But I ask you—is it a crime to walk in a dead man’s shoes?
As I walk the Long Walk, nothing but the scratchy noise of the respirator in my ears, the world reduced to what I can see through my visor, it’s not for me to ponder why someone has built this bomb whose only purpose is to spread terror. I have no time to curse or hate. It’s not for me to condemn anyone. Whether “the package” represents present danger from enemies foreign or domestic; from without or from within; my only task is to defuse and/or demolish any and all rogue explosive ordnance brought into my city, my homeland; that and nothing more. The rest I leave to the politicians and to fate. You go mad otherwise.
I know I can face the very worst the world’s worst terrorists can conjure up and even contemplate the beginning and the end fused into a single moment again as happened that fateful September day. And I can do so without giving way to fear. Love may conquer all, but not all fears. Love opens you up to fear in ways unimaginable before that love ever took hold of your heart. I can walk into the mouth of hell every single day, but I will not take a woman or child I love in there with me. Nor will I ever put a woman in a position where she believes her only path to continued happiness is by my side. For me that’s a nonstarter. So I’ve chosen to live alone and alone I will stay. It’s my battle to win or lose, then, even though I admit it’s not at all a path I ever imagined I’d seek out for myself.
And so my entire life; the best of times, the worst of times; all the people and events that have formed and framed my life within its sudden-seeming all-too-brief span; comes down to a lead-lined box, not much bigger than the one my last pair of Nikes came in, split open at one end to reveal a digital timer with its face smashed. And beneath the tangle of wires, which after some gentle twisting, pulling, and prodding I see are attached to nothing but themselves; I come at last to an exposed blasting cap connected to four different-colored electrical wires; three if I count the yellow one I’ve just cut; two, once I’ve cut the green. Two wires, then, red and black; one the color of life, the other of death; and the eternal clock still ticking down; digital or analog; sand falling through an hourglass; it’s no matter at all to me now, as all time is relative. And I feel the wire hot in my blood; taste the stale air in my face mask; and catch the salt tears starting to sting my eyes. Are we our memories? Is that all we are? Ever were? Will ever be?
What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that. I know. I must’ve read that old quote a thousand times on the tiny brass plaque on the bookcase that stood next to my father’s armchair. Even though there was no way, back then, I could fully understand the true wisdom contained in those words, they always hit home. And never more so than when I was a teenager desperately trying to find my own way out. The words still hit home. When all else is dead and gone, it’s what lies within that truly counts. How else can you ever know why you are, who you are? Why you do what you do? Why even though what you do may appear as a crime to others, those same events, when seen from where you stand, point to the only possible path open to you? And you must always be true to yourself. Right?
One day, after one of my visits to the New York Public Library, on Fifth, I visited with my dad, at his office, at One Police Plaza, in the hope I could get a ride home; he wasn’t in, but on his desk, another brass plaque, more Emerson: He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.
Truly, is there really any other way to live?
Yet no one asked my brother, Teddy, if he could take the worst; nor was it asked of anyone else who died in the Twin Towers, or of any of their surviving family members; or of anyone else in New York. Death was visited, on all, from above; without warning, without pity, and without remorse; by unforgiving strangers from strangely unforgiving lands. It’s no way for anyone to die.
After that first dreadful year, following 9/11, Jackie went out of her way not to see my father or me. We’d always been worlds apart, anyway, but her putting distance between us—and events in New York—was, I’m sure, the only way she thought she could take back control of her life. So she relocated to another city, on another coast; found herself a new husband; and had the children she never had with Teddy. The falling Towers broke her into a million pieces, too, and the dense clouds of grief smothered and killed whatever love she’d once had for Teddy. Everything became dead ground.
That’s why, once she’d sold the house in Brooklyn, she got rid of everything of Teddy’s that would in any way remind her of him. That’s why she let me have anything of his I wanted; any and all of his personal things; and I took everything, literally. All his books; his CDs and DVDs; all of which arrived at my Brooklyn apartment in stacks and stacks of neatly lettered moving boxes. Everything of his for me to read and/or listen to; at last for me to know the secret heart of him; so he could live again, inside me. I even inherited his collection of vintage Rolex wristwatches; his purple silk ties; his suits, his shirts, his sweaters, most of which fit me, for a time, anyway, until I bulked up a bit. His shoes still fit. Like his suits, they were the kind of shoes I could never have afforded. English. French. Belgian. Handmade. I know there were women who had given me a look, then a date, only because of those shoes, those clothes. I never minded that. In fact, I wore it well.
What I do still mind, though, every single second of every single day, is a big brother gone forever, blown all over the island of Manhattan. Knowing that the emptiness that followed can never be filled; no bedrock ever solid enough to build a future upon; only shifting sands, no matter how deep you dig down. So, yes, it’s true, I did rush to fill the hole inside me; my own personal Ground Zero. All I could do was try to fill up the huge gaping hole with the best of him and the worst of him. His was a different generation; different hopes, different dreams; different music; different rock stars, film stars, sports heroes, but they all became my heroes, too, just as he had always been.
There are times when I can do nothing but rip off my blast helmet and push down the protective collar and go throw up before I can even start to remove the rest of the bomb suit. Afterward, I always seem to catch myself, for an instant, reflected in a vehicle’s wing mirror or blacked-out window and I just stare and stare and have to really think hard whose face it is. Is it Teddy? Or is it me? And when death comes, as it does to us all, will it honestly really matter?
I saw for myself that Teddy never let anyone or anything stand in his way. In everything he ever did, every goal he ever set himself, he was single-minded, fearless; he just went for it, hell for leather, damn the torpedoes. He was like that in high school. I know, because I went to Bishop Ford, too, and they were still telling stories about him when I was there. He was the one to emulate, the one to follow. I’m sure he was just the same at Holy Cross and Dartmouth, and then on Wall Street. I didn’t need my father to tell me that staying focused was how Teddy always succeeded, but he did, at every single, sad, sorry opportunity.
And me? I was always the big disappointment. I was hotheaded Bobby, hot-tempered Bobby; always-getting-into-hot-water Bobby; no hell’s kitchen ever too hot for our damn Bobby.
And maybe that’s the one thing that ever truly separated us.
We were fire and ice. Eternal opposites.
Though I do admit I seem to have grown so very, very, very much colder since the Twin Towers fell.
For the inescapable truth is I chose the road I traveled by; it was not the road that Teddy took, but it might just as well have been.
They say your whole life passes before you at the moment of death.
They’re wrong, even if by no more than a few milliseconds; for I am already dead before I cut the bloodred wire. Blown to smithereens by the blast triggered by what lay hidden deep inside; my fate forever sealed by the lie beneath the lie; the falsehood now fully revealed; the father, the son, the brother, if never quite the twin; my death mask, but a momentary reflection of what lies inside the ever outwardly expanding heart
.
DOUBLE JEOPARDY
BY STEVE BERRY
He stood before the machine, studying the chrome switch marked ON/OFF, mustering the courage to end his son’s life.
The boy lay on the bed, the once-adorable face obscured by thick white bandages, just a nose and tiny mouth visible, blue lips clutching an oxygen feed. Only the respirator, standing before him, allowed the child’s six-year-old lungs to accept each breath.
The brain was gone.
That was what the doctor had said yesterday. She’d tried to be gentle, knowing the situation, but how do you gently tell a man that his only child had no chance? At least Kristen had died instantly, spared the agony of having her body kept alive when no semblance of life remained. Only three days had passed since their new Navigator, driven by Kristen, careened off Highway 16 into an oak tree. The air bag deployed but did little to stop the engine from slamming through the passenger compartment, killing her and horribly maiming Marty. The boy’s thin body was burned and battered, nearly every bone broken, yet somehow he’d survived long enough to make it to the hospital so doctors could connect him to the machines.
For seventy-two hours he’d stood beside Marty’s bed, delaying Kristen’s funeral as he anguished. His options had been made clear earlier by a hospital counselor.
What an interesting service.
Someone to help when the plug needed to be pulled.
The wiry older man had offered little advice, simply agreeing with the obvious. The need for such a service was clear—risk containment—since it was bad for business to have grieving families filing lawsuits claiming that overanxious doctors and cost-conscious administrators had rushed them to judgment. The counselor was the patient’s advocate, supposedly speaking only for Marty, urging caution but never discouraging the inevitable.
And that was the problem.
Everything had become painfully obvious.
Marty had, for all intents and purposes, been dead for three days. There’d not been a sign of life, except what the machine forced upon his damaged organs. A finger placed within his tiny palm brought no response. Where before his son had clutched the offering and held on while they crossed the street or found their car in a parking lot, here there was nothing.
He stared down at Marty.
God, he’d miss him.
He was a blessing in every sense, something neither he nor Kristen had expected. She was nearing forty and he was approaching fifty, and they’d tried for decades to have children, without success. The doctors had offered little hope—age and nature were working against them—but they kept trying and, finally, Marty was born. They loved each other, got along wonderfully, even worked together every day. He practiced law and she made sure the office ran smoothly. Clients called her most times instead of him. Everyone loved her. It was hard not to. Friends wondered how they could be together so much.
He’d not even had time to grieve for Kristen yet.
Marty had delayed that.
It seemed he’d bury them together, side by side, in a plot under more oaks near the ocean. The thought wrenched his stomach and he felt his knees weaken.
No time for that.
Marty needed him.
The doctor said that once he switched off the machine the end would come fast, so everyone had retreated to give him privacy. Kristen’s parents stood out in the hall, respectful of his task. His own parents had long been dead. Marty and Kristen were all the family he had. Crying had never come easy for him, and he could not recall the last time a tear had formed in his eyes. Now, suddenly, rivulets started to flow.
Last Christmas they’d taken Marty to see The Nutcracker. Marty had worn a precious new suit bought specially for the occasion and had been enthralled by the spectacle. For days afterward he’d imitated the dancers and hummed the tunes. He was proud that his son appreciated art. Such a bright little boy.
But now…
In a few minutes his son would be dead and a part of him would die, too, just as a different part of him had been extinguished three days ago when he’d been required to identify his wife’s mangled body. After, he’d tried to flush the blood and disfigurement from his thoughts, remembering her as the beautiful woman she’d always been.
The same was now true for Marty.
He wanted to think of him as a blond-haired, violet-eyed little boy with all the energy and enthusiasm life, opportunity, and privilege bestowed. Maybe he would have one day become a lawyer, taking over the practice. Then again, perhaps he would have chosen another career, something that made him happy. Either was fine. He’d given him life, and all he ever wanted was for him to succeed. Now he would give him death.
He stroked the child’s head.
“The best boy in the whole world,” he whispered.
That was what he’d always told him, since Marty was an infant, held in his arms at three in the morning. Or when they’d played together in the backyard—hide-and-seek was Marty’s favorite. Or when the boy had brought home from preschool a picture painted just for Dad. It was never anything recognizable, mostly smears of paint, but to a father they were masterpieces.
He recalled the last time he spoke to his son. Three mornings ago as he headed out the door for work. Marty was finishing off a bowl of Apple Jacks at the kitchen table. Kristen was dressing and would soon follow him to the office, after dropping Marty at school. He’d kissed the child on his forehead and told him they’d do something fun that evening. Maybe ride bikes around the neighborhood. Marty had only recently mastered a two-wheeler with training wheels. He recalled the smile and the words he’d said.
“The best boy—”
“—in the whole world,” Marty finished.
He’d started doing that lately. Accustomed to the phrase. Always smiling back at him when he completed the sentence. It was something between them, special for a father and son.
His gaze stayed locked on his son.
“The best boy in the whole world,” he mouthed again.
He wondered what he’d done to deserve the misery life seemed to have imposed. Four days ago things were good. He was having the best year ever. Money was plentiful, the bills low, they were planning a trip to Disney World in the fall. Every day for the past month, while fighting sleep at night, Marty had scanned the resort’s brochure in his bed.
He turned back to the machine and knew what he had to do. Just a flick of a switch. He tried to imagine what the feeling would be like as he watched Marty die, and the terror of that vision kept his hand frozen at his side. He thought of Kristen and wondered how all this had happened. The police had offered little in the way of explanation. The day was clear, the roadbed dry, their car in good repair. Something must have distracted her, the authorities concluded, and she’d momentarily lost control, enough that the vehicle left the asphalt and found a tree. She knew the road, had driven it hundreds of times. On that day—just a simple errand to the grocery store, on the way home from picking Marty up at school, for some sour cream so she could make stroganoff for dinner. He loved her version. Pink from red wine and always served over rice since he didn’t particularly care for pasta.
The thought of food turned his stomach.
He’d not eaten in two days.
He sucked a breath and steadied himself.
His son did not deserve to die, and he did not deserve for his son to be taken. But circumstances had assumed control. Kristen was gone and Marty was about to be. Was it that they had challenged nature? Become pregnant when they shouldn’t? Was nature striking back? It sure seemed that way. For this case, this trial, he would not walk away with the dispassionate objectivity of a lawyer doing his job. This time the verdict was against him.
And he would pay the price.
He reached for the switch.
A spark of static electricity popped as his fingers touched the metal. The shock caused him to yank his hand back, as if the machine were telling him no, not now, not yet.
But he knew better.
&n
bsp; Act before his courage vanished.
He touched the switch again.
No spark this time.
He closed his eyes, bit his lower lip, and with tears streaming down both cheeks he flicked the toggle down.
Ten seconds passed.
Twenty seconds.
Marty’s chest heaved. A groan seeped from the boy’s mouth and for an instant he wanted to reengage the respirator, but the doctor had warned him that the body would labor until it realized there was no brain. Ignore the pleas, he was told, and let nature take its course.
Damn nature.
Another moan and his heart pounded.
The chest collapsed. Shivers racked the child’s limbs.
The sight clawed at his heart.
Then, nothing.
Color drained from the skin and a sickening silence signaled Marty was gone.
He bent down and lightly kissed the child’s bandage.
“The best boy…”
But he couldn’t finish.
He turned and stared at the door leading to the hall. Framed in the rectangular window were the tearful faces of Kristen’s mother and father as they watched their grandson die.
The box lay on the table beside the bed. Silver, wrapped with red ribbon and a bow, which he’d brought with him earlier. He slowly tugged on the ribbon, unwrapped the bow, and opened the lid. Wrestling one last burst of courage from his fear, he reached inside and gripped the gun. A semiautomatic, bought years ago for late nights at the office. It had never left the drawer in his desk until today.
He turned back toward the bed, never let his eyes leave the boy, and raised the barrel to his head.
The door of the room swung open and someone screamed No.
But his finger was already pulling the trigger.
And his last thought was a hope.
That God was indeed merciful.
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