Absent Friends

“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 1

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 mid-September had been, too.