“You can stop it there,” Dan says. Brad pokes his tablet and the big TV returns to bluescreen.
Dan turns to Holly.
“A hundred and thirty-four dead in all. And when did it happen? December sixteenth, 1960. Sixty years ago to this very day.”
Only a coincidence, Holly thinks, but a chill shivers through her just the same, and once again she thinks of how there may be forces in this world moving people as they will, like men (and women) on a chessboard. The confluence of dates could be a coincidence, but can she say that about all that’s brought her here to this house in Portland, Maine? No. There’s a chain going all the way back to another monster named Brady Hartsfield. Brady, who allowed her to believe in the first place.
“There was one survivor,” Dan Bell says, startling her out of her reverie.
Holly points at the bluescreen, as if the newsreel were still playing there. “Someone survived that?”
“Only for a day,” Brad says. “The newspapers called him the Boy Who Fell from the Sky.”
“But it was someone else who coined the phrase,” Dan says. “Back then in the New York metro area, there were three or four independent TV stations as well as the networks. One of them was WLPT. Long gone now, of course, but if something was filmed or taped, chances are good that you can find it on the Internet. Prepare yourself for a shock, young lady.” He nods at Brad, who begins poking at his tablet again.
Holly learned at her mother’s knee (and with her father’s tacit approval) that overt displays of emotion weren’t just embarrassing and unpleasant but shameful. Even after years of work with Allie Winters, she usually keeps her feelings bottled up and tightly capped, even among friends. These are strangers, but when the next clip starts on the big screen, she screams. She can’t help it.
“That’s him! That’s Ondowsky!”
“I know,” Dan Bell says.
11
Only most people would say it wasn’t, and Holly knows this.
They’d say Oh yes, there’s a resemblance, just as there’s a resemblance between Mr. Bell and his grandson, or between John Lennon and his son Julian, or between me and Aunt Elizabeth. They’d say I bet it’s Chet Ondowsky’s grandfather. Gosh, the apple sure doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?
But Holly, like the old man in the wheelchair, knows.
The man holding the old-fashioned WLPT microphone is fuller in the face than Ondowsky, and the lines on that face suggest he’s ten, maybe even twenty years older. His crewcut is salt-and-pepper, and it comes to a slight widow’s peak that Ondowsky doesn’t have. He has the beginning of jowls, and Ondowsky doesn’t have those, either.
Behind him, some firefighters scurry about in the sooty snow, picking up packages and luggage, while others turn hoses on the remains of the United plane and two burning brownstones behind it. Just pulling away is a big old Cadillac of an ambulance with its lights flashing.
“This is Paul Freeman, reporting from the Brooklyn site of the worst air crash in American history,” the reporter says, puffing out white vapor with every word. “All were killed onboard this United Airlines jet except for one boy.” He points to the departing ambulance. “The boy, as yet unidentified, is in that ambulance. He is—” The reporter calling himself Paul Freeman pauses dramatically. “—The Boy Who Fell from the Sky! He was thrown from the rear section of the plane, still on fire, and landed in a snowbank. Horrified bystanders rolled him in the snow and put out the flames, but I saw him loaded into the ambulance, and I can tell you that his injuries looked severe. His clothes were almost entirely burned off, or melted into his skin.”
“Stop it there,” the old man commands. His grandson does so. Dan turns to Holly. His blue eyes are faded but still fierce. “Do you see it, Holly? Do you hear it? I’m sure to the viewing audience he just looked and sounded horrified, doing his job under difficult conditions, but—”
“He’s not horrified,” Holly said. She’s thinking of Ondowsky’s first report from the Macready School bombing. Now she sees that with clearer eyes. “He’s excited.”
“Yes,” Dan says, and nods. “Yes indeed. You understand. Good.”
“Thank God someone else does,” Brad says.
“The boy’s name was Stephen Baltz,” Dan says, “and this Paul Freeman saw the burned boy, perhaps heard his screams of pain—because witnesses said the boy was conscious, at least to begin with. And do you