning storms. We should've considered ourselves fortunate; we didn't go through near the disaster some other areas went through. We could have been in Florida.'�

'Mister Cap?'� one of the children piped up, waiting for Capital's gaze to rest permissively on him before continuing. 'Where were you during the flood?'�

Capital laughed.

'As for myself,'� old man Capital spoke, straining to make his voice heard above the carnival music emanating from behind him, 'during the flood I was stuck in an acrylic bathtub, floating through the streets. When the rain first started, I was outside playing, against my mother's wishes. I had never seen an amount of rain like that before, and have never seen that much rain since.'�

He craned his neck up at the sky and stared out into the distance, beyond the children, past the line of white tents, over the Great Chasm, far off into a time and place that no longer existed. His ice blue eyes melted at the memory, and he smiled warmly as he ran his gnarled, knotted fingers through his wispy gray hair.

'I remember it was garbage night, and one of my neighbors down the street had discarded an old bathtub. It was a powder blue acrylic bathtub, a standalone model, made in the old style with clawed feet. As the streets began to fill up with water, I noticed the bathtub was floating above the floodwaters. I hopped in the bathtub, not realizing how quickly the rain poured down all around me. Before I knew what was happening, the streets were several feet deep, and I'I was only eleven at the time, mind you'I was scared to get out of the bathtub. I stayed in that bathtub for the better part of a day, using a shower rod someone had thrown out to push myself in different directions, until I managed to climb onto a neighbor's roof and wait the storm out.

'It could have been worse. I could have been in Florida, fighting off a one-thousand pound reptile with only a shower pole.'�

Although none of the children were older than eight years old, they had enough common sense to doubt the veracity of such an unlikely story. They rolled their eyes and offered doubtful smirks; Cap overheard one child mutter, 'yeah, right'� under his breath.

'Maybe you find it hard to believe, but it's true,'� Cap said. 'To this day, I still refuse to go outside in the rain for a prolonged period of time.'�

Capital pulled his emerald green sweater jacket closed, trying to suppress an involuntary chill as he thought of those long hours spent soaking wet inside a floating bathtub. His shaky hands fumbled with the buttons of the jacket, but, after several attempts, he buttoned it closed against the chilly night and the chasm's vicious winds. The sun sent out its last dying orange-red embers over the landscape, wishing all the land's people a good night as it withdrew its warmth until another day.

'Before I continue,'� Cap continued, 'I need to tell you a little of our great town's history. Although we've struggled economically for a very long time, at one point in the early 1900's, Crestwood was a financial powerhouse. There's not a foot of earth in this town that doesn't have an anthracite tunnel beneath it, because back in those days, coal was the fuel of choice, and we had so much of it underneath our feet.

'The coal industry provided the foundation for our economy; Crestwood was once one of the nation's most prosperous, advanced cities. Of course,'� he said with a chuckle, gesturing vaguely at his surroundings, 'you can all see, that was a very long time ago. Gas heat replaced coal as the most efficient fuel source; we had nearly depleted our coal resources; coal mining became just too expensive with its diminishing market value. Analysts have offered a number of explanations as to why the industry fell off. I don't know anything about the reasons, but, all of a sudden, the people didn't want coal anymore, and Crestwood had nothing else to fall back on. Our economic foundation had crumbled away beneath us.

'The area sank into a deep depression, and, not only that, we were stuck with a number of problems resulting from the constant mining. Health problems, things like black lung, and structural problems, in that much of the city'because we were considered a city at the time'was unsound to build upon, with weakened and hollow earth underneath us.

'During Hurricane Aristotle, we experienced something of a most bizarre and unexpected nature. As a result of the unprecedented rainfall, floods and increased water traffic deluged parts of the city, specifically the corner of Vine and Scott Avenue. This corner, like most of the city, was situated above a very old coal mineshaft. Originally created in the very early 1900's, this mineshaft's ceiling'and, in reality, the entire three hundred feet of earth above it'was supported by wooden beams. The city never intended to leave the mineshaft unattended for as long as it was. They wanted to fill it in or replace the wooden supports with ones of stronger materials, or any number of proposed solutions. When the coal industry collapsed, the city had no money to address this project. So officials just ignored it, and, after a while, everyone forgot it existed.

'Over the following few decades, the mineshaft was subject to all of time's methods of erosion. Water seeped through the ground and rotted the beams. The earth settled in, gravity naturally weakening the beams in its effort to close the gaping wound in the earth's interior. It was just a matter of time before the hole collapsed, and that time was September 21, 1962.

'I remember hearing on the news that night. Eyewitnesses said they heard a tremendous groan, like the earth belching, and, in an instant, eighty or one hundred feet of ground just fell right in. I guess, the earth couldn't hold all that weight up anymore; in addition to the soil, there were homes and businesses, cars and trees. The earth gets tired, too, I suppose, and all that weight went crashing right on in, forming a huge sinkhole in the middle of the street. Gradually, as the day progressed, the hole grew in size, expanding to over one-fifty feet in diameter by the day's end. The majority of its expansion took place in the first twenty-four hours. Of course, since that day, it's been growing more subtly, only really measurable on a yearly basis.

'Fortunately, no one was hurt, not initially. The hole swallowed up a car, a mint-green 1960 Plymouth. On the news, the girl mentioned that she only owned the car for six months at that point. I felt bad for her, but it could have been worse.'�

'Yeah, she could have been in Florida,'� one of the children said, but Cap couldn't make out who in the dim lighting. The sun had disappeared, and the rising full moon provided the scene's only light, aside from some diluted light from the distant festival.

A bout of laughs erupted from the children.

'Things could always be worse, children,'� Cap remarked gravely, ignoring the snide remark. 'A number of neighborhood residents, scared for their safety, fled their homes, staying in cheap hotels or with relatives until they found secure living arrangements. A few businesses on the hole's outer edge were forced to move, and one or two that I can think of offhand closed down months later from lost revenue. Customers, apparently, couldn't be bothered with seeking out new store locations. In the days and weeks to come, the hole grew in size, undermining the structures' foundations and making them unsafe to inhabit, or sometimes swallowing buildings entirely.

'In the wake of so many Hurricane related problems, the hole went unaddressed, especially with the financial deficit Crestwood was in. It appeared as if the local government officials didn't know of the problem; either that, or they ignored it. At the very least, roads leading to it should have been blocked off, and they should've called someone in'engineers or safety inspectors or something'to halt the hole's expansion and draw up a plan for its repair.'�

Capital paused to look at the children, and something in his face had changed. Gone were the gentle laugh lines around his mouth and the crow's feet that came with smiling too often. The lines in Capital's face were deep and sorrowful, the result of a lifetime of hardship and stress.

*

In the interest of truth, it is imperative that we discuss the reactions of local officials, as Capital could possess no understanding of the happenings behind closed government doors. Several of Cap's suppositions actually held quite a bit of truth: the declining coal industry had weakened the local economy to the point of nigh impossible recovery; city officials had gravely underestimated Aristotle's capacity for destruction, ignoring the example of Florida; and, finally, local government officials ignored the problem, but not because they were unaware of the problem's magnitude, or that they didn't care. The money to address such a debacle simply wasn't present in the budget, and, in acknowledging the problem, local officials would be forced to own up to their own impotence in dealing with it, an action that would be the equivalent of political suicide.

Several hours after the hole's birth, around supper hour on September 21, an impromptu meeting was called by the pertinent officials at City Hall. City Hall's designated Conference Room was a large, unpainted room with blank walls, its only furnishings a single large meeting table, covered in dust, and several chairs that had been wheeled in at the last moment. The pulled blinds, at the room's single window, only added to the suggestion of disuse and neglect, as the entire room was shrouded in gloom and shadow. Unmarked cardboard boxes, taped shut with duct tape, lay stacked in piles at various locations around the room. At this meeting, various strategies for dealing with the growing development were discussed, one of which was, as the proponent called it, 'the consensus of ignorance.'�

'Everyone's heard the saying, 'Ignorance is bliss,''� Chief of Police William Welker began. 'Let's face facts here, people: we don't have the money, nor the manpower, to deal with a crisis of this proportion right now.'�

This comment was met with nods and whispers of agreement all around City Hall's Conference Table.

'But we can't be accused of failing to repair a problem we don't know anything about. My proposal is simple'we feign ignorance of the hole's existence.'�

'Bill, we can't just ignore this problem,'� Mayor Bruce Zielinski shot back, a look of complete disgust on his mustachioed face. He loosened his blue striped necktie and leaned closer to the table. 'This is a serious safety issue. If we just ignore this, there will be some major property damage; one car has already been lost into that pit. People could die.'�

'Yeah, this is bigger than money. People's lives are at stake here. We need to somehow come up with the money, utilize whatever resources we can to fix this thing,'� County Commissioner Michael DePaolo offered, while looking frantically around the room, at the various desks and tables that occupied the room. 'Don't you guys have some coffee, or donuts or something?'�

He looked askance at Mayor Zielinski's secretary, Miss Susannah Burkhardt, a fetching young woman in her early twenties, with wavy brown hair and sparkling green eyes.

Said secretary, blushing profusely, stood and left the room.

'That's a good point,'� Welker conceded. 'While it's admirable to attempt to fix everything and save everyone, at some point, we need to start being realistic here. This city has been in a bad way, financially, for a very long time. We need to do what's best for the majority of the people. While I may sound like a cold hearted bastard saying this'�'murmurs and chuckles of agreement could be heard throughout the room''maybe it's in our best interest to write the whole incident off as a loss and concentrate our efforts on the rest of the city.'�

'You're saying,'� DePaolo asked, 'that we should just accept the deaths of dozens of people and millions of dollars in property damage?'�

'Well, it sounds ridiculous if you say it like that. I'm of the opinion that our money would be better spent elsewhere. Fixing this giant pothole will completely ruin any shot we have of getting this community back on track. Why should we just throw our money 'in a pit,' as they say? Pun intended.'�

A collective groan issued from the others present.

'This is not going to be a popular decision,'� Mayor Zielinski said, and sighed.

'The tough choices never are,'� Welker said, not missing a beat. 'But, if it was an easy job, than anyone could do it.'�

'People are going to cause quite an uproar over this,'� DePaolo argued.

'If it wasn't this, it would be something else,'� Welker shot back.

'You know,'� DePaolo said, cocking his head in thought, 'it's almost Darwinian'�the hole, I mean. If people are stupid enough to remain in their homes, with their property lingering around the outskirts of the hole, then they deserve to lose their possessions, right?'�

*

In the meantime, the young girl whose car fell in the hole was refused her insurance claim, as the insurance company claimed that they 'regrettably can not afford to reimburse our drivers for damages sustained by hitting potholes or other common road occurrences.'�

'But the 'pothole' was three hundred feet deep!'� the young lady yelled in exasperation, to no one in particular, as she read the letter in the shelter she shared with three dozen other homeless flood victims.

Over the next several weeks, concerned and angered citizens placed many phone calls to various city offices and government officials. Mayor Bruce Zielinski notified all relevant employees of the new policy change, and, subsequently, all references to the now two hundred square foot hole on the corner of Vine Street and Scott Avenue were completely ignored or circumvented. In the initial few days following the incident, a sample phone call may have sounded like the following:

Miss Susannah Burkhardt: Good afternoon, City Hall. How may I help you?

Caller: Yes, I need to speak to the mayor.

Burkhardt: What, may I ask, is this in reference to?

Caller: I have a complaint about the growing hole on Vine Street.

Burkhardt: Excuse me, the what?

Caller: The huge gap that stretches from corner to corner on Vine Street.

Burkhardt: I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, sir.

Caller: The void where Vine Street used to intersect with Scott Avenue? The street caved in, and'�[sighs] just put me on with the Mayor, okay?

Burkhardt: I'm sorry, sir. He's out to lunch.

Caller: It's only ten in the morning.

Burkhardt: [clearing throat] Brunch.

Caller: When could I possibly reach him?

Burkhardt: Unfortunately, he's got quite a busy schedule today. Meetings, and'� such, all day. [sweetly] Can I take a message for you?

Caller: '�[sounds of muted cursing and banging issue from the caller's end]

Without fail, the first few days' conversations would unfold in this fashion, with little or no deviation from call to call. Much of the time, callers would tire of the bureaucratic runaround and would hang up in frustration before leaving any message. On occasion, the caller would leave a message, which would be promptly forgotten.

After several days, however, repeat callers grew savvy to the politicians' games and pursued further actions, such as writing letters, notifying local media, or showing up to protest. With each step the people took to complain, it grew increasingly difficult and implausible for the government to deny their knowledge in the scandal, and, before long, a veritable bee's nest of controversy surrounded City Hall. In more than one instance, nearly every official in City Hall (except for the always reliable Miss Susannah Burkhardt) was forced to avoid their workplace altogether (claiming perhaps a sudden attack of the flu, or a dead mother) in order to dodge the scores of protesting commuters sick of the hazardous driving conditions.

The situation reached its climax on September 28, 1962, when lovable albeit hyperactive nine year old daredevil Wesley Dean plunged full speed into the hole on his skateboard, forcing government officials to finally acknowledge its existence as a continued threat to the public's safety.

*

'I've never heard any justifiable excuse for the city's complacency,'� Cap told the children. 'For the first couple days, they refused to acknowledge the hole. Then the incident involving Wesley Dean happened.'�

Cap placed both his hands on the ground in front of him and used them to support his weight as he stood. He winced as his aged knees creaked.

'Sitting all this time is making my legs hurt. What say we go for a little walk?'� he asked, feeling around in the pocket of his slacks for some change. 'We can get a funnel cake, mebbe.'�

The children's drooping heads and half-open, tired eyes perked up at the mention of food, and they stood without a moment's hesitation, ready for whatever demands might be made of them in the name of a free funnel cake.

The motley collection of individuals, seven dirty-faced children led by a distinguished looking, gray haired six foot five man, meandered through the festival. Cap trailblazed through the ignorant, unwashed masses, nudging aside man, woman, and child alike in his pursuit of that singular goal: a prized festival funnel cake.

Overpopulated with stands representing different eateries around the city, the festival boasted a cornucopia of gustatory treats. The vendors had redesigned the majority of the confections to employ chocolate or somehow otherwise capitalize on the feast's unusual theme; among the most prevalent were chocolate donut holes, blackberry pies, and a strange concoction made of crumpled Oreo cookies and black pudding, intended to look like a crumbling pavement in the rain. Then there was, of course, the funnel cake, not thematically oriented to the celebration at all, but, ironically, regarded by many as the highlight of the festival, outclassing the other, thematically sound offerings.

'Wesley Dean was nine years old at the time, and one of my best friends,'� Cap said as the group wandered through the endless maze of vendors, games, and patrons. 'He liked to ride his skateboard all over the city; I had my bike, and he had his skateboard. Together, we were inseparable, racing each other through the city streets, much to the annoyance of neighbors working out in the yard, walking their dogs, or worshipping the sun. Yep'�'old man Cap chuckled, a chuckle that lit up his entire face, deepening the lines around his mouth, twinkling in his eyes''we caused a bit of commotion in our day.

'Wes always had a bit of the daredevil in 'im. Me, too, I suppose. We always tried to upstage one another. I'd ride my bike on one wheel, then he'd ride his skateboard on only the back two. I'd do a handstand on the handlebars while going top speed downhill'�'several of the children looked at each other, doubting the truth in this statement''and maybe he'd ride down the handrails outside the high school. Once, he jumped over a wheelbarrow full of cement that my neighbors were in the process of moving. They were laying down some new sidewalk, and rolling the wheelbarrow from the water hose down towards the street, and'here comes old Wes Dean!'he jumped right over the wheelbarrow. They made like they were annoyed, but I knew they were a little impressed, too.'�

Cap rubbed his bleary eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, then pinched the bridge of his nose.

'We'd seen the hole plenty of times, of course, riding back and forth through the streets that autumn,'� Cap said. 'We couldn't believe how big it was. You kids don't know, but it's a completely different experience when you saw the street before the hole. Every day of our lives, we would pass that section on the way to school or just hanging around, and that corner was just a normal street corner, but, suddenly one day, there was a massive pit where the street used to be. It's almost like the whole world changed overnight, for us, and that we had taken the street's existence for granted.'�

The group reached the funnel cake stand, and moved to the line's rear. Cap halted his speech to do a quick head count of the children.

'School had just started back up two weeks earlier, and we weren't ready for it. We wanted our summer back, those lazy days when we could sleep until ten if we wanted, when we could spend afternoons on the stoop in front of Tony's Pizza, drinking sodas and reading X-Men comic books. If summer was going to leave us, we decided, we had to celebrate it with a bang, something memorable. Wes finally came up with the idea; I wish he hadn't. We had grown pretty familiar with the pothole in its seven days of existence, having walked past it every day to school or just gazing into its hypnotic depths.

'From one end to another, the hole's length was two hundred feet, but the hole wasn't symmetrical. Its edges were jagged, and, in many places, precipices would suddenly jut out over the hole, tapering into a slight downhill before the big fall. In one section, there was this branch in the hole, a crack in the street, really, that was only about fifteen or twenty feet long, and probably thirty feet deep, but the bottom of this crack was pitched steeply into that big dropoff. Wes suggested that, to cap off the summer with a bang, we would construct a ramp and both jump over this twenty foot gap. Somehow, in our minds, by jumping the gap, we could conquer this hole, this intruder into our small city.

'He constructed this little ramp out of leftover two by fours he had in his basement. It didn't look the least bit trustworthy, but Wes had constructed plenty of odd things like that in the past, and he had a talent for these sort of things. We didn't invite anyone to watch this, although many of our accomplishments could've earned us a lot of fame in those days. It was some sort of implicit understanding we had; our secret doings were just that: secret, for us alone.'�

The group had reached the line's front, and the portly, middle aged vendor's white t-shirt read, 'I climbed out of the Great Chasm, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.'� Cap knew the t-shirt's claim was untrue'unlike the Grand Canyon, the inspiration for many of their fundraisers, Crestwood's officials had never gone as far as to allow tourists to descend into the hole.

Cap's three funnel cakes arrived, and they moved to a nearby picnic table to eat. Cap refused to partake in the treat; he claimed his stomach was bothering him, and that elderly men couldn't eat all that fried food. He continued his narrative:

'At the last minute, I chickened out. I've always been afraid of heights. It's something I could overcome, when I needed to in order to top Wes's accomplishments, but this hole was too big, too deep. Wes made fun of me for backing out; he called me chicken shit and a whole bunch of other names I shouldn't repeat to you, and he nearly convinced me to jump with him. I almost wasn't strong enough to hold up to the peer pressure, the idea that my best friend found my non-participation a sign of weakness. In retrospect, I wish I was even stronger, strong enough to pull him away from that hole, to say, 'Hey Wes, this is crazy, man. You know that? Let's just go home.' But I wasn't.

'Of course, there was no possibility of a nine year old child leaping over even a ten foot gap in this hole, but, at the time, we thought we were invincible. Wes had no inhibitions of my sort; he took one glance over the pit's edge, then turned away to build up the necessary speed to launch himself over the gap.

'I remember 'Under Pressure,' by David Bowie, blaring from a nearby apartment building. It's one of those things that engraves in one's memory'now, every time I hear that song, I think of Wes and that early autumn afternoon, Wes with his grand aspirations of clearing this huge canyon. And I remember him soaring high in the air above the pothole, the sun bouncing off his golden hair, and this triumphant grin plastered across his face. He was in his glory. For that brief moment, against all logic, I actually thought he could have done it; in that brief moment, I believed he could have done anything.

'One of the most traumatic experiences of my life was watching that young boy careen thirty feet down to the floor of that expanse, and then helplessly observing as he screamed for help at the top of his lungs, clawing at the loose gravel, reducing his fingers to bloody stumps, trying to stop or at least slow his descent down the slope. Fear paralyzed me; what could I possibly do in that situation? There was no way, if I ran for help, that anyone would make it in time; Wes was smoothly sliding down that slope. So I stayed to watch, trying to somehow draw the moments out, knowing that this would probably be the last time I'd see my best friend alive. I continued looking at his face, wanting to be able to remember him always. Now I can't forget that nine year old face, looking up to me in terror, knowing death would arrive in only moments, begging for help.

'Then he was gone, but I continued to hear his voice trailing away, diminishing in volume as he fell to the hole's floor.'�

Cap's deeply shadowed face exhaled sharply. Tears ran down his face, not in rivers but in drips and drops, following the lines in his face. Several moments of silence followed as Cap struggled in the grips of powerful emotion. The children began to wonder if perhaps the old man had fallen asleep.

When Cap continued, his voice was weak, and the children struggled to hear.

'Crestwood was a small, economically depressed town where nothing ever happened. Word about this spread quick, and you could imagine the scandal that followed. The authorities could no longer ignore the problem. This wasn't a two year old car, or a tree, or a Mexican grocery store that had been swallowed up. A nine year old child, with his entire future ahead of him, had passed away.'�

'At least some good came out of it, Mister Cap,'� Chuck Mason offered in between mouthfuls of funnel cake. 'They couldn't ignore it anymore.'�

'Oh, they acknowledged the hole alright, but not in the way that any of us wanted them to. They didn't block off the streets, like they should have done a week earlier. They didn't surround the area with police tape or 'Caution' signs while they searched for a viable method of fixing the hole. They didn't hire engineers or contractors to assess the problem. They spun the whole thing around on its head.

'They decided to celebrate the hole.'�

*

Mayor Zielinski had called another emergency meeting together on September 28, to address the growing concern about the pothole among the public. It wasn't until halfway through the meeting that word was received of young Wesley Dean's unfortunate accident.

'We can't continue to ignore this hole, that much is obvious,'� County Commissioner DePaolo stated. DePaolo, much to everyone's surprise, had been quite active in these meetings. The general consensus had borne the idea for quite some time that DePaolo only came to government meetings for free donuts.

'I think we all realize that,'� Mayor Zielinski added. 'But how do we begin? If we all of a sudden begin discussing the problem, after it's existed for a week, we'll either seem ignorant, that we didn't know about it before, or irresponsible, for refusing to deal with it.'�

'Maybe rightly so. Aren't we irresponsible? Aren't we ignorant?'� DePaolo questioned, thereby losing all the brownie points he had accumulated in the last week's rampant participation. The rest of the room's occupants glared at him.

Police Chief William Welker sighed and replied:

'Of course we are, Mike. But we don't want the voters to think that. The real question here is, 'How do we spin this to make it into a positive?''�

At that moment, Miss Susannah Burkhardt burst through the Conference Room's large double doors and rushed to the Mayor's side. She hunched over his side, whispering into his ear for several minutes, and then seated herself in one of the nearby chairs, making eye contact with no one else.

'What is it, Bruce?'� Welker asked the Mayor, after half a minute of silence.

'It appears as if the pothole has claimed its first victim. At about two this afternoon, a nine year old boy attempted to jump it on his skateboard.'�

The others looked at him in suspense, with mouths ajar and wide open eyes.

'He didn't make it, of course,'� Mayor Zielinski added, his brow furrowed, nodding his head. 'He fell to the bottom. He fell all three hundred feet'�'the Mayor whistled sharply, raising his right hand sharply and then plunging it down towards the table''to the bottom.'�

'This complicates things,'� DePaolo said.

'Just a bit,'� Welker added.

A few more minutes of silence were observed, spent in deep thought about how to proceed on the subject, but Mayor Zielinski liked to believe they were moments of respect dedicated towards the deceased youth.

'We should hold a festival,'� Welker broke the silence.

'A festival?'� the Mayor asked.

'For what? To celebrate a dead kid?'� DePaolo questioned, horrified.

'No, no, no.'� Welker laughed. 'To celebrate this hole! This hole isn't a bad thing; how come if they have a huge hole in Nevada, they create a park around it and call it the Grand Canyon?'�

'Arizona, actually,'� Miss Susannah said under her breath.

'Whatever. But how come they can get away with celebrating it, but ours has to be a bad thing? I think we should leave it as is, but set police tape all around, so people don't fall in, and promote it as a tourist site.'�

'Preposterous. Nobody would fall for that.'�

'Actually, Mike, I think that it could work,'� Mayor Zielinski chimed in. 'We just have to do it the right way. We can't just call it 'the Pothole,' but we need to make up some name that sounds magnificent, like 'the Chasm.''�

'How about 'The Great Chasm?''� Welker suggested, his eyes lighting up. 'And we can have a big festival to celebrate it! Every year, on the day the hole opened up, we'll celebrate its creation! We'll call it 'The Feast of the Great Chasm!''�

'That's actually not bad,'� Miss Susannah said, uncrossing ,and then re-crossing, her legs. 'Or something like 'Le Fete de Fosse;' I don't know.'�

DePaolo rolled his eyes at her suggestion.

'I took French in high school,'� she explained, blushing. 'Maybe that's just the Romantic in me coming out.'�

'I've got it,'� DePaolo said. ''The Great Feast of the Great Chasm!''�

'That's pretty much what I said,'� Welker said.

'I added a second 'great,' though. No one can doubt that it's a good thing, not with two greats,'� DePaolo explained, leaning back in his chair in contentment. 'Now, it's really great.'�

'I like it,'� the Mayor declared. Thus, a new city-wide holiday was born: The Great Feast of the Great Chasm.

*

'They never spoke of Wesley Dean; a city representative, a Public Welfare worker, came to the funeral home and offered condolences on the city's behalf, but he never mentioned anything about accepting responsibility for their negligence, or for Wesley's death. The Public Welfare girl brought a basket of bagels and various jellies for Mrs. Dean. Understandably, she was upset about the death of her son, but the government's lack of accountability sent her through the roof. I remember her bawling her eyes out, shrieking: 'Bagels? They killed my boy, and they give me bagels?''�

'Mister Cap? Can I go now? I'm tired.'�

The small fellow with the Coke bottle glasses offered this, causing similar complaints from the rest of the children. Capital silently admonished himself for feeding them; of course, after they'd had their reward for listening, they wouldn't want to hang around an old man anymore. They were only kids. They wanted to run around and enjoy the spectacle. The story, an unreliable explanation from a strange man, was accepted as a deception when compared to the city's commonly accepted myth.

'Sure, children,'� he resigned himself to saying. 'Go enjoy the festival.'�

He watched them run off to enjoy the festival, laughing and hooting, Cap the man and his story probably already forgotten, secondary to the more pressing issues of play and sightseeing. The carnival music abruptly lowered in volume. The public address system crackled and a nasal voice broadcast through the speakers:

'Attention, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you're enjoying the Great Feast. In just a few minutes, our traditional re-enactment ceremony will be taking place on center stage.'�

Cap trudged to the back, occupying a seat in a section relatively bereft of others. He pulled a cigar from his sweater pocket and lit it with his Zippo, all while glancing over the rest of the crowd. If the government officials had intended to turn this negative into a positive, they had accomplished their goal. A black couple sat in the front row, the male holding his newborn child wrapped in a pink blanket. An elderly widow sat in one of the many folding chairs set up for the event, her polished oak cane resting against the seat beside her. A group of tourists, easily recognizable by their Great Chasm shirts and caps, and the enthusiastic look of a first timer on their faces, stood off to the side, apparently more satisfied with the view away from the crowd.

A man wearing a dark green button down shirt and a tweed jacket approached Cap from behind, stroking his neat brown mustache. He tapped Cap on the shoulder.

'It bothers my wife,'� he explained, after Cap turned to face him.

'Give an old man his vices,'� Cap said. 'I'm not long for this world.'�

'Please, sir,'� he pleaded, and gestured back to his group. 'She's pregnant.'�

'Very well,'� Cap consented, and sighed. He dropped his cigar to the ground and crushed its spark out with a twist of his leather heels. 'You know, I've been living in this area since before the first of these festivals. I was here when the Chasm first opened up.'�

'It's great, isn't it?'� he asked. 'We came all the way from Minnesota for this.'�

Capital paused, scanning the crowd once again. A true smattering of cultures and ages comprised the audience, all celebrating in unity, all spending very satisfactory portions of their paychecks on food, games, and memorabilia. This all stemmed from the disaster of the enormous sinkhole.

'It's really something,'� Capital conceded.

Maybe it's easier to find happiness, Capital thought, when one ignores harsh realities and instead molds the truth into something more manageable.

A single spotlight fixated on center stage as a tall, dapper looking young man walked out. He wore an old fashioned coat with tails, as one might expect to see in 18th century England, and a stovepipe hat. He walked to the stage's middle and, with his arms folded behind his back, addressed the crowd in a thick high European accent.

'Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the 52nd annual Reenactment Ceremony. We, the Crestwood Players, dedicate this yearly event to preserving the memory of the Great Chasm's creation, that magical moment in 1962 when it first appeared on our soil. Please turn off all cell phones and pagers, and'�'at that moment, a cellular phone's shrill ringtone emitted from the crowd''now, I don't need to take that from you, do I?'�

All heads turned towards the offending party, laughing at this poor fellow's embarrassment, and the perpetrator promptly turned his phone off.

'That's a good chap,'� the well dressed gentleman continued. 'Also, out of respect for the performers, we ask there be no flash photography. Thank you, and enjoy the show.'�

As this man walked off the stage, two large area lights turned on in the immediate vicinity, illuminating the performance area. A tall wooden stool had been placed stage right; an old mariner sat on this stool. He wore a thick, dull gray longshoreman's coat, and a ragged skipper's hat that protruded well over the front of his face, casting most of it in shadows, only revealing the stark white beard surrounding his mouth, a mouth minus a few teeth from a full set and with a charcoal black pipe protruding from it. With the exception of this single man, the stage was bare.

'It was late September 1962,'� he began, his voice a scratchy, gravelly thing that made one think of clearing his throat. A symphonic score erupted from the audio system, starting out with dancing flutes and cheerful clarinets. 'All was peaceful and calm in the quiet Northeastern city of Crestwood.'�

Six individuals ran onstage, all dressed in brown tights and long sleeved shirts, with all exposed skin covered by green body paint. The six androgynous people alternated frolicked to and fro on the stage.

'But danger was on the horizon. Hurricane Aristotle was a mean old man, wreaking havoc up and down the East coast and, when he arrived in Crestwood, he would stop at nothing to destroy our idyllic lifestyle.'�

Another man'a short, heavily muscled man in a dark purple jumpsuit'joined them onstage. He wore an oversized wooden mask, with an eternal scowl drawn in thick red lines and large eyelashes about the eye holes. The other characters cowered in fear, 'hiding'� in the exposed corners of the stage as this man stomped across the stage, taking large, disproportionate steps, each sandal clad foot creating an enormous percussive impact. The heavy sounds of the bass, and the tympani's deep rumbling joined the symphony at this point.

'Yes, the earth was angry in those days,'� he continued after watching the musclebound Aristotle goosestep around the stage for several moments. 'Aristotle raged for several days, bringing with him an unprecedented amount of rain'�'a female in an all blue unitard pranced across the stage, drawing blue sequins and tinsel from a bucket at her side and flinging these haphazardly at the other players, as cymbals crashed in the music''and high speed winds.'�

Capital stood to leave. The show was just getting started, but Capital decided that he had seen enough. He found himself able to think only of the nine year old boy who had lost his life all those years ago, so that fifty years later, people of all kinds could meet together as fellow human beings and celebrate being alive. Maybe the lie was better than the truth. Capital was an old man, and maybe these youngsters didn't have any need for him, or his truth, anymore.

Capital walked to the hole's edge with determination in his eyes.

When Capital's body crashed to the hard, unforgiving ground, with many bumps and scrapes along the way, it bounced from the accumulated velocity, and its sickening crunch was drowned out by the festival sounds hundreds of feet above. The truth was finally at rest; Capital's body lay twisted on the black pit's bottom.

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