The Ones
We Would Call
by Robert P. Barsanti
I listened to the moon rise on Saturday night. After Labor Day, the air has cooled and cleared for the early stars and planets. The beach plums and scrub pines have dimmed in the early evening shade but high in the air, the sunset still flecks the clouds. One jet, on its way to Europe, burns gold in the sky.
The days have become quieter and stiller in September: the nights settle in a windless silence. Without the crowds from New York and New Jersey, the island returns to us. Free from work and from leases, the connections of our lives tighten in the brisk evening. We wear polar fleece, sit on the deck that the tenants paid for, and drink to the lingering summer.
Quiet days in September can never be what they were. Ten years ago, we were in the midst a perfect weather week; clear blue skies, light winds, still warm temperatures. I was in my classroom on the second floor of the high school, wondering why the fighter jets were flying over the Sound. Then, with my sophomore class, we all watched the tragedy unfold on my new green iMac.
Time seized. The planes and boats stopped going while we waited for another attack. Then, we waited for the fires to stop burning at Ground Zero and for the pictures to come down and for the dead to be named. The ash blew through Manhattan, the air thickened, and the odor hung. We gave blood, donated money, and prayed in the stillness.
Then, in fits and stutters, time lurched forward. Baseball was played again. Letterman and Stewart returned to TV. The unimaginable was imagined, then accepted with color coded warnings. Stores reopened and the fiction of everyday life wound its way around us. We came back to our lives and got on with it. The waves keep rolling in.
Ten years later, I stood in front of another sophomore class. These kids were in kindergarten when the towers fell. Since that time, the grass has grown over the ruins. I never forgot, but they can’t remember. They knew of the events of September, 2001with the same depth of understanding that I had for the events of December 7, 1941.
Teachers write the final draft of history. We open the books, show the pictures, and make sure the next generation has it in the mental back closet. If we no longer teach about kings and union heads and wars, they no longer exist. Rare is the student who can tell what was fought for in the War of Jenkin’s Ear or in the wars of Austrian Succession, no matter how many men died.
But history, in the end, is the story of common men and women in the ground. My students, while great and thoughtful children of New England, are not likely to become the presidents or the terrorist leaders of the future. But they are likely to be firefighters and sound engineers.
So I taught them about Mike Kehoe, from Engine 28, Ladder company 11. I showed the famous picture of the him climbing up the stairwell, while everyone else ran down. The picture that made him a hero, put him in my classroom and has plagued him with fame and guilt. While Mike lived, six others from his company died. Those who came to his wedding, who came to the baptisms and the birthday parties and the Friday nights after work; they hadn’t made it out of the stairs. He worked on search and rescue, then he worked on his own guilt at surviving and now he still works as a fireman in New York. Today, he has a family with three kids and a house in Staten Island. He visits elementary schools, answers letters, and mourns for his friends that died and are dying from those attacks.
Jonathon Briley was also made famous by photography, but not as fortunate. He was in his mid forties, had become a deacon in his church, and had made nice life for himself. On that morning, Jonathon came to work as a sound engineer at the Windows on the World, at the 107th floor of the North Tower. When the first plane crashed, he was trapped above it in the smoke and heat. He, like hundreds of others, reached out by phone and computer to those that knew his name. He left messages for his loved ones, tried to breathe through the smoke, and realized the nightmare that the last few minutes of his life had become. And he became the Falling Man.
The students could not imagine. They could stand in his shoes and they could not. They could walk in Mike Kehoe’s boots because he escaped in the nick of time. He dodged death, just as they imagined they would. But, they found Jonathon Briley’s shoes just as fitting. The humdrum of Jonathon’s life stretched before him, and then it didn’t; and he was asthmatic, breathing heavy smoke, and one hundred and seven stories up. In my classroom, the children worked out ways to survive, before they grasped that often there are no answers left and ten long seconds alone in the air. Then they thought about who they would call.
History grinds ordinary people up, then it erases their names. They become part of a chart in a textbook or a fleck in a picture, and then are gone before the next President or General appears in bold print. Long after the New York Times has forgotten about the men of Ladder Company 11, Mike Kehoe will remember. The Falling Man has a name, a grave, and a family. History books were never going to be the reward for them, nor will they wait long for us.
Our reward comes on a deck in September, when the tourists have left, the westerly wind blows commas of clouds overhead, and the chairs are thick with familiar names who have come over with clams casino and Whale’s Tail. This is the lesson that we all must learn. This is the net we can hold when no other net will do. These are the people we would call when history waits in the smoke.
