Reflections of Grace by Andrea Raynor

Author:Andrea Raynor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2021-09-07T00:00:00+00:00

8 STATION 10–10

IT IS GETTING CLOSE to midnight. I have had too much coffee, too many bottles of water, and have made too many trips to St. Paul’s to use the bathroom. I decide to walk down to the fire station that sits on the edge of Ground Zero. Once nestled in the shadow of the mighty towers, it is a place that some workers avoid and others seek out like a holy shrine. The firefighters from this company were the first to respond when the planes hit. “All rushed in to help,” I hear over and over. “No one came out.” Someone tells me that all of the men from this station were killed on that morning because they were in the middle of a shift change. As the months pass, I learn that five men from Station 10–10 were killed that day—five more than anyone can bear—but not all of the men from this company. Truth and mythology mingle freely in the air in these early days of the recovery, adding to the haunting sense of tragedy and shock. For the moment, for those who walk the site, however, facts are less important than feelings, numbers less compelling than the battered station that still stands defiantly at its post.

Now the firehouse is ghostly quiet, save for a few scattered workers. Supplies have been organized in the bay that once housed a fire truck. Someone is on hand to give out gloves, hats, boots, socks, et cetera to the workers. As the hours pass, the man on duty sits at a makeshift desk talking quietly to those who come in and out. There are a variety of fire department patches scattered across the desk, free to whoever wants one. Another man sits behind a computer in a small office. He is in charge of satellite locating—when remains are found, he precisely charts the place, the position, and the time.

I offer the usual “How ya doin’?” to those men I pass. There are women here, but it is predominately a man’s world at Ground Zero. When I worked my first shift, back in October, the air was positively humming with male energy, with testosterone, and with what could have been mistaken for bravado. But it was not bravado; it was the desperation of strong and able men who could not fathom that there was nothing they could do to save a life. They lined their trucks along the site, made plans, climbed the pile, passed buckets of debris like thimblefuls of ocean. They persisted with their broad shoulders and bare hands, with images of their children at home and their brothers underground, and they hoped.

Now, some four months later, they work continuously to find the bodies of those who eluded their best intentions to save. It requires tremendous strength and gut-wrenching commitment. But what always makes my throat tighten and my eyes well is the quiet tenderness with which they go about their work. “See how the driver of that bulldozer gives his bucket a little shake?” says a man standing next to me.

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