Absent Friends

The boat groans into the slip back at home, back on Staten Island. Jimmy goes outside on the side where the Verrazano Narrows Bridge is, and when the boat pulls out from the slip he stands in the wind and the sunlight, so strong in winter it's not yellow, it's pure white but it doesn't warm you. He watches the bridge slide by, watches Staten Island get small.

When they get close to the Manhattan side, Jimmy checks his pocket for Phil Constantine's address. He moves to the front and he watches the towers come close. As the boat slides into the slip, sunlight bounces off the windows at the top of the World Trade Center, the ones highest in the air. It sparkles off the water at the end of the island. It's so bright it even glitters on the pathway stones, worn smooth by so many people over so much time.

The sun's a huge fireball burning in the sky, and Jimmy wants to be the sun. That strong. That clean. That distant.

But Jimmy's a twenty-five-year-old guy standing on the steel deck of a ferry. When it docks, when they lower the ramp, he takes one more minute, like he's still not sure. He's not. But he heads down the slope with the people around him. Jimmy stands for a moment at the rail, looking back. Then he turns, leaves Superman on the boat, and walks out onto the streets of Lower Manhattan.

And at the rail now, Jimmy stands there, in that same place, different, after so many years, but the same. The ferry that docked is pulling out again, carrying people across the water. Jimmy finishes his coffee. He checks his pocket for his St. Florian medal that his mother gave him his first week in the Academy; and for Marian's photograph, the single one he's kept all these years. They're both there, they always are; he's taken them into each house as he's transferred, slips them into the pocket of his dress uniform for ceremonies and funerals. But he's always checked for them as he's heading for the firehouse, and he checks now.

Jimmy glances at the river and the ferry one more time. Then he turns and walks out onto the streets of Lower Manhattan.

SECRETS NO ONE KNEW

We lost voices

Lives

Loved ones

Secrets no one knew

—Sarah Williams, 17, “Voices” (excerpt),

from Wordsmiths: A Teen Poetry Journal

TREE, FALLING

A tree falls in the forest; no one is there to hear it. To whom does it make a difference, then, whether it makes a sound?

COMPLICATED WORK

What is a good man but a bad man's teacher?

What is a bad man but a good man's job?

—Lao-Tse

THE MAN WHO SAT BY THE DOOR

A New York City police officer tells this story: I took my wife upstate to visit my uncle Rob. To get away for a few days, you know? This was maybe a month after 9/11. Rob used to be a warden, one of the prisons up the Hudson. They call them medium security, but, trust me, they're tough places. He retired long ago, kids are all grown and gone, wife died years back. Talks about moving to Florida, but still lives in the same house he used to, across the street from the main gate. So the first night up there, Rob makes lasagna, we talk for a while, then my wife and I are ready to turn in. Rob takes us to this bedroom upstairs, says good night, heads downstairs again. You staying up for a while? I ask him. No, I'm going to sleep, he says. I sleep here. He points to a chair in the living room, facing the door. Got used to it years ago, he says. And damn if he doesn't sit down in that chair, fully dressed—even shoes—and sleep like that until morning. And all I could think was, I thought I was putting in a lot of overtime. You know?

THE OLD MASTERS

 (SAILING CALMLY ON)

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along . . .

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure . . .

. . . and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

—W. H. Auden, “Musée des Beaux Arts”

THE WOMEN IN THE TENT