Among the Dead by Michael Tolkin

Author:Michael Tolkin
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 1993-06-28T16:00:00+00:00

7

Public Relations

Frank watched himself become famous on the news that night, the story was the same on every channel: man misses plane, evades police barriers at crash site, is arrested for looting on Cohassett Street. As he listened to them talking about this man who had been arrested, as he felt the thrill of fame, a disturbing high-pitched tone vibrated through their reports, linking the basic elements of the story, implying a relationship, an intention, some subtle marriage between the crashed plane and his walk through the ravaged houses, his arrest. He wanted to know what they really meant by the implicit connections – ‘PLANE CRASHES’; ‘MAN WHO MISSED PLANE SEARCHES THROUGH RUBBLE’; ‘ARRESTED’ – and why they were frightening him. He wanted to call up the radio and television stations, and the newspapers that would print the story in the morning, but he couldn’t think of anything to say that would help his cause. Don’t they care how it makes me feel? What do they mean when they say I was searching through the rubble? Searching? As though I had a goal.

He wanted to tell the reporters covering the story that in his distress he had visited Cohassett Street to see for himself where the plane had crashed, and that of course he had not been looting. He could tell them what he told the police, that he had found his wife’s suitcase. He hoped that anyone hearing about this would put themselves in his place. He hoped they would understand that there was nothing to loot. But who would believe that? Too many people crowding the police barricades that night wanted grim souvenirs. But who would blame me for wanting something that might have been touched by my daughter? What if I said I was looking through the awful zone hoping to find her favourite doll? Yes, if it comes to trial, he thought, and my lawyer sees the jury running against me, he will claim that my search through the wreckage could hardly be called looting, since by definition looting is theft, and by definition I was looking for what I had lost. And I found it.

No jury will go against me, he thought. But there won’t be a jury. And how important is my story in the larger story? I will be lost in all the other news. There were so many pieces of the event now. The flight attendant whose dogs were waiting for her. The pilot who was going to retire in six months. The three couples killed on their honeymoons. The destroyed families. The reports of eye-witnesses.

In the Flight 221 Crisis Center at the Marriott, Frank waited with the families of the dead, while Lowell was at the airport, meeting their parents. The airline was flying them down, for free.

Minutes would pass while he watched Bettina Welch on the phones, or Ed Dockery talking to the press who tried to get through the cordon into the room with all of the families, and Frank would have no thoughts.

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