Though, maybe nothing would happen this year. Beyond the newest crisis of H-8 making her people sick, Detroit had been rationing water for some time—not for lack of water, but because of greed and mismanagement. Two years ago the city council had finally implemented a rightsizing plan, denying services beyond the downtown area, creating havoc and resistance north, southwest, east.

And beyond the city borders? The country was imploding along fault lines of race and fear. The norm was stolen elections, rampant corruption, bought and sold media, gutted and turbulent schools, and a never ending and unclassifiable world war.

A crumbling age. Maybe nothing would ever be built again.

Dune leaned closer. North of the defunct train, I-75 cut a path along the upper edge of the stadiums. Brendon had spoken of hooking up light and sound to the model and being able to recreate game nights, though Dune didn’t get it. He’d always said it was the worst thing that happened in Detroit, getting swarmed by drunken white people from the suburbs who threw beer cans all over the downtown streets and stopped up traffic, honking in tones that were identical in victory or defeat.

Maybe, probably, games were cancelled due to the Syndrome. Dune hoped. A shadowy upside.

Just above 75 was an area Kama and Brendon used to take her often, to look at, to long for: Black Bottom. The stunning houses were mostly empty, boarded up or shelled out by arson, but Kama had told Dune stories of the elegant Black people who had lived out of those homes, where each family was a part of the city’s glamour. Kama had often spoke of growing up and having one of those homes, on the block where Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson had been neighbors. Or the home where Delloreese Early was born years before she became Della Reese.

Brendon had glued multiple smaller house pieces together with curved lego attachments to approximate the unique structures they loved. His makeshift neighborhood signposts had the oldest known names of places on the bottom, moving up, each slip of paper a newer name, occasionally with gentrified hood brands in sardonic quotes. In the center was the largest sign, which said, Detroit (pop. 1,942,567). Under this was Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, then le détroit du lac Érié and finally Anishnaabe/Kickapoo territories, Mound Builders.

Who were the Mound Builders? Dune didn’t want an internet search response. She missed her father when she came across questions that would never be answered, not in his way. He told stories to say a word.

Above the highway, maybe a quarter up the model, was Mack, which became Martin Luther King Boulevard once it crossed the central meridian of Woodward heading west. It was no fancier for the formal name. The entirety of Mack/MLK was pockmarked with potholes that were refilled each spring, re-formed each winter, strewn with drug detritus and napping drunks.