“Look!” an ambulance man pointed at Max.
And then lots of people noticed him, only it couldn’t just be him and he turned to glance back. Behind him, like ghosts, walking at a slow stunned pace were maybe fifteen or twenty people, emerging out of the cornfields.
Quickly they were surrounded by a variety of helpers, in uniform and out. A man lifted Byron and it was only then that Max saw one of the boy’s legs had been scraped and he was bleeding.
“Whose baby is this?” Max shouted back at the other passengers. He called to one woman. “Is this your baby?” But she didn’t even seem to see him, much less hear what he said. He recognized her as one of the blond mothers he had noticed on the plane traveling with all those look-alike blond kids; None were as young as the baby he held. And none were with her.
“Help!” That was Byron’s voice.
Max turned and saw that Byron was reaching for him.
“Don’t worry,” the man carrying Byron said. “Your daddy is right here.”
“I’m not his daddy.”
Byron still had his hand out, yearning for Max.
“Take care of him,” Max told the volunteer. “Who are you?” he added lamely.
“Red Cross,” the man said. Max was surprised by the speed of their arrival until he remembered there had been about twenty minutes while the jet was in trouble in the air. Plenty of time for all the services to be prepared on the ground.
“He’ll get you back to your parents,” Max told Byron and the boy actually had me presence of mind to nod his agreement. “He was traveling alone,” he told the Red Cross man.
They reached the ambulances and trucks. Max leaned against a green station wagon. Three bags of groceries were loaded in the rear. He noticed a box of Rice Krispies. Byron was carried off toward the airport buildings. Max wanted to close his eyes but he thought he would die if he did. He pushed off the car and moved toward the other collection point of surviving passengers — a pair of ambulances parked near an open hangar.
He walked holding me infant seat outstretched, offering it to each person he approached. “Is this your baby?” he called to a woman who was in hysterics, but he realized the moment his question was out that she was in her sixties.
A few rescuers blocked his path. “Are you okay?” one said.
“I got this baby out,” Max answered. “Maybe we can find the mother.”
“You weren’t in the crash?” a paramedic in white uniform asked. She bumped shoulders with him and looked closely into his eyes.
Max shook his head no, hoping she would ignore him. “I found this baby,” he repeated. He just wanted them to make an announcement or something so he could relieve the mother’s anxiety.
“Over here!” a fire fighter shouted at him and bounced up and down. A hatchet on his belt danced. He looked fake, someone in costume. “This way!”
Max was urged along until he reached a woman seated on the edge of a station wagon’s back panel. Her head was bowed and the hair cut in a pageboy style; the bangs obscured her face. She was small; her feet dangled without reaching the pavement. As she lifted her face to look at him he was impressed by her youth. She was hardly older than a teenager.
“Is this your baby?” he asked his forlorn question.
For a moment she stared lifelessly. Then she was on him, frantic. She grabbed the infant seat as if Max had meant to do her baby harm. She knelt on the ground, unstrapped her child, and clutched it desperately, repeating its name in between wild kisses.
Max was crying. The tears came down his cheeks. He felt them hang and drip off his jaw. One curved around his chin. When he tried to wipe it away his palm slid off into the air.
The doctor in the hangar injected Carla with something, something that made her feel she was atop a mass of large cushions, that every muscle could give up and leave the living to these giant pillows, each one devoted to relieving her of the slightest effort. In fact, she lay on a portable cot beside a number of other injured passengers.
She told the T-shirt man Bubble’s age and size and general appearance. She knew he was thirty-seven inches and weighed thirty-four pounds because he had gone for his twoyear-old checkup last week.
“I’ll find him and bring him to you,” T-shirt said. After he left, Carla decided he must have had a reason for being sure that he could succeed. Maybe very few passengers were dead. She knew some were because…
There was a nausea that accompanied any recall of the sights she had passed while running out of the plane, especially of the body she had fallen on. If she forced the ghastly images away then her stomach settled. She made a great effort to raise herself up and look at her right arm to check whether that corpse’s blood was still there. No. Maybe she had imagined it. Maybe things weren’t so bad.
Her leg was in a cast, or a kind of cast, something that the doctor had been able to put around her calf instantly. It was inflated and held in place by straps fastened with Velcro. She felt a dull sensation, not pain really, right below her knee. The doctor told her it was broken although there hadn’t been an X ray—
Why wasn’t she thinking of Bubble?
She was a horrible person. Selfish and scared. She had learned that in the plane.
The hangar had a tall ceiling, vast and curved like an old-fashioned train station or a cathedral. Her head fell back on the pillows. She stared into the receding dark of the roof.
Please bring him back, she asked God meekly. I’ll do better next time.
She waited for someone to answer. She wasn’t dumb or crazy, she knew God wouldn’t. But wouldn’t He send someone? Or was Jesus himself scared?
She felt hot although the hangar was cool. She shut her eyes.
She was floating on waves. She opened her eyes and saw a man carrying her into an ambulance.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Going to the hospital.”
“Get your leg fixed up,” a voice from behind added.
“What about my boy?” It took all her energy to speak. She couldn’t lift herself either. A weight had her pinned, as if someone were sitting on her.
“Everybody’s going to the hospital.”
They slid her into the ambulance. She saw sky out the window, that soft perfect blue sky which makes people say, “Oh, it’s such a beautiful day,” and she thought—
He’s dead.
The thought hurt. She wept. The tears rained on the cruel fact and she just didn’t care, didn’t care where they were taking her or whether she would ever get up from lying down.
She couldn’t stop crying. One of the medics held her hand. He had a plump face, small dark eyes, and messy brown hair. She noticed all that but she kept on crying. She wanted her head to feel, not think about what happened, not judge, not hope.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“New York,” she stammered between sobs.
The medic nodded and covered her hand with his other. “Does the leg hurt?”
She had forgotten all about it. “My baby,” she bawled.
That made him look away. He knew something. He knew Bubble was dead.
She stopped crying and felt cold. The perspiration covering her was chilled; she felt as if a thin blanket of ice had been thrown over her. She shivered.
The medic’s attention returned. He noticed her condition and fussed, covering her with another blanket and taking her pulse. Her head lolled toward the window. Outside the sky remained empty and pretty. She couldn’t find a single cloud, not even a wisp. In the plane she remembered they flew above a puffy floor of them.
She felt Bubble in her arms again, his sweaty head bouncing underneath her chin, his stomach pushing against her hands.