8
David hoped the doc on duty would give his daughter a sedative, but it was against protocol for infants who could not be diagnosed, and Abra Rafaella Stone seemed to have nothing wrong with her. She wasn’t running a fever, she wasn’t showing a rash, and ultrasound had ruled out pyloric stenosis. An X-ray showed no foreign objects in her throat or stomach, or a bowel obstruction. Basically, she just wouldn’t shut up. The Stones were the only patients in the ER at that hour on a Tuesday morning, and each of the three nurses on duty had a try at quieting her. Nothing worked.
“Shouldn’t you give her something to eat?” Lucy asked the doctor when he came back to check. The phrase Ringer’s lactate occurred to her, something she’d heard on one of the doctor shows she’d watched ever since her teenage crush on George Clooney. But for all she knew, Ringer’s lactate was foot lotion, or an anticoagulant, or something for stomach ulcers. “She won’t take the breast or the bottle.”
“When she gets hungry enough, she’ll eat,” the doctor said, but neither Lucy nor David was much comforted. For one thing, the doctor looked younger than they were. For another (this was far worse), he didn’t sound completely sure. “Have you called your pediatrician?” He checked the paperwork. “Dr. Dalton?”
“Left a message with his service,” David said. “We probably won’t hear from him until mid-morning, and by then this will be over.”
One way or the other, he thought, and his mind—made ungovernable by too little sleep and too much anxiety—presented him with a picture as clear as it was horrifying: mourners standing around a small grave. And an even smaller coffin.
9
At seven thirty, Chetta Reynolds blew into the examining room where the Stones and their ceaselessly screaming baby daughter had been stashed. The poet rumored to be on the short list for a Presidential Medal of Freedom was dressed in straight-leg jeans and a BU sweatshirt with a hole in one elbow. The outfit showed just how thin she’d become over the last three or four years. No cancer, if that’s what you’re thinking, she’d say if anyone commented on her runway-model thinness, which she ordinarily disguised with billowing dresses or caftans. I’m just in training for the final lap around the track.
Her hair, as a rule braided or put up in complicated swoops arranged to showcase her collection of vintage hair clips, stood out around her head in an unkempt Einstein cloud. She wore no makeup, and even in her distress, Lucy was shocked by how old Concetta looked. Well, of course she was old, eighty-five was very old, but until this morning she had looked like a woman in her late sixties at most. “I would have been here an hour earlier if I’d found someone to come in and take care of Betty.” Betty was her elderly, ailing boxer.
Chetta caught David’s reproachful glance.
“Bets is dying, David. And based on what you could tell me over the phone, I wasn’t all that concerned about Abra.”
“Are you concerned now?” David asked.
Lucy flashed him a warning glance, but Chetta seemed willing to accept the implied rebuke. “Yes.” She held out her hands. “Give her to me, Lucy. Let’s see if she’ll quiet for Momo.”
But Abra would not quiet for Momo, no matter how she was rocked. Nor did a soft and surprisingly tuneful lullabye (for all David knew, it was “The Wheels on the Bus” in Italian) do the job. They all tried the walking cure again, first squiring her around the small exam room, then down the hall, then back to the exam room. The screaming went on and on. At some point there was a commotion outside—someone with actual visible injuries being wheeled in, David assumed—but those in exam room 4 took little notice.
At five to nine, the exam room door opened and the Stones’ pediatrician walked in. Dr. John Dalton was a fellow Dan Torrance would have recognized, although not by last name. To Dan he was just Doctor John, who made the coffee at the Thursday night Big Book meeting in North Conway.
“Thank God!” Lucy said, thrusting her howling child into the pediatrician’s arms. “We’ve been left on our own for hours!”
“I was on my way when I got the message.” Dalton hoisted Abra onto his shoulder. “Rounds here, then over in Castle Rock. You’ve heard about what’s happened, haven’t you?”
“Heard what?” David asked. With the door open, he was for the first time consciously aware of a moderate uproar outside. People were talking in loud voices. Some were crying. The nurse who had admitted them walked by, her face red and blotchy, her cheeks wet. She didn’t even glance at the screaming infant.
“A passenger jet hit the World Trade Center,” Dalton said. “And no one thinks it was an accident.”
That was American Airlines Flight 11. United Airlines Flight 175 struck the Trade Center’s South Tower seventeen minutes later, at 9:03 a.m. At 9:03, Abra Stone abruptly stopped crying. By 9:04, she was sound asleep.
On their ride back to Anniston, David and Lucy listened to the radio while Abra slept peacefully in her car seat behind them. The news was unbearable, but turning it off was unthinkable . . . at least until a newscaster announced the names of the airlines and the flight numbers of the aircraft: two in New York, one near Washington, one cratered in rural Pennsylvania. Then David finally reached over and silenced the flood of disaster.
“Lucy, I have to tell you something. I dreamed—”
“I know.” She spoke in the flat tone of one who has just suffered a shock. “So did I.”
By the time they crossed back into New Hampshire, David had begun to believe there might be something to that caul business, after all.
10
In a New Jersey town, on the west bank of the Hudson River, there’s a park named for the town’s most famous resident. On a clear day, it offers a perfect view of Lower Manhattan. The True Knot arrived in Hoboken on September eighth, parking in a private lot which they had four-walled for ten days. Crow Daddy did the deal. Handsome and gregarious, looking about forty, Crow’s favorite t-shirt read I’M A PEOPLE PERSON! Not that he ever wore a tee when negotiating for the True Knot; then it was strictly suit and tie. It was what the rubes expected. His straight name was Henry Rothman. He was a Harvard-educated lawyer (class of ’38), and he always carried cash. The True had over a billion dollars in various accounts across the world—some in gold, some in diamonds, some in rare books, stamps, and paintings—but never paid by check or credit card. Everyone, even Pea and Pod, who looked like kids, carried a roll of ten and twenties.
As Jimmy Numbers had once said, “We’re a cash-and-carry outfit. We pay cash and the rubes carry us.” Jimmy was the True’s accountant. In his rube days he had once ridden with an outfit that became known (long after their war was over) as Quantrill’s Raiders. Back then he had been a wild kid who wore a buffalo coat and carried a Sharps, but in the years since, he had mellowed. These days he had a framed, autographed picture of Ronald Reagan in his RV.
On the morning of September eleventh, the True watched the attacks on the Twin Towers from the parking lot, passing around four pairs of binoculars. They would have had a better view from Sinatra Park, but Rose didn’t need to tell them that gathering early might attract suspicion . . . and in the months and years ahead, America was going to be a very suspicious nation: if you see something, say something.
Around ten that morning—when crowds had gathered all along the riverbank and it was safe—they made their way to the park. The Little twins, Pea and Pod, pushed Grampa Flick in his wheelchair. Grampa wore his cap stating I AM A VET. His long, baby-fine white hair floated around the cap’s edges like milkweed. There had been a time when he’d told folks he was a veteran of the Spanish-American War. Then it was World War I. Nowadays it was World War II. In another twenty years or so, he expected to switch his story to Vietnam. Verisimilitude had never been a problem; Grampa was a military history buff.
Sinatra Park was jammed. Most folks were silent, but some wept. Apron Annie and Black-Eyed Sue helped in this respect; both were able to cry on demand. The others put on suitable expressions of sorrow, solemnity, and amazement.
Basically, the True Knot fit right in. It was how they rolled.
Spectators came and went, but the True stayed for most of the day, which was cloudless and beautiful (except for the thick billows of dreck rising in Lower Manhattan, that is). They stood at the iron rail, not talking among themselves, just watching. And taking long slow deep breaths, like tourists from the Midwest standing for the first time on Pemaquid Point or Quoddy Head in Maine, breathing deep of the fresh sea air. As a sign of respect, Rose took off her tophat and held it by her side.
At four o’clock they trooped back to their encampment in the parking lot, invigorated. They would return the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. They would return until the good steam was exhausted, and then they would move on again.
By then, Grampa Flick’s white hair would have become iron gray, and he would no longer need the wheelchair.