United We Stand (15 page)

“I’m not stupid,” James said.

“What?”

“I’m not stupid. I know … my father … he’s … he’s dead.”

“So … what are we going to do now?” I asked.

“It’s time for us to go home,” he said. “My mother needs me.”

The train rumbled along the tracks. James stared out the window. He hadn’t said more than a half-dozen words since we’d left the site. We’d turned in our construction boots and goggles and gloves—well, at least James’s gloves. Mine were so bloody they just got tossed in the garbage, along with our masks. We’d then washed up as best we could with the limited water available. We actually still looked as though we were wearing goggles and masks, because the places they’d covered were the only areas that were clean … or at least cleaner.

The only part of me that was completely clean was
my left hand. The doctor had scoured it and disinfected it and then put in a few new stitches to replace the one that had popped and a couple that were loose. My hand was still tingling.

We were the only two people on our car. The few other people who had boarded at Grand Central had exited already. We hadn’t bought tickets. I still had the note from the conductor, but nobody had even asked. The only people who had checked us were the soldiers when we’d entered Grand Central. We told them where we’d been and what we’d been doing and they told us how they wished they could be down there helping. I wanted to tell them not to wish for something they really didn’t want, but in the end I kept my thoughts to myself.

I wasn’t surprised that nobody had asked for our tickets. Nobody seemed to care about things like that right now. Everybody seemed to be in the same dazed state we were in. That’s how I felt. Dazed. Numb. Unfeeling. I just wished I could stop thinking completely.

“Have you decided what you’re going to tell your parents?” James asked.

That startled me out of my thoughts. “I guess I’m going to tell them the truth.”

“Your mother is going to freak.”

“Probably. But I think she should know—they both should know. I think that maybe my father will understand.”

“You think so?”

“I hope. I went down there because you wanted me to, but I think I needed to go there for me, as well.”

“You had to see that the monster was really dead.”

I smiled. “Yeah, I did. My father will understand that. Besides, unless I’m stopping at your place for a shower it’s going to be pretty obvious when they see me that I wasn’t just walking around the neighborhood.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“I’m guessing, once my mother sees me and knows I’m fine, it won’t be so bad.”

“Is that why you haven’t turned your phone back on?” he asked.

“My phone! I forgot!”

I reached into my pocket, pulled it out, and turned it on. It searched for a signal and then told me I had four missed calls. I didn’t need to check to see who those were from.

“It would be better to talk to her in person. We’ll be there soon enough.”

We were only two stops away from ours.

“How about you?” I asked. “Are you going to tell your mom?”

He nodded. “The truth is painful sometimes, but you have to tell it … and live it.”

I knew what he meant. There was no point in living a lie, or living in denial. She needed to realize what everybody else already knew … no matter how painful it was.

“You ever get mad at your father?” James asked.

“All the time. I get mad when he acts as though work is more important than us. It makes me angry that he’s gone so much.”

“I’d get mad at my old man, too.”

“But your father always spent a lot of time with you.”

“It wasn’t about time. It was about what he did when he wasn’t with me, with us. What he did for a living.” He paused. “My mother always says that police officers and firefighters are like little boys.”

I didn’t understand what that meant, but I’d heard her say it … I’d heard her say it
today
. Was that really today? It seemed like a week ago that my mother and I had visited their house.

“Did you ever want to be a cop or a fireman when you were growing up?” James asked.

“I guess everybody does at one time, when they’re a kid.”

“Yeah, but most people grow out of it. Some don’t. My mom says that bad little boys become police officers and good little boys become firefighters. My father was like a good little boy. He was always there to play road hockey or shoot hoops, or to hang around, or to help shovel the neighbor’s driveway. He was like a little boy who never grew up. Sometimes I wish he
had
grown up.”

“And sometimes I wish my father hadn’t grown up so much,” I said.

“I guess it’s part of human nature to want something different from what you have. Your father is a businessman. When he goes to work every day
do you ever worry about whether or not he’ll be coming home?”

“Not really … although maybe I should.”

“Things happen to everybody. Maybe not like what happened yesterday, but bad things, like car accidents, things you can’t control. But for a firefighter there’s nothing but bad things. So maybe it’s his dream, but it isn’t the dream of his family. All we want is for him to come home. He goes out every day, and the people he leaves behind know what could happen. Do you know which profession has the highest rate of job-related deaths?”

“Isn’t it like that TV show, those fishermen in Alaska who catch crabs?” I asked.

“I’m talking
real
jobs, the kind that people here do,” he snapped, and I instantly felt bad. “It’s firefighters. When you’re little you think your father is the greatest, strongest, most powerful man in the world.”

“That’s he’s bulletproof,” I said, using the word James had used for me.

“Yeah, that he’s bulletproof, that nothing can happen to him. But then you get older and you know better. And then you hear about other firefighters who have died in the line of duty. People you’ve never heard of, or people your father knew. Then it’s a family friend, somebody like that man today, Charlie O’Leary. You’ve met the guy at a picnic or a Christmas party or something, and then you hear that he’s gone, died in the line of duty. And then it’s not just one or two, but more. And you start thinking that every time
your dad goes to work might be the last time you ever see him.”

“That would be brutal.”

“He puts on that uniform, pats you on the head, gives everybody a hug, and leaves, and you know that he’s risking his life for people he doesn’t even know, and he’s leaving behind a family who’s scared. But we have to pretend we’re not scared, right? I remember so many times my mother would listen to the news and hear about a fire. She’d make some phone calls to try to figure out if his company was involved. And then she’d slip off into the bathroom, and later she’d come out smiling. But I could tell she’d been in tears, because she’d heard that it was his company and he was there. She’d put on a big, fake smile for us so we wouldn’t worry.”

“Like she’s doing now?” I asked.

He nodded. “And when he didn’t come home when he was supposed to she’d get even more fake-happy, to try to stop us from worrying. But I knew.”

“And is that when you’d get mad at him?” I asked.

“Yeah. Really mad. I wanted to know why he couldn’t get a real job, like your father or everybody else’s father I know!”

I chuckled. “You know, there isn’t one kid we hang with who didn’t think that your father had the coolest job in the world, that he wasn’t the coolest father around.”

James smiled. A sad little smile. “He was pretty cool.”

There was that word again—
was
, past tense. Gone.

The train pulled into the station. This was sort of like perfect timing. I didn’t know what else I could say. We climbed off the train and walked along the platform, exiting out onto the street. James’s house was in one direction and mine was in the other.

“I guess this is it,” he said.

I wanted to get home, but I wondered if maybe I should walk with him to his house.

“I know the way,” he said, reading my mind. “I think I can find it myself.”

“Sure … okay … I know.”

He reached out, wrapped his arms around me, and gave me a hug. I hugged him back. “I really appreciate your coming with me,” he said.

“Thanks for bringing me along. Like I said, it wasn’t just for you.”

“Thanks for saying that. I’ll talk to you later.”

“For sure. Call me if you need to talk … okay?”

“Okay.” His expression got serious. “I’m not mad at him any more, you know, in case you were thinking that. I haven’t been for a long time. I got older and realized that the world needs people who run into those buildings while everybody else is running out. And I know that he was doing it not just because he was a little boy who didn’t grow up, but because the world needs men who are willing to risk their lives, even for strangers …
Especially
for strangers.”

“Like yesterday,” I said quietly.

I thought about his father climbing those stairs, heading up toward the fire as we were running in the
opposite direction. And I remembered how he looked— like there was no other place in the world he would have chosen to be, even if he could.

“Yeah, like yesterday. He went there to help people, and that’s what made him feel good, feel alive. And I wouldn’t have made him stop even if I could have, because that’s the core of who he was, everything I know about him, everything I love about him. I realized at some point that being a firefighter wasn’t just what he
did
, it’s what he
was
.”

“I understand,” I said.

“I thought you might. I just hope
my
kids understand.”

“Your kids? You still want to be a firefighter?”

“We need people who are willing to help other people, who are willing to run into burning buildings, who are willing to risk their lives. Maybe we need them now more than ever. We were down there, just a couple of guys, part of hundreds, maybe thousands of people trying to help. We weren’t alone. We worked together, and we stood together. Because, the way I see it, united we stand and divided we fall.”

My phone rang. Three guesses who that was. I flipped it open.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Will! I’ve been calling you for the last three hours and you haven’t answered!” she shrieked. “Do you know how worried I’ve been? Where have you been?”

“The more important question is, Where am I now?”

“What?”

“I’m three houses down. I’ll be home in less than a minute. Can we talk when I get there?”

“You bet your life we’re going to be talking. Do you know how worried I am or—”

“Let’s talk in person.” I hung up on her. She wouldn’t like that, but how much more angry was she going to be, either way?

I turned up our walkway and the front door opened. My mother was standing there.

“I just wanted to say how sorry I am.”

“We were so worried about you … Your face,” she gasped. “What happened to you?”

“It’s nothing. It’s just—”

“Were you in a fight?”

“A fight?”

“Did you and James get in a fight?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. James and I have never fought each other in our entire—”

“Not with each other. Did you two get into a fight with somebody else?” she demanded.

“No!” I protested. “Why would you even think that we’d been in a fight?”

“Look at your face!”

“It wasn’t a fight. It was a—”

“Because with males, grief and sadness often lead to anger.”

I was starting to feel angry, but that had more to do with what she was saying and what she wasn’t letting me say. I could have snapped out something nasty, but I just took a deep breath instead. There U was no point in reacting. I was already going to be in enough trouble.

“Well, don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” she questioned.

“I already said I was sorry I made you worry.”

“Sorry isn’t good enough. This time you’ve really—”

“How about,” I said, cutting
her
off this time, “I tell you what happened, and why I’m so late? Would you like that?”

“Of course. That’s all I want.”

“Then could we go inside, please, instead of doing this on the front step?”

It was like all of a sudden she realized where we were standing. She ushered me in and closed the door.

“It’s not just your face, Will. You’re filthy all over,” she said.

“I am filthy, but I’m home. I’m here, and I
am
sorry. I really don’t like worrying you.”

I wrapped my arms around her. She was shaky— or was it me?—and as she hugged me back she started to sob.

“I’m really, really sorry,” I said quietly in her ear.

“Will?”

It was my father. I looked up at him, and when he saw my face his expression registered the shock I expected.

“What happened to you?” He sounded more than a little worried too.

“Can we sit down?” I asked. “My legs are pretty tired.”

“You should be tired after all that walking you’ve been doing,” he said.

“We weren’t just walking. Let me explain.”

I sat down in the wing chair, and my parents sat on the sofa across from me. In the corner the big TV was
on, sound off, CNN and Ground Zero on the screen. Now that I’d seen it myself in person, the TV image seemed even more real.

“Well?” my mother prompted.

Now that I had their attention I had to figure out where I should start. In a way it didn’t matter. I was going to be in trouble no matter where I began this story.

“I was with James all afternoon,” I finally began. “He needed me.”

“And how is James doing?” my father asked.

“I think about as well as he can be.”

“And you said you were doing more than just walking,” my father said.

This was where the trouble began. I nodded my head. “We started out walking, and we found ourselves down by the train station.”

“And you went into New York,” my father said quietly.

“Yes.” I wasn’t expecting him to know that.

“But why would you two go into New York?” my mother asked.