|
Boys' Own Book
Chapter 1
Secrets No One Knew
July 4, 1976
Four boys, three girls, high and soaring, skin sizzling, tingling under the dizzying stars. Everything open and opening: the ragtop to the sky, the sky endlessly to the huge summer night. This night to their limitless lives.
Everything opening: In the black sky tight bright bursts eclipse the luminous moon, explode as fiery streaks, fountains of scarlet, rockets of silver, purple blooms and sprays of green. On the radio rising swells of tinny music; from the car shouts and applause.
Everything opening: the girls to the boys, not for the first time, but with a new, laughing heat. The boys to each other, grunts and shrugs and grins their fiercely sworn oaths, beer cans their glittering tokens of fealty.
Everything, everything opening: surprisingly, newly, the boys to the girls.
The boys? One is quiet, and one sure; one eager; and one flying, as always, too near the sun. The girls are royalty to these boys, have been since their memories began; and now, as the boys turn into men, the girls are knowing, wise, and real to them in ways they are not yet to themselves.
All would tell you.
And on this patriotic night, this celebration of association, when people all around them are reveling in the sheer staggering luck of being born into the community they would most want to be part of--what are they feeling, these boys and girls? Not fear, not on a night like this, when together they could conquer invading intergalactic armies, with grace and ease they could defeat rock-blind, howling swamp men burning with destruction. Not fear, but the hope of an anchor. The need for each other's weight in the whirlwind. "You Are Here" marked on a mental map. One of the boys leaving in the morning, everyone else to stay. All have been told by men and women, older and more tired, that the marked spot shrinks to nothing, that no ballast can hold, that the buoy above the anchor disappears in the bobbling waves.
Not one of the seven believes it.
It can be said that here the story begins, though it has been going on for some time. No story has a true beginning, and none has an ending, either.
***
From the New York Tribune, October 16, 2001
A HERO REMEMBERED:
CAPT. JAMES MCCAFFERY
by Harry Randall
Third in a Series of Profiles of the Lost Heroes of September 11
Note to readers: September 11 produced countless heroes. Many are still with us; others perished. Some final acts of bravery and sacrifice will never be known. The New York Tribune joins a grateful city in saluting all our unsung heroes.
There are others among the lost whose final deeds stand out in memory. In this series the Tribune profiles some of these heroes, as a testimony to their courage and to the character and pride of all New Yorkers.
"First in, last out."
With these words, spoken by a surviving member of Ladder Co. 62, Capt. James McCaffery was eulogized before a crowd of 2,500 at a memorial service at St. Patrick's Cathedral on Monday, October 15. McCaffery, 46, one of the most decorated firefighters in the history of the New York City Fire Department and the focus of a memorial fund, was remembered by speakers including the Mayor, the Fire Commissioner, the Governor's Chief of Staff, and firefighters who had served with McCaffery or under his command. Firefighters from nearly every state in the union stood shoulder to shoulder in the cathedral aisles, ceding the pews to members of the FDNY and to McCaffery's family and friends.
Because of his long and distinguished career--and, paradoxically, his lifelong distaste for publicity--James McCaffery's story has captured the imagination, and the hearts, of New Yorkers. He has been cited as a example of the courage and character of the FDNY on the day of the worst terrorist attacks in American history.
Ladder 62, housed in a landmark firehouse on West 11th Street, was one of the first companies to respond to reports that a plane had hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, arriving at the scene minutes before the second plane struck. Multiple accounts from survivors credit McCaffery's organization of their evacuation with saving hundreds of lives. Repeatedly noted was McCaffery's "calm, in-control" demeanor and a sense he conveyed that "the situation was in hand." More than one survivor spoke of McCaffery's smile. "He didn't say anything," said Baz Woods, a law firm clerk. "But he made me feel like things weren't so bad. Like someone was in charge."
"That was definitely Jimmy," Thomas Molloy, a prominent Staten Island businessman, childhood friend of McCaffery's, and founder of the McCaffery Memorial Fund, told the Tribune. "You always knew Jimmy could take care of things."
James McCaffery grew up in the Pleasant Hills neighborhood on Staten Island. He left over two decades ago but is still regarded as a local hero.
"Oh, no question," said Father Dennis Connor, pastor of St. Ann's Church in Pleasant Hills. "Through all these years, we'd read in the papers about him, some brave thing he'd done, and we'd all be thinking, that's our Jimmy."
James McCaffery always wanted to be a firefighter. "He had a red plastic helmet someone gave him when he was three," said Mr. Molloy's ex-wife, Victoria. "He wore it all the time. When it got too small, he still kept squashing it on. His father had to buy him another one."
McCaffery is remembered as a quiet boy who captained the varsity baseball team at Dwight D. Eisenhower High School. "Jimmy never talked much," said Mike Pidhirny, retired head coach. "I never remember him riding anyone. It all went into his game. Jimmy expected a lot from himself, and he made the other guys want to give as much as he did. We made the play-offs every season he played. We won two division titles."
McCaffery entered the FDNY Academy in 1976 at the age of 21. His first assignment was to Engine 168, in Pleasant Hills.
"We watched him grow up," recalled Owen McCardle, a firefighter retired from Engine 168, who has been digging at Ground Zero since September 11. "Used to come around all the time when he was a kid, try to help out, wash down the truck, stuff like that. Did well at the Academy. Could have got assigned anywhere, put in for here. Once he was in, we couldn't shake him. Go out on a run, come back and this probie, not even on duty but he's frying up bacon, ready to scramble eggs."
In a move that surprised people in Pleasant Hills, McCaffery applied for a transfer in 1980 and was assigned to Ladder 10 in Manhattan. He moved to a Greenwich Village apartment near his new firehouse and never returned to live or work on Staten Island.
"He lost two friends within a year," said Marian Gallagher, the director of the More Art, New York! Foundation. Ms. Gallagher grew up with McCaffery and now heads the McCaffery Memorial Fund, whose mission is to aid the FDNY's outreach and recruitment efforts. "I think he just felt a need to start over. But he never forgot where he came from. One of the friends who died left a son. Jimmy helped raise him."
"Definitely, I joined the Department because of Uncle Jimmy," said Kevin Keegan, 24, the son of Mark Keegan, a close childhood friend of McCaffery's who died at the age of 23. Kevin Keegan is a probationary firefighter at Engine 168 who had been on the job just three months on September 11. His right leg and arm were badly burned by falling debris as he and other firefighters prepared to enter the north tower. Keegan is currently in rehabilitation at the Burke Center in Westchester. "Uncle Jimmy was there the whole time I was growing up," Keegan continued. "If I was in trouble, or had a problem or something, he'd be on the phone, he'd show up at our door. I could count on him."
Keegan, the Tribune has learned, is the beneficiary of Captain McCaffery's FDNY life insurance policy. "That's Jimmy. Still taking care of us," said Keegan's mother, Sally. "No matter where he was, Kevin and I could always go to Jimmy."
After Ladder 10, McCaffery served with Engine 235 in Brooklyn and then in three other Manhattan companies, including three years with Rescue Co. 1, before being given the command of Ladder Co. 62. From his probationary days at Engine 168, McCaffery's fearlessness stood out. "He wasn't reckless," said his mentor, Owen McCardle. "Jimmy never made a move until he took the situation in. But sometimes we had to pull him back all the same. One thing you learn on this job: sometimes you have to let something burn. Let something go to save something else. Jimmy never wanted to believe that. Superman, we called him. Save everyone, that's what Jimmy wanted."
In a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph from 1984, McCaffery is in midair, leaping the gap from one rooftop to another, silhouetted against smoke and flame. Another picture, taken in 1988, shows him being lowered on a rope to rescue a baby held out the window of a burning third-floor apartment. McCaffery brought the baby up and was lowered a second time to save the mother. He tied the rope around her, signaled firefighters to pull her up, then disappeared into the building in search of another child. He found her crouching in a closet with the family cat. As the fire went to three alarms, McCaffery staggered from the building, ankle badly twisted and with bloody parallel lines of scratches on his face and hands. EMS workers rushed forward and took from him a blanket-wrapped, unhurt child clutching her terrified cat.
There are other stories: a dive into the Hudson in a rainstorm to pull a man from a sinking boat. Using his turnout coat to smother the flames on a man whose clothes were burning. Many stories. And after each act of heroism, James McCaffery--most often smiling widely--thanked well-wishers, returned to his firehouse, and refused all requests for interviews.
Three times McCaffery was admitted to NYU Medical Center, twice to the Burn Unit, with injuries that would have made him eligible for retirement. Each time he was back on the job within months. FDNY Assistant Chief Aleck Wagman acknowledges McCaffery to have been a source of "institutional knowledge." "Men were anxious to serve under him. Not just the new guys, everyone. Anyone could learn something from Jimmy. He'll be badly missed."
"At the other houses he worked, he wouldn't let them call him Superman," Owen McCardle recalls. "Like it embarrassed him. But tell you the truth, it was always who he wanted to be."
McCaffery lived alone in a small, spare apartment on West 12th Street and never married. "The Job was his family," said Ted Fitzgerald, retired captain of Engine 235. "There's always guys like that, every generation. They're the backbone of this Department, and on 9/11 we lost way too many of them."
McCaffery's heroism on September 11 is by now legendary. Elizabeth Murray, an attorney, made the trip down 28 flights of stairs with others from her firm. Murray, her firm's fire warden, was among the last to evacuate her floor. She spoke of McCaffery's "swift and total" understanding of the tragedy. "There was fire on our floor from the elevator shaft. People were burned, and some had been hit by debris that exploded out when the doors blew open. There was a lot of smoke, and we were cut off from our stairs." The men of Ladder 62 directed the crowds away from the fire to an open stairwell, assisting the injured and, in the words of another survivor, "defusing the hysteria, everyone screaming and running around."
"He seemed to know exactly how much time we had to get out," Murray said of Captain McCaffery. "He said if we didn't panic, we'd be all right. He could have come out with us. We just barely made it. I really think he knew that the tower was going to come down. None of us remotely thought it would, at that time."
McCaffery was last seen by Murray heading another way. "He went up," she said. "He told his men, 'Get control of this, take these people out of here.' He meant the panic, the confusion. Then he looked around, like he was taking it all in. He said something like 'The job's up there.' One of the others, another firefighter, said, 'If you're going, Captain, I'm going with you.' Some of them went." Murray's eyes filled with tears. "He was smiling when he pulled open that staircase door. I'll never forget it. All the way down, I wondered what made him smile like that. I remember thinking, Well, when this is over, I'll look him up and ask him."
Deputy Chief Gino Aiello was at the north tower command station when the evacuation order was issued. "Some of the companies didn't respond," Aiello said in an interview. "A lot of the radios were out, so we don't know if they got the order. But Ladder 62 heard us. Captain McCaffery responded. He was on 44. He said he had injured up there, and he was bringing them out. He had three men with him. 'We'll be down as soon as we can, Chief. There's a lot of injured.' That's what he said. I don't know how he was planning to bring a lot of injured down 44 flights with three men, but if anyone could talk the injured into getting up and walking--the injured, maybe even the dead--it was Jimmy McCaffery."
Ladder 62 lost four men that day. Funerals and memorial services for the other three firefighters have already been held. "This is how Jimmy would have wanted it," Owen McCardle said. "He would have expected the other men to be taken care of first. He was their captain. First in, last out."
Boys' Own Book
Chapter 2
Abraham Lincoln and the Pig
October 30, 1968
Eleven years old: Four boys, three girls, and they weave through each other's lives the same as through the open doors of the houses up and down the street. These kids know one another the way they know these blocks, the trees and sidewalks and everyone's backyard. Jimmy can't remember --- no one remembers --- a time when the other ones weren't there.
When they were little, their moms brought them to the park or to each other's houses; on Saturday their dads took the whole bunch to the beach, to the zoo. It's different now that they're bigger, now that they go to school: Jimmy --- with Markie, Marian, Sally, Vicky --- is at PS 12; and the Molloys, Tom and Jack, go to St. Ann's, study with the nuns. It doesn't change who they are to each other; it's just, this way, some things about each other are stories, legends almost: only some of the kids see, but everyone knows.
Like the story (it got to be a legend) about Paulie Testa, and Eddie Spano, and Tom's smart idea.
Paulie's at St. Ann's, too; his father has the fruit stand on Main Street. He's little, Paulie, and right after school starts in the fall, there go the Spano brothers knocking him down, taking his lunch money. It happens a couple of times. It's not like Paulie says anything to any of the kids, it's not like they say anything to Paulie; after all, he's from the other side of the parish; after all, he's Italian. And the Spanos are Italian, too. In Pleasant Hills people take care of their own.
But all the kids like Mr. Testa. Sometimes he gives you an apple or a peach for free; says they're bruised, he can't sell them, though no one ever finds a brown spot on one.
And weeks go by, and no one, meaning none of the Italians, stops the Spano brothers from beating on Paulie. Tom tells this to Jimmy, they both agree it's bad.
If he was bigger, Tom says, if he could look out for himself. But Paulie, he's just a shrimp, like Markie.
This makes Jimmy mad, the Spanos beating up on a scrawny kid. Paulie can't help it, or Markie, either, if they're not big; and Jimmy's had to get Markie out of trouble more than once that he got in just for being small.
Because of who their dad is, says Tom. That's why, because everyone's scared.
Jimmy knows that's right. Al Spano is a frightening man; being scared of him isn't stupid, it's smart. What should we do? Jimmy asks.
Tom says, Not you, Jim, just me.
Alone? Jimmy says.
Tom's not scared like everyone else, not afraid to go up against the Spanos. Jimmy knows why: because of who Tom's dad is.
But not being scared still doesn't mean Tom can take both Spano brothers on.
I don't think I'm gonna fight them, says Tom. I have an idea. He grins, and Jimmy does, too.
Like always, Jimmy says.
But if it doesn't work? If I need help? You got my back?
Like always, Jimmy says.
This is the way it is with Tom. Like because of who he is, he has things he has to do. All the kids have things they're supposed to do: clean your room, do your homework, do the dishes, go to church. Some kids, that's how you get your allowance: you do your chores. Tom, he has this extra job: take care of people. The kids aren't sure what he gets for doing that, but chores come from grown-ups and so does whatever you get, and Tom's father is Mike the Bear.
So one day Eddie Spano, the older brother, he's in fifth grade, Tom's grade. It's morning, the kids out on the playground before school, everyone running, yelling, the boys throwing balls, the girls jumping rope. Sister Agnes blows the whistle, the kids all run to get their bookbags and line up to go in. Eddie Spano at first can't find his bookbag. It's not where he left it, but he spots it off to the side. Goes over to get it, and it stinks. The thing's soaked in gasoline. All Eddie's books, notebooks, his history report, drenched in gasoline, everything reeking and ruined. A book of matches on top, a note in the matchbook: Lay off Paulie Testa, or next time its you. The kids are lined up, girls on one line and boys on the other, and Tom, from his place in line, is staring at Eddie, not looking away.
That's Tom, that's his way. He could have fought the Spanos, sure, could have collected his brother Jack, and Jimmy --- Jack's a year older, a lot bigger, but Tom's always in charge --- and stood on the sidewalk around the corner from the schoolyard, where the Spanos had to pass, where the nuns couldn't see. Jimmy would have done it; Jack would have loved it. The Spanos would have lost.
Why didn't he?
What I wanted, I wanted them to stop beating on Paulie. That's what Tom says to the six kids sitting on the stoop, eating Heath bars and waiting to hear the story again. Marian says, Couldn't you tell a teacher? Tell someone so they'd make Eddie stop, so nobody has to get into a fight?
Vicky rolls her eyes. She's sitting next to Tom, the place Vicky usually sits, on the top step. Anyway, Vicky says to Marian, they didn't get into a fight. Tom knows what he's doing. Vicky scoops up some crackly fall leaves, tries to braid their stems into a bouquet, but they crumble.
Well, I didn't want to do that, have a fight, Tom says. I mean, suppose we did, suppose Jimmy and Jack and me beat the crap out of them?
You would've, Tom, Markie chimes in, you would've demolished them. Terminated them. Markie's using big words, the kids ooh and ah; except Sally, she giggles and pushes Markie, and Markie grins and tries to tickle her.
Yeah, says Tom, for sure.
Yeah, says his brother Jack, for fuckingsure, and I fucking wish we had, man. Jack says this, though he's also been heard to say, That little runt Paulie, he looks like a worm from his father's apples.
Yeah, Tom says; and the kids know there's no question in his mind who'd have won, if that's how it had gone. But, he says, but then they get some other assholes, come back and call us out. Weget some other assholes --- here he pokes Markie with his sneaker, and Markie grins again --- and we call them out. Guineas and micks, in the middle of Main Street! World War Three!
Tom's saying words the kids aren't supposed to say. They're not dirty words, not exactly, or swearwords, like saying Jesus when you're not praying. There are other ones, too, spic and chink and kike and nigger, they're not nice. The moms don't want the kids to say them, though sometimes the dads, if they're talking to each other, they'll let one pop out, especially if they don't know you're listening. But not the kids, they're not allowed. Those other words, the kids don't know anybody to say them to anyway. But guineas, you better believe they know who the guineas are in Pleasant Hills. And the micks, that's them. It's not a nice word, but it's a good thing to be. All the kids know.
So, says Tom, so the next thing that happens, we have this big fight, and then Sister Joseph calls out my dad, and their dad. And your dad, Jimmy.
The kids all laugh, seeing Sister Joseph, a dried-up prune, standing on the sidewalk waiting to mix it up with Al Spano, with Brendan McCaffery and Mike the Bear. Jimmy laughs, though Jimmy's not really sure what odds he'd give on Mr. Molloy and Mr. Spano, or even on his own dad, if it came to that.
My way, Tom says, nobody gets hurt. Meaning, he adds, me and you assholes. Them, who gives a shit?
Tom talks dirtier than the other kids, except not dirtier than Jack. This is a privilege of rank; all the kids understand that.
Yeah, Markie pipes up. And I heard Eddie's dad beat his butt.
Tom nods. This is expected, but Markie's is the first report. That's expected, too: Markie's always hearing things, bringing the kids interesting information. Probably this is because no one --- grown-ups or kids --- really pays much attention to Markie. No one notices him much, who cares what he sees or hears?
Markie says, Mr. Spano, he's making Eddie buy a new math book from his fucking allowance.
Now Markie's using a word Tom saves for when he really needs it. Tom acts like he doesn't hear. Jack's eyes narrow, but he says nothing.
Markie goes on: And what else I heard, I heard Eddie told his dad he didn't know who did it, poured the gasoline. Even no matter what his dad did to him, he wouldn't tell.
Sally's green eyes get wide; Marian moves a little closer next to her and pats her hand. Everyone's quiet for a moment. The kids are all thinking about what Mr. Spano, a red-faced explosion of a man, might have done to Eddie, and about Eddie not telling.
Al Spano is just plain mean, for no reason, like his two sons. The Italians, the kids all think they're weird anyway. They wave their hands around and listen to music that you can't understand the words, and the old ladies wear black. But this kind of meanness, it's not from being Italian. All the kids keep away from Al Spano, all the kids cross to the other side of the street on the block where the Spanos live; all except Jack, who walks on that side on purpose, staring right into the windows of their house. No question Al Spano would tear out and break the arm of any man whose son was messing with his son. Even Mike the Bear: any man. But going up against Mike the Bear, that would be the end of Al Spano. Eddie Spano must know that, everyone knows that. So Eddie has to say he doesn't know who poured the gasoline.
Eddie's doing what he has to do. The kids are still scared of him, they'll never like him, and he deserves whatever he's getting; but his silence, they respect. Only Marian looks sad.
Sitting there on the stoop, everyone quiet, Jimmy's thinking, like the other kids, about Al Spano and the beating Eddie must have taken. But he's thinking about something else, too: what would happen if the Spano brothers snatched little Paulie's lunch money again tomorrow.
He sees it: Eddie Spano howling, rolling on the ground, eaten alive by flames.
He knows it won't be like that: the Spanos will never go near Paulie again.
But if they did? Jimmy watches Tom, Tom's hands peeling the bark from a stick, digging with his thumbs where it doesn't want to come off. But if they did, Jimmy thinks. Whose job would it be, then, to put that fire out?
Tom looks up at Jimmy, almost like Jimmy said what he was thinking out loud. Looks at him, but doesn't answer the question.
Tom snaps the stick, throws it away. Anyhow, he says. This way Paulie gets to keep his lunch money. The only one in trouble is Eddie, and he started it. The important thing --- and now he grins, that great grin that makes them all feel good, all feel part of everything --- the importantthing, Dad don't get smacked by Sister Joseph.
The kids all laugh.
But there's something else Jimmy sees, sees and doesn't forget. What Tom wanted was to make the Spanos stop. Tom makes Jack part of it, what Jack will want is to beat the crap out of anything that moves. Kids fight, it's no big deal, not big enough for Sister Joseph to call anyone out. Except the way Jack fights. Jack gets in there, everything blows up, everyone's in trouble.
Tom looking out for little Paulie the way he did, Jimmy knows, that way instead of a different way, is also Tom looking out for Jack.
From the New York Tribune, October 24, 2001
A HERO'S LEGACY
by Harold Randall
Today was a happy day in Pleasant Hills.
This Staten Island hamlet of modest homes on sloping, treeshaded streets is a town that lives up to its name. Kids ride bikes past well-tended flower beds on their way to the schools their parents went to. Main Street runs a short three blocks, lined with mom-and-pop shops. The Post Office is on the eastern end of Main Street, and the parish church of St. Ann's anchors the west. Between them, in the symbolic heart of Pleasant Hills, stands Engine 168, one of the first firehouses on Staten Island and still inuse.
The purple and black bunting draped above the red doors of Engine 168 and the flags at half staff all over town suggest that Pleasant Hills hasn't had many happy days lately. Engine 168 lost two men on September 11, men who lived here, who were neighbors, fathers, and friends. The town also lost four other residents: two who worked in the World Trade Center, and two who were firefighters with other FDNY companies. And Pleasant Hills is also mourning a native son, a man who left this town 20 years ago but will always be one of their own: Capt. James McCaffery, one of the most decorated firefighters in the history of the FDNY. Capt. McCaffery died in the collapse of the north tower along with three other members of Ladder 62, the Manhattan company he commanded.
But today was a happy day in Pleasant Hills, because another native son, a little worse for wear, maybe, but alive and whole, came home.
Kevin Keegan was a probationary firefighter with three months' experience under his belt when the bell at Engine 168 rang on September 11. His shift was over; he didn't need to be there. But Keegan could often be found in the firehouse after his shift was over. Or before it began. Or on off-duty days. He liked the place: the kidding around, the stories, even the food.
"Kevin grew up here," Owen McCardle told the Tribune. The gray-mustached Pleasant Hills resident spent his entire career at Engine 168. Though he left the job over a decade ago, McCardle is still a part of the firehouse family; in the FDNY, that's how it works. "Jimmy McCaffery was here then," McCardle said. "He used to bring Kevin around to the firehouse after his father was gone. When Jimmy transferred out, he asked us to look after the kid."
"We made him like the prince of the firehouse," confirmed Peter Connell, recently promoted to captain and given the command of Engine 168. 168's former commander, Bill Small, is one of the men this company lost. "Kevin was two when his father died. We sort of adopted him. No kid should have to grow up without a father." Captain Connell looked back through the open firehouse door to the apparatus floor. Engine 168, damaged in the maelstrom that was September 11, has been repaired and repainted. The captain said, "I guess there are going to be a lot of kids to adopt now."
When the call came in to Engine 168 on September 11, offduty firefighter Kevin Keegan asked Captain Small for permission to ride along. By then the extraordinary nature of the event was clear, though not yet its true and terrible extent. With the other members of the company, Keegan rode the engine into a cataclysm for which no level of experience could have prepared anyone.
"They had the bridge open for emergency vehicles, but it was slow going." In an interview last week, Keegan sat with a visitor at a picnic table on the rolling grounds of the Burke Rehabilitation Center in White Plains. "By the time we got there, the second plane had hit. The fires were burning pretty bad."
Keegan is a cheerful red-haired, freckled young man. But when he speaks of the events of that day, he turns his gaze away. He peers across the distant hills like a man hoping for the first glimpse of travelers returning home.
"Everything was chaos," Keegan said. "Girders crashing down, glass breaking. People on fire falling from the sky. It was unbelievable." Here in the green serenity of the hospital grounds, it did seem almost unbelievable that such horrors had ever been real.
"They sent us to the north tower," Keegan went on. "We were massing to go in --- there was a chief there, I don't know which chief, but my captain reported to him. And there were, I think, four other companies. And we were getting set when part of the building just came twisting out of the sky. Someone shouted, and some guys ran, but some guys didn't have a chance to run."
Keegan was seriously injured by the falling debris, receiving a concussion and second-degree burns; but it's clear he knows how much luckier he is than many of the men with whom he stood.
"I lay there with something heavy on top of me. I knew I was being burned, but I couldn't move. I thought, I'm going to die. But, okay, at least I'm on the Job, I'll die as a firefighter. That was okay, you know?"
Whether or not that would have been okay is a judgment the visitor is glad he does not have to make.
"Then I heard Uncle Jimmy calling me."
Uncle Jimmy, of course, is Capt. James McCaffery, who stepped in and helped raise young Kevin Keegan after the death of his father. "There was smoke and dust everywhere, you couldn't see anything, but Uncle Jimmy told me to go left. He said it was my coat that was pinned, not me, and to take it off and stay low and head toward daylight on the left.
"So I did. I peeled out of the coat, and I could move. It was slow going, but Uncle Jimmy kept saying just a little further, he was right there waiting. I could see the daylight he meant. I got there, to a kind of hole, and saw guys up there, yelling and digging. I called to Uncle Jimmy. I figured that's where he was, that I'd made it to the right place. A couple of guys yelled back. One guy jumped down into the hole. A guy I didn't know." Keegan shook his head, clearing out memories of smoke and dust, fire and darkness. "I asked where Uncle Jimmy was, but he just kept telling me I was okay, and they got me out.
"That's the last thing I remember until I woke up in the hospital the next day. Some of the guys were there sitting in the room, the guys I rode with. They told me about Dave" --- firefighter David Schwartz, the second member of Engine 168 to die that day --- "and Capt. Small. I asked about Uncle Jimmy. They told me about him, too.
"The thing is" --- Keegan turned his clear green eyes back to his visitor, giving up his search of the horizon for absent friends --- "I reconstructed it. Over and over, in my head. Uncle Jimmy was already up in the tower when we got to the location. Thirty, forty flights up. That's where he was when it fell --- on forty-four. He was nowhere near where I was. Nowhere near."
Today in Pleasant Hills a breeze ruffled the bunting above the doors of Engine 168, and the carved salamanders, legendary lizards that cannot be destroyed by fire, seemed to wink. And Probationary Firefighter Kevin Keegan walked, slowly, on crutches, but unaided, back into the firehouse where he grew up.
"Jimmy saved him." Keegan's mother, Sally, has no doubt in her mind about that. "Jimmy's been taking care of us all our lives. Since we were all kids. Kevin's dad..." Sally Keegan smiled. It was a day for smiling. "You had to know Markie. My husband was the sweetest man who ever lived. But he got into trouble all the time. Jimmy was always getting him out. One of the worst things for Jimmy, I think, was when he couldn't help Markie that one last time. But he's been doing things for Kevin and me ever since. And look what he did for us now."
You don't have to believe in ghostly voices to see the ways in which Captain McCaffery is still taking care of his friend's son. Kevin Keegan's FDNY health insurance paid for his stay at Burke. Jimmy McCaffery's FDNY life insurance named Keegan as beneficiary and has paid for the extras: the private room, the private nurse, the hours of physical therapy demanded by a young man eager to push himself, anxious to get back on the Job.
But even before that, years before, Jimmy McCaffery always did what he could.
Mark Keegan, Kevin Keegan's father, died in prison, according to Marian Gallagher, director of the More Art, New York! Foundation and Kevin Keegan's godmother. "Markie killed a man in self-defense. He was never charged in the killing. But his gun was unlicensed, and he went to prison for that. It was a short sentence, but he got into a fight there and was killed." Marian Gallagher's face saddened. "We were all so young..."
After Mark Keegan died in prison, Jimmy McCaffery looked after Keegan's young family. "Uncle Jimmy said we should sue the State," Kevin Keegan tells the visitor. He leans on his crutches, the center of the happy chaos echoing down Main Street. "Mom and Aunt Marian thought he was nuts. Even Uncle Phil did." Keegan grins. He pokes the ribs of a tall man standing beside him. This is Phillip Constantine, Mark Keegan's court-appointed attorney. Over many years he has remained a friend of the Keegan family. He grins also and tells the visitor, "Once in my life I was wrong, and he can't forget it."
"But Uncle Jimmy insisted," said Keegan. "So we sued. And the State settled."
All of that, of course, is family lore: Kevin Keegan was too young to remember. His mother remembers, though. "Yes, it was Jimmy's idea. No one thought it would work, but it did. That was Jimmy --- just going ahead with something he believed in, no matter what anyone said. It wasn't a huge amount of money, but it came every month. I didn't have to work when Kevin was little. That made all the difference."
Sally Keegan's eyes, clear and green like her son's, broke off from her visitor's and gazed down the street, as though someone had called her name.
And Main Street suddenly seemed crowded. Not just with Kevin Keegan's friends and well-wishers, people giddy with good news in a season bleak with tragedy. Ghosts were also shimmering in the morning air. Jimmy McCaffery. Markie Keegan. Bill Small. David Schwartz. The four others that Pleasant Hills lost on a day which changed us all forever. All were there, to welcome Firefighter Kevin Keegan home.
Laura's Story
Chapter 3
The Man Who Sat by the Door
October 30, 2001
Harry Randall's death broke over Laura Stone like a thunderstorm out of a clear blue sky. That was even one of her stupid thoughts, one of the notions that floated by as Georgie, who'd brought her the news, hovered, ready to catch her if she fainted or to fetch water, a sweater, whatever she wanted. Georgie who'd always loved her. I should have known, Laura thought, rubbing her arms with her newly cold hands, seeing not Georgie but the Hudson flowing splendidly through the glorious afternoon in the window behind him: It's such a perfect, beautiful day.
In New York now, beautiful days were suspect, clear blue skies tainted with an invisible acid etch. "Lovely weather," neighbors greeted one another, smiling under the generous golden sunlight of an Indian summer still unrolling into late October. Then their smiles would falter. They'd nod and walk hastily on, to avoid acknowledging the likeness, to escape seeing, in each other's eyes, how stunningly beautiful that day in midSeptember had been, too.
The next equally meaningless thought that passed through Laura's mind as she stood staring down at the river: How long had Georgie known? Had he stood watching, waiting for her to leave her desk to go stand by the conference room window—a thing she could be counted on to do half a dozen times a day, to come here to watch the Hudson flowing to the sea while a sentence composed itself in her head—so he could be the only one near, the one to comfort her?
No, she told herself impatiently, as you might scold a child for making a claim he knows is false: "I can fly," or "My dog ate a car." No, not Georgie. I'd do that. I'd deliver bad news to Harry that way. But kind, lovesick Georgie wouldn't do that to me.
Bad news, or good news. It was Laura who'd pinned yesterday's front, the front that carried the third Jimmy McCaffery story, to Harry's corkboard. Not where everyone could see it (though of course they'd all seen it when the paper came out, all seen Harry Randall on the front again after a five-year drought, not just the front, above the fold). She'd tucked it in the corner, folded small, just the head and subhead left to shout privately to Harry how proud of him she was. It was still there, still shouting:
FUND REJECTS CONTRIBUTION
Questions Surround Hero Firefighter's Dealings with Crime Figures
by Harry Randall
Surprising her, Harry had left it up all day yesterday. But he was sure to take it down today. No, but—twisting stomach, ice on her skin—according to Georgie, Harry wouldn't be here today, wouldn't be here again, wasn't here, was gone.
But—swept away suddenly, losing her footing to a rogue wave of hope—Georgie must be wrong! It wasn't Harry. Someone else took Harry's car. Who? What's the difference? It was someone else's body. She'd go, she'd go now over to the morgue, past the tent and the refrigerated trucks where all the unidentified bodies were, and this would be just another one, just someone else no one knew. She'd tell them it wasn't Harry, and later, back at home, she and Harry—
Georgie was shaking his head, reaching for her. Laura heard, horrified, her own voice, high and shrill, speaking these thoughts aloud. Shivering, she spun away from Georgie, turned to the river, willing Georgie to stay back: if he touched her, she would splinter and crack, like ice in warm water.
The river blurred, her face felt steamy: oh God, she was crying, with Georgie there. Her knees wobbled. Despising herself, she dropped onto a chair. It was the one with the coffee stain on the arm, from the morning meeting, soon after Laura had come to the Tribune, when Leo had complained about something—toothlessness, Leo's word—in a story of Harry's. Harry, to the mortal eye unperturbed, offered an insolent reply. Leo tossed the pile of copy and a disgusted snort in Harry's direction. The gods clashing on Olympus: Laura had been thrilled. The papers had upended someone's coffee, not Harry's, she remembered, but someone else's.
"Who has the story?" Confused, Laura heard an imitation of her own voice demand this of Georgie. Oh, she thought: Reporter-Laura, that's who's speaking. She who went to a hospital groundbreaking to give the donor a chance to comment on the rumor that the multimillion-dollar windfall was profit from his Mexican drug operation. She who pushed herself into the face of a mother to ask how she felt now that a fire had killed her children.
Georgie, weakly and after a moment: "What?"
"Who?"
"Laura, what's the difference?" Georgie had damp brown eyes and a mouth eternally open, eager to speak the right words, of comfort, of explanation, if only he could find them. He preferred to be called George or, better, to be abruptly summoned by his last name—"Holzer!" the way you'd hear "Randall!" or "Stone!" echo through the newsroom—but no one ever did that. His beat was technology, science. Half the Tribune staff held he was a virgin; the rest, that he visited a Korean whorehouse on 38th Street twice a week.
Laura, who never gazed long upon Georgie, looked angrily past him now, through the blue sky's reflection in the conference room glass, into the newsroom.
It was chaos there, the regular thing. The attacks had not forced the Tribune's offices closed, but the rhythm, the urgent fast and steady beat of newsgathering, had been smashed and jangled. Throw a rock in water, orderly rings pulse in all directions; throw many, and the world is anarchy, confusion. It took time for the Tribune's tempo to reassert, but finally it had. Keyboards clicked. Men with their polished shoes on their desks leaned dangerously back in chairs asking pointed questions into phones. Women with sharp elbows leaned forward over theirs, desks and phones, listening darkly. Someone came, someone went.
Laura turned to Georgie. "They don't know yet." It was an accusation.
"Leo's about to call us together. I asked him if I could tell you first." It was an admission of guilt.
"First? So you could—? I have to—?"
On top of her words: "Laura, you know—"
But Laura was refusing to know. A wave of fury threw her out of her chair, fury at Georgie for the news he'd brought and the way he'd brought it, at the river for flowing and the sun for shining and the leaves for falling from the trees.
Before she could scream and tear Georgie apart—he would have permitted this—a change in the tenor of the newsroom froze her. A ripple in the force field: Leo was stepping from his office. He planted himself just over his threshold, and when he stood there and roared, "People!" everything stopped.
Square-headed, white-haired, rough-faced, and bulky, Leo waited for phone calls to end and documents to be saved-as. Laura and Georgie, after a motionless moment, stumbled unthinking through the conference room door: rage, shock, and sorrow could not, even combined, begin to overcome the autoresponse triggered in a reporter by Leo's bellow from the doorway.
So Leo delivered the news, and Laura had to hear it again.
This time it was ornamented with details. If she'd been listening as a reporter, these would have been important to her. Fascinating even, as they clearly were to the colleagues around her. Unable any longer to be impressed by death, they could still be surprised by the personal nature of one like this; but not enough to keep them from scribbling notes onpads, in case Leo assigned them the story, or from stealing glances away from Leo to send them Laura's way when they thought she wasn't looking.
But she was looking, though she was determined to have nothing but scorn for their glances, and she didn't hear the news as a reporter, though she was one. She heard it as a student, as an acolyte, apologist, and lover, and the word Georgie hadn't used but Leo did, the dam-break that swept her into stunned disbelief and powerless fury, was suicide.
Excerpted from ABSENT FRIENDS © Copyright 2004 by S.J. Rozan. Reprinted with permission by Delacorte Press, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
• Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.
Back to top.
|
