Tim Brown said, “Will the structure stand? If it begins to collapse, we are going to have the damndest mess this city has ever seen.”
“I think it will stand,” Nat said. “If the fire gets completely out of control—”
“Man,” one of the battalion chiefs said, “it is completely out of control. All we’re doing is shoveling shit against the tide.” He paused. “And losing men doing it.”
“Then more windows are going to go,” Nat said. “And that aluminum siding won’t stand up indefinitely. But the structure itself isn’t going to collapse.”
“You’re sure?” Brown said.
Nat shook his head. “My best guess,” he said. “I can’t do any better than that.” His mind went off on a new tack. “With a forest fire,” he said, “you pray for rain.”
“Like they used to say in Boston,” Giddings said.
“Spahn and Sain and two days of rain. How much good would it do here?” He spoke to the firemen.
One of the battalion chiefs shrugged. “It would help. It would give them up there”—his raised head indicated the Tower Room—“a little more time, I’d think.” He paused. “But if they’re already getting smoke—” He paused again. “Two hours is a long time.”
Time was the essence, Patty thought. Time was the dimension against which all else had to be measured; within its framework, length, breadth, depth, those who waited their turn in the Tower Room would live or die. While we stand by outside that framework unable to help, she thought, and was reminded again of the vigil outside the Coronary Care Unit in the hospital.
She wondered how her mother was bearing up, and knew that at this moment Mary McGraw would be in church, on her knees, praying for the soul of Bert Mcgraw, and believing that her prayers would at least be heard even if not wholly granted. Faith has the power to move mountains? Maybe yes, maybe no. But certainly it did have the power to soothe and comfort.
And faith I have not, Patty thought for perhaps the first time with real regret. We have turned our backs on the old ways, many of us, but what have we taken in their place?
She was suddenly aware that Nat was watching her with concern, and she repeated the question aloud, wondering if he would understand.
“I don’t think we’ve taken anything,” Nat said. “We’ve substituted what we considered knowledge for belief and found that we don’t yet know enough to make the substitution work. Maybe we never will.”
His eyes searching her face asked a question, Patty thought, and she slid down from the stool to walk over and perch on the comer of the desk. “I’m all right,” she said. “Honest. Mother said she was going home to have a nice cup of hot tea and a good cry. Mine will come later too.”
“Tea?” He was trying to keep it light.
“I’m that old-fashioned,” Patty said.
The telephone crackled. Nat picked it up. “Yes, Governor?”
“We’ve had one heart attack,” the governor said. “It has set me thinking. I’m having a list prepared of names and addresses of all those up here. When it is ready, I’ll have it read to you for someone to set down.” He paused. “Just in case.”
“Yes, sir.” Nat cupped a hand over the phone. “Get a stenographer to take down names,” he said to Brown.
Patty stirred herself on the comer of the desk.. “Let me.” Something, anything to do, she thought, anything that might in the slightest way help. Nat watched her; he was smiling approval. “I write legibly,” she said.
Nat said into the phone, “We’re ready for your list whenever, Governor.” Again he leaned back in the desk chair, and smiled up at Patty.
“You did it,” Patty said quietly. “You promised a new idea and you came up with it. I’m proud of you.”
“It isn’t over yet. Not by a long shot.”
“I’m still proud of you. And however many people manage to get out will—”
The walkie-talkie said, “Oliver to Trailer. They’ve got the line over there. I want to make damn sure somebody knows how to tie a decent knot; a bowline is what I’d like. If that end pulls loose while somebody is between the buildings—” He left the sentence unfinished.
Nat said, “There are two firemen up there, and probably some ex-Boy Scouts as well—” He could not stifle entirely a triumphant sense of gaiety. “I’ll see to it, Chief. Hold on.”
He picked up the phone and spoke to the governor, smiling a little at the thought of a man used to dealing with the problems of eighteen million people now bothering to make sure that somebody had tied a knot properly in a piece of line. He listened. “Thank you, Governor,” he said, and returned to the walkie-talkie. “Bowline it is,” he said. “Rest easy, Chief.”
“Then,” the chief said, “tell them to haul away on the breeches buoy line. We’re ready at this end.” There was triumph in the chief’s voice too.
In the building’s core, already converted to one great flue, temperatures were climbing to welding-torch levels. A continuous blast of fresh air was sucked in at the base, driven upward by its own almost explosive expansion and accelerating to near the hurricane speed, acting, as the battalion chief had said, in the manner of a blast furnace.
Structural steel* began to glow. Lesser materials melted or vaporized. Where, as on floor after floor, random spacing, superheated air burst out of the core into open corridors and turned instantly to flames, the heavy tempered windows lasted only moments before they shattered and threw out their shards to rain down on the plaza.
Aluminum panels curled and melted, the ‘kin of the structure peeling away to expose the sinews and the skeleton beneath.
Like a gigantic animal in torment, the great building seemed to writhe and shudder, its agony plain.
From the ground, to those whose eyesight could make it out, the line dangling between the two buildings looked impossibly fine, delicate as gossamer. And when the breeches buoy swung loaded for the first time from the Tower Room and began its catenary descent to the roof of the lower Trade Center roof, it seemed that the canvas bag and the woman it contained were hanging free, suspended by nothing more than faith, defying gravity in a miraculous attempt to escape the rising blast-furnace heat.
Her name was Hilda Cook, and she was currently starring on Broadway in the new musical Jump for Joy!
She was twenty-nine years old, dressed in shoes, minibriefs, and a mid-thigh dress tucked up now above her waist. Her long shapely legs dangled crotch-deep through the breeches buoy holes. She clung to the edges of the canvas bag with the strength of hysteria.
She had stared unbelieving at the number on the small square paper slip she had been handed from the empty punchbowl, and her first sound had been a squeal. Then, “It can’t be!” Her voice was shrill. “I’m number one!”
The secretary general was conducting the drawing.
“Someone,” he remarked, “had to be. My congratulations, young lady.”
They had carried the heavy line on which the breeches buoy rode through the window and up to the ceiling where one of the firemen had broken through with his halligan tool to expose a steel beam around which they had bent the line.
Ben Caldwell, directing the operation, had made the point: “Unless we go to the ceiling,” he said as if explaining a problem to a class of not very bright young architects, “the line will rest on the window sill and we will not be able to get the breeches buoy into the room. I, for one, would rather get into the bag inside than climb out the window to get to it.”
Three men manned the lighter line attached to the breeches buoy itself, and Hilda Cook, swinging free within the room, said, “Easy, guys, for God’s sake! I’m already scared spitless!”