A Spattering of Rain
By Coyote Phillips
They'd been in New York City Memorial Day Weekend, 2001, on a Spanish Club trip both brothers had been looking forward to for nearly eight months. Joe, who rarely saved his money for anything, had saved up nearly two hundred dollars. Frank, on the other hand, took that much out of his savings account the weekend before Memorial Day.
They left Friday, in a big Coach USA bus crowded with fifty other Bayport High kids, at 6:00 a.m. Joe, of course, complained about the ungodly hour at which they had to leave; secretly, Frank agreed with the ninth-grader.
There's a saying about New York City. "If you visit for the weekend, you see everything. For a week, some things. If you live there, you see nothing." The trip fell under the weekend category.
The bus reached Rockefeller Center at ten o'clock that morning. That night, they went to Medieval Times for the dinner show. The next, the Palace Theater on Broadway for a performance of Aida. Joe even got a photo of a Broadway street sign, ordinary green and white like every other street sign.
They got lost in the Metropolitan Museum of Art; toured the Metropolitan's Cloisters, took dozens of photos inside the toy store called F.A.O. Schwartz and rode the elevator in Schwartz that looks like a robot; Joe got seasick taking the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty; when they sat down to watch the video clip that comes along with the Statue's tour package, there was a fire drill in the building the theater was in. The ride home was a bit of a letdown, especially discovering that the tallest building in Bayport was a measly 10 stories high.
But neither got a picture of the New York City skyline the entire weekend.
---
Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Frank Hardy looked up, sharply, at the clock. Exactly 8:45 a.m. Why did he have a sudden, inexplicable feeling of horror? He shrugged it off and returned to attempting to figure out how to pass the New York State Math Regents when the professor refused to use a book or to teach the class in a way they could actually understand the stuff.
The bell rang, signaling the end of the period. After his next class, agriculture mechanics, he was getting his afternoon books from his locker. Joe came up to him, a mixture of sadness and panic on his face. "Frank, the World Trade Center was hit by planes."
Frank froze, then turned to face his brother.
"You're joking."
"Wish I was."
"Joe, do you realize that this could have just as easily happened when we were there back in May?"
It was Joe's turn to freeze.
"Holy shit," he said. And to Frank, that about summed it up.
---
The entire student body as well as the vast majority of the teachers walked around in a daze that day. Many were crying; many expressed concerns for relatives or friends who worked in New York City. One girl in Frank's lunch period broke down completely, partly because of concern for her step-aunt, partly because she'd been on the NYC trip, too.
Frank thought back to when they'd crossed to the other side of the Hudson River and had seen the skyline from there, with the Empire State Building and the World Trade Center side by side. He thought of the castle in Central Park; of the Statue of Liberty, who had stood there the entire time, a silent witness with her back turned to the last moments of normality that day; of the streetlights oblivious to the chaos around them.
On Broadway…green, yellow, red.
Elsewhere…green, yellow, red.
Green, yellow, red.
Green, yellow, red.
Green, yellow, red.
Green, yellow, red….oblivious to the chaos around them.
---
They came out of school into bright September sunshine. Not a cloud in the sky; it was one of those days when not even a jet trail was to be seen.
Kids around Frank and Joe were talking and laughing as usual; the horror had worn off a bit but what was usually done so casually was now subdued in a sad sort of way. Even the clock ticking on the wall during eleventh period was slower, as if even the non-animated entities could sense that something was deeply wrong.
For the first time in months Frank and Joe drove home without talking to each other. The mood was still the same as it had been that morning, but it was a milder version. But still there.
The sun was shining brightly, reflecting off the road in such a manner that it looked like it was shining off water instead of pavement. The trees, even up close, looked hazy; Frank, who was driving, knew that seeing hazy trees even along the side of the road is a telltale sign that it would rain soon. Where were the clouds for that?
The breeze from the open windows raised goose bumps on his arms; he shivered slightly and quickly corrected the car's path. Sighed. It was such a beautiful day, that day. To think that horror had occurred only that morning…it was unthinkable. He knew that when they arrived home in just a few minutes, Laura Hardy would be outside shelling peas with Aunt Gertrude and not saying a word between them. But later that night the news would be turned on, and everything on every channel would be about that morning. They'd be eating coconut shrimp soup-from-a-can and watching the news, because nobody would be very hungry or in the mood for a regular sit-down dinner. And that night they'd go to bed hoping that it was all just a nightmare, but they'd wake up the next morning and discover that it wasn't a nightmare at all and that the NATO agreement would probably take effect, if the rumors flying around the country like crazy were to be believed.
---
The rest of the week went by as though time were speeding up again. By the end of the next day, they didn't think about it…much. Frank was more worried about a sociology test he had the following Monday; Joe was worried about making weight for wrestling. It was an unspoken agreement among everyone not to discuss those events. And it would be for years to come, being much more preferable to think of something else.
But everyone remembered that day, where the weather was the only gem of beauty and serenity, oblivious to the chaos around them.