CHAPTER 21
SUSPENDED LIKE AN ANT ON a slender blade of grass, Topper started across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. He recalled how the bridge had once been known as Galloping Gertie, remembered watching footage from the bridge’s collapse in 1940, how the structure had undulated, twisting in the wind like a child’s ribbon, people abandoning their vehicles and running to safety at the cliff edges before the ribbon snapped and spilled into the water below. He felt trepidation as he drove over, and knew he was racing a disaster, vulnerable on a narrow strand of steel and concrete hung high over the Puget Sound.
The news came over the radio as he was thus suspended. Mt. Rainier had exploded. The west side of her, weakened by acid-altered rock, bulging and buckling from the pressure of building ma
