officer and he nervously nodded toward her, pain in his eyes.
There was pain, apparently, everywhere. These men too would have rather
been home with their families. Here there was death; it was everywhere.
It seemed to cling to her clothes, much like the snowfall.
“Ms. Archer, when you’re ready to leave, you tell Billy over there and
he’ll radio me. I’ll come right up and get you.”
As he started to get back in his cruiser, she called to him. “What’s
your name?”
The officer looked back. “Eugene, ma’am. Deputy Eugene McKenna.”
“Thank you, Eugene.”
He nodded and touched the brim of his cap. “Please don’t stay too long,
Ms. Archer.”
As the car drove away, Billy led her toward the lights. He kept his
eyes straight ahead. Sidney didn’t know how much Officer McKenna had
told his partner, but she could feel the distress emanating from his
body. He was a slender straw of a man, young, barely twenty-five, she
thought, and he looked sickened and nervous.
He finally stopped walking. Up ahead Sidney could see people moving
slowly across the property. Barricades and yellow police tape were
everywhere. Under the artificial daylight, Sidney could see the utter
devastation. It resembled a battlefield, the earth seemingly inflicted
with a terrible surface wound.
The young police officer touched her arm. “Ma’am, you oughta stay back
around here. Those folk from Washington are real particular about
people messing around up here. They’re afraid somebody might stumble
over… you know, mess up stuff.” He took a deep breath. “There’s just
things everywhere, ma’am. Everywhere! ! ain’t never seen anything
like it and I hope I never do again so long as I live.” He looked off in
the distance again. “When you’re ready, I’ll be down there.” He pointed
in the direction from which they had come and then headed back down.
Sidney wrapped her coat around her and brushed the snow from her hair.
She unconsciously moved forward, then stopped, then started advancing
again. Directly under the umbrella of light, mounds of dirt had been
thrown up. She had seen that on the news now countless times. The
impact crater. They said the entire plane was in there, and though she
knew it to be true, she could not believe it was possible.
The impact crater. Jason was in there too. It was a thought that had
become so deep, so wrenching, that instead of sending her into
hysterics, it simply incapacitated her. She clenched her eyes shut and
then reopened them. Thick tears rolled down her cheeks, and she did not
bother to wipe them away.
She did not expect to ever smile again.
Even when she forced herself to think of Amy, of the wonderful little
girl Jason had left her, not a trace of happiness was able to break
through her utter sorrow. She stared ahead as cold winds buffeted her,
her long hair swirling around her head.
While she continued to watch, several large pieces of equipment headed
over to the crater, engines whining, black, smoky exhaust gushing up
from their bowels. Steam shovels and earth movers attacked the pit with
great force, lifting up huge mouthfuls of earth and depositing them in
waiting dump trucks, which headed out on special routes over terrain
that had already been searched. Speed was the overriding concern, even
paramount to the risk of further damaging the aircraft’s remains. What
everyone wanted desperately to uncover was the FDR. That was more
important than worrying about turning a quarter-inch fragment into
something smaller by the accelerated excavation work.
Sidney noticed the snow was adhering to the ground–an obvious concern
to the investigators, she assumed, as she saw a number of them racing
around with searchlights, only stopping long enough to stick small flags
in the rapidly whitening earth. When she moved closer, she made out the
green-clad figures of the National Guardsmen as they patrolled their
sectors, rifles slung over their shoulders, their heads turning
constantly in the direction of the crater. Like an omnipotent magnet,
the crash site seemed inexorably to demand everyone’s attention. The
price to be paid for the innumerable joys of life, it seemed, was the
constant threat of swift, inexplicable death.