On the Way to Heaven

by Catherine Underhill Fitzpatrick

The truck is cherry red. Ladders, axes, and coiled hose cling to its side, held fast by brackets that flash in the sun. The boxy thing blazes down the West Side Highway like a jet on takeoff. I cover my ears. For an hour, waves of emergency vehicles have been blaring warnings as they race to the desperation at foot of Manhattan, bearing rescuers who know in their thrumming hearts that any soul above the gashes is beyond hope.

       The red truck swerves to the curb. Firefighters jump off and sprint to a telephone kiosk. The one in the lead jabs the keypad with trembling fingers; the others fish their pockets for coins, waiting their turn, their backs to the plume rising like a cobra. For 10,388 days the South Tower thrust its elegance into the air. An hour ago, a great winged beast screeched across the harbor and snuffed it away.

       South Tower’s wounded twin stands, for now.

       The firefighter shouts into the receiver. A bear of a man, his voice is high and thin.

       Hi babe. Put Mikey on the phone.

       Pause.

       Go Get Mikey!

       I take out a pen, open a notebook. The tragedy downtown is beyond description; here, the pathos is discrete. I watch him grind the receiver into his forehead. I write the time, the street intersects, the numbers painted in gold on the side of the truck.

       How are you doing? I ask the guys in line.

       One wrings the back of his neck. Another looks away, squinting. A third tries to describe his conflicting emotions. I scribble words across the lined pages and look up. Already, they’re done, hiking up to the truck, clamping chin straps, checking jacket toggles, twisting wedding rings. I give them a dry smile. They don’t see. I signal two thumbs up. They don’t see. They are staring into the middle distance, at their boots, at their buddies, anywhere but at the ash cloud ahead, whirling an entire skyscraper into the air, its steel and glass, its elevators, hallways, offices, cubicles. Cell phones, keyboards, coffee cups by the thousands. Armani neck ties, Nike sneakers, Fossil watches. Lucky pennies in purses. Snapshots of babies, tucked in wallets. More. Oh, more. Bond traders. Sous chefs. Mothers and sons. Sisters and brothers. Fiancés. Best friends since high school, twelve floors apart. Strangers in a stairwell clinging like lovers, seeking courage, as if it were transferrable, which it is. Each set off at dawn for what was known and familiar. By mid-morning they had turned to dust before our eyes.

       It’s eight blocks or so from the phone kiosk to the North Tower, time enough for the red truck to get there before that, too, will thunder down, carrying everyone in it on an epic journey to Earth and raising them, comingled, to heaven.

       Weeks later, I learn what I already know: the men on the truck got there too late to save the living and just in time to die for the trying.

       I keep the notebook.

       On the first anniversary, I fly back to a city soaked in woe. Bagpipes wail. Relatives call out the litany of the dead. Afterward, I take a taxi to the firehouse. The bay doors are open, welcoming crews from across the country. Their trucks line the street. I find the chief; tell him why I’ve come. He twines me up an iron staircase to an office, sits at an old desk, motions me to a chair.

       I tell him what I saw, what I heard, what I wrote by hand in the notebook, most of it never published by my Midwest newspaper.

       Here, I say, holding out the notebook.

       He does not move.

       You should have this. It’s a keepsake. It has some of their last words.

       Still he doesn’t move.

       I plow on. It belongs at the firehouse among the mementos, or give it to the families.

       He rests his chin on steepled fingers, lowers his gaze. I wait, confused.

       Finally, he looks up. You’re wrong, he says, voice gone to gravel. Those weren’t my boys.

       But they were. I lean forward. Here, I’ll show you. I flutter the pages and turn the notebook to him. See? The number on the side of the truck. I didn’t get any last names but that was the route they would have taken, right? And afterward, when the Times ran all the photos of the . . . I recognized them. I think. No, I know. Sir, I’m sure they were from this firehouse.

       He rises. Chair legs scrape the floor. You’re mistaken, he says.His face is a stone mask.

       I get up, bewildered. He rounds the desk and clasps me in a bear hug. Try up in Harlem, he says, choking back tears. They lost some boys.

       We are done.

       He walks me down the stairs. Visitors fill the bays and spill out onto the sidewalk. Mothers and grandmothers hover over seven-layer salads and pans of brownies. Firefighters stand in clots, speaking in low murmurs. Young widows at the fringes transfer toddlers from one hip to the other. Teenage boys finger the gleaming equipment.

       I pause at the corner, my thoughts spinning. What just happened?

       Months later, in the pre-dawn haze of awakening, the firehouse crosses my mind again, and I understand.

       Although the notebook bears witness to the humanity of the men under his command, although it is a testament to their sacrifice, although it would be a treasure for the families of his men, the captain could not accept it. To do so, he would have to concede the unthinkable:

       That as they raced toward an epic disaster, his boys had paused a few moments, a few breaths, a few heartbeats, a few tics of a forbidden clock, to say goodbye.