You watch the drawbridge rise and the road splits in half and the splitting in half is the road admitting it was never permanent. The road was always temporary. The road was always conditional. The drawbridge is the piece of infrastructure that confesses the hierarchy and the hierarchy is that water outranks pavement. The ship is coming. The bridge goes up. The cars wait. The truck driver turns off the engine. The pedestrians lean on the railing and watch the halves of the road point at the sky and the pointing at the sky is the road praying and the road praying is the road surrendering to the river.

The Tower Bridge in London has lifted over half a million times since eighteen ninety four and the half a million times is the city bowing to the river. Tower Bridge is not a drawbridge in the strict sense. Tower Bridge is a bascule bridge and the bascule is French for seesaw and the seesaw is the mechanism and the mechanism is a counterweight that makes lifting a thousand tons of road look easy. The bridge took eight years to build and eleven thousand tons of steel and the eleven thousand tons of steel was wrapped in Portland stone so that it would look like it belonged next to the Tower of London. The Victorians built a machine and disguised it as a castle. The bridge opens in ninety seconds. Ninety seconds to split a road and let a ship through and then ninety seconds to close the road again. London stops twice for ninety seconds and the stopping twice for ninety seconds is the toll the Thames charges for running through the center of the city.

Chicago has more drawbridges than any city in the world because Chicago built itself across a river it refused to abandon. The Chicago River runs through the center of the city and the center of the city needed bridges and the bridges needed to open because the river carried grain and lumber and steel and the grain and lumber and steel needed to pass. Chicago reversed the flow of the river in nineteen hundred. Chicago made the river flow backward because the river was carrying sewage into Lake Michigan and Lake Michigan was the drinking water and the drinking water was killing people. Chicago reversed a river and then built drawbridges over the reversed river and the drawbridges over the reversed river is engineering layered on engineering. The Michigan Avenue Bridge opens and the Magnificent Mile stops. The bridge tender sits in a small house at the base of the bridge and the small house at the base of the bridge is the office from which one person controls whether the city moves.

In Sinclair's Detroit the drawbridges over the Rouge River and the Detroit River opened for the ore boats and the freighters and the opening for the ore boats was the factory demanding passage. The Ford Rouge plant needed iron ore and the iron ore came by water and the water meant the bridges opened and the bridges opening meant the workers waited. You sat in your car on Fort Street and the bridge was up and the freighter was passing and the freighter was eight hundred feet long and the eight hundred feet long took ten minutes to pass and the ten minutes was the river reminding Detroit that the factories came first. The bridge went up when the boat came. Not before. Not after. The boat came and the bridge rose and the city yielded.

You sit in traffic at the drawbridge and the light is red and the gates are down and the bells are ringing and the ringing bells are the warning and the warning is the road is about to break. The road breaks. The halves rise. The gap widens. You can see the water through the gap and the water through the gap is the river that was here before the road and will be here after the road. The ship passes. The horn sounds. The halves lower. The halves meet. The road is whole again. The light turns green. You drive across the seam where the road split and the seam where the road split is the scar and the scar is the evidence that the road broke and healed and will break and heal again. The drawbridge. The road that opens. The road that closes. The road that genuflects to the river every time a ship needs through.