The black clouds moved quickly in from the ocean, threatening to release again. Water was still ankle deep or higher in the streets.
Was it a June afternoon? Was it really nine years ago? He had taken an afternoon off. They had gone to the Central Park Zoo to watch the penguins. His wife was a penguin person. He was a seal person. They had been in no hurry. People passed them as they sat eating peanuts, saying nothing, deciding without saying it that this was a special day and they should celebrate with her favorite, Thai food. And then it had rained. Suddenly. They had been caught. Soaked. No umbrella. No cabs would stop on Fifth Avenue. Traffic was bumper-to-bumper and filled with frustration. They went to the apartment, stripped, made love. Eight years maybe. A June afternoon.
An hour after he had called to place his order, Mac sat in white lab coat and carefully sheared off slivers of stainless steel from the tip of an Army Ranger knife. It was painstaking, slow, absorbing in its detail.
He almost forgot about that day in June.
Jackson Street was flooded, knee-deep, like many other streets in Queens. Kids in shorts had stripped the wheels from old skateboards and were trying with little success to surf down the empty streets.
The water was overflow, sewer backup, filthy and dangerous. There were warnings on television and radio, but the kids of Queens were not paying attention. They were having fun.
Sam Delvechio screamed, 'Get out of my way,' and, board in hand, ran through the dark water as fast as he could. Then he plopped stomach down on the board and sailed surprisingly quickly down the middle of the street. He was going in the direction the water was flowing.
His friends Doug and Al took their turns, gulping in bacteria and laughing.
'Look,' Al called out.
A fish, about a foot long and moving against the flow, swam down the street.
'Catch it,' Al called.
They grabbed for the fish, but couldn't hold it.
'Hit it with the board,' called Sam.
Doug swung at the fish with his board, missed. Al took a turn and hit the fish, which was just getting the idea that it wasn't safe. It sped up.
Sam took a turn, hit the fish. The fish turned on its side, still swimming. Sam was about to strike again when he stepped on something. No surprise. He was barefoot in the middle of the street.
He was about to swing again when Al said, 'Hey look.'
Blood curled up to the surface of the dark water in front of Sam.
Sam reached down and groped for whatever it was he had stepped on. The fish righted itself and swam away. Sam came up with something that looked like, and was, one of his toes.
'Hey, shit,' said Al.
Sam looked dazed and said, 'It doesn't hurt.'
'Get your aunt,' said Al. 'They can sew it back on.'
'My aunt?' asked Sam, staring at the bloody toe in his hand.
'No, Sam,' said Al, whose father was a paramedic. 'The hospital.'
Doug stepped forward, reached down into the murky water, cautiously moved his hand along the surface of the street and touched something. He lifted it and held it up.
The open blade of the Army Ranger knife was stained with blood.
It had been dark during and before the rain, but it was even darker now. Somewhere behind the ominous clouds and rumbling sky the sun was going down. Night was coming.
'My first name's John,' said Devlin as the board was eased into the pit by two other firemen.
The board was blue, plastic, two and a half feet wide and seven feet long.
'Stella,' she said.
'Stella,' he repeated. 'I'll be right back up with your partner.'
'Be careful,' she said.
There was a metal coil hooked to the fireman's waist. Devlin had removed his raincoat and put on a long- sleeved plastic jacket.
Stella nodded and Devlin straddled the board. The two firemen at the surface started to ease him down by slowly releasing the coil as Devlin slid into a darkness broken only by the light mounted on his hat.
The sides of the pit bled dirt and debris around him.
Standing near the edge, Stella watched the light bob into the blackness and grow smaller as the fireman descended.
Stella turned her eyes to the taut metal line and the two men who were easing it down. The line went slack and Devlin's voice called, 'I'm down.'
There was little room for movement at the bottom of the pit. Hawkes was kneeling and holding Custus's head out of the water. In the light from his lamp, Devlin could see the injured man's pale face. The man wasn't dead. Not yet.
'Doctor?'
'I'm okay,' said Hawkes.
There was 'okay' and 'okay.' Devlin had seen them all. He looked at the beam that trapped Custus's broken ankle. He unhooked the metal coil from his waist and reached over to hand it to Hawkes. Hawkes shook his head.
'You'll need my help,' he said, nodding toward Custus.
'I know how to do this,' said Devlin.
'And I know what his body can take. Let's get it done.'
It was Devlin's turn to nod.
'What're you nattering about?' said Custus, eyes closed. 'Can't you see a man is trying to reach nirvana here?'
'He has a morbid sense of humor,' said Hawkes.
'I'm not easily amused,' said Devlin. 'Let's get him out of here.'
He reached into the water, found the rubble under Custus's ankle.
'Can't move the beam,' he said, pulling his hand out of the water. 'We have to try to clear enough room under that ankle to pull him out.'
'Let's do it,' said Hawkes.
'Let's do it carefully,' said Devlin. 'The beam is wedged tight. It's not going to shift, at least not because we remove some of what's under it. Slow so more debris doesn't slide down when we work.'
'There's an irony here,' Custus said weakly, painfully, as the two men reached under his broken ankles. 'But it eludes me.'
'Under the circumstances,' said Devlin, 'that comes as no surprise.'
'Ahhh.' Custus groaned in pain as a chunk of plaster the size of a football crashed into the water near his head. 'This,' said Custus, 'is the moment in which I am to nobly tell you to save yourselves and leave me to my fate, but I have a secret.'
'More than one,' said Hawkes.
'Well, yes, but you've penetrated some of my better ones,' Custus said. 'No, the secret is that I'm not afraid to die, but I am very curious about the future I'll miss if I do. Ah, the irony. Now I remember. You are risking your lives to save me so that I can be accused of a bevy of crimes including murder. If brought to trial and convicted, I will spend what remains of my life in what…?'
Neither Hawkes nor Devlin answered.
'In a dark pit,' Custus supplied.
'Might be clear,' said Devlin, leaning back, knowing that they had been lucky so far, knowing there was only so much luck to go around for a fireman. 'Let's try it. I'll take him under the arms and pull him slowly. You ease his
