Twelve Fifteen

“Tom,” said Frank.

He had turned his head. Only his head. His arms stayed out, wide, on either side of him, holding the line, the way the chief steward had told them, and his body stayed facing the junction and the Queens column going through it, and his head turned, and he looked at Tom beside him.

He looked at all of him. At the dust, white, from his hair to his shoes. At the hat that was not there. At the uniform under the dust. At his face.

Tom saw him see it. He saw it go into Frank’s face and down through it, the way the colour goes into a river.

“Grand Central,” said Frank.

It was not a question.

“Yes.”

“You were in it.”

“Yes.”

Frank looked at him for one second longer. His face did a thing Tom had seen it do once before, on Sunday, across the chicken, when Tom had said the concourse, and that he had not been able to read; and he could read it now, standing next to him at the steward line at the foot of the bridge in the sun, and it was not what he had thought it was on Sunday, and it had never been.

Then Frank looked back at the junction.

“We’ve got to get through,” said Tom. “The Battery. The terminal. Whitehall’s gone up. We were sent.”

“I know. I heard. Somebody’s got a radio.” Frank did not take his eyes off the junction. “Thirty seconds. The transport lot are coming through. Two more sections. If I let you through now I’ve got eighty men behind me coming through with you, and they’ll all want to go to the Battery, and I’ll lose them.” He did not look round. “Thirty seconds. Then the gap. Then you go.”

Tom stood beside him.

He did not argue. He found that he did not want to. He stood beside his brother at the steward line, with Teresa at the end of the line by the pavement with her face to the smoke, and the old red banner up on its two poles behind them in the sun with the painted man on it and the stitches in the corner, and the eighty men of the local standing under it, held, in their work jackets and their caps, waiting, and the band somewhere behind them still playing, faintly, something old, and in front of them, through the junction, the Queens column going by under its blue banners with wheels on them, the bus depots and the subway lines, men and women in the uniforms of the buses and the trains, a woman with a pram, a man with a child on his shoulders, a hot dog cart.

“Did you get the photograph?” said Frank, to the junction.

“Yes.”

“You didn’t say anything.”

“I was going to,” said Tom. “At lunch.”

Frank’s mouth went in at one corner. He did not look round.

“At lunch,” said Frank.

“I had something written.”

“What did you have written?”

“Mum’s stitches,” said Tom.

Frank did not say anything for a moment. His arms were out, wide, holding the line. The last section of the Queens column was going through the junction in front of them, the end of it, the stragglers, a man in a bus driver’s jacket helping an old woman along by the arm, a boy running to catch up with a flag.

“They held,” said Frank. “She did them too small to see. You can’t see them unless you know.” He took a breath. “Right. Gap. When I drop my arm, you go, and you go fast, and you go round the left of the Queens lot, and you don’t stop for anybody.” He looked at Tom, then, once, sideways, quickly, with his arms still out. “And you go to Whitehall and you do whatever it is you lot do.”

“Frank…”

“Go when I drop my arm,” said Frank.

He dropped his arm.

---

There was a light.

It was the same light. He knew it this time; that was the worst of it. He knew it in the instant before it was everything, the white, from the middle of the junction, from the place in front of them where the end of the Queens column had just gone through and the front of the Brooklyn column was just going in, the place where the two crowds became one; he knew it and he knew what was coming after it and there was no time in the world to do anything with knowing it.

Then the weight.

It was not like the first one. The first one had come across a floor in a room the size of a church and found him at the mouth of a passage. This one came across an open street from thirty yards and found him standing in the open with nothing in front of him, and it did not knock him down. It took him. It took him off his feet and through the air and he was not anywhere and then he was on his back on the road among a lot of other people on their backs and there was a sky over him, very blue, with things in it, turning over, coming down. Paper. Glass. Something red.

There was no sound.

Not even the ringing. There had been the ringing, at Grand Central, the high note held on and on, and under it, from the bottom of the well, the world. There was nothing now. There was no high note. There was no well. There was nothing at all, as if somebody had taken the whole of sound out of the world and shut the lid, and he lay on his back on the road at the foot of the bridge and looked up at the blue sky with things coming down through it in perfect silence, glass, turning, catching the sun, beautiful, and something red on a pole coming down slowly, folding, and he heard none of it.

He thought: my ears.

He thought: get up.

---

He got up. He did it faster this time. He knew how.

He was on his knees. There was glass under his hands, on the road, a great deal of it, from the windows of the buildings round the junction, which had all gone, every one, up and up, on every floor, so that the buildings stood round the junction with their windows black and empty like a row of skulls. His hands were cut. He could see the blood on them coming through the dust. He could not feel it.

The people round him were getting up. Or not. He saw them in silence. A man in a work jacket on his knees beside him with his mouth open very wide and his hands over his ears. A man in a cap lying very still. A boy, one of the young ones from the local, sitting up in the road, looking at his own arm. The two men who had been holding the poles of the old red banner, one of them down, one of them up, standing, swaying, with the pole still in his hand, and the banner gone off the top of it, and he was looking up at the empty pole.

He looked for Teresa.

She was at the end of the line, on the pavement, getting up. She was on her hands and knees and then she was on her feet with one hand on the wall of the building behind her, and she was looking at the junction, and her face was white under the white, and she was alive. He saw her see him. He saw her mouth move. He did not hear it.

He looked for Frank.

Frank was up.

He was up before anybody. He was standing at the steward line, where he had been standing, in front of the eighty men of the local, with his back to the junction, facing them, and his arms were out. Wide. On either side of him. Holding the line. And the line was holding. The other stewards were up too, three of them, along the front of the section, with their armbands and their arms out, and the men behind them, the ones who were up, were coming forward, pushing, a wall of them, to go into the junction, to go to whatever was in there, and the stewards were holding them, with their arms out and their bodies, leaning into them, and Frank was shouting.

Tom could see him shouting. He could not hear it. He could see Frank’s mouth, wide, and the cords in his neck, and his face, red under the dust, and the words coming out of it, the same words, over and over, into the faces of the men pushing against his arms, and Tom could not hear one of them and did not need to. He knew his brother’s mouth. He had watched it make words at a kitchen table for twenty-two years.

HOLD. HOLD IT. THERE MAY BE ANOTHER ONE. THERE MAY BE ANOTHER ONE. HOLD.

And behind the words, in the men pushing against Frank’s arms, their mouths going too, wide, all of them, the other words, the ones the old men in the local would have said, the ones that came out of every crowd that had ever stood behind a line and seen what was on the other side of it.

LET US GO. LET US THROUGH. FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, FRANKIE, LET US GO.

Frank held them.

---

Tom turned round and looked at the junction.

He did not know how long he looked. Less than a second. Long enough. The place where the two crowds had become one. The place where the end of the Queens column had gone through and the front of the Brooklyn column had gone in. It was in front of him, thirty yards away, in the sun, in silence, under the black empty windows, with the smoke going up out of it, slowly, white and grey, and in the smoke, on the road, on the ground, everywhere, people.

Some of them were moving.

He looked at the ones that were moving. He did not look at the others. The thing in him that had shut the door at Grand Central opened the door and put this in and shut it again, very fast, and stood in front of it, and he let it.

He went in.

---

He went past Frank.

He did not decide to. He found he was doing it. He went forward, off the line, towards the junction, past the end of Frank’s outstretched arm, and as he went past it the arm came down, fast, and a hand closed on his sleeve, hard, on his upper arm, and held.

He looked round.

Frank had him by the arm. He had turned his head again, only his head, his other arm still out holding the line, and he had Tom’s sleeve in his fist, and he was looking at Tom, and his face was a face Tom had never seen on him, not at sixteen in the kitchen door, not ever. His mouth was moving. Very close. Tom could see every word.

TOM. THERE MAY BE ANOTHER ONE.

Tom looked at him.

THERE MAY BE ANOTHER ONE. DON’T. TOM. DON’T.

Behind Frank, along the line, the men of the local were pushing against the stewards’ arms, wanting to go where Tom was going, and the stewards were holding them, and Frank was holding them with one arm and his brother with the other, and he could not hold both, and he knew it, and Tom could see that he knew it.

“I know,” said Tom.

He did not hear himself say it. He felt it in his throat.

“I know, Frank. I know there may.”

And he pulled his arm free. It was not hard. Frank let him. Tom felt the fist on his sleeve open, at the last, not because Tom had pulled but because Frank had let it, because Frank had his other arm out and eighty men pushing against it and a line to hold, and he could not hold his brother and the line both, and he chose the line, because that was what a steward was for.

Tom went into the junction.

---

Two streets up, to the north, on the far side, where the Queens column had come from and where its rear sections had been held by their own stewards at their own line when the device went off, there was another wall of people, pushing, held, with the stewards’ arms out along the front of it; and in front of that wall, a little to one side, on the pavement, not in the march, a woman in a light coat with her hair tied back and a telephone held against her ear.

She was not marching. You could see she was not marching. She was standing very still at the edge of the march with her telephone at her ear and her mouth moving, and she was looking down the street, two streets, across the junction, through the smoke, and he thought, for one second, as he went into the junction past his brother, that she was looking at him.

He did not know who she was.

He went on into the smoke, towards the ones that were moving, and the sky over the junction was blue, and the black empty windows of the buildings looked down, and something was still coming down out of the blue, very slowly, a long way above him, a sheet of paper, turning over and over in the sun, the way the stars had come down from the ceiling.

He could not hear anything.

A minute ago he had been standing beside his brother at a steward line at the foot of the bridge, with the band playing faintly behind them and his brother saying at lunch.

There was nothing to hear.