United We Stand (5 page)

“Have you heard anything?” my mother asked.

That was so like my mother, straight to the point, fearless.

“They’re all pretty busy today, but the department has been keeping us updated,” she said. “And, of course, we have CNN.”

There was a small television on in the corner. The sound was so low that I could barely hear it, but there were a couple of men sitting right in front of it, watching intently. Right now on the screen there was footage of something that looked like some kind of military camp, where guys were getting weapons training. The voice over was saying something about terrorist groups in Afghanistan and one in particular called Al Qaeda. Were these amateurs the guys responsible for all this devastation? It was hard to believe.

“I expect we’ll get good news soon,” she said sweetly.

Good news? What good news did she expect to hear? My father had told her what happened when he’d called last night to make sure James was home
safe. It was the last thing I remembered hearing before I dropped into a deep stupor. He’d told her that we’d seen her husband going up the stairs as we were going down, so she had to figure that he was in the building when it collapsed. I mean, we’d barely made it out and we were going the right way. He couldn’t possibly have survived … could he?

“The department says there are reports coming in all the time,” she continued. “They pulled three people out of the wreckage today already and—”

“They just found another person,” one of the men at the TV said. “They just announced it.”

“That’s so wonderful!” Mrs. Bennett said. “That’s another husband going home to his wife, another father going home to his children. I expect
my
husband to walk in that door any minute.” Her smile faltered for just a brief second and then came back to full glow. “At least he’ll call me.”

One of the women went up and put her arm around her. “I’m sure he’ll call. I’m sure.”

“Thanks. Now, Will, you came here to see James. He’s downstairs in the rec room. You
certainly
know the way.”

“Yeah … sure … thanks.”

I was grateful for an excuse to leave the room. I couldn’t understand what was going on. It was like Mrs. Bennett just didn’t understand. It was like she was playing a game or pretending.

Before I hit the bottom of the stairs I heard a guitar being played—it was James. I’d jammed with him
enough to know what his licks sounded like. I stopped and listened.

I knew the song. It was something that he and I had written together. It was a really cool riff that we were still working on, although it did sound like he’d worked out a few more chords. But why was he working on the song? Was he downstairs doing with the guitar what his mother was upstairs doing with the muffins? Was he just pretending that none of this had happened, that his father wasn’t dead? How could he not be dead? How could he have survived that collapse? I’d come here thinking I was going to have to deal with people crying or screaming, but instead it was almost like nothing was wrong. No, they had to know. They weren’t stupid people.

I stood there frozen on the stairs. I had to fight the urge to spin around and go back up. I couldn’t do that. Actually I didn’t want to be there, either. I was stuck between two places I didn’t want to be. I guess it was easier to just let gravity make the decision.

I went down the last few steps and into the rec room. James was sitting in the corner, on a stool, playing his guitar. He looked up. He gave me a slight nod, a slight smile, to acknowledge my being there, but continued to play, continued to focus on the song. I walked over and perched on the arm of the couch and watched.

He finished the riff. “What do you think?” he asked.

“Not bad. Might work good. Wait.”

I walked over and picked up my bass. I slung it around my neck, adjusted the strap, and plugged it into the amp. James started to play, and I started
along the bass line. We’d played this part a hundred times before and it
did
sound good to me. It could have been that I liked it because we’d written it, or simply that we’d played it so much that it was like one of those McDonald’s commercials that you hear so often it just lodges in your brain against your will until you’re humming it and it’s driving you crazy and—no, it really
was
good.

We came up to the new part, the part he’d written, and as James started off I tried to follow on the bass. I plucked a few notes. I thought I had it! This could really work and— James stopped playing.

“That wasn’t right,” he said.

“It’s my first time through,” I apologized. “I can get it better once I’ve heard it a couple more times.”

He unplugged his guitar and lifted it by the strap until he was holding it over his head.

“Not the song,” he said. His voice was barely above a whisper.

He was frozen now, staring straight ahead, his expression a complete blank, like a mask that I couldn’t read. I looked at him silently staring. Was I supposed to say something, or was I supposed to just wait until he said something?

James suddenly unfroze. He jumped to his feet, grabbed his guitar by the neck, and smashed it against the wall! I jumped up and almost toppled over in shock, but before I could do or say anything, he swung the guitar against the wall again and again and again, until the neck snapped and all that was holding
the two pieces together were the strings.

There was a noise at the top of the stairs. “Are you all right down there?” It was a male voice, but I didn’t recognize it.

I looked at James. He didn’t answer. Things were far from okay, but what was I supposed to say?

“James!” the voice called out louder. “Is anything wrong?”

“Nothing!” he called back. “Nothing is wrong.”

There was a pause. “We heard something,” the voice said.

“It was just my guitar.”

That certainly wasn’t a lie.

“It’s all right,” James said. “Don’t worry … don’t worry.”

He slumped back down on the stool. I heard the upstairs door close. I stood there, still in shock, looking at James holding his broken guitar—a guitar he loved more than he loved his girlfriend—wondering what I was supposed to say.

Slowly I took off my bass and set it down. For a quick, terrible second, I thought about how I should take my bass with me when I left, in case he smashed it, too, but then I put that thought away. He wouldn’t hurt my bass. And if he did, well, that would be what he needed to do, and I guess I’d have to understand.

I walked over until I was standing right in front of him. He looked up from the guitar to me. His expression was sad and sorry and confused. It was almost as if, even though he was looking down at the broken
guitar, he didn’t know how it had got that way. More likely he was searching for what to say to explain what he’d done, and hoping I’d give him those words.

Gently I took the guitar from him. I put it down on the couch, laying the two pieces together so it still looked like a guitar.

“It’s just a guitar,” I said. “It can be fixed.”

“It
can’t
be fixed,” he said.

“I don’t know. Maybe some guitar guy can use glue or—”

“I’m not talking about the guitar.”

I suddenly knew what he meant.

“No matter how many muffins you bake, no matter how much you smile, no matter how hard you pray or how much you wish, it can’t be fixed.”

“I know,” I mumbled.

“Do you?”

“I think I do … I think I understand.”

“Then could you go upstairs and explain it to my mother?” he asked. “She has to know … has to know the truth.” He started to sob and shake. I put an arm around his shoulders. What else could I do?

“I just feel so guilty,” James sobbed.

“Guilty of what?” I sputtered. What did he mean by that?

“I should have been there. I should have gone with him.”

“You know you couldn’t have,” I said. “You told me that they weren’t going to let you go on any
calls, that they wouldn’t let you go with them in the truck for anything.”

“I should have gone anyway. I should have just gone and walked there once I knew what was going on, once I saw it on TV. I should have walked. The station is just a few blocks away … I could have gone there to find him.”

“You couldn’t have found him,” I said. “It was just crazy … confused … You couldn’t have found him.”

“Maybe I could have,” James said.

“Even if you did find him, what difference would it have made?” I asked. “He had his job to do.”

“I could have just gone into the building and—”

“And done what?”

“I could have been with him.”

“And died too?”

He stopped crying and looked up at me, square into my eyes. I knew what I’d just said, and I knew he’d heard it— “
and died too”
—that’s what I’d said.

“He is dead, isn’t he?” he said, his voice catching on each word.

Of course he was dead. There really couldn’t be any question about that, could there? But who was I to say?

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.” Maybe that wasn’t honest, but in a way it was the truth. Really, I didn’t know. Not for sure.

“Boys!” a voice called out loudly from upstairs. “They’ve found some people alive in the wreckage … some firefighters!”

James and I flew up the steps, pounding the stairs as we ran, racing into the kitchen. Everybody was crowded around the little TV and the volume was up as high as it could go. People made way for James to squeeze through to the front, where his mother and sister were already standing. I stopped at the back and shifted so I could see past the heads in front of me to the picture.

Two anchorpeople were sitting at their desk.

“Yes, we have reports of a rescue of seven people—I repeat, seven people—from the wreckage,” the female anchor said.

“And these are confirmed reports,” the male anchor added.

“Yes, confirmed. We have had many reports of people being pulled out of the wreckage, but most often these have proven to be unfounded.”

“I have been told that the seven people include five members of New York’s bravest, our firefighters.”

You could almost feel the mood in the kitchen change. Everybody stayed silent, but there were smiles, or hints of smiles. I tried to see the expression on James’s face or his mother’s or even his sister’s, but I could see only the backs of their heads.

“We’re going to go live to Ground Zero for a report shortly,” the woman said. “But at this time we can confirm that seven people, including a Port Authority police officer and five firefighters, have been pulled from the wreckage.” Her voice caught over the last few words and I thought she was about to cry.

Along the bottom of the screen on the crawl it was repeating what they had just said. Somehow that made it all more real, because I wasn’t just hearing it, I was reading it.

“We’re going to go live now, down to the site, where our reporter has Chief Donovan standing by.”

The scene changed to two men, one obviously the chief and the other a reporter. The chief’s face was dirty, and he looked as though he hadn’t slept. Behind them was the wreckage, filtered through a film of smoke—or was it mist, or steam, or dust?

“Chief, can you update us on the story of more survivors being found?”

“I’m happy to report that we’ve located seven more survivors. I can now confirm that one of them is a Port Authority police officer and five are firefighters.”

A little burst of excitement filled the kitchen. People reached over and patted others, or gave them a squeeze, and those hints of smiles became fully blown. I started to cough and turned away, covering my mouth to try to muffle the sound.

“And can you tell me the condition of those survivors?”

“They report only minor injuries.”

This time a cheer went up in the room.

“But they haven’t been examined by medical personnel,” the chief said. “In fact, they haven’t yet been fully extricated from the wreckage.”

“So they remain trapped.”

“It’s not so much that they’re trapped as that we are taking great care to make sure they are removed safely.”

“Can you give us the circumstances of their situation?”

“They are trapped in the remains of a stairwell.”

“Stairwell,” I said out loud. “That’s where—”

“That’s where my husband was last seen,” Mrs. Bennett said. She turned around, scanning the room. “Will?”

I started slightly. She was calling me. I moved slightly so she could see me, so she was looking right at me.

“Will, that’s where my husband was when you saw him … He was in the stairwell … right?”

“Yes, in the stairwell.”

She smiled and nodded her head.

But weren’t most of the firefighters in stairwells?
I thought but didn’t say. They were all heading up the stairs to get to the people who were trapped. They were heading up to try to fight the fires on the top floors. That’s why they were carrying all the equipment—putting out the fires would have allowed the people on the top ten floors to be rescued.

“You said there were seven people,” the reporter questioned.

“The seventh person is apparently a woman who was being assisted in her evacuation by the firefighters.”

“Can you tell us her name, and the names of the firefighters?”

The room became hushed. I felt another cough coming up but worked hard to suppress it.

“We know the names, but we are not prepared to release them until these people are fully free from the wreckage.”

“And how long do you estimate that will take?” the reporter asked.

“There are no estimates of the—”

“Wait,” the reporter said, holding a hand up to his ear. He must have been wearing an earpiece. “I’m receiving word that the rescue has begun, that the first person is being removed.”

The camera showed a woman—an older black woman—being walked, a paramedic on each side. Her clothes were ripped and torn, her face caked with white powder, and she had a bandage wrapped around her head. She smiled and gave a little wave, and a cheer went up in the background. They lowered her onto a waiting stretcher.

“That is Josephine Harris,” the unseen announcer said. “Reports indicate that the firefighters trapped in the stairwell with her were helping her to leave the building at the time of the evacuation. Due to health issues or possibly injuries she was not able to move rapidly, and they were unwilling to leave her behind.”