Sons Of Privilege, Towers Of Strength (Stories For Ears To Hear #1)

There was no way for the man to know this, but the large piece of metal that he was trapped under had recently belonged to the jet engine of a commercial airliner.
As he lay there in the prone position, his face pressed against the asphalt of the street and his arms spread out like a scarecrow, he could see the world in front of him in the same way that you would view a photograph turned sideways. He could vaguely make out feet and legs moving around him and somewhere in the distance the shrill noise of sirens could be heard. There was also the steady rainfall of paper all around him.
He watched as one piece of paper slowly made its way into his field of vision with its lazy, side-to-side downward motion, until it settled neatly onto his face, nestling perfectly just over his eyebrows and under his chin.
Panicking because his limited visual scope had just become completely obstructed, the man puffed out his cheeks and attempted to blow the piece of paper away from his face. But the heavy piece of metal debris pressing in on his torso precluded him from taking a necessary deep breath. What came out was more of a weak whistle than anything else. The bright morning sunlight on his face allowed for the viewing of shadowy shapes through the piece of paper, but despite this, his sensory deprivation was now almost complete.
He had started out this morning a few minutes late, his time exiting his home extended by his young daughter’s inability to find her school library book to return that day. He knew that it was under her bed, where they always put it after reading at bedtime. But he was determined to have her find it and retrieve it this time because he wanted her to start to become responsible for her library loans.
When she came downstairs almost in tears from not being able to find it he relented and helped her search her room for the book. It was not under the bed. And after a thorough taking apart of her room the book was located by his wife in his daughter’s backpack. The very place that his daughter had thoughtfully placed it earlier that morning and then forgotten about it. As he fought traffic and rushed to make train connections so as to avoid being late to work he had no way of knowing that those lost ten minutes had saved his life.
Well, had saved his life so far.
As he lay there he absentmindedly thought about the baseball game tickets that he had in his pocket. They had been a gift to the folks in his division from his boss for the successful completion of a recent deal. The whole group was planning on attending the game tonight after work and he had been looking forward to it for almost a month. The game had playoff implications and he had brought along a few dollars from the family’s "fun account" that was located in the piggybank near the front door of his house to buy a t-shirt for his daughter to wear to "team jersey" day at her school.
His mind snapped back to the present, and his predicament, and he tried to take stock of what was happening to him. He took three shallow breaths and tried to clear his mind for just a second. The breaths hurt incredibly and he wondered if maybe he had broken a few ribs. Back in high school he had broken a rib playing soccer and he remembered how difficult it had been to breathe. This felt like that, but a thousand times worse. His necktie was also draped across his face in what would have been an odd, gravity defying position if he had been standing upright. The tie across his face had already been making his breathing more difficult when the piece of paper had arrived. If he could have moved his arms for just one second he would have brushed the tie and paper away from his face. But his outstretched arms were pinned down like he was a butterfly in a collection somewhere.
Breathing and vision he thought, two things you don’t really notice until they are gone.
Whatever it was that was on top of him was heavy, but not so heavy as to completely crush him. So maybe he could get out from under this thing if he attempted to move in just the right way. He tested his fingers and his toes and found to his relief that he could wiggle them, though not without causing small, sharp pains to his chest area. He also found that when he went to wiggle the fingers of his left hand they were stilled curled around the handle of his briefcase.
When he had heard the initial explosion and the screaming he had done what comes natural to human beings. He had ducked down behind a parked car and that had saved him. The flying chunks of debris had ricocheted around once they had hit the street, and though he had not seen it, the piece of engine that was pinning him down should have killed him outright. But by the time it had made its way over to where he was crouched down it had lost most of its killing momentum and simply knocked him off his feet against the side of the car and then come to its final resting place.
Well, that had saved him, so far.
Others near him had not been so fortunate. It the first few seconds after he had come to he heard a woman screaming in pain, and then go silent. He had tried calling out to her but his breath would just not come, and he could produce no sound louder than a choked whisper.
The strange thought came upon him to test all his senses. He sniffed weakly and came up with the scent of the street directly beneath him and the increasingly strong smell of gasoline. He could feel the rough pavement under his face and his fingers brushed small stone-sized debris all around his hands. His sight was still obscured by the piece of paper, but a breeze had shifted the paper slightly to partially uncover one eye. Through this limited tunnel of vision he could see down the boulevard a few feet. The most immediate thing in his vision was a pair of feet in high heeled shoes. They were attached to a pair of legs, but he could not turn his head to see the rest of the figure lying just a few feet from him. He guessed that these shoes belonged to the woman he had heard screaming.
There was also the strong taste of blood in his mouth. He thought back to his days as a teenage lifeguard at a summer camp and he wondered if the blood he tasted was from a mouth injury or some sort of internal, crushing injury. One sort of bleeding he thought was infinitely better than the other.
As for sounds, there was still the distant wailing sirens and not much else. Sirens were a constant in the city, and most people gave them no more thought than they gave a rotating ceiling fan in the office or the sound of conversation in a restaurant. But as he listened intently he heard the distinct sound of boots clomping on the pavement near him. And not just boots, but a collection of boots stomping in a rough formation.
He could identify this sound because for ten weeks of boot camp the sound rhythmic clomping boots had been his constant companion. The sound had signaled that his training squad was moving somewhere; out to train on the pt field, marching on thirty mile treks across the desert plain, in formation in front of the general for graduation exercises; the sound was woven into his memory in a way that he had not realized until that moment.
And then the boots were upon him, passing just through his field of vision. As they passed their collective momentum caused a slight movement of air that moved the paper from his face completely. This sudden restoration of vision (and the slight blinding caused by the sunshine hitting his face directly) gave the paper’s movement a religious overtone and that was enough to cause him to call out with a force that he did not expect.
He immediately felt the impact of the breath he had taken to make the loud sound that he did. His insides shot up a pain into his head that caused him to trail off his call for help. His eyes closed for just a second to deal with the pain, and when they opened again he saw a pair of boots separate from the pack and take two steps to where he was laying face down. The pair of feet turned into a knee, and then a helmeted face appeared in his line of site.
"Sir, can you hear me?" the fireman said as he placed one hand on the man’s shoulder.
The man could not speak, but he weakly nodded his head in the affirmative.
The fireman took a quick stock of the situation, the piece of engine on top of the man, the woman lying dead at his side, the dust that was starting to settle on every available surface.
"Try not to move sir; we’re going to get you out of here. Just lie still while I radio in our coordinates."
The man heard the distinct beep of a walkie-talkie and the fireman’s voice talking to a dispatcher. He also felt the reassuring hand of the fireman on his shoulder and for the first time that morning he felt a sliver of peace. He would see his family again; he would have another morning to see his daughter off to school. He would have another evening to read to her. There would be other ball games to go to.
And then in mid-sentence the fireman’s voice trailed off as the sound of another explosion rocked the street, causing the pieces of debris around the man to jump into the air like popcorn and then settle down again into the rising dust.
The fireman’s hand clenched tightly on the man’s shoulder and then released. A voice in the distance screamed "Jon, we’ve got to go now!" and the fireman leaned down and spoke into the man’s ear "I’m so sorry sir, but I have to go. Hold tight, dispatch knows where you are and someone will be right back for you, I promise!" And with those words the fireman stood up and rejoined a second pair of boots and the man heard them running away towards the sound of the explosion.
And then, as quickly as it had come, hope vanished from the man, like a wave of the ocean that arrives violently and then departs in the next motion.
The man balled his left hand into a fist and pounded the pavement with all the force he could muster. This action again sent shockwaves through his broken ribs and caused him to momentarily black out from the pain.
When he came to again, he cried. He cried like he never had before. Weak sobs echoed through him and tears traced little rivers through the dust that was caking on his face as he lay there. He cried for the daughter he would never see again, he cried for the silly argument that he had had with his beautiful wife that past evening. He cried for the dead woman that lay there beside him in her five-hundred-dollar designer shoes that were twisted at a grotesque angle.
Hours passed. They could have been minutes; there was no way to tell. The dust was so thick and fierce now that it reminded the man of flying through a dense cloud in an airplane. He had once flown with his daughter and she had been delighted the moment that they broke out of the clouds and saw the sun again. She had said that they were flying through marshmallow skies. The other passengers around them had been delighted with this comment, and the stewardess had even found some small marshmallows from a hot cocoa packet to give her in honor of her first flight.
The memory of this happy event sent a fresh wave of tears through the man. He was normally a composed individual, not given to much outward emotion. This had made him good at what he did for a living, and had earned him that corner office that he had been craving ever since he joined the firm on the seventy-third floor.
As the man daydreamed these thoughts about his family and life in the corner office, he became dimly aware of the smell of latex and of a gloved hand brushing the thick dust off his face.
The paramedic then placed two fingers on the side of the man’s throat and called out to someone "hey, we got a live one over here!"
There was a rush of movement and two sets of boots joined the paramedic beside the man. The first paramedic leaned over into the man’s face and roughly pulled his eyelids up and shined a pencil flashlight in his eyes.
"This one’s doing okay, but he’s not gonna make it much longer breathing all this dust. Maybe if we can get this thing off of him he might stand a chance of getting out of here."
Another voice chimed right in. "I don’t know man, that metal looks awfully heavy, I’m not sure it’s worth the time."
"What do you mean ‘worth the time?‘" the first paramedic replied. "This guy’s still breathing, we’ve just got to get this thing off him and we can get him out of here!"
"Sam" said the second voice, "I know that you haven’t been at this very long, but remember your triage training. You look and access a situation, in this case, this dude right here, and then you determine if your time is best used here or somewhere else."
"We cannot just leave this guy here!" said the first paramedic. "I’m tired of losing people today! We can get this guy out; just help me with this debris!" The man then felt a shifting of the metal on top of him as the first paramedic frantically tried to move the object by himself. He heard the first paramedic grunt with excursion.
"Sam! Sam! Listen to me" the second paramedic yelled, "this guy’s not going to make it. Chances are that he has crazy internal injuries and he’d die a few minutes after we got him out of there. It would take at least four of us to move this debris and then how many more people die because we took the time to get this guy out? Use your head Sam; we’ve got to move on. Remember, it’s a game of numbers now."
It always amazed the man the way that medical people talked about a patient like they were not even there. He could hear every word clearly. Did they know that it was his life they were talking about? Did they have daughters? Did they like baseball?
The first paramedic leaned his face down into the man’s line of sight and he could see that the young paramedic was crying hard.
"I’m so sorry man. I have to go! Is there anything I can do for you?"
The man could not speak, but he nodded towards his back pocket. He wanted the young paramedic to pull out his wallet and get his identity. He wanted this young kid to tell his family exactly what happened. If he could have talked he would have given the paramedic a message. But all he could do was nod painfully towards his waist.
"Your back hurts?" said the young paramedic.
The man slammed his head on the pavement out of frustration.
"I’m sorry, I don’t know what you want me to do." said the young paramedic desperately, the anguish plain to see on his face.
"Sam, on your feet now! Let’s tag that guy and go. I need you to focus here if we‘re going to get through this day."
The first paramedic pulled out a black tag and wrapped it around the man’s outstretched wrist, and then he was gone.
The man stared at the black tag for a long time. He had no illusions now what was going to happen. He didn’t feel the sudden despair that he had with the fireman, he just felt numb.
As the day progressed the man slipped in and out of consciousness. At times the sounds of footsteps near his head would awaken him out of his stupor, but they would always be moving past him. The black tag on his wrist said it all. He tried to remove it a couple of times, but with his other armed pinned down he could not remove the tag with just the use of his one hand. The exertion of trying to bend his hand up to his wrist used up whatever reserves of strength he had left, and once again he drifted off into a half-awake state.
He was suddenly brought to by the splashing of water on his face. This so shocked him that he assumed that he had finally awoken from his long nightmare and was ready to start his day.
As his eyes desperately attempted to focus, he was shocked to see a grizzled, unkempt face looking directly into his. The face was missing many of its teeth and reminded the man of his daughter, who was in the midst of loosing her baby teeth and currently looked like a hockey player.
The homeless man cracked a broken smile and said "good morning, my good man, you look like something the cat dragged in! I seen some folks who looked bad today. You ain’t even the worse I seen. I don’t think that ones gonna make it though" he said, pointing to the woman in the designer shoes.
The homeless man continued to talk to himself as he poured water gently over the man’s face and cleaned away the caked dust with a rag he pulled out from a shopping cart that was next to him.
"Now there was this kid in ‘Nam’ who I remember got himself squished under a helicopter skid. It almost cut him in half! That was the second week I was there and I had to see something like that. That chopper was coming in hot because it was taking fire from Charlie who was holed up at the tree line. That kid didn’t even see what was coming. I think he and I came over together on the same flight, but I don’t remember."
The homeless man was chuckling to himself now.
"Imagine that, one minute you’re standing there looking out over a rice paddy, wondering how in the world you got there and the next thing you know, ’bam’, you’re jellified! Three tons of Heuy coming down on you like the wrath of God."
When he finally finished washing the man’s face, like a mother washing her small child, he stood up and proclaimed "you don’t look half as bad as that kid did. No sir. We had to get two body bags for that kid. You only gonna need one!"
This set the homeless man off laughing again and he had to lean against his cart for support.
The man, more awake now than any time in the past few hours, summoned the breath for one request.
"Water…please."
The homeless man fished around in his cart for a second and produced a six pack of bottled water. He wrested one from the plastic webbing, opened it up and held it to the man’s mouth.
The man coughed on the first sip, and spewed water onto the pavement in front of his face.
"Slow down son, there’s plenty of water to go around. There’s folks just giving it away today, all over the place. You watch, tomorrow it will be ten dollars a bottle. But today it’s free, just walk right up to the tent with the red cross on it and they’ll give you a pack to take with you. They say they’re gonna serve food soon too, just got to wait a couple of hours."
He put the bottle back to the man’s mouth and he drank his first successful drink since that cup of coffee he had at home that morning. The homeless man cracked open a bottle of his own and sat himself down cross-legged, opposite the man.
"What you got here is a situation, my friend; I might be able to help. I got this crowbar in my cart for warding off the punks. They see crazy old Joe swinging his crowbar around and most of them got the sense to back away."
With that Joe stood up and fished out a long crowbar from underneath his shopping cart and walked around the man, out of his sightline. He then heard old Joe call out.
"What you need here is to create a fulcrum. Once you get that everything else is simple. Even an old fella like Joe can move a big bolder once you get your fulcrum set up. That’s what this thing is, just a big bolder make out of metal. I had to move rocks back in the Corps, used to have to make those landing strips every month. Got so good at moving stones that I should have gone to jail. Breaking rocks on the chain gang is nothing compared to moving rocks in Da Nang."
This statement caused Joe to chuckle again, and as he laughed the man felt the weight of the debris lift off of him and he heard it crash to the ground next to him.
"Woo hoo! That did it!" said Joe, his voice cracking in exuberance.
He came back around to the man’s head and leaned in close.
"You and me gots to get out of here brother. This dust is gonna kill us both. That doctor down at the VA told me to quit smoking ten years ago, or I was gonna die of lung cancer. Well if that Doc could see me now!"
This statement again caused Joe to laugh so hard that he coughed raggedly. He then reached down and grabbed the man under both of his arm pits and hauled him into a standing position. The man cried out in pain, but found that he could stand with help from Joe.
"It’s a long way out of here brother, do you think you got it in you to walk?"
The man nodded and attempted to take a step. As he stepped forward his legs collapsed under him and Joe was again holding him up.
"Well sir, if you can make it over to that curb over there I think I’ve got an idea."
Joe pointed over to a sidewalk curb a few feet away and the man, with Joe’s help, shuffled painfully over to a lamp post. The man was left to support himself on the lamp post while Joe went back to collect his cart. Joe then wheeled his cart to the curb and indicated for the man to step off into the shopping cart.
That would be the last activity that the man attempted that day. His body had used up it’s last reserve of strength. The adrenaline had run its course and he was as limp as a pillow once his body was settled into the shopping cart. Old Joe wrapped a dirty blanket around the man, the way a mother would tuck in a child for a long car ride, and then turned the shopping cart towards the river and wheeled away.
After a few blocks Joe, the man and the shopping cart met a stream of people heading for the bridge. The crowd was so diverse and shell-shocked that a homeless man with a banker in his shopping cart wasn’t even the strangest site among the sea of humanity. There were businessmen and hipsters, college students and construction workers, people with their pets in cages and whole families still in their pajamas, holding tightly onto each other; all silently crossing the bridge.
Midway across the bridge a cool breeze coming off the river momentarily revived the man and he woke up to see the sun setting over the city. In his delirium he murmured "it’s time to go to the game, is this the way to the stadium? It’s over isn’t it? Did we win?"
Joe, smiling to himself, replied "You should have seen it. Babe Ruth hit a line drive to center and drove in Derek Jeter from second base in the bottom of the ninth to win the game."
"Oh good, the man replied sleepily. Make sure to get my daughter a t-shirt for me, will you?"
"You bet" said Joe.