Colin Harrison - The Finder

The receptionist watched Victor's eyes anxiously.

"Mister, we're busy here and it's time for you to leave." Victor took a step forward. "What's your name again?"

Ray shook his head. "Can't give you that. But I can tell you Sharon says she had a great time with Richie the other night. A great time. Hot. A smoking hot time."

Victor's mouth was frozen. He didn't blink, studying Ray, his body, his stance.

"What d'you mean?"

"Richie will know. Ask him."

Victor twisted his head as if looking at a bad TV picture. Ray watched as his chest rose and fell more quickly, the subtle enlargement of his pupils, his brain juicing him up for a fight.

"One more part of the message, if you don't mind."

"Yeah?"

"Tell Sharon's boyfriend he needs to work on his golf game."

Victor nodded coldly. "I see."

"Just tell him that."

Ray gave the secretary a polite smile and stepped quickly out of the office, alert to any movement behind him, and opened his truck. In the rearview mirror he could see Victor standing in the trailer window, talking into a walkie-talkie. Almost immediately a man stepped out of a shack nearby and hopped into one of the huge tank trucks. A blast of diesel smoke shot from his stack as he started up. But Ray was too quick for him, already had the pickup truck in third gear and gunned it across the gravel, slamming over the ruts, toward the turnout to the avenue. The green truck bolted for the same spot, but Ray got there first, even as the truck's bumper crushed the back panel of the red pickup, kicking it sideways. Ray fishtailed forward through the gap into the avenue, almost hitting an ice cream truck tinkling its mechanical ditty, and moments later was way down the avenue, gone but not forgotten.

He dropped the truck at his father's and walked to the subway with his old fireman's equipment bag. The train would be the fastest way to get to the East Side of Manhattan this time of day. Sitting in the rocking car, he studied the subway map, his eyes drawn to the World Trade Center site. It always made him feel strange taking the subway so close to what had happened. He'd never gone back, never stood at the site and thought and remembered. Something about the ceremonies and political speeches had made him uneasy. The pile had burned for one hundred days. A lot of the firemen and construction workers who worked the site were getting sick now, had breathed in all sorts of terrible stuff, pieces of plastic and bone tissue and chemical compounds no one had ever seen before. I don't think I've dealt with the whole thing, Ray thought. Maybe I just ran away. Maybe I felt guilty about Wickham. Things got a little foggy after he was released from the hospital. His memory wasn't even perfectly coherent. He'd lost weight, some of the skin grafts had to be redone, and his leg hurt still. He'd taken a leave from the fire department. And also attended forty-six funerals, some of them with his father. He felt guilty for not going to work; the department told him that he would always have a job. The FD desk shrinks made him come in six times, handed him a lot of printed materials. His personal shrink was a woman in her fifties with tired eyes. She wore no makeup. "Frankly, I feel like just drifting away," Ray finally told her.

"Why don't you?" she said.

"Well, the guys-"

"The guys will understand," she said. "And if they don't, who cares?"

He sat there in silence.

"Let me tell you something, Ray Grant Jr. I've read your whole file, of course. The FD doesn't want you back right now, not like this. You're deeply traumatized. By 9/11 itself, then by being trapped, then by having your partner die on top of you. Yes, I know about that. We don't know if you're a busted fireman. We don't know what you're going to do when it comes right down to it. And you know what? Neither do you. You don't know much right now. My suggestion is that you go on official indefinite leave. You're not disabled, although we could probably get some kind of mental health exception, though I don't recommend it. You could take a leave and when you felt you could come back, you could take the physical again, retrain and recertify, then get assigned to a company. The union will make sure that happens. But you need to drift away, as you put it."

He nodded uneasily. "You've seen a lot of guys like me?"

She shrugged. "Everyone is different."

"Yeah, but in general. Burns, falls, accidents, cave-ins… a lot of guys?"

The lady shrink nodded. "Couple of hundred, anyway."

He didn't know how to respond.

"Listen to me. Being a fireman is a macho thing. Sacrifice, heroism, the whole deal. Very male. But it doesn't allow for emotional nuance, for ambiguity. You got hit hard. Maybe you should accept that, not resist it. Let the hit carry you somewhere. Ever consider that?"

"My dad always told me I should be a cop."

"He was wrong, in my opinion."

"Why?"

"You interested in power?"

"Not really."

"Justice?"

"That's tougher."

"Something more basic. More elemental?"

"Life and death, yeah."

"Then go find it, Ray. You found some death, go find life."

She stood then. They were done. She gave him a direct look, like a mother to a son, woman to a man. Firm. With a profound human authority. He remembered it. She'd been right. Go find some life.

Within a week, he was on the other side of the world, everything he needed in a rucksack. In a little town in Indonesia. Unplugging. No cell phone, no Internet, no newspapers, no CNN. He met a skinny German girl, and they traveled for a few weeks. She was pretty but she had an intravenous drug habit. He wouldn't have sex with her. He'd seen two advanced AIDS patients coming out of a burning Harlem walk-up once, living skeletons. Besides, he hadn't survived the WTC just to get whacked a stupid way. His refusal to fuck had the effect of making the girl do more drugs. But he knew that if he stayed with her, he might eventually have sex with her, maybe shoot some of the heroin she kept in her knapsack. He told her he was going to leave and she tearfully admitted this was a good idea. He paid a man with a truck to take him to the next town. A few days later he was in the Philippines. In an outdoor restaurant, he saw some big blond guys who looked like sunburned surfers from California. They weren't. Aussies. Relief workers. Lounging around in their boots and sunglasses. He sat down and shared a beer with them. They asked where he was from. New York, eh? Long way from home? They'd just flown in, they'd said, were waiting. A typhoon was hitting the eastern islands. They would be dropped in by a C-5 military transport as soon as the trailing edge cleared the coast. Advance team with sat-phones, tents, water. He asked if he could join them, help out. No, they said, we don't take tourists. The tone of the conversation changed, became awkward. He didn't push it. When the bottles were almost empty, one of the guys asked him why he was in the Philippines. Drifting, said Ray. What do you do there in New York, mate? Ray took a last pull from his beer. Used to be a fireman, he said.

"Fire department, New York City?" said the Aussie, his voice more energetic. "Whereabouts?"

"Company Ten, 124 Liberty Street, lower Manhattan."

"Certified first aid?"

"Yes."

"Rope trained, rappelling, the whole bit?"

"Sure. Smoke-plunge and failing-structure rescue. Roof collapse, floor collapse, wall collapse."

"Construction analysis? Post-and-beam, masonry?"

"I can tell if it's going to fall down," said Ray.

"You can drive a lorry?"

"Lorry?"

"Truck?"

"I've driven a pumper and the hook and ladder."

The Australian nodded. "Gimme a minute, mate." He rose and found the others. They turned and looked at Ray.

Two days later he was in the top of a mangrove tree, trying to rescue a terrified eight-year-old girl clinging to a branch. She'd been in the stripped branches for thirty hours, after the waters had gone down. Her mother stood waiting. When he reached the girl, she clung to him so tightly he could feel her heart hammering against his chest. Her arms squeezing his neck for all she was worth. The best feeling ever, in his life. Ever. The best moment of his life. I'm going to remember this until I die. He struggled not to cry when the mother raced to her daughter. The crew spent three days digging out corpses from the mud. They directed airdrops of bottled water and foodstuffs and distributed them to thousands of hungry hands. They saw hundreds of people dying from dysentery. Three weeks later the crew was rotated out and given medical exams. His parasites were not unusual, but he'd lost twenty pounds. The scar on his stomach sank inward. They offered him a job. From there on it was six months in the field, off two weeks. All over the world. He didn't read many newspapers, he just lived-in the place, in the time, and with the people.