28
Iowa, 1998
For the next several years, after his family’s destruction, Jordan stayed with the Millman family, who had a farm a mile west of the Krays’ house that had burned.
He went to school on the yellow bus as before, but the other kids tended not to talk to him. No one made fun of him; they simply didn’t seem to know quite what to make of him. A kid like Jordan, their classmate, an actual hero. Nobody knew how to approach or talk to him. A kid who in truth had been thought of as something of a dork had miraculously become “awesome.”
Jordan enjoyed his celebrity status—at least some of it. But after a while he became withdrawn and quiet. He would look around the bus sometimes at his schoolmates and wonder how something that had nothing directly to do with their lives could strike them as so great a tragedy that they seldom knew what to say to him. He thought it shouldn’t be such a problem. Even the nitwits they saw on TV news were always yammering about “getting on with” their lives.
The Millmans were a nice enough family. The father, Will, had died three years ago in an auto accident. His wife, only slightly injured, became “The Widow Julia.” Their son Bill, also injured, was a little younger than Jordan. He seemed to look up to Jordan, who, while older, was considerably smaller.
At times Bill would follow Jordan to the burned, partially collapsed hulk of what had been the Krays’ home. The burned smell was still strong, but Jordan was used to it and didn’t mind. He would stand at the edge of the ruin and point things out to Bill. Teacher-to-student mode: “See how the kitchen floor caved in first? That’s because the appliances were so heavy. And the fire almost melted part of the house’s main beam, running the length of the structure. That’s a steel I beam that held up the entire weight of the house,” Jordan told Bill, “but look how it’s bent. Like it’s squishy rubber instead of steel. See over there, where the electrical service was run in and mounted on that wall? That metal box hanging on the wall is full of circuit breakers.”
While Jordan talked, Bill listened carefully about electric current and circuit breakers. Then they covered the subject of smoke alarms. What kinds there were and how sometimes they worked but sometimes didn’t. Jordan explained about the sprinkler system, and how it was kept dry by air pressure unless one piece of metal melted faster than another, which completed a circuit and triggered an alarm and an indoor cloudburst.
Bill Millman thought that if someone walked in or listened to them, it would sound as if Jordan was trying to sell him the ruined house.
What Jordan never talked about was the short time he’d spent after entering the burning house. Before the propane explosion.
Jordan had learned a great deal observing the fire that morning, not the least of which was how a burned body looked. Kent, he thought.
Jordan only had to move a few feet to find what must be his mother’s body. Interesting how the blackened corpse might have worked when alive, the bone and muscle and tendon receiving instructions from the brain. Human bodies were simply large gadgets, Jordan realized. Parts working in conjunction with each other.
How fascinating.
Especially women’s parts.
The widow Julia liked to cook. Bill and Jordan liked to eat. Bill became tall and lean, an outfielder on the school baseball team. He was disciplined for using the janitor’s tools to peel a baseball like an onion, unwinding what was inside. He never told anyone that Jordan had ruined the baseball, curious about how and why it behaved as it did when it met the bat.
The two boys grew apart. Bill became immersed in baseball, and Jordan, more and move aloof, discovered reading. It was rumored that the Cincinnati Reds were going to send a scout to assess Bill’s talent. Bill shagged fly balls and spent extra hours in the batting cage, but the scout never showed up.
Toward the end of that season, a batted ball shattered Bill’s kneecap. He managed to adapt well to an artificial knee, but that was the end of baseball or any other active sport.
Bill did, however, learn to walk with the knee so well that unless you knew about the injury, you’d think it was just fine.
Then Bill got into the habit of spending time in the park, hitting fly balls to slightly younger, more nimble outfielders. Now and then Bill would even break into a run to field a ball that was thrown back in.
Not a long run, but it was amazing the way Bill could get around with the man-made knee.
Jordan sometimes watched from the shadows on summer nights when Bill would sit with the widow Julia in the porch glider. With every gentle rock the glider would squeal as if in ecstasy. Jordan mentioned a few times that it would be no trouble to oil the glider’s steel rockers. A couple of drops would do the trick. But Bill told him to leave them alone, he kind of liked the sound. He told Jordan it was more pleasant to listen to than the crickets. Jordan wondered if Bill had ever taken apart a cricket.
Jordan took to playing solitaire by the light of a yellow bulb, while Bill and the widow Julia rocked. Occasionally Bill would get up and go inside to the kitchen to get a couple of Budweiser beers and bring them outside. He never brought a bottle out for Jordan.
Jordan got into the habit of ignoring the squeaking sound of the glider. But when the squeaking stopped, he would wait to watch Bill clomp across the porch, then with the slam of the screen door reappear a few minutes later with the two bottles of beer.
Then one warm night the squeaking stopped. The boots clomped across the dark porch, and there were lighter, trailing footfalls.
Then the night was quiet except for insect noises.
That night the screen door never slammed, and the glider didn’t resume its squealing.
Early the next morning, routine set in again. It was the weekend, and Jordan and Bill had turnips to harvest before the sun got high.
The widow Julia gave little indication that last night had been different for her and Bill. But occasionally their eyes would meet, then quickly look away. There were small, sly smiles.
When the turnip harvesting was done, Julia put biscuits in the oven, brewed a pot of coffee, and scrambled some eggs. Everyone behaved in precariously normal fashion. Jordan sat back in his spoked wooden chair and watched Julia move about the kitchen. She was barefoot and wearing a faded blue robe with its sash pulled tight around her narrow waist. Something about her feet with their painted red nails held his attention.
Jordan and Bill both watched as she bent low with her knees locked to check the biscuits she’d placed in the oven.
Bill shoved his chair back and stood up to help Julia. It didn’t look as if it hurt him to stand, but it was obvious he was slowed down.
He stretched and got some mugs and plates down from a cabinet, and Jordan observed how well he moved without his cane. Jordan didn’t know what artificial knees were made of—some kind of composite material, he imagined. The human knee was complicated. There must be lots of moving parts.
Jordan wondered how they worked.
29
New York, the present
The concrete saw roared and screamed simultaneously. Dan Snyder, who’d been a worker for SBL Property Management for fifteen years, knew how to use the earsplitting tool to section off concrete better than anyone at SBL. He kept a deceptively loose grip on the saw, using its weight to maintain stability, his arms to guide rather than apply pressure. Let the saw do most of the work.
He’d learned to ignore the noise.
Snyder knew some older workers at SBL whose hearing had been affected by the noises of destruction and construction. He did wear earplugs, though he didn’t think they’d make much difference. Already he was asking people to repeat themselves. He was particularly deaf at parties, or wherever a crowd gathered.