When the Harbor Gate in Bridgeport, CT Would Not Open
Chapter One: The Man Who Knew Where the Water Went Jesus prayed before dawn near the edge of Long Island Sound, where the dark water moved quietly beyond Seaside Park and the first gulls cried over the stones. He stood apart from the early walkers and the parked cars with fog on their windshields, wearing a plain coat that held no attention. His eyes were lifted, but His face carried the sorrow of a city not yet awake. Bridgeport slept behind Him in pieces, with its harbor, old factories, tired streets, narrow porches, railroad tracks, and families already bracing for what the day would ask of them. A few miles inland, on a side street near the Pequonnock River, Elias Mercer sat at his kitchen table with a city map spread under both hands. The map was old enough to show notes from projects that had been delayed, renamed, promised, forgotten, and promised again. A storm had moved through the night before, not the worst storm Bridgeport had ever seen, but enough rain to raise the ...